The core of the issue is that competitive players try to push the boundaries of what's possible without outright cheating. Which is in itself fine. However, this naturally leads to them finding exploits, or otherwise broken or degenerate playstyles, every so often. That's simply what happens when you try to push to the extremes of what's possible; every so often you end up breaking things . A good developer/tournament organiser/game publisher/etc. will try to curtail the worst excesses of these exploits by fixing things. A bad one does not. What further complicates things is that competitive players might like a particular exploit, and start arguing it's a "genuine" playstyle. And since competitive players are a fairly vocal group, after all this is going to be one of the more passionate and active groups in your community, they are quite likely to get their way. Now this exploit might be accepted by the developers and introduced properly into the game. It might even be reasonably balanced, or well as balanced as the rest of the game. But even so the exploit turned "genuine" playstyle can end up breaking a (small) core part of the original game. Maybe it's just not very fun to face. Maybe it simply changes a core aspect of the game (e.g. teleports completly change the way movement works). Maybe it lead to an arms-race, where the only way to keep up is by joining in with the min-max nonsense. Or maybe it's counter is too difficult for regular players to reliably execute, while tournament players find it trivial. Or maybe it's so powerfull it quickly became the only legitimate way to play for that particular army/unit/whatever. Or it's only "balanced" because in a tournament it'l probably face it counter at least once, but it'l win every other match-up. Or maybe it causes another issue entirely. There's 100's of different small cascading issues it can cause. Regardless this will chase away some of players which came for the original game, while at the same time attracting more competitive players as the game turns more and more towards the competitive side. Making it more likely for the next exploit to be turned "genuine". And so the cycle continues on and on. And yes, one of these exploits turned genuine mechanic probably isn't going to break the game. But add in enough of these and eventually you're left with a husk of the original game as the fun and it's original core has been optimized away, while the developers did nothing to stop it and occasionally actively assisted the process. The developers/tournament organisers/etc. are the ones who can control the evolution of the game, and offer alternatives. Either by providing alternative rulesets (E.g. using tiers with approved units like the pokemon tier-system or different styles of matches like the formats in MTG) or by outright squashing the exploit by fixing whatever interactions broke the game (e.g. endless spells no longer benefit from range increases cuz Morathi broke them by doubling their range). And so far, GW has not done a particularly good job at that for AoS. Matched play is the only genuine official ruleset available. And a lot of their "fixes" have either been blanket fixes, that fix the exploit, but also hurt genuine playstyles, or simple small rebalances like point changes. Which ultimately don't fix the exploit, they merely make it fall out of favour until a future balance update makes that particular exploit efficient again. And in certain cases they've outright introduced new rules where they're just begging for problems since GW doesn't seem to uphold any sort of design guidelines for new stuff, they just throw together whatever seems cool at the time. So meh, not a brilliant track-record so far.
Do you have any examples of this situation taking place in AoS? I can't think of a single "exploit" that falls into this category. I'd also argue with tournament players being the most vocal. Take this board for example. Are the tournament players even close to the most vocal? Just feels like that opinion is based off some pretty strong assumptions that don't necessarily line up with my own experiences.
So, I would like an example of this happening in AoS. I have some ideas what you mean, but I would like you're example. Again, I need an example. Arguing with ethereal ideas doesn't work when we have a concrete game in front of us. I also disagree with Competitive players being vocal. Organizers are definitely vocal, since they have some sway with the community as a whole. Thing about them is they often take feedback from those that attend their events. As for the passion and active part of the community... yes, they should, since if they're passionate and active more than any other part of the community, they should be taken into account when sussing out problems in the community. 'Playstyles' being accepted is still something I need an example of evolving out of this. Teleports have been in the game since the start, so it's not exactly been an exploit. It's been something you have had to interact with since the inception of the game. That and the rules for Teleports have been refined since. Now they are more fair for everyone, and honestly, more fun in my opinion. As to an arms race... that's just power creep? That's something we see as nearly inevitable in GW games. As it stands, the balance is alright. Intriguing, what might this allude to? So a net-list. That's something many armies seem to start with and later branch out as people become more comfortable with the books. FoS being pretty standard right now, but many other DT and TL lists cropping up in tournaments/events. Fair, meaning the book is poorly written, or the game itself works on Rock, Paper, Scissors balancing. I would hope that's not something we see often. What part of AoS has been optimized away? The original Core of the game didn't have a structure at all. That has been removed for a semblance of organization to allow more fair games for people. What has been removed that is not still present? If you want to play your mates in some fun, relaxed games, the structure is there to allow it. If anything, the structure of AoS allows for more varied interactions and different games, see the numerous battleplans NOT present in the Matched play portion of the game. So in your second example, GW has actually addressed an 'exploit' of rules interaction. What you're advocating for otherwise is splitting the player base, especially with a Tier list. [I have seen others advocate for a 2 tier system based upon list structure]. As for different styles of matches.. we have those in battleplans? Or would you like to see Highlander tournaments become more common? Or Restricted Unit tournaments? Perhaps Narrative tournaments can make a comeback? There are definitely other types of events, they're just not widely advertised because, from what I've seen, they're more local and relaxed. Addressing the Bolded First: What? Narrative is literally the base style, and Matched play being the most widely used system. Path to Glory is also readily available, and while imbalanced in places, I've found there's some fan adjustments that are pretty good. Ninthmuskateer over on Dakka Dakka has a fairly nice one. Blanket fixes often also fix multiple instances of exploits and set a standard for any future interactions that might arise. What 'genuine' playstyles do you know have been hurt by such? Small rebalances in points are often also fairly good, drastic points changes literally affect whole swathes of playstyles in negative, and positive, ways. Efficiency does affect exploit viability, but otherwise it wouldn't be an exploit. It would be alright, and fairly balanced then. The italicized sentences I need an example of so we can discuss that further. I am very interested to know what rules these are to prepare for.
