The gamers have spoken!
In response to player feedback asking us to curtail certain aspects of the game, we put forth one issue for the LVO attendees to vote on this year: do we change Invisibility to be less powerful or leave it be?
The poll went out last week and we got 240 votes, which is a really good response considering it was sent out to just over 280 40k players coming to the LVO.
The proposed change was to alter Invisibility from what it is currently (snap fire at the Invis unit and hit on 1’s in assault) to the still very powerful, but toned down version: hit the Invis unit at BS1 with shooting and on 5’s in melee.
What this does is allow blast and template weapons to still impact invisible units (although they scatter at BS1) and doubles the amount of hits you land in melee, hitting as if you were WS1 for most situations. This is also the way many UK tournaments have been playing the rule, too. It tones it down a bit.
The vote came back 16 didn’t care which way the wind blew, 59 didn’t want to see the change and 164 wanted the change to take effect, which is considered to be a landslide majority. So, the change to invis is in effect for this event. Be sure to be aware of this as we don’t want anyone to be blindsided by it at the event! We will continue to let it be known. Thanks to everyone that voted and helped to continue to make our events shaped by those who go to them.
Poll results below.
Results from the last Poll to change Invis for comparison.
We have voted on this issue before, and here are the results from earlier in 2014, also asked of our attendees for those interested. Seems folks’ opinions have changed over time.
‘Murica!!
Blindsided….. Intentional or fortuitous?
I can’t help with the puns! haha
Do you use a stats program to actually find statistical significance or are you just pulling the analysis out your firm and toned butt?
Since his target population is “people going to the LVO 40k championships”, it’s pretty solidly in the realm of statistical significance. You just couldn’t assume this result applies to the community as a whole, only to the LVO attendees.
Precisely.
Lol, nothing comes out of my butt, sir! But no, we vote and simply tally them. Very simple, however feel free to analyze it to your heart’s content.
You may want to talk to a gastroenterologist about that.
I just tried to “like” this post.
Lol
Because I know stats and have stats programs and would actually like to run numbers for you if you think that would be chill.
That kind of difference is going to be highly significant. And even if it wasn’t, most people won’t know or care what you are talking about.
But that’s not the real reason not to care. This is basically a vote of who was and wasn’t planning on playing with invisibility.
I’m not saying changing it isn’t the right move. But the vote is extremely predictable and almost meaningless.
Not everyone votes out of a sense of benefiting their own play style, although many do I am sure. And I always find it amusing when folks say voting is meaningless, haha, as what other method of determining these types of things would you suggest? Alternative methods of decision making are often either impractical or dictatorial. This gives community feedback, and gives us a barometer for what folks want. This isn’t an attack either, just that this pops up when we run polls and I while I understand the argument, I am always left asking what other method do we use to resolve these types of issues.
When you vote on a single issue like this you strongly incentive people to vote in favor of their own army.
If people were voting on a basket of changes, its much more likely that their army would also be impacted and they would be forced to more objectively evaluate the changes.
But as is, if I’m not playing invisibility, why wouldn’t I vote for changing it? It makes my army better by hurting a competitor. And vice versa, if I do play it, why on earth would I handicap myself when none of the other top builds are being handicapped?
It’s your tournament. Do what you think will bring the most people back next year. If you think changing invisibility will do that, then change it.
But a vote like this gives you neither an objective measure of the community sentiment or an estimate of who will and will not come back if you do/do not make the change.
Neither is necessarily the aim, is it?
Reece isn’t straw-polling the entire community, and he’s not trying to ensure that people come back, at least not directly.
Seems like FLG is focused on making the tournament as fun as possible for as many of the attendees as possible. Now whether or not you believe democracy is the best way to work this out, it wouldn’t have been put to the attendees if it didn’t have some level of support from Reece.
I think the community as a whole, is represented better through discussion with other tournament organisers, than through a poll anyway. As you point out, there’s nearly always going to be sampling issues.
What Reece has demonstrated, objectively, is that most of the attendees are interested in his proposal to amend invisibility.
@artfcllyflvrd you silly bum, if you’re the type of twerp who would actively vote to overpower their army instead of looking at it without bias and realizing it is a bad rule in it’s current form then I’m ok with you being kne of those people who passive-aggressively vote not to “come back” as you put it. If you dont like it get a refund, there is a list of people waiting in line for your ticket, ~68% of which can see and agree invisibility needed to change.
@ Tinbane
But those are exactly the points. And it doesn’t really achieve either. So I see very little point to it all other than pretense.
Again, I don’t have a problem with the change (although I strongly echo the sentiment that other things need changed far more).
But basing the decision on a vote like this isn’t helpful. The decision was forgone before the votes were ever cast.
I voted for changing Invisibility. I play Eldar, arguably the faction that can abuse it the most easily (although you could make a solid case for SM.)
Not everyone is purely self-interested.
Yeah, and Frankie votes not to change it and he doesn’t use it, so there are definitely some folks who vote with their conscious.
The survey doesn’t demonstrate objectively that more attendees are supportive of amending invisibility?
FLG have put up proposals that have got voted down in the past. You seem to be taking this pretty personally, basically arguing they should man up and just implement the rule through force of will. Presumably so you can argue they are being jerks, which is harder to do if they are being consultative jerks, right?
FLG have been doing this for a while. Getting feedback, and from all accounts putting on some of the best events anywhere in the US. They are selling out tickets, so presumably the fact that they ask what people want, and take it into account, works.
I can understand this might weaken your plans, but honestly, I don’t have much sympathy. Invisibility is bad game design. It’s frustrating to play against, regardless of what you are running. It doesn’t “fix” the balance between shooting and assault. And the lists that “rely” on it, are viable after this change.
@ Tinbane
I’m not coming, and have no skin in the game other than my involvement in the FAQ writing. I like Reece quite a lot actually. But I think it’s fair to point out that allowing people to vote on the rules of the game can be (and usually is) fundamentally flawed.
It would be like a high school class voting on whether the F students can take the A student’s lunch money. If the class has more F than A students the rule has a very high probability of passing. A voting majority is not equivalent to morality (or in this case what is best for the game/event/attendees/etc.).
And from memory, the only other issue really comparable to this one, nerfing the 2+ rerollable saves, did come down in exactly the same fashion. Most of the other votes are for things like points limits, number of formations, lords of war, etc where the impact on any particular army relative to the rest of the field is not so clear. And predictably, when a particular army is not targeted the will for changing the game is not nearly as strong.
And I’m not saying the vote doesn’t represent the will of the players going to the LVO. I’m saying the players will isn’t motivated by the best interest of the game, attendees, or future of the event. Or at least their perceptions of what’s good for the game etc. are extremely biased by whether they do or do not regularly play with invisibility. I don’t see how that couldn’t be the case.
Which is why the attendees can’t vote on whatever they like.
Reece decided that in his opinion, it was a change worth making. Now rather than impose that on his players, he gave them collectively, the option to agree or disagree.
You might be right, but I think many players would be voting for what they think is best, rather than what will advantage them the most. Who knows, it would be interesting to see the breakdown on who voted to nerf it vs who voted to keep it the same.
I doubt you’ll find it was only tau players that supported the change.
But that’s my opinion.
I voted no on the rule change simply because I thought voting on a rule change, after the rules came out, people had built lists, and the rule was assumed to be in operation from the start, was unfair and self-contradictory. In other words, the system was meant to create fairness, but only for the majority, which is unfair and oxymoronic. i think if frontline felt the rule was unfair, it should have been nerfed when the rules first came out. Not after people submitted lists for review, or after people spent time buying and play testing their armies.
Exactly. And easy to test, too:
Send out a vote asking “Should Wave Serpents be legal at the LVO?”
I assure you, they’d be voted down as well. As would any other suggested nerf that hits only a fraction of the armies, as an incredible majority of the players who aren’t affected by it will vote for it.
Kinda seems like common sense, which in turn makes it seem like you’re hiding behind the “democracy” of your voting system to give you an excuse to enforce changes you’ve already decided you want.
Leave my serpents alone. Good day, sir.
I said good day!
Well I hope you are going to nerf the five flying hive tyrant build. With out invisibility I wouldn’t have made it close last game.
It’s not really a logical argument to say one OP rule should be kept so that you can use it to counter a specific list that many people dont have a problem with. You still have two months to get your money back and let someone else play whose entire build doesnt depend on a single randomly generated power.
It’s not randomly generated for everyone… Or are you talking about something else?
Yeah, exactly. The slippery slope fallacy is usually the first response to anything like this and I tend to move past it as it is illogical. I understand the sentiment behind it, but it is not a real counterpoint.
Slippery slope actually is a logical fallacy. It’s based on the presumption that just because people can do something, that means they will. Frontline can get the leverage to ban certain things at their events. That doesn’t mean they arbitrarily will ban anything and everything. Not only does it have to get past their own filters, but the community has to back it as well. There are several layers of safeguards in place that don’t magically go away after this poll.
I have always read it as a fallacy, yes, but that the fallacy implies one thing follows another when they have no logical connection. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
However, you are correct in that we won’t go willy nilly all over the place changing rules for no reason.
I am disappointed that the rule was changed via vote as opposed to frontline just changing the rule because they thought it was fair. I am also disappointed that the change came at this time, as opposed to earlier. Everyone knew the rule was suspect, why wait until now to change it?
Putting this to a vote just invites controversy and invites people to use a system that, hopefully, was designed to ensure fairness in a way to gain an advantage. I highly doubt most of the people voting on this considered fairness, i.e. I doubt very many people who were planning on using the rules voted yes, and people who would have problems with the rule voted no. In the future it would be better if you just changed the rule. I should add that my list did intend to use invisibility in some limited context (be’Lakor casting it on another daemon prince dropping out of flight, perhaps once a game). Even though it is not game breaking to my list, directly, I voted no because i think voting on this is a terrible idea.
However, I should also add that I avoided using certain units in my list because of invisibility and planned around it. For example, I planned on getting some of the new rapier batteries with conversion beamers, but decided against it because it wouldn’t work. Instead, I purchased other models and made a list that would not be susceptible to the typical build using invisibility because I wanted to bring what I figured would be the counter meta. This comes after play testing, spending money ($320 on models) and more. Now I have to rethink things, which doesn’t sit well.
In the future, change rules because you think it’s fair. Don’t ask a bunch of competitive people whether a rule that they may or may not be using should be nerfed, because the vote won’t be about what’s fair it will be whatever people think will give them an advantage. Also, don’t make a change 2 months prior to. Some people have been planning their lists for months and this change is substantial.
