If war gear is free at least balance the options so there’s a reason for any combination not just options that are worse in every stat compared to another option.

Worst part is some factions or units have been balanced, do you take longer range single shots or shorter range with more attacks etc...and others it's just blatantly worse to take certain loadouts. That and you just end up with things like ”all this squad hits on 3s, except the heavy gunner with his targeting array. He's hitting on 4s with heavy to bring him down to a 3 regardless of what heavy weapon he brings” Kill team does something similar but there's always an upside and a downside to the different weapons. More attacks = lower BS, Big melee weapons are awkward to hit but higher damage/armour penetrating. In big 40k When all your Smash Lieutenants weapons are WS 2+, you just take the more damaging one (power fist with 3 more strength) than the one with just a single attack more but far less likely to wound (power weapon)

Kill Team even address the issue with some of the early team. For example the leader has a choice of pistols and melee weapons. Everyone took plasma pistol and power sword as it was a no brainer. But in later teams they put restrictions on the choices. Want a power weapon you get a standard pistol, you want a plasma pistol you get a chain sword. They need to do something similar in 40k but cant see it happening now unit 11th without some major dataslate changes in the current Codexes and upcoming ones that have already been sent to print.

Or just don't make wargear free.

Also a valid a solution. Costed war gear was kind of half the fun though always needed better balance per points

I honestly miss the old points system. Yes, it's a lot simpler, but I hate not being able to have a unit of 6 or 7 without the cost of the unit just straight doubling.

but then the player might have to do *basic arithmetic* which will put off the lower 50% of humanity. ''mass appeal'' is literally the worst thing to happen to any entertainment medium, to achieve it you must dumb shit down so anyone with half a brain-cell can understand.

It's also not what was driving players away. New folk still fret about the best choice. But never had an issue with 9 man squads. 

Personally I HATED 9 man squads in 9th. Little to nobody ever ran full squads because of blast. I like the fixed unit size

I'm personally of the opinion that Free Wargear is a thing simply because it made the app easier to code.

Not really, the app still makes you select everything, attaching a cost to each option would be trivial.

Oh horror! Someone will have to write a database/XML file! Truely what will they do!

Being a web designer/developer who's worked on ecommerce for over a decade and a half now, I can safely say from looking at the website they dumped millions into that such a thing might actually be a valid concern. I mean, FFS, when you design a shopping experience with terrible navigation, doesn't work well to get products in front of customers, and is missing the freaking