Meanwhile the Orks codex is actually the strongest codex released in 10th… (Edit: Yes they are like gamedesign beginners. As a gamedesigner myself I often scratch my head over most things they do)
Custodes' codex is not (only) weak, it's bad. Bad in the sense of boring, inconsistent, flavorless. Tyranid codex being only "weak" (except some blatant mistakes like the Harvester keyword or unending swarm enhancements*) seems like we were lucky, at this point. At least we have 6 dettachemnts which 3-4 are fun and flavorful (a little bit at least). Imagine paying 50 bucks for 9 pages of unusable rules that do not represent the army.
I don't think they're doing it on purpose, at least not the way people think. I think there's a huge disconnect between the individuals writing the codices and I think there may be some favoritism going on with the writers favoring the factions they play. The stuff I've seen for the orks certainly doesn't seem very weak. I also think there's almost zero playtesting going on.
I’m concerned about the loss of fluff that used to be coupled to rules, no psychic phase, very little flexibility during list building, pre-determined unit sizes, no cost associated to wargear, the loss of artifacts, the nixing of special characters, the absence of a meaningful morale phase, etc. etc. Moving to universal special rules is 1 good thing about 10th but we’ve lost so much of what makes 40k special… the lore and the lore being intertwined with the rules; Bad Moonz like to shoot so give them rules that reflect that… oh wait we no longer have sub factions. Every bit of flavour has been sucked out of 40k and you hear people saying “the flavour is in the detachments”… there was no reason to decouple the rules from the lore in the first place and detachments are a poor substitute for what we’ve had in past editions.
Make them weaker to prevent creep? - I agree. Does 10e have good 'bones' to base an edition on? Yes, agree here too. However: 1. Is total winrate a good north star for the design team? I.e if Dark Angels hit an absolute 50% win rate would they consider that a success when it's all green ironstorm? If admech and nids got points cut to 50% win rate with only move blocking would that be a success? The answer is no, not because winrate is a bad metric, but because it's a lag indicator to the lead of consistent good player experience which should be the key metric. There should be a balance team working towards good winrates but let's not lose sight of why we want 50% balance. "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." - Goodhart's Law. 2. Subjectively I consider some releases to be poor quality relative to older editions: Lacking art, lacking text, lacking lore, lacking mechanical depth and clearly lacking complete editorial review. If anyone agrees with that then, is it to our benefit that they launch products at a high price with worse quality? Do they feel there's no elasticity in demand and we just buy it no matter what? - Not good, regardless of balance that's not a good trend.
With the new data sheets and whatnot, it feels like there are lots of growing pains to get through. It doesn't come across like spite or malice to me. Spite would be keeping CSM on 1 wound for half a decade after the rest of the game had moved on. Then joking about it in a very specific manner in warcom articles.
Honestly I must say this: I think you're crazy... Crazy for putting out such informative content so consistently, keep em coming, Big fan of the craziness going on here (I think you points are valid. My #1 priority for balance is game wide... but codices do need better internal balance a lot of times.)
I think you are right, but that gives me little incentive to play for the next 2.5 years. I guess I will work on my grey pile of shame, but I certainly wont buy anything new for the foreseeable future.
It's not just the codexes. The game itself is boring now. Nice to see someone else who enjoyed 9th ed. I thought it was fine, other than a little strategem bloat. 10th has no WL traits, relics, psychic phase, or fun. I don't see the game returning to its former glory any time soon so I'll just continue playing 9th with friends. Just sucks any current content coming out is all boring, snoozefest, unbalanced 10th.
"Tau kinda meh with fluffy detachments, I hope that stay that meh" I might me wrong but both mont'ka and retaliation cadre feel rather good to me, the index points now feel too low
Nah it's not on purpose. It's just bad writing, bad rules writing and how much love for the faction is put into the codex. Just look at Orks and Custodes, it's unbelievable that these two books cam out at the same time. It think it's just the skill of the writing teams, some are good and some plainly suck. And most likely too less editotial overview. The fact that the books are written so far in advance, just for logistical reasons, means that they lack inclusion of current rules meta and erata, like Devastating wounds changes.