Also, I think 5 hive tyrants, lance formations, wave serpent spam, drop pod spam, and flying circus’ are unfair. Let’s have a vote on that.
I voted no. And no I’m not bringing any pyschers. People are going to vote for their armies… and most armies don’t bring invisibility lists…
My bigger issue is that I don’t like tournaments changing core rules. You don’t like the game? Why are you playing it or running tournaments for it? Go write your own game. Don’t ruin mine.
And yes, I usually vote with my wallet and don’t play tournaments that change rules… but I’m already locked in with all my tickets.
Unbound?
If you hate tournaments that don’t just use the “base” rules (GWs own tournaments don’t even do this, BTW) then I’m not sure why you signed up for a FLG tournament.
“base” 40k, is not a competitive game.
You speak as if invisiblity is now powered by rainbows and farts, when it is still incredibly powerful as a WC2 spell. And when you playtest you should proxy, not spend $320 and whine about it.
You assume I wasn’t proxying, troll. I actually was. If you think it’s wrong to assume that the rules aren’t going change prior to the event, by a vote no less, then we have nothing in common.
Of course the rules will change before an event, we have new rules coming out every single week. That is inevitable. Had this happened in a GW FAQ (if they actually wrote them, anymore), the end result would be no different. A vote is the most fair way ask our players what they want. You are free to disagree with that, of course.
Would you like some cheese with that whine?
Frontline is in the business of running events that are fun to play at, and they so they ask their community “how do you have the most fun playing”. People like it when they get to give feedback, and they don’t like it when they don’t get a say in arbitrary nerfs. Hence, the vote.
And dont try and lay the blame for spending money on models on them. That’s some entitled bullshit there. Invisibility was such a problem you spend a few hundred dollars to counter? Well, invisibility is still in, it’s just a little more balanced. Your models are still perfectly useable, and it’s not like everyone else going isn’t constantly debating what armies to bring. Get over yourself.
I think you assume a lot of things from what I am saying, probably because, while you like to point out logical fallacies, you like to throw straw-men when you can’t deal. You should look that fallacy up. You know…it’s when you take an argument, weaken it, deal with the weakened version, and then claim victory.
The only one being presumptuous, is you. Then again, I can understand why you wouldn’t understand why someone would buy more units to counter. It’s because you can’t after your codex got nerfed with no new options. Don’t get testy because you can’t sympathize.
Invisibility wwas never that powerful, it was just combined with other powers to make it more powerful
I wish you had also included a poll asking who is planning on running a list that rely’s upon invisibility or would be significantly impacted by it’s change. Even though people could just lie about it, it would be fairly obvious who was full of shit after the LVO. I see how changing a specific rule that is widely percieved as the most broken rule in 7th seems like a safe bet, but i think it is the opposite of safe. Now that youve changed this one rule what about changing specific Detachments or combinations there of (5 Flyrants or Pacific Rim-job)? Make Chaos not suck? Stop Eldar from being complete BS? Stop tau from ignoring cover and intercepting whenever they eat burritos? What will you change next? I voted to leave invis alone even though i dont normally use it nor do i plan on running a list at LVO that will rely on it. However my experience with it was that when i needed it the most i would fail it on 6D, peril and lose it the first turn or have it blocked and then lose half my death-star. So im not sure its that unbalanced when you look at the warp charge and points investment in a non Eldar/Deamon list. Frankly it wasnt very fun to play people with because they complain or bitch about it while running 4 waveserpents. Ok so eldar just ignore perils? so lets just change that? As much as i like Democracy and voting i dont think this was a good choice, but i still plan on enjoying LVO and 40k in general.
Slipper slope fallacy.
I understand what you’re saying, but your couterpoint is illogical.
Reece, just because you claim something is illogical, doesn’t make it so. People are right to question how you choose to address perceived rules issues and “balance.” Comparing one issue that you chose to address to equally overpowered and unfun things you chose not to address is not illogical. You obviously have no requirement to make these changes, but this isn’t an Oxford style debate. This is actual people who are actually impacted by your choice to change the rules of the game after you sold tickets to your event.
Well, if something is illogical it is, it’s not a subjective thing. 2+2=4.Logic in rhetoric isn’t that exact, but it is close if you do it right. But, I understand your point. We do have a methodology for implementing changes when and if we do so. For one, again, this isn’t my choice as an individual. I know it looks that way as I am the spokesperson of the event, but that simply isn’t true. For two, we do have requirements for the changes, it isn’t arbitrary. And yes, the rules do change after tickets go up for sale. Whether by us (FAQ updates, mission changes, rules addendum, etc.) or new GW material, FAQs, codex updates, etc. this is a moving target. It just feels different because we implemented it. If GW had changed this in an FAQ, for example, everyone would just deal with it, you know? The difference here is that the community made the choice.
Lets vote on summoning next
Despite it’s hyped up boogeyman status, Inivisbility was not and will never really be a problem due to the randomness of the psychic phase. I had it in my list to make things a bit more survivable, but as soon as I saw you were even considering the nerf, I removed any idea of having it as an option from my mind because it is now overcosted and pretty useless for a Daemon Prince who almost always got hit on 5s anyways. I still plan on coming to the LVO and expect to have a good time, but I’m pretty disappointed in how this went down. It’s obvious that you wanted it nerfed to begin with, it’s not like there was any call from the attendees to do it until you proposed the idea. It’s easy to see why people would vote to change it as well, because if they weren’t planning on rolling on telepathy at all or don’t have access to psychic powers, then there’s no reason to give others an advantage. Rather than have this biased facade of democracy, I would’ve had a lot more respect for the decision had you just done it on your own rather than put it to a poll. If anything, the poll just makes me more disenchanted with my peers’ lack of empathy and inability to think about anybody’s experience other than their own. Rather than have to think about strategizing a win against someone who gets an invisible unit SOMETIMES, let’s just remove the threat completely and make it easy on myself.
Why don’t you just do me like Kunta Kinte and chop of my foot?
– the Fresh Prince
You are throwing around some pretty heavy accusations here, Greg. You are essentially saying that we are liars. Are you sure you want to go that far? That is pretty heavy.
I am open with my biases, and yes, i don’t like Invis. I also hate CtA allies, but the majority of players wanted it so we went with it against my will. I have a lot of examples like that. Some of the other decision makers on the team don’t like certain aspects of what we do, either. But, we compromise. This was one of them.
You may disagree with the process (I for one, believe in democracy), but please don’t throw my or our team’s ethics out of the window along with that judgement.
I’m sorry if you feel like this was a personal attack or accusation of intent. I respect TO’s and don’t envy their position in having to make these decisions, but whether it was intentional or not (again I’m not implying that it was nor am I calling you a liar) this poll was decided from the start. You’re a very humble guy if you don’t acknowledge how much weight your own personal opinion can influence perception in this forum. While, I too, want to believe that not everyone will vote in their own interest, human nature and scientific study says otherwise. The only reason one would vote against themselves is either through belief in sportsmanship above all (unfortunately not as common as I’d hope in our community, but I’ll always give the benefit of the doubt when across the table from someone) or ignorance.
The whole ‘I believe in democracy’ statement itself is a red herring, because removes any acknowledgement of error in the poll itself. Coming from a background in research, it’s almost always apparent when a study has variables that are highly subjected to bias. To sum it all up, if you really did want to poll people to make this a democratic decision, I’m just disappointed that more thought wasn’t put into how to create a method of implementing ithat would cut down on the number of variables whch could be influenced by personal bias rather than a sense of fairplay.
Thanks for clarifying. I am glad you don’t think I am a liar =)
Well, given the means available to us, polling works. I did not know how this poll would go and yes, we do know that we influence people when we say one thing or the other, and I do use that. However, I always try to present my own bias, too, so that what we do is transparent.
If you have methods for gathering data in a better way, I am all ears, honestly. I use the tools available to me and try to do it in as fair a way as possible.
You could have sent out a poll asking people to list the top 5 issues to game balance that they feel need to be addressed. Of course, that would take some work on your part to collate the results and then you’d have to give consideration to what the options for the most commonly complained about issues are. Then you’d have to see how the game balance would change if you made those changes. Instead, you chose an easy way to solve the “most complained about” rule in the game. Just because people actively complain about something does not make it in need of changing, nor does it represent everyone’s concerns. How many people haven’t emailed you about wave serpent spam or Ad lance, because they didn’t think removing a unit from the game, or ret conning the rules for the serpent shield were even an option?
You make some valid points. The methodology could be better, and so could have the timing. However, I didn’t take the “easy way out,” or at least, that is not what was going through my head when we presented the poll this way. We did not know what the result would be. It was a mystery to us. I get surprised by the poll results all the time. This specific time it went the way I hoped it would (I don’t like invis) but I did not know in advance what everyone would want.
Serpent Shields and AdLance are hot button issues at present but we try to avoid targeting units, but try to look at things that impact all armies equally, or as close to equally as we can get. Invis is a power that any army can get through allies (although not every army takes it, of course) and so this is more of an even application than say, targeting just the Serpent Shield would be.
Thank you for allowing our opinions to be voiced and the discussion. I admit that there is no true way to eliminate bias, but I do stand by my disappointment in how this went down. I understand that this is a passion for you all and that other more important things prevented you from addressing this sooner than you did. Nobody is perfect and if we don’t make mistakes, we can’t learn from them. I only hope that this may have changed your approach to tackling these types of decisions in the future, if only to consider a method of polling that takes more into account than the poll taken for invisibility.
I do have a lot of respect for the rules council as it was explained to me by current and former members, and appreciate the effort all of you put in to make time to meet and discuss these issues that affect our community. I guess it’s my confidence in that decision making process that makes this poll all the more difficult to accept as fair. To make a relevant, though possibly extreme comparison, the legislative branch is divided into the house and senate because of the acknowledgement that ‘majority rules’ is not always in the best interest at the expense of the minority.
C’est la vie, sir. I hope there won’t be any bad blood because of any unfortunate, unintended offenses and again, want to thank you for the discussion.
No bad blood at all. And we are open to learning new ways to gather data and make choices for sure. It’s tough as do we conduct an exit poll and make the choice in advance form the last event? What happens if something new pops up between events (which does happen, of course),then what? If we do an exit poll and change something and then a new player coming into the event didn’t get a say on the issue. Every way of approaching things has pros and cons.
We absolutely do listen, though. We appreciate your input.
I was typing the last post before I saw your reply. I’d be happy to help suggest alternate methods of polling and will definitely give it a look and have some examples of certain research methods that apply to our community’s make up when I see you in a few months. All the best and happy holidays.
I would genuinely love to hear them.
