shiver
Junior Strategist
Posts: 150
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Post by shiver on Dec 22, 2018 7:07:14 GMT
Wrestling and tennis would be good examples as well. I was the one that started the CID stuff and I still think it’s a good part of it because the people I was referring to are very competitive but it’s too much of a time investment and too confusing because model rules are constantly changing. How many CID’s are there in a year: 6, 8, or 10? That’s a lot of changes to learn in a year. Most companies will have maybe two updates a year so that the player base can puzzle through the ramifications and new synergies. There was a mention earlier of something I’d forgotten about, the last edition of card boxes. I bought 3 and was saving up for a couple more. My flgs ordered around 30 mostly for players but at least one for each faction. Two or three months after this, they all become invalidated. It still makes my blood boil to think about it! There should have been somebody at PP that looked at the business plans and said this was a terrible idea. This burned one of my FLGS owners hard. Just bought a lot of command books, prime and primal, and decks for every faction because we had a thriving community and he could finally get them. Then the announcement that everything was going online only 4 days later. He got left holding the ball and took a pretty significant loss. He finally sold those books for 1.00 each (no kidding) and he gave the decks away. He wrote PP an email and kindly explained to them he will never do business with them again. Thanks for sandbagging me. You can't really invest much in a game full of power creeping CID and with a meta shifting every 3 months. Thwy made cloudwallss unsable with the last 2 CIDs (cornucopia and mercs), that is absurd I love the arguments from peoople who think this isnt the case. CID is just crazy chock full of power creep, many times worse than what I'm seeing in the new Ork codex or the new Beastmen Battle Tome. For a game company who gets shit about never having a balanced game, GW seems to be working harder on balancing their shit than PP is right now, and hey, GW had the balls to do a universal FA3. Also, this is a product. If the metas are dying is not the community's fault. It's their product, it's PP who should do their work with the LGSs to promote the game properly. LGSs that are still pissed about all the MK2 product cold on their shelves... This. It isn't the community, and I hate being blamed because PP can't be bothered to get off of their lazy ass and do something about getting new players into the game. The last thing we saw that was geared at bringing in new people was that ill fated "play with a kid" organized play day, and that was so good and instrumental that i dont even remember teh damn name of it. Worse of all, they charged for the kit for it. Those kits were created from MK battle boxes, with stryker 1 and chargers. that should have been given for free, and promoted. I agree with netdragon somewhat: CID does not compensate or "fix" mk3 in any way: - it takes waaay to long for your faction to enter CID and get an update. I play Trollbloods which got Northkin last fall. Currently CID looks like "X" the next 2 months until Infernals kick in until summer. That's 2(!) whole years with no new Trollbloods release. 2 ******* years! With the meta changing every 3-4 monts, that's just too damn slow. Mk2 at least gave everyone "something" every 6-9th month. - CID feels to me like a bad excuse to fix all the errors they made during the mk3 creation. Maybe it's just me.. - Only the very dedicated players want to contribute to CID: I play 0-2 games a week, none of which I want to be an "experiment" for PP to evaluate stuff from. If they really want quality playtesters, then actually hire a bunch of people to do it. Imo it's way more efficient: - you get rid of negative people on the forums which leads to wasted work hours to solve what is good feedback and what is not - you can get way more non-biased battlereports - balance it enough for people to actually buy it, but not draw into the powercreep curse. I agree that this should have been built around a closed and private playtest group, of a small and select group of people who are actually trained on how to playtest. They should have been recruited on an interview basis, and not selected based on "who's who" in the community (Anyone remembers the playtest they took applications for?). This playtesting probably should have been done at FLGS in Washington so they have proximity to and access to the devs. Point is, open CID is a bad idea, and it hurt the game. All it has done, when it was supposed to inspire product loyalty, is destroy product faith. And the powercreep is real. holy shit the power creep is real. look at Northkin vs Circle Tharn. not every theme is consistently more powerful than the last, but as a general trend, they are going up in power level so much that the factions that went through earlier CIDs are now begging for a new CID cycle for another of their themes because the new stuff just eats them alive again. Its also no shock that it seems like the stuff that went through CID the latest seems to be the best shit that everyone plays in the faction. (except cryx, for some reason, that faction just shits power level and PP refuse to do anything to balance it...wonder why? guess those slayers wont sell themselves).
