It is impossible to balance 40K

[YorkNecromancer]

It Is Impossible To Balance 40K

Or

Please, Just Hear Me Out

‘I think it’s obvious, that with only one or two minor changes, 40K would be, if not balanced, at least significantly more balanced than it is at the moment.’

So begins every ‘positive’ comment on game balance ever. As a phrase, it might be worded slightly differently. It might call for ‘several’ changes; it might call for ‘tweaks’. But hey, at least it’s more positive to read about than the soul-numbing misanthropy that comes from reading endless comments about how broken the game is, how the Codex creep is ruining things, how these or those units are undercosted, overpowered, cheap, beardy, useless or autoincludes.

The one thing that both the ‘just a few tweak’-ers and the ‘I’M NEVER PLAYING 40K AGAIN AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU’ complainers share is an underlying assumption. If the Tweakers and the NEVERS! represent different sides of the same coin, then the assumption is the metal the coin is made from. As a result, it’s so intrinsic to the argument that it’s never questioned, and is more seductive than a naked Burt Reynolds holding a gamepad in one hand and a bottle of 100 year aged bourbon in the other.


Pictured: ‘Sure, we can balance the game with just a few tweaks. Why don’t you just shuffle out of that uncomfortable-looking T-shirt and tell me your ideas for how. More bourbon?’

The thing is, this assumption is so critical to all these arguments, I don’t think many people even realise it is an assumption. So what am I on about? This concept:

’It is possible to balance 40K.’

Has to be true, doesn’t it? I mean, it just has to be. Well, I don’t think so. I would go so far as to call that assumption a big load of sweaty man-bollocks, and in this article I’m going to

Okay, calm yourself. Come back. I can feel the rage through my screen from here. Look, if you want to skip to the end and post angry comments, feel free. But at least hear me out.

So, anyway, in this article, I’m going to

Seriously: this is going to be fine. I’m just going to write some ideas down and then we can talk about them like civilised adults. There’s no need for that kind of language. Or a gun.

So yeah: game balance. In 40K? Not possible. That’s what I think.

Here’s why.

Defining The Assumption.

So when people operate with the assumption

’It is possible to balance 40K.’

They’ve probably got an idea about what this means. So let’s just clarify that before we begin so we all know where I’m coming from and nobody has to threaten my family or phone in bomb threats to places where I’m giving talks.

I would argue that the sentence ‘It is possible to balance 40K.’ could, more precisely be defined as:

‘I feel that it is possible for Games Workshop’s design team to construct the game of Warhammer 40,000 such that in a two player game - held between people of equal knowledge and skill – each player has a completely equal chance of winning, one based entirely around their own personal abilities. That it is completely possible to design the game such that no player can ever exploit a single rule, option, unit, combination of units or armies in a way unintended or unforeseen by the design team, such that they could be considered to have an unfair advantage over their opponents’ army.’

Bit more of a mouthful. Basically comes down to ‘if my opponent and I are as good as each other, we should have an equal chance no matter what army we play as’.

But here’s the thing: that assumption? It is insane. The more you look at it, the more completely and utterly insane it becomes, and the reasons why are what I want to spend the majority of this article looking at.

Opinion Number 1: 40K Is Too Complex To Balance

Okay, so let’s be real here: 40K is the biggest and most successful wargame there has ever been. Warmahordes has roughly eight ‘big’ factions (Khador, Cryx, et al.) and a couple of medium-smaller ones (Cyriss, Cephalyx, etc.) Infinity has eight factions. Flames of War has twelve.

Assuming you regard Forge World’s lists as game legal (which I do, because Games Workshop has officially said they are), Warhammer 40,000 has thirty five: Astra Militarum; Adepta Sororitas; Blood Angels; Chaos Daemons; Chaos Space Marines; Cult Mechanicus; Clan Raaukan; Dark Angels; Dark Eldar; Eldar Corsairs; Eldar Harlequins; Eldar; Grey Knights; Haemonculus Covens; Imperial Guard Armoured Battlegroup; Death Korp of Krieg Assault Brigade; Death Korp of Krieg Siege Regiment; Elysian Drop Troops; Imperial Knights; Inquisition; Khorne Daemonkin; Militarum Tempestus; Necrons; Orks; Ork Dread Mob; Renegades and Heretics; Skitarii; Siege Assault Vanguard; Space Wolves; Tau; Tau – Farsight Enclaves; Tyranids; Tyrant’s Legion; and all the various Chapter Tactics flavours of Space Marines.

