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Post by chaingun on Jan 1, 2018 13:51:45 GMT
I really don't like Warjack points. IMO they serve two (wrong) purposes 1. As a very awkward method of representing a warcaster's "footprint" or "impact" on the board - casters with model unit and or pet warjack get less WJ points becausethey start with larger "footprint". 2. As an encouragement for people to take Warjacks.
The first purpose is wrong because it's very indirect and vague, the relationship between WJ points and casters is very loosely defined. In MK1 casters had points value like any model. There is nothing wrong with the MK1 warcaster pricing model IMO. The second purpose for WJ points, i.e. to encourage players to play with more warjacks is a very sad encouragement method IMO. In order to make people play with jacks, PP should simply make them better. Make them a bit cheaper. Hit better. Move faster. Whatever. But this whole "take them because they are free" is like PP saying "we don't believe in them, please join our Affirmative Action policy for integrating jacks in the battlefield initiative"...
Just make them better and lose the WJ points, PP.
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Post by GumbaFish on Jan 1, 2018 14:32:34 GMT
I think as part of the second point it also encourages more balanced lists from Warmachine. Because it is not viable for Hordes players to run an entirely infantry army, it helps to make warmachine and hordes armies more similar in terms of composition. There can still be obvious skews one way or the other, but I think this helps constrain it into always at least having one or two jacks. Honestly, that is the core of the game and I don't see any reason for PP to cease promoting that via war jack points.
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Cyel
Junior Strategist
Posts: 685
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Post by Cyel on Jan 1, 2018 15:22:23 GMT
Without WJPs it would be possible to play an army which is warrior-models-only and I think PP doesn't want the game to go into this direction.
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Post by chaingun on Jan 1, 2018 15:29:37 GMT
Why do PP need to include a mechanism designed solely for "persuading" player to include warjacks in their lists? What's wrong with simply making warjacks better?
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Post by borderprince on Jan 1, 2018 15:33:04 GMT
Shouldn't this really be in the general discussion? It's hardly Khador specific.
In terms of the substance, the criticism of the use of jack points to encourage the taking of warjacks doesn't really work in Mk3 (it had some traction in some factions in Mk2). Jacks are already worth taking. The difficulty is that PP try to make jacks and warriors worth taking, and the points system should make that possible for both. But then there is a risk of people taking only warriors. In a perfect points system, equal points of warriors should be just as effective as equal points of jacks.
That would be fine, were it not for the fact that Warmachine is meant to be a game focused on casters and their battlegroups. A list without any jacks would not be the game that PP want to have designed. If they've done their job right with the points system, they need something like jack points to ensure jacks are taken.
Your criticism doesn't mean that this first purpose is 'wrong'. It just means it has not been perfectly implemented. You've accepted some sort of pricing for casters, and warjack points do achieve that (although I don't think that well at present).
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Cyel
Junior Strategist
Posts: 685
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Post by Cyel on Jan 1, 2018 15:36:34 GMT
Why do PP need to include a mechanism designed solely for "persuading" player to include warjacks in their lists? What's wrong with simply making warjacks better? Beacuse if the option existed some players would choose to use it regardless. And PP says "Warjacks MUST be in every army 100% of the time" Warjacks are rather good and pretty well balanced with infantry nowadays anyway and I am sure we'd see some pure infantry armies if players were given a chance.
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Post by welshhoppo on Jan 1, 2018 21:04:02 GMT
It's because they want war machines in warmachine.
Back in the days of MKI, warjacks were absolute garbage. Your average khador Jack was mat 5, if you lost your movement you became spd1. If you lost three systems, it went inert. And those white boxes were a system known as the hull.
So we have mkII, where warjacks are a bit better and everything has warjack points. However, they are still focus hogs and the majority of casters would bring the cheapest Jack they could and then play with nothing but infantry.
So you've had 2 editions of warmachine with no war machines. So it's no wonder they actually made much more effort to make sure that they are good to use in this edition.
