zich
Junior Strategist
Posts: 690
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Post by zich on Dec 3, 2017 15:54:17 GMT
etheric42: I don't agree with that. I got into the game in Mk2 and could basically play whatever I wanted within my faction + mercs. Sure, some models were just terrible, but that is not because of a lack of themes, but because of how terrible Mk2 balance was. But in general, if I wanted - say - a unit of Immortals or a unit of Gun Mages I could get them and play them. If I did the same today, I'd get randomly punished for buying the wrong models. Because let's face it, new players have no clue what to get, at least I didn't. Building an army slowly was also a lot easier. If I wanted to run said unit of Immortals, all I needed was them and the UA (later in Mk2). Maybe an Ancestral Guardian to go along with them. Nowadays I'd need 3 units with CAs and 4 solos. Haight: A lot of that resembles my thoughts. What kind of annoys me about this is how PP introduced mandatory themes. Their attitude of "Sure you don't need a theme to play - you just need it to have a shot at winning." is high-level piss taking.
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Post by smoothcriminal on Dec 3, 2017 16:49:54 GMT
We're beyond the point when macromanagement of balance can realistically happen. Old factions are closing on 100 models per faction each, there are over 1000 models in the game. PP needs to outsource playtesting to us even for the small theme releases because by themselves they still make things like Una2, an anecdotal case of literally 2 model combination of caster + N of same model being broken from the start.
If it was a card game, the rotation would have to happen right about last year. But it isn't, so we'll have to live with themes and whatever balance crutches PP will introduce next. It's clearly beyond their ability to do something else.
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unded
Junior Strategist
Posts: 760
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Post by unded on Dec 3, 2017 17:38:24 GMT
For me the biggest problem with themes is not actually for vets like myself, but for newcomers.
In MKII, when a new Cryx player told me he wanted to start playing and sought advice in beginning his collection, I could give him pretty sound advice:
" Take 2 units that can slot into most armies. Satyxis raiders are always good, and I like mechanithralls and a necrosurgeon but alternatively Bane Thralls will also be a unit you will never regret. Then pick up the starter box, that will cover your arcnodes and give you a functional (at least for the first couple of months) heavy. Deathjack is always fun, so buy him pronto for some cool shenanigans. From there look at the caster pool, proxy a couple to see what you prefer, and expand from there, buying jacks and units as you expand to suit your new casters"
It was easy, and the growth felt organic. I have no easy answer to the same question in MKIII since all the units are pigeonholed into specific themes. I shudder to think how anyone new to the game starts buying in MKIII - are you forced to just build theme by theme? Does that mean it feels like a whole new faction when you start buying a new theme? It's really vicious for new players (and their wallets), and in my meta we lost all of our newer players from MKIII as a result.
-und_ed
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Post by HubertJFarnsworth on Dec 3, 2017 17:52:23 GMT
As far as new player growth, I think that will get easier as more theme releases happen. Every theme release so far is getting a box that slots in with the Battle Box to make a 50-point list. If a new player can't or doesn't want to buy the whole box up front it still give them a template to expand towards bit-by-bit. In a year or so when we have multiple theme boxes per faction it'll be a lot easier to ask a new player what thing they like most about their faction and point them to that theme starter.
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unded
Junior Strategist
Posts: 760
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Post by unded on Dec 3, 2017 18:24:31 GMT
@hubert
That really does nothing to alleviate how much more expensive it is now to start a faction. If you look at my above example, you could reasonably start cryx for the price of two infantry units, a couple of warjacks and then pick a caster. With that base a newbie could pick up almost any caster in the faction and be playable, and only need a small purchase to be competitive. Themes do just the opposite, and when new players are weighing up starting WM/H versus Malifaux or or something similar, it skews them hard away from WM/H. In my meta I literally lost 5 out of 6 new players that started end of MKII / beginning of MKIII to Malifaux, and the above complaint has made it impossible to reclaim them.
-und_ed
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bward
Junior Strategist
Posts: 184
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Post by bward on Dec 3, 2017 18:42:19 GMT
@hubert That really does nothing to alleviate how much more expensive it is now to start a faction. If you look at my above example, you could reasonably start cryx for the price of two infantry units, a couple of warjacks and then pick a caster. With that base a newbie could pick up almost any caster in the faction and be playable, and only need a small purchase to be competitive. Themes do just the opposite, and when new players are weighing up starting WM/H versus Malifaux or or something similar, it skews them hard away from WM/H. In my meta I literally lost 5 out of 6 new players that started end of MKII / beginning of MKIII to Malifaux, and the above complaint has made it impossible to reclaim them. -und_ed Its a mindset change of instead of wanting to get into “Cryx”, you want to get into “Ghost Fleet”. And from there its a much smaller, but similar step, of picking up a second faction by then moving into Satyxis, Slaughter Fleet, etc. Each buy in to the next sub theme is incrementally easier since warjack/casters are the same, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with only playing Slaughter Fleet or only Satyxis, etc.
