Greybeard86

This. It is incredibly obvious when they shuffle power levels within books. Sometimes they just straight up buff some units to be better than the rest (can be seen at first sight), but then they rotate them through giving abilities, changing point costs, and so on. I have an extremely hard time reconciling this with "but they just couldn't predict it, you know, they just thought it was cool and didn't think it through".

I do honestly appreciate the "recent history lesson", in case my "like" wasn't explicit enough. Personally, I think that they somehow managed to cripple ally options via the specific synergies they allow within faction. For example, I was looking at fyreslayers to have something "competitive" besides my collection of oldhammer. What allies can one meaningfully bring there? Seems pretty limited, most competitive lists are pretty closed in points. I think that was the design intent, to be honest, to include a bunch of "smaller" armies and have people paint a bunch of those, as opposed to the massive collections of old. You are telling me that is changing? I also think we may have different expectations. Discounting heroes, I'd say lumineth are fairly limited. Archers, spears, cavalry, hammers; one version of each; then some centerpieces. I mean, compare that to the old "high elves". One might argue this is on release, and that they will keep expanding. But I thought that hasn't been the case for a lot of factions in AoS. You are telling me otherwise?

That was my comment. Although, as dwarf fan, I'd argue that fyreslayers have a pretty limited range (literally 2 sculpts for things that aren't heroes?). Specially coming from the wealth of options (granted, some bad) of the proud oldhammer dwarves.

I thought we were talking about monetary cost. After your post, I see the "fixed entry costs" as being in two categories: Money: I think we agree that buying some different units for an army is cheaper than buying a new army. Time / mental effort: Need to figure out how to play the new army. Then, there is the "need" / "desire" to change playstyle interacting with this. If you have small armies with few choices, it is "mental effort" is "low(er)", but the monetary cost of switching playstyles is "high(er)". If you have armies with many choices, the reverse is true. Personally, I think that "money" trumps the mental effort, as one is a "true" cost and the other is part of the hobby (making lists). The fact that there are "bad" choices in large ranges has more to do with GW having bad internal balance, though. But that's a different topic. If you want to try a new playstyle, it is easier to do so staying within an army if that army has more choices. I think that's self explanatory? So if you have a "narrow" army and you branch out to another army for a different playstyle, you certainly pay a big fixed cost.

Exactly. One cannot approach a large corporation the same way would when dealing with a small studio. A small studio may be constrained, inexperienced, filled with semi-professional individuals that care more about the game and having a good time than about maximizing profits. GW is a large corporation with very high margins (it is publicly traded, so this is available for everyone to check) owned by investment funds. It is not "all in good faith, just goofy mistakes happening". They have business plans that spans years, they make conscious decisions on their release schedules, they have viability plans for new armies and they have business intelligence data and analysis of the past sales performance of models that spans decades. While everyone can make mistakes, on ocassion, the meta shifts across al their products are far too predictable to be "goofiness". They track point costs and damage / defensive / utility outputs across all books, they have lots of data regarding what types of abilities are powerful on the table, and so on. When they take a "good" unit and they nerf it to be "bad", they have made a conscious decision. When they put in a few units that are better than the rest of the book, and then over time rotate which units those are, they are doing so on purpose. At least, in my opinion, this is the most logical explanation for the meta shifts. The "they are boys making cool rules and printing ****" seems far more of a stretch.

I am not sure it is easier to get started with smaller armies. As a matter of fact, I think it might be harder. Hear me out: An army with several alternative options represents just that, options; at the end of the day you are limited by points. Another army without as many options just limits your choices, but the cost of entry is the same (you need X units to fill your 1000/2000 points). However, there are some elements within a large army you can recycle. For example, in an army with a large collection of models you can re use battelines, or certain key heroes, and just change whatever special units you want to bring. You cannot do that easily cross armies, specially in (semi) competitive play. So, in fact, if you just want to vary the playstyle, having to go across armies is actually more expensive than just moving to a different set of options within a book with more options. You may argue that staying within an army and varying units provides less of a different experience than going across armies. Very true, but with armies with larger collection of units, this is a choice. With narrower armies, if you want to vary playstyle you are sort of forced into buying a whole new army; precisely that is what has a big fixed costs (rebuy all generals, rebuy books, rebuy perhaps paints for a different scheme, and so on). TL/DR: It is more costly to vary playstyles if you need to switch armies, there us no such a thing as a "barrier of entry" for broader armies.

