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So I've found entering the local scene to be a bit rough, not because people are unfriendly or anything, just because they're more experienced players. I've also noticed that many people drop out of the game early, for reasons unknown (and maybe only perceived I don't know they've quit, maybe they're just really busy right now). Everyone's not me, but maybe the experience is similar, people start, maybe they win agains some other novice people, or don't, or play someone who is a better player with a better list and get shot up. If the problem is people are playing too many games against players that just outright outclass them...

If the problem is good players stick around, intermediate and novice players leave not finding good matches. How do we get the less skilled players to stick around? My thought is that we need a system of player rankings, keeping track of local players and helping people find matches that are well suited to them. at the very least letting them know they are outclassed in a match, or perhaps even-ing it up by providing a points handicap.

I've just been thinking about this because I feel like I'm stuck in the middle, nothing but losses, except when I play n00bs and then I crush them... and that feels, well it feels like I'm doing them a disservice. I don't need to win every game, but I'd be happy if most games felt winnable.

Has anyone seen anything like this implemented in 40k? any other thoughts?

My local meta has a league where it starts off within 3 divs and the first 3 matches place you into 5 different tiers. People the top of each tier and bottom move up and down divisions to start the next season.

The only way for this to last is make the good people aware of this problem and have them pull punches when building lists (not during the game). We've had a single player crushing every new player as hard as he could in any game "because that's the only way to learn" resulting in at least six new players quitting the game for good.

Our area is mostly competitive and this issue comes up a lot. New player wants a demo game. Competitive guy gladly gives him a demo game and fields his adepticon list and smashes new guy. The thought process being "you have to teach them right, no one plays with uncompetitive unoptimal lists so we're not going to start them off like that"

It does run a lot of people off because not everyone wants to play that way, but if your community is shaped that way then it will only tend to attract those type of people.

There's a life-cycle that exists for warhammer consumers;
1. Intrigue - Person because interested in some aspect of the hobby. They investigate purchasing, but hold off. Excitement is restrained at this point.
2. Adoption - Person makes the initial purchase. Excitement builds quickly as they first start assembling and painting models.
3. Investment - Person makes continued purchases. Excitement continues building, but is petering out.
4. Stagnation - Person stops making purchases of whatever intrigued them in the first place, or makes much fewer purchases. Resentment of some aspect begins to settle in.
5. Rejection - Excitement dissipates. If buyer's remorse is strong enough, person may abandon the product altogether. Person then either exits the hobby, or re-enters the life-span with "Interest".

Now, this cycle exists for EVERYONE. The question is, how quickly do you move through it, and how often will you repeat it? For someone like me, it takes me about 2 years to hit stagnation, but by that point, I have always re-entered with Interest in a new faction. Right now, I am currently in a mix between Stagnation and Interest; I don't want to buy any more for my current army (Genestealer Cult), but I keep hearing rumours that there's a Daemon Primarch coming, which I am committed to getting. If that happens, I will move back into Adoption and Investment with Emperor's Children.

Some people move through this life-cycle more quickly than others. Everyone knows someone that seems to start a new army every other month, buys a TON of models, then sells them off again for "the new hotness". New players, especially if they're younger, don't have the funds to move quickly through this life-cycle, and so they tend to go through Adoption and Investment more slowly. I believe a slow burn is more enjoyable.

You seem to be coming here because you have a lot of new players that are very quickly going through this cycle. Perhaps they go through Interest and Adoption, hit Investment, then very swiftly hit Stagnation when they see how "hard-core" the local meta is (whether justified or not, it's only their perception that matters). Here's some things I would recommend:

1 - Start a league. As others have said, start at something small and approachable, like Kill Team. Their first Adoption should be enough to get them into this. Then, have the league increase in points value every month until you hit 2000 points. End with an Apocalypse game. If the players don't have the funds to make this work, offer to loan units for games, and have the community get involved in helping to keep these players around. You can also make it a challenge for your veterans by imposing restrictions that new players have an easier time working around, list-building wise, than veterans. "No Lord of Wars this round" or "You must randomly roll your Warlord Trait and Psychic Powers this round" or "for this 1500 point round, you must take a Brigade if you own the models to do so".

2 - Talk with your community about having "Novice Nights". Times when they bring really bad lists to help give new players a chance to crush them. The idea is for the new players to win, but not because you played wrong. Intelligent and cunning play should always be something to aspire towards.

3 - Run a story or map-based campaign for two players that are both entering the hobby at about the same time. Most of us that have played for a long time entered the game WITH someone, not by ourselves. We then felt a drive to "keep up" with that person, and pushed each other with small steps of one-up'smanship.

 Yarium wrote:
You can also make it a challenge for your veterans by imposing restrictions that new players have an easier time working around, list-building wise, than veterans. "No Lord of Wars this round" or "You must randomly roll your Warlord Trait and Psychic Powers this round" or "for this 1500 point round, you must take a Brigade if you own the models to do so".

I agree with all of your post, except this. Good players usually have a better time adjusting to such random changes to the rules than new player, for multiple reasons. When we are running campaigns with wonky missions, the good players usually win more, not less.

