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Greetings Designers,

I have heard the contention that:

"A game designed to be competitive is a boon to all gamers"

I have seen this contention discussed as a truism for wargame design.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Is it a truism that all designers should keep in mind? Or is it just an opinion?

Discuss.....

I agree, having everything balanced for competitive play ensures that a casual doesn't stomp another casual just because one plays Harlequins and the other plays IG. If a game is easily broken by competitive players, then it leads to casual games where one player doesn't have a chance just because of the army he chose to play. That's bad game design.

I think I mostly agree.

I do think that any game will benefit from clear and well written rules that aren't full of loopholes. Whether that's competitive, co-operative, solo, or "for fun." To that end, games that have the intent of being competitive tend to put a little more effort towards that than "it's only a narrative game" types do. Likewise, I think overall balance does help, too (though maybe not quite as important for co-op, where "fun" and "story" may be more important).

On the flip side, it's easy to have "competitive" games become so micro-managing that they are absolutely the death of anything but the most hardcore players. Warmachine/Hordes is a good example of how, due to the way Steamroller events run, extremely precise measurements become "The Way," which can make playing like going to a trig class. You can definitely take it too far, though to be totally fair that often more comes in how the community engages with the game, rather than just the game itself.

Hard disagree. If the goal of the game is to produce a simulation which is used to analyze and evaluate weapon systems, tactics, strategy, doctrine, etc. with real world applications then producing a "competitive game" is not a value-add to the player (or the designer, or the data that comes out of the game), and in fact may very well be detrimental to the games design.

Likewise, a game that is intended to provide a narrative experience similar to the various narrative skirmish games that are en vogue right now will generally suffer from being competitively tight, as the act of tightening the game for competitive play removes the flexibility needed to encourage the narrative gameplay that the game was actually designed to produce.

The only time that statement is true is when the game in question is actually being designed to produce a narrow subset of possible experiences for the player. To hold that statement as universally applicable requires you to view all games through a common lens, i.e. the belief that all games should be engaged with in the same way that the 40k community at large does with 40k. That is a very narrow lens to look through and cuts out a lot of the purposes that a designer might have to create a game, as well as a lot of the experiences that may be desired for the participants of said game to have while playing it.

 Valander wrote:

I do think that any game will benefit from clear and well written rules that aren't full of loopholes. Whether that's competitive, co-operative, solo, or "for fun." To that end, games that have the intent of being competitive tend to put a little more effort towards that than "it's only a narrative game" types do. Likewise, I think overall balance does help, too (though maybe not quite as important for co-op, where "fun" and "story" may be more important).

Well stated. Tight rules are my goal, but I am also striving to include co-op, solo, and narrative in my game. Those other play styles definitely benefit from the foundation of a solid ruleset. However, I don't want to constrain those "looser" play options by elevating competitive play over those other styles. It is a bit of a balancing act, but my focus has been to create an air-tight ruleset (lol I can dream) that will enable those less competitive play options to thrive.

 Valander wrote:
On the flip side, it's easy to have "competitive" games become so micro-managing that they are absolutely the death of anything but the most hardcore players. Warmachine/Hordes is a good example of how, due to the way Steamroller events run, extremely precise measurements become "The Way," which can make playing like going to a trig class. You can definitely take it too far, though to be totally fair that often more comes in how the community engages with the game, rather than just the game itself.

Another great point. I was a big WM MK1 player and saw how Mk2 and Mk3 gave the game a steep learning curve that discouraged new players from giving an otherwise very fun and tight ruleset a chance. The best rules in the world aren't worth a damn if people are intimidated by them or if keeping up with a game ends up feeling like homework to learn all the tactical combinations. But, at the end of the day, these are games that are supposed to be fun, so fun is my ultimate goal.

Hyper-competitive games like WM/H work better as a CCG (my opinion, don't hate me), where the play elements are relatively cheap tokens or cards rather than expensive multi-part models that require assembly and paint to enjoy fully.

As a player, I hated meta shifts that made elements of my model collection obsolete or performed differently. I want to prevent that same feeling with my game as a designer. Which ultimately makes me wary of having a system functioning like the WM/H engine, even though it has a very well-thought-out system.