only one i can think of would be daisy chaining but thats not a thing any more guilt as charged but im just one of the three loudest and i don't think you or canas are proper turny players
in other news WE GOT WITCH HUNTERS BACK WOOOOOO!!! i hate the fact that im totaly going to buy them since they look like a nightmare to paint but still very exited
Theyre also characters appearing in Broken Realms, apparently the weekly model reveals for the foreseeable future are going to be the same. That’s a lot of named models all up, but also hopefully includes us lizards since we’re getting some prominence in at least BR: Belakor
I totally want those two Witch Hunters, even if just for DnD or something. Honestly I'd read a book about them
Pretty much. It's also not just that you see a vocal demographic within the community at tournaments, but the fact that it's visible and fairly well-recorded, which make them easy candidates for acquiring gameplay feedback. Harkoning back to the Las Vegas Open a couple years back, an extensive FAQ and errata update was published almost immediately in its wake, specifically focusing on the shenanigans that certain Space Marine players (Iron Hands and Imperial Fists especially) were pulling off, in a grand sweeping effort to curtail the worst excesses of it at future events. Given the prompt response and the tone used throughout the sweeping changes, it can be argued that it was an instance of GW using tournaments as outsourced beta-testing platforms for the purposes of troubleshooting. Whilst this isn't an inherently bad practice, as the cited instance demonstrated, there is still going to be that visibility bias affecting decision-making within the development of the game and the adjacent community. Survivor bias is also something we need to keep in mind with this - it's easy to get caught up with what works and complain about people gaming the system with un-fun lists for an advantage, but it's just as likely that the reason for the latter stems from the alternatives being mediocre by comparison, which can very well impact the enjoyability of playing those alternatives even in a casual setting where you're not under that pressure.
If you go based off the patterns, this summer. Typically GW releases a new edition of AoS/40k every 3~ years. However, due to COVID delays, Broken Realms, and the GHB's being pretty solid, I could see it being next year.
