Table of Contents
Understanding the Concepts:
Analysis of the Meta
Introduction
Every week more and more tournaments of Warhammer 40k are being played, and data is being collected a lot of them. The data I use is complied from (https://40kmetamonday.wordpress.com/). All data is being collected from register GT's (Grant Tournaments) consisting of at least 20 people and 5 rounds.
I have organize the data starting since the Dataslate update (April 25, 2024).
The main points of focus will be on the army representation (Percentage of people playing each army), an armies win rate and the percentage of people who go X-0/X-1 at a tournament (Undefeated or only 1 loss). We will look into how all of those statistics work together to give a bigger picture of current state of the competitive state of the game and were adjustments can be made to better improve the fairness and balance for all players and armies.
Before we dive into the data we need to set some baseline numbers so we can establish what might require adjusting. Below will be the averages for each data type.
Army Representation:
The first data set we are going to look at is Army Representation, this shows the percentage of players who play each army. With an average of 3.8% we are looking to make sure most armies fall within 1.2% of this number, which is a range of 2.6% - 5.0% representation, 33% increase or decrease in player representation from the average. There are many qualitative factors that can effect players choices in which army they bring, these can include things like:
- The budget of the player, can they afford a new army or are they stuck playing with what they have even if it is not good.
- A player might enjoy playing an army, or favor one army over another due to personal reason or the armies lore/background.
- Players might be new to the game and are just starting out, their inexperience can lead them to bring armies that might be in a bad spot in the Meta.
With all those factors have to assume we will never get to a perfect 3.8% player representation for each Army, which is why we allow the variance.
There is also quantitative data that can affect a players choice in the army they choose to play that we can analyze and compare to help get a clearer picture of the competitive health of the army compared to others and how it is influencing players decisions.
Below is the chart showing the army representation since the last balance patch was implemented on May 5th.
Key Take Aways.
The Good (Green)
- The green bars show the armies fall within the acceptable representation range of 2.6% - 5.0% (3.8% +/- 1.2%)
- These numbers indicate a healthy population of the army.
The Bad (Orange)
- The orange bars show the armies that fall between 1.8% - 2.6% and 5.0% - 5.8%.
- This starts to be a concern for the armies on both sides, the numbers up near 5.8% are starting to climb very high which means the army could be over performing leading to more players want to play it to get an advantage.
- On the bottom end near 1.8% has the opposite effect, these armies are could be under performing leading players to stop playing them.
The Ugly (Red)
- The red bars show the armies that are either under 1.8% or 5.8% representation. These armies have an extremely high representation, which is cause for concern on the over health of the meta. These high numbers can indicate either extremely overpowered armies that are dominating, or underpowered armies that are struggling to compete.
These numbers on their own do not tell the whole story, we need to look at other factors to accurately determine which armies need to be adjusted. It is a good starting point to the meta, people want to win and will gravitate towards the more powerful armies, so looking at this alone paints a picture, but not a complete one.
Taking a quick look at the graph we can see that a majority of the armies fall within the acceptable healthy range, which is a good for the game as a whole.
Armies Win Rate:
The next group of data we need to investigate is the win percentage of each army, this number indicates the how often each army wins its games. Games Workshop has stated that they believe any army within the 45% - 55% win rate bracket is considered to be a in a good spot, it does not mean they do not need adjustments but they are performing in a spot were if you take the army you have a chance to win most games.
Like player representation there is some qualitative data that can affect the win rate of an army.
- The person playing the army has the largest impact on any game, a veteran who has hundreds of games under their belt will have a much high chance of winning any game they enter than someone who has only played a handful of games, no matter what army they use.
- Opponents army and/or the mission you are playing, sometimes there is a rock/paper/scissors situation that happens during games, with 26 different armies available to play there are some that have massive advantages over others, and if you show up to a game and your opponent has the rock to your scissors you will be in a uphill battle all game to win.
One of the more impactive quantitative factors for an armies win rate is the army rules. If your army is unfortunate to have a bad set of rules at the time that will make it increasingly hard to win games, and likewise if your army has a great set of rules it will give you an advantage going into any game. You can look at unit X and say this model will perform better than model Y, so I am going to use that model instead.
Below is the chart showing the army win rate since the last balance patch was implemented on April 25th.
The Good (Green)
- These bars show the armies that fall within the acceptable win rate of 45% - 55%.
- These armies are in a healthy state and given all the variables that go into any one game, and all things being equal, the armies in this category have a chance to win to most games they show up too.