I think a lot of this may also come down to "what does competitive play really mean?"

For some, that means extreme precision on measurements and list building and combo-wombo so that they can club baby seals and gloat about how their supreme rules knowledge found those corner cases. For others, it may mean that it's simply a tight, elegant ruleset with no room for misunderstanding how something is going to work.

Competitive games don't have to be complex. Go and chess are perfect examples of simple rules but competitively deep. That doesn't mean that all simple rules are complex, of course, nor does it mean that complex rules can't be competitive (c.f. Star Fleet Battles, which is very complex but also surprisingly tight and competitive, especially with their tournament packs).

Opinions will vary on this point but competitive translates for me to trying to be the best, that's a competition, a way to determine who is best at a certain sport/game.

So: "A game designed so that players can try to be the best is a boon to all gamers"

I don't try to be the best, I rather not play too many trying to be the best (WAAC) players. For me games are trying to have fun. As long as you find a group of like minded people the designers can do almost whatever they want .

One of the reasons to start playing Orks was the Shock Attack Gun with a 2d6 list of results. Not competitive, totally unbalanced, but couldn't wait to get my next game in because it was so much fun.

But yeah, one side being wiped turn 1,2 or even 3 is no fun, so there should be some thought going into avoiding those situations.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Hard disagree. If the goal of the game is to produce a simulation which is used to analyze and evaluate weapon systems, tactics, strategy, doctrine, etc. with real world applications then producing a "competitive game" is not a value-add to the player (or the designer, or the data that comes out of the game), and in fact may very well be detrimental to the games design.

Likewise, a game that is intended to provide a narrative experience similar to the various narrative skirmish games that are en vogue right now will generally suffer from being competitively tight, as the act of tightening the game for competitive play removes the flexibility needed to encourage the narrative gameplay that the game was actually designed to produce.

The only time that statement is true is when the game in question is actually being designed to produce a narrow subset of possible experiences for the player. To hold that statement as universally applicable requires you to view all games through a common lens, i.e. the belief that all games should be engaged with in the same way that the 40k community at large does with 40k. That is a very narrow lens to look through and cuts out a lot of the purposes that a designer might have to create a game, as well as a lot of the experiences that may be desired for the participants of said game to have while playing it.

Seconded.

The problem I have with the statement in question and large part of the resulting discourse is that it immediately devolves to „tight balance and clearly written rules are good for everyone”. But that misses the whole wider context of the activity that wargaming and gaming is. So, to back up a little, the fundamental constraint of competitive game is… time.

For tournament game you have to be able to play multiple matches a day to fit into a realistic tournament time table. For that (I’ll only focus on wargames here) you have to cut down on time consuming parts of the game - remove templates; limit the number of times per turn you manipulate models; limit the number of times players interrupt the flow of the game/passthe dice; decrease events resolution time etc and move the larger part of cognitive burden to outside-of-tournament-day time, so you are not only free, but also benefit hugely from a pre-game crunch focussed design.

With narrative focus, your realistic time constraint is different - you have to beable to fit a single game a day, where definition of what „gaming day” is will vary with target audience. Within a pickup culture this will be closer to tournament time scope, but within a traditional wargaming club this is closer to an actual day - the same amount of time that you have to fit an entire tournament day can be dedicated to a single match.

This difference is both huge and fundamental. Only on top of that choice of focus you are then designing the building blocks of your core rules system. So, for example, for a narrative/simulationist game you can have inherently slow resolution mechanics like comparative stat based rolls, where you have an overhead of communicating those stats; you can use reference tables; templates; detailed and unique effects etc. With a tournament focus you are way better with static roll targets and relegating unique effects to non-variable CCG interrupts and mortal wound like shortcuts that speed up the gameplay, but universally strip down a bit of feel each, so if you include a whole bunch of those, the resulting immersion factor will be limited.

All of this has exactly null inherent impact on the mythical balance and rules language. You can have a well written, simulationist wargame that has depth and balance, and we all well know, that you can have an utterly broken „tournament ready” game that is lacking in all areas - depth, balance and clarity.