So given a few days to think of a starting point, when polling a small sample of peers and wanting to eliminate bias as much as possible, the solution lies in the poll structure and question construction. Within your group of TOs, go over possible reasons why people would or would not support changing a rule and weigh them accordingly, which gives you more control, but can still completely be honest with yourself in weighing the reasons why people vote the way they do. It’s also important to include the math hammer involved in the rule, so those who happen to be burned by it regularly can see if it really is because the statistics are too favorable or if their opponent’s just happen to roll really well by chance.
For example:
Should we nerf Invis from this (insert rule and statistical analysis of rule from ability to use to general effectiveness) to this (insert similar description for newly proposed rule change).
Yes. (Sends you to the poll for reasons)
No. ” ”
Don’t care. ” ”
Secondary poll.
Why did you choose this? (Pick the one that most describes your feelings)
– because my army can’t take it
– because it’s too powerful
– because rule changes are not okay
– etc.
Based on the options, weigh them accordingly (1 being a reason that you wouldn’t agree with as being a legitimate reason, higher if you feel like it’s one that’s perfectly logical, sprinkle in a few that are a bit of both and score them as intermediates) Do not include a choice of ‘other.’ While some may be able to ID which ones you would weigh more heavily than others, providing more options that are likely to be reasons for saying yes or no, can decrease the likelihood that it can be gamed. Additionally, you can have them weighed differently between 2 or 3 ‘judges’ so multiple schools of thought can be considered. Once tallies are done between the 3 ‘judges’ methods of scoring, those 3 are subjected to a majority rules vote which would be the final deciding factor. Yes, it requires more work to construct and tally, but it could also be more representative of the group being polled. A similar, more familiar form of this system would be college football rankings where various polls come up with different rankings regularly based on their make up and scorjng criteria.
You can also have those being polled rank the secondary poll questions themselves from 1 to X number of questions based on how strongly they feel about one reason compared to another. This would also provide numerical value to each answer which is then subjected to your own rankings accordingly. Again, more math and more work, but it is another method of polling that can provide data which provides more information for basing your decision off of compared to the simple ‘yes, no, maybe so.’
I’m not sure exactly what biases you want to address. I mean, Reece is pretty open about his opinion, but as pointed out, he doesn’t carry everyone else. There’s a good history of people disagreeing and voting down his suggestions.
What variables are you trying to control? Because honestly, there isn’t an objective answer. If the rule stays the same, I’d still play at LVO. If the rule changed, I’d still play at LVO. And I play a faction that has more reason than most to use invisibility, and I used to use it quite a bit in lists.
Negativity bias, for one. Whether it was through personal experience, reading a batrep, or from watching a video, there are numerous accounts of what would be considered case studies that show a scenario where invisibility has tipped the scales in favor of someone who used it, but in my experience, it is just as likely to be ineffective.
By presenting the poll the way it was presented, it is unintentionally seen as a problem that is rampant enough to address, but the data regarding what is required to effectively utilize the power to begin with was left out. First, unless you’re Belakor or Loth, you have to roll the power, with Tiggy being the next more likely to get it with his ability to reroll powers. Next, you have to commit an X number of WC dice to increase the likelihood of casting it, which any psychic heavy player will tell you, comes at a cost to the effectiveness of the rest of your list because you risk losing more options by committing more of your dice to Invis. There is also the increase in likelihood that you will perils while throwing more dice, followed by the 66-84% chance of suffering the penatly for that perils. All these hoops to jump through and yet, because this is a dice game, your opponent still has a chance to counter it by denying the power or mitigating it completely with hot dice or weight of attacks.
I don’t understand why something with so much uncertainty was deemed necessary to nerf when there are a number of cases that are also perceived as OP which are a lot more consistent in their effectiveness in comparison. I wouldn’t vote any of those to be nerfed, much like I didn’t vote for Invis to be nerfed out of respect for the game where we’re supposed to think our way around problems within the restrictions of the rules rather than change them at our own convenience. You picking up what I’m puttin down?
Sure. But take a step back, this isn’t a scientific or statistical poll.
I agree, as far as experimental design goes, it’s a crummy design. But it doesn’t have to stand up to that scrutiny.
Reece posited that the power is a bit much / not fun. He then asked every attendee to vote on it. It does a great disservice to everyone voting, to suggest they are unduly influenced by Reece, when they vote. And historically, other rules changes that Reece has pushed MORE emphatically, haven’t gone through.
At the end of the day, each person is being asked to comment on an aspect of an event they wish to partake in. The guidelines you are talking about, generally exist because you are polling randomly selected individuals, about something they probably don’t care a great deal about, and then extrapolating out onto the population.
In this case, you are asking a group of people, who by the very nature of qualifying, are likely to have an opinion, and a relatively informed one at that. And you are asking them to rule on an effect, that will apply to an event they care about. Now, based on past performance, I’d have to say that LVO/BAO attendees tend to be conservative (they don’t favour changes from the generally accepted standards, except with a significant need).
So, there’s no extrapolation. There’s no scale, it’s binary. There’s no suggestion effect (it’s a binary answer to a set question, not one where they fill in their own answer). It’s inherently less likely that it’s biased, aside from the fact that Reece has a public opinion. And honestly, just like in a democracy, that’s just fine by me.
I see where your concerns are coming from, but honestly, I don’t think Reece rocked the vote on this one, especially not with the huge margin. I think most players just don’t like invisibility. Hell, I used to use it (and could still), but I think it spoils the fun of the game.
All very good points. I also use it occasionally as well, but by no means abuse it. While I do want to give the benefit of the doubt to those who participated in the poll and I do give people the benefit of the doubt when personally interacting with them, this community does have a mob mentality that tends to ebb and flow at the drop of a hat. Every release of rules from GW and the following reactions to them are indicative of that, but perceptions do change with time.
In regards to the sampling method and random polling, these confirmational and social biases exist within smaller, specialized samples as well, if not more frequently when they are polled for common misconceptions. For example, the bandwagon effect is more common within a group of peers than it is amongst a random sample.
But this is all detracting from my overall point.
1. I gots the feel baddies because this seems like it’s just a metaphorical band aid for a larger problem that requires major surgery.
2. I’ve acknowledged my own bias and will always play within the rules set by a TO, but am more likely to respect decisions based off of my trust in the TO’s intentions compared to that of the “mob’s.”
3. I at least hope that steps can be made to create a better method for collecting data than this attempt. It would require more investment in time and resources to implement, but if you want to base a decision off of more than just ‘majority rules’ it’ll be worth it.
My personal opinion is that it’s a TO proposed fix, that has been ratified by the attendees. I agree, it’s a band-aid solution, or at least, it won’t fix everything. But I think that’s a much larger problem, which needs a much larger solution.
Who knows, maybe FLG will run two championships at the LVO next year, one on the current format, and the other on one with a heap of fixes. We’ll see. It would certainly be interesting to compare sign-ups.
“overcosted and pretty useless”
This hyperbole is worse than Hitler. Worse than TEN Hitlers.
Lol
LOL, I’ll admit it was extreme. But in the case of CC, getting hit on 5s for a unit that has a higher than average WS does make the utilization of invisibility a bit redundant.
It means you’re getting hit on 5s rather than 6s; that certainly is a significant change, but given that Invisibility was the ONLY effect in the entire game that made that happen, and also that reducing you to WS1 was how Invis worked last edition, it doesn’t seem horribly unreasonable.
Good point.
Also, I like the templates/large blast change. From a narrative perspective, it just doesn’t make sense that weapons which can ignore LoS or indiscriminate templates are blocked, but I can fire my sniper weapon at an invisible unit?
Narrative should never take precedence over the rules… but it is nice when they line up a bit…
Of course the most narrative defying thing in the game right now is toe in cover for Gargantuans, or cover at all for flyers… My Flyrants demand I keep silent on those though 😉
Another way of looking at it: By doing this there is now (presumably) a rough consensus behind the scenes that it needs changing AND a large majority of the only relevant sample audience thinks the same thing.
Or maybe it was put to a public vote precisely because there was split over which way to go, as a tie-breaker of sorts.
Who knows? But it certainly can’t hurt to have a public vote factored into the equation.
it negates the whole purpose of that power.
They might as well just have banned the power.
People think the hitting on 6’s is the reason the power is OP and it might be but switching it to 5’s would not really hurt the power much.
But allowing the unit to be hit by Blasts and Templates, now that really just negates the power altogether
So your argument here is that being hit by Flamers and Templates negates the power? Meaning it does nothing else?
That is obviously a rhetorical question, but the intent is to show that you are using hyperbole here to try and justify an overreaction. I am not attacking you, you are free to dislike that if you choose, but it always irks me when people use false arguments.
My arguement is that the very heart of the power is to make units snap fire at the invisible unit.
This change does not simply tone it down, it completely changes it into a sort of reverse markerlight.
but my opinion is my opinion, it is neither false nor fact, just my opinion.
The heart of the power, is that it makes your unit harder to hit.
They’ve simply changed the implementation. In any real terms (ie running the numbers, and in game effect) the changes just reduce the effect of invisibility.
ok, lets run the numbers.
(excluding the occasional lucky blast scatter or the even more rare position of an invis unit caught between target and shooter with a template weapon)
What are the chances of hitting an Invis unit with a blast/template before the change? a big fat ZERO, you couldnt even fire them at them.
That is not “hard to to hit” that is outright protection against blasts and templates.
Now post change, what are the chances of hitting an Invis unit with blast/templates?
Well for templates, if they are in range, it is 100%
They went from ZERO to HERO in one Vote.
As for blasts they have a 1/3 chance for a Direct Hit on the Scatter Die, that is 33% and if the the arrow is rolled, there is a still an additional chance of rolling low on the 2D6 and still hitting some of the target unit.
That is a HUGE change, so much so that I would venture to say it is a new power altogether.
That’s looking at a subset, sure. I agree it’s going from zero to better than 1/3 chance of being hit by a blast.
I guess it’s your opinion whether it’s a new power, or a change to an existing one.
But from my perspective – you cast invisibility, you are now harder to hit (except for templates). Before the change, you cast invisibility, and you are much harder to hit (sometimes impossible to hit).
Well really the only impact this has is on CS[M/D] with Bel’akor and to a little extend the SM Char which is not that great at casting it reliable for several consecutive turns.
That said CSM have no mega powerful deathstars you could cast this on. Neighter have CSD all killing deathstars. Sure 20 khornedogs are great with invis but they are decent without and if you see how much of the army you have to commit something like this to its far from overpowered.
I can see that hitting with blasts could be good but it should just full scatter. Also flamer templates should hit.
