9th Age Is negative power creep the reason why 0.99 is not doing very well?

[airjamy]

After reading a couple of other fora, i have seen that not only here the reaction to 0.99 is less then ecstatic. My first reaction to the somewhat lulled reception is the fact that only one person wrote our update, it is easy for one person to fuck up, i took it he did, and i hoped for a better new update.

Now that i see that the discontent is more wide spread, i think it might have something to do with the fact that the board has chosen to power down the power levels of all armies in 9th. It is simply less fun to play with rules that feel less strong then your old rules, even though relatively little has changed in the power balance because everybody has had a power downgrade. We all know our own armies trough and trough, to every last point value and stat, so we really notice everything getting less powerful in our own armies, while we might not be so knowledgeable about our opponent's army even though they are dealing with exactly the same thing!

GW always had the somewhat hated strategy of the power creep, new models were most of the time stronger then the older models, so the power level in the game was constantly rising. This was mostly seen as a way to sell more new models, which is ofcourse part of the strategy, but it also had the added effect that your new and very expensive models were strong on the table, and thus fun to use and fun to come up with new strategies. This is not as big of a problem as it seems, Warhammer has never been a balanced game, and this is ok as long as this imbalance is manageable (instead of something like AoS, which has in my opinion without outside help no balance at all). I think that the board might want to consider powering everyone up instead of powering everybody down to get to the same balance level to simply participate in the power fantasies all players in the end have to a certain extent. What do you guys think about this idea, do you even think that people are really discontent about 0.99, or do you think that there is another reason for it?

 

[n810]

... probably.
making everyone miserable
doesn't make anyone happy.

They should have left the powerful units alone,
and buffed the weaker units.
Except cannon accuracy, that did need a nerf.

 

[Crowsfoot]

I don't really follow the 9th age but what I have noticed over the last couple of weeks is everyone that was excited and could not wait are now turning back to 8th so something is drastically wrong.

I hope they get it back on track as a lot of time and effort has gone into it so far and a lot of players hopes and dreams will be crushed if it fails.

 

[Haemoglobin]

Well for Lizardmen/Saurian Ancients the book was overperforming hard. You had some crazy things like 3x3 Spearbacks that had 18 D6 S4 AP1 shots in total, often with a +1 to hit +1to wound to Large Targets. This, combined with a lot of other borderline OP things and good synergies really put the SA army on a pedestal.

In the newest edition (0.99) SA got nerfed hard. Some of the nerfs really were coming to them and deserved (max 2x2 Spearbacks now) but there are a hell of a lot of inconsistent nerfs. Things that were not an issue got nerfed, things that were an issue got a strange "fix". A lot of the design behind the SA book is inconsistent and illogical. Externally the book is relatively well balanced. Internally however...

So I am hoping that the book receives the fixes it needs in the next (April) release.

Other books like VC, SE and DH and such are doing really well and are at a good place withing 9th Age. Make sure you check it out!

 

[The Red Devil]

Some of the nerfs really were coming to them and deserved (max 2x2 Spearbacks now) but there are a hell of a lot of inconsistent nerfs.

That there was power issues that had to be handled, is not the point i believe anyone is complaining about.

The issue is as you mention the nerfs, that is either inconsistent on our side, or inconsistent with other armies (I.e. was a problem with our army, but not with X army who has basically the same. This show inconsistencies and that balancing is not applied at the same level across the board).

Other books like VC, SE and DH and such are doing really well and are at a good place withing 9th Age. Make sure you check it out!

That is good news, though is this from their standpoint, or outside standpoint?

 

[airjamy]

Well for Lizardmen/Saurian Ancients the book was overperforming hard. You had some crazy things like 3x3 Spearbacks that had 18 D6 S4 AP1 shots in total, often with a +1 to hit +1to wound to Large Targets. This, combined with a lot of other borderline OP things and good synergies really put the SA army on a pedestal.

In the newest edition (0.99) SA got nerfed hard. Some of the nerfs really were coming to them and deserved (max 2x2 Spearbacks now) but there are a hell of a lot of inconsistent nerfs. Things that were not an issue got nerfed, things that were an issue got a strange "fix". A lot of the design behind the SA book is inconsistent and illogical. Externally the book is relatively well balanced. Internally however...

So I am hoping that the book receives the fixes it needs in the next (April) release.