The bottom line is - most posters in such discussions look at the problem through the lens of 40k problems, and from that POV it may indeed look like „focussing on competitive experience will benefit all”. But that is a very narrow perspective on the much broader subject.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
One more difference, that is worth mentioning here is the player's mindset and his goal of the activity.

In both contexts, the game is adversarial, so we can move past "but both competitive and narrative player tries to win" and focus on the core of the difference.

Competitive player tries to establish his position on the skill ladder in the context of other competitive players, ultimately trying to prove his superiority over peers. Narrative player does not.

So, for example, "gotcha" moments in modern 40k, resulting from the amount of stratagems per faction and number of factions is "bloat" for the competitive players, as it promotes good memory but has nothing to do with skill. But the same "bloat" may be welcomed by narrative players, because in narrative context you can simply communicate a list of stratagems/special rules that will come into play during this particular match and make sure, that the adversary understands how your army works. [To be clear, I still think, that stratagems in modern 40k are a disaster, but for completely different reasons than "bloat"]. Something that is often missed by competitive minded players' is that in narrative wargaming context you are interested in witnessing how the forces would fare within the simulation perspective, not how you, the player, can win in an abstract game with pretty pieces and a freeform board. [In historical wargaming context, one of the most important aspects of design testing is the process of validation, where you feed the system with historical forces and conditions and see if it can produce the realistic outcome.] So you do not strive to be an omnipotent agent, but will welcome the role of a general with a limited control over the assets. So, for example, you want realistic morale rules that may render your units temporarily or permanently useless. You want realistically swingy results you have to adapt to on the fly instead of layers upon layers of outside-of-simulation manipulations that will ensure the success of a given roll, the mythical "reliability of the outcome".

Some great responses there!

I will still stand by the idea that if by "competitive" you mean clean, balanced rules (which I think is often the implied meaning, but as other posters have pointed out is not really what "competitive" means), then sure, that will benefit everyone. However, the broader (and more accurate) meaning of "competitive" as discussed above I would agree has no direct benefit to "all gamers," and in fact can have a detrimental effect on certain types of games.

 Valander wrote:
Some great responses there!

I will still stand by the idea that if by "competitive" you mean clean, balanced rules (which I think is often the implied meaning, but as other posters have pointed out is not really what "competitive" means), then sure, that will benefit everyone. However, the broader (and more accurate) meaning of "competitive" as discussed above I would agree has no direct benefit to "all gamers," and in fact can have a detrimental effect on certain types of games.

Conflating "competitive" with "clean rules" is so popular on dakka, that I had to edit my response above, because in writing it hastily I have used this false equivalence in one spot too.

The reason why this is sometimes somewhat justified perspective is that narrative mindset allows some shortcomings of the ruleset to have no impact on the gaming experience - players will just negotiate over the unexpected rule interaction on the fly and move on, while within a competitive environment this is a direct problem that requires an impartial judgement of an arbiter. Because of that, narrative players do not stress so much over minuscule details of rules wording - rules-lawyering is largely non existent in narrative community. But that does not mean, that we can simply make up rules as we go, beer and pretzels and so on. Simulation focused games tend to have tons of rules and expecting all of those to be written in perfect legalese and not produce an odd interaction here and there falls under the problem of Godel' incompleteness theorem - it is not possible, there will always be need for some form of interpretation/judgement to be applied from the outside of the system as it is.

nou wrote:
Simulation focused games tend to have tons of rules and expecting all of those to be written in perfect legalese and not produce an odd interaction here and there falls under the problem of Godel' incompleteness theorem - it is not possible, there will always be need for some form of interpretation/judgement to be applied from the outside of the system as it is.

So, if I am interpreting this last bit right, perfectly written and tight rules is just as much of a unicorn as perfect balance? Instead, they need to be viewed on more of a spectrum?