Fair warning: giant wall of text Some of these got fixed, some were embraced but here we go, some exploits (or playstyles that start to approach exploits, depending on where exactly you want to draw the line between "genuine" gameplay and exploit. Unfortunatly it isn't a clear black & white problem.) that have popped up over the years: Spamming spells Abusing range modifiers on (endless) spells Daisy-chaining nonsense. The move towards hordes because they're more efficient to buff Lists revolving around buffing 1 unit to absurd levels of power by stacking as many buffs as possible, while the rest of the list is just there to buy time for the super-powered unit to steamroll everything. Spamming a particular unit(type) Shooting armies being able to shoot half your army of the table turn 1. Armies that can charge across the entire table turn 1 and smash apart all of your stuff if you're not screened perfectly Overwhelming amounts of teleports & other movement based sheninigans Borderline immortal units with re-rollable 2+ saves, a wardsave, some healing and whatever other nonsense. double turns, especially in combination with heavy shooting/magic activation-wars Bear in mind, these aren't always inherently bad things. They are simply examples of people finding extremely effective tactics. Some of which are genuine, some of which are exploits of unintended flaws in the design. Consequently, some got fixed, some resulted in blanket nerfs destroying legitimate play along with the exploit and some got embraced and further encouraged by GW once they realized they were there. They're vocal by sheer virtue of being more passionate and involved. Someone who is willing to go to tournaments is also more likely to be willing to fill in questionaires, participate on forums etc. It's fairly natural. And yes, keeping tabs on such a part of your community is good, they can help you find a lot of problems. The issue is that since a particular type of player tends to go tournaments this can lead to certain biasses in the feedback you get. One should be aware of that and make sure the complaints and suggestions of other types of players don't get drowned out by the more vocal and visual tournament visiting players. The point of the example wasn't that teleports in themselves are necesarly an exploit, but that their existence changes how you play. Originally teleports were relativly rare. Now everyone seems to have some form of teleport or deepstrike. And the more this gets exploited by the min-maxers the more it leads to the game changing and moving away from how it was originally played. There was a time were you didn't need to screen your backline, now there's armies against whom you must screen everything from every angle or you'l get murdered by teleporting nonsense. Yup, power creep is bad. And a perfect game would completly avoid it. Now obviously that's unrealistic, but it should be kept to an absolute minimum all the same. And GW does seem to like its powercreep, especially in 40K and AoS. The LOTR game oddly enough seems to be far more immune to it for some reason. Stuff like the example given here. Where an Idoneth player makes clever uses of his support, his ability to fly, the enemies positioning & some special abilities to charge into a monster that should've been too far away & had a screen for safety and get a free round of attacks in on him without risking counterattacks. A weaker player is liable to not going to see that coming and will have assumed that monster is safe seeing as it's both out of range & screened. In general, anything where the counter is "you need to play nearly perfectly, and even a small mistake will cost you dearly" is problematic for weaker players. They need some room for error. Obviously how much room is up for debate, again, it's not all black & white, but the smaller the room for error, the more problematic it becomes. The question that needs to be asked here is how much are you expecting a "weak" player to know? Is this particular case an example of a "mistake" of the player or is this something that you can't reasonably expect a weaker (or average for that matter) player to be able to pull off reliable? Or match-ups where you can only win on points, because your army is massivly outclassed. A great example of that is our old lists before the second battletome that relied nearly completly on just keeping our opponent busy and hoping we win on points because we don't stand a chance in hell in a fair fight. Again, this is something a weaker player probably won't be able to do. Sadly it is something you often see when the balancing is done from competitive point of view, as those tend to focus on winrates and similar statistical measures to ensure balance. MSU's are largely irrelevant other than being cannonfodder with hordes taking the spotlight. The only exception being MSU of certain elite units (e.g. idoneth eels) Wizard-based lists are made somewhat awkward due to the rule of one as you can't really use the same wizard twice. Once upon a time a 4+ save was quite decent, now there's far too much rend & mortal wounds Foot-heroes have become basicly useless outside of supporting roles, even if they're designed to be beat-sticks because they just can't hope to keep up with hordes and behemoths. Wizards without significant bonusses to cast are super easy to shut down with the amount of +3 wizards running around. There's probably others as well, but that's all I can think of for now. Well they don't do everything wrong. Though the fact that they didn't just nerf morathi and instead nerfed everything was a bit of a downer. But yeah, sometimes they do something right Yeah basicly. With actual support from GW. Include the rules for it in the GHB. Instead of leaving it up to the tournaments to figure out on their own and players to somehow find those rulesets. As for battleplans, they can help to an extend. But most of these are limited enough that they don't do much to stop exploits. A simple change in objectives ultimatly isn't going to do much to stop say Kroaknado from doing a ton of damage, nor is it going to stop Teclis from auto-casting, or an idoneth player from spamming eels. Narrative play is literally just "do whatever you want and go make up your own nonsense". That's not a framework. Path of glory is better, but only provides a framework for a campaign of linked games. Not for individual games. Fan adjustments, while potentially good, are not officially supported. And unless you get lucky 90% of the playerbase probably will never find them. There's also some frameworks that GW seems to throw out every now and then and they then proceed to immeadiatly forget about them. Like the army generator thing from last? GHB 2019's?. But those get so little support they're basicly dead on arrival. Essentially pitched battles matched play is the only genuinly officially supported framework. Everything else is just fans mucking about and basicly making up their own frameworks. Wizard based lists, as the rule of one makes using two wizards impossible. Endless spell ranged shenanigans was targeted specificly because of morathi. But ignored that orginally one of the major selling points was that we could use arcane vassal & others could use the mirror endless spell. And although this one might have ultimatly been fair, it did feel rather lame at the time. Summoning got completly curbstomped once they realized free reinforcements was a tad bit broken until they reworked it into something vaguely balanced, but it took them years to actually come up with a reasonable fix. And in the mean time very little was provided to make up for the loss of that powerfull tool, while the associated weaknesses remained. Other than that not many blanket fixes that have been done oddly enough. At least none that I can think off. The point is that small point rebalances ultimatly don't fix the exploit. They simply make it irrelevant for now because it's no longer efficient. And while that can be enough in certain settings (e.g. tournaments won't see exploits that are inefficient), it ultimatly doesn't actually prevent the exploit. This is especially noticeable at lower levels of play where you don't necesarly need to play effeciently to win. A great example of these are the various god-models. They may not be super competitive in tournaments as they're not efficient enough, but each and every one has consistently been a pain to deal with in more casual settings due to them simply being extremly powerfull models. Eh, everything in quotes seems to be italicized by default so can't tell which ones you mean here.
