Codex Balance - a new perspective...

[Denzark]

I was chatting with my local blackshirt the other day. We were discussing Codex DA and CSM, and balance. His words to me were to the effect that the Design Studio has been strictly told to go for balance in 6th. Codex Creep is to be avoided at all costs, because that locks the studio into a cycle of creep to try to re-balance the books. Strict balance would mean no creep, faster updates and allow the possibility of new races - something he was specific about and stated they don't have time for purely because they are too busy trying to get the newer codexes to balance against the last uber codex.

Can't comment on the provenance of this, just smacks me as an odd thing to bull about and makes a kind of sense.

[Wildeybeast]

It's exactly how Warhammer 8th ed has worked. All the army books released so far have either been toned down or beefed up to bring them in line with the other new books. They haven't quite got it spot on, but it is much better way of doing things in my opinion. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the aim for this in 40k too.

[Psychosplodge]

Certainly makes more sense than to appeal to the waac crowd who collect 1500pts or 2000pts of the newest uber army and that's it.

[Denzark]

Psycho I never thought of it quite like that...

[Spamthulhu]

I was chatting with my local blackshirt the other day. We were discussing Codex DA and CSM, and balance. His words to me were to the effect that the Design Studio has been strictly told to go for balance in 6th. Codex Creep is to be avoided at all costs, because that locks the studio into a cycle of creep to try to re-balance the books. Strict balance would mean no creep, faster updates and allow the possibility of new races - something he was specific about and stated they don't have time for purely because they are too busy trying to get the newer codexes to balance against the last uber codex.

Can't comment on the provenance of this, just smacks me as an odd thing to bull about and makes a kind of sense.

Would be nice if they did some retro active balance of the older codices. Fixing point costs and implement rules to fix the under costed stuff. Making the grey hunters and some of the grey knight units point balanced and fixing the necron flyer lists.

[Denzark]

I hear you, especially on cron air the personal robot monkey around my neck - but that ain't how they wil do things methinks...

[Wolfshade]

This does seem to be a good thing. Though it might be over ridden by the sales. Hopefully, for GW the splash of new miniatures will be neough to boost sales without having to creep

[Learn2Eel]

There's quite a bit of stuff in both codices (like specific wargear and units) that don't look so good compared to the 5th Edition (and older) armies. It may be that as more codices are redone for 6th, some of those things may see a lot more use.

And yeah, I agree with your overall point. It is much better to do it this way and saves everyone having to listen to people whinge about the latest OP army every few weeks, I know I am sick of hearing about how "broken" Necrons and Grey Knights are (even though I think those two codices are perfectly fine for the most part). I expect all the Space Marine codices to fall in line with Dark Angels, though I feel Grey Knights will simply be toned down whilst keeping their own thing. I expect Tau, Eldar, Tyranids and the like to be brought in line with the other codices by giving them much needed boosts and points cost drops. Chaos Daemons are probably going to be reworked quite significantly.

Frankly, it makes the most sense from a financial and a gamer-centric perspective. Balanced codices means tournament players will usually win mostly based on skill rather than taking the best army list possible, leading to more competitive and entertaining games. It would also mean more hobbyists would indulge themselves in armies they may have otherwise avoided due to some of the newer codices that are considered over-powered. Tyranids, Tau, Eldar and Chaos Daemons see so few players nowadays (though Tzeentch Daemons are obviously very popular with tournament players right now) and giving them codices that are more in line with newer ones would go a long way to fixing that issue.

Unfortunately, we won't always have fully balanced armies, but the fact that they seem to be trying to do this is a great sign for us hobbyists.

[DarkLink]

If you're still having trouble dealing with Grey Knights, the problem is not with the Grey Knight codex. Even in 5th, they only really needed to nerf the crazy grenades and price psybolt ammo on certain vehicles more reasonably, any maybe nerf Paladin wound allocation and Purifier spam lists, and in 6th all of those problems are taken care of with the nerf to both assault deathstars and vehicle spam lists and the changes to wound allocation.

Necrons aren't overpowered, they're just annoying to play, with all those stupid flyers and gauss and telsa and characters that just won't die and some more flyers.

[Dalleron]

If GW really cared about balance in their flagship game system, they could easily achieve it. They could adjust points, stats and anything else they wanted using the internet and the GW site itself. They can also use White Dwarf to do this. Think of the copies they'd sell.

They could have done more of this at the release of 6th ed. Sure they got Paladin's, Nobs and Wolf guard wrong at the start, but they fixed that pretty quick. Necron Nightscythe too cheap? for example. They can fix that easy enough.

Its the year 2013. They need to get with the times. But they choose not too.

[Wolfshade]

Balance is very hard to achieve.

In simple games like Chess and Draughts balance is achieved by giving people identical armies. In tabletop wargamming it is not that easy given the number of different units and their abilitites. If everyone could do everything then we would be in the chess/draughts situation whereby the only difference between armies would be the colour.

