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I agree with Redbeard on this one. Yes, it would be nice to fit more games in, but 45 mins a side for a game just unfairly punishes horde players and those who have to take a while to think about moves. I do think people should generally play as fast as they can, but a massacre if you don't finish is simply too big of a punishment.

Also, does your chess timer take into account when your opponent slows down your turn with stuff like rolling armor saves or responding with CC attacks?

Timmah wrote:If people would just learn to play the game faster, you could have a more competitive environment.

In a 2 day competition you could run 7-8 games if you switched game length to 1.5 hours.

Give each person a chess timer set to 45 mins. If either person runs outa time, they lose by massacre. (That would teach people to speed up their game pretty quickly)

I don't really think you'd need to do all that much.

There are lots of different ways to do this, depending on how many days you want your event to last

40 player tournament

Day 1: Pool Play

8 pools of five players. Pools set by whatever method the TO wishes (random would probably be best). Each player plays round robin. One player from each pool has a "bye" during each set of games. This removes the need for a lunch break, as everyone has built in time off. Each player has four games.

Top two players in each pool advances to single elimination tournament on day two.

Day 2: Tournament

Players seeded by combined battle points (or whatever scoring system you're using). First ranked player plays last ranked, etc. (think like the NCAA basketball tournament seeding and brackets). Sixteen players in the tournament means four rounds of play, where the winner in each round advances to play the next opponent. At this point, "battle points" are meaningless; either win, or go home. Four rounds in the tournament to determine final winner. (Alternatively, top three from each pool could advance, with the number ones all getting a first round bye. This would put 24 players in the tournament, and have a total of five rounds.)

Also, you might have a consolation bracket to determine a true second place, just in case the second best player gets unlucky and loses in an early round. All the losers in each round go to a second bracket that they drop into after a single loss. This starts to look like a double elimination tournament, though, and would require an additional game or two to be played by the eventual final table. This type of a format would require, in this scenario, an elimination tournament to have probably six total rounds.

{For those of you who don't know, this kind of a format is how competitive volleyball tournaments are done. I've been playing for about 15 years, and my team goes to between 5-10 tournaments during the indoor season, and I go to several more during the outdoor season. I really don't see why it would not adapt well. I feel it is a more "competitive" way of running a tournament that 40K uses now; winning against every opponent out there rather than just the style of your win against the small number of opponents you face.}

Gosh, I even came up with another idea. On day two, simultaneously to having the elimination tournament to find the champion, all the rest of the players who didn't make the cut (and even other players who didn't want to enter the cut-throat, highly competitive part of the tournament) could play in a traditional style RTT. That way, everyone gets a lot of games in during the weekend, and more casual players have a reason to come and something to compete for.

Going fast doesn't make the game unfun, it makes the event unfun. It takes away any opportunity you had to socialize with the players you're meeting.

Dakka is the most competitive forum I know of, and even here, not even 50% of the poll people want tournaments based on battle points only. Get away from this site, and the number of hyper-competitive types drops.

Most tournaments cater to a more casual crowd. People who are looking to enjoy a few games, and if they win they win. We've just run a tournament series in Chicago where we had between 24-32 people per event. Out of seven tournaments, I think that the same two to four people had the most battle points, month after month.

That means that 20-30 people were showing up each month, not running the most competitive builds. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that if the same three people are on the top tables after two games for six months, they'll be the same ones there in month seven. Most people don't have the energy or time to put into figuring out exactly what they need to do to win every game of toy soldiers. So, why are they there?

Because, a tournament is more than just crushing heads. I know that's hard for you uber-competitive types to wrap your heads around, but it's true.

Some of us go to tournaments to show off new painting/modelling projects we've been working on. When I go to a tournament, I play hard, but my goal is to win best appearance. I spend a hundred hours painting an army, compared to six hours playing it in a tournament. Some of us go to hang out with other gamers for a day. To socialize with the other players is more important than having the newset codex-creep list.

If you alter tournaments to cater more to the competitive crowd, you'll find tournaments that are poorly attended. The casual players won't go, because they won't get what they enjoy out of it. To many people, the $10 entry fee is worth a day of enjoyable gaming, and a chance at winning a door prize or a sportsmanship award, even if they know they're not going to take best general or best appearance. Take that away, and they're not going to spend their $10 for something that is, to them, not fun.

