Should GW UNDO the NERFS? (Auspex Tactics)

[Hi I'm Derek]

youtu.be/QG62WVOlXjE

I wanted to post this because it's a conversation I've had a few times with different people lately and I suspect I'm not alone.

So this pattern is extremely familiar to anyone who has played actively developed online games - you have a Problem Thing, so you nerf Problem Thing. Then, just as you've depowered the worst elements and hopefully leveled out the metagame, you drop a new Problem Thing into the game which means the last wave of fixes have actually made things WORSE since now the meta is even more weighted in favour of the new thing. This is especially bad if the new stuff is even more powerful than the old stuff and basically guarantees a really vicious lopsided meta churn where (for example) the same three new codexes take every podium

Some changes like volkite are probably good since they're very much an issue with internal balance, but there's definitely a LOT of other balance changes we've seen since this grand experiment of regular points updates that could probably afford to just be reversed. Fifty point plasma inceptors are probably fine, pre-nerf outriders probably wouldn't even be good enough to use atm, AdMech probably could have been left with one functional build, DG and Sisters probably could do without ANY of the nerfs they've eaten so far etc etc.

It's not as easy a problem as it sounds to fix because much sprier teams than GW have failed for a few reasons:

• Meta churn offers a perverse business incentive cuz you can sell a lot of stuff from a select range in a short span. Saves a lot of money on stuff like tooling and logistics, and pushes FOMO sales. So it may actually be against your best interest to even try to fix it.
  
• You have to be fast. Your balance work has to be able to outrun the metagame and in particular your own release cycle, and slap down problems before they become the regular everyday state of the game. Otherwise the balance changes never get you to where you want to be, you're just selecting winners and losers while increasing churn.
• Your new stuff actually has to arrive already close enough to the existing toys that the meta isn't always just 'whatever is new'. New stuff can also start worse but that feels bad for a whole slew of other reasons that are probably even more undesirable.

My take would be that, regular balance nudges are good, especially FAQs and erratas, but where the real effort needs to be is on unreleased products. For all the improvements GW's codex releases are still very hit and miss. I don't know the solution, but there's still mistakes that really ought not be happening. The worst one lately wasn't even in 40k, it was in Sigmar, with the Stormdrake Guard. They had to release a whole article explaining why they were nerfing it before the models were even released and even still it's become possibly the most ubiquitous meta unit and list in the game and is apparently in line for further nerfing. 

Also points updates should be free, fight me.

Edit: there's also the related 'fix it in post' problem that, again, if you play video games, you probably recognize. When the option to patch the game after releasing the product exists a lot of businesses get lazy about this sort of thing figuring that they can just not bother with balance and let the meta settle, then nerf whatever is at the top. Magnifies the churn.

[distractedcarnifex]

You leave Stormdrake Guard out of this.

[mrmanstory]

I don't have much to contribute here other than *sad death guard noises*

[Hi I'm Derek]

Mar 27, 2022 15:13:19 GMT -5 distractedcarnifex said:

You leave Stormdrake Guard out of this.

SDG know what they did

[Frosty the Pirate]

Short answer:

Absolutely not. It would be insane to do this. It would actually cause MORE codex power creep and balance issues than currently exists, and some of the fixes for this that people are suggesting in the comments on that video are absolutely toxic.


Long answer:

I actually just unsubscribed Auspex Tactics and will be starting to encourage others to do so as well, because he's unfortunately become the Fox News of 40k, stirring the shit pot for viewcounts and likes and posting even more click bait titles and video subjects to provoke these unhealthy responses. He knows people are upset at the state of the meta and is shamelessly profiting from it. Shame on him. End rant.

Should units that get nerfed too-hard get readjusted in future balance patches so they are balanced choices? Yes. Absolutely. But for folks to expect balance changes to codexes that haven't even shipped some of the new models or kits yet would be insane.