Other books like VC, SE and DH and such are doing really well and are at a good place withing 9th Age. Make sure you check it out!

I am not saying that everybody is mad, but some boards such as the Undying Dynasties, our book and the Daemons ofcourse are less then glad. I feel as if the discontent is a bit broader right now, but as i said in my earlier post, maybe i ahve read the community wrong. I am really mostly online at the UD and SA fora, that may have coloured me a bit.

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

After reading a couple of other fora, i have seen that not only here the reaction to 0.99 is less then ecstatic. My first reaction to the somewhat lulled reception is the fact that only one person wrote our update, it is easy for one person to fuck up, i took it he did, and i hoped for a better new update

I agree that the mood surrounding 9th Age has definitely diminished around these parts, but that is really no surprise considering what they did to our army book. I haven't frequented many other forums of late so I can't speak on how wide spread this effect might be. As such, your insights from other forums is informative!

I personally disagree with the organizational structure that the 9th Age group decided to employ. If it were up to me, I would have assembled a small group (in the vicinity of 3-5 people) that had a good deal of experience and could devote a large number of hours to the project. This group would be the writers for the main rules AND all the army books. One group working across the board. When tackling each specific army book, this main group would be given the opportunity to interact with a 2-3 army book experts. These people would act as consultants (who could interact with army specific forums), describing the ins and outs of the army to the main writers. Ultimately however, it would be the main group that wrote all the books. What this structure would achieve is a steady vision of changes across all books. Having different writers for different armies has created inconsistencies that are reminiscent of the problems that GW experienced when they employed the same tactic.

The next point is that I don't believe that 9th Age should have made as many changes as they did. I think the changes should have been focused on the top 5% over-powered units/items/etc. in the game and the 5-10% of the most under-powered units/items/etc. I think most of the major gripes about 8th Edition can be found in this small percentile range. The rest of the stuff I would have kept largely unchanged.

Now that i see that the discontent is more wide spread, i think it might have something to do with the fact that the board has chosen to power down the power levels of all armies in 9th. It is simply less fun to play with rules that feel less strong then your old rules, even though relatively little has changed in the power balance because everybody has had a power downgrade. We all know our own armies trough and trough, to every last point value and stat, so we really notice everything getting less powerful in our own armies, while we might not be so knowledgeable about our opponent's army even though they are dealing with exactly the same thing!

I couldn't agree more. I was thinking the exact same thing but I didn't want to bring it up myself (probably because I was already embroiled in things like the unbreakable hellcannon debate!). For all its imbalances, it was fun to thrown down a powerful unit in 8th edition. Similarly I found it fun to try to take down my opposition's uber unit; I viewed it as a fun puzzle waiting to be solved. Alternatively, it was an interesting challenge to try to make slightly under-powered units work within an army. Some balances had to be made for the betterment of the game (top and bottom 5-10%) which would address things like the banner of the world dragon or daemon prince on the high end and things like the Troglodon and Giants on the low end. Instead what we have now are units that aren't as exciting; they don't evoke the same sense of joy and thrill. Everything feels a bit more bland.

Here is what I feel is an interesting analogy...

• Mom takes away a child's favourite toys
• Child: "Mom, why did you take away my toys?"
• Mom: "Don't worry dear, I took away all your brothers' and sisters' favourite toys too"

I think that is where we are now. None of the children in the example above would be very happy. GW on the other hand gave us new toys that we were excited about. Maybe sometimes we were a bit jealous of the toys GW gave to your brothers and sisters, but eventually GW gave you some shiny new toys too (unless you were a Beastmen or Bretonnia child ... no toys for you, go to bed!).

I think a happy medium can be found between balance and fun. GW may not have been right on the mark, but I feel they were closer to it than 9th Age.

GW always had the somewhat hated strategy of the power creep, new models were most of the time stronger then the older models, so the power level in the game was constantly rising. This was mostly seen as a way to sell more new models, which is ofcourse part of the strategy, but it also had the added effect that your new and very expensive models were strong on the table, and thus fun to use and fun to come up with new strategies.

Although I agree that a power creep did occur (looking at you 7th edition), this trend was farily inconsistent in 8th Edition. Balance in 8th edition could definitely have been improved, but it wasn't too bad. Furthermore, I don't think there is as strong of a correlation between new units and broken rules as everyone believes. For all the powerful new models that were introduced, say Skullcrushers, there were new models with very moderate or even weak rules, say Dragon Ogres or the infamous Troglodon. I agree with most or your post, but I slightly disagree here. I wouldn't go as far as to say it didn't occur at all, but I think it was a weak effect at best.