If you want eight-man king-of-the-hill tournaments, then go ahead, preach on about how you get more competition by speeding everyone up and dropping soft-scores. If you want to have tournaments with enough players to make it worth playing, you'll do well to remember that the players who aren't as competitive are the majority of attendees.

Yes, darn us uber competitive types who want a TOURNAMENT that actually does a good job of letting the best player win.

I never said I was against giving out best painted or best sportsmanship awards. I just said that if you wanted a tournament that does a better job at determining the best player.

I keep hearing altering tournaments to the more competitive crowd is bad. Yet I have never seen any proof of this. In fact, most of the systems that do, MTG ect have attendance at their tournaments that is 2-5 times what a large 40k event gets.

I'm sure you will now give me a bunch of reasons for that though.

Redbeard wrote:Going fast doesn't make the game unfun, it makes the event unfun. It takes away any opportunity you had to socialize with the players you're meeting.

Another good point. Probably the main difference between casual/competitive matches for me is how much BSing goes on during the game. When I'm at the FLGS, we still try to play super tight, competitive matches, but we also have the time to shoot the breeze and screw around while we play. At a tournament, you really have to keep that in check to make sure you have plenty of time to finish the game. A really fun event I played in were 1000 point games over 1.5 hours (may have even been two hours) and it gave plenty of time to play the game, chat, and even walk around to talk with other people or watch other games once your game was over.


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Timmah wrote:Yes, darn us uber competitive types who want a TOURNAMENT that actually does a good job of letting the best player win.

I never said I was against giving out best painted or best sportsmanship awards. I just said that if you wanted a tournament that does a better job at determining the best player.

I keep hearing altering tournaments to the more competitive crowd is bad. Yet I have never seen any proof of this. In fact, most of the systems that do, MTG ect have attendance at their tournaments that is 2-5 times what a large 40k event gets.

I'm sure you will now give me a bunch of reasons for that though.

Sorry, Timmah. While I'm normally a Battlepoints-only guy, MTG and 40k are completely different animals. They tend to attract different crowds of people. 40k has such a high overhead compared to Magic (buying, building, and painting an army... and longer game times) that it actually makes sense that the normal MTG event would have more people. The two just don't make for a good one-to-one comparison.

Question for you Redbeard.

You're big on painting and stuff right?

What if the next tournament, each round a judge would come around and the best painted army between you and your opponent for that round would get 1 painting point.

Then at the end of the tournament each army with 5 of these points would get put in a drawing and 1 picked out. That person would win best painted.

Wouldn't you feel a bit cheated? Especially since technically a very crappily painted army could win just because his opponents armies were painted worse.

@gornall
Actually type 1 MTG has a much higher overhead than 40k and it still has larger tournaments. (we are talking $4k+ for some decks)

I don't see why Battle, Paint and Fluff (or theme or whatever) can't be three seperate, equally acknowledged prizes instead of lumping them into one mess. Then if someone wins all three, they are the best overall by default!
I agree that tournaments should cater to many different people, but I don't see that that should require a wierd lumped-together scoring system.

Redbeard wrote: Some of us go to tournaments to show off new painting/modelling projects we've been working on. When I go to a tournament, I play hard, but my goal is to win best appearance. I spend a hundred hours painting an army, compared to six hours playing it in a tournament. Some of us go to hang out with other gamers for a day. To socialize with the other players is more important than having the newset codex-creep list.

Im the same way, but I also plan my painting/modeling projects around army lists that are fluffy and competitive, that way I hit on all the major points in a tournament.

Redbeard wrote:

If you alter tournaments to cater more to the competitive crowd, you'll find tournaments that are poorly attended. The casual players won't go, because they won't get what they enjoy out of it. To many people, the $10 entry fee is worth a day of enjoyable gaming, and a chance at winning a door prize or a sportsmanship award, even if they know they're not going to take best general or best appearance. Take that away, and they're not going to spend their $10 for something that is, to them, not fun.

If you want eight-man king-of-the-hill tournaments, then go ahead, preach on about how you get more competition by speeding everyone up and dropping soft-scores. If you want to have tournaments with enough players to make it worth playing, you'll do well to remember that the players who aren't as competitive are the majority of attendees.