Then, given we have the upcoming release of Horus Heresy in plastic, we can also include the following twenty four ‘30K’ lists in our comparison: Imperial Militia and Cults; Mechanicum – Ordo Cybernetica; Mechanicum – Ordo Destructor; Mechanicum – Taghmata; Questoris Knight Crusade; Solar Auxilia; not to mention all eighteen Space Marine Legions.

This all brings the grand total of game legal Warhammer: Sci-fi Warfare armies to (by my calculation) sixty. Just stop and roll that number around your head for a moment. Sixty armies. Sixty.


Pictured: what happened to my brain after the fifteen minutes it took me to check through everything, knowing that there’s probably still some other lists I’ve missed. ‘Sentinels of Terra’ maybe…

No other game comes remotely close to that.

Then consider how much you can micromanage those armies. Each codex has a variety of units. Some, like the Cult Mechanicus, only have a limited number – just six model types. However, each model has at least two different wargear options, not to mention a variety of army rules, special wargear options and the like, all of which can be combined in a multitude of different, extremely personalised ways, meaning that while you may only have six units, they can be built into a vast number of extremely different ways. An all-grav Servitor list is going to play very differently to a power-fist and flamer Robot list, and even more differently to a all-phosphor Robot list that mixes in plasma Servitors.

And Cult Mechanicus is one of the smallest factions in the game. Compare them to Space Marines, who have an absurd number of units to choose from, each with multiple wargear options, special wargear, dedicated transports, and so on.

That is a LOT of stuff to keep track of. A lot of stuff to compare to each other and assign points values to. Even if we (as some people will no doubt argue we should) ignore Forge World’s lists, keeping this as GW-‘pure’ as possible (which, of course, makes the assumption that the Games Design team ignored Forge World’s products – something I strongly suspect they don’t do), that still leaves twenty-three discrete armies, not including Space Marine chapter tactics.

Imagine trying to balance all those things.

'Yeah, but half of those armies are Marines, or Marine equivalent, so they're all basically the same. It can’t be that hard to balance them. It’s like Horus Heresy. Everything’s Marines; it’s all completely homogenous.’



Do you remember 5th edition Grey Knights, Kanye?

I remember 5th Edition Grey Knights.

*Shivers*

If you don’t? How great is it to be eleven and just have discovered 40K? Welcome to the community! Also, go to Google, and search the articles that were on BoLS round about the end of 2011 and all through 2012. 90% of the articles were either ‘Holy Throne this Grey Knight combo is brokenly good and will win you every game you play’ or else ‘HOW DO I BEAT THE GREY KNIGHTS?! HOW?!!!!!’

It was not a great time to be a 40K player.

Those Chaos players who pine for a codex in-line with the 3.5 CSM Codex know exactly how it felt to be a Grey Knight player circa 5th edition.


Pictured: the shift from Chaos V2 to Chaos V3.5

An MEQ codex isn’t naturally balanced just by virtue of being MEQ; ask an actual Horus Heresy player about the differences between Legion playstyles, and you’ll learn that very quickly. So it’s not as easy as ‘make all the armies the same’, because a few changes here and there can very quickly add up to OH MY GOD HOW DO I EVEN COME CLOSE TO BEATING THIS F**KING ARMY?!!!

‘Okay fine. But the game should still be balanced; that’s why they have a design team! If the team can’t balance the game, what are they doing?’



Okay, Kanye, fair point. Because, sure, GW do have a fully-paid design team, paid in what I assume is genuine, real-world money. And you know what? That means you’re kind of right. With enough professional people comparing ideas and coming up with new ones, you probably should be able to come up with a fairly well-balanced game; even one as complicated as 40K. And anyway, as long as players observe the social contract, ‘fairly well-balanced’ is all you’ll ever need for fair games. (Remember that phrase; we’ll talk about the social contract later.)