With this change Bel’akor will just not be worth its 350 points. sure shrouding is good too but I don’t want to be hit on 5’s with him in melee with a that expensive that fragile model so in a world with knights ubber big templates and torrents this guy just dropped his tier from very good to painfully expensive for what he can do.
As you said by your self its not because its to strong it is because people think its unfun to play against. A lot people think summoning is unfun because it can bring you a points advantage and while its nowhere near unfair in a world with gravstars, jink ignoring rapid fire tanks, and said ubber templates the argument ist still the same: Some armies can’t do shit about it.
So some armies can’t do shit about Invis and Summoning. Some can’t do shit about Baneblades because they like to play infantry and boom you get an apocalyptic blast in your face which makes a lot of Infantrie choices plane bullshit. And that baneblade is not the strongest here.
So is it unfun to play against invis? Yes it can be very unfun if you have a huge load of blast/template weapons and then you can’t do anything about it. Is it to strong? Nope not really we see loads of tournament builds winning without it and no winning with it.
Is it unfun to play against 6 Waveserpents? Yes it is because it is amazingly powerful. Can you do something about it? Yes if you play SM and Sicarans. Can every army reliably do something against t without sacrificing so much that it can’t win against anything else? Nope. Its tournament winning.
Long story short:
Do a poll for waveserpents
Do a poll for summoning
Do a poll for adamantite lances
I bet you get similar results (though I don’t consider the later 2 out of balance)
The end of this post x1000. I’ll still vote no for any of the changes to rules because doing otherwise would be hypocritical, but I bet you $20 that they all get voted to be nerfed if you come up with a way to neuter them similar to invisibility.
The sad part is Greg they probably wouldn’t be nerfed because of the bias created from this discussion. People would vote to keep them to ‘show’ people like you, chubby, and me to show us how we are wrong. Hooray for democracy.
Way to go Reece… so glad to see you guys go in this direction. This is exactly what GW keeps telling everyone to do… alter things to suit your gaming environment. I hope to get a tourney scene going in my area and will DEFINITLEY be implementing the BAO/LVO rules. Thanks for getting out in front of things as always… FLG leading the pack!
There needs to be some consistencey from tourney to tourney, otherwise no one is going to attend your event unless you publish your 40 pages of house rules and faqs. Doing that could also discourage some players from coming…if only the company that made the game could put out a decent set of rules and codexes lol. Wyrd, Privateer Press, and Corvus Belli don’t seem to have a problem of the magnitude of what is facing GW’s let it all in its the wild west if miniature gaming mentality.
Thank you, sir.
I agree with Bob playing against 6 wave serpents and two wraith knights plus one wwp is not very fun. In the few test games 5 flying tyrants is definitely not very fun. Most armies don’t have enough sky fire to put any kind of serious pressure on them. Why should they be included. Plus the damage output is ridiculous. I guess two months from the tourney I can start rebuilding my army…..
Think of al the fun you will have rebuilding your army because of this nerf…that is fun in the how GW views the hobby…players spending money on their products. I wouldn’t worry about it too much some stuid datalsate will come out the night before the cut off for list submission and the winner of the LVO will be whoever can put that garbage together the fastest.
I wanted to give a shout out to Neil from the 11th company…if tourneys outside the westcoast ever want to draw attendance, there needs to be some movement to a tournament standard with cut off dates for content.
Do you honestly think someone would have to totally rebuild their list because of this? I genuinely don’t.
I am sure that is hyperbole I was just angry after I was finally able to come up with a list and now I have to reconfigure it. But I do definitely need to rebuild my army to take into account the flying tyrants. I feel many people are going to be in for a rude awakening when they come up against this type of list.
Well, the change to Invis doesn’t do much vs. Flyrants, really, unless you are really vulnerable to the eGrubs? They still hit you with their shooting the same as before.
But, yes, I agree that Flyrant spam is going to be brutal. I know a lot of Ork players around here are going to be running a number of Traktor Kannons for just that reason.
Yes, I am in that exact situation. I have spent 2 months painting an army that relies on getting my seeker star across the board without taking a ton of casualties. Even with invis, my list is mediocre. Did you really think that making this change wasn’t going to have a profound effect on a handful of players? I saddens me that you didn’t consider how this affected your attendees holistically and downplay the impact on the handful of players that take Be’lakor.
Punchdub, I empathize with your situation, genuinely. I do wish this would have been taken care of sooner, been meaning to do it for a while now but things have been really hectic. From your perspective, I understand that you are upset and you are justified in that.
We didn’t present this option in order to hurt you specifically, I hope it doesn’t come across that way. This was more in response to seeing things like LoW going Invis and how incredibly unfun that was. A majority of players find the mechanics of Invis unenjoyable to game against. We tried to even that out a bit.
I hope there are no hard feelings as this was not personal at all. We appreciate your feedback, though, so thanks for taking the time to write in.
Poor be’lakor.
This really sucks.
This was incredibly unfair, poorly targeted, and unprofessional. A professional organization forms a competition committee and agrees upon the rules beforehand. Privateer Press doesn’t let its players vote on whether or not they want to allow Bradigus.
You have sold me a ticket to your event, and then let all my opponents weaken my army before we even get to the table. That is bush league.
If you think something is wrong with the game, you devise a rules change, test it for balance, and implement it yourself. You don’t let the clueless masses decide what is and isn’t okay.
This.
Yup. I feel for your Slaede. Felt unfair to me too, and I’m not even running psychers.
On the larger tournament front, my bigger issue is how every tournament seems to be radically different from the next and I’m constantly having to retool and rejigger my armies for EVERY TOURNAMENT.
I mean I get it, this edition is especially retarded in that they gave us two totally different mission tracks and blew up the four org which basically felt canon at this point.
But I’ve been playing in tournaments since RT and the tournament scene has never been this fractured. So it’s bad enough that we have radically different missions and force orgs, but now we are changing core rules.
It’s hard enough to just keep up with the rules at the rate they are releasing them. I’m afraid that this is just a slippery slope where we now need to start memorizing in different rules per tournament as well on top of rule interpretations.
Is it me or does ETC seem to be much more organized and excepted than anything going on is the US on the tournament front…
I can’t wait to see the ETC take on basegate…I can’t wait for all of the armies to get pulled for not having models on the new larger bases.
I can tell you with certainty we will never require folks to rebase entire armies to play in our events. We will just allow either base size as legal.
I agree most U.S. tourneys are pretty laid back with regards to this rule, it becomes tough though when building new stuff,because you never really know what you should do for the future…i.e. if I had some old tactical marines I was going to paint up as blood angels. I would hate for the winds of change to shift and have to rebase….I think most people who go to the ETC know what they are getting themselves into.
Fair enough. I just can’t imagine telling someone they have to rebase their entire army that they’ve been building over 10+ years. Feels so wrong.
The ETC is very organized, it;s a single event. However, there is just as much variety in individual events there as there is here. And, I agree that uniformity would be awesome, however, each TO is the captain of his or her own ship and likes to do things the way their players ask them to. We’ve been aiming for uniformity for years, it is no easy task. We finally have some traction with our format being so popular, but it is a long, slow process.
It’s not clueless. People knew EXACTLY what they were voting for. They don’t want to go against invisible units (because they’ve won a lot of tournaments lately, let me tell you).
So of course those people voted against it, because they don’t use it. Let’s have a vote banning all melta-guns. I wonder what Orks, Nids, Necrons, etc will vote. Then I wonder what all the melta-gun armies will vote.
This vote was rigged from the get go based upon player biased. But it was a cover for “well we got the players vote!” . So vote on more things then, and completely change the game design. You can’t only vote on what some people in a gaming group are bitching about. If you’re going to literally change the rules, then change more than just one.
I think saying a poll is rigged is perhaps not the right term. Rigged implies cheating. We simply asked a question to our attendees.
And we have changed more than one rule, we’ve changed tons, as has every other tournament. We don’t use unbound, we don’t allow unlimitted detachments, etc.
You speak of slippery slopes, yet you present them left and right. Yes, you changed how formations work for the tournament, because it TRULY has an impact on every single person. Nerfing invisibility, because FLG feels it is overpowered, is not the same comparison. In an earlier post you compare nerfing Eldar wave serpents to nerfing invisibility – saying they are not equal, because nerfing wave serpents is targeted to one army, as opposed to invisibility is not – which is clearly still a targeted nerf.
Rigged is actually exactly what I meant, although taken down to it’s base form of calling it fraudulent, it’s really what it was. There is a reason why they don’t allow electioneering near polling places.
How have I used a slippery slope argument? A slippery slope is saying that if X occurs, then Z must also occur, despite the fact that the two are unrelated. To my knowledge, I have not done this.
And again, feel free to throw this on us, or me personally, but this came about as a result of feedback from the community. It is not a personal crusade. I do dislike Invis, and I have been totally open about that, but we are not alone in this and many other events around the world have already implemented these changes.
And no, the poll was not rigged in that it was unethical. You may perceive it to be so due to voter bias, but in a democratic system, that is inevitable. However, it was not a fraudulent vote in a literal sense.
Neither NOVA nor BAO, the two biggest competitive tournaments on their respective halves of the country, was won by an army making any use at all of Invisibility.
NOVA had–I think–3 of the 4 semi-finalists with it. However, that is not the point of the poll.
The top four lists in the NOVA open were Eldar (with an Autarch), Daemons (with Tzeentch), Necrons, and Eldar (with a Farseer.) Only one of the four of them could even roll on the Telepathy table.
The Daemon player had Be’Lakor, I played him. He did use Invis. And the Eldar player also used Invis, he was a Danish player. So, 2 of the 4, I stand corrected.
Ah, did he? I must’ve missed that in his list. I knew Tony, the winner, and the Necron/Orks guy both didn’t.
Yeah, the Daemon player (Kelsey) smoked me, one of his Princes got Armorbane and just chop-chopped all of my knights in half. I was sad panda, haha.
+1 I think they should allow a full refund if you purchased your tickets and they nerf what you were going to be taking into oblivion. We call that ye olde bait and switch. Would you have bought tickets and reserved a hotel in advance if you knew you couldn’t play your army and you had to shell out several grand more just to show up with someint that doesn’t get roflstomped….I doubt it.
Thats a pretty significant change to the rules to make AFTER people have already bought tickets for your event.
No, it really isn’t that significant of a change, honestly. It is a relatively minor change to one power in a game full of rules and powers. It may feel like a big change to someone that relies on invis as a part of their strategy, but objectively for the big picture, it is not really a significant change. And yes, we do vote after people buy their tickets as then we can ask the folks that are actually going to the event what they want which is 100% logical, the tickets are fully refundable if people really think it will ruin their experience, and we are over 60 days out form the event which is plenty of time to adjust.