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Post by Netherby on Jan 2, 2018 4:50:17 GMT
WJ points are a lot less necessary in Mk3. Their primary purpose now is to tweak the balance of casters without modifying their rules.
Warjacks used to be worse point for point than infantry, so you had to be forced into taking them. That isn't true any more, so you could change WJ points into just bonus points you can spend on anything to use for balance.
However Hordes armies are forced by game mechanics to take at least two beasts, so making them bonus points would benefit only Warmachine armies. There are already balance problems between the systems and that would only make it worse.
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Post by Soul Samurai on Jan 2, 2018 5:16:32 GMT
If warjacks were just "better" than infantry there would be little reason to take infantry. If they were just worse, there would be little reason to take warjacks. I don't think I need to explain why that's a bad thing. Instead the aim is to balance infantry and armour so both are viable.
If both are equally viable and there were no list-building restrictions, then the problem is it would create a situation where you might be facing 100% infantry (then your anti-armour is a complete waste of points) or you might be facing 100% armour (in which case your anti-infantry is a complete waste of points). This would reduce the game to an army-wide paper-rock-scissors situation where the outcome was decided before you even put your army on the table.
Instead the desire is to encourage balanced lists that play well against each other; the game is more fun for everyone that way. This is done through warjack points (so you will always have some warjacks running around), availability of focus (so it's hard to run too many), warcaster design, and scenario rules. In other games such as 40K, there's the Force Org chart, scoring rules, etc.
Yes, I know that in the current game there's plenty of skews that you won't have a chance against without the right list, but it's less common than it would be (especially at casual levels of play) without the current system of checks and balances, that of course include warjack points.
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Post by tapecrawler on Jan 2, 2018 17:53:58 GMT
I’ve always thought about War jack points being used to balance out the warcasters and keep them from being too strong. But then you have Old Witch1 with 4 points less than Butcher3 and Strakhov2. Butcher3 is one of our strongest casters so it makes sense to me that he has low War Jack points. I don’t see Strakhov2 being as effective as Butcher3 and I definitely don’t see OW1 being even more effective than B3. I think they have kind of blown it in my mind by forcing people playing at the higher levels to filling up their WJP. That means that people are being forced to take jacks that they are not interested in or consider suboptimal to meet the requirements. If the player wants to penalize themselves by playing points down in a tournament that should be their choice.
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Post by Blargaliscious on Jan 2, 2018 20:41:03 GMT
I’ve always thought about War jack points being used to balance out the warcasters and keep them from being too strong. But then you have Old Witch1 with 4 points less than Butcher3 and Strakhov2. Butcher3 is one of our strongest casters so it makes sense to me that he has low War Jack points. I don’t see Strakhov2 being as effective as Butcher3 and I definitely don’t see OW1 being even more effective than B3. I think they have kind of blown it in my mind by forcing people playing at the higher levels to filling up their WJP. That means that people are being forced to take jacks that they are not interested in or consider suboptimal to meet the requirements. If the player wants to penalize themselves by playing points down in a tournament that should be their choice. I think the differences you see between Butcher3 and Strakhov2 are the differences in which one suits your playstyle and which one doesn't. Butcher3 is pretty much a super-solo (all right, unit) that just happens to have warjacks and infantry along for the ride. Now, while Strakhov2 has a significant presence, his spell list is more bent on supporting the troops around him. Each of them having only 22 WJP (as opposed to the typical 28) is a representation of them each being a warcaster unit with significant combat potential. (I noticed that you never mentioned Zerkova2 with her 24 WJP...) Comparing either of those 2 murder machines to Old Witch1 really brings out, more than anything, that Old Witch1 needs to go into CID. (Or we need to learn how to play her.) I think that PP has overvalued her abilities, and Scrapjack's, similar to how they were overvaluing ranged warjacks, like the Destroyer. Assuming that if Old Witch1 did not have Scrapjack she would have 28 WJP, PP has valued Scrapjack at 10 points. Yes, it has SPD6 and an arc node. But the rest of its stats suck and Old Witch1 does not have a spell suite well tailored to using the arc node. (1 offensive spell with Gallows and 2 upkeep support spells of Iron Flesh and Weald Secrets.) Scrapjack is not worth 10 points. Nor does Old Witch1 have the offensive output to justify a lowered WJP rating. Maybe back in Mk1 when the unit coherency rules were a lot different would Avatar of Slaughter be of interest. But now, with the current unit coherency rules, Avatar of Slaughter is worthless against anything a knowledgeable player will take except units in shield wall. All right, that does it! I'm starting a new thread...