The thing is, Kanye, that 40K isn’t just difficult to balance because it’s complicated. It’s also difficult to balance because, like a house built on a foundation of delicious pudding, things are always shifting in ways you can’t control.

Opinion Number 2: New Releases Naturally Create Imbalance.

This one should be obvious. Every new model released is, to all intents and purposes, an unknown quantity. No-one knows how they’re going to perform until they’re out there ‘in the wild’ being used in games by the players.

Of course, the natural tendency for the internet is to LOSE ITS G*DAMNED MIND each and every time, crying ‘OMG BROKEN!’ at the release of any new model. Because we all know that every new model is released with the most broken rules to increase sales, right?


Pictured: The Maleceptor thanks you for your faith in her.

No. Contrary to what every single person wailing ‘OMG BROKEN!’ wants you to think, they don’t really know if a new unit is going to be good or bad at all. Because no-one knows for sure whether anything is broken or not until six months or so down the line, when it’s seen enough real-world play for the community to be able to draw empirical conclusions. Of course, those occasions when a new model is broken are immediately seized on by these kinds of people as proof that doomsaying is always right.



Pictured: The Toxicrene thanks you for the selective cherry-picking of evidence that proves she is, in fact, a terrifying monster who has been the bane of every tournament since her release.

This immediate doomsaying means new releases have all kinds of ‘distorting’ effects on the metagame, simply because they’re new releases. As a result, when a new codex drops, the simple fact of the release schedule itself makes it difficult to balance the game. Players don’t know whether an army is OTT or not until well down the line.

That’s before we get to the fact that improving one army often has the side-effect of naturally downpowering another. For example, when they were re-released for 5th edition, the Dark Eldar were a strong army. Not top-tier, but dangerous. Their cheap Wych assault units could be devastating in the right hands. Then Overwatch became a thing and they were suddenly in trouble. Then Tau 6th edition and the ‘Supporting Fire’ rule mades Wyches disappear in a puff of smoke, because really – what was the point? They weren’t going to make it into combat - the thing they were designed for – and so why bother with them at all?

Yes, it’s arguable that the latest edition of the game, with its focus on firepower has hobbled the Wyches more than anything (not to mention the loss of Haywire grenades, which was all they really had going for them), but if you take Wyches against Tau, well… You’re not going to auto-lose, but, to misquote Blade, you are going to spend the majority of the game ice-skating uphill. Overwatch damaged Wyches, but 6th edition Tau killed them.

So the obvious answer might be to take out the Supporting Fire rule. But if you do that, you leave Tau far too vulnerable to Assault. So how do you balance Wyches? Banshees had the same problem until the latest Eldar codex made Banshee masks awesome. Hopefully, the next Dark Eldar codex will give Wyches something similar. (Or at least give them their bloody Haywire grenades back.)

And this is the thing with game balance – it’s a work in progress. Because Games Workshop is a company, one dedicated to making money, it’s going to need to release new models for its armies. That’s just how it is. And when a new model drops, it’s going to imbalance the game. The more models that drop, the more the imbalance. That’s also part of things. You can’t change that.

‘But the design team…’

Yup.

You’re right, Kanye. The design team are responsible. As I discussed first, they have an incredibly complex task to accomplish, and it’s one that’s always changing. They’re never going to be done, because the day 40K done, Games Workshop goes out of business. So there’s always going to be new units.

‘But the design team…’

And this is where we get to The Real Problem.

See, 40K is complicated, but alone, that’s not enough to stop the game being balanced. And 40K is always changing, but again, that’s not enough to stop the game being balanced. Because the design team does a good job, and 40K has experienced numerous periods of being pretty well balanced, assuming players adhere to the social contract.

Opinion Number 3: Ignoring The Social Contract.

I love wrestling.

I love it as much as I love 40K, and I love 40K a lot.

‘But wrestling’s fake.’


Pictured: it’s real in my heart!

Look, [url=http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2jt00i]I know[/url], because 1.) I’ve got a functional brain and 2.)I’ve wrestled (yes, the 'fake' variety). I’ve performed in the ring, taking bumps for a paying audience (and I’ve got the back injury to prove it). I’ve thrown men around like they were ragdolls and let me tell you now: I couldn’t have done it if they weren’t helping me.

