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It seems to me that GW has been waging a systematic war against competitive 40k gameplay. When you combine a very *meh* non-competitive 6th ed release, increased imbalance between the factions and then add their recent move to stop the tourney friendly Army Builder...to me it just seems that GW is treating the concepts of balanced competition as if it was somehow politically incorrect or morally wrong.

IMO, 40K is turning into an elitist hobby with no real game behind it. Cinematic and Narrative is not a game, it is a movie and/or a book. And we all know that there are much better sources for both, movies and books, than what GW publishes.

My question is this:

If GW succeeds in making 40K a non-competitive game, what will be the long-term impact of such?

People will continue having fun, the tournament players will continue the wailing in their tourneys, and life will go on.

SoloFalcon1138 wrote:People will continue having fun, the tournament players will continue the wailing in their tourneys, and life will go on.

You missed the point. What if GW actually succeeds.
TO's stop organizing the events because of the hassle and due to lack of player interest.
The majority of players stop playing because there is no real game, just a couple of individuals playing out a pre-determined storyline of why faction x always wins and that the other factions only serve as a backdrop to emphasize that Faction x always wins.
(Note- faction x = the latest releases or poster army for the company.)

Basically, 40k ends up as an elitist version of Pathfinder or D&D. The models are only there to mark places for the role playing. Imo, there are other companies that can and will do this better.

So again, what will be the long-term impact of competitive based game play going the way of the do-do?

As long as there is more than one person in it, it can still remain competitive to a degree. It'd likely take a more relaxed position, but I don't doubt some would try to continue anyway.

Perhaps we'll see an increase in painting and background, then perhaps that'll only be because those in it for the gaming aspect become less and less in comparison. A balanced rule set wouldn't really have such a negative impact on either of those anyway, as most units and combinations would be on somewhat even grounds. If anything it'd be a benefit on it as a whole, but instead it seems to slowly walk away from that.

If they succeed in making it non-competitive, someone will likely look for how it could be anyway. Even with completely unbalanced rules. There just won't be as many.

of the 40K gamers I know and game with - about 75% have only a passing interest in tournaments and of the 25% that are big tournament players - well to be honest there are the least fun to play with or against.

I think what GW is trying to (apart from make money) is to make a fun hobby for the majority.....

I play the game to have fun, 6th added some interesting elements and I just don't care about the super competitive level(mostly because those people aren't even fun to be around usually).

The game will continue on, I actually noticed an increased interest in tournaments in my area after 6th edition released.

I think for 40k there are a few things these videos make good points about(they are about video games but a lot of this applies to 40k as well):

I cant see how you can justify the premise with the following you have put forward:
A meh non competitive release? You're judging that after 2 months since release and how many major tourneys held/attended?
Sorry I just dont see any hard emperical evidence to back that.

Poor balance in the armies? Of course there is, several codexes need updates, several need total rewrites and others dont gel so well with 6th but it is early days yet. Nothing has changed in that regard, gw were never top of the pile for army balance and these early imbalances have nothing to do with "gws war on tourney play".

Im unfamiliar with gws move against ab but dont see the issue really. At tourneys you are required to have your army codices and rules so building your army on ab whilst convenient should not be a given. Infact I agree that armies should be written from the cidexes with no 3rd party allowances.

And finally how is 6th becoming elite? I cannot fathom where you are getting that from. Infact its widely held in some quarters that tourney players are the elite. Yet you claim gw is punishing them?

Mr Morden wrote:of the 40K gamers I know and game with - about 75% have only a passing interest in tournaments and of the 25% that are big tournament players - well to be honest there are the least fun to play with or against.

I think what GW is trying to (apart from make money) is to make a fun hobby for the majority.....

Yeah, I think this is one of the premises of GW to make a hobby for the majority of the players.
If they had interest in rules for tournament play, they would have made them already. Streamlined RTT rules are missing.