QFT.

Tournaments are perfectly fine the way they are, Competitve people want it to be all about battle points, non-competitve people want more soft scores, everyone wants everything stacked in their favor, but a balanced approach seems to work best (hence why attendance at adepticon this year is well over 1000 people!)

Some tourneys rely solely on battle points ('Ard Boys) some rely mostly on Soft Scores (Necronomicon) and if you dont like the way a specific tourney is run you dont need to attend.



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Da Boss wrote:I don't see why Battle, Paint and Fluff (or theme or whatever) can't be three seperate, equally acknowledged prizes instead of lumping them into one mess. Then if someone wins all three, they are the best overall by default!
I agree that tournaments should cater to many different people, but I don't see that that should require a wierd lumped-together scoring system.

They usually are separate, so you can win

Best General for battle points
Best Appearance for painting
Best Sportsman for sportsmanshipyness
and Overall for someone who may have scored very well in all 3 categories without actually winning one.

Ah, that is not the system being used over here, though we are arguing for it. It tends to come down to winner + best army, or some such. Maybe a prize for best sports too, though I dislike that award personally.

Timmah wrote:
@gornall
Actually type 1 MTG has a much higher overhead than 40k and it still has larger tournaments. (we are talking $4k+ for some decks)

As a former MTG tournament player I cant tell you without a doubt that even Type 1 Tournaments in MTG have less overhead than a RTT/GT warhammer event.

Ok, someone can spent $4000 on a deck (or traded for cards that they dont already own), Ive spent $2000 on my models, another $600 on glue, paint, flock, brushes, plaster, epoxy, greenstuff, platicard, wood, foam etc. And approx $8000 worth of my time based on minimum wage just to convert, assemble, paint, and prepare my army for the tournament.

on top of this I DONT plan on actually winning anything.

EDIT: and the time aspect doesnt include brainstorming ideas, 14+ years of experience the model building requires, playtesting and practicing the army lists, or cost of transportation for the massive investment.

Timmah wrote:@gornall: Actually type 1 MTG has a much higher overhead than 40k and it still has larger tournaments. (we are talking $4k+ for some decks)

What about the time component? Personally, that's my biggest overhead problem.

But there a lot of problems with saying, "MTG has lots of people at their competitive tournaments, so if 40k switched to that format they would have more people show up." MTG has a tighter ruleset, so dealing with TFG isn't as big of a deal. Shorter games makes it easier to get more games in and get a better swiss-pairing setup going. I would argue MTG has way more players (no proof to back that up though) than 40k in the US, meaning that more people are available for those events.

Timmah wrote:
I keep hearing altering tournaments to the more competitive crowd is bad. Yet I have never seen any proof of this. In fact, most of the systems that do, MTG ect have attendance at their tournaments that is 2-5 times what a large 40k event gets.

I'm sure you will now give me a bunch of reasons for that though.

Sure, since you resorted to your completely inappropriate M:TG analogy again...

M:TG is a game. Some people collect the cards, sure, but discounting them, the only thing M:TG cards are good for is... playing M:TG. And, as a competitive game, it's pretty well balanced. Some cards are stronger in some situations (draft) and some are better in others (constructed). Some are better in some formats than other (type 1, extended , or standard), but in general, the cards are well balanced with the other cards in a given set. Because, WotC has found that, in selling a game, the success of a set of cards (which is where they make their money) is based on how much fun that set is to play. Sets that have been unbalanced have led to decreases in players (Such as the Urza block fiasco), and since then, they've really tightened up the ship. WotC has nothing to gain from releasing unbalanced cards, only aftermarket sellers make money in that way. So they focus on making balanced sets.

M:TG is also a game that has, at it's base, the idea that you need to replace all your pieces every so often. If you play standard, you know that you need to buy the new set in order to keep playing standard, and that the old set will be rotated out. And, other than spending money, it's easy enough to do that. You have the cash, you get the new stuff, and you're good to go. Keeping up with the tech curve is a matter of contacting Star City games, or one of the other dealers, and ordering whatever cards you want.



