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So, I've been on Dakka a fair while now. And I reckon we're seeing more of a polarization of the userbase than I've seen before. Seems like people are splitting into a few separate camps, and then defining people in other camps as the enemy or whatever.

This has really lowered the level of discourse on the fora, with some threads degenerating into allegations of "hate" and "white knighting". (A tip of the hat to any mod who tackles this by removing it, most recently I saw Insaniak working on that, so cheers mate).

I'll just use myself as an example. I would class myself as a "competitive player." I enjoy close tactical games, I like to win them, and I enjoy playing in tournaments against stiff opposition. However, just because I am a competitive tournament gamer, does not mean I hate fluff or background. I build armies by picking a theme or models I like and then trying to squeeze as much competitive juice out of them as possible within my theme. I read the novels and enjoy them, I have run a long RPG campaign in the 40K universe, as well as multiple narrative campaigns and events. But at the core, I want a balanced game that I can choose to deviate from.

To read some arguments on here, I should be happy with 7th for example because it will bring more variety to the competitive scene. However, I and many others like me are concerned not just with list power, but also with the story of the game. We don't particularly want our games to be ludicrous or not make fluff sense. We'd like people to be able to take fluff orientated armies and have a decent chance of competing- most of us would like to do that ourselves! It's just incorrect to assume that competitive players don't care about background at all, or that fluff bunnies never care about winning.

That's just one example, but there are many more- "balance" vs "fun" (as if it can't be both?) "GW hater" vs. "White Knight" (can't we just accept that sometimes people like or dislike what we don't like?) and so on.

I dunno. Perhaps this post is a total waste of time, but I reckon I'd enjoy reading Dakka a lot more if we all took a little more time to imagine the person on the other end of the post we're reading as a little more complex than some ultra-stereotype of the worst attributes of "that sort of gamer". That sort of fragmentation diminishes the entire hobby, and certainly the part of it that takes place on the fora.

I'm not sure I'd assert it's getting worse, I'd suggest that it is a symptom of your participation reaching a certain level of maturity.

I say this, because I'm in a similar place. Where I have now begun asking people, when I see it, to stop using label words, most specifically in my case "hate," because I'm tired of hearing it thrown around.

I seem to be specifically sensitive to that over "white knight', which is simply the reverse, because I tend towards the more critical end of the spectrum in matters GW (and let's face it, it is GW-centric topics, and pretty much only those, which attract this sort of discourse) and also because it seems to be much more acceptable to accuse someone of 'hating' than to intimate they may be a 'white knight' which seems to be a licence to come out with all sorts of righteous indignation.

So, in short, the user base isn't really more polarised, you're just more sensitive to it. Probably exacerbated by the fact that the new edition 40K discussions have been consistently fractious and have attracted posts from new and infrequent users who don't always seem to quite respect forum etiquette.

While I certainly agree with Az, I would place even more emphasis on context. Things are a little heated right now, sure, but no more so than, say, the height of the Chapterhouse kerfuffle. Back when that case first appeared, and for months afterward, the tone on here was pretty tense in certain fora. Any thread relating even tangentially to CHS was a powder keg. Nowadays, the Chapterhouse thread in N&R very quickly disappears from the front page due to lack of interest.

So, I think that while that the tone of the fora are a little more tense at the moment, and that a lot of posters have their hackles up, it'll dissipate, probably quickly. After the new 40K edition drops, a lot of the vitriol will go away. I highly doubt that 7th will be that contentious that the argument will sustain itself at this level indefinitely.

Things are certainly a lot more relaxed now than during the 'summer of terror' a few years ago, that saw combination of Finecast release, overseas sales ban, price rise and reduction of staff in shops & tournament support stopping in the place of what seemed like a few months. It was a dark time..

The thing is if you keep getting a groin thrust in your face you gradually become acclimatised to it, to the point where you just respond to it with a 'meh'. I'm sure had GW announced ten years ago that their latest version of 40k would be "JUST THROW EVERYTHING ON THE TABLE, CHAOS MARINES WITH ELDAR BUDDIES TROLOLOL" there would have been an explosion of krakatoa-esque proportions on the internet, with players of all types united in their disbelief. Now, it's almost like it's expected, and the veteran GW fans seem to just shrug their shoulders, say "oh well", and reach into their pockets for another round.