Out of curiosity, what kinds of missions are you playing? If you're doing eternal war or ITC etc. then I can definitely see this happening and I don't really have a great solution for how to improve matchmaking.

However, the CA2018 maelstrom missions and Open War cards are much more forgiving of skill gaps between players because the RNG helps mitigate things. Even if you're getting wiped off the board in Maelstrom you can still score points with some luck and in open war you've sometimes got asymmetric goals like 'killing one designated model can win the whole game outright' which can at least make players feel like they're "in the game" and they have a chance to win even when pulling models off the board by the handful.

The underlying problem with losing in 40k is that it's really not very fun. By definition, you're literally losing some of your ability to interact with the game every time you pull a unit off the board and in a 'balanced' mission things can rapidly snowball because killing enemy units makes you win more (because your units are exposed to less damage in return) and your opponent lose more (because they've got fewer and fewer options as units die). If you're really outclassed it's usually pretty obvious that you're going to lose by turn 2 but you've still got to suffer through maybe an additional 30min to an hour of getting crushed. Most people will not find this experience fun because they will (correctly) feel like there's nothing they can really do to win. The more random missions mitigate this aspect of the game by giving players some hope of being handed a comeback via RNG which can give them a reason to keep playing and stay invested in the game.

I love watching noobs cry.

This issue has been the main reason I don’t play at the FLGS. The local players are vets from a gaming club with 20-30 years of play under their belt. I only get to play a tabletop game every three months or so; it’s already been proven to me that playing one of them isn’t enjoyable in the slightest. They also tend to drive away the new bloods - the FLGS has given up on the likes of an escalation league because it turns into a “massacre the noobs” situation, and that just drives away the new players or turns them into basket cases as bad as the old guard.

 auticus wrote:
Our area is mostly competitive and this issue comes up a lot. New player wants a demo game. Competitive guy gladly gives him a demo game and fields his adepticon list and smashes new guy. The thought process being "you have to teach them right, no one plays with uncompetitive unoptimal lists so we're not going to start them off like that"

It does run a lot of people off because not everyone wants to play that way, but if your community is shaped that way then it will only tend to attract those type of people.

Here’s the sad truth, the list wouldn’t matter. Unless you are really tanking your lists, I’ve taken weaker lists (5 wardens replacing 3 bikes and a shield captain, taking another shield captain off his bike and just eating a 50ish point deficit) and smashed newer players. And some not so new ones. Someone who is tournament competitive is just gonna see and be able to exploit plays a novice won’t think of. Like, what new player is going to think about wrapping a model?

 Stormonu wrote:
This issue has been the main reason I don’t play at the FLGS. The local players are vets from a gaming club with 20-30 years of play under their belt. I only get to play a tabletop game every three months or so; it’s already been proven to me that playing one of them isn’t enjoyable in the slightest. They also tend to drive away the new bloods - the FLGS has given up on the likes of an escalation league because it turns into a “massacre the noobs” situation, and that just drives away the new players or turns them into basket cases as bad as the old guard.

This reminds me of a very old post from either warseer or dakka. It went like this:

Two noobs enter a GW store with the intention to play an intro game of 40K. They are thrilled and excited to at last move some of their shoddily painted Ultramarines around. So they ask the store manager for an intro game but he declines in a gruff manner and points to two of his cronies next to the table who spent nearly their entire existence in his shop to hone their skills at being douches.
The two vets play IG and teach the noobs the rules before commencing the inevitable slaughter of the lambs. The most important rule that the noobs are taught is the formation rule which means that infantry models
can´t be more than two inches away from their squad mates. Now comes the interesting part of that rules segment: It ONLY applies to IG as they claim. Any other faction MUST adhere to a more severe formation rule that states that infantry models must be in btb contact at all times.
Now the game starts and you know what´s coming. The two obnoxious IG players hurl pie plates around the table as if it were the end times while the noobs watch in horror as their bunched up smurfs are taken off the battlefield by the handful. At the end of the short game the noobs flee the store with a severe case of PTSD and are never seen again while the vets snicker around like Gargamel and are congratulating themselves for a job well done.

Marines are a terrible starter army anyway.

So, do you turn every thread into a marine whine-fest now, Martel?

Here’s the sad truth, the list wouldn’t matter.

Lists matter a great deal. A good demo game is one where the person that is new is introduced to the game and can learn from what is happening.

If what they are learning is that the list matters a great deal, they are turned on to the fact that a good deal of the boxes in the store are never-touches, and that is the quickest killer of enthusiasm that I've ever seen, and seen it many times over and over again over twenty years of playing.

 auticus wrote:
If what they are learning is that the list matters a great deal, they are turned on to the fact that a good deal of the boxes in the store are never-touches, and that is the quickest killer of enthusiasm that I've ever seen, and seen it many times over and over again over twenty years of playing.

What's the alternative? Lie and pretend that the list doesn't matter and let them learn about how a lot of boxes are never-touches once they've invested a bunch of time and money into an army that can't function? It's better to kill their enthusiasm early than to have the same end result at a much higher price.