before we start we must establish that there are to definitions to the word exploit first to make full use of a resource this is probably not what canas is talking about as to complain about that would be foolish. second to use rules or systems in away that the designers did not account for to gain a abnormal advantage. this is the far more common use of exploit the one i think canas is talking about quote"The core of the issue is that competitive players try to push the boundaries of what's possible without outright cheating. Which is in itself fine. However, this naturally leads to them finding exploits" unquote and the one we will be focusing on as it is the version that causes problems. that said away we go not an exploitation but they still fixed it until they didn't not an exploitation but they still fixed it this is a exploit and they fixed it. not an exploitation just how math works not an exploitation and remarkably uncommon we haven't really seen this since stanchcast not an exploitation just the result of poor balancing not an exploitation just bad design can't blame the players for that not an exploitation not an exploitation not an exploitation and i can only think of two models that can do this and only one of them is good not an exploitation thats just how that game works. not an exploitation so out of all of those you managed to find one problematic exploitation that they fixed and a bunch of rules and situations you personally don't like half of witch aren't even in the game any more
To add something to @Canas ' considerations, i would say that we have plenty of examples of the "optimizers" crowd. like, A LOT. IN this very forum, while true that we often encourage "play what you like", the various threads in tactic section analyze the units from a power level and utilities, and we focus on tricks and combos. Yeah, we have a good "moral filter", we also say that having fun is the first thing and what kind of combos are cheese and should be avoided playing with friends, but that's a advice you find on LO because this is not a toxic community. if you go on other forums, or on youtube, you will find tutorials kinda "Top Tier units", "what units are bottom Tier", "armies ranked from best to worst". People are simply (and rightfully) interested in the ways you can make your army stronger, and these tutorials cover that. The whole mathammer concept revolves around optimiziation. The logical consequence is that a newbie that built a Troglodon because it was cool, suddely sees that Trog is garbage, shouldn't be taken to competitive play, and thinks that he is "doing it wrong". EDIT: On you tube, there are many channels with various BatReps. These are interesting and often offer good fun, with various lists and friendly behavior. And then you go reading the comments, and there is always someone that points out that "the list was horrible, it was suboptimal you should have done / taken this and that". Toxic people that cannot even accept that other gamers are having fun with casual lists.
In certain cases the line between "making full use of a resource" and "using rules or systems in an unforeseen way to gain an abnormal advantage" is increadibly vague, to the point of the two become virtually indistinguishable. This is especially important for this particular topic, as this discussion is about "exploits turned genuine mechanic by popular demand". Let's take the move to hordes as an example. In itself this is a completly natural move. As you pointed out, this just how maths works. However, that doesn't mean the complete extend of it was foreseen by the designers. They may have overlooked just how many buffs you can stack. They may have overestimated how difficult it is to get all those buffs. They may have overestimated the drawbacks associated, assumed you wouldn't be able to afford all these support heroes. they may have assumed MSU would've remained more relevant etc. This is evident because of some of the changes they've made to make it more difficult to stack buffs. For example, daisy-chaining made buffing too easy, so buffs were changed to require the target to be "wholly within", preventing daisy chaining. And quite a lot of buff-stacking units have been nerfed quite heavily to try and reign them in. A similar thing holds for all the mechanics the designers put in on purpose with the clear intend of it being an impactfull mechanic, they can easily overshoot the mark. Using a double turn & shooting to devastating effect is by no means cheating. But one could definitely argue it's an unintended exploit that the designers did not initially plan. They expected it to be impactfull, sure, but not game-deciding. Same for activationwars, the phases of borderline immortal units we've had at points,movement shenanigans,turn 1 charges, doomstars, god-models etc. None of those are exploits in the sense of "cheating", but there are definitly cases in there where a particular mechanic/unit/ability/etc. is far more impactfull than what was probably intended. It may not necesarly be brokenly OP, it may even be liked by a part of the playerbase. But ultimatly it's little more than a designer endorsed 'exploit'. Also, a thing I'd like to add is something that I've always found weird. The battlereports in white dwarf and other GW publications rarely take advantage of these examples. They rarely have buffed up hordes, loads of movement shenanigans, activation wars, turn one charges, super devastating double turns etc. They tend to keep it to that sorta stuff to an absolute minimum. It makes me wonder what exactly the intended way of playing is supposed to be seeing as these are the designers themselves playing and they seem to activly avoid most of the min-maxing. Also again, none of these examples are necesarly problematic by themselves. The issue is that they are extremely effective strategies/mechanics that push the boundaries to such an extend that they risk opening the way for true 'exploits' to be discovered or in certain cases are essentially little more than designer endorsed 'exploits'.