Honestly Necrons could use a tweak on their unused stuff. Wraiths and c'tans are too good, but if you look at other datasheets they are just meh, some examples : -20 warriors for 200 points, kinda pricy for no reanimation support AND no realistic damage. -Lychguard and praetorians, they are the main unit of one of the detachments and they really can't punch up even if you stack a bunch of rules on them. -keywords on the characters, many unique characters don't have the noble/triarch keyword for the phalanx detachment rule... kinda without reason, why is the king not a Triarch??
Didn’t they purge their playtesterd early last year? I think it’s a greater possibility that they aren’t making them weaker intentionally, they just aren’t fully testing the rules themselves before calling the codex done
They're not the same caliber of Writers and rules crafters. That's why Warlord Games, and Bolt Action is eating their lunch. The glory days are gone for GW when they drove away their talent for the DIE shitbirds they decided to hire to try to fill the large gaps in the talent pool. Your theory is spot on, BTW. The people filling in do not honestly have the background to fill the ranks with. They're not doing it "Om Purpose." they are doing it, because they don't know any better. Take 3d and 4th edition codex, and compare it with 8, 9th, and 10th. They are head and shoulders better in the past, because the writers had stock in the material. not like the nameless drones they have in the background, now. Then they cover their own asses with an encyclopedia of FAQ's and Errata.
I want to love 10th but every game leave me feeling empty and I question my self was this even fun? win or loss. This was a feeling that I never felt with 9ed or any other edition that I can remember at least. Game feels flat, mechanical and very not cinematic. Regarding leathality I do not really see a big difference, if its seen it's gone.
So much of the background fluff is gone. The codices are are pale imitations to what they once were. Some armies just had balance problems right from the beginning.
Fair points; I used to think the same thing because there was no way they had accidentally released so many bad codices in a row. Given recent events, I'm now more of the mind that they're doing it on purpose because they are actively trying to push existing fans out of the hobby and entice new customers who don't know how bad everything is.
Everyone finally getting a taste of what Chaos Marine players have endured for decades... Going from the glorious feast of options, customisation & being able to build lore accurate Legions, to a soulless, shell of an army where "paint schemes don't matter anymore", because everything sucks and themed/lore accurate armies are just figments of your imagination! Been playing since 3rd edition. 10th is the first time I'm outright skipping an edition entirely! And that includes suffering through the darkest times of being a CSM player in absolute clusterfeth that was 7th edition! (...if you know, you know)
Sure they're avoiding power creep, which is commendable. Problem is that some of the codexes are just so unimaginative and lacking any vision or purpose. They feel phoned in. I know you can't see the names of who wrote what, but can see the difference in the quality of writing to know that their are good writers and bad ones in the company. And the People in charge are not scrutinizing and evaluating the poorly written books.
Nice insight. So in short: They fucked up the index SO HARD that every codex needs to fix it. Thats not the best model for selling books/models. What about the orks codex tho? Imo, they are just bad at what they do... Keep the vids comming :)
At least 9th had a ton of customisation & soul to it. 10th is the blandest, most boring pile of half-baked trashed ever vomited out by GW... did they *really* learn nothing after the monumental community backlash to the 4th ed Dark Angels -> Chaos Marines -> Eldar fiasco? This "tailor to competitive try-hards above all else" BS has destroyed the essence of what 40k is supposed to be.
Probably an overcorrection from GW trying to address criticisms of 9e Codexes being OP at launch. In the case of Custodes, there's probably a factor of them paying for their sins in 9e, and GW coming to the conclusion that the playstyle Custodes embodies is just way too unfun to fight against for most armies.
The problem with dark angels is that all the datasheets are mediocre and massively overcosted for what they are. The only unit in dark angels anywhere near worth its points is azrael, and he is dark angels this edition. The 44% dark angels have is Ironstorm space marines with azrael thrown in for extra cp farm every command phase. That’s it. Anyone playing dark angels detachments or other space marine detachments are probably sub 40%. And that isn’t even the worst of it. The lion has one of the worst datasheets for an epic hero I have ever seen in 40K. With the shitty datasheets he has, he would need to be below 300pts to be even considered fun to just take casually. Terminators are mediocre and overcosted. Ravenwing are lackluster and boring. The detachment are all flavorless and trash. And on top of all of this, the my took away war gear options for deathwing terminators, which is the entire reason to play DW over any other marine faction. They removed so many classic and fun units. It’s all just bad. There is literally only one positive, and the grandmaster himself props up the winrate to the bottom of mid tier. Lol. And then everything that has happened with custodes recently. Company is a joke.