 

[GCPD]

Although I agree that a power creep did occur (looking at you 7th edition), this trend was farily inconsistent in 8th Edition. Balance in 8th edition could definitely have been improved, but it wasn't too bad. Furthermore, I don't think there is as strong of a correlation between new units and broken rules as everyone believes. For all the powerful new models that were introduced, say Skullcrushers, there were new models with very moderate or even weak rules, say Dragon Ogres or the infamous Troglodon. I agree with most or your post, but I slightly disagree here. I wouldn't go as far as to say it didn't occur at all, but I think it was a weak effect at best.

To chip in here, sometime around I think the Wood Elf release I did a bit of statistical analysis on new kits, broken down between "brand new" units (that didn't exist before), and "rereleases" of new models for old units, or models for units that didn't have one. Where the kit was dual-purpose, it counted into both categories.

I found that there was as good a chance that the "new" unit would wreck the meta as it would be a dust-collector, and as equal a chance for a "rerelease" to be nerfed or buffed. For comparison purposes, I also checked against units that didn't get new kits and found similar results (ie some were nerfed, some were buffed, no clear trend behind why) - although this was a little trickier as a straight up buff/nerf wasn't always clear.

Far from the often trotted out claim that GeeDub deliberately overpowers the latest model kit to increase sales, my conclusion was that rules writers were inconsistent, didn't understand their own game, and lacked a clear understanding of or direction towards achieving game balance. Given the trends in Warhammer that eventually culminated in the great Sundering of AoS, I find this explanation much more compelling.

 

[airjamy]

Far from the often trotted out claim that GeeDub deliberately overpowers the latest model kit to increase sales, my conclusion was that rules writers were inconsistent, didn't understand their own game, and lacked a clear understanding of or direction towards achieving game balance. Given the trends in Warhammer that eventually culminated in the great Sundering of AoS, I find this explanation much more compelling.

That's very interesting, i must say that the statement holds better in 40K to some extent, but if you actually did analysis on it and ound nothing, that is really compelling. I already thought that the part about GW powering our rules up all the time was the weaker part of my argument, but that does not mean that the rest of my argument, that it is not fun to power down all armies, does not hold.

Here is what I feel is an interesting analogy...

• Mom takes away a child's favourite toys
• Child: "Mom, why did you take away my toys?"
• Mom: "Don't worry dear, I took away all your brothers' and sisters' favourite toys too"

I think that is where we are now. None of the children in the example above would be very happy. GW on the other hand gave us new toys that we were excited about. Maybe sometimes we were a bit jealous of the toys GW gave to your brothers and sisters, but eventually GW gave you some shiny new toys too (unless you were a Beastmen or Bretonnia child ... no toys for you, go to bed!).

It does not take away from this analogy though, even though it felt like GW did this, it is clear right now that it is no fun to lose your toys. I do not feel that the analogy keeps up completely, kids do not use their toys to wage war on their friends in a really quite enjoyable way, nor do kids buy things in order to make their army of toys more efficient at beating their friend's toys, but the feeling is somewhat the same i guess. Would love to get a reaction from a 9th staff member who was partly responsible for making the choice of powering the game down, even though that might be a lot to ask outside of the 9th fora.

 

[Haemoglobin]

That is good news, though is this from their standpoint, or outside standpoint?

I would have to say that this comes from my buddies and I reading the books of armies we play / play against a lot. But looking at the forums I would have to say that the biggest amount of annoyance is generally in the SA forum. Which I have to agree to tbh, considering the inconsistent nature of the changes and "fixes". Me and the other guys from the SA team are doing our best to mitigate this new book and turn the April update into something with more variation.

 

[Lawot]

I personally disagree with the organizational structure that the 9th Age group decided to employ. If it were up to me, I would have assembled a small group (in the vicinity of 3-5 people) that had a good deal of experience and could devote a large number of hours to the project. This group would be the writers for the main rules AND all the army books. One group working across the board. When tackling each specific army book, this main group would be given the opportunity to interact with a 2-3 army book experts. These people would act as consultants (who could interact with army specific forums), describing the ins and outs of the army to the main writers. Ultimately however, it would be the main group that wrote all the books. What this structure would achieve is a steady vision of changes across all books. Having different writers for different armies has created inconsistencies that are reminiscent of the problems that GW experienced when they employed the same tactic.