But that’s all by the by. The real reason I’m bringing this up is because of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_McMahon]Vince MacMahon[/url].

Vince MacMahon is the owner and operator of WWE, the premier wrestling promotion in the world, and he likes to tout himself as a business genius. He’s got the success of the WWE to back him up, and as evidence goes, a multi-million dollar company is pretty compelling. WWE has always been profitable, ever since it was the WWF. It’s come through recessions and busts and it’s still going strong. In many ways, it’s like Games Workshop: a company that kind of shouldn’t exist – because it’s a throwback to an earlier time, to interests that should have died out – but one that is, against all the odds, perhaps even perversely, successful.

How does this relate to the social contract?

WWE wasn’t always this way. Vince MacMahon is actually the second Vince MacMahon to own a wrestling company. His father, the first Vince MacMahon owned the Capitol Wrestling Co, which Vince MacMahon jr. bought out in 1984, and turned into the WWF.

Now the first Vince MacMahon, he’d worked with his rivals. Wrestling companies in the US were split across territories; each territory would have its star wrestlers, and they would move out as the fans got tired of them, coming back later to roaring cheers, ensuring that local fans never got tired, and that everyone got paid. A network of handshake agreements, unenforceable in court, ensured that no-one business trod on anyone else’s toes. They existed as a kind of co-operative, with everyone able to enjoy the fruits of their work, and many, many options for success.

Vince MacMahon jr came along and changed all that, because he was a Business Genius. What he did was very simple. He ignored the non-aggression treaties and offered the big stars of rival companies massive money contracts to come and work for him. Funnily enough, his plan worked. He made an absurd amount of money, destroyed almost every other wrestling company, and established WWE as an absurdly dominant monopoly.

Vince MacMahon’s only success is WWE… But I would argue that he succeeded not by skill, ingenuity or gumption, but through breaking the social contract. He saw that if he was prepared to ignore handshake agreements, he could take control of wrestling. He assumed it's because he's a great businessman… But the way he ‘won’ would have made whoever did it rich - it was nothing to do with his skill/genius, and everything to do with ruthlessness... And some 40K players are like that.

[url=http://1d4chan.org/wiki/That_guy]You know the sort[/url]. The kind that, back when the 6th edition Chaos Codex had dropped, went out and bought three Heldrakes and fielded them every battle. The kind that, when the Tau Codex dropped, went out and bought three Riptides and fielded them every battle.

‘Cause there ain’t no rule says they couldn’t do it… So they just did it, ignoring the social contract because it means they get a win, and a precious, precious win is more important to them than anything else.

There’s always that cry of ‘the design team should…’ whenever the issue of balance comes up, but the problem isn’t always the design team. Sure, sometimes it is: Grey Knights in 5th, Chaos in 3.5, those are times when the fault absolutely lies with them.

But other times? Other times it’s us, for not acknowledging a very simple truth: for many people, breaking the game IS a game. And for many people, especially the kind who enjoy making things like [url=http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/09/40k-top-ten-ex-power-lists.html]this nonsense[/url], it can seem like the main one. So the Games Design team isn’t working in a vacuum. They’re actually in combat, and their opponents are the people who play their game. They have to design everything so it fits into a massive system of many, many interlocking units, characters and vehicles, one that’s always changing, and they have to do it in such a way that a person who is cleverer than them cannot exploit the system they create.

I’ll just repeat that, because it’s the most important part of this piece: games designers have to design every rule for every model in such a way that a person who is cleverer than them cannot exploit the system they create.

And that’s impossible, especially in this day and age. The internet has connected us all; when I was growing up, the only source of tactical information were one-off articles in ‘White Dwarf’ and lunchtimes at the school Games Club. Now, [url=http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Category:Warhammer_Tactics]I’m a single click away from extremely helpful, well-detailed tactics articles apparently written by racist, misogynist psychopaths.[/url] There are forums where I can discuss tactical ideas with the best of the best. There are statistical breakdowns of which armies perform best at the most recent tournaments. In short, there is a surfeit of information about how to play.

