Were the nerfs necessary? Is errata a relevant approach anymore?

[Math Mathonwy]

I really loved the last errata. Felt like it balanced the game a ton.

But they didn't touch Explorers and now they released the titles. I feel that the power level of the game took a big jump with these latest two books and I'm not at all convinced that the old Von Schtook or Yan Lo would've been somehow too powerful for the new normal.

So to me it kinda feels that the last errata (that I loved!) kinda just made a couple of Masters kinda less appealing for no reason.

And of course I'm just talking about the nerfs in the last errata - the McCabe and Youko reworks, for example, were really really good regardless of whatever else happened.

Finally, I wonder if there will be errata anymore. Balancing the fifty new Masters seems like an exercise in futility. Do you think Wyrd will even try or is Malifaux now beyond the scope of erratas?

[fire5tone]

gotta be honest, i dont see the point of the post, 'course theres gonna be erratas, im not convinced the titles on average are stronger than the old masters on average, even less so the same as the old masters on release

the game is never going to be perfectly balanced, never would be so do what they've always done, specifically just target extreme outliers

the "ES werent in the last errata" bit never made sense to me, it could be that they wanted to go through 2 GG's before taking out a bat, especially given how different they ended up being (with gg1 being extreme aggro) alternatively, they just wanted data? bear in mind nexus didnt actually release until a good bit into gg2, and while there are a lot of online players and people OK with proxies, theres likely more that arent

[Regelridderen]

Does it matter?

The game changes every year, some things get more useful others less. Yet the overall balance is good, and we’re rather far from the Sandeep vs Nidodem end of M2E. 

-

I’m much more worried about the declining quality of cards, printing etc. Recent cards feel more like they came from the office photocopy machine than a proper printer. I’m starting to suspect we’d get better quality from chinese bootleggers by now.

[Plaag]

1 hour ago, Regelridderen said:

Does it matter?

The game changes every year, some things get more useful others less. Yet the overall balance is good, and we’re rather far from the Sandeep vs Nidodem end of M2E. 

-

I’m much more worried about the declining quality of cards, printing etc. Recent cards feel more like they came from the office photocopy machine than a proper printer. I’m starting to suspect we’d get better quality from chinese bootleggers by now.

noone uses cards-we have app for it

and it is not too hard to remove some broken abilities(as it were shown with nexus videos which should be nerfed for example)

wyrd dont need to read all the data, because most of this data is not competitive-just only games of best players

[fire5tone]

1 minute ago, Plaag said:

noone uses cards-we have app for it

and it is not too hard to remove some broken abilities(as it were shown with nexus videos which should be nerfed for example)

wyrd dont need to read all the data, because most of this data is not competitive-just only games of best players

1 plenty of people, and i mean a lot, use cards

2 it is *not* that simple, with any change likely undergoing a reasonably sized testing period to make sure you have not just utterly shanked a keyword, the issue with the early nexus coverage is that it was mostly just yelling, while it does a good job at outlining the issue, it doesnt always prove that there IS an issue, only time and data will get you there because as you go along people (and even pro's have to) learn how to play around it significantly lessening how problematic a model ends up being
but, in the case of nexus, if it doesnt lessen the horrors, neither does a new gg, or the summon nerfs, then you can very well say theres an issue

3 suprisingly, data is crucial, even from new to decent players (in some senses especially from new to decent) asking a man to chart a predictive line on a board with just 5 dots and anecdotes is tantamount to spitting in a statisticians face, for the rest see point 2

[Maniacal_cackle]

If anything I think errata is too rare now (although I don't like errata that is too frequent, currently it is too rare relative to the speed of releases).

Explorer's Society has been part of Malifaux 3rd edition for over a third of the lifespan of the game.  Every other faction has got balancing errata twice, and Explorer's hasn't gotten any yet. By the time they do, it'll be the longest period of a faction ever going without balancing errata.

And then as you pointed out, now stuff is getting power-creeped by next content, and that new content appears to be immune to errata. I would like to see new content subject to errata in the next errata (or erratas more frequent and subject to the second errata). Otherwise we'll go huge periods of time with a bunch of balanced old content and unbalanced new content (and at the current rate of releases, there'll always be new content before the old content is even subject to errata).

This does create the tricky issue that model's rules are out before the models actually physically release.  There's a number of possible solutions to that though.

[clockworkspide]

50 minutes ago, Plaag said:

noone uses cards-we have app for it

and it is not too hard to remove some broken abilities(as it were shown with nexus videos which should be nerfed for example)

wyrd dont need to read all the data, because most of this data is not competitive-just only games of best players

I mean, if what you want is a game balanced only for the bleeding edge competitive crowd, Wyrd may as well just create six or seven model profiles and lists of which profile to use for which model.  Make as chesslike as possible, you know?