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Haight
Junior Strategist
Posts: 396
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Post by Haight on Dec 3, 2017 18:43:55 GMT
@hubert That really does nothing to alleviate how much more expensive it is now to start a faction. If you look at my above example, you could reasonably start cryx for the price of two infantry units, a couple of warjacks and then pick a caster. With that base a newbie could pick up almost any caster in the faction and be playable, and only need a small purchase to be competitive. Themes do just the opposite, and when new players are weighing up starting WM/H versus Malifaux or or something similar, it skews them hard away from WM/H. In my meta I literally lost 5 out of 6 new players that started end of MKII / beginning of MKIII to Malifaux, and the above complaint has made it impossible to reclaim them. -und_ed Precisely. These way of doing themes actually makes buying into a faction MORE expensive as field allowances are modified, or certain combinations are allowed / not allowed. Themes are a lot of things, most of which i don't like, but i'll be the first person to say that whether you like them or not is inherently subjective.... But make no mistake: a prime objective of Themes is to encourage the consumer to spend more money by boxing out options into silos instead of sandboxes. When you understand the gaming industry's marketing by having been in it and worked in it, there is literally no other conclusion you can draw. There are lots of other reasons for themes, and you can debate the merits or flaws, but on the topic of themes effect on consumer habits, themes are 100% intended to influence purchasing habits. For every player that says "I play Storm Division and THAT'S IT", there are an order of magnitude more that buys into multiple themes, and probably a few that buy into multiple themes across multiple factions. Steamroller and the "list pairs / triples" system is actually directly intended for this reason to (and to give a pressure relief valve matchups that could skirt the edges of being binary scenarios, of which there are far, far fewer than the player base alleges. There really are not that many "hard counters" or "solutions" to many lists. Pairing takes care of a lot of the few that do evolve, but pairs are absolutely intended to influence consumer habits too. Who buys more models: the competitive player that makes one list, or two?). There's nothing nefarious in this: its good marketing strategy. I always chuckle whenever people lay the death of Hardcore format solely on bad sportsmanship and tournament format gamesmanship. Part of it ? Absolutely ! But original hardcore was a single list format, which saw a lot of people gravitating to it while it was still popular (roughly mid to mid-end MK2) and building singular lists instead of dual lists for steamroller. That affects sales, which means revenue is impacted. Couple that with some comparatively expensive awards for the "official" ones, and that shit was destined to die. All of these things - rules governing list construction, competitive formats, etc, they are all at least partially marketing ties, and all of them are intended to influence purchasing habits with a gear towards encouraging the consumer to spend more. Anyone who says otherwise is either naive, or is bullshitting you. This is a business first, and a game second. Again: zero things nefarious about that, but it's important to have an honest discussion rather than resorting to debate tropes (particuarly with controversial topics). I haven't seen a lot of that in this thread (which, btw, that's cool, thought for sure i was going to see some "lol, git gud nerd" horseshit after my manifesto above). bward - i'd agree with you but for the LIst Pairing aspect. If it was TRULY 100% across the board a move to "Think of it as i don't play Cygnar anymore, but i play Storm Division", i'd be cool with it. But its not. If you take 2 ghost fleet (can you even do the same theme in current steamroller? Honest question, i skimmed the doc once, i can't imagine they prohibit that, but you never know) for your pair you don't have an answer for anything ghost fleet can't handle, just a variation on how it handles via caster and maybe that characters pet jack / beast. So while i see where you're going, and i'd actually LIKE that were it true, i don't think it is because i don't think its that often people are taking list pairings of the same theme outside of bizarre shit like Cephylex. I might be wrong, i'm out of the tournament scene frankly, but for the entire time i was going to tourneys (ridiculously often early to mid MK2, occasional end mk2, rarely early mk3) it was the rarity not the norm.