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shiver
Junior Strategist
Posts: 150
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Post by shiver on Dec 22, 2018 7:20:24 GMT
I agree with netdragon somewhat: CID does not compensate or "fix" mk3 in any way: - it takes waaay to long for your faction to enter CID and get an update. I play Trollbloods which got Northkin last fall. Currently CID looks like "X" the next 2 months until Infernals kick in until summer. That's 2(!) whole years with no new Trollbloods release. 2 ******* years! With the meta changing every 3-4 monts, that's just too damn slow. Mk2 at least gave everyone "something" every 6-9th month. As opposed to mk2, where they just didn't fix things until the once a year rules release that put counter models into play....maybe. this isn't a mutually exclusive binary world. both things can be true at the same time. Yes, MK2 sucked at fixing problems quickly (though people who often tout this normally forget that the last two years of MK2 saw increasing amounts of errata and balancing on a more consistent basis) but the idea that CID fixes the game is pretty misleading. It really just points players to the next big thing, one right after another. If the idea was to get normal players playing multiple factions, i think it worked. I wonder: if I had access if I could see the populations of the facebook groups charted over time. I'm willing to bet it increases dramatically, like significantly beyond the mean for growth (assuming you could chart it) with each new CID announcement and implementation.
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Post by mcdermott on Dec 22, 2018 7:28:52 GMT
Except your presentation is as though it somehow got WORSE, when the reality is its better than it ever has been in the history of the game for tending to overpowered lists and models. It is a flat improvement from mk1 and mk2 as far as addressing broken shit is concerned.
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Post by netdragon on Dec 22, 2018 8:55:58 GMT
Just for the record:
I'm not against CID, I'm just against how CID has been handled.
- Mixing existing models with new models kills the hype for the new models. These should be done separatedly. - PP's application of the design space concept is wrong. You design taking design space in mind, you do not nerf to make room for new stuff. - For me it's disenhearting to see thing even being tested at all. Caine 0's first version included Snipe. Dude. Snipe on a cygnar junior. Even Cygnar player were against it as we just had hunters nerfed because of the trencher junior and the blockhouse was release with a shorter advanced deployment because PP was afraid of first turn shots into deployment (which is another problem with WM/H that PP does not seem to want to fix properly).
I'm not against not fixing things, but fixing could be done better.
#DesignGud
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Post by 36cygnar24guy36 on Dec 22, 2018 9:00:51 GMT
What I find annoying is that during the Kraye dev talk I voiced the opinion that Stranglehold would be too good for him.
However looking at where we have ended up with stuff coming out of CID, I shouldn't have bothered, Stranglehold would have been absolutely fine.
I basically just denied myself a good Kraye because I thought PP would act with some restraint in future CIDs
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Post by smoothcriminal on Dec 22, 2018 12:44:23 GMT
Mk3 clearly was bad for the game health. We can argue specifics, but the general numbers are undeniable.
Personally, I agree with the sentiment of competitiveness focus finally catching up with PP. It's a miniature wargame, you can ignore the hobby/fluff issues only for so long. The competitive crowd isn't a very faithful fanbase, the moment your rules system does a few missteps they can just switch to another game, meanwhile hobby/fluff people can stick even with an unplayable system, case in point any gw game. It's not necessarily direct PP fault that it happened like this, maybe they wanted and tried to go differently about it, but that's what happened.
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seul
Demo Gamer
Posts: 15
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Post by seul on Dec 22, 2018 13:50:50 GMT
A core rule change edition change is always going to have detractors when balance is the goal. With 10+ factions
A) The top faction(s) finds that some of its models are still on the shelf and never played. B) the next faction(s) suffer from A, but also aren't as good as the top faction(s), and so don't see why they should be brought down to the middle as they can't beat the top factions. C) there's at least one or two factions that "are only being kept afloat by 1 or 2 models/casters/themes" and hate to see these 1 or 2 models brought down to the middle, when the rest of their models (might) need to be brought up, or were just not a compelling choice compared to the (potentially) overpowered 1 or 2 models/casters/themes. D) The bottom factions get a boost to the middle, but some models aren't touched and they aren't brought up to A or B's level (because A and B have been brought more to the middle)
So each previous tier is now unhappy, even if everything is closer to the middle in terms of balance and the core rules have been streamlined and cleaned up for a better foundation. Each faction will point to their own buffs during rules updates (or mk3 transition) to show they were not in a good place, while pointing to other factions nerfs, but every faction has had buffs and nerfs.
Sometimes it feels like the most vocal whiners (it's a lot of whining) were the top half factions upset they are now closer to the bottom factions, even if it means more balance. I see a lot of posts of "I want balance", "I don't want this nerfed, I want this other thing brought up to that level". I think nerfing, even if it makes things balanced, tends to be a negative experience instead of the positive one a balance should be.
You can put whatever factions/models you want in category A-D, everyone will have their own opinions. It happened with MK3 transition and is still occurring.
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vlad
BattleBox Champ
Posts: 53
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Post by vlad on Dec 22, 2018 16:03:45 GMT
I find it amusing how many people believe power creep is occurring dispite the total lack of any statistical or empirical evidence to support this.