[fire5tone]

1 hour ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

 Otherwise we'll go huge periods of time with a bunch of balanced old content and unbalanced new content (and at the current rate of releases, there'll always be new content before the old content is even subject to errata).

I highly  doubt this is the rate of release for content, and don't see much of a reason why it would, and I still think it's far too early to call for how unbalanced the average title is in terms of power creep

1 hour ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

This does create the tricky issue that model's rules are out before the models actually physically release.  There's a number of possible solutions to that though.

I am quite curious about what the number of solutions for that are, much less for wyrd

Hold back rules for a models release into the wild like most? try'n dump as many models as possible at once so you can get it on physical tables asap?

Despite my tone I am actually open to suggestions

I suppose you could hold back releases until the start of GG's so there's a bit of time but... That creates some real testing wyrdness but even that's not actually that great cause dumping a ton in general, especially not when your trying to understand the GG too is not overly favorable...

 

While I am a proponent of new releases getting 1 errata seperate from the general erratas to make sure stuff doesn't cause issues for that long, it is worth noting that by the time an errata is actually due (march typically) explorers will have been in for 3 months over a year, so it's not been an uncharacteristically long time, especially with covid remember that gg1 to 2 was 1 year 1 month

 

[Math Mathonwy]

2 hours ago, fire5tone said:

gotta be honest, i dont see the point of the post, 'course theres gonna be erratas, im not convinced the titles on average are stronger than the old masters on average, even less so the same as the old masters on release

Well, the point of the post was to harbor discussion - I'm very interested in what people's opinions are. Would pre-nerf Von Schtook or Colette or Yan Lo feel out of place power-wise in the Explorers-and-titles world? Is the current errata style going to work?

And yeah, on average the titles probably aren't stronger. But I think that the most powerful titles are as strong or stronger than the pre-nerf old Masters so were the nerfs really needed?

And I'm not 100% sure of my own stance on the matter! As I said, I loved the errata! But I'm having some doubts and would be very interested in hearing opinions. And the discussion so far has been very interesting, I think.

[fire5tone]

27 minutes ago, Math Mathonwy said:

were the nerfs really needed?

And I'm not 100% sure of my own stance on the matter! As I said, I loved the errata! But I'm having some doubts and would be very interested in hearing opinions. And the discussion so far has been very interesting, I think.

Ah, ok, well fair enough and I'm glad ya found it interesting so far, not sure how much more I've to say on it, especially while it's uh... 6 am XD

To me the nerfs are absolutely needed, otherwise you'd end up with certain masters causing problems forever, regardless how OP a few titles and masters are pre-errata one of the most important things to do beforehand is create an actually balanced baseline to go off of (so everything that's not a title, OG masters and stuff in this case) and work the extremes back to that line (or close) rather than buffing all the old up to be closer to those outliers (or just ditching the old stuff that can't compete but that's just so much worse an idea)

 

 soapbox time: to be far (far) more blunt about my previous point cause this comes up alot (most recently with title box packaging complaints) if you think there's a fix to a perceived problem say yer dang solution and we'll discuss it or just don't say you think there is one before leaving. Lotta thought likely ended up going into it so it might be worth brainstorming a tad to know why it's causing issues or atleast how to prevent another instance in the future

[Regelridderen]

7 hours ago, Plaag said:

noone uses cards-we have app for it

and it is not too hard to remove some broken abilities(as it were shown with nexus videos which should be nerfed for example)

wyrd dont need to read all the data, because most of this data is not competitive-just only games of best players

I couldn’t care less about complaints about the state of a game, that changes in a year. I just want quality products

[fire5tone]

first priority is always the games integrity IMO, while it can absolutely be fixed in the future we want to limit the amount of things that NEED fixing, dont want too many nexus's running around for a year with total impunity, and to be fair to titles, i'm quite suprised its not significantly worse so far

[Maniacal_cackle]

9 hours ago, fire5tone said:

soapbox time: to be far (far) more blunt about my previous point cause this comes up alot (most recently with title box packaging complaints) if you think there's a fix to a perceived problem say yer dang solution and we'll discuss it or just don't say you think there is one before leaving. Lotta thought likely ended up going into it so it might be worth brainstorming a tad to know why it's causing issues or atleast how to prevent another instance in the future

Well, that's not really the job of the consumer. Our job is to let Wyrd know that there's a problem, and then they can look if there is a solution. Plus the first step of fixing a problem is identifying it, so expecting people to have solutions before raising problems doesn't work.