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Ganso
Junior Strategist
Posts: 932
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Post by Ganso on Dec 3, 2017 19:53:30 GMT
We're beyond the point when macromanagement of balance can realistically happen. Old factions are closing on 100 models per faction each, there are over 1000 models in the game. PP needs to outsource playtesting to us even for the small theme releases because by themselves they still make things like Una2, an anecdotal case of literally 2 model combination of caster + N of same model being broken from the start. If it was a card game, the rotation would have to happen right about last year. But it isn't, so we'll have to live with themes and whatever balance crutches PP will introduce next. It's clearly beyond their ability to do something else. Yup. It's naive to think that any selection of those 1000 options is balance against any other selection of similar size. At this point Themes are a necessity. Maybe in the future, when PP introduces a limited format (way beyond anything Champions has done so far) we can leave themes behind. Anyone that hasn't made their peace with Themes by now should be looking for a different game (and leave those of us who stayed to enjoy our chosen game without the negative Nancys )
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zich
Junior Strategist
Posts: 690
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Post by zich on Dec 3, 2017 20:09:06 GMT
Excuse me, but WMH is also my game of choice. I am just as much invested as you are. When I chose it, themes were optional. Things changed and now they no longer are. It's not wrong to hope for things to change again - this time towards something I and others prefer.
As to your assertion that themes are the only way forward. I disagree. Neither of us have any proof.
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Ganso
Junior Strategist
Posts: 932
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Post by Ganso on Dec 3, 2017 21:35:33 GMT
Excuse me, but WMH is also my game of choice. I am just as much invested as you are. When I chose it, themes were optional. Things changed and now they no longer are. It's not wrong to hope for things to change again - this time towards something I and others prefer. As to your assertion that themes are the only way forward. I disagree. Neither of us have any proof. I clearly didn't state it's the only way forward. The other alternative is a limited format. What is not a feasible alternative is to keep on adding SKUs to a count that already passes the 1k mark and expecting a healthy balanced game. Which is how the "no more theme" rhetoric seems to read.
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unded
Junior Strategist
Posts: 760
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Post by unded on Dec 4, 2017 7:40:14 GMT
Not at all true, Ganso.
I look at the tail-end of MKII as the most balanced the game the ever been (certainly better than at any point in MKIII), and that needed no themes to balance it. It took diligent work and rebalancing, and with CiD in place PP is in a better place than ever to get it right. This notion that it's impossible to balance the model stable in an open format is defeatist and flies in the face of what PP showed us they can accomplish.
-und_ed
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zich
Junior Strategist
Posts: 690
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Post by zich on Dec 4, 2017 8:50:35 GMT
Well that I disagree with. No part of Mk2 was nearly as balanced as the game is now - even with its current flaws. But the imbalance in Mk2 was not due to a lack of themes, but due to a lack of refinement and playtesting. There were just some pieces (Haley2, Vayl2, Cryx, the list goes on) that were poorly balanced, hardly tested and (mostly) never adjusted. Model overlap was not the issue.
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Post by Gamingdevil on Dec 4, 2017 11:04:53 GMT
And why do customers put up with this? Simple. It's tied to something they enjoy doing. A lot. A REAL lot. So the choice becomes either accept and continue enjoying this thing, or Firetruck You PP i'm done with this shit, or somewhere in the middle of this scale in the grey. Gaming is tied to social relationships, in many cases social relationships people really value. Sometimes gaming is the social fulcrum. So of course there is going to be a large rate of adoption, yet the situation remains such a controversial one. I know people that the only few hours of "me time" they get a week is game day due to job, family, and commitments. It's hard as Firetruck to get someone to give that up. For me, for these kinds of reasons, giving up WM/H in the middle of MK2 for a year was actually harder than kicking my 20 year smoking habit. For those of you still reading (thanks, btw!), you might call bullshit, and its anecdotal, but for me, it was. So we'll take negative things in small doses and normalize them if it means we can keep doing the thing we like doing. Too many negative things and we'll turn, but if its by slow increments with some incentive, we'll deal with it. Until the day we wake up and go "Firetruck it, no more." Besides how much they enjoy it, there's also the fact that many already invested thousands of *insert currency* and it's really hard to just throw that out the window. If a small adjustment in mindset can allow them to keep using their collections without losing money, then they will do it, while investing more money. This is the sunk-cost fallacy and I'm also guilty of it, though I actually enjoy it as well. People like me/us already have most of what a faction has to offer, often in multiples, some still rotting in the box. Then it's pretty easy to say "I already have most of this theme and my favourite list almost fits into it, might as well buy that extra box and change up my list a bit."
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bward
Junior Strategist
Posts: 184
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Post by bward on Dec 4, 2017 13:37:42 GMT
Disagree unded. This game is so much more balanced now than any stage of mk2.
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Post by HubertJFarnsworth on Dec 4, 2017 14:34:37 GMT
There seem to be a lot of talk in the lines of PP tricking people into spending more or people being unwilling to leave or something. Many of us simply like what PP is doing. I've greatly enjoyed the amount of detailed fluff we've gotten in NQ Prime for each of the released theme forces and I like a lot of the models that have come out of exploring the themes some more; I'm excited to see what we get for Blighted Ogrun, Man O' Wars, and Dawnguard.
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