What does this mean? Well, in simple terms, the design team have to be cleverer than literally everyone on the internet, because the moment an exploit is discovered, it’s going global. There are writers on sites like BoLS who spend their days thinking of the next tactics article, and if they read about a gaping hole in the games’ design that can be exploited, you better believe they’re going to tell everyone.

Look, Just Get To The Point: What The Hell Is This Social Contract You’re Going On About?

‘We’re both just here to play a game and have fun. I’m not going to ruin your experience for the sake of my own.’

That right there? That’s the social contract. It’s an unspoken rule that says ‘I like to play games in the time between birth and the grave. I’m going to be dead one day, and I want to fill the time between now and then – where I can – with enjoyable activities. I enjoy the company of fellow human beings, and I enjoy it more when there is an activity we can share. I would like to play this game with you. I would very much like to win, but I understand that, in order to play, I’m going to have to treat you fairly. With respect. As a result, I will not play the absurdly overpowered units that will win me the game with little effort, because that’s disrespectful to you, as it means you will not have fun. I don’t want to use you as a scratching post for my ego, and so I will deliberately tailor my list to be less devastating than it could be if my army is a powerful one.’

The unspoken social contract is the reason so much argument goes into game balance. Arguing that an externally mandated ‘game balance’ will solve all the game’s problems essentially removes any responsibility for gamers to play according to the unspoken social contract, and means that those WAAC players who bring the nastiest toys to the fight will be controlled without the rest of players having to tell them to stop being so mean.

But here’s the thing: there’s nothing wrong with being a WAAC player; it’s actually allowed. There ain’t no rule says they have to play nice. Oh, there are frequent mentions, but there ain’t no rule. Powergamers will ignore the fluff in favour of increased utility in games, because winning is what they enjoy, and [url=http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/04/40k-safe-sane-and-consensual-or-the-arrogance-of-unacknowledged-playstyles.html]if everyone’s agreed that that’s how they want to play[/url], then why is that wrong?

Not to mention, it’s a bit rich to have a go at the WAAC players when even the severest fluff-gamer will efficiency maximise in some ways. I love Grotesques, but I know they’re pretty overcosted in a standard Dark Eldar list, not to mention that for the price of three Grotesques, I can get far more Blasters into my Trueborn squad, maybe even a spare Venom to go with them. It's honestly stupid to say 'play to the fluff' if it cripples your army.

Don’t believe me? Look at the Pyrovore.


Pictured: WHAT THE F*CK DO YOU ACTUALLY DO?

It was a joke on release and it’s still a joke now. A two-wound Marine Scout with a power sword and heavy flamer. It’s got some other rules, but they don’t help it much. Oh, and it’s huge and easy to spot over scenery.

‘But you can take them in squads of three now!’

This waste of space costs £20. I’m not spending £60 for a sub-par unit made of Aero chocola – sorry, Finecast.

‘You could put them in a Tyrannocyte, use them to incinerate some Marines and…’

A Tyrannocyte costs £38. So I’m spending a minimum of £58, maximum of £98, for a sub-par unit that takes up valuable space I could have used on another Winged Hive Tyrant. Who is cheaper, more terrifying, and can actually do stuff.

So, no matter how much Tyranid players might play to the fluff, the only ones who field Pyrovores are the ones who enjoyed the refreshing taste of lead paint back in their youth.

In many ways, the metagame is an evolutionary process, driven by players seeking to maximise efficiency. Even if they choose to ignore maximally optimal units to honour the social contract, they will still generally ignore sub-optimal choices. And the thing about evolution, is that it doesn’t produce ‘balance’. Competition never produces ‘balance’; it only leads to an apex predator. That predator will shift as the game shifts. Today that predator might be Slaanesh Daemon Prince with Lash. The next it might be Psyrifle Dreadnoughts. The day after that, Wraithknights with the D.

Balancing the game is a deliberate act, made by design, and therefore, only as effective as the cleverest person involved in its creation.

There’s always going to be someone cleverer out there. And that’s the core problem.

I Think We Can Agree, All It Would Take Is A Few Tweaks, And…

BOLLOCKS.

'It would only take this to balance the game' is nothing but a seductive delusion, because there’s too many things to consider; because the game is never ‘whole’, so it's always going to be a work in progress; because there’s always going to be someone cleverer than the Games Design team out there, and there’ll always be players prepared to ignore the social contract if it gets them the win.