That said I have ideas on it so may post later if I'm not busy.

[fire5tone]

41 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Well, that's not really the job of the consumer. Our job is to let Wyrd know that there's a problem, and then they can look if there is a solution. Plus the first step of fixing a problem is identifying it, so expecting people to have solutions before raising problems doesn't work.

That said I have ideas on it so may post later if I'm not busy.

Yes, it's not the functional point of being a consumer. however if you want something to be better, say how you think it could be, even if half baked, or just aknowledge that you don't know

With the title boxes for instance it was quite a bit of yelling but if you think about other ways it could be boxed you start running into the actual issue that caused them to be where they are, companies tend to have to think about things for a long time before putting them out, so just saying to "reconsider" is as useful as not saying anything at all

 

Edit: the reason I bring up box packaging is because I don't see the way they are packaged as an issue, originally I was quite disgruntled about it myself but upon thinking about a lot of the alternatives that wyrd "certainly should have done" I realized what we got was, in some ways, downright merciful compared so while the complaints were understandable, the boxes could feel quite bad it's... This again "..while it does a good job at outlining the issue it doesn't always prove that there IS an issue.." but I wouldnt have gotten there if I didn't try and find out how to fix it

[Azahul]

12 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

If anything I think errata is too rare now (although I don't like errata that is too frequent, currently it is too rare relative to the speed of releases).

Explorer's Society has been part of Malifaux 3rd edition for over a third of the lifespan of the game.  Every other faction has got balancing errata twice, and Explorer's hasn't gotten any yet. By the time they do, it'll be the longest period of a faction ever going without balancing errata.

And then as you pointed out, now stuff is getting power-creeped by next content, and that new content appears to be immune to errata. I would like to see new content subject to errata in the next errata (or erratas more frequent and subject to the second errata). Otherwise we'll go huge periods of time with a bunch of balanced old content and unbalanced new content (and at the current rate of releases, there'll always be new content before the old content is even subject to errata).

This does create the tricky issue that model's rules are out before the models actually physically release.  There's a number of possible solutions to that though.

Maybe models from a release cycle should just be barred from competitive play until their exemption from errata has passed?

 

Yes I am aware this creates issues with obtaining the data to prove that they should be nerfed, I am being more than a little tongue in cheek. But... there will consistently be some models in each release cycle that are problematic, and I don't think allowing them to avoid the subsequent errata actually does the game any favours either.

 

Of course, in response to the original question posed by the topic I am firmly of the belief that we should continue nerfing outliers at the top end of the game, and that most models in Malifaux Burns hew close to the baseline established by the previous nerfs. It does seem harsh to punish an entire (massive) release cycle for the overperformance of a handful of models, and the fact that it is just a handful is why I think it's an extreme position to want to throw away the errata entirely. That's how you enter a phase of power creep where the original releases all get left in the dust over time.

[fire5tone]

1 minute ago, Azahul said:

Maybe models from a release cycle should just be barred from competitive play until their exemption from errata has passed?

Now THAT. Is a strat.

Otherwise agree

[solkan]

13 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

This does create the tricky issue that model's rules are out before the models actually physically release.  There's a number of possible solutions to that though.

If that's your particular concern, keep in mind that pretty much all of M2E was subject to a release schedule of "The yearly book comes out at Gen Con, and then the models for that book come out over the next year."  I'm trying to remember whether any of the M2E models ended up getting errata'd before their official release, but I think that it had to have happened.  (Edit:  I know it happened, I just can't remember which model(s) it happened to).

But I think somewhere along the lines "model error errata" (or FAQ's specifying what the model is supposed to be doing) and "balance errata" (power level changes) got lumped together.

Historically, the problem with balance errata is that the initial reactions to new models typically include hysterical or exaggerated reactions, and it takes time to weed through the reports, figure out what the solutions are, test the solutions, and decide which one gets published while continuing to oversee the work on the next release cycle.

55 minutes ago, Azahul said:

Maybe models from a release cycle should just be barred from competitive play until their exemption from errata has passed?

I think some people have unrealistic expectations about "competitive play", personally.    

[Azahul]

3 minutes ago, solkan said:

I think some people have unrealistic expectations about "competitive play", personally.    

Haha, if anything casual play would be my concern. Nothing more off-putting than feeling helpless in the face of something oppressive, especially if you and a buddy are just getting into the game and one of you happens to pick something a clear level above the other.