I am not attacking you personally, I hope it doesn’t come across that way, just explaining things form our perspective.
Good for your guys on refunding tickets after making huge changes to the rules! I got caught by NOVA, because they wouldnt refun my money after they made the shift to 7th and I didn’t want to go and play in a 7th edition tourney. I think that promotes alot of good will honestly. I basically made a $ 100.00 some dollar donation last spring, simply because I didn’t wan’t to pay thousands of dollars to go there and not enjoy it. I realy think any major changes like this or a new edition etc should allow for players to opt out. I really applaud that you recogjnized this Reecius!
If it isn’t that significant of a change, then why change it? Honestly. You seem to alter your stances and responses based upon what you think is what the person wants to hear. So far, you’ve stated no solid foundation as to why the vote even took place. Here you say it isn’t that significant of a change, so my question stays the same – why change it at all?
“Not so significant a change as to render a power/army useless” isn’t the same thing as “not significant enough to matter.” You’re conflating two completely different concepts there.
Fair play, that is a good critique. It does matter to the individual that uses Invis as a cornerstone of their game plan. I understand that.
The tickets are refundable, John. And no, this is not a bait and switch, you may want to look up what that means. A bait and switch would be a situation where we sell one thing and give you another. That is not the case, here. We are making this change 2.5 months out form the event, stating it quite clearly and allowing people to get their money back if they are that upset. That is, definitely, not a bait and switch.
I think my bait and switch reference was more to my experience with NOVA…I bought tickets for a 6th edition 40K tournament and ended up with tickets to a 7th edition tourney. If we get into semantics…I gues we could parse it as I bought tickets to a 40k tournament, but if that is the case, then you would likewise have to reason that no one should cry foul if you show up for the event and it became a 40k second edition tourney.
GW and their insane release schedule (and inability to create balanced rules) really is to blame. I think I have commented on this several times, but you do a great job fighting the stuid that is constantly pouring our of GW…utlimately I think the fight is unwinnable, because they just keep upping the ante and the speed of their releases (inlcuding the digital data slates).
Fair enough. I am sorry to hear that. But yeah, we make it easy on our attendees. We offer a 100% money back guarantee on the tickets up until 30 days out form the event. We understand that shit happens, I have missed events, too. Funny, I had to miss NOVA one year also, and didn’t get a refund.
We try our best to thread the needle with all the rules and trying to maintain balance, but it is hard. Thanks for the acknowledgement.
2 months, during which we have the holiday season. Just because you’re willing to refund people’s money doesn’t mean that you didn’t sell them one thing and then change it after the fact. Does it only seriously effect a handful of people? Yes, but for those people it is a very significant change.
Change is inherent in this game, new things have been introduced into the game on a weekly basis sense we put tickets up for sale. Should we not allow any of that as then we would “not be delivering what we sold?” It is a rhetorical question of course, but where do you draw the line? What is GW had changed invis with an FAQ in the same time frame? How would that be different?
Slaede, I understand you are upset, you’ve been extremely vocal about that. You play Daemons and Invis is a main part of your strategy, I get it. However, please stop with the insults. You realize that by calling your peers clueless masses that you include yourself in that statement, right? By your own logic, I shouldn’t listen to what you say, either.
And of course we listen to our attendees, lol, who else would we listen to? People that aren’t coming to the event?That’s illogical and bad business.
Again, I am sorry that you are upset about this, but lay off the vitriol, please. You can express your opinion clearly without it.
I do include myself in that statement. I do not do enough playtesting to know what is over the top and what isn’t. I am not qualified to determine what is and what is not OP. To do so requires lots and lots of playtesting among high level players that few outside of maybe Team SG and yourselves perform.
Fair enough. I understand that you are mad man, and if I were in your shoes I can’t say I wouldn’t feel the same. We do playtest the shit out things we do, and we only propose changes like this when there is a lot of feedback on the topic. You are right in that it should have been done earlier, but I have been stretched thin on time and it got pushed back a bit.
I hope you still have a great time at the LVO (which I am willing to bet you will) and I will buy you a beer at the event and we can have a non-internet debate! haha
I don’t drink, but I’ll see you there. And I’m not mad, so much as annoyed. I’m going to have to put the Grimoire on Be’lakor if I send him against a Knight since the Knight already needs 5’s to hit him, and shrouding on the Hounds to tank the double battle cannon. It’s a chump nerf.
I just want you to stop taking polls!
Haha, fair enough! I like polls because it shows us what the majority of folks want (biased or not biased) and it helps us to make informed choices. I can see how from another perspective it may be annoying.
And I will just drink two beers then, one for each of us!
So the way I view this vote:
“Do you play with invisibility?” = Keep it the same
“Do you play without invisibility?” = Nerf it
I’d love to see the players that use invisibility that voted for a nerf, and the players without it that voted to keep it the same.
I have a new vote I’d like:
Lets raise taxes on the poor, and lower taxes on the right. I bet I can predict the outcome of that vote based upon the incomes of the people that vote!
Please keep politics to private conversations.
And while I understand your argument, the fact that we had the I don’t care vote, and it was exercised, shows that not everyone voted simply in their own self-interest.
I… I don’t even know what to say to this. You feel that because that option was available, no one would have artificially changed their answer in order to no have to fight against an army that can reliably get invisibility?
Please re-do the poll, with these options:
Does your army use invisibility? Y/N
Do you want invisibility nerfed? Y/N
Then we’ll see the true spirit behind the votes.
I am not saying it is all or nothing. That was not my point. What I was trying to express is that the fact that not everyone voted yes or no shows definitely that not everyone voted out of self interest.
However, how many folks did I can’t say, we don’t have that data.
However, to get to your point, does it matter if the people that don’t use Invis don’t like it? We did the same thing with the 2+ reroll and had the same reaction. Those that use it want it, sure, but does that mean that if others don’t want to play against it they should be ignored because of that? Are you suggesting that only those that use it can vote on it? That is illogical.
What we have proven here, is that the overwhelming majority of folks who are coming to the LVO wanted Invis to get toned down. That was the intent of the vote and that is what we got.
But if they’d done that, you’d just say that people lied about whether or not they were using Invisibility. You’re already assuming the worst about them, so why stop halfway?
>I’d love to see the players that use invisibility that voted for a nerf, and the players without it that voted to keep it the same.
Hey, it’s me, I’m that guy. And so are tons and tons of other people who are smart and honest enough to be able to assess their own army and say “this rule/unit/power is unfair” without having to rationalize things away.
Most of the actually-skilled players I know are able to look at a particular thing in the game and assess its balance and fairness. (That’s part of being good at the game, after all.) And most skilled players would like the game to be more balanced, not less.
Well said.
For what it’s worth I mostly play Necrons and I voted No. I considered the change too drastic.
Sure, fair enough- I can respect that opinion. I don’t think the matter is absolutely clear-cut and there’s certainly room for discussion about the hows and whys.
But that isn’t what most of these replies are about. Mostly, it’s people saying “YOU’RE JUST DOING THIS TO NERF MY ARMY” or “THIS IS INHERENTLY UNETHICAL AND REECE IS A LYING LIAR WHO LIES.” They’re not even trying to put out arguments about the suitability or unsuitability of the change, but rather reacting from a purely emotional standpoint about how the change feels _to them_.
Invis gets a vote but where the vote on Stomp being OP? Or Knights, or any of the other mentioned things in this game.
By editing the rules of the game you open up anytime door for all of the other rules to be changed. I’m disappointed that this was brought up in such a way.
What is perceived to be OP by some, is not by others. From your perspective this may seem strange or unfair, but form the perspective of a TO, this is one of the most common complaints we get and so we presented it to the community to vote on. As stated in other responses, Knights are an army, changing them is a change that impacts a minority of players, changing something like invis impacts all armies equally that have access to it. I personally, for example, love Knights and see no problem with them at all. However, you may disagree based on your experiences. We try to address issues like this only when there is a strong majority that want it to happen.
Now don’t get me wrong – my army does not rely upon insta Gizz to win and with that said Reecius is fooling himself if he really thinks this was a democratic decision – he has constantly whined all over the internets how unfair is Insta Gizz so there is lots and lots of him influencing the people voting. I have already had several friends tell me this morning they are dropping.
What is insta Gizz? Do I even want to know, haha?
And this was, by definition, a democratic vote. I don’t know what else you would call it.
And for your friends dropping, we are sad to see them go, but there is a long waiting list with people waiting for those tickets. They can email me and I will get them their money back, today.
But in a democracy it’s illegal to use your words to influence other people’s decisions, didn’t you know that Reece? it’s right there in the constitution.
Is that in the Constitution? I did not know that if so. And fair play if that is accurate, I definitely do use my words to influence what I believe is right or wrong. I am not always successful, though! haha
I think he’s joking.
The very point of democracy, is that you can make compelling arguments to sway others.
Ah yes, fair enough. It’s hard to catch the subtext in writing.
It is not really democratic since you have been so vocal on the internet against invisible. You are using the poll to justify your tyranny.
Tyranny? Hahaha, come on, now. Using the poll to justify my Tyranny…well, I will give you this, that is a first. I’ve been called a lot of things, but that is unique.
I had no idea of knowing how the poll would turn out. I can’t predict the future. It went the way I hoped, sure, and yes I expressed my opinion on the matter, but you are falsely looking at the conclusion and assuming I had control over it. Perhaps influence, yes, but not control.
I have wanted to implement other changes, too, but have failed, such as CtA allies. I argued for that, and lost. Oh well, life goes on, you know? And the fact that we voted at all clearly undermines an argument for Tyranny.
Reecius the Tyrant! I think t-shirts are in order. 🙂
Nice! Haha, the Tyrant of Baddab…or of Invisibility! lol
There have been quite a few where the result has been the opposite of Reece’s opinion. That’s why they run polls, instead of just doing whatever Reece wants.
You realise he’s not even playing in the tournament?
This is dozen blades from dakka Reece.. You can just ignore him and life will go on at probably a better clip
BBF and I are actually friends, he’s just venting at me at present in a rather snide way, but that is OK. It doesn’t bother me.
When’s the vote on nerfing the other broken crap that people spam?
I.e. Wave Serpents. Gonna nerf them, right?
No we are not changing Serpents. I know you are using hyperbole, but to give you a straight answer, there are a number of reasons why. For one, that is a targeted nerf to a single army. I am not saying that at times that is not necessary, but this is a rule change that impacts all armies equally (assuming they can get Invis, somehow). Plus, what is or is not “broken” is usually subjective. Finally, your argument is a slippery slope fallacy and illogical.