Warhammer is a hobby. As a competitive pursuit, it's piss poor. The rules are written sloppily. The updates are done one-at-a-time, and new rules are written with the goal of selling models, not writing a balanced game. GW wants to recoup their investment in new sculpts and molds as fast as possible, and to that end, new models are always more powerful than old models. Codexes release one at a time, each pushing the power-curve a little forward. Buy more models is the watchword, and in order to do that, they believe they need to keep pushing that curve.

Unlike M:TG, you can't keep up with the tech curve just by spending. At the very least, you need to assemble models, and that can take several hours. If you're playing in a tournament, you need to go the extra step of painting the models. 100 hours of prep time for a 2000 point army isn't out of the question. This means players are more invested in what they have. There are emotional attachments involved. Switching to a different codex is not just a chunk of cash, it's an investment of time and energy as well. This is why the meta-game in 40k moves so slowly. Even if codex Space Mice on Flying Carpets is the most powerful thing ever, at least half the field at any given tournament will still be Space Marines.

These things discourage hyper-competitive play. In M:TG, you spend $100-200 three times a year, and you're up-to-date with the power curve. A 2000 point army will run between $500 and $1000. And new codexes come out every three months. Trying to keep up with the ever changing power-curve is not only more expensive, it's also significantly more time consuming.

People aren't stupid. We know that 40k isn't a well-written game. Perhaps a well-written game isn't what we're looking for? Maybe we want something to do in the evenings besides watching American Idol, so we paint our armies. Maybe we want a reason to have a beer with some friends, and engage in real human interaction, rather than staring at WoW. People looking for competitive pursuits don't get into 40k. People looking to play with toy soldiers get into 40k. Sure, some competitive people want to play with toy soldiers, but overall, if you're looking for a purely competitive entertainment option, you're going to pass on Warhammer. It's not designed for that, it's not supported in a way that makes it work like that, and most players aren't into it in that way.

Sure, we all want to win our games, but there's "I want my Flesh Tearers to do well", and there's "The new Blood Angel codex will give me a 3% better chance of winning than the new Space Wolves codex does, so I am switching armies". M:TG players are used to the latter. There's no emotional attachment, no time constraint, and picking up a new deck is something you do every draft anyway. 40k players are the former.

You didn't answer my painting question.


@gornall

I didn't say switching to a tournament style like MTG would cause more people to show up. I was just stating that competitive tournament structures don't necessarily scare away players from attending.

Excellent post, Redbeard. I think the emotional attachment/time invested part is huge. My orks have been my army since I was about 14 years old. Some of those models, with their fugly paintjobs, are still in my army today. I'm only going to switch armies if I feel attracted to the theme or paintscheme or if I have some brainstorm. Very different to magic the gathering. Two good games, but not that comparable.

I also agree with you on the time aspect. 70 models at 1850 is nothing, my orks run 166 at 1750 and that's not even going all out horde. Factor in that heavy weapon users don't move much and it's a totally different proposition. Not saying us horde players have a right to be slow, but it's already hard work getting the turns done on time without shortening the time down even more.

Timmah wrote:Yes, darn us uber competitive types who want a TOURNAMENT that actually does a good job of letting the best player win.

I never said I was against giving out best painted or best sportsmanship awards. I just said that if you wanted a tournament that does a better job at determining the best player.

I keep hearing altering tournaments to the more competitive crowd is bad. Yet I have never seen any proof of this. In fact, most of the systems that do, MTG ect have attendance at their tournaments that is 2-5 times what a large 40k event gets.

I'm sure you will now give me a bunch of reasons for that though.

It's completely fallacious to compare 40K to M:tG. Magic does not have as many different elements or reasons to enter the hobby as GW does. In Magic, you're either a serious or casual player. You don't have people who start playing Magic so they can draw their own cards. Very few get into the game because they really like the fluff of the Color: Black. Nobody converts their own cards to play in tournaments or to set up for their friends to admire their handiwork.


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Man, I'm so sad nobody has mentioned my idea for a different competitive tournament structure. I thought it was a good idea :((

Timmah wrote:
@gornall
Actually type 1 MTG has a much higher overhead than 40k and it still has larger tournaments. (we are talking $4k+ for some decks)

Unless you've been playing since 1992 and got most of the cards when they were first released. I still have some dual lands and moxes and such from when I played back then. I dunno why I haven't bothered to sell them; I'm a complete packrat.