 

That said I agree that models need to be played with to find out if the situation is as bad as they seem on paper. In my other main game, Warmachine, there were a few instances of the very competitive scene just getting things completely wrong. My favourite being a list called the Ghost Fleet being mocked as weak and worthless for months, and then a forum conversation with one of the devs leading to absolute disbelief from the players when the dev said no buffs to Ghost Fleet were coming because they were worried it might actually be broken.

 

Over the course of the following year people actually played Ghost Fleet, it actually did turn out to be broken, and it ended up getting nerfed...

 

Top players do get it wrong, basically, and wouldn't you know it sometimes the devs are actually more informed.

[solkan]

3 minutes ago, Azahul said:

Haha, if anything casual play would be my concern. Nothing more off-putting than feeling helpless in the face of something oppressive, especially if you and a buddy are just getting into the game and one of you happens to pick something a clear level above the other.

Well, sure.  But that's like saying that there's nothing more off putting than getting a rotten orange in your orange bag, or having a restaurant get your order wrong.  Mistakes are going to happen.  And oversights are going to get noticed after the fact when you go from a group of X play testers to full release.

When you go to get food, the better question is "How to I make sure I get what I ordered?"

For wargaming, what's the better question?  Because "I demand the models are perfect when they're released" or "Well, let's just give up on errata entirely" don't work.

 

[Azahul]

2 hours ago, solkan said:

Well, sure.  But that's like saying that there's nothing more off putting than getting a rotten orange in your orange bag, or having a restaurant get your order wrong.  Mistakes are going to happen.  And oversights are going to get noticed after the fact when you go from a group of X play testers to full release.

When you go to get food, the better question is "How to I make sure I get what I ordered?"

For wargaming, what's the better question?  Because "I demand the models are perfect when they're released" or "Well, let's just give up on errata entirely" don't work.

 

I don't disagree with any of this, but it's not quite the point I was getting at. To rephrase:

 

There is this assumption that a well balanced game is driven for and by the competitive scene, but the benefits flow down to all levels of play and there's a good argument that data from less competent players should be involved.

 

New releases will always include some percentage that misses the desired power level, and bringing them in line with balance erratas is an important part of any game's life cycle.

[Maniacal_cackle]

A lot of points made and possibly too many to quote, so will try to tie into thing said as I go.

NB. Wyrd has actually said that they are actively considering a greater frequency of errata/FAQs in someone's podcast or similar... So it is already a known issue, and I imagine threads like this just help provide further feedback.

Regarding tournament play... I don't think the vassal experience should be a big concern for Wyrd. They cater to people playing on the table top. That said, the moment ES released people were proxying it on the actual tabletop, and some of those crews released quite quickly and were played right away.

But I do think tournament play is the best target for balance for any game. Below tournament play, players have their own tools for addressing balance issues (getting better at the game being chief among them). Indeed, encountering stuff that seems unbeatable and then learning to beat it is a core part of the malifaux experience IMO. Tournament play is a good balance target because then you can start to identify the stuff that is really an outlier even once you account for people adapting and improving.

The biggest thing I'd like to have seen for Explorer's was at least some mild adjustments. Archivist is a prime example that we have known the model is a problem for a long time (and not in the same sense that Lone Marshal is a problem IMO). So doing some slight adjustments there could have made sense, with greater adjustments later if needed. This does pose issues for the card system, but cards are a tiny fraction of the cost of playing Malifaux and I think it'd be worth it to increase errata a bit.

Instead there's a system of if Archivist gets adjusted, it only gets adjusted once, which I think helps fuel the desire to wait a long time to errata models.

In regards to releasing and errata-ing models... They could release in smaller bunches, or they could leave models as 'subject to change' until they're actually released.

Despite what I said earlier about not targeting the vassal experience with errata... It is 2021, and digital play exists. Digital communication is much higher than it was for second edition (from what I gather). What is broken and what is not is getting solved faster than what I assume it used to. At least, this is the trend I've seen in every other similar game. To some degree, wyrd needs to account for the idea that while it takes time to establish whether stuff is truly broken, the time it takes to reach a reasonable conclusion is much shorter when you have tons of people working together and some of them playing 20 games in a week.

[muraki]

1 hour ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

But I do think tournament play is the best target for balance for any game. Below tournament play, players have their own tools for addressing balance issues (getting better at the game being chief among them). Indeed, encountering stuff that seems unbeatable and then learning to beat it is a core part of the malifaux experience IMO. Tournament play is a good balance target because then you can start to identify the stuff that is really an outlier even once you account for people adapting and improving.