At best, there will be periods of balance, followed by periods of imbalance, much like the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave]Kondratiev Wave[/url] that’s observed in economic systems. But a wave is not a stable thing, and no matter what happens, that period of relative calm always gives way to the storm. So that’s why I believe 40K will never be balanced, and why it’s folly to believe it ever will be.

[Lexington]

Opinion 2 rather negates Opinion 3, doesn't it? If we can't know anything useful about a unit until six months after its release/revision, we're talking about huge, huge portions of the player base that can't, in good faith, observe that social contract, since, again, no one knows anything. Rather paralyzing, that logic.

Of course, it's silly, because we do know quite a bit about the armies the moment they're released. 40K's present framework has been out in the open for about three years now, and the underlying engine of the game was released during the latter days of the Clinton Administration. We know what works and what doesn't. D-weapons, extreme buffs (2++ re-rollable armor saves, anyone?) and hard-counter debuffs (Invisibility) are all understood. Contra the article, the consensus that forms around new releases tends to be pretty accurate, because 40K's base system isn't particularly complicated.

At the end of the day, this article doesn't really address the main problem with balancing 40K, which is that balance is not a priority of the design team. They are not an independent entity within the structure of Games Workshop, tasked with creating the best game they can and nothing more. Within GW's internal hierarchy, the Design Studio is a component of the Sales division, and their work reflects that fact. There's no magic bullet to "fixing" 40K, but the problems aren't hard to identify.

[Charon]

Opinion 2 rather negates Opinion 3, doesn't it? If we can't know anything useful about a unit until six months after its release/revision, we're talking about huge, huge portions of the player base that can't, in good faith, observe that social contract, since, again, no one knows anything. Rather paralyzing, that logic.

Of course, it's silly, because we do know quite a bit about the armies the moment they're released. 40K's present framework has been out in the open for about three years now, and the underlying engine of the game was released during the latter days of the Clinton Administration. We know what works and what doesn't. D-weapons, extreme buffs (2++ re-rollable armor saves, anyone?) and hard-counter debuffs (Invisibility) are all understood. Contra the article, the consensus that forms around new releases tends to be pretty accurate, because 40K's base system isn't particularly complicated.

At the end of the day, this article doesn't really address the main problem with balancing 40K, which is that balance is not a priority of the design team. They are not an independent entity within the structure of Games Workshop, tasked with creating the best game they can and nothing more. Within GW's internal hierarchy, the Design Studio is a component of the Sales division, and their work reflects that fact. There's no magic bullet to "fixing" 40K, but the problems aren't hard to identify.

Pretty much this.
Add in that nobody talks about "perfect balance" and the understanding that balancing a game that expands is an ongoing process with erratas and FAQs (which then, if they became numberous, turn into a new edition). To be fair they dont even give a rats *** about clarifying unclear rules or weeding out grave mistakes (see drones on bomber).
There is a huge gap to fill between "can't be perfectly balanced" and "well, you bought it so we don't care anymore"

[YorkNecromancer]

Opinion 2 rather negates Opinion 3, doesn't it? If we can't know anything useful about a unit until six months after its release/revision, we're talking about huge, huge portions of the player base that can't, in good faith, observe that social contract, since, again, no one knows anything. Rather paralyzing, that logic.

Not really. The social contract is 'I won't let my fun come at the expense of yours'. Therefore, if you're mid-play, and it turns out the New Hotness is absolutely broken, then maybe talk about that with your opponent? Ask if they're still having fun? Ask if it's okay to go on?

As I have [url=http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/04/40k-safe-sane-and-consensual-or-the-arrogance-of-unacknowledged-playstyles.html]discussed before, and at much greater length[/url], it's like with sex: if you're being intimate with someone and halfway through, they start looking away from you, shuffling awkwardly and basically pulling faces that say 'I'd rather this was over', you don't just carry on 'serving your own needs' - not unless you're some kind of self-serving psychopath.

The social contract requires communication because it is social. If a person isn't going to talk to their opponent, periodically checking they're okay as and when it seems necessary, then seriously: why are they playing? This isn't really the best hobby for antisocial loners.

