Understanding AoS. Acceptance & Balance: The Break Up. The Future.

[40kGamer]

It seems to me to be something Jervis would do ... and he still works there. So this is not surprising to me. There is an article he did in 2002 citadel journal you can google up where he talks about his disdain for points systems.

It still seems weird. Did Jervis have some kind of religious awakening regarding points? All of the games he was credited with in the past had points. Epic Armageddon was published in 2003 and in the Game notes someone (I would think him since he's credited as the designer) went through the 3 ways to play with tournament and pick up games being the most popular way, followed by scenarios and campaigns... The author (once again I would assume it was him) then launched into a long explanation as to why points and restrictions are necessary for tournament/pick up play to make it as balanced as possible for the participants. Contrasted to the 2002 article it's like someone was having an identity crisis.

[Dont-Be-Haten]

War dollies are so serious.

In any case my points are valid. I didn't cover everything just the key points and felt what needed to be addressed again got it. For the people still crying I'm sorry, I wish I knew how to help you, but I can't. It's great being able to play however you want. I play my toy soldiers one way you the other. I think the game is perfectly fine as is. And really hope it stays the course, and if it changes that's fine I'll just go with the flow.

[odinsgrandson]

Yeah, no.

One of those battleplans can be seen on Lady Atias twitter and there are no mentions factions or unit restrictions or even as much as suggestions.

So, as I understand it then, we had a hope that this game would be balanced with the new book- and it totally isn't.

Shall we hang all our hopes on the next release that "might" have a balancing mechanism in it?

It still seems weird. Did Jervis have some kind of religious awakening regarding points? All of the games he was credited with in the past had points...

Not to mention, Blood Bowl was and is the best balanced game that GW has ever been responsible for (in my experience).

Now, that wasn't all Jervis, but it was his baby.

[Path Walker]

The game is as balanced as GW are ever going to make it. There will be no points, no restrictions, it's up to the players, thats the plan and that's what they want the game to be now.

They've used points in the past because some people liked them, and they wanted to allow for people to play competitive if they wanted to. However, things gotout of hand, the game became all about competition to the extent where competitive players thought that was how the game was supposed to be played.

They're willing to risk it with Fantasy because people weren't playing it anyway, so its low risk, if it fails they've not lost anything as it wasn't making money. If it succeeds, they shift the culture of the game into something more akin to how wargames were played for years and years before warhammer was ever conceived.

[Erik Setzer]

It still seems weird. Did Jervis have some kind of religious awakening regarding points? All of the games he was credited with in the past had points. Epic Armageddon was published in 2003 and in the Game notes someone (I would think him since he's credited as the designer) went through the 3 ways to play with tournament and pick up games being the most popular way, followed by scenarios and campaigns... The author (once again I would assume it was him) then launched into a long explanation as to why points and restrictions are necessary for tournament/pick up play to make it as balanced as possible for the participants. Contrasted to the 2002 article it's like someone was having an identity crisis.

Well, right there in the article, he ends up showing that his views either changed, or... something. He did indeed do the first Grand Tournaments (which is what really helped the tournament scene explode) and likely was part of setting up the Rogue Trader Tournament program, and as he noted, their battle reports showing how to play used equal points. They hardly ever did a batrep that didn't use points, and it was usually something like the super-mega-battle that I think was somewhere in the 180s where they threw all their good guys on one side and bad guys on the other for a massive gave of Warhammer, using multiple players per side and some creative rules on coordinating the battle. Even then, they tried to make sure the two sides were balanced.

Everything he did promoted the use of points. Every game except Inquisitor (which flopped) had points. Scenarios almost always had some way to pick even armies. Even after writing that, he continued to push out stuff that promoted the use of points to balance matches. The kind of story scenarios he talks about are things you do with your friends, not pick-up matches, because you can have a good chat about what to do with the game.

His column doesn't really make sense. Especially as scenarios and points can worth together.

[Lexington]

It still seems weird. Did Jervis have some kind of religious awakening regarding points?

I'm fairly sure the decision to drop points had little, if anything to do with game design, and everything to do with a sales mechanic. When GW says "we're a models company, not a game company," this is the sort of thing they mean - the rules will be written to support and maximize the sale of models. From that business perspective, having a completely arbitrary, self-imposed "points limit" on certain models (say, large, expensive monsters that cost a lot to produce) seems pretty crazy. Why on Earth would you tell a customer that they can only have a limited number of big, expensive models? Along the same line, why would you allow for a siutation where groups of customers create artificial limits on the number of models they can field? It means everyone will be held back to the level of the group's lowest spender. So, no points limits, no assumption of balanced forces - it's "up to the players" to balance the game. Practically every game design decision made in AoS can be traced to this kind of thinking.

[40kGamer]

War dollies are so serious.

In any case my points are valid. I didn't cover everything just the key points and felt what needed to be addressed again got it. For the people still crying I'm sorry, I wish I knew how to help you, but I can't. It's great being able to play however you want. I play my toy soldiers one way you the other. I think the game is perfectly fine as is. And really hope it stays the course, and if it changes that's fine I'll just go with the flow.

We have to separate things out a little. Playing with our toy soldiers isn't a serious affair, however, designing the game is. Otherwise any idiot could scratch some rules out on the back of a napkin and we'd all get googly eyed to play their brilliant system. I don't think the majority of us have issues with playing/players, but rather the lackadaisical approach GW has taken to game design for the last several years.

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I'm fairly sure the decision to drop points had little, if anything to do with game design, and everything to do with a sales mechanic.

Probably goes back to Mr. Priestley's comment about merging the design studio into Corporate being a bad thing.