The Bad (Orange)
- These armies are falling into the rang of 40% - 45% and 55% - 60%.
- This range is were you need to start looking at making small tweaks to the army, they are either a little to good or a not quite good enough, but some small changes should be able to bring them back into the green range.
The Ugly (Red)
- These armies fall either below 40% win rate or above 60%.
- Anything below 40% is suffering to be competitive. You will go into any game you play with that army at a disadvantage. These armies need to be looked into and reevaluate what is going wrong and how to fix them.
- Anything above 60% is arguably more of a problem, these armies are oppressive to play against, and can lead to an unbalanced and frustrating experience for other players. These armies need to looked into and adjusted to bring them back into the green to create a healthier competitive environment.
One of the big differences between an army below 40% win rate and above 60% win rate is the people who play armies below 40% are making the decision to play those armies, they might only have one army or just really love that army and want to play it no matter how bad it is, but ultimately it is their decision. As anything competitive if you lose enough, even if with an army you love you will probably stop playing with them sooner or later, which can lead to a decline in army representation.
The armies above 60% is also the players decision to bring them, but it might not because you love the army, but because like in any competition, you want to win. If you bring the Meta army and the Meta list, you potentially bringing an oppressing or unfun advantage onto your opponents. This leads to people resenting or disliking certain armies because of the experiences they have playing against them and creating a bad experience in general which is not good for the health of the game. This can lead to an increase in player representation as well for the unbalanced army, as more people see it do well more people will start to play it.
Taking a quick look at the graph we can see that a majority of the armies do fall within the 45% - 55% win rate, with only a few armies in the Red that need some help. Overall the current state of the game is looking very good, with a few exceptions that will need some adjusting.
Armies Performance:
We have looked at how often people play each army and how often they win, now we need to look at how those wins are being achieved. Win rate can be a measure of performance but it does not tell the whole story. We need to look at how that win rate is achieved. Not everyone is going to have 3 wins and 2 losses or 2 wins and 3 losses at a tournament, some going undefeated or only one loss and some are not winning any games.
The next set of data we will look is X-0/X-1, this represents players who went undefeated or only one loss during a tournament. These numbers do not paint the whole picture but show a good starting point, the closer a army is to 12%-15% the more often the players are not playing lopsided games. The higher or lower it goes shows that players are winning or losing a larger percentage of their games at tournaments by wide margins which can be cause for concern.
The next set of data we will look is X-0/X-1, this represents players who went undefeated or only one loss during a tournament. These numbers do not paint the whole picture but show a good starting point, the closer a army is to 12%-15% the more often the players are not playing lopsided games. The higher or lower it goes shows that players are winning or losing a larger percentage of their games at tournaments by wide margins which can be cause for concern.
- The average so far for players going X-0/X-1 is around 12%-15%, anything that falls within the 10% - 20% range I believe to be an acceptable amount. There are many variables that go into each game and can cause skewed results in a small 5 game sample at each tournament.
- This range shows the armies that more likely to have a more balance tournament results.
The Bad (Orange)
- This range shows the players between 5% - 10% and 20% - 25%. This shows the armies that on average performing very well, with more players doing well in tournaments, or showing the players that are struggling and underperforming.
- These armies need to be investigate further to see if they require minor adjustments or if it is a few players skewing the averages.
The Ugly (Red)
- This range shows the 0% - 5% range and the 25% + range. The armies in this category need to be looked at to see if there is some serious changes that need to take place. They are either dominating tournaments they are taken too or are struggling to have any success at all
- Some investigation needs to be completed to check if the numbers are showing the full story but the armies in this category most likely are in need of some adjustments.
This chart can help show us how powerful each army currently is, the higher the percentage of X-1/X-0 the more potent the army is, as on average the people who play that army are performing very strong. We have to take into account other factors when looking at this data, army representation also correlates to this chart, if you have very few people playing this army but a very high X-0/X-1 percentage, it can show that the army has the potential to be extremely strong but something about the army limits the number of people who play it. Which could be anything from play style to design to cost.
If the army representation is high and the X-0/X-1 percentage is also high, than the army probably needs some looking at.
There are many ways to look at and interrupt this data but even on its own it tells a very clear story of the armies that are seeing consistent high level of success and might need be to addressed.
Putting it All Together:
Each of the three sets of data above (Army Representation, Army Win Rate and X-0/X-1) shows a piece to a larger puzzle, on their own they give us some idea of how each army is performing but when you put all three together to you start to see a clearer picture of how the meta is unfolding and what armies need some adjusting.