I see what you are saying. The criticism seems to come from a fan that is used to the "old" style of releases. GW had some factions and, over the years, they constantly filled them with new options. Whereas for AoS it seems to be more like you say, minimal working armies that may or may not get new releases; certainly, besides stormcast, other factions have (at best) spaced out releases. I guess that, while in WHFB (or 40k), the expectation was that you would have a few large collections, whereas in AoS people may have several armies and expand to new ones instead of adding to their standing ones.

It would be much better to work with GW for better rules. Mantic, for example, has some sort of player's council to officially give feedback on rules. Do not know how well that's working, it is just an example. GW's design team are employees of the corporation, so yes, they are part of GW. If you feel the need to highlight that maybe they would make "better" decisions (as in better for balance) if they were free to do so, I am guessing that yes, that would be the case. But has anyone here been arguing that GW's game designers are writing bad rules on bad faith? I would love some quotes.

GW designers are employees in a large company owned by investment funds, much like game designers in the video game industry. None of my comments are directed at them because those decisions are not up to them. What I said is that GW is, on purpose, altering frequently the state of the meta to promote sales. They do that both within and across armies. For that to happen, you need imbalance within and across books, and you need it to hold enough to entice people to buy. Which is exactly what I am seeing; for example: when I first looked into AoS some years ago the faction DoK was dominating the meta, and now I see that they seem to have fallen off the top positions. KO appears to have gone through a rollercoaster too, further reinforcing the idea that power levels are cyclical. Saying that I claimed that every new model needs to be OP to sell it is setting up a strawman to beat. The internal imbalance within the new lumineth book is entirely consitent with this story. Want a prediction? Within a few years, the "good" units of the Lumineth book will have changed. It is my understanding that KO were terrible for a while, but they weren't ALWAYS as bad, were they? And again the same thing. In a court of law no one would ever say: "but you weren't there, so you cannot know for sure, right? ", which is what you are repeating time and again. You stack evidence and you provide a reasonable story that ties it together within your explanation of the events. This is exactly what we are doing here; shall we get back to it? When I said that "the community accepts it", I referred to clear cases of units that were straight up swapped in power levels across editions. They went from good to bad, and viceversa, and it was kindergarden obvious why that happened, not so unexpected rule interaction. If you go and ask 40k players, they'll say yeah now this unit sucks, and that one was bad and is now good; they won't necessarily engage in the sort of discussion were are having here. That is not in good faith, so I won't further respond to it. Acknowledging it is important. Much like it is important to recognize marketing tricks to remain rational in purchase decisions. The way we, as consumers, approach the game and the company is not the same under the two scenarios. If they truly want a balanced game, but somehow failed at doing it, then our best strategy is to show them how we are assessing balance (tourney results, unit analysis), and hope that helps them better hit the target. If they are switching metas on purpose, then we need to think whether we want a competitive scene dominated by marketing ploys, or we want to somehow isolate it from them (e.g. tournament rules packs to correct for blatant imbalances). And so on. You are aware, though, that large dominant companies engage in lots of strategies aimed at keeping that dominance while not necessarily being the best? Why do you think windows worked so hard to be included in every new computer? Why do you thin google is introduced as the default in so many phones? When a company has market power, they engage want to keep it (it is good for profits, though bad for consumers), and they will do plenty to make it so. All that to say that current GW being THE dominant company does not necessarily mean that they are the best company or the best game, or even the one that people would prefer. Much like windows was not necessarily the best OS. There is no "game designers" and then "GW corporate entity". They are not to separate things, there are game designers working for GW corporate entity. You don't need to make "excuses" for designers because no one is saying they are malicious, or even bad at their jobs. It is just you fighting that battle, I bet the majority of us have a lot of sympathy for the game designers, or the mini designers.

That sums it up. AoS is not like 40k or the old WHFB, at least it has not been like that in all it’s existence. Sure, I prefer deeper factions with more models, as opposed of large blobs of the same for each faction and then multiple factions. But that’s not how GW is developing AoS and SoB aren’t any different.

That’s a standard we don’t even have in a court of law, so not sure what you are trying to accomplish with that comment.

Buffing week units and nerfing powerful units is not necessarily a sign that they are attempting to balance things. If they buff weak options too much while nerfing good options also too much, you end up again in a situation of imbalance. That is precisely my point: they aren't balancing, they are switching metas. And they aren't doing that by mistake, because it happens consistently over the years. I do not think I have called them incompetent a single time; on the contrary, I think they are very competent and what they are doing, which is not balancing.