Why does everyone become a philosophy major as soon as debates come up.
The whole point of ZeroWolf’s post was a dig at you for only voting on what FLG seems to deem ‘over powered’. If you’re only opening it up to a single vote based upon that outcome, then you are presenting invalid (and extremely biased data). You’re quite literally dictating the outcome of the vote to be what you want it to be, by your ‘smear campaign’ against invisibility to begin with. Why not open up the voting what is deemed Over Powered to all the other things people bitch about in tournaments? Why just what FLG deems is ‘too broken’. If you were to open up this poll to a number of other things, you’d see they all end up with the same skewed results.
So, another counter point to your stance is that “nerfing wave serpents is a targeted nerf to a single army”, with the logic of saying that “[nerfing invisibility] impacts all armies equallty (assuming they can get invis, somehow)”. With your caveat, you already made the first portion of your statement illegitimate, because it indeed does not affect all armies, because not all armies can take invisibility. You countered your own argument, with your own argument.
I do not intend to sound like a philosopher (although I wouldn’t be opposed to it, either!), I just fall back on formal rhetoric because it is dispassionate and it works. I find that if you want to have a fair debate, using logic is the way to go.
The data is not invalid, I don’t see how you can draw that conclusion? What is invalid about it? Biased? Sure, all polls are. It is a legitimate vote by paying attendees to the LVO on a simple question. That is absolutely legitimate. You may disagree with the results, which is your prerogative, but trying to undermine the vote itself is not a good counter-argument in this case. There was an opinion poll and we got opinions.
And you are partially right that not all armies can take invis, however with allies, that is not totally accurate. However, I get your point. The difference here is that one is a specific change that does single out any individual army, the other is a change that (potentially) impacts most or all armies the same way. However, if you feel that my argument has been 100% undermined by the fact that some armies out of the box can’t get invis, then fine, that again is your prerogative and their is some validity to it, although I think you have to admit it is splitting hairs quite a bit.
At any rate, I don’t want this to devolve into a fight of some sort as I honestly don’t take this stuff personally. You can view this rules addendum how you choose, if it impacts your army I am really sorry for that. Hopefully we can agree to disagree and move forward.
Wrapping your response in fancy words makes it no less demeaning.
Illogical? Fallacy? The same could be said for your argument on invis. You simply don’t like it and put out an arbitrary vote that you knew would pass. You might as well have worded it as “Do you want your opponent to be able to use this particular strength against you?” OF COURSE they’re going to vote for whatever gives their cheesedick list more teeth.
I respect you, Reece. You’re the TO. You call the shots. We simply disagree on this.
I am sorry if it seemed like I was coming across as demeaning, I didn’t intend to.
I honestly had no idea which way the wind would blow on this one. I felt that invis would get shut down but not because I personally dislike it but because it can imbalance the game.
And no worries, I don’t take this stuff personally at all. I understand that folks care a lot about this stuff and can react strongly in the heat of the moment. No offense taken and I hope you take none, either. Agree to disagree and all that.
For sure, dude. I apologize for the butthurt. Lol
Is there a reason in particular why my post wasn’t deemed acceptable for this discussion? You’ve always said that a well worded discussion would be welcome, but seeing as my post is missing, it seems to be a bit more of the opposite.
You simply posted it before I got into the shop to approve it =)
No conspiracy here, good sir. I am not plugged into the internet 24 hours a day, despite what it may seem like at times, haha.
Thank you, Reece. I’m sorry for any insinuation of foul play. I’m just ignorant to how the process works when I saw that some posts are up that were made after I posted, I’m guessing a few people are automatically allowed to post after approval from an earlier discussion, which I don’t think I’ve participated in before.
Please don’t chalk up this flak you’re taking to be the rule of a ‘loud minority’. While I understand your desire to make as many people happy as possible for your event, which is entirely your prerogative and right, there was a better way to create a poll that influenced your decision making than the simple ‘check yes or no.’ I believe it was mentioned in another post that you could have broken down each vote further by army played or made it public for how each other person voted. Accountability can sometimes lead more people to being honest with themselves than a poll that literally has no negative consequences on what you’re bringing to LVO whether invisibility is nerfed or not.
It’s all good, sorry for the delay, you just posted your comment during the roughly 10 hours I am sleeping or at the gym, haha.
And perhaps gathering more data about the voters would have placated some folks, but in the end people still voted with what they wanted to see. How others interpret that data is their choice.
Thanks for sharing your opinions, though.
Are you people serious? Invisibility didn’t change at all vs most builds. Goddamn whining children needing a crutch to build a list instead of a real army. The only thing that “neutered” Invisibilty is that Guard can fucking shoot your shit or a guy with a flamethrower does what a guy with a fucking flamethrower would do and cook your panzy psycher ass. You want to be pissed about a nerf to psychers? Go look at the assassin book.
This is what Machiavelli taught me: Piecemeal changes will generate more ill-will (and discontent), over a longer period of time, than simply making the X number of changes the FAQ and/or Rules Committee believes are necessary for balance (where ‘balance’ = ‘rolling dice and watching your opponent pick up at least some of his models’?). It’s better (politically) to make all the changes at once so we can all get over our individual cases (and varying degrees) of butthurt and find something else to complain about.
He also taught me that giving ‘the people’ what they need is never better than giving them what they THINK they need. /wink
🙂
That old Machiavelli was a sharp cookie =)
But yeah, it may have been wiser to implement changes in advance but honestly the only reason this got delayed as long as it did is due tot he fact that we have been so incredibly busy.
That is no excuse.
Actually it is.
It might not be one that you accept, but actually, there is a heap of stuff that FLG can and has been doing, to make sure the LVO is a ton of fun for everybody attending. It might seem that this one rule change is most important to you, but honestly, if it had been run two weeks, or a month earlier, would it have made that much difference if the result was the same?
Reecius thinks Ad Lance is just fine.
Yes, I do. I played it at NOVA and found it to be really one dimensional. I don’t think it is that good, honestly. However, that is just my opinion. I also think Wave Serpents are too good and I think that MCs having a toe in cover and getting a save is lame when a Dread doesn’t. I could rattle off a long list of things I think are this or that, but what difference does it make?
From my playing experience… Toe in cover +shrouded on gargantuans or toe in cover on Flying MC’s, Wave Serpents, and Invisibility are all undercosted where available. As is re-rollable 2+.
Ad lance and toe in cover on MC’s without shrouding doesn’t bother me too much rules / point-wise. I have never played either list and found the Ad lance rule alone or the toe in cover alone was a problem.. EIther I could handle the list or I couldn’t.
I am annoyed by toe in cover as non-immersive in the general sense, as I am by walkers and MC.s having different cover rules.
I am curious to see how the 5 Flyrant (really, the 30 points for 2 troops thing) list will play out and make it into the “unbalanced” discussion. My guess is that it’s much ado about nothing, some armies will table you easily, and you’ll be at an amazing disadvantage against LoW, in objective missions, etc…
Doesn’t this change make Tau Marker Light significantly stronger against Invisibke units?
Only in regards to blast weapons. It changes nothing for units like Missilesides, etc.
Reecius, a serious question please. How will you handle any gear that increases BS when shooting. Does the inches reduce the base stat to 1 or does it reduce the final stat to 1. Like if I invis, can a Tau marker light then increase the BS of someone shooting at me?
It already could do this since marker lights worked for upping snap shot BS. The only thing that changes is blasts/templates can target now.
Precisely.
which is a buff to Imperial Knights against what is probably their biggest weakness.
i know it has been repeatedly said that this change affects all armies the same but it is nothing but a buff to Imperial Knights
Knights are still vulnerable to flyers. It’s going to be interesting to see whether space wolves have any impact on the Knight meta.
That would be an interesting thing to keep an eye on.
Flyers sure have been scarce lately.
So a model with very high weapon skill would gain no benefit from invisibility in melee? Weird.
I agree that invis needs some sort of reworking.
Maybe just change the name to shadow clone spell and have it play like the revenant Holo
Field except maybe 5 or 6+
In that instance, no, a high WS model would not gain the benefit of the “get hit on 6’s.”
So after thinking about this for awhile…
Next year, if you plan on doing “democracy rules polls”, you should post what the rules will be voted on before tickets are purchased and vote after tickets are purchased.
I’m sure players would get behind a player voted comp tourney if they know if that’s what it’s going to be. Maybe the results of the tournament might even take off and start a precedence.
The poll was obviously done with good intention, but the reaction shouldn’t be ignored.
At that point you could tackle a lot of the rule issues like do stomps effect units beyond combat, should we allow Str D weapons, forgeworld allowed, re rollable invulnerable saves, are relics in play, etc.
You are correct in this. I do wish we would have done it earlier. Although, the reaction may have been just as strong, but using different arguments to undermine the result.
You could have done it earlier – please stop with the lame excuses. The tournament is less than two months out.
It’s actually more than two months out, but Reece has already conceded he would have liked to have done it earlier.
The potentially necron release in January (which will effect LVO, if it’s before Jan 22nd or so) will probably have a bigger impact on most lists, than this change.
We’re actually MORE than two months out from the event, and while the excuse may seem lame to you, it is the truth. I do think we should have done it sooner though, I grant you that.
I got the dates confused with TempleCon. Still it’s not much notice. I’m guessing you waited so it wouldnt potentially Impact attendance.
You would be guessing wrong, actually. There was no reason for waiting. Well, I should say there was no intentional reason for waiting, it got put off longer than I would have liked due to my hectic schedule at present.
So some observations on the response:
1. Some people think the vote was rigged, despite Reece’s opinion not being backed up by many votes in the past.
2. Some people would prefer that a decision just be made, rather than allowing a vote. A decision was made, on the form of the change to the rule, and obviously whether it would be put to the vote.
3. Obviously there’s some strong feelings on this, as evidenced by the number of people who have replied many times in here, and that’s awesome!
But take a breath, and reassess the change. Is it really going to hurt you, as much as you feel it is? Give the other players some credit, and the benefit of the doubt. They probably just voted how they feel. Most players, actually aren’t massive jerks.
This can’t have been a surprise. Didn’t the other FLG tourney use the same rule?
Honestly I’m another player who plays tyranids and I voted to keep invis as it was. It was tempting to vote to benefit my army but overall I just wanted to be careful about going too far with house rulings.
Thanks for voting with your conscious.
The change to invisibility is perfect, ignore the haters. I hope other tournaments will adopt this same change.
Thanks, Nick.