Thanks for clarifying. An interesting thought, as many people seem to approach these concepts as a Yes/No proposal. It either has perfect balance or tight rules or it does not.

nou wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Hard disagree. If the goal of the game is to produce a simulation which is used to analyze and evaluate weapon systems, tactics, strategy, doctrine, etc. with real world applications then producing a "competitive game" is not a value-add to the player (or the designer, or the data that comes out of the game), and in fact may very well be detrimental to the games design.

Likewise, a game that is intended to provide a narrative experience similar to the various narrative skirmish games that are en vogue right now will generally suffer from being competitively tight, as the act of tightening the game for competitive play removes the flexibility needed to encourage the narrative gameplay that the game was actually designed to produce.

The only time that statement is true is when the game in question is actually being designed to produce a narrow subset of possible experiences for the player. To hold that statement as universally applicable requires you to view all games through a common lens, i.e. the belief that all games should be engaged with in the same way that the 40k community at large does with 40k. That is a very narrow lens to look through and cuts out a lot of the purposes that a designer might have to create a game, as well as a lot of the experiences that may be desired for the participants of said game to have while playing it.

Seconded.

The problem I have with the statement in question and large part of the resulting discourse is that it immediately devolves to „tight balance and clearly written rules are good for everyone”. But that misses the whole wider context of the activity that wargaming and gaming is. So, to back up a little, the fundamental constraint of competitive game is… time.

For tournament game you have to be able to play multiple matches a day to fit into a realistic tournament time table. For that (I’ll only focus on wargames here) you have to cut down on time consuming parts of the game - remove templates; limit the number of times per turn you manipulate models; limit the number of times players interrupt the flow of the game/passthe dice; decrease events resolution time etc and move the larger part of cognitive burden to outside-of-tournament-day time, so you are not only free, but also benefit hugely from a pre-game crunch focussed design.

With narrative focus, your realistic time constraint is different - you have to beable to fit a single game a day, where definition of what „gaming day” is will vary with target audience. Within a pickup culture this will be closer to tournament time scope, but within a traditional wargaming club this is closer to an actual day - the same amount of time that you have to fit an entire tournament day can be dedicated to a single match.

This difference is both huge and fundamental. Only on top of that choice of focus you are then designing the building blocks of your core rules system. So, for example, for a narrative/simulationist game you can have inherently slow resolution mechanics like comparative stat based rolls, where you have an overhead of communicating those stats; you can use reference tables; templates; detailed and unique effects etc. With a tournament focus you are way better with static roll targets and relegating unique effects to non-variable CCG interrupts and mortal wound like shortcuts that speed up the gameplay, but universally strip down a bit of feel each, so if you include a whole bunch of those, the resulting immersion factor will be limited.

All of this has exactly null inherent impact on the mythical balance and rules language. You can have a well written, simulationist wargame that has depth and balance, and we all well know, that you can have an utterly broken „tournament ready” game that is lacking in all areas - depth, balance and clarity.

The bottom line is - most posters in such discussions look at the problem through the lens of 40k problems, and from that POV it may indeed look like „focussing on competitive experience will benefit all”. But that is a very narrow perspective on the much broader subject.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
One more difference, that is worth mentioning here is the player's mindset and his goal of the activity.

In both contexts, the game is adversarial, so we can move past "but both competitive and narrative player tries to win" and focus on the core of the difference.

Competitive player tries to establish his position on the skill ladder in the context of other competitive players, ultimately trying to prove his superiority over peers. Narrative player does not.

So, for example, "gotcha" moments in modern 40k, resulting from the amount of stratagems per faction and number of factions is "bloat" for the competitive players, as it promotes good memory but has nothing to do with skill. But the same "bloat" may be welcomed by narrative players, because in narrative context you can simply communicate a list of stratagems/special rules that will come into play during this particular match and make sure, that the adversary understands how your army works. [To be clear, I still think, that stratagems in modern 40k are a disaster, but for completely different reasons than "bloat"]. Something that is often missed by competitive minded players' is that in narrative wargaming context you are interested in witnessing how the forces would fare within the simulation perspective, not how you, the player, can win in an abstract game with pretty pieces and a freeform board. [In historical wargaming context, one of the most important aspects of design testing is the process of validation, where you feed the system with historical forces and conditions and see if it can produce the realistic outcome.] So you do not strive to be an omnipotent agent, but will welcome the role of a general with a limited control over the assets. So, for example, you want realistic morale rules that may render your units temporarily or permanently useless. You want realistically swingy results you have to adapt to on the fly instead of layers upon layers of outside-of-simulation manipulations that will ensure the success of a given roll, the mythical "reliability of the outcome".