Below is a graph that plots all three points of data on the same graph, it allows up to relate all the data together and get a better understanding on each army.
Key Take Aways.
The ideal look of this graph would be 3 straight lines, which would mean all armies are performing equally across all variables. In the real world this will never happen, so we need to address the outliers, the ones who deviate from the average and see if it needs to be addressed. Lets take a look at the different states armies can be in, and an example of each one.
Balanced (everyone is around the average)
This is the best state to be in, average in everything generally meaning it is a balanced army with a health population of people playing it.
Over Represented (high representation)
This could be the result of a few factors, first some armies are just more popular than others. Take Space Marines for example, they are the post child of Games Workshop, they are on all their promotions and in every starter box, their population is always high no matter how good they are because most people get into the hobby by collecting them.
Another factor is a new Codex (the book that has all the rules the army) has come out and people want to play with the new rules and see what they can do.
A third factor is an armies power, or potential. If an army is very powerful more people are likely to play it, or if a new Codex has come out people might be playing with different set ups to find the the best/most powerful options. This can be tracked more accurately by checking the week by week numbers and seeing how they adjust.
Over Powered (High Win Rate/High X-0/X-1)
High win rate and high X-0/X-1 are very telling signs of an army that is a bit to powerful, winning a majority of your games and also dominating a tournament (X-0/X-1) more than the average shows that the army not only has better than average rules but also something that could be causing it to dominate more than average. A deeper look into the rules of the army and a look into the armies list to see if there is any common denominator across games.
Under Represented (low representation)
This could be the result of a few factors much like the over representation, first some armies are just not as popular with the fans. Take Genestealers Cult for example, which is always one of the lowest represented armies.
Another factor is cost and/or painting difficulty, Genetstealers Cult and Adeptus Mechanicus are notoriously expensive to collect, they require a large amount of models, and they are smaller and more intricate models which can be more difficult to paint and a turn off for some players.
One other factor is how powerful an army is, if an army has a bad win rate you will most likely see a drop off in play representation as people switch to better armies to get an competitive advantage.
Under powered (Low Win Rate/Low X-0/X-1)
Low win rate and low X-0/X-1 tell the story of armies that most likely have weaker rules in general compared to other armies but they also lack the tricks and rules that might allow skilled players to still succeed with them despite their below average rules. These armies are in a bad spot and need some adjusting to increase their overall power to make them more competitive.
Oppressive (High Win Rate, High Representation, High X-0/X-1)
Oppressive armies are succeeding in all categories, they are on average stronger, they have a few abilities/rules that allow them to dominate and the abilities/rules are easy to master. Which means you have a lot of players playing that army and a lot of players doing well. Normally if you get an influx of players the rates should drop a bit because not everyone is going to know how to win with the army but if they keep winning and keep dominating than it shows an issue that the army is simply to good and to easy to play.
Not playable (Low Win Rate, Low Representation, Low X-0/X-1)
Opposite of oppressive, this shows armies that have weaker rules, not many ways to overcome those rules and no one wants to play them.
Sometimes armies can be weaker in general but if played a specific way can be good, while this can band aid over the issues it is ultimately not good for the game or for the army. In an ideal world each army would be able to succeed playing at least a couple different ways to keep them in a healthy spot competitively and provide a more healthy community in general. While the general numbers offer a good general representation of the meta, we can dive a bit deeper and investigate each army individually to see some more specific numbers and how they are performing week by week, which we can investigate in the visuals below.
Review of the Warhammer 40k Meta (May 29th, 2024)
Now that we have an understanding of the context and the data types, we will look at the state of the Meta as of May 29th, 2024. The charts and data below will be a snap shot of 4 weeks worth of data. Because rules change or new rules are released for the game/armies, we will only use 4 weeks worth of data, starting on April 25th. This is when the latest rules/points update came out. This will give us a large enough sample size for most armies to make an confident analysis of the current meta.
Below are the three main charts for the 4 weeks we have outlined, Army Win Rate, Army representation, X-0/X-1% and a chart showing how they all stack up together.
When looking at the armies win rate we can see a few standout armies that appear in the red zones. On the high end we have Genestealer Cults and on the low end we have Deathwatch. Genestealer Cults have a bit to high of win rate, we will need to do some further digging to to see if there is a larger problem at hand.
Deathwatch is a terribly low win rate at less than 30%, this is very concerning and is a major red flag on the state of their army.
.png)
Look at the army representation we can see a few outliers, Orks and Necrons are both extremely high at over 8% which is well over double the average representation. Looking at the lower end we can see three armies that are struggling, Deathwatch, Adeptus Mechanicus and Genestealer Cults. Which is interesting because Deathwatch also struggled on the win rate chart, which leads further confirms the issue the army is having.