Imagine if GW released balance hotfixes as quickly as an online game. Book comes out, and 2 weeks after release they 'patch' the book and fix everything the community is raging over. Sometimes shipping models takes 2 weeks. Imagine buying a $100 new kit and by the time you even get it in the mail it's been nerfed, changed, or rebalanced in a way that makes you reconsider using it. That would leave such a sour taste in any players mouth (let alone a new player) that it would probably destroy the game as we know it. (And this literally has happened before to other game companies)

People get upset and demand immediate action, and think GW's silence on the matter means they don't care. They read the same articles and see the 40k content on YouTube and other sites. I'm 10000% sure the balance team at GW is already working on identifying, testing and proofing the rounds of changes needed to bring these factions in line.

Am I a little upset the competitive meta is unbalanced? Yeah a little. Does it affect the 40k games I play in my basement where none of these factions have even seen table time since their books released? Not even a little.

GW cannot "win" in this situation by any speech. If they post an article they are looking into balancing these factions with the May dataslate, they'll be flamed for not doing something sooner and the competitive community will see it as a green light to smash the win button for a few weeks until the changes take affect. The only approach they can take is to get the changes ready, test them well, and continue to collect data on the state of the meta. In the end, isn't that what we all want?

[Typhus]

Mar 27, 2022 15:57:44 GMT -5 Frosty the Pirate said:

Long answer:

I actually just unsubscribed Auspex Tactics and will be starting to encourage others to do so as well, because he's unfortunately become the Fox News of 40k, stirring the shit pot for viewcounts and likes and posting even more click bait titles and video subjects to provoke these unhealthy responses

Legitimate question: did you actually watch the video? Both sides of the debate were presented in a pretty fair fashion, and there were factions and units in particular which were considered safe to roll back the nerfs on (Death Guard Terminators, most Space Marine units) - and even flaws discussed with the wholesale rollback of all nerfs (Adeptus Mechanicus and Dark Eldar would likely be considered problematic codexes even in the context of Tau, Eldar, and Custodes).

[Hi I'm Derek]

Jeez, it's rare somebody posts something with so much material I vehemently disagree with I've got to break out the multi quote. Buckle up lads cos we're gettin' STUCK IN!

Absolutely not. It would be insane to do this. It would actually cause MORE codex power creep and balance issues than currently exists, and some of the fixes for this that people are suggesting in the comments on that video are absolutely toxic.

This is a weird take that is very subjective and unqualified. It's not clear you're talking about un-nerfing factions or more rapid balance changes since you focus mostly on the latter on the 'long version', which is not the thrust of Auspex's video but one possible solution I posited to the creep problems. If it IS the first part, will I be allowed to point out how out of touch you are if GW does start un-nerfing things? And why are you so confident they won't roll back nerfs?

The toxicity comment seems out of place, without knowing what comments you're referring to. It's not notable to point out 'damn sometimes youtube comments are toxic'.

I actually just unsubscribed Auspex Tactics and will be starting to encourage others to do so as well, because he's unfortunately become the Fox News of 40k, stirring the shit pot for viewcounts and likes and posting even more click bait titles and video subjects to provoke these unhealthy responses. He knows people are upset at the state of the meta and is shamelessly profiting from it. Shame on him. End rant.

Speaking of toxicity, this is legitimately the worst take. I don't even know what to say to the Fox News comment so I guess I'll just ignore it. He's running a channel about competitive and meta 40k, and this is a hot topic in those circles. Nothing in this video is especially controversial or 'pot stirring', and we're going to be hearing more about it as we go forward. The profit comment has no bearing on anything, almost the entire news apparatus of the developed world is for-profit so expecting somebody who talks about games to have an even higher standard in their reporting is silly, especially when the guy grinds out videos on the daily most of which are still just dry assessments of units and rules. You can be mad that people want to talk about this all you want, but that's not a good reason to encourage people to unsub. You'll run out of 40k content pretty fast if this is your cutoff. WarCom and WarCom alone, basically.

But for folks to expect balance changes to codexes that haven't even shipped some of the new models or kits yet would be insane.

GW has already started doing this (in extreme cases). Doesn't seem too insane to me, and a short hop from expecting changes a couple weeks or a month after.