Exact same company, that's why I used examples I know are good. I am newer to AoS (old fantasy), so I am more careful discussing it beyong the general picture (which I have researched). If it was all random, then we'd expect exactly that the changes don't knock down systematically the top meta after a few months, but rather affect units and armies independently of where they are. That's not my experience, both units and armies seem to take turns in taking the spotlight, and the changes tend to come from the top or the bottom of the pile. This is what my observation of past / other systems behavior of GW made me conclude, and what I have been reading about the AoS competitive scene. Am I wrong?

I was refering to the ability to use them in AoS. While they seem to have rules, they seem a tad on the underpowered side. I had an idea for the Wild Hunt led by Orion, but I am not sure it would be fun to play against

I am in a similar boat, I collect for the models, mostly, but also would like to throw them together for games (and not get stomped all the time :P). Just felt like showing some love for the thread; in my case I have mostly dwarves, but I am putting together a small force of the old wood elves led by orion (mixed in with thematic new units like skaeth's wild hunt). In any case, I hope your army remains playable for years to come, and would love to see some pictures of the efforts!

I already highlighted some changes that are obviously intentional in my other post. Straight up swaping the key abilities between two units, one considered bad and the other decent, is only going to lead to one clear outcome. That is, the bad unit will become good, and the good unit bad. That is not balance, at all, and I do not think anyone would believe that in that scenario the game is better. Again, I used examples that are very commonly accepted in the community. Go to any 40k player and ask them about those units. This is not a matter of having lots of time to think it through: most of the new imbalances can be spotted within hours of the release of a new rules book. The majority of the time they aren't obscure rule interactions, they are straight up buffs or nerfs with straightforward consequences. I think that saying it is incompetence is just letting GW get away with it; it is straight up planned, and I am sure that perusing through changes in recent years we could find even more obvious answers. The rule writers work in a company attempting to maximize sales, same as video game designers. Whether their strategies work on us is, to an extent, up to how we react to the changes.

I know, I meant rules wise. I do think some of the sculpts are "magical"

I wish they would integrate the warbands better into AoS, since I hear every season they are retired? I loved the wild hunt sculpts!

By design. They use hypetrains to sell, and nerfs to keep it going. Look, LoN are great, fantastic sculpts, updated rules! Hype hype hype! Until it is time for SoB, which are great, new sculpts, new rules! Hype hype hype. And round and round goes the wheel.

Absolutely. GW does monitor sales and I am sure they make very calculated decisions when it comes to that. Whinning about prices will not get any attention if the rest buy enough; there isn't much else to say about it. If you do not like the current "high prices", the only solutions are things that diminish GW's market dominance, since that is the main reason for the price levels. As an individual consumer, this means being careful with your budget. But we can do a bit more than that, though. We can be more accepting of 3rd party sculpts in tournaments, for example.

It is not only the rules, it is the attention they generate. As I said, if you are painting (maybe even have a commission service), you'll likely get more attention if you focus on models that are taking the spotlight. Recently warcom featured a selection of the new void necro models (very powerful IG, btw), showing what "elite painters" crafted. That's big publicity for the people featured. GW is a big company and they make a deliberate effort to sell you models, attacking from all fronts. It is not just WAAC people they target, they have tricks to get to all of us. That's a silly thing people say to disprove the obvious. Not absolutely all new releases are broken OP, and they do not need to be. The model is based on switching the spotlight to a few choices at a time to boost their sales; sometimes they bring to relevance old sculpts / armies. That said, an analysis of new releases will show that the majority place "strongly".

Is there any doubt about that? GW is not devoted to making the best and most affordable models out there, but rather to making the most money out of it. If they think they'll make more by charging hundreds or thousands of dollars for a kit (titans, big resin centerpieces), instead of selling more at a lower price, they will. Or does anyone believe that the astronomically high prices in forgeworld are mostly due to higher production costs? The same logic applies to plastic kits.

