November 04, 2022 by Polar_Bear
When a game has as many little dials and sliders as 40k does, there’s a constant struggle to make sure everything’s balanced right. We got a new Balance Dataslate a couple weeks ago, but GW has put out a Metawatch update, with some insights into the changes and how things have gone since.
From the post:
The latest Balance Dataslate has been in operation for two weeks now, and while it introduced a number of targeted tweaks, it’s fair to say that some don’t think we went far enough! In this article we’ll talk about why we prefer to avoid drastic changes when modifying rules, and how we expect the latest update to percolate into the competitive scene.
The changes in the latest dataslates were deliberately light touches, but we expect they’ll have an impact. This approach of making small adjustments helps us to determine how effective each of those changes have been – and what to do in response if they’re not having the desired effect. If we introduced three powerful new special rules for an underperforming army which then started consistently overperforming, it could be tricky to work out which of those additions to reverse. The same is true for applying multiple penalties or restrictions to powerful factions.
Making smaller changes gives us more accurate data, and makes it simpler to account for other factors – such as new factions joining the game, and new tactics hitting the tournament scene. We’ll have plenty of opportunities to make additional tweaks in the future, incrementally moving factions towards the ideal win rate – between 45% and 55%.
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