I think these have become counterproductive.

The lists are good enough that they can be locked down and wait for an overarching review process. Pretty much every one of the poll changes needs to be put on hold for now - Warhounds, Destructors, Tacs, Scouts, Tbolts, and anything else - until the lists are settled and we have time for the metagames across the world to take the current lists into account and get a wide range of feedback.

Why do I say that?

If the NetEA project is going to succeed in remaining a resource that people across the world can use, we have to be able to provide stability. The most important thing is to get workable, consistent army lists set up and stable. Constant tweaks are bad. They create a massive PR problem.

"The Epicomms guys can't decide anything."
"The Epicomms lists are unusable because you never know what they are."
Et cetera.

At this point, stability is far more important than perfection.

Disagreed.

I think they have quickly shown what proposals have (Significant majority) levels of support (Warhound Critical, Destructors, Tacticals), and what proposals had no support at all (Scouts, Thunderbolts).


I'll be blunt: People have been playing the lists as they are in the NetEA draft documents for more than a year.

Being as there were generally no changes going from the various scattered lists to the draft documents, the actual length of time those lists have been played has been considerably longer than that.

If you haven't been playing personally, it's because this has been a heavy academic year for you, and that's understandable.

In any case, my point is that the lists are settled right now, have been for over a year, and the community seems very clear on what they want to happen.


That is not the critisism I repeatedly hear here in the UK.

What I hear, is two critisisms

1 - That the inner clique of the Epicomms crowd (Amongst whom I allegedly stand because I have a stupid amount of posts here) decides what will happen, and that the greater "will of the people" gets ignored.

2 - That the NetEA project never produces anything concrete, just talks.


Well, polls address both of those concerns, because they give a clear mandate to the NetEA to put changes in a compiled Armies Book and present it to the world.

Or we could spend another 2 years as the community says exactly the same thing, before the 2012 version of the Armies Book comes out in 2013 (ho ho ho).

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My stance is that a lot of these proposals are stemming from the last *year* of testing/playing, so they should be examined... especially Predator Destructors and ATSKNF.

It seems that people only get strongly invested in the discussions when it comes to "crunch time" for finalizing lists; the stress of "finals" seems to really show the cracks and concerns that people only seemed mildly, if at all, concerned with. Now there's the great rush to get things "done" as there's an actual deadline.

The target date for the NetEA Books is the start of the New Year, so I feel there is still time to discuss these issues, especially when they are small tweaks like a single pip of FF or "rounding up instead of rounding down"; for larger issues, they can certainly wait.

I'd also note that polls generate a wider pool of opinions than the debates do; A typical TacComms proposal thread will have 5-10 people debating, and a democratic poll will have 40-50 hands in the air.

Which again, neatly side-steps the whole "Only the loudest voices get heard" critique of the TacComms debate threads, because everyone gets exactly the same voice. Democracy in action, rather than Yellocracy or Narcisocracy.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

I love that "Yellocracy" word. I will probably re-use it one day or another

I think these polls are very useful, as there does seem to be a number of minor and probably easily fixable problems with the Marine list(s), and these specific poll threads seem like the best way of dealing with them.

As a way of having my opinion shown I prefer the polls: truth is a lot of us simply don't have the time to input into conversations/debate all that much as others.

Although I think a few of the polls that crop up aren't neccasarily needed to begin with I have found it very useful to be able to read through a discussion between a few people who have thought/fought/argued hard about the situation and then to be able to chime in with my opinion via the quick click of a button.

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There's a couple of problems with polls that were pointed out to me after I created a bunch for the IG changes back in 2007.

For one, they're open to everyone. And everyone includes people who have never played the list, never played against it, have played against it but interpreted the rules incorrectly, etc. It's for this reason that I think they need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Second (and admittedly this flies in the face of point number one), it's not the opinion of the community as a whole, rather the opinion of those that frequent TacComms at the time of the poll. Granted, the entire can community can stop by to vote, but they're not going to. There's a large portion of the Epic community that does not come to TacComms (ask Mosc how many copies of Raiders and Siege he sold to people not on these boards). So again, they need to be taken with a grain of salt.