Imagine if GW released balance hotfixes as quickly as an online game. Book comes out, and 2 weeks after release they 'patch' the book and fix everything the community is raging over. Sometimes shipping models takes 2 weeks. Imagine buying a $100 new kit and by the time you even get it in the mail it's been nerfed, changed, or rebalanced in a way that makes you reconsider using it. That would leave such a sour taste in any players mouth (let alone a new player) that it would probably destroy the game as we know it. (And this literally has happened before to other game companies)

Isn't this essentially what they did with Ork buggies AND Ork fliers? Except worse, because when the book dropped you were allowed to field your models and then a month later you suddenly weren't? It may not have been precisely two weeks but it seems more destructive to do it after a month or two, since you're going to hoover up even more people who bought illegal lists you're about to delete than if you made the change as fast as possible. You're framing this as a hypothetical but I've had that conversation with a real person. And yes, it's extremely sour- GW's balance change was actually far worse than a mere points tweak because it took away the choice to even use the unit and just banned it completely turning their new models into hunks of unplayable plastic. Even so, it clearly didn't destroy the game because here we are, still playing.

People get upset and demand immediate action, and think GW's silence on the matter means they don't care. They read the same articles and see the 40k content on YouTube and other sites. I'm 10000% sure the balance team at GW is already working on identifying, testing and proofing the rounds of changes needed to bring these factions in line.

I never understand where this boundless confidence in the GW rules team comes from. It's like they're not cleaning up messes they themselves were responsible for creating, due to an obvious lack of identifying, testing and proofing their rules. Not to say everything GW does is bad, they've actually come a long way from the old days, but perhaps we can restrain ourselves to patting them on the back only for things they've actually done, and not for things they might do at some unspecified future time?

Am I a little upset the competitive meta is unbalanced? Yeah a little. Does it affect the 40k games I play in my basement where none of these factions have even seen table time since their books released? Not even a little.

Doesn't seem particularly relevant. If it doesn't affect you maybe you shouldn't be spending time making long winded posts about this when you apparently have no skin in the game. Some of us have friends who play harlies, or custodians, or tau. Great for you that you don't. Thumbs up. Happy for you.

GW cannot "win" in this situation by any speech. If they post an article they are looking into balancing these factions with the May dataslate, they'll be flamed for not doing something sooner and the competitive community will see it as a green light to smash the win button for a few weeks until the changes take affect. The only approach they can take is to get the changes ready, test them well, and continue to collect data on the state of the meta.

Sure, the first part is probably true to some degree, but ultimately this is just an excuse to not do better and a milquetoast observation that 'the only option is the one they've already taken' which is difficult to take at face value. Why frame it as if GW is totally powerless to decide how they want to tackle the issue, when we've seen them try multiple levers and distribution options just over the last couple years? Ironically it seems GW is a lot more open to alternatives than you are.

In the end, isn't that what we all want?

See, you say this, but I remember not so long ago you jumping into a thread about the almost universally despised DG nerfs just to point out 'yeah but actually they probably deserved it blah blah blah' so what you want to see for the game is actually very different from what I want.

Also I hate that this is inevitably going to be reframed as me dumping on GW & 40k, because I'm the negative guy who bitches and moans about everything - but legitimately the version of GW you are defending here doesn't exist. I'm not attacking GW (except for the bit about buggies, that was cringe GW please don't do that) I'm attacking your post, because I think to have legitimate discussions we need to agree, on some level, about material fact and when you are putting out stuff like this we obviously do not on so many levels we can't do anything but talk past each other.

[Frosty the Pirate]

I wrote a pretty long reply here and then chose to delete it. I think I got off on the wrong foot here.

I'm pretty pissed off at several YouTube communities in general (not just 40k ones) these days because they are all succumbing to the algo and posting clickbaity headlines instead of what originally built the channel.

I think post-rant-mode I lost any coherency of the point I was trying to make and it basically just became poorly edited nerd rage. Any chance you'll allow me a mulligan on this one?

Honestly I agree with all your points you made in your retort. I'm definitely the one out of line here.

[Hi I'm Derek]

Well fair enough then! The algo clickbait thing is absolutely a real problem that's probably not going away unfortunately, and you're not wrong about the negative feedback loop it creates. I just think AT deserves better than to have his whole channel dismissed as junk content like that.

I probably went overboard in dissecting your post but as you can see, I was suffering from a bit of nerd-rage myself. And I think there's no shame in walking back a point, I've had to do it on more than a few occasions. Adjusting one's position doesn't have to be a bad thing when confronted with an alternate viewpoint or new information.