You are one of my favorite posters when it comes to the game design boards, always insightful, always thinking beyond the surface level discourse, and always demonstrating a solid grasp of design theory and concepts. Well done.

"competitive" can be understood as the opposite of cooperative or tournament games

and those are very different

in case of the first one, yes a game that is meant to be played by players against players is written differently than one that is played by players against the game/AI/game-master as this can get away with balance issues or unclear rules as no one cares one faction is stronger than the other as they are all on the same side


narrative and simulation can also be seen as the opposite of each other, as the one focus on re-telling the story while the other one on being realistic

reason why I see this as opposite comes from historical games, you often have some that change to rules to fit reality, but not the reality of battle but of history. So the rules are written in a way to always have the historical outcome, were a simulation is written to have the realistic battle (so the other one might have an easy victory in a historical scenario because the reason they lost in real life are not happening)


so a cooperative narrative game will have a lot of problems if you use it as competitive simulation or even worse as competitive tournament game
while using a tournament game as base for a narrative game is less of a problem

but overall, clear, clean and easy to follow rules are always superior no matter how detailed those are and will benefit all kind of players

 Easy E wrote:

nou wrote:
Simulation focused games tend to have tons of rules and expecting all of those to be written in perfect legalese and not produce an odd interaction here and there falls under the problem of Godel' incompleteness theorem - it is not possible, there will always be need for some form of interpretation/judgement to be applied from the outside of the system as it is.

So, if I am interpreting this last bit right, perfectly written and tight rules is just as much of a unicorn as perfect balance? Instead, they need to be viewed on more of a spectrum?

Thanks for clarifying. An interesting thought, as many people seem to approach these concepts as a Yes/No proposal. It either has perfect balance or tight rules or it does not.

I definitely agree there's a spectrum there. And also, "tight rules" and "balance" are not the same thing. You can have very clean rules with terrible balance (eg, "If you roll an even number on a d6 and the date is an even number as well, you win the game" is pretty clear; it is not, though, "balanced"), and vice versa I think.

Like most things in life, very little is binary. Neither balance nor tight rules can be just a "yes/no" but definitely more on a scale.

nou wrote:

 Valander wrote:
Some great responses there!

I will still stand by the idea that if by "competitive" you mean clean, balanced rules (which I think is often the implied meaning, but as other posters have pointed out is not really what "competitive" means), then sure, that will benefit everyone. However, the broader (and more accurate) meaning of "competitive" as discussed above I would agree has no direct benefit to "all gamers," and in fact can have a detrimental effect on certain types of games.

Conflating "competitive" with "clean rules" is so popular on dakka, that I had to edit my response above, because in writing it hastily I have used this false equivalence in one spot too.

The reason why this is sometimes somewhat justified perspective is that narrative mindset allows some shortcomings of the ruleset to have no impact on the gaming experience - players will just negotiate over the unexpected rule interaction on the fly and move on, while within a competitive environment this is a direct problem that requires an impartial judgement of an arbiter. Because of that, narrative players do not stress so much over minuscule details of rules wording - rules-lawyering is largely non existent in narrative community. But that does not mean, that we can simply make up rules as we go, beer and pretzels and so on. Simulation focused games tend to have tons of rules and expecting all of those to be written in perfect legalese and not produce an odd interaction here and there falls under the problem of Godel' incompleteness theorem - it is not possible, there will always be need for some form of interpretation/judgement to be applied from the outside of the system as it is.

This is the only part of either post I disagree with. I agree that it may be more prevalent in the competitive atmosphere, but there are plenty of rules lawyers outside of tourney and pickup games. Ask the question on any wargaming forum. You'll find everyone has encountered the rules lawyer.