For casual games the rules seem a lot more fun, some of the random terrain features(poor fire warrior squad that ended up in a carnivorous forest with an exploding objective, but they were my opponents so ).

Small things like that can make the game more interesting and when people are less competitive and joking back and forth it's much more fun to play. Don't get me wrong local tournaments can be fun but I have no interest in going to a larger tournament.

TheAvengingKnee wrote:For casual games the rules seem a lot more fun, some of the random terrain features(poor fire warrior squad that ended up in a carnivorous forest with an exploding objective, but they were my opponents so ).

Small things like that can make the game more interesting and when people are less competitive and joking back and forth it's much more fun to play. Don't get me wrong local tournaments can be fun but I have no interest in going to a larger tournament.

In larger tournaments, you have to play about 3 or 4 games per day. Here the rules are not streamlined enough.

Granted but that dosent prove the theory Gw are waging a war on players who enjoy tourneys. In addition barring the official Gw events TOs can tailor/ tweak rules to player needs. Eg only one piece of mysterious terrain, all forests are standard, objs dont use special rules etc.

Mr Morden wrote:of the 40K gamers I know and game with - about 75% have only a passing interest in tournaments and of the 25% that are big tournament players - well to be honest there are the least fun to play with or against.

Note, that you said 75% have a passing interest.

The point that I am encouraging people to consider is that a removal of competitive game play would affect all "players". This is not about the WAAC crowd, this is about GW moving away from a game and towards a narrative role playing system. (As I get older, I'm beginning to view role playing systems as not really being games but more as exercisies in creativity and story-telling.)

The point is, that poeple need to drop all of the assinine competitive players ruin the "game" bs. That is now what this thread is about. The thread is about the game becoming an elitist role-playing system and the impact such will have if GW completely moves in this direction.

TheAvengingKnee wrote:I play the game to have fun, 6th added some interesting elements and I just don't care about the super competitive level(mostly because those people aren't even fun to be around usually).

The game will continue on, I actually noticed an increased interest in tournaments in my area after 6th edition released.

I, also, play the game to have fun. Have been playing my Tau since their first codex, in both good times and 5th ed.

Again, this is not about The omg he's a super-comp waac player that is a jerk even though he buys every fotm army and builds net-lists that happens to help keep the cost of my hobby down.

This is not a thread for bashing super comps or the fluffers, it is about the ramifications of the game going the complete narrative route.

As to increased tourney interest, this happens with every new edition release. A new edition brings the old players out to try the new system for a while and then a percentage of both the old and the current players fall off due to dissatisfaction with the system(Their faction is weak in the particular editition).

Heck, GW used to set-up tournament campiagns to help drive up interest/push the new edition about a year after the release.

BTW, The number of players returning for this release seems a fair bit lower than in previous editions.

Ratius wrote:I cant see how you can justify the premise with the following you have put forward:
A meh non competitive release? You're judging that after 2 months since release and how many major tourneys held/attended?
Sorry I just dont see any hard emperical evidence to back that.

Poor balance in the armies? Of course there is, several codexes need updates, several need total rewrites and others dont gel so well with 6th but it is early days yet. Nothing has changed in that regard, gw were never top of the pile for army balance and these early imbalances have nothing to do with "gws war on tourney play".

Im unfamiliar with gws move against ab but dont see the issue really. At tourneys you are required to have your army codices and rules so building your army on ab whilst convenient should not be a given. Infact I agree that armies should be written from the cidexes with no 3rd party allowances.

And finally how is 6th becoming elite? I cannot fathom where you are getting that from. Infact its widely held in some quarters that tourney players are the elite. Yet you claim gw is punishing them?

1) How can I justify the *meh* non-competitive comment? Don't have to because GW's designers said such in a recent interview.
a) Emperical evidence is the rules themselves. Increased randomness, increased book keeping, longer game times and inconsistant faq's.

