ITC, WarMachine, and Narrative Gaming

[pretre]

Again, I have stated that these thoughts off the top of my head, and that I wasn't trying to set up a nuts and bolts fix; that my goal was to discuss the philosophy behind the solutions. Instead the philosophy was thrown away in favor of the crunch. Ok. Fine. But I honestly have not seen people become so vitriolic at the idea of favoring positive changes over negative changes when the opportunity presents itself.

 

I mean have you really stopped and looked at your responses pretre? I'm sorry that my thoughts on game design are such heresy to you, but [big bad swear word]ing seriously? Seriously? How does it help? Tell me. I would love to know.    

I think we have different definitions of vitriolic.

 

My responses are tongue-in-cheek. And they are exactly what you were asking for, I'm empowering everyone else and not nerfing anyone. 

[pretre]

Nerf bat makes me have to change my list less than figure ways to get acute senses in. That makes nerf more about bringing more folks.

I agree. By nerfing D, 2++ and Invis, you nerf a very small number of codexes and make a very large number more viable. That makes the game more available to more people.

[Sugarlessllama]

I think we have different definitions of vitriolic.

 

My responses are tongue-in-cheek. And they are exactly what you were asking for, I'm empowering everyone else and not nerfing anyone. 

 

Well it is good to know that you define mocking one person as empowering others. I think I am about done here. Good day to you sir. 

[Guest Mr. Bigglesworth]

I love narrative play. I mean survival missions are great I set up in middle of board I get to set the whole board the way I want and you get 2 pieces. I play with 1/3 of the points to mitigate the lack of terrain for you. And we see how long I last. I love games like this. I would love events to be put on like this too.

 

Hey agent p make a league night attack defend scenario so the one who is defending their position needs is the defender.

 

I can for this with ITC.

[fluger]

In a perfect world, it would be better to raise up [big bad swear word]ty units to be competitive with the stuff that is broken, but that requires more wholesale changes.  From the limited perspective of ITC, doing nerfs on a few outliers is easier and less disruptive to the community.  

 

Per your example of narrative based gaming, such nerfs/buffs aren't required.  If you objectively know that, say, Hormagaunts are terrible (or at least a bad matchup for the list you want to bring) its no matter to let your opponent have more of them to achieve a more balanced game.  Or, if you just want to see what it would be like for 10 terminators to stave off 2k points of Nids, then have at it.  

[Guest Mr. Bigglesworth]

The moment GW AOS's this game then I welcome a living dex by the community that can make a 10" genestealer list fun to play!

[fluger]

The moment GW AOS's this game then I welcome a living dex by the community that can make a 10" genestealer list fun to play!

 

I've actually been thinking about this a lot, and I keep thinking that it might work out.  

[pretre]

Well it is good to know that you define mocking one person as empowering others. I think I am about done here. Good day to you sir. 

Oh come on, don't get all martyr-y on me. It's the internet; we use humor to lighten heavy conversations.

[Guest Mr. Bigglesworth]

Pipe dream. i would also like more synergy between models that came with AOS.

 

I doubt it would be healthy and we would see a shrunken community.

[AbusePuppy]

 

Power of the Ancients: If your codex was released in a previous year, you may bring 25% more points per year since your codex was released to any Bizarro ITC event. (2015 - 100%, 2014 - 125%, 2013 - 150%, etc). If you have multiple detachments with different codexes, the newest one is used to determine this modifier.

 

A Tau or Daemons army with 150% points would be crazy-balls good.

 

 

#1 I knew that. I knew that it made achieved the same thing, but it did the same thing by making one rule better instead of making another worse. 

#2 It isn't essentially pointless, because it makes an underutilized rule more powerful. Which is nice. It can make players who those factions happier. 

#3 Claymores are a defensive system of mines. As are anti-pursuit mines. Maybe in the year 40,000 they can up with another nifty explosive system that is tripwire on the go? It is about as logical as turning invisible. 

#4 That I didn't know. And I will be the first person to admit that I don't know all the rules printed in the BRB off the top of my head. But thank you for being a dick about it. Lord knows the gaming community was really short on people being dicks about things. 

 

But you're not making anything "better" or "worse" with #1- in the case of both your change and the ITC change, you're getting the same result with the same methods. There is no difference between "must snap shot but can fire blasts/templates" and "count as BS1 when shooting."

 

I say #2 is "pointless" because it doesn't fix the problem at all. If you're changing the rules because of a problematic ability/unit in the game, the changes you make need to be ones that solve the problem- and letting units with Acute Senses shoot better doesn't do so, because Acute Senses is a very rare rule. That still leaves 90% of the armies out in the cold and is thus a "bad" change because it doesn't serve any real purpose.

 

With regards to #3: I... I guess? I'm not sure why defensive grenades (as opposed to all of the other types) would be used in this way- and again, this doesn't actually solve the problem. Defensive grenades are rare, and rerolling 1s when you only hit on 6s anyways is almost worthless; you go from 17% hit ratio to 19%.

 

And as for #4, I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm pointing out that solving the problem is not as easy- or intuitive- as you seem to think it is. Rules design is hard. Solutions that are natural and functional are not easy to come up with. For all your criticisms of ITC, you seem to miss the plank in your own eye when it comes to the solutions you are providing. The most basic requirement for someone that wants to go around changing the rules in significant ways is to fully understand the rules themselves; it's not special or surprising that you don't have that level of detailed, intricate knowledge of the rules of the game, because only a very small percentage of players do. But without that level of knowledge, how can you expect to understand what will happen as a result of the changes you're proposing for the game? Isn't understanding the prerequisite for altering something?