I never seen "rules lawyer" in cooperative games

 Easy E wrote:

nou wrote:
Simulation focused games tend to have tons of rules and expecting all of those to be written in perfect legalese and not produce an odd interaction here and there falls under the problem of Godel' incompleteness theorem - it is not possible, there will always be need for some form of interpretation/judgement to be applied from the outside of the system as it is.

So, if I am interpreting this last bit right, perfectly written and tight rules is just as much of a unicorn as perfect balance? Instead, they need to be viewed on more of a spectrum?

Thanks for clarifying. An interesting thought, as many people seem to approach these concepts as a Yes/No proposal. It either has perfect balance or tight rules or it does not.

Valander wrote:
I definitely agree there's a spectrum there. And also, "tight rules" and "balance" are not the same thing. You can have very clean rules with terrible balance (eg, "If you roll an even number on a d6 and the date is an even number as well, you win the game" is pretty clear; it is not, though, "balanced"), and vice versa I think.

Like most things in life, very little is binary. Neither balance nor tight rules can be just a "yes/no" but definitely more on a scale.

It can be viewed as a spectrum of sorts, but on top of the hard theoretical impossibility, I strongly advise reading through this thread https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/804312.page to see just how airtight the rules language must be in seemingly obvious cases to stop rules lawyering.

Ork-en Man wrote:

nou wrote:

 Valander wrote:
Some great responses there!

I will still stand by the idea that if by "competitive" you mean clean, balanced rules (which I think is often the implied meaning, but as other posters have pointed out is not really what "competitive" means), then sure, that will benefit everyone. However, the broader (and more accurate) meaning of "competitive" as discussed above I would agree has no direct benefit to "all gamers," and in fact can have a detrimental effect on certain types of games.

Conflating "competitive" with "clean rules" is so popular on dakka, that I had to edit my response above, because in writing it hastily I have used this false equivalence in one spot too.

The reason why this is sometimes somewhat justified perspective is that narrative mindset allows some shortcomings of the ruleset to have no impact on the gaming experience - players will just negotiate over the unexpected rule interaction on the fly and move on, while within a competitive environment this is a direct problem that requires an impartial judgement of an arbiter. Because of that, narrative players do not stress so much over minuscule details of rules wording - rules-lawyering is largely non existent in narrative community. But that does not mean, that we can simply make up rules as we go, beer and pretzels and so on. Simulation focused games tend to have tons of rules and expecting all of those to be written in perfect legalese and not produce an odd interaction here and there falls under the problem of Godel' incompleteness theorem - it is not possible, there will always be need for some form of interpretation/judgement to be applied from the outside of the system as it is.

This is the only part of either post I disagree with. I agree that it may be more prevalent in the competitive atmosphere, but there are plenty of rules lawyers outside of tourney and pickup games. Ask the question on any wargaming forum. You'll find everyone has encountered the rules lawyer.

Well, I won't "rule lawyer" over this YMMV, but personally, I have not encountered rules lawyering in narrative gaming. At the same time, taking just a step outside into adversarial board games or competitive wargaming I see a lot of lawyers. So, while narrative community may not be blameless as you point out, from my POV it is fundamentally different in that regard.

Personally I think that a competitive approach to game design and balance is a good thing so long as the designer has a few key cornerstones to their approach

1) Flat balance between factions. Yes there will be those that do better than others, indeed perpetual little tweaks and updates will be a thing. However the idea is that the intent is for there to be a pretty even footing for every faction where differences, at the numerical/stats level are marginal to slight.

2) Flat balance within the army. This does NOT mean every single possible combination of units will work. It means that each army will have a range of various options and should be able to use the majority of its models across a variety of army compositional types and perform well.


The aim of these first two is not to remove army choice or building, but to make the gains more marginal so that you can build a very good army which has the edge, but where that edge is not a case of an auto-win when putting it on the table. Where the gains are slight and where the overall intention is for player skill to be the greatest variable.