2)Unbalance between the factions is not new, the allies matrix is new and completely screws about half of the factions. So yes, there is something new to the level of imbalance. There are also powerful new units that are in the game now that GW has not provided an across the board equivalency to the factions.

3)You may feel that the move against AB is not a big issue and that you prefer hand written lists. Doesn't make them tournament friendly.
I prefer to handwrite my own lists, but AB was a boon for my opponents. I have essential tremors that make my hands shake and my penmanship difficult to decipher for those not used to it.

4)How is GW becoming Elitist?
Only GW themselves having indicated that this is the direction that they want to go. It is one of the justifications of their annual price hikes, their price point and, again, has been stated through their target demographic of individuals/families whose annual earnings are well above the national average.

BTW, I love the nebulous anti-tourney player shot of "It being widely held in some quarters that tourney players are the elite". So, is it widely held or is it in some circles?

Again, this thread is not about Super comp vs fluffers. It is about what happens if GW continues to push until the players stop viewing it as a game.

Ratius wrote:Granted but that dosent prove the theory Gw are waging a war on players who enjoy tourneys. In addition barring the official Gw events TOs can tailor/ tweak rules to player needs. Eg only one piece of mysterious terrain, all forests are standard, objs dont use special rules etc.

In view of the ToS events, local organizers provide some simplifications as described, but not GW itself.

I think that GW did try for a while to make a water-tight set of rules. Chiefly with 4th edition, and Alessio Calvatore at the helm of rules development. But, I think the sales/release model, 'codex-creep' and the sales department-prompted updates of rules are largely unreconcilable with the creation of a game that is as well balanced as possible.

I do think that the more hardcore crowd - those who are after a far more balanced experience, and true test of their skill rather than a reliance on completely random events, will start to take other avenues. Mantic have recently offered a fairly substantial cash prize for one of their official tournaments, and I think that as well as what are regarded as a fairly balanced set of rules might drag a lot of the disillusioned players away from 6th edition 40k. It's interesting to note that Kings of War had Alessio Calvatore as its chief designer, and it might be that he has finally got his wish in having the creative freedom to make a release a game that is well balanced and actually designed to be played in a competitive environment.

So, I wouldn't say they are 'waging war' against competitive play. More, it's a recognition of their target demographic (the casual gamer) and that making a game which is completely balanced is very, very difficult with GW's staggered release model.

Captain Avatar wrote:

Ratius wrote:I cant see how you can justify the premise with the following you have put forward:
A meh non competitive release? You're judging that after 2 months since release and how many major tourneys held/attended?
Sorry I just dont see any hard emperical evidence to back that.

Poor balance in the armies? Of course there is, several codexes need updates, several need total rewrites and others dont gel so well with 6th but it is early days yet. Nothing has changed in that regard, gw were never top of the pile for army balance and these early imbalances have nothing to do with "gws war on tourney play".

Im unfamiliar with gws move against ab but dont see the issue really. At tourneys you are required to have your army codices and rules so building your army on ab whilst convenient should not be a given. Infact I agree that armies should be written from the cidexes with no 3rd party allowances.

And finally how is 6th becoming elite? I cannot fathom where you are getting that from. Infact its widely held in some quarters that tourney players are the elite. Yet you claim gw is punishing them?

1) How can I justify the *meh* non-competitive comment? Don't have to because GW's designers said such in a recent interview.
a) Emperical evidence is the rules themselves. Increased randomness, increased book keeping, longer game times and inconsistant faq's.

2)Unbalance between the factions is not new, the allies matrix is new and completely screws about half of the factions. So yes, there is something new to the level of imbalance. There are also powerful new units that are in the game now that GW has not provided an across the board equivalency to the factions.

3)You may feel that the move against AB is not a big issue and that you prefer hand written lists. Doesn't make them tournament friendly.
I prefer to handwrite my own lists, but AB was a boon for my opponents. I have essential tremors that make my hands shake and my penmanship difficult to decipher for those not used to it.