And FWIW no matter how strongly we might disagree with one another, I don't think you were out of line. You say your piece, I say mine- maybe we come to some kind of consensus or maybe we don't. Either way life goes on as long as we can remain (reasonably) respectful and fair

[raceygaming]

I mean 100% on the any and all points updates after a codex has been release need to be free. This is just the micro transactions of the war gaming world, and GW is by far the worst offender (that I know of).

Onto the meat of the debate. I do agree that release/pre-release balance does need to be an area that needs to be heavily invested into, no game that I know of has ever gotten it perfect but some have gotten close. However I don't think that is what GW should aim for since it tends to be much slower. I do think that "patching" is the best way to make war gaming work and I'd love to see a flow chart for the process.

step 1. what is over preforming?
Step 2 what is under preforming?
step 3 ..etc etc

Id love for one of these step to be re-evaluate previous nerfs. I general I think that points are a good place to look at back tracking.. ex sisters of battle repentia and death shrouds both were doing well and took a 2 or 5 pt bump. This could be walked back. a unit that WAS over preforming might be pretty even now that other powerful things have come into the game.

The FAQ side of things is something I would like to avoid having walk backs things like the core key word ( admech walkers, DE pain engines **tau broadsides coming soon) and interaction like the Lucius 120 troops with 2+ or 3+ ignoring ap -1/-2, or stratagems.
In general a lot of those were due to interaction abuse not imbalance. A big one for this is the rule of 1/2/3 for flyers, they are just so hard to balance based on mechanics and I'm happy with the solution they came too, and could equally apply to all codex.

As an Ork player I will say it was pretty painful to get 2 buggies after some second hand haggling and then have them nerfed into the ground the next day. Do I think that orks could use a buff yes, but I think the blocking spam was a good idea. I think that you could easily change the wording to only 3 of each buggy MODEL can be in the army so 3x1 or 1x3 are both doable, or anything in between but 9 of them was silly but id rather see other ork units get a buff then a full walk back on the orks.

Overall if GW could give us a check list or process for the nerfs/buffs rather than the "its being played a lot" so nerf and its being played so buff.

[Typhus]

I like that GW is aiming for 4 balance patches a year, but coupling them to printed, paid books is absolutely the worst possble way to go about it - not only does it represent a huge barrier to entry for new players, but it also means that we're reacting to a meta that (maybe) existed months ago.

Hell, the Dark Eldar and Adeptus Mechanicus changes we got back in November were outright stated by GW to have been lined up for the recent February balance dataslate, but were released early to reduce the impact of the two factions. So we know for a fact that the points are months out of date. A free, online PDF would have been far preferable - and likely wouldn't have gutted Orks, Death Guard, and Sisters of Battle.

[Jack Shrapnel]

I'm all for frequent balance updates (I remember the dark times all to well where years went by with no fixes) but I'm not happy about the double chapter approved per year. Like not happy at all.

It's not about the money... I spend a pretty stupid amount on Games Workshop products, and $50 isn't that much out of my hobby budget of six months... but it's the POINT of it all. Kind of like how Kevin said, it's reacting to something months out of date. Asking new players to drop $50 on a somewhat dubious valued book is a bit of nonsense in my opinion.

The last chapter approved - I really appreciate the mission / secondary reworking... but STILL not sprial bound, and having to pay for a points update book is grating, along with the core rules not even being in it anymore!

I always compare CA to General's Handbook - which is miles better... for the same cost.

[Frosty the Pirate]

Ok, so trying to avoid the landmine that is my nerd-rage with a better and more thoughtful attempt at discussion here.

I feel like undoing balance changes would be an unhealthy way to "rebalance" the meta. GW's balance team has attempted to set a certain power level, and outside of the books released in 2022 so far, I think there is a very healthy and balanced meta under this thick layer of the top three right now.

Part of what is skewing things so hard imo is we've had 5 new books, a balance dataslate, a chapter approved release, and a mission booklet drop in the last 12 weeks. That's a crazy number of releases. Part of the feeling that the meta pendulum has swung massively out of whack is because of this, and those balance releases massively affected around 4-5 top lists that were all demolished by the no-mixed-subfactions change.