Where I think competitive systems fall down is

1) When the gains/losses are extreme. A fantastic example is something like Magic the Gathering where a very well built deck can win most times against a moderate or intermediate deck and often by a huge margin. Where the composition of what you choose is often the greatest element in the win/loss. This rewards only one style of play - compositional. It devalues actual player skill which is fine in a card game because you can cycle games so fast; but in a wargame that player skill might be 4 hours or more per game. It's a huge part of the game.

2) Where there is no care if an army has extreme power. Ergo where there are clear winning choices both between armies and within an army. A great example was the old Ossiarch Bonereapers battletome which had a single faction choice which gave a +1 save over the entire army. It was an extremely clear "take this" over all other choices. It didn't create choice and gain/loss within the battletome, it created a default choice that was a no-brainer where every other choice was clearly far lower in performance.

3) Too fast. Yep its possible to build a balanced system that's too fast. Where the kill ratio is so extreme that the game is over in one or two turns. I think for a wargame that's a bad design philosophy. Again this works in cardgames because the games themselves are always short so you can cycle games more frequently (heck in card games best of 3 per match is often used). For a wargame where you might spend 10-30 mins (casual) setting up; to then have it all over in one or two turns saps a huge part of the fun from the game. It also is unlikely/difficult to start up a second or third game in the same evening.
A fast hard hitting system might be neat for a competitive event, but for casual play and I think for proper immersion and creating the proper experience for a wargame; you want rules that allow for as many turns as possible. For a system that has a lot of back and forth where there's no sudden super powerful mega alphastrike that default wins the game in a turn.

Certain aspects of competitive rules greatly balance casual play. A balanced system gives players a sense of personal responsibility in their results for example and clear rules reduces issues and conflicts. Consistent wording helps players recognize intent without needing to be an expert. All good things.

Some aspects of competitive play aren't necessarily correct for every game though. For example, competitive players abhor randomness which sometimes is the right call, but not always. There's a tendency from competitive players to make games that they can always feel advantaged in with a consistent plan, but there's a lot of value in systems that require more adaptive play.

It's also important to recognize that making constant fine tuning to appease competitive players creates a barrier to the casual crowd. Some problems simply need to be addressed, but its important not to make the process of playing with the right rules too big of a deal for casual players.

It's also important to recognize that rules can be more casual friendly even when implemented in a competitive manner. Compare, for instance, measurement between Warmachine and MCP. The former has very minor advantages in threat ranges but very large scenario elements. MCP flips that around. Difference in threat range stats are very significant, but to score objectives, you have to be closer to them than the range of almost any attack. The former results in a game where measuring precisely is extremely important, where the latter lets you place your models a lot freer. I personally don't think one is more competitive than the other, but I find the latter far more friendly to casual players.

I think the issue with constant updates is important to address, as is the delivery of that information.

I think video games have pushed this on many people to think that fast updates are always a net gain; however they forget that video games deploy these changes in competitive player vs player games automatically. So the players have those updates instantly without any need to do anything, save update next time they play.

When many of those changes are minor it might lead to shifts in tactics here and there, but by and large players have the info instantly.



Real world wargames can hit issues. You can push out online info fast, but not everyone jumps online every day; not everyone uses an ap; not everyone wants to use the ap - esp when physical games are often a person "stepping away from digital for a time".

GW has issues here for certain - codex, expansion book, white dwarf, online article, expansion book, new rules edition- each one with an FAQ and Errata. Suddenly a simple fast updating system becomes a huge minefield of references.


This is perhaps the hardest thing with a fast updating system - how do you deliver it to the gamers. Privateer press was going to do it by printing new cards every year, which they abandoned pretty fast.

Probably not true for cooperative games.

I'd argue the better phrasing, and truer sentiment, is that a competently written ruleset is a boon for all gamers.

 AdmiralRon wrote:
I'd argue the better phrasing, and truer sentiment, is that a competently written ruleset is a boon for all gamers.

That is what I have heard many times, but tell me what a "Truer sentiment" means?

 AdmiralRon wrote:
I'd argue the better phrasing, and truer sentiment, is that a competently written ruleset is a boon for all gamers.

But is it „the better phrasing” if it completely changes the meaning of the sentence?