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Dave

Blog

NetEA Tournament Pack Website

Squats 2019-10-17

I think you misunderstand me. I don't have a problem with continuing to test changes. Polls are great for ideas on what will optimize testing.

What I have a problem with is sticking new, relatively untested changes into what is supposed to be an "official" doc on short notice. Polls suck for that. They turn an opinion of "that sounds like a good idea to try" into "this is definitively better."

In other words, I have no problem testing FF3+ Destructors based on the poll. I do have a problem sticking them into the list in the short term future based on it.

I agree. While I think community input is a very valuable tool for gaining feedback on lists and proposals, I find myself extremely wary of using polls to determine changes. The huge influx of polls the last couple of weeks has only served to reinforce this because some changes, like the warhound critical, seem to be change for the sake of change rather than any balance issue and few if any have enough of a majority to truly say the leading options are what a majority of the community wants. Last, Taccoms isn't the entire Epic world and just because 40 or so people vote on a poll or five of us comment on a thread shouldn't be absolute grounds for making a change to the core official lists. That's not to say that thoroughly tested options shouldn't be submitted for review and approval though.

I just don't like the concept of changing lists based on whatever the community votes as the choice of the day. It makes lists too fluid for my tastes.

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-Vaaish

The polls are handy if you have a large turn-out and the topic is fairly well understood. If those two things aren't fulfilled, the poll is just a fun thing to click on. We oft joke by putting an option that says, "I don't know but I like to vote" but unfortunately it is true. There are some people who just will vote without even thinking. That isn't a big deal if you get 50+ votes, but it can screw things up on a smaller poll turnout (say 15-20 votes).

I tend to fall in the middle of Neal and E&C. I think the SMs are probably the only core list that could use some tweaking and I think 1-3 changes should be evaluated, possibly implemented, and the list locked. IG, Ork, and Eldar all seem to be fine.

I wholeheartedly agree with Neal that -overall- the stability of the lists is more important than the nuanced changes that some people are proposing. The SM list with the 2008 changes plays fine. There is a lot of talk about frequency of formation usage that I simply see as perspective rather than fact. The quick analysis done showed only the Warhound usage being validated, and that was only for the UK tourneys. As mentioned before, the Northeast U.S. group hasn't seen much of them and yet the game goes on just fine.

My suggestion to the NetERC and Hena as the AC is to address a couple of the big topics for SMs and then lock it down in time for the Army List project in January 2011.

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It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

When we were discussing the path the NetEA would take, wasn't an idea thrown out there that we should have the "stable lists" and a set of "playtest changes"?

The compendiums are serving as both at the moment, perhaps when they are updated they can serve as the stable, and we could have the playtest changes in a separate document or thread?

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Dave

Blog

NetEA Tournament Pack Website

Squats 2019-10-17

+1 to Dave

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"Don't use finesse, if force will solve the problem."

- Lieutenant General Michael O'Neal

In the first straw poll, 82% wanted to change the Warhound's critical. 8 out of 10 people.

We're now working out what to change it to. You're in the 18% who says it isn't nessesary.
I'm most likely going to be in a minority as regards the specific solution chosen (I want the "Imperial Titan Critical Hit Chart" to be used), but I don't care that my horse won't win because the majority will have spoken.

At this point,
72% want Tacticals to go to 275pts immedately.
79% want Predator D's to go to FF3+, or test it with FF3+ with a view to possibly implementing it when the Armies Book is released in January.

Those are not small majorities, really. That's 7 or 8 out of every 10 hands in the air.

That is a very strong mandate to begin organised testing.




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The community is, by my eye, giving the Champion the opionion that they want 3 changes to test, and with two full months before the Armies Book is published, I don't see what the problem is in beginning testing now, organised by the Champion (Who is, after all, supposed to contribute in some manner). If insufficient testing is done before the deadline then fine, put off implementation for yet another year (It's not like that doesn't happen every single year with the Marines in any case, is it?), but stone-walling 7-8 out of 10 people is simply irresponsible, in my opinion.


Some of the other polls have 5%-10% support, and have served a useful purpose: They have instantly shot down most of the proffered proposals.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Yes, exactly.