Chess also has a predictable setup and both sides have identical pieces. Might take a lifetime to master but it's not exactly all that interesting either. Now if each side could be setup however each player chose within the same deployment squares, then you're talking some real complexity.
So sad, Im in the hobby first for the Lore and second for the game itself. Retconing and gaslighing killed my interest in the setting, so from now I wont buy anymore books and 3d print everything I need
GW IS TRYING to match faction theme / lore in a fun way without making them OP. Which upsets everyone who plays the generic "we are super strong in lore why do we have boring rules "
I find it insulting that you think dark angels "seems okay". Inner circle detatchment is at 28% win rate, deathwing was smashed into never play again basically and company of hunters ravenwing detatchment is just okay but still kind of bad. Dark angels is absolutely the worst army in the game when not playing the ironstorm skew tournament lists.
Meanwhile the Orks codex is actually the strongest codex released in 10th…
(Edit: Yes they are like gamedesign beginners. As a gamedesigner myself I often scratch my head over most things they do)
Custodes' codex is not (only) weak, it's bad.
Bad in the sense of boring, inconsistent, flavorless.
Tyranid codex being only "weak" (except some blatant mistakes like the Harvester keyword or unending swarm enhancements*) seems like we were lucky, at this point.
At least we have 6 dettachemnts which 3-4 are fun and flavorful (a little bit at least).
Imagine paying 50 bucks for 9 pages of unusable rules that do not represent the army.
I don't think they're doing it on purpose, at least not the way people think. I think there's a huge disconnect between the individuals writing the codices and I think there may be some favoritism going on with the writers favoring the factions they play. The stuff I've seen for the orks certainly doesn't seem very weak. I also think there's almost zero playtesting going on.
I think games workshop is trying to get more kids into the hobby.
I’m concerned about the loss of fluff that used to be coupled to rules, no psychic phase, very little flexibility during list building, pre-determined unit sizes, no cost associated to wargear, the loss of artifacts, the nixing of special characters, the absence of a meaningful morale phase, etc. etc.
Moving to universal special rules is 1 good thing about 10th but we’ve lost so much of what makes 40k special… the lore and the lore being intertwined with the rules; Bad Moonz like to shoot so give them rules that reflect that… oh wait we no longer have sub factions. Every bit of flavour has been sucked out of 40k and you hear people saying “the flavour is in the detachments”… there was no reason to decouple the rules from the lore in the first place and detachments are a poor substitute for what we’ve had in past editions.
They’re not making weaker codices.
They just haven’t made Craftworlds yet.
Make them weaker to prevent creep? - I agree.
Does 10e have good 'bones' to base an edition on? Yes, agree here too.
However:
1. Is total winrate a good north star for the design team? I.e if Dark Angels hit an absolute 50% win rate would they consider that a success when it's all green ironstorm? If admech and nids got points cut to 50% win rate with only move blocking would that be a success? The answer is no, not because winrate is a bad metric, but because it's a lag indicator to the lead of consistent good player experience which should be the key metric. There should be a balance team working towards good winrates but let's not lose sight of why we want 50% balance. "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." - Goodhart's Law.
2. Subjectively I consider some releases to be poor quality relative to older editions: Lacking art, lacking text, lacking lore, lacking mechanical depth and clearly lacking complete editorial review. If anyone agrees with that then, is it to our benefit that they launch products at a high price with worse quality? Do they feel there's no elasticity in demand and we just buy it no matter what? - Not good, regardless of balance that's not a good trend.
Very thoughtful comment.
With the new data sheets and whatnot, it feels like there are lots of growing pains to get through. It doesn't come across like spite or malice to me. Spite would be keeping CSM on 1 wound for half a decade after the rest of the game had moved on. Then joking about it in a very specific manner in warcom articles.
Honestly I must say this:
I think you're crazy...