I would say that sometimes a designers clarity in the type of game that they are creating and the skill in achieving that objective can be great boons.

One issue GW hits time and again is that their intention and skill base with their rules are often at odds with each other. Not to mention that its clear that within their team setup there are variations with different project leads having different skill sets and slightly different focuses. Sometimes we get a balanced codex/battletome; sometimes its rife with clear imbalances and fluffy elements; etc....


Meanwhile a firm like Privateer Press was very clear that they were making a competitive game at its core.




These aspects help a lot, because this clarity and skill set establish expectations in the players both in terms of what they initially encounter and in terms of what kind of support they might official expect after initial releases.

Yet, one of the two examples is flourishing, while the other is dying, with a counter-intuitive result from the example given.

 Easy E wrote:
Yet, one of the two examples is flourishing, while the other is dying, with a counter-intuitive result from the example given.

Go back to when Warmachine was in 2nd edition and GW was under Kirby and GW was bleeding players whilst Warmachine (and Hordes) was growing.

GW was making poor choices and whilst they had a huge advantage in highstreet stores recruiting new people (which has always been a huge boon for them); they had huge problems retaining players.


However when PP launched their 3rd edition several things happened at once

1) Their 3rd edition had problems and wasn't as well written as they'd hoped
2) They shut down their Press Ganger program
3) They gutted most of their social media in the form of their main forum community. With the expectation that 3rd parties would take over the job
4) They made very fast changes to their rules set which fast became heavily reliant on online elements to the point that they abandoned their "cards in the box" approach to rules that had helped grow them
5) Their plastics were found to be somewhat sub-standard as a material to work with and were not as popular.


Meanwhile GW
1) Changed CEO's
2) Started marketing online and through social media 7 days a week every week
3) Started making some more competitive aspects to their rules. Eg releasing codex all within an edition; updating with regular FAQ and Errata and even annual points and balances updates - the latter of which are sold as printed media



Broadly speaking GW adopted some (but not all) competitive rules approaches; at the same time PP made a series of changes that resulted in a vast reduction in their community outreach and interaction. The joint impacts is that the two firms swapped positions. GW started massively growing once again and retaining (and bringing back) long term customers; whilst PP shifted to the one bleeding players.


IT is very true that a very high skill highly competitive COMMUNITY can be unfriendly or difficult for new people to get into. However that's a community element not a rules element. You can have the worst rules in the world with no competitive edge at all and still have a totally hostile and rubbish community.

In PP's case, I'd say another factor that hurt was the fact that, up to late Mk 2, they did have a fairly tight and competitive ruleset. Late Mk 2 it started getting some bloat, and they rushed Mk 3 out well before it was ready, without sufficient testing. Since they'd already established themselves as a "tight, competitive ruleset," putting out something that was the exact opposite of that severely hurt their reputation. Combine that with all the other things that happened around the same time, and then the fairly regular loss of experienced staff at PP, and it's no surprise where they are now.

Edit:
So I don't think the decline of PP and growth of GW have a direct correlation to the quality of the rulesets. I mean, GW has always had a rep for mediocre (to outright bad) rules for the most part, and yet they're arguably the biggest in the hobby. There are lots of other factors to account for than just the "are these rules competitive?" Decisions affecting the operation and direction of the companies had a lot more to do with the current state of these two examples, IMO.

Indeed, though I do attribute some of GW's regrowth in latter years to some of their rules changes. Just advancing the codex/battletome release speed made a colossal difference on its own. No more were you left waiting a whole edition or even two editions to get a book that, when it arrived, might come on the tail end of an edition and be out of date (entirely, not just FAQ/Points costs changes) within weeks.


I think there's just core elements of a tight competitive rules set that enables better play and product potential for casual to narrative to competitive players.



But yes GW rising up and PP falling down were the result of much much more than their rules systems alone.

I'm going with a big ol Yarp

And without a wall of text I'm of the view it's easier to loosen the rules in a well designed game for the less committed than it is to tighten shaky rules up for Competition, still baffled as to why gamers who by definition are smarter than the average bear tolerate sloppy rules beyond the whole only game it town bias