Rules that annoy (me): FMC’s jinking while GLIDING (wtf?). Monstrous creatures getting a cover save with the tiniest part of their base in ‘area’ terrain. Vehicles able to drive to the upper levels of buildings (ruins). Invisibility. 2+ re-rollable saves. Necron ‘chariot’ rules. Serpent Shields (I hate ’em when I play against ’em). Imperial Knights (pretty much ALL of their rules smell like money).
I’m sure there are others (multicharges and combat resolution rules for combats involving multiple units).
Invisibility is neatly balanced by D-Stomps. With a nerf to Invisibility (removing the ‘snapfire’ stipulation), Imperial Knights will just Melta or Battle-Cannon those units to death.
If it goes to ‘hit on 6s’, the unit should perhaps also get stealth/shrouded? Otherwise, what’s really the point of being Invisible at all?
Yeah, I think it’s gone too far the other way with the change. Armies with a significant number of Templates and Blasts simply won’t care. 1/3 of the time, Blasts will not even worry about BS 1. With a WC 2 power, it would seem it wouldn’t worth the resource commitment against anyone other than WS spam Eldar.
I’m not in favor of changing rules for “balance” reasons, but I think a better change would have been to up its WC cost to 3. You keep it’s power, but up the chances that it will fail or cause a Perils.
We had considered going WC3, but unfortunately if you play a spchic spam army, it hardly changes anything. You toss a handful of dice at it, you are going to get it off.
It does hardly change anything if you can spam dice. However, why should that change not be utilized when very few lists can actually take advantage of that? It seems that you have decided against a change because of something that occurs very rarely. In that instance, you’ve gone from “we want to penalize across the board” to “we’re penalizing Daemons”. Realistically there is only one army in the game that can spam dice at a level where throwing 5-6 dice at something doesn’t use up half your pool and can guarantee Invisibility. So really, were talking only Be’lakor that can do what you feared with upping the WC to 3.
By selecting the one change over the other, you have done something very much like selecting one army (or unit) to penalize. I find that making minimal changes first is best.
You are jumping to conclusions here, but I can see how you got there.
First of all, not only Daemons can get auto-invis. Obviously Chaos can, too (but I assume you meant both), but also every Imperial army can, too, through Severin lloth. That is the vast majority of armies that will be at an event.
Also, you are arguing from the perspective that WC3 is an option, it is not. It was of course considered, but now you using that as a counterpoint to try and explain our intent, which of course is impossible to determine.
Third, if your strategy revolves around getting Invis off, you aren’t going to hold back half the dice, you throw all of them at it if needs be. This is a common tactic in tournaments, disregarding perils or even the death of the psyker in order to get the power off.
I think the disconnect is that you are assuming a relatively mild list using Invis to buff say, Khorne Hounds or something similar. However, what we’re trying to curb is the most abusive combos. The kind of thing that makes the game unfun. Imagine a Khorn Lord of Skulls Invisible the entire game? Or an Eldar Lynx? Or an Imperial Knight? Deathstars that are Invisible, etc.
That is what we’re attempting to curtail, and unfortunately some of the more tame units that use Invis get hit in this, too, which sucks.
But, again, Invis is still an amazing buff. It is just toned down to a level most folks would like to see it as.
How often do you see it happen that any of those units succeed 100% of the time on getting and manifesting Invisibility while simultaneously keeping the Psyker alive? What’s the cross section of tournament attendees that do that? How many armies of that type have won tournaments?
Fair point, it never succeeds 100% of the time, but, you can get into the upper 90% percent range fairly reliably.
As for the other data you are asking for, that is obviously impossible to determine. No one has tracked that over the spectrum of players so I can’t answer that.
As for if an army wins tournaments or not as the final determination of if something is broken or not is not really accurate for what we are doing, here. I mean, that is a good way to look at things, sure, but for example, AdLance, which people are really upset about at present, doesn’t win tournaments often but is still a bear to deal with sometimes. For me, it’s more listening to what people say, and seeing things that are abusive and unfun. What that is of course, varies form person to person though.
If it’s not too late, what are your thoughts on giving Stealth & Shrouded in addition to hitting on 6’s?
Do you seriously think that “only” forcing the enemy to hit on 6s is somehow not good enough, especially when Shrouding is right there in the same discipline?
You can already do that in the Telepathy school of powers, actually.
AbusePuppy: The difference in what you get for what you pay between the power in the rulebook and the proposed revision is, as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, significant. Blast weapons, in particular, go from not being useable at all to being completely unaffected. This is essentially an infinite reduction in Invisibility’s efficacy.
Before: ‘Invisible? Gah!’ Now: ‘Invisible? Where’s my blast template?’ /shrug
An infinite reduction in efficacy? Haha, first of all, what does that mean? Does it go negative? Does your opponent then get a buff? I am teasing of course, but you are using some extreme hyperbole, here. Blasts still scatter 2/3’s of the time at 2D6-1, which means a dramatic reduction in accuracy, but, they can still have an impact. Flamers work, yes, but that is one of the points of the change. You still get hit on 6’s for most shooting and in combat you are still much better defended. This is still an incredibly good defensive buff.
Well…isn’t any increase from 0 to 1 an ‘infinite’ improvement? /wink The hyperbole was intentional; if everyone else goes hyperbolic, I want to too.
I took the time to actually read the proposed change; it’s fine for what it is. 🙂
ALSO: ANTI-CONSPIRACY THEORIES GO!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hug0rfFC_L8
Lol, fair enough, you got me there! Nothing to something is an infinite increase.
Putin, Erm, I mean Reecius,
What was the point of this puppeteer election? You’re obvious for the change, and you held a biased, one-sider “vote” to some how provide you with proof that it was a good idea? Problem is, you don’t have enough data to make your “logic-based” decision.
It seems everyone that goes against your points of view is illogical and only presenting fallacies.
In the end, it comes down to it’s your tournament, you’ll run it how you want. Don’t hide behind the facade of this ridiculous poll.
I’m sorry, but WTF.
I know people touched by the MH17 tragedy, you fuckwit. What a horrible thing to say, so that you can get across how upset you are that people didn’t vote the way you wanted them to.
Actually, I didn’t vote and I’m not going.
I just disagree with the poll itself. Glad to see you’re so combative. However, my comparison to Putin was in the puppeteering of his leadership within Russian, not in regards to the MH17 incident.
I challenge you to find a single person to compare to in American history that doesn’t have some sort of skeleton in their closet – then use that to counter any reference to that person.
Next time you open your mouth, try to use a little more than shooting from the hip with your close minded assumptions. Also resorting to ‘fuckwit’ doesn’t really help your stance at all either.
Alright guys, try to keep it civil, please.
You may as well just go whole hog and compare Reece to Goebbels or Hitler. Your comparison was unnecessary, and frankly immature. The fact you can’t think of anyone you’d like to compare Reece with who doesn’t have “skeletons in his closet”, which I’m taking to mean, is responsible for mass killings, should highlight the absurdity of your argument.
Just to be clear, I didn’t think you were saying Reece was involved in protecting war criminals, and supplying them with material aid. I didn’t assume that was your intent. I object to you trivialising war criminals, by comparing them to someone who made a rule change, in a tournament, which you aren’t even attending.
Get some perspective.
You call my response immature after your tirade?
Cute.
I see other comparisons to Hitler by the way, please go fly off the handle up there.
Ha ha ha
I’m sorry if I used a big boy swear, but it doesn’t excuse the fact that you are a contemptible human being.
Alright guys, try to keep it civil, please.
Why are you still arguing this if you aren’t going? What’s your stake in it? And calling me Putin? Hahaha, come on, now. That is just stupid. What can you possibly expect to accomplish by doing that other than to make me not want to further engage you? Poor debate strategy, and actually, another logical fallacy on your part =P I am totally fine with people voicing their opinions here but all we ask is that you do so with respect. I am not calling you names, there is no reason for you to do so, either.
And no, not everyone that opposes my point of view is illogical, but some of you have been making illogical arguments. I point that out, because it is pointless to respond seriously to some of them as they literally don’t make sense.
And puppeteer poll? Not enough data? Hahaha, where are you getting this? We polled the people going to the event, they voted, we had no way of knowing the outcome, and this is what they wanted to see at the event they paid to go to. Simple. You are seeing conspiracy and connections that are simply not there. Tinfoil hats and all that, haha.
Reecius,
If you honestly don’t see how useless this poll is, then there is no talking sense into you.
You ask what my stake is? My stake is that you have developed yourself a harem of minions that seem to want to play Reece-40k. I don’t play Eldar, I’m not going to your tournament, but yet I still think it’s an absolute mess to screw with the specific items within the game, without screwing with them all. Invisibility has gone by the way side with the introduction of the new allies matrix and Imperial Knights.
There are A LOT of things in this game that are “broken”, yet you specifically only choose one of them. Invisibility. You yourself have stated it isn’t that significant of a change. Look into all the other “broken” combinations, units, etc. Run the same poll. I guarantee you, the results will always be in favor of removing it.
A poll with a predetermine outcome is nothing more than a statistically insignificant way of defending a personal agenda. End of story.
Dopes this harem include any hot chicks? If so, sweet! I always knew my obsession with toy soldiers would land me some babes, someday!
Poor move, poor judgement in swinging the crowd your way. Kudos, you tourney was sold out with invs in play. Doing this is just another attempt to get more drama and more Internet traffic to your site. If it was done in the spirit of “it’s not fun to play” as you’ve mentioned. You missed the mark, as in there is way more out there. But hey there’s always next year. It’s irresponsible to do this and say it was to make a business decision when everyone signed up and new invs was in play. This action is a stain on your rep in the community, just leak the last top tables in both your events. I hope it lasts a while.
Lol, you seriously think this was a play for more clicks? Hahaha, no, not at all. The drama is hardly worth that. I am not laughing at you, but what you are suggesting is straight up silly.
Gah, these conspiracy theories that a few folks are tossing up are seriously funny.
Would it have been a better option to leave the power as is but increase the warp charge to 3 or even 4 points?
We considered that, but if a player wanted to maximize the dice to get the power off, changing it to WC3-4 may not stop it.
So what was your goal with this change:
To stop Invisibility, i.e. get players not to use it as much or at all?
To give those facing Invisibility a better chance at killing that unit?
or something else entirely?
The goal with the proposed thank was to keep Invis as a very good defensive buff, but to tone down to a level that was less impactful on the other player’s ability to interact in the game. We don’t want people to not use Invis, just to tone it down a bit.
I think the result will be just what you didnt want.
However only time will tell, I wonder how many players will use invis at the LVO.