um no. something working to well is poor balance not exploitation. if something is better and people use it that is not exploitation if the thing is being used as intended thet is again bad balancing not exploitation. there is no vagary hear i can look at daisy chaining(the only example you had of actual exploitation) and say flat out that is not what was intended, it is a screwing of the rules to derive a decisive advantage and every one knew it. exploitation is never subtle. grappling in DnD 5E is GOOD (no monsters have built in defences to it) minore illusion is exploitative (if you use it to make a box around you enemies can't interact with you in any way due to how actions and skill checks work) there is a clear difference none of that would make it exploitatively just poorly balanced. again something being good does not make it exploitation. again this is not exploitation this is poor balancing don't blame turny players for GWs mistakes. this happens in every game people gravitate to the best things. you can it's a bad argument but you can make it. the double turn has been around for 6 years and paople have been using it for devistating double punches for just as long. if this was not how GW intended for it to work thay would have removed it this is not the first time KO has been a thing. you are asuming a lot there since they keep making all those things and they are still in the game and getting better. you also described basically every strategy there is soooo there is no such thing as a disigner indorsed exploit. it's just bad balancing and if something is not inherintly better then why would turny players be "exploiting" it well they also did a battle plan with gotreck fighting the 4 greater deamonds and constantly put out things that are narrative over standard i don't think they are at all taking things seriously one last time bad balancing is not the players being eploitative nore is a good macanice a exploit you are arguing bad intentions where there are none.
quote "Same for activationwars, the phases of borderline immortal units we've had at points,movement shenanigans,turn 1 charges, doomstars, god-models etc."unquote also none of these are explotations. in fact a bunch of those aren't even all that good stop saying that things you don't like are a problem
All in all, I believe what @Erta Wanderer has said in response to Canas is along the lines of what I was getting at. But @Killer Angel does make good points. There's no black and white to the debate of perception of the game. It's through the filters which we see it that do color it. Even so, I do have some points to address that stuck out to me. That's not all that uncommon. We can do that with Terradons. Also, the monster would get to attack back after the eels struck, if they didn't kill it. Most, if not all the damage done was done during the charge phase/before combat started. This is not an exploit of the game, this is growing in skill and learning how to use the abilities your units have. If that's exploitative, than by that definition, being a good player is nothing but exploitation. All wizards know at minimum 3 spells. Arcane Bolt, Mystic Shield, and their flavored one on the warscroll beside Wizard rule. Which mentions the two previous spells. How is using two wizards impossible again?
Agreed, daisy chaining was/is a little wonky. I'm certainly not winning GT's anytime soon, but i try to participate a fair amount in tournaments. I suppose like your post to canas about defining exploits, we'd have to define what qualifies as a tourney player/WAAC player as well. either way, pretty interesting discussion. I've never really looked at the game as being dictated by the tournament players but can see in some ways how that could come across. I think a lot of this also comes down to the recent explosion of warhammer information on the internet. 5 years ago there wasn't nearly this level of discussion, youtube videos, tournament streams, etc. This just so much more information, discussion, and conversation around that I think the community is still trying to wrap its head around so much coverage. And the game is crazy complicated, which i think naturally leads people to more generalized statements about quality of units and army lists. I'd almost wonder in that case if there even is an "intended" way of playing. GW seems to be pretty big on player agency ("the most important rule" and all that.) I wouldn't be at all surprised if the game is intentionally created with the kind of depth to allow both ends of the playing spectrum. If anything, the "intended way of playing" is for players to make more use out of the social contract when it comes to structuring their armies and games.