One of the particular armies that I now think was a little unfairly affected was Death Guard, because their changes were "held back" last summer for the CA release at end of the year, and Admech, Drukhari, and Ork Freebooterz kind of jumped to the front of the queue because of certain skew builds last fall which really took the spotlight and couldn't have their changes held back to CA.

They are also suffering from being what I call being "ahead of the meta" right now, where they have had their "To The Last" options neutralized, while several other factions who have high-customization within their factions are able to strategically manipulate the choices for TTL to force some very difficult targets (see CWE taking Baharroth + Eldrad in Ulthwe lists as a specific example here)

Indirect Fire is also a source of balance issues, but not just because of indirect fire itself. It's also because of the state-of-the-meta imo. The current competitive template that has reigned since before even the start of 9th edition in some cases is this list template that I'll call a "FOB Push" (Forward-Operating-Base-Push) template. Effectively, a list structured around taking a powerful-close-range unit, who "pushes" into midfield and hides behind a piece of LOS blocking terrain to stage it's attack, and then uses infantry or fly to "jump" over/through the LOS blocking terrain to unleash it's damage the following turn. This style of list template is/has-been pushed by a huge number of competitive sources, including Art of War, Glasshammer, and several other names (but basically most of them from my eye).

Indirect-fire absolutely breaks this template. Because the base-strategy of this template is that your staged-unit is immune to attack and will strike the next turn at full power, and in some factions these powerful units typically don't have good transport or deployment options to get into their strike-range otherwise.

Many top-lists were reliant on this style of play (I'm thinking specifically Sisters, Grey Knights, Tsons, and Black Templars here, but there are others) and this new threat of indirect fire from Tau/Craftworlds is a huge killer to this strategy.

Custodes Bikers and Harlequins look to my eye to be surviving in this meta because their units are fast enough they have the threat range to strike with necessarily _having_ to stage their attack the turn before, and Custodes in particular have a combinations of very high level of durability and low-model count that makes the indirect fire strat a little bit less effective against them as well.

So, what do I think really needs to happen here?

As a bullet list:

- Units who received nerfs *changes* in a previous dataslate or CA should -automatically- get a second-look in the following dataslate to ensure the previous adjustments have had their intended effects.

- Tau, Custodes, and CWE (and harlies) will all likely get some tuning-down in a few weeks. I think the new threat they pose to the meta, as well as their particular matchups into what was the late-2021 meta have vaulted them far beyond what I think the testers and balance team would have realized in play testing, because the "FOB template" I mentioned above as well as the terrain-structure at events is also playing a part of what is influencing the off-the-charts winrates being seen.

- Death Guard in particular, as well as Necrons both need a boost. I don't know if this will come in the form of buffs, or in the form of game-play adjustments that make durability based armies a bit more viable. Personally I think there's a two-birds-one-stone throw possible here in the form of completely revamping how "To The Last" works.

- Otherwise, underneath this current top-end of the meta, I feel there's quite healthy state of the game, because in matchups that don't involve factions in the "needs help" tier, or "overpowered" tier, there is definitely a fairly level playing field, with most factions able to win and compete when utilizing a general all-comers build. That's not to say the game is perfectly balanced, but it's within a reasonable margin. There can always be some further tuning here as well, but I think people aren't focused on that right now.

[Hi I'm Derek]

Wow I find myself agreeing with almost everything you said Frosty. I don't think broadly unnerfing factions is a real solution to the problem of the new books creeping things and it would be better to bring those books down than try to boost everyone else up. There is an unrelated problem of some of the changes just having been bad in the first place (DG ugh), or even Custodes having a huge amount of points buffs which they evidently didn't actually need, but those are theoretically easy to fix if GW chooses to fix them.

Ideally the game can get back to where it was in December but the challenge will always be release cycle timings. By the time those three books can be reigned in we'll have a few more entering the field, so it'll once again come back to if those new ones are reasonably balanced or overtuned enough to also need reigning in. It would be nice to have a longer window of 9th without gigantic meta churn before we're looking down the barrel of 10th

[Frosty the Pirate]

I occasionally can speak/write well when I actually use my brain and have had my coffee. =P