 

Incidentally, I'm not implying an exemption for myself here- there are always things that any single person will miss. I myself failed to notice the fact that the ITC change for Invisibility (set BS to 1) was a subtle nerf to Markerlights when it was first proposed. But that's exactly the point of the ITC's system: by having a committee to analyze such things (so that no single person determines everything) and by opening them up to public debate and comment (so that as many additional viewpoints as possible can be aired in an open environment), and by being cautious when changing things and only doing so once every several months at most (so that knee-jerk reactions can't predominate), as much insurance against the common failures as possible are put into place. Is it perfect? Certainly not. But it avoids the obvious pitfalls, which is more than can be said for a lot of other ideas.

[pretre]

A Tau or Daemons army with 150% points would be crazy-balls good.

It was tongue-in-cheek. Even Chaos at 3000+ points versus your 1850 would be crazy-balls good*. Although 3 sources would tend to cut back on the worst, I'm thinking. My tongue-in-cheek solution does, however, empower rather than nerf. ;)

[Lord Hanaur]

Well this got lively!

[fluger]

Well this got lively!

 

[AbusePuppy]

We're wargamers. We're the opposite of people.

[indytims]

I think the comparison of a miniatures game like 40K to an MMO's gaming philosophy (like WoW's) is ultimately flawed. Mainly because the vast majority of MMO's are design as PVE environments, where a 40K game is simply a PVP environment. When you start 'buffing' people in a PVE setting, the only entity that 'suffers' are the mobs - which are themselves then altered in order to create 'balance'.

 

In 40K, to modify even a single weapon can have rippling effects across the meta. D-weapons are a perfect example of that. If we follow WoW's example, and buff all the other races in some way to compensate - will there be an adequate and applicable points increases? Who decides these costs? Why should other races receive buffs for free, when I am still paying for my D weapons? Etc. To follow this trail of logic, you would end up with an increasingly painful power-creep (which is bad enough the way it is, really). "Ok, so we buffed everyone else's lists to compensate for the Eldar D-Weapon spammage. Yay! We've empowered everyone else (except Eldar players, of course).... Now what's next? Oh! Gladius Formations!..." and the cycle then renews itself, tons of forces get 'buffs', and the creep explodes exponentially.

 

In an 'ideal world', this would be nice. But eventually, in that ideal world, you would end up with homogenized lists, where everyone has 2 Rooks, 2 Knights, 2 Bishops, a King, a Queen, and so on. They might just be 'called' different things.

 

Really, as others have said it is far simpler to pick the anomalies, and bring them down to an acceptable level.

 

Just my 2 coppers, though.

[InfestedKerrigan]

[Guest]

40K game is simply a PVP environment.

See, I think this is the issue. 40k, as GW sees it, is a hobby. It's not PVE or PVP to them, just a hobby. I don't think they are wrong, 7th unmodified is certainly a hobby.

 

Warmachine is a PVP game. Chess is PVP. 

 

The ITC is trying to make it a PVP environment (not a knock on ITC). 7th ed is so not PVP that ITC really has to re-invent the wheel in order to make 40k PVP friendly. I may not agree with how they changed the game, but I do see what they are trying to do and why they thought it was needed.

 

Personally, I play 40k as a hobby. So, there are some inherent conflicts between my 40k mentality and that of anyone who is trying to make 40k into a PVP game.

[pretre]

Umm. Even with all the 'Forge the Narrative' stuff, 40k is pretty much, by definition, Player Vs Player.

[Lord Hanaur]

Pretty much.

[Guest]

Umm. Even with all the 'Forge the Narrative' stuff, 40k is pretty much, by definition, Player Vs Player.

I'm talking about the mentality of the game or gamers. A player who identifies as a PVP player is very different than a player that intends to forge a narrative when playing 40k.

[Lord Hanaur]

I'm not sure I'd use the word "very"

[pretre]

I think you're getting hung up on the acronym instead of the meaning, Pax.

[Guest]

I think you're getting hung up on the acronym instead of the meaning, Pax.

There are games where players play against eachother, and their are PVP games. Not really the same thing.

 

That's like saying that twister is a PVP game....

 

PVP typically refers to a specific style of game which is often more cuthroat than your typical game that features human opponents.

[pretre]

I think you're getting hung up on the acronym instead of the meaning, Pax.

Same response.

[indytims]

In the case of what I was referring to, I only meant by who your opponent is.

 

In a PVE setting, your opponent is the machine, a heartless, emotionless computer. If your stats/abilities/skills allow you to wade through the computer-controlled enemies, you feel 'empowered', and no one feels 'degraded' since the computer doesn't 'care' if it loses 100000 mobs to the players.

 

In PVP, your opponent is another player, another human. PVP 'mindsets' can vary from game to game of course, but one of the biggest reasons PVP fails in many MMOs is because of the lack of perceived balance. Often, game companies have built-in nerfs on various skills/abilities/powers when used against other players in order to tone them down in an attempt to appear more 'fair' and balanced.

 

My draw to MMO's is the PVE setting, cooperating with other players to achieve a goal. I also love mutli-player games (even 40K 2v2) for the same reason. I love team-work and sharing the victory (or defeat) with others.

 

But YMMV. Folks have different reasons for playing... just like folks have different reasons for playing in tournaments (or not).