 

1 hour ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Despite what I said earlier about not targeting the vassal experience with errata... It is 2021, and digital play exists. Digital communication is much higher than it was for second edition (from what I gather). What is broken and what is not is getting solved faster than what I assume it used to. At least, this is the trend I've seen in every other similar game. To some degree, wyrd needs to account for the idea that while it takes time to establish whether stuff is truly broken, the time it takes to reach a reasonable conclusion is much shorter when you have tons of people working together and some of them playing 20 games in a week.

I highly disagree with these 2 statements.  Tournament play and tournament players are just one segment of the population who plays a game.  Full stop.  Playing 20 games a week doesn't entitle you to anything.

I know this comes off as dismissive to you and your thoughts, but the post smacks of 'touney players are real malifaux players and everyone else just needs to 'get gud' before they have a seat at the table/discussion... But don't worry, if you don't get gud, well still be here to tell you how the game should be played.  You're welcome'.  Which is bull.

If you don't agree, go read some articles about toxic fighting game communities (I assume there's similar for tabletop games cause people suck).  Also jump into some random malifaux discords and wait for someone to defend a top malifaux player who acted like a jerk with 'but he's really good at the game' as if that somehow makes his behavior ok?

[Maniacal_cackle]

33 minutes ago, muraki said:

 

I highly disagree with these 2 statements.  Tournament play and tournament players are just one segment of the population who plays a game.  Full stop.  Playing 20 games a week doesn't entitle you to anything.

I know this comes off as dismissive to you and your thoughts, but the post smacks of 'touney players are real malifaux players and everyone else just needs to 'get gud' before they have a seat at the table/discussion... But don't worry, if you don't get gud, well still be here to tell you how the game should be played.  You're welcome'.  Which is bull.

If you don't agree, go read some articles about toxic fighting game communities (I assume there's similar for tabletop games cause people suck).  Also jump into some random malifaux discords and wait for someone to defend a top malifaux player who acted like a jerk with 'but he's really good at the game' as if that somehow makes his behavior ok?

I think you misunderstand my point.

To clarify, I think that the game should be balanced for everyone. Most of the time, that means...

• Not nerfing models just because they can be tricky to beat for new players.
  • Learning curves should be part of the game IMO.
• Nerfing models should happen when players are making an effort to beat a crew and it still has a high winrate/can't be beaten with reasonable effort or by many things in the game.

English Ivan shouldn't just be nerfed because he summons Brocken Spectres and that can feel impossible to beat when you're not adapting against him. But when you are adapting to the gameplan and he still has problematic winrates, then perhaps he should be nerfed.

That's what I mean by targeting tournament style play (aka, play where people are actually playing to win and making an effort). And to be clear, I don't mean 'vassal world series top 16'. I mean even like casual 8 person tournament at your local shop even. Or even a 'competitive' 1 on 1 game where you're both playing to win (and with enough data you can do some regression stuff that should untease some of this).

Similarly, the '20 games a day' comment doesn't mean those people should get priority. I just mean that games happen a LOT faster now, and people talk. You don't need to play 50-100 games against a crew to understand how to beat it. You can go talk to people on the internet and get tips for how to beat that crew and you can learn to beat it in 5-10 games potentially.

The fact that you can talk to those people who play 20 games a day just speeds up how quickly people are figuring out how to break crews IMO.

And on the other side of the coin, if you have people playing dozens and dozens of games all talking to each other and putting out there 'come try to beat this strategy, I don't think it can be beaten', then that can show stuff that might be above the curve.

[Maniacal_cackle]

That said, there's certainly exceptions to what I said above.

Some stuff is so miserable to play against it should be nerfed, whether or not it is winning tournaments/competitive games.

See my long-winded rants about Hoffman 2 being able to lock stuff out of the game - it just seems like such a horrible NPE (negative play experience) that it shouldn't be in the game. I don't care if it ruins tournaments - it seems liable to just ruin people's fun to an enormous degree.

[Rufess]

I do agree that tournament is a better place than causal play to collect data for balancing. But then I also know GAMES came to the end because they had gone too far on the competitive scene.

 

The frequency of errata could change how players play the game as well. During the open beta of M3E when models were changing on a weekly basis, players tended to call for a nerf instead of learning to play against when encountered strong models. In another game where it takes turn to playtest every faction in monthly basis, players from other factions just randomly yelling "OP pls nerf" instead of actually playing it.

These maybe a bit too extreme as examples, but I believe there is theory can be found in common. The period between errata should be long enough for players to overcome the knee reaction and actually play and learn the problematic models. Discussion can help for sure, but it is not much better than theorycrafting.

 

Not that I am a competitive player so the top tablers can just ignore my comments here.🙃