I have not played at a tourney in my life.

That being said, the type of tourney I would like to play at would be BPs and Sportsmanship.

Painting competitions at the same event for the armies brought seems a logical choice but the painting skills should not relate to the gaming. Armies should be painted at events however.

Composition seems odd. I don't like it, having read it, it seems an ill fit purely due to how incredibly subjective it would prove. It is also logical for someone creating an 'all comers' list and attending a tourney to bring the best list they can design. 'Fluffy' lists are for campaigns, specific games and home play IMO.

Saldiven wrote:

Timmah wrote:Yes, darn us uber competitive types who want a TOURNAMENT that actually does a good job of letting the best player win.

I never said I was against giving out best painted or best sportsmanship awards. I just said that if you wanted a tournament that does a better job at determining the best player.

I keep hearing altering tournaments to the more competitive crowd is bad. Yet I have never seen any proof of this. In fact, most of the systems that do, MTG ect have attendance at their tournaments that is 2-5 times what a large 40k event gets.

I'm sure you will now give me a bunch of reasons for that though.

It's completely fallacious to compare 40K to M:tG. Magic does not have as many different elements or reasons to enter the hobby as GW does. In Magic, you're either a serious or casual player. You don't have people who start playing Magic so they can draw their own cards. Very few get into the game because they really like the fluff of the Color: Black. Nobody converts their own cards to play in tournaments or to set up for their friends to admire their handiwork.

Reading comprehension ftw. I did not compare the to. All I said was that the competitiveness of an event does not determine the number of participants, in the sense that: higher competition = fewer participants.

That is all, I don't need your 3 paragraph answers on why they are different. I never said they weren't.

Well, this poll stirred up some interesting results, didn't it?

I will say that I'm surprised about how dominant 'pure' Battle Points is in the poll. I know Dakka is seen as more of a competitive forum, so I anticipated that it'd probably win, but by over 30% more than the next option?

It goes to show that, at least on Dakka, the casual gaming mafia is merely a very vocal minority...

Timmah wrote:You didn't answer my painting question.

Perhaps cause I was writing before you posted it. If you gave 1 point per round, yes, I'd feel cheated. If you let people score up to 40 points/round, like they do with battle points, well, perhaps that would be different.

I didn't say switching to a tournament style like MTG would cause more people to show up. I was just stating that competitive tournament structures don't necessarily scare away players from attending.

No, competitive structures don't scare people away. But structures that do not acknowledge the reasons that people choose to play the game do. More people play 40k to be social than play it to win. Taking away the social aspect in order to fit more games in would lose players.

Redbeard wrote:

Timmah wrote:You didn't answer my painting question.

Perhaps cause I was writing before you posted it. If you gave 1 point per round, yes, I'd feel cheated. If you let people score up to 40 points/round, like they do with battle points, well, perhaps that would be different.

I'm not saying my system that I quickly made up was the be all/end all of competitive tournaments, I am just saying that the current structure could use some revisions. Because right now you very easily can get easy matchups and luck your way to the top.

Redbeard wrote:
I didn't say switching to a tournament style like MTG would cause more people to show up. I was just stating that competitive tournament structures don't necessarily scare away players from attending.

No, competitive structures don't scare people away. But structures that do not acknowledge the reasons that people choose to play the game do. More people play 40k to be social than play it to win. Taking away the social aspect in order to fit more games in would lose players.

I would say that more people play MTG to be social than to win also. And yes, you might lose some players with my (crappy) system, but you would gain some too. I am just saying that maybe a discussion needs to start on how to make the tournaments pull out the best player and make sure he wins.

I would say that most smaller tournaments already do that. Like I said, at the 24-32 person tournaments we've been running in Chicago, the same few people are at the top tables in the last round, month after month. That does seem to indicate that they're being identified...

As you add more players, the only way to ensure the same result, that of having the top players at the top at the end, is to have more rounds. The five and six round events also seem to do a good job of identifying the better players in this way.

The problem comes when you have large tournaments with only a few rounds, such as the 'ard boyz finals, or the adepticon championship (where there will be 2 events with 120 people playing 3 games each, which means that mathematically, there could be as many as 15 people with max points (in each of the two events) at the end of the three games. I'd be shocked if that happened, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were two people with max scores in one of the events....