Crazy for putting out such informative content so consistently, keep em coming, Big fan of the craziness going on here
(I think you points are valid. My #1 priority for balance is game wide... but codices do need better internal balance a lot of times.)
I think you are right, but that gives me little incentive to play for the next 2.5 years. I guess I will work on my grey pile of shame, but I certainly wont buy anything new for the foreseeable future.
It's not just the codexes. The game itself is boring now. Nice to see someone else who enjoyed 9th ed. I thought it was fine, other than a little strategem bloat. 10th has no WL traits, relics, psychic phase, or fun. I don't see the game returning to its former glory any time soon so I'll just continue playing 9th with friends. Just sucks any current content coming out is all boring, snoozefest, unbalanced 10th.
Oh wow
Scrolling at 1 am and I happen to catch this. DOOM SCROLLING PAYS OFF.
Thank you.
Balancing a game and selling miniatures is very difficult. Especially since GW doesn't have a very efficient team for this task.
Cries in Votann
"Tau kinda meh with fluffy detachments, I hope that stay that meh"
I might me wrong but both mont'ka and retaliation cadre feel rather good to me, the index points now feel too low
Good vid but you're off on Tau index, it's scoring in the top 3 of all armies in the game right now in competitive play and has for a while
Nah it's not on purpose.
It's just bad writing, bad rules writing and how much love for the faction is put into the codex.
Just look at Orks and Custodes, it's unbelievable that these two books cam out at the same time.
It think it's just the skill of the writing teams, some are good and some plainly suck. And most likely too less editotial overview.
The fact that the books are written so far in advance, just for logistical reasons, means that they lack inclusion of current rules meta and erata, like Devastating wounds changes.
Honestly Necrons could use a tweak on their unused stuff.
Wraiths and c'tans are too good, but if you look at other datasheets they are just meh, some examples :
-20 warriors for 200 points, kinda pricy for no reanimation support AND no realistic damage.
-Lychguard and praetorians, they are the main unit of one of the detachments and they really can't punch up even if you stack a bunch of rules on them.
-keywords on the characters, many unique characters don't have the noble/triarch keyword for the phalanx detachment rule... kinda without reason, why is the king not a Triarch??
Didn’t they purge their playtesterd early last year? I think it’s a greater possibility that they aren’t making them weaker intentionally, they just aren’t fully testing the rules themselves before calling the codex done
They're not the same caliber of Writers and rules crafters.
That's why Warlord Games, and Bolt Action is eating their lunch.
The glory days are gone for GW when they drove away their talent for the DIE shitbirds they decided to hire to try to fill the large gaps in the talent pool. Your theory is spot on, BTW. The people filling in do not honestly have the background to fill the ranks with. They're not doing it "Om Purpose." they are doing it, because they don't know any better.
Take 3d and 4th edition codex, and compare it with 8, 9th, and 10th. They are head and shoulders better in the past, because the writers had stock in the material. not like the nameless drones they have in the background, now. Then they cover their own asses with an encyclopedia of FAQ's and Errata.
I haven’t watched it yet, but “yes” they are.
I want to love 10th but every game leave me feeling empty and I question my self was this even fun? win or loss. This was a feeling that I never felt with 9ed or any other edition that I can remember at least.
Game feels flat, mechanical and very not cinematic.
Regarding leathality I do not really see a big difference, if its seen it's gone.
So much of the background fluff is gone. The codices are are pale imitations to what they once were. Some armies just had balance problems right from the beginning.
Fair points; I used to think the same thing because there was no way they had accidentally released so many bad codices in a row. Given recent events, I'm now more of the mind that they're doing it on purpose because they are actively trying to push existing fans out of the hobby and entice new customers who don't know how bad everything is.
I think everyone just has overly high expectations because the eldar.
Everyone finally getting a taste of what Chaos Marine players have endured for decades...
Going from the glorious feast of options, customisation & being able to build lore accurate Legions, to a soulless, shell of an army where "paint schemes don't matter anymore", because everything sucks and themed/lore accurate armies are just figments of your imagination!
Been playing since 3rd edition.