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Post by tapecrawler on Jan 2, 2018 22:19:56 GMT
Thanks for the response. I didn’t mention Zerkova2 because she’s at the low end of WJP for most factions so she doesn’t fall as far out of the norm as OW1, B3, and Strakhov1. Outside of Caine3 and Bethayne1 all of the other factions start at around 24. Caine3 seems to be considered in the top tier in Cygnar and a strong caster in Mercenaries. Bethayne1 I know nothing about so I can’t comment. The whole using points to balance out power levels seems to work until you get to OW1, Haley2, and Denny1. Haley2 and Denny1 just recently got nerfed, but before that, they were meta bending. Haley2 at 25 WJP should have been weaker than four of our casters and Denny1 at 28 WJP should have been weaker or equivalent to all of our Casters outside of Sorscha1 and Kharchev1. I’ve always thought that the WJP of Kharchev1 and OW1 should be swapped. I mean Kharchev is a jack so he doesn’t need as much help as OW1.
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Post by minmaximus on Jan 3, 2018 5:13:07 GMT
Warjacks are the whole point of the universe, really. Like, the entire reason warcasters matter to the various factions is because they are uniquely capable of handling warjacks. The whole difference between Zerkova and some other Greylord is her ability to make a stompy death machine even more brutal, and thats why she gets to be important. Having a guarantee that there'll be at least a couple of warjacks on each side helps maintain the integrity of the fluff- otherwise there are more than a couple warcasters in every faction who would never run a single warjack because they don't really do anything for them.
There's a fundamental rule of game design where the thing that's supposed to set your game apart should be omnipresent. Magic devs say "If you're theme isn't at common, its not your theme", which is basically the same concept- if somethings supposed to be important you should be able to see it almost immediately otherwise you're not doing your job right. Warjack points ensure the thing thats supposed to be important are always on the table.
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Post by Soul Samurai on Jan 3, 2018 6:09:40 GMT
Warjacks are the whole point of the universe, really. Like, the entire reason warcasters matter to the various factions is because they are uniquely capable of handling warjacks. The whole difference between Zerkova and some other Greylord is her ability to make a stompy death machine even more brutal, and thats why she gets to be important. Having a guarantee that there'll be at least a couple of warjacks on each side helps maintain the integrity of the fluff- otherwise there are more than a couple warcasters in every faction who would never run a single warjack because they don't really do anything for them. There's a fundamental rule of game design where the thing that's supposed to set your game apart should be omnipresent. Magic devs say "If you're theme isn't at common, its not your theme", which is basically the same concept- if somethings supposed to be important you should be able to see it almost immediately otherwise you're not doing your job right. Warjack points ensure the thing thats supposed to be important are always on the table. Exactly this. Back in MkII I actually wrote an email to one of the devs (after a specific request for feedback was posted on the old forums) politely suggesting that the game was so unfriendly to warjacks (there were so many things that could trivially disrupt or cripple a warjack or prevent focus allocation, nevermind warbeasts being straight-up better) that they were effectively killing their own USP (unique selling point). Yes, warjack points feel like a bit of a heavy-handed way of keeping warjacks in game, but as I said before I do believe that it's good for the game on the whole as it helps encourage more balanced lists rather than skews.
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Post by Cryptix on Jan 3, 2018 18:32:11 GMT
Moved to General Discussion
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