@Pinktaco @Mr Phat correct if I'm wrong on what I'm saying here...

@NIGHTBRINGER what you wrote here is striking to me, because this is actually the structure of T9A, at least as far as I understand it. We've been talking about the ABC's (Army Book Committees) "writing" the book, but that's not actually how this works. The group of 3-5 people with a lot of experience and time that you refer to is the Rules Team. They take feedback from a number of sources, but they are the ones who actually create the rules and have final say on changes. The 2-3 army book experts you refer to are the members of the ABC. The ABC takes into account community feedback from the Army Support, tournament data from an analytical team, and other feedback to discuss ideas and make recommendations to the RT. The RT takes these recommendations into account when making changes to the army book, then gives the ABC a chance to present counterproposals. The RT decides on what to do with those counterproposals. So it is in fact a small group of people writing both the core rules and the army books, using consultant groups of army experts.

As much as it has been said that our 0.99 problems are because "one guy wrote our book", it's not true - we started with three people developing ideas and suggestions, then two discussing changes with the Rules Team, and finally one guy had the responsibility of finalizing and presenting all the counterproposals.

Where I as an Army Support probably failed was in predicting the degree of disappointment with the changes, and in articulating the way the changes, as a whole, just looked confusing. Where I hope to succeed, going forward, is in asking harder questions about why certain changes are being proposed, and what the larger impact of them will be.

 

[The Red Devil]

So it is in fact a small group of people writing both the core rules and the army books, using consultant groups of army experts.

I am certain you are correct here (@Lawot).

The issue is that this just show that either:
1. The Rules Team are biased against some armies, or they are being affected by the public.
2. That is that the Rules Team is going at this at the completely wrong angle.
3. Possibly a mix of both.

For statement 1:

• The reason I am saying this, is due to the inconsistencies across the army books that should not have been there if the balance review was done as one. There is multiple records that was deemed too powerful for SA, which other armies has even more powerful versions of.

For statement 2:

• It feels like the reason to decide if something need to be nerfed is if enough people take it on their list... If this is correct, it would actually explain statement 1 as well.

• The reason I say so, is due to for SA our problem is LIMITED CHOICES, which ironically was made even more limited with the latest update... From the outside standpoint, it looks like instead of actually asking why SA players tend to use only X, it was decided to just hit nerf.

The problem with the current strategies, is that SA will just keep getting nerfed, which does not solve the underlying problem.

Looking over the latest update, it is in some cases easy to see what they tried to change, the problem is what was done dont work. People will bring halberds instead of GW, people still will bring Caimans, they wont bring SW, TG or Cuatl etc.

I really hope 9th Age will be successful, but for it to be so for SA, it is clear that a step down has to be taken, and instead look at why are people only using X in their lists. The reason does not need to be due to its "overpowered", it is due to we do not have any other viable options if we want to survive.

I am certain that with a few changes to currently underused units, they would be fielded easily. Note, hitting a unit you want people to use more of with a serious nerf never works...

 

[The Red Devil]

Forgot to add one thing, it is possible that the domain experts for SA, either has a limited field of vision (only their play-style and their meta) or they are not domain experts (i.e. army book experts).

There has been a lot of feedback on the latest version, with a lot of good points why something was an issue, and how it was addressed wrong. Hopefully these points will be considered, and changes done rolled back for a better solution for the problem

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

@NIGHTBRINGER what you wrote here is striking to me, because this is actually the structure of T9A, at least as far as I understand it. We've been talking about the ABC's (Army Book Committees) "writing" the book, but that's not actually how this works. The group of 3-5 people with a lot of experience and time that you refer to is the Rules Team. They take feedback from a number of sources, but they are the ones who actually create the rules and have final say on changes. The 2-3 army book experts you refer to are the members of the ABC. The ABC takes into account community feedback from the Army Support, tournament data from an analytical team, and other feedback to discuss ideas and make recommendations to the RT. The RT takes these recommendations into account when making changes to the army book, then gives the ABC a chance to present counterproposals. The RT decides on what to do with those counterproposals. So it is in fact a small group of people writing both the core rules and the army books, using consultant groups of army experts.