Genestealers had the highest win rate while having the third lowest army representation. Which leads me to believe that while despite being a powerful army people still do not want to play it. This tends to show the army is being played by skilled players for the most part and it is not a beginner friendly army, if it was more people would play it.
On the high end we see Genestealer cults again, coming in at a staggering 32%. This shows that almost one third of all their players performing extremely well at tournaments.
Army Meta Health Cards
This chart puts all the information together and we can easily view how they relate to each other.
Struggling Armies:
Adeptus Mechanicus is showing some signs of struggling, they are on the low end of an acceptable win rate but have very poor rep and X-0/X-1 %, which means the players are performing below average with very few having much success.
Adeptus Custodes are also struggling, with a below average win rate, and below average X-0/X-1 % we can see another army that is consistently under performing.
Deathwatch might as well not even show up at tournaments, they are having no success at all and no one wants to play them.
Space Marines is a tough army to judge, they are always one of the higher represented armies, but even with such a high number of people playing them they are seeing very little success.
Overpowered Armies:
Genestealer Cults is the first army that pops out, it has a very high win rate, and very high X-0/X-1 rate, and while its army representation is low, the success players are having with this army shows it needs to be addressed to bring it back in line with average.
Space Wolves are having large amounts of success right now, a very high win rate, and a very high X-0/X-1 %, along with an average army rep means there is a good amount of people playing this army and they are performing well above the average.
Grey Knights is another army that is pushing the limits balanced, they are just above the 55% win rate but have a very high X-0/X-1 % and a high army representation. This shows that everyone is getting good results with this army and something should be done to help bring those numbers down a little to make it a little more balanced, it is not a problem right now, but a concern.
Recommendations For Improvements & Adjustments
Complete Rework:
Deathwatch is unplayable competitively in its current state, this army needs a complete rework to bring some life and players back into it.
Adjustments Down:
Genestealer Cults need some adjustments to help bring the army more inline with averages, but you have to be careful not over adjust it down to much, it has a low army representation to begin with if they become a below average army the number of players could drop even lower. Minor adjustments every 4-6 weeks until they are near the averages.
Genestealer Cults need some adjustments to help bring the army more inline with averages, but you have to be careful not over adjust it down to much, it has a low army representation to begin with if they become a below average army the number of players could drop even lower. Minor adjustments every 4-6 weeks until they are near the averages.
Space Wolves could use some small adjustments to bring them down and more inline with the averages.
Grey Knights you can be a bit more aggressive with their adjustments, they have a very healthy player population. Which means even if half the people stopped playing them they would still be in a good spot.
Adjustments Up:
Adeptus Mechanicus is in a ok spot to make some more impactful adjustments, they are almost in the acceptable win rate zone. You can make some liberal adjustments to a few things to see if you can bump up the X-0/X-1 %, which will lead to their win rate increasing closer to the 50% rate. The army appears to just have a bunch of mediocre units and nothing that is making an huge impact on the games. Giving them a couple more impactful, powerful units which is what most of the armies have, and that could could lead to high X-0/X-1 %.
Further Investigation:
Space Marines is always a curious army, they are played by so many people, and many of them being newer players that it is hard to get a overall feel for how their army is doing. You would need to investigate the results further and check their players average win rate to see if they are having success with any other armies or if they struggle with other armies. Success with other armies could show an issue with the Space Marine Codex itself, and if they continue to struggle with other armies it shows the player could be more of a reason for the armies issues.
Space Marines is always a curious army, they are played by so many people, and many of them being newer players that it is hard to get a overall feel for how their army is doing. You would need to investigate the results further and check their players average win rate to see if they are having success with any other armies or if they struggle with other armies. Success with other armies could show an issue with the Space Marine Codex itself, and if they continue to struggle with other armies it shows the player could be more of a reason for the armies issues.
These are examples of quick reference cards that been created for each army, they show various data related to each army, and their comparison to the average. A week by week break down of their win rate and army representation, along with their rankings in the meta, their sub faction ratings and their Meta Health Rating (MHR), which is a statistic I have created to give a overall rating of the armies current status in the meta.
For the MHR the baseline is 100, if an army is at 100 than they are perfectly balanced, anything above and the army is over performing and anything below and they are under performing the averages.
An army in the 90-110 range would fall into a health category and anything above or below should be looked at it to see if there can be any adjustments made.
No comments:
Post a Comment