4)How is GW becoming Elitist?
Only GW themselves having indicated that this is the direction that they want to go. It is one of the justifications of their annual price hikes, their price point and, again, has been stated through their target demographic of individuals/families whose annual earnings are well above the national average.

BTW, I love the nebulous anti-tourney player shot of "It being widely held in some quarters that tourney players are the elite". So, is it widely held or is it in some circles?

Again, this thread is not about Super comp vs fluffers. It is about what happens if GW continues to push until the players stop viewing it as a game.

1) No real argument, but in all fairness GW is going for the casual gamer not the hardcore tournament gamers, if it was always aimed for competitive then we would not see useless units in every codex.
a)From what I have experienced games are actually shorter, the randomness in some ways sucks in others its a boon, inconsistent FAQs is how GW operates

2) Don't be suprised if those factions that got screwed get major buffs where they no longer need allies, but put them on par with alllied armies

3)If only there was access to this strange thing that printed out sheets of paper that have been typed hmmmm.....

4)Its a selective market, and gosh darnit what would we do if the GW employees werent able to buy their Ipads. (in all seriousness here, the pricing turns off so many people that GW may actually do better if they lowered the prices)

5) I don't think GW will push it so far as it is no longer regarded as a game.

We can only hope. It'll be a lot more fun for the people who still play without obnoxious super-competitive players around.

On a gakphone so will respond when home to your rebuttal.

What if GW succeeds in its war against competitive 40k gameplay?

It will be a day of great victory. The scum-of-the-earth WAAC netdeck list tournament gamers will be no more, and the casual games - paragons of humanity and virtue that we are - shall rule uncontested.

What a glorious day that will be.

This message brought to you by the Dakka Dakka Casual Gaming Mafia - 'Cause winning is for losers!

H.B.M.C. wrote:

What if GW succeeds in its war against competitive 40k gameplay?

It will be a day of great victory. The scum-of-the-earth WAAC netdeck list tournament gamers will be no more, and the casual games - paragons of humanity and virtue that we are - shall rule uncontested.

What a glorious day that will be.

This message brought to you by the Dakka Dakka Casual Gaming Mafia - 'Cause winning is for losers!

Great comment as always.

Captain Avatar wrote:[The point is, that poeple need to drop all of the assinine competitive players ruin the "game" bs. That is now what this thread is about. The thread is about the game becoming an elitist role-playing system and the impact such will have if GW completely moves in this direction.

Aren't you part of an elitist tournament playing culture then? How can you call out one side as 'bad and if it comes down to them being ascendant then the game is done for' and then call them elitist? Just seems odd.

So...It'd be like rogue trader again?

ZebioLizard2 wrote:So...It'd be like rogue trader again?

My thoughts exactly, if the premise of running competitive completely out of the game were to come to fruition then you would likely end up with the GM running the game and two armies taking part. This would essentially rend all rules disputes moot as the GM would have final ruling on the game to ensure if was both cinematic and fun.

Nitros14 wrote:We can only hope. It'll be a lot more fun for the people who still play without obnoxious super-competitive players around.

Really, just stop it with this lame, disingenuous false comparison. The enjoyment of competition - one in which both players are trying to win a more-or-less balanced contest - is a basic part of game-playing. Do you move your models randomly? Do you not try to win a game when you play one? Because unless you do, you're a competitive player.

WAAC players are another kettle of fish entirely, and this edition has done nothing to alleviate the laughably poor game balance that encourages them to field tedious (and unfluffy) spam lists, and to quibble over poorly-phrased rules. Despite GW's claims. exploding objectives and carnivorous forests don't make a narrative-driven game, they just make a less-balanced one.

English Assassin wrote:

Nitros14 wrote:We can only hope. It'll be a lot more fun for the people who still play without obnoxious super-competitive players around.