Exactly my thoughts. With the Swiss program (mtg runs this) they go with more rounds when there are more players. Unfortunately this isn't always something that is doable with 40k. So you need to either make scores more spread out or something else.

Timmah wrote:I would say that more people play MTG to be social than to win also. And yes, you might lose some players with my (crappy) system, but you would gain some too. I am just saying that maybe a discussion needs to start on how to make the tournaments pull out the best player and make sure he wins.

I agree with this, actually, in tournaments where the organizers have decided the "best player" is whom they wish to reward. (I'll ignore those tournaments that decide they want the "best hobbyist" to be the one who wins for now.)

I posted this idea for a format earlier, but nobody addressed it, and it made me sad :((

Any opinions about playing in a tournament with the structure below? (Copied from my post above)

40 player tournament

Day 1: Pool Play

8 pools of five players. Pools set by whatever method the TO wishes (random would probably be best). Each player plays round robin. One player from each pool has a "bye" during each set of games. This removes the need for a lunch break, as everyone has built in time off. Each player has four games.

Top two players in each pool advances to single elimination tournament on day two.

Day 2: Tournament

Players seeded by combined battle points (or whatever scoring system you're using). First ranked player plays last ranked, etc. (think like the NCAA basketball tournament seeding and brackets). Sixteen players in the tournament means four rounds of play, where the winner in each round advances to play the next opponent. At this point, "battle points" are meaningless; either win, or go home. Four rounds in the tournament to determine final winner. (Alternatively, top three from each pool could advance, with the number ones all getting a first round bye. This would put 24 players in the tournament, and have a total of five rounds.)

Also, you might have a consolation bracket to determine a true second place, just in case the second best player gets unlucky and loses in an early round. All the losers in each round go to a second bracket that they drop into after a single loss. This starts to look like a double elimination tournament, though, and would require an additional game or two to be played by the eventual final table. This type of a format would require, in this scenario, an elimination tournament to have probably six total rounds.

{For those of you who don't know, this kind of a format is how competitive volleyball tournaments are done. I've been playing for about 15 years, and my team goes to between 5-10 tournaments during the indoor season, and I go to several more during the outdoor season. I really don't see why it would not adapt well. I feel it is a more "competitive" way of running a tournament that 40K uses now; winning against every opponent out there rather than just the style of your win against the small number of opponents you face.}

Gosh, I even came up with another idea. On day two, simultaneously to having the elimination tournament to find the champion, all the rest of the players who didn't make the cut (and even other players who didn't want to enter the cut-throat, highly competitive part of the tournament) could play in a traditional style RTT. That way, everyone gets a lot of games in during the weekend, and more casual players have a reason to come and something to compete for.

Saldiven wrote:
Any opinions about playing in a tournament with the structure below? (Copied from my post above)

40 player tournament

Day 1: Pool Play

Sorry, two days for forty players? I think this is logistically bad. If you're talking about a local event in a larger metro area, are you really going to get people to commit to two day events that easily? I'll go to a one-day local tournament once a month, no problem, but if that stretches out to my whole weekend... people have families and stuff.

On the other hand, if this is a convention type thing, then the two-day aspect isn't the bad part, but the people who don't make it into round two are going to have had to buy a hotel room anyway. Forty players is low for a convention event too. What do they do on day two?

Day 2: Tournament

Players seeded by combined battle points (or whatever scoring system you're using). First ranked player plays last ranked, etc. (think like the NCAA basketball tournament seeding and brackets). Sixteen players in the tournament means four rounds of play, where the winner in each round advances to play the next opponent. At this point, "battle points" are meaningless; either win, or go home. Four rounds in the tournament to determine final winner. (Alternatively, top three from each pool could advance, with the number ones all getting a first round bye. This would put 24 players in the tournament, and have a total of five rounds.)

What do you do with draws? There is no "win by two" or "go to penalty kicks" in 40k...

I dislike elimination tournaments for things like this. In sporting events, you don't have the same sort of matchup issues that you have in games like 40k and even M:tG. Elimination tournaments punish players who hit a list that just beats them, far more so than swiss tournaments reward people who hit lists that they just beat. If one of the knocks on the current system is that a bad player can luck into three easy matchups for the win, then your system is the opposite; a good player can run into the one list that their army can't beat - and get knocked out of the tournament for it. At least in a swiss system, they have a few more games to recover from that bad matchup.