As much as it has been said that our 0.99 problems are because "one guy wrote our book", it's not true - we started with three people developing ideas and suggestions, then two discussing changes with the Rules Team, and finally one guy had the responsibility of finalizing and presenting all the counterproposals.

Thank you for the clarification. The organizational structure makes more sense to me now and is definitely not what it sounded like. Good to know!

With this new information, I feel that @The Red Devil 's theories are probably correct. I would imagine that either the rules team was biased against the SA or the ABC did not provide the rules team with the proper support/information. Either way I'm surprised at how some of these glaring errors made their way into the book after so many months of work and so much feedback.

 

[Haemoglobin]

Personally I believe that the huge amount of negative feedback from the community (OMG SA OP, NEEEERFFFF) drowned the good commentary about SA having broken builds and how to fix them properly.

 

[Pinktaco]

I think the RT was indeed affected, but that's likely a deeper psychological talk.
Here's the issue:

• RT was aware of the OPness
• BB was as well, some being more harsh and open about it than others
• The public chat on T9A frequently had negative comments about SA OPness
• So did the "outside view" thread on T9A age. Interestingly what happened in this thread was that people brought up completely ridiculous non issues here

So everywhere you looked there was s negative e attitude towards the SA army. The DL army was equally offending in the balance part and no where did you see any complaints. In fact the outside view thread was rather empty as far as I remember (could be wrong).
When there's a general negative attitude towards something the group mentality will thrive and I bet you that most would've been affected. Even SA players began to accept the nerfs prior to the release.

With that said I don't think the absolute biggest issue is balance, but rather the identity and flavor of the army. You could've kept poison on Javelin and made them a model by model upgrade at +4-5pts. And sure that's ridiculous, but it would've kept the flavor intact.

Prior to the update I said internally that I firmly believed that 90% of balance issues would've been fixed with proper pricing and I stand by that. T5 Caimans? 60pts/model or more with reduced max size as a consequence, and so on.

Anyway that's just my personal opinion.

 

[Rettile]

a personal opinion that we all share. We had some pricings to adjust and maybe some synergies to limit. Spearbacks had to be limited for example, but not many other things. RT and BB decided to use a bomb instead of a scalpel, that's all

p.s.: i thought threads like "external view" were important and needed, then i saw people complaining about our swarms being OP, our rippers killing zombies being a valid example of their OPness, our cavalry being just too good... LOL, those threads can't be taken seriously if people tkes LSD before posting

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

p.s.: i thought threads like "external view" were important and needed, then i saw people complaining about our swarms being OP, our rippers killing zombies being a valid example of their OPness, our cavalry being just too good... LOL, those threads can't be taken seriously if people tkes LSD before posting

Interestingly enough, GW's lack of communication with the community actually granted it full immunity against this. It's clear that there are distinct deficits to both approaches.

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

I'd like to propose another (albeit linked) idea as to why 9th Age hasn't been as successful as some thought it could be. Through the pursuit of balance, the rule set has become very restrictive and inhibitory in nature. As compared to 8th Edition proper, 9th age feels like it more often tells you what you can't do, while 8th is more conducive to creativity and variation. I would argue that it feels very "comp like". This shouldn't surprise anyone, since if I remember correctly, it is a collaborative effort between the Swedish comp and ETC guys. In 8th edition these two groups were responsible for perhaps the two most prevalent comp packs. This isn't an attack against comp but as 8th edition showed, only a small subset of the gaming community engaged in comp games. The vast majority of players preferred playing regular 8th edition. As such, it would make sense that 9th Age would probably not appeal to many people outside of the previous comp community. They may grab a few stranglers due to a lack of an alternative official title, but for the most part the group will remain fairly small. Within that group however, 9th Age might very well flourish for many years to come and it might do very well within the tournament scene.

I think the best way to look at it is that 9th Age is written by tournament players for tournament players. So perhaps having a smaller fan base should not be unexpected or viewed as a failure.

 

[Haemoglobin]

I think the best way to look at it is that 9th Age is written by tournament players for tournament players. So perhaps having a smaller fan base should not be unexpected or viewed as a failure.

That is exactly what the 9th Age is. A game made by tournament players for tournament players. We might get some flavor, but not the kind of flavor we would have in 8th edition.

Hopefully the September release will have some more room for flavor.