Really, just stop it with this lame, disingenuous false comparison. The enjoyment of competition - one in which both players are trying to win a more-or-less balanced contest - is a basic part of game-playing. Do you move your models randomly? Do you not try to win a game when you play one? Because unless you do, you're a competitive player.

WAAC players are another kettle of fish entirely, and this edition has done nothing to alleviate the laughably poor game balance that encourages them to field tedious (and unfluffy) spam lists, and to quibble over poorly-phrased rules. Despite GW's claims. exploding objectives and carnivorous forests don't make a narrative-driven game, they just make a less-balanced one.

I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to win. Certain people go way too far and drain the fun from the game. You know who I'm talking about.

Personaly, I think it would be a good day for the majority of players. I hate WAAC players, hate them. True I have been to a couple of tourneys, but that was cos a friend asked me to. I want to play the game for fun, not to win.

Sure winning is nice, but it isnt all there is to the game. That is why I have like 27:15:90-odd W:L ratio. I dont care, cos its a game for fun

Both of which posts entirely miss the point. 6th edition has done nothing to discourage WAAC players; it's still every bit as unbalanced and exploitable as its predecessor. The players it will discourage are ones like me, whose enjoyment of the game relies principally upon trying to win in a reasonably balanced contest the outcome of which is decided primarily by player skill, not by a random roll which causes one army to die of plague, be eaten by trees, or fall into some magma they inexplicably hadn't noticed until they stepped in it.

While I am not sure that GW is actively waging a war against competitive play, they sure as hell aren't going out of their way to support it. Every time I see people whining about WAAC, I typically think that it is either more of an issue with the WAAC guy(s) they know being obnoxious or the fact that they get pounded constantly and think that with less power gamers, they can at least break even on wins.

IMO, the reason GW states the game is for casuals and is for movie like play is so they can be lazy and not have to change their Codex release model. Heaven forbid they actually put some effort into the game rules and switch over to the update everyone at once model (PP). Sure there are a lot of armies, but it can't take that long to make the tweaks needed to fix most armies. Hell, most new army books are the same as the previous ones with points moved up or down and a couple new units (sell new models).

If competitive play goes away, PP or another game company would probably eclipse GW and GW games would turn into Flames of War. Like it or not, tournaments help drive the game forward.

The game started and grew in a time period when tournaments never existed. If this is GW's aim and it does succeed then the game will continue on just fine like it did in the 80's and 90's.

We wrote:The game started and grew in a time period when tournaments never existed. If this is GW's aim and it does succeed then the game will continue on just fine like it did in the 80's and 90's.

You do realise that GW ran their own official tournaments from about 1975 onwards? They even published around 1990 in White Dwarf (and gave away for free in their shops) special tournament army lists for 40k which replaced the usual random equipment tables with fixed-cost lists.

Moreover, it's worth pointing-out that despite Rogue Trader's rulebook suggesting games have a GM - essentially because Rogue Trader was, for wholly commercial reasons, a confused mish-mash of RPG and wargame - the game developed significantly over its six-year lifespan, and all mention of GMs had vanished from official 40k material by about 1990.

English Assassin wrote:

Nitros14 wrote:We can only hope. It'll be a lot more fun for the people who still play without obnoxious super-competitive players around.

Really, just stop it with this lame, disingenuous false comparison. The enjoyment of competition - one in which both players are trying to win a more-or-less balanced contest - is a basic part of game-playing. Do you move your models randomly? Do you not try to win a game when you play one? Because unless you do, you're a competitive player.

WAAC players are another kettle of fish entirely, and this edition has done nothing to alleviate the laughably poor game balance that encourages them to field tedious (and unfluffy) spam lists, and to quibble over poorly-phrased rules. Despite GW's claims. exploding objectives and carnivorous forests don't make a narrative-driven game, they just make a less-balanced one.

There's a difference between being competitive, and always being in the competitive mindset, which is what most people mean by competitive in this case.

If you can only have fun by beating the other player 100% to the ground, your stuck in a competitive mindset to much and need to relax.