10th is the first time I'm outright skipping an edition entirely! And that includes suffering through the darkest times of being a CSM player in absolute clusterfeth that was 7th edition! (...if you know, you know)
Sure they're avoiding power creep, which is commendable.
Problem is that some of the codexes are just so unimaginative and lacking any vision or purpose. They feel phoned in.
I know you can't see the names of who wrote what, but can see the difference in the quality of writing to know that their are good writers and bad ones in the company. And the People in charge are not scrutinizing and evaluating the poorly written books.
Nice insight.
So in short: They fucked up the index SO HARD that every codex needs to fix it.
Thats not the best model for selling books/models.
What about the orks codex tho?
Imo, they are just bad at what they do...
Keep the vids comming :)
After 9th ef Power Creep - 10th seems to be very reserved
At least 9th had a ton of customisation & soul to it.
10th is the blandest, most boring pile of half-baked trashed ever vomited out by GW... did they *really* learn nothing after the monumental community backlash to the 4th ed Dark Angels -> Chaos Marines -> Eldar fiasco?
This "tailor to competitive try-hards above all else" BS has destroyed the essence of what 40k is supposed to be.
I think it’s intentional. Can’t have a broken game if all the army’s are meh.
Yes they are. In game design, it's easier to buff a set of mechanics. Then weakening it, without having to remove a rule or two.
Probably an overcorrection from GW trying to address criticisms of 9e Codexes being OP at launch. In the case of Custodes, there's probably a factor of them paying for their sins in 9e, and GW coming to the conclusion that the playstyle Custodes embodies is just way too unfun to fight against for most armies.
Is Necron the only faction that got super powerful after 10e codex drop?
Bypassing invuls just breaks the game.
A bit in the way the destroyer weapons used to.
They *REALLY* want to sell these models they push.
I remember when people were whining when the necron codex dropped.
Generalist detachments are better than sque on average. Codexes are full of sque
When everyone's codex suck, then no one's will.
Dude, dont always say: "and again..." and explain that its your theory, once is more than enough!
No. Flat out no.
This is worse than the conspiracy theory that all the codices were written at the same time at the beginning of 10th.
The problem with dark angels is that all the datasheets are mediocre and massively overcosted for what they are. The only unit in dark angels anywhere near worth its points is azrael, and he is dark angels this edition. The 44% dark angels have is Ironstorm space marines with azrael thrown in for extra cp farm every command phase. That’s it. Anyone playing dark angels detachments or other space marine detachments are probably sub 40%. And that isn’t even the worst of it. The lion has one of the worst datasheets for an epic hero I have ever seen in 40K. With the shitty datasheets he has, he would need to be below 300pts to be even considered fun to just take casually. Terminators are mediocre and overcosted. Ravenwing are lackluster and boring. The detachment are all flavorless and trash. And on top of all of this, the my took away war gear options for deathwing terminators, which is the entire reason to play DW over any other marine faction. They removed so many classic and fun units. It’s all just bad. There is literally only one positive, and the grandmaster himself props up the winrate to the bottom of mid tier. Lol. And then everything that has happened with custodes recently. Company is a joke.
A game doesn't have to be complex to be deep. Chess takes 5 minutes to learn and a lifetime to master.
How many of us want Warhammer to be chess? I know I don’t.
Chess also has a predictable setup and both sides have identical pieces. Might take a lifetime to master but it's not exactly all that interesting either. Now if each side could be setup however each player chose within the same deployment squares, then you're talking some real complexity.
I have been wondering about the same thing.
necron codex was terrible compare to index
They need to make them weaker for the incoming D.E.I quota.
So sad, Im in the hobby first for the Lore and second for the game itself. Retconing and gaslighing killed my interest in the setting, so from now I wont buy anymore books and 3d print everything I need
GW IS TRYING to match faction theme / lore in a fun way without making them OP.
Which upsets everyone who plays the generic "we are super strong in lore why do we have boring rules "
I find it insulting that you think dark angels "seems okay". Inner circle detatchment is at 28% win rate, deathwing was smashed into never play again basically and company of hunters ravenwing detatchment is just okay but still kind of bad. Dark angels is absolutely the worst army in the game when not playing the ironstorm skew tournament lists.
codices?
Codices is one of the correct plural forms of the word Codex