While some CIDs might have influenced the competitive landscape more than others, it is really difficult to prove that what will come out of the Steelhead CID is absolutely better (because that is what power creep is supposed to be) than let’s say the Northkin or Primal Terrors CID. Perfect balance is impossible in a complex game such as this, but PP and the CID have been doing quite a good job of making the balance of the game better so far.
I also find it amusing that the people who seem to complain loudest about power creep here seem to have a sort of strong protective bias toward Cygnar, even though the CID process has made a lot of Cygnar models playable, while basically making none unpayable (Haley1 maybe?).
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Post by Lorian on Dec 22, 2018 22:02:23 GMT
I think it is more the feeling of your other models beeing left behind, when one part of it gets an CID. Maybe that is why you always want more and then are jealous for other people getting their CID before all your stuff is "properly" done. (properly depends on the personal point of view)
As a Swan myself, I laughed hard when the Haley2 nerf was anounced. Since then I always joke around, that an update for cygnar can only be true if a Haleynerf of some sort is included. xP
I don't see the power creep that obviously. Maybe it is because the first CID iterations (week 1 stats, etc) are mostly OP, but get back in line a few weeks into the CID. But you only remember the initial shock moment of your mates bragging how awesome their model xyz is going to be...
What troubles me is, that you have to play in theme to be competetive, but you only have one CIDed theme. So you most likely have just this one theme you can play. And as a Cygnarian most troubles are with the armor meta. In a 2 List format it is very hard for me, not to pick my armor cracking list all the time, because everybody has an armor spam list today. Even cryx as one now...(Black Industries) So I am bound to play Siege or Stryker every tournament game.
I once dropped Haley3 (GunMageTheme) into Legion. He had one armor, multi wound list and one infantry list. Guess what. He saw Cygnar and picked the armor block....It is so frustrating and boring.
Nevertheless I don't want to get off topic too much. Sorry, if I derailed a bit.
One last thing. I probably should not say this aloud, but I like MK3. The change to Focus and Jacks were amazing for me. Finally i could play more jacks. These funny looking steam robots were my entry reason into WMH in the first place. (and the neat rules) But that is for a different thread.
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Post by oncomingstorm on Dec 22, 2018 22:06:06 GMT
There is no power creep, except possibly in terms of huge based/BAHI models. Models are released, the community loses their shit for a few months over how OP it is, and then the meta adjusts. Once in awhile, something actually absurd is released (or more likely, a new release unlocks something that was absurd before) and it needs to be nerfed, but that's not power creep.
Players whined about Grymkin when they were released...then they adapted. Players whined about Kolgrimma when she was released...then they adapted. Players whined about Anamag when she was released...then they adapted. Players are currently whining about Tharn...they will adapt.
Some things have been released that may be actively bad for the game (the proliferation of anti-healing tech, anti-place tech, and arcane vortex everywhere is a profoundly uninteractive trend that incentivizes people to just smash models together in the centre of the table), but that's not the same thing as power creep.
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eathotlead
Junior Strategist
PP forumite since 2004
Posts: 259
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Post by eathotlead on Dec 22, 2018 22:25:38 GMT
I see that the thread has moved on to be more focused on power creep but regarding the OP and talk of the US market vs. Europe, here are some web stats. Not making any inferences right now, just showing data. ...and the PP forums data...
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Post by netdragon on Dec 22, 2018 23:00:47 GMT
I see that the thread has moved on to be more focused on power creep but regarding the OP and talk of the US market vs. Europe, here are some web stats. Not making any inferences right now, just showing data. ...and the PP forums data... How you dare bring actual data to this thread??? XD
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eathotlead
Junior Strategist
PP forumite since 2004
Posts: 259
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Post by eathotlead on Dec 22, 2018 23:06:04 GMT
LOL
As far as what I want, again in reference to an earlier post...
- Bring back fully functioning forums (even the painting portion suffered d/t lack of general traffic). I'll come back. - Bring back regular story-advancing fluff. Online is fine. I'll pay... especially for Seacat stuff. - Tease the Infernals periodically, model by model. I'll watch with curiosity. - Reduce CID to new models, and maybe twice yearly for legacy stuff. I'll buy more stuff if I have a stable handle on what my purchases will mean over the next year or two.
I'm no competitive player, and don't want to be, but in the name of positivity toward a PP turn-around I think these look like constructive suggestions.