Perhaps, but once we present the alteration, how players react is up to them. Last year we similarly changed the 2+ reroll save mechanic and people still used. In fact, the guy that won used it.
Rally happy about this ruling. My local community follows the flg format, and this is the type of action that should be happening in the official faqs…but isn’t. So having a community of players making a rules format that fixes the really broken parts of the game helps us – so we aren’t knee jerk house ruling that might appear spiteful. Same with the 2/4 retool able save ruling, it justs cuts a part of the game down from where it KILLS THE FUN. Thanks for the hard work guys!
You are welcome, sir!
Wow, the way this has people worked up you’d think FLG had just banned invis from their event altogether!
Even with this modification Invisibility,it is still an awesome power. This change just makes it a little more fun to play against.
If your whole list revolved around getting invisibility then id say it’s quite likely you weren’t ever going to win a big event like this with it anyway given the unpredictability of getting invis on a random roll multiplied by the unpredictability of casting a WC2 Power.
A list that relies on such a psychic power is very flaky, where as if you use such a psychic power to improve a list that doesn’t necessarily rely on that power then this change really doesn’t hurt that much at all IMO.
Agreed, Shane, this is a relatively mild nerf to make it more enjoyable for the majority of players.
So I’m probably beating a dead horse here, and it’s likely this thread has been put to bed, however I thought it was worth adding my .02 as someone who’s pretty vested in the success of 40k as a whole.
First, some preamble: 40k has balance issues, and as it stands in 7th edition, needs a lot of boundary-drawing in order to make a competitive game. Everyone draws those boundaries in different places, and while I wish they were more similar, that is inevitable in the current game.
That said, this poll is absolutely meaningless. A survey, created with a predetermined outcome, is statistically worthless. And if you didn’t think the outcome was predetermined, you’re kidding yourselves. The goal in a survey like this is plainly, transparently, as a defense for an already made ruling, a leg to stand on when making a potentially disruptive change. As has been stated and restated, when you ask an obvious question and receive an obvious answer, you gain nothing except some faulty result that you can gesture to when defending why you did what you did.
If this poll wanted to be even close to legitimate, it simply needed a second question: “Do you plan to use invisibility in your army?” And then, when the results of question A and B were nearly the same, at least some semblance of an educated decision could be made based on the results. However, without that question, and with only the poorly phrased initial question, neither the results of this poll nor the crowds response should come as any surprise.
Frankly, there’s a lot that can be done to adapt the game to make a competitive environment more consistent. I think much of what the Robbins and Brandts and others have done in the past has been successful. But let’s call a spade a spade, here. If you want to change the rule at -your- tournament, using -your- FAQ’s, just do it. Don’t create this mockable, laughably silly poll as some sort of defense that what you’re doing is right. Ultimately, right and wrong don’t matter. Make the ruling, and people can vote on the real survey with their wallets.
Instead, after the event is sold out, we get this. I hope you’ll consider this knowingly too rant-like response in the future.
Chip, I value your opinion, but in this case you are 100% inaccurate. The poll was not predetermined. I posted the result of the last poll taken earlier in the year and the vote was to not change Invis by a narrow margin and that is what we went with. We did not know what was going to happen this time in advance, how could we have? I am flattered that so many people think we are able to see into the future, but alas that is not true or I would be in Vegas as we speak getting rich.
The timing could have been better, sure, I concede that. But, we got to it when we did. If their had been more questions on the poll perhaps some folks wouldn’t have this feeling that this is a sham or something, I don’t know, but this was a question posed to the attendees and this is the response we got. See it how you like of course, but I am being forthright in this.
As for asking folks if they plan to use invis or not, what does that matter, though? Should only their vote count? And if so, that truly would be a biased poll. The person that plays against something also has a right to express their opinion on something, too. But, as always, YMMV.
I think that the result was predetermined because it was sent to a somewhat captive audience that has experienced both one more year of invisibility, coupled with one more year of conversation from you/FLG about invisibility. I really feel like the outcome was expected, and not surprising.
Asking folks if they plan to use invisibility or not allows you to add statistical depth. It doesn’t mean that only one group or the others vote matters, but it allows you to draw a correlation between the results of question A and the results of question B to determine whether the bias of one affected the outcome of the other. Good polling requires a few things beyond that, and we can talk more offline about it if you’d like, but mono-dimensional (and some would say poorly worded) surveys as the basis for this type of decision is a bad method for parading “statistics behind results”, and I think the backlash proves the masses feel that way too.
Do I think that good polling and surveying is an affective way to manage a product decision? Overwhelmingly so, it’s something I preach. Does GW need to do more of this type of crowdsourcing/community outreach? Obviously.
However, if you’re going to do this kind of thing (crowdsourced decision making based on polling and surveying that affect the product you’re selling ie BAO format), I really think more thought needs to go into how the survey is built, how the questions are formatted, etc. I’m sure people are going to say I’m being ridiculous, that the effort is not worth it, we’re playing with toy soldiers, etc. But, as you clearly know, holding a major event at a giant hotel in vegas has major financial/livelihood implications that I think could be improved with more cogent survey creation.
I concede completely that this could have been done better, you got me there. However, I am also not a pro at gathering data in this matter and, I am open minded to learning new ways to go about it.
The honest intent here was just answer a question I get asked a lot. I do openly say I dislike invis, but I question how much that sways people as the first go around when we voted I was the same way. The vote lost. This time, the vote swung the other way, hard. I think, as you said, folks have played against it for a year and decided they didn’t like it. I mean, half the team voted against the change, and those are the people whose opinions matter most to us. Frankie voted against it for crying out loud, haha, he’s my business partner. I had no way of knowing the results, but I am happy with them, I won’t hide that.
And I think doing things correctly is important. This is toy soldiers after all, but as you said is our livelihood and we want to do it the right way. If you have any tips, I am all ears. And yeah, i can see how having the other data point on what people play would help (assuming folks answer honestly, of course).
By providing multiple reasons for why those being polled voted yes or no on the first question and having them rank them from those they feel most strongly about to those the feel the least, you can assign numerical value to each of the reasons provided.
The poll shouldn’t be a simple ‘yes or no’ majority based off of this polling method, but rather a guide for helping you make a decision based off of the issues most concerning to those being polled.
If you must have some method of scoring it, have 3 people put their own weight on which reasons they deem most important and tally it up that way with the totals of yes and no based on all 3 judges criteria and let that be the determining factor.
If you look into the basics of how to poll while reducing bias, it is wholly in the hands of the researcher to identify possible sources of bias, and structure the poll in a way that can address them.
Again, as I mentioned before, this takes more time and effort to implement, but if you really value a sense of fair play and want to provide a good experience for all attendees, it’ll take more than tallying up a overly simplified poll that addresses a rule set riddled with complexity. Yes, you can say that polls from before have gone against you, but such is the ebb and flow of opinion and perception in our community. While there also may be a few people who voted in previous polls that voted in this one, they can’t be compared like for like solely on the idea that both consisted of 40k players.
If FLG had just made a command decision this thread would be filled with people talking about how they didn’t have the balls to put it to a vote.
It’s a no win situation, my friend =)
I really don’t think that would be the case. If you look through the posts that Reece would deem logical and coherent arguments, the most common issue is the construction of the poll itself. It was explained to me how the FAQ council functioned and I accepted and respect the process. I’m making a bit of a leap, but I suspect that most of those who also had issues with how the poll was presented also had faith that a TO would only make this kind of decision if they felt was better off for everyone, though after this, it may not be as strong of a feeling as before.
I can’t understand it. The jerks at Frontline Gaming see a rule they think is unbalanced, then they ask the players going to an event whether they would like to see the rule changed?
And based off a 75% agreement of the population, they make a decision?
And in case that isn’t being enough of a douchebag, they offer refunds for people who no longer want to play in the event because of the rule change?
Obviously this goes beyond simple cheating and gamesmanship. This is straight up anti-US terrorist activity. I wonder how FLG managed to get all the Sony leaks AND screw over the 40K community in the same month? And what are they planning next?
No seriously, I want to know what they are doing next so I can start overreacting now.
It seems like many of the people complaining, aren’t playing at the LVO.
Most of them “know better” than the people who are “just voting to ban it for advantage”.
It seems like half of them have a hard on for Reece and his “harem”, and the other half are just concerned people will have fun and the rule might be adopted more widely.
I believe you are completely right though, if it wasn’t put to a vote, they’d be saying he doesn’t have the balls to put it to a vote.
Is there a ‘thumb’s up’ button?
Jural, you’re the man, hahaha!
Empathy is overrated, amiright?
I always try to consider both sides to an argument, if we didn’t have differing values and opinions, there wouldn’t be a dispute to begin with. Yes, a few people spoke with a bit more emotion and bit less cohesion to their argument; but similar to how it was noted that the votes from those who said yes to the nerf and don’t run invis in their army shouldn’t count any less than those who do, the general message of dissatisfaction of these shouldn’t be discounted. There will always be disagreements in our community and I’m glad for it because apathy will ultimately lead to the demise of this niche hobby of ours.
I literally threw my Be’lakor across the room and then impaled it with throwing knives I keep under my painting table after seeing this.
Seriously though. When I used to TO 40k events I would lose sleep over making decisions because I knew someone was going to be pissed off. I don’t envy FLG in the smallest. Polling the people who are going and giving them the event they want (the majority of people anyway) was the best solution.
Yeah, poor Be’lakor!
Maybe he should get the old invis, at 350pts he doesn’t have that much else going for him!
Funny thing about Belakor- he gets almost all of the old advantages of invisibility (Skyfire excepted) while getting terminator saves in ruins, even without casting a single power 😉
I know he is less useful as a buff-bot with the new invis… but honestly I don;t think I would change my lists that much on account of it.
I would be interested in a poll asking which “problem” in 40K is most in need of fixing?
You could include wave serpents, ad lance, invis, reroll invulnerables, summoning, flyrant spam, etc., the results might surprise us all, or perhaps confirm that they are equally important , and to select out a few to fix and others to leave might be the wrong call.
I know you don’t like to target specific units to affect certain armies, remember that even lists that don’t take the unit often have to be constructed with the ability to counter multiple of the unit in mind. So in reality all armies in the tourney are affected by these units. If you are trying to fix things to be best for the majority, units and formations should not be off limits.
Not a bad idea at all. We could do a general information gathering poll after the LVO. Wouldn’t want to do it now in case folks accidentally thought we were changing more stuff.
Yeah, it seems a lot of people are as upset at the timing of the change as they are the change proposed, and how it affects the time and money invested to prepare to attend. After the event, but before the next goes on sale would seem appropriate.