Gosh, I even came up with another idea. On day two, simultaneously to having the elimination tournament to find the champion, all the rest of the players who didn't make the cut (and even other players who didn't want to enter the cut-throat, highly competitive part of the tournament) could play in a traditional style RTT. That way, everyone gets a lot of games in during the weekend, and more casual players have a reason to come and something to compete for.

Except the highly competitive players who would rather club baby seals in the loser bracket than face stiff competition in the winner bracket? If all the "good" players get pulled into one group, and then the other players get to compete for some prizes, why wouldn't people go for the easier road to the prizes?

Redbeard wrote:

Except the highly competitive players who would rather club baby seals in the loser bracket than face stiff competition in the winner bracket? If all the "good" players get pulled into one group, and then the other players get to compete for some prizes, why wouldn't people go for the easier road to the prizes?

A common misconception. However, competitive players play for the competition. They want to play other people who are as good as them. The fun is competing and trying to get first. Not clubbing baby seals.


Now, there might be some TFGs that do this. But they are not competitive gamers then.

Redbeard wrote:Except the highly competitive players who would rather club baby seals in the loser bracket than face stiff competition in the winner bracket? If all the "good" players get pulled into one group, and then the other players get to compete for some prizes, why wouldn't people go for the easier road to the prizes?

Wow, are 40K players really that pathetic and needing of outside acknowledgment of their own worth?

When we go to volleyball tournaments, the last thing we want to do is go to the loser's bracket. Who cares if you're the best of the worst? Second place is just first loser.

I find it funny that some people really don't like nebulous scoring like comp and sports, but are perfectly content with thinking that playing five people out of 40+ (where they probably only play two good players) is somehow sufficient to determine who "wins" the tournament.

Face it, neither one is an exact science.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Timmah wrote:A common misconception. However, competitive players play for the competition. They want to play other people who are as good as them. The fun is competing and trying to get first. Not clubbing baby seals.


Now, there might be some TFGs that do this. But they are not competitive gamers then.

Whew, thanks for restoring my faith in competitive 40K players, Tim.

Yep, competitive gamers is just a tag a lot of the 40k community has thrown on anyone who wants to actually win at this game. They act like its a terrible thing to play to win.

Seriously, why would you try and lose if you were really competitive.

Maybe they're failed competitive gamers. Whatever label you want to use on them, people like that exist. And it's not just in 40k, Saldiven, it happens everywhere.

Some people would rather be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond, especially when money (or prizes) are on the line. In poker, some people play at the smaller limit tables, knowing that they'll win something against worse competition than going to the high limit tables where they know they'll lose.

Same thing in Chess. You don't enter a master-level tournament if you're not a master. You play at the level where you think you have a chance. Some chess players deliberately do not allow their ranking to put them in the master category, because they still wish to compete against the non-masters.


These people are competitive, in a way, but they want to have a chance to win, rather than knowing they'll lose. They know their own limits. If they're expected to pay an entry fee, why shouldn't they go in whatever pool they believe gives them the better chance to recoup that investment?

These people are competitive, in a way, but they want to have a chance to win, rather than knowing they'll lose. They know their own limits. If they're expected to pay an entry fee, why shouldn't they go in whatever pool they believe gives them the better chance to recoup that investment?

Anyone who stacks the deck in their favor by manipulating pairings and match-ups isn't even remotely interested in competition. They're interested in winning. If they were competitive in the true sense, they would be interested in competition for competition's sake and would want no more and no less than to be matched against their peers.

This is one of the fundamental misunderstandings in our community, and why so many members can't seem to get past the idea that there are a lot of people who derive their enjoyment of the game from its competitive aspect, but don't really care about winning or losing as long as the playing field is fair. These are the people who take offense to the idea of soft scores, since they compromise the competitive part of these so-called "tournaments", which aren't really tournaments at all.

Battle Points and Paint for me.

Soft scores are just lame, IMO. I have run into one too many TFG's that didn't feel like giving me the point for having all of my dice and templates(which I did.)

Forget that noise.