So no, I don't see my logic as being particularly paralysing. Frank and open discussion is the lifeblood of all successful human interaction.

[Alaric]

Enjoyable read York.

[Charon]

So no, I don't see my logic as being particularly paralysing. Frank and open discussion is the lifeblood of all successful human interaction.

The problem here is that the social contrac between 2 armys of the opposite spectrum of power level will NEVER be enjoyable for neither side. You may prentend that you totally enjoy picking a really bad unit comp with ugly models because that happens to be the only way your opponents army will ever have a fair chance but neither of you will really enjoy the game. For your opponent you are a duche for not taking him and his army serious and you would rather like to play your newly painted ghostkeel and stormsurge instead of not even painted vespids and half assembled kroot.
Sure. The social contract is important for pickup games but the game system must provide a common ground to start from. If the social contract does force you to only pick certain units instead of "just" refraining from spamming and combine to not stomp your opponents army, the game system does not provide a solid foundation.
CSM vs the new codices is as one sided and boring as Eldar vs Dark Eldar and no amount of social contracting will make it enjoyable without telling you how you HAVE to build your army to remain "fair".

TL;DR Agreeing to "no deathstars, no invisibility, no ecessive spamming" is all fine but it starts getting ridiculous if you can't use half of your codex because the powerlevels are so different.

[Lexington]

As I have [url=http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/04/40k-safe-sane-and-consensual-or-the-arrogance-of-unacknowledged-playstyles.html]discussed before, and at much greater length[/url], it's like with sex: if you're being intimate with someone and halfway through, they start looking away from you, shuffling awkwardly and basically pulling faces that say 'I'd rather this was over', you don't just carry on 'serving your own needs' - not unless you're some kind of self-serving psychopath.

I think the comparison of 40K's current state to bad sex is pretty apt.

But, this misses the overall point there, which is that Opinion 2 is pretty much nonsense. It's easy to figure out where the really broken stuff in 40K is these days. It didn't take me six months of arduous playtesting to figure out that the new Eldar Codex completely outclasses my Orks - it took six seconds. The game just isn't that complicated, nor is it hard to figure out the relative power between two units if you've got a good understanding of the game and some years of playing under your belt.

Were balance a real concern of the Design crew, it actually wouldn't be difficult for them to reign in the system and create something that, while imperfect, was at least much more balanced than the 40K we have right now. Lots of other game systems do it. GW just chooses not to. This fad of blaming players for not observing an unwritten and incoherent "social contract" just seems like a way to try and get GW off the hook for making an inferior rules product.

[Mr.Gold]

Probably the one thing that will go a long way towards balance is change all battle Brothers to Allies of Convienence - no more super frineds lists, no more weird buffs from one army affecting another in a starnge way...

[Arkhan Land]

thats only part of the problem, some of the issues are entirely army internal buff madness for crazy saves/attacks/etc. but the army to army issue is there definetly. i always felt it would be something helpful to say that only UNIVERSAL special rules could be exchanged between armies, and then do work to carefully name codex specific things for derivative stuff like fearless/fnp/etc to carefully regulate which rules can end up between armies. lotta effort but maybe something for future edition cleanups

[40kGamer]

'It would only take this to balance the game' is nothing but a seductive delusion, because there’s too many things to consider; because the game is never ‘whole’, so it's always going to be a work in progress; because there’s always going to be someone cleverer than the Games Design team out there, and there’ll always be players prepared to ignore the social contract if it gets them the win.

At best, there will be periods of balance, followed by periods of imbalance, much like the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave]Kondratiev Wave[/url] that’s observed in economic systems. But a wave is not a stable thing, and no matter what happens, that period of relative calm always gives way to the storm. So that’s why I believe 40K will never be balanced, and why it’s folly to believe it ever will be.

I'm a huge proponent of at least trying to balance the system. I do respect your position since it's a massive undertaking to even list all the possible combinations and permutations of the game, and it is constantly evolving. However I still firmly believe that the game engine could be designed around some linked probability matrices that could be used to derive expected points values. This would be transparent to the community as it would just be data used on the design side. I'm not under the illusion that this would give players 'equal chances to win' but it should level the field at least a little bit.