Jervis has touched on the issue of balance in a previous standard bearer coloumn and the problem comes down to the more play testers are familiar with the rule designers the more they play the game as it was intended to be played rather than how it could be played. Jervis illustrated this point with Blood Bowl, he prefers to play a long ball game which is highly unreliable whereas others play a running game instead, which is far better.

Play testers do not consider all the different ways that things can be used, certainly they try to but they can't and the closer the relationship the more they play RAI rather than RAW.

Some of these percieved imbalances are not visibile everywhere in the community, For instance the gaming group I play with we haven't seen any major changes to army composition from 5th. Arguably we should have done but our 1 necron player is still playing a similar list without spamming 9 doom scythes and our nids and eldar players are still regularly winning games.

With regard to Nobs, I still find them too expensive and would rarely take a nob unit. Indeed only if I am trying to make a higher points level.

[alshrive]

To go off on a slight tangent i do feel that both of the armies with 6th Ed Codices are more characterful as to how i perceive the army than in their previous versions. They are also more than one codex in one. The Dark Angels lets you do pure Ravenwing or Deathwing or a balance of everything. The Chaos one allows Undivided or a Pure Mono-God army. most of this is done through FoC alteration by characters but completely alters the codex each time to the point where it is essentially a completely seperate book in itself! Updating all olds codices to balance them out would be nice, but it takes time and manpower which would be better spent working on that armies 6th ed codex anyway.

[rpricew]

If GW really cared about balance in their flagship game system, they could easily achieve it. They could adjust points, stats and anything else they wanted using the internet and the GW site itself. They can also use White Dwarf to do this. Think of the copies they'd sell.

They could have done more of this at the release of 6th ed. Sure they got Paladin's, Nobs and Wolf guard wrong at the start, but they fixed that pretty quick. Necron Nightscythe too cheap? for example. They can fix that easy enough.

Its the year 2013. They need to get with the times. But they choose not too.

With the introduction of the Digital codex, and the recent Necron update over the weekend, it seems like GW may be headed in that direction. Unfortunately, not everyone has an iPad and can access these Digital Codices. But as everyone catches up with the technology, I would bet that more and more people will shift over to Digital and GW will be able to push out more and more frequent updates. Of course, the downside to pushing out updates is that their bottom dollar may suffer slightly, since that means that I can just get an update instead of buying a whole new codex. But over the long run, I think that more people will want to get involved with the hobby if there is a balanced ruleset that's updated and fresh, which would translate to an even bigger bottom dollar than they are seeing now.

I personally like the way Mac updates come out on a regular basis and are usually only about 20-30 bucks as opposed to how Windows updates every few years and it's a more substantial amount. GW is a lot like Microsoft in that sense, they are both dominating global sales and put out expensive products that are updated over long periods of time.

[Wildeybeast]

GW are very unlikely to make significant changes to old codexes as they haven't done it in Warhammer. They have some armies which are pretty OP and some which are so UP as to be laughable. They just plod on updating them. If you think about it, those which are in desperate need of changing will require that many alterations that you may as well do the whole book as try to do a bodge it job. Those which juts need a few tweaks don't warrant the effort.

[DarkLink]

If GW really cared about balance in their flagship game system, they could easily achieve it.

It wouldn't be easy...


Balance is very hard to achieve.

But GW could do a significantly better job than they have been in general.

[Wolfshade]

But GW could do a significantly better job than they have been in general.

It depends if the studio were aiming for balance previously.
If they weren't then each new codex would need to be stronger than the previous as it pushes (some) gamers into wanting the new stuff not because it appears better than that which has gone before but it is better. This approach generates income quite well and increases the market from the people who just want the stuff because it is new but to incorporate those who want the best codex.

[Xenith]

Do you want GW to endlessly tweak point costs, units, etc every time a new codex comes out, or do you want them to work on bringing then next codex out.

Pick one.

[DarkLink]

While that is true, there's no reason they can't address specific problems in FAQ/Erratas more frequently than they do. It's not like it's hard to type a few sentances into Word and publish as a PDF on their website. After a few weeks of play, every codex has a few standout OP/UP options/units, and it's rarely much more than a minor tweak to balance them. GW is getting much better with their FAQs, but they still have a ways to go.


For example, in 5th ed, to fix the basically every actual problem with the GK codex, all they had to do was this:

Change:
Cleansing Flame - Engaged enemy models are hit on a 4+ (rather than all enemy models in the whole assault).
Psybolt Ammo on all Vehicles (except Rhinos)- 15pts
Rad/Psykotroke Grenades - If the model with grenades charged, or a charging enemy unit reached base contact with the model, the enemy unit in base contact that charged/was charged suffers the effects (so only one enemy unit at a time, rather than basically all enemy units all the time).

Something to that effect, and maybe one or two other items. It took me about two minutes to type that.