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crimsyn
Junior Strategist
Posts: 389
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Post by crimsyn on Dec 23, 2018 1:39:12 GMT
IMO, PP has a great product in warmachine, and it's gotten that way largely because they've been listening to the top 2% of players, the people who actually know balance well enough, and care about the health of the game enough, to contribute to it's development. Listening to casual players about balance is a terrible idea (and I'm not going to rehash that particular debate), and the game is not oriented towards a casual audience, both because the community is not casual friendly, and because the rules are very all-or-nothing, and do not lend themselves to fun casual play. Most of the 'casual' games I've seen end up being more of a stomp than any competitive game, because the core game rules encourage and allow this (and before anyone says anything, the game has always been like this). I also strongly disagree about the CID leadipowercreep. with a few notable exceptions (one in particular I'll get to later), the things coming out of CID have not been significantly stronger than the strongest things Pre-CID. Factions have gotten stronger through CID, but largely because they were underperforming pre-CID. The thing is, no one is arguing that casual players who don't have the same mastery of the system should be in charge of deciding what is balanced and what isn't. That's a strawman. However, it may be a good idea to take casual play into account at times. For example, if the argument is that something is fair and balanced because if you bring a very specific tech you can actually have a game, or that all you need to do is have absolutely perfect positioning to not automatically lose, then that's something that should be considered, because odds are that on a casual game night, you're not going to bring the one or two casters that can actually have a game. For example, Ghost Fleet. This was a list which was miserable to play into because you didn't even have a chance to really interact with unless you built a list specifically to counter it. It was a huge NPE, unless you brought some sort of very specific tech (okay, I need a list that has mass ranged RFP and magic weapons and can deal with a wraith engine and doesn't randomly lose to assassination or melt to a 7 point armour swing). It may have been okay competitively because you could always bring a really janky list that is hyper-focused on that one matchup and have a game, assuming you don't lose list chicken, but if we're playing on a tuesday game night and someone brings a list like that, it's going to be a situation where it's not even a game. It feels like lately, a lot of stuff has been released into the wild which is very meta-bending, and it has become very difficult for casual players to keep up. Also, perhaps part of the issue is that the community shouldn't be "not casual friendly"? I don't know the answer to this, but I do know the answer isn't to either ignore casual players and hobbyists at best, or be actively hostile to them at worst? I mean, your post is part of the problem as a lot of the wording in it basically implies to casual players that the game isn't for them. At some point, it's hard to grow the game and grow PP's bottom line by telling people that the game isn't for them and making them feel unwelcome. I've been getting back into the game lately, but I know personally, my enthusiasm for the game took a severe dip this year and my hobby purchases shifted from PP to GW after things like having competitive players swear at me and insist that I change my terrain setup (on a table they weren't even playing on) because I lined up multiple trench templates to make it look like a realistic trench, or being told that I'm not playing a "real game" because I'm playing a scenario from a narrative league instead of a steamroller scenario, or literally being told to Firetruck off and go play GW games instead. I mean, at some point, if people keep telling casual players and hobbyists that this game isn't for them, then they might start thinking that the game isn't for them and go play something else.
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Post by oncomingstorm on Dec 23, 2018 2:18:16 GMT
crimsyn - I mean. Are you seriously going to suggest that Warmachine/Hordes is a system which (even ignoring the community's orientation towards competitive play) lends itself towards casual play? It's a game where you can win or lose by misplacing a model by a quarter inch, by forgetting a single rule on an opponent's cards, or by messing up your order of activations slightly. It's a game where if you don't understand positioning, a single model can eat through 75% of your army without slowing down. It's a game where 90/10 matchups do exist, such that one player simply doesn't get a chance to play if they wander into that matchup. Like...I can't see a single way in which warmachine/hordes could be considered a game that is conducive to playing random tuesday night games with whatever you have to hand. Warhammer and suchlike are pretty dice dependent and skill agnostic (as I remember them), and as such are way better geared towards that kind of single-list-no-prep pickup environment. And, hell, the current iteration of WMH is as good as it's ever been for pick-up games. There's fewer useless models, the most oppressive lists have been nerfed, and the biggest gotchas no longer exist (remember Mk1 top of 1 assassinations? double/triple ports? old Haley2 feat? Excarnate Bile Thralls?). And despite that, it's still not a good game for casual play. The binary, all-or-nothing nature of the rules structure, and the reliance on hard counters, is baked deep into the ruleset, and it's probably not going anywhere. As for the competitive orientation of the community...again, I don't know what you expect PP to do about that. The competitive mindset is pretty well entrenched, and the amount of practice and 'grinding' that's needed to keep improving competitively is such that competitive players tend not to want to spend warmachine time playing non-competitive games. PP can (and has!) put out all the narrative/hobby-based content they want, but if the community gravitates toward steamroller, they're gonna play steamroller. Now, if you've got players in your meta that are making fun of you for playing casual games with another player who's willing to play casually, those people are dicks, but that's neither here nor there in terms of PP encouraging casual play or not. But as for 'making' the community more casual friendly, again - I'm not sure what you're looking for. Most metas that I've experienced encourage the development of new players, but if players want to play competitive games (and moreso if the meta is a competitive meta)...you can't force people to play in a way they don't want to play.
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