It is most certainly a deliberate choice. I'll give you some examples from 40k which give it away (these are community accepted examples): Aggressors vs assault centurions: towards the end of 8th edition, the 40k competitive scene was dominated by Raven Guard assault centurion spam (slow units that have high volume of fire and punch well in melee). When 9th came, assault centurions were nerfed to the ground (point costs), and then aggressors were undercosted and started showing up everywhere. Aggressors are the primaris version of assault centurions (they fulfill the exact same role). Aggressors were very strong due to their ability to double shot. Then, a few months later, aggressor double shooting is taken away, which is a massive change. It simply overshadowed any of the new powerful models GW is introducing for primaris marines (heavy intercessors). Wulfen vs thunderwolf cavalry: both units are hard hitting mobile assault units from the Space Wolves marines. In 8th edition, thunderwolves were considered to be very bad units. Wulfen, on the other hand, saw some more use. To a large extent, this was due to their ability to: i) advance and charge, ii) fight on death. 9th edition comes, and wulfen lose fight on death and advance and charge. Guess who gained advance and charge (and other benefits)? Yes, you guessed correctly, thunderwolf cavarly. Now wulfen are considered bad and thunderwolves good. Custodes wardens vs terminators: custodes wardens were the best point per point infantry unit custodes could field; they massively overshadowed the terminators due to high number of quality attacks, good resilience, utility, and being very point efficient; point per point, it was better to bring wardens than terminators. 9th edition comes and terminators get both point reductions and a lot of strategem support. Now, wardens are strictly dominated by allarus terminators in the vast majority of situations. So, this is not unexpected, or some weird rule interaction. Anyone can see that they decided to switch the units they favored. They simply made some better, and some worse. But they made sure that what they made better was without a doubt superior than what they made worse. In other words, they did not move towards more balance, they purposely kept things as imbalanced as before, but switched around what units were the "best" options. And I expect them to do the same in a few months, again. There is, without much doubt, a deliberate effort by GW to switch around what armies are better and, within armies, the units that are better. There is little to no sublety in the way this is done. So why is GW doing this? Why aren't they balancing wulfen and thunderwolf cavalry to be both viable? Because they stand to benefit from a switching meta. People will gravitate to powerful options, and away from weak ones. When a new player asks for advise on a list the first thing he gets are the meta choices. But we now know those won't stay always relevant, so the player will either accept being "weaker" in an obvious manner, or get the new "meta" units. And then the meta army will change altogether. Obviously, some people don't care about the performance in game. But even hobby oriented people enjoy getting attention, likes, visits. So they will paint things that are being talked about. New things, and units that warcom and the GW machinery brings to the front with revised sculpts, new rules, and so on. It is all part of a very obvious plan to boost sales, and it freaking works.

Thanks for the well reasoned answer. I still fundamentally disagree, though. i see very often assertions like “perfect balance is boring” or “with so many factions you cannot balance”. I have some counters: 9th age is now more balanced, in terms of tourney outcomes, than WHFB or AoS have ever been. AoS seems, ever since the “second launch”, to be permanently in a similar level of imbalance, with top armies capping at around 70% wins, and supported bottom armies with at least around high 30%. The name tags change, the results are similar. The moment a new book arrives competitive players can tell, almost immediately, whether it will be strong or not. The combos are not that hard to spot, there aren’t that many deep rule interactions. Given all this, I am quite convinced that the meta shaking is by design. That GW uses this both in 40k and AoS as a way to “keep the game fresh”, much like video games do. But with the added bonus that this encourages players to switch armies and buy new sculpts. It is not a conspiracy theory, in the sense that you don’t need to stretch reality to make this fit, and it is very well aligned with GW s main motivation of selling models. I think this warcom article is GW embracing the meta seasons approach. Neither player nor interviewer ever discuss the fact that there is such a meta as a bad thing or that GW will try to address it. They limit themselves to discussing what are current strong options. You want a current strong option? Here we give you the menu and how to build them. But then, don’t get too attached, because things will change again. This sort of imbalanced meta seasons will continue for as long as GW has the market power to enforce it. There aren’t that many obvious alternatives to their rules, specially with the all around mainstream package they provide (support, recognizability). I have seen people quit wargaming because of legends shenanigans or big meta switches because they thing there isn’t a true alternative. I do understand that lots of hobby oriented individuals are happy to show off their creations to a large audience (darned by the gaming side). And that players like being able to find others to play with(as opposed to having to look for deep geeks who may know about that very specific game system). I think that’s how they keep a bulk of happy costumers, even with all the rule butchering they do, or the astonishingly high prices. There are ways to work around the BS, with second hand models and what not, but it still irks me to see the commercial side messing so much with the development of a better game.

I guess we'll have to wait and see at the next stockholders meeting. They obviously can make mistakes, but pricing decisions are not taken lightly in corporations of that size. I do think you should account for what I said if you want to keep drawing comparisons to knights.