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 auticus wrote:

No, it's the usual hyperbole

There is zero hyperbole from anything I posted in this thread. There is an opinion that you don't like.

First, in this specific instance I was agreeing with Entyme about Waynaics post, and the general stance that several of us believe that AoS has no flaws, which is downright false and is in fact hyperbole. Secondly, it does not have to be specific to this thread, as you have a well documented pattern of behavior as I put in my first post on the matter.

If you want to dogpile me for using hyperbole, then do it after I have used hyperbole. Not in a thread where none has been used, and hasn't been used for some time.

Second, if you are going to respond specifically to hyperbole then you need to pay attention to the last part of the definition:

"exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally." THE ENTIRE POINT of using hyperbole is that it is obvious exaggeration. Its the SAME THING as people complaining that a POSTER IS POSTING OPINION AS IF ITS FACT. Its an opinion. Hyperbole is intentional exaggeration. None of those things should NEED TO BE EXPLAINED.

What I think you are raging about is not hyperbole, but rather exaggerated statements that you feel someone not knowing better looking in will see and presume to be a fact, which you would consider a loss and the source of your extraordinarily angry response. You did after all in a thread where no hyperbole was being used advise people to put me on ignore, but then defied your own advice by responding to me (indicating I am not really on ignore).

If you followed your own advice, you wouldn't be seeing any of my statements, past or otherwise, and you wouldn't be having these extreme negative emotions that you are feeling now at someone posting an opinion of a plain statement kind of way that had no hyperbole in it that you didn't agree with.

 auticus wrote:


Second, if you are going to respond specifically to hyperbole then you need to pay attention to the last part of the definition:

"exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally." THE ENTIRE POINT of using hyperbole is that it is obvious exaggeration. Its the SAME THING as people complaining that a POSTER IS POSTING OPINION AS IF ITS FACT. Its an opinion. Hyperbole is intentional exaggeration. None of those things should NEED TO BE EXPLAINED.


What I think you are raging about is not hyperbole, but rather exaggerated statements that you feel someone not knowing better looking in will see

Are you reading what the definition says? Because that's.. literally what it says, you are using exaggerated examples to add emphasis to your statements.. And even then, nitpicking words at this point by going straight to the dictionary is not exactly helping anything because it's a deflection and still doesn't exactly fix the underlaying issues going on here.

Also it's been explained why Ignore does not work when it drags others and new posters into it.

I know what hyperbole is. It is a form of communication using exaggeration. It is something employed by many people. I'm not apologizing for using hyperbole because there's nothing wrong with it. As a matter of fact, people on here use hyperbole many dozens to hundreds of times a day without a single comment.

What exactly is the underlying issue?

That you get cranky when someone uses exaggeration? That someone doesn't like the game that you do and is posting in a forum that you feel should be reinforcing the game and not criticizing it? That other new people might see the criticism and bail because the game isn't their cup of tea? That you prefer positive reinforcement for issues and then if they don't like the game after they have dumped a grand into the game, they can get out then? That you feel posters posting an opinion that you don't like come off to you as comic book guy and they think that its fact for whatever reason?

Really whats the underlying *issue*

At what point did I break some code of yours and others when poster asked if game was as list building dependent as 40k, and I answered its just as bad?

 auticus wrote:
If you want to dogpile me for using hyperbole, then do it after I have used hyperbole. Not in a thread where none has been used, and hasn't been used for some time.

Second, if you are going to respond specifically to hyperbole then you need to pay attention to the last part of the definition:

"exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally."

Auticus,

This "dogpile" is a culmination of several peoples feelings on the matter on this forum. While I will agree that you did not use in any hyperbole in this specific thread, your general behavior and posting habits have just reached a point that I had to make a stand on the matter. The fact that so many people have come out and agreed on the matter and citing that you are the reason they have either moved on to other forums or not posting lines up with exactly what I posted.

What I think you are raging about is not hyperbole, but rather exaggerated statements that you feel someone not knowing better looking in will see and presume to be a fact, which you would consider a loss and the source of your extraordinarily angry response. You did after all in a thread where no hyperbole was being used advise people to put me on ignore, but then defied your own advice by responding to me (indicating I am not really on ignore).

Calling me "raging" is just weak attempt to try paint me like I am some kind of angry keyboard warrior instead of addressing the issues at hand. The fact of the matter is that I posted several break downs of your behavior, and highlighted several issues in a calm and rational manner. I am also unsure of what you mean by "Loss' this is not a win or lose game. It's a forum designed for the fostering of discussion. The problem I have with your posts is that you stifle discussions with your overwhelming negativity. Again, multiple people have come in and voiced this.

If you followed your own advice, you wouldn't be seeing any of my statements, past or otherwise, and you wouldn't be having these extreme negative emotions that you are feeling now at someone posting an opinion of a plain statement kind of way that had no hyperbole in it that you didn't agree with.

Perhaps I should at some point, but the fact of the matter is your behavior is driving off people from this forum and someone needs to be a counterpoint at times.


The crux of the issue Auticus, no matter how you try to paint me, is that you are driving people away from the forums and stifling discussion. This is not healthy for the forum, and it needs to stop. The fact that we have had so many people come out in this thread in support of what I have said and you don't think there is a problem absolutely speaks volumes.

The problem as I see it right now is that the people that have complained all want a place where there is no criticism of a game that they like and no negative comments allowed. The whole "safe space" concept that has blown up this decade.

When I employ hyperbole and go off on a tangent next, which won't happen because I haven't done so in a while and have emotionally distanced myself a while back, you can dogpile me legit.

In the meantime, if a poster asks a specific open question about the game and I answer with a simple sentence, you can all kindly step off my nuts.

If there is a thread asking people to rate something about the game, or warcry, or whatever, I am going to respond with my opinion. And you can all kindly step off my nuts.

You won't have back and forth responses from me if you and your buddies would simply step off my nuts so that I didn't have to respond in a machine gun fashion.

Discussions aren't popping in and dropping a one liner and then disappearing. Literally no conversations work that way. Poster makes a comment. Another poster responds. It is generally known that there will be a response back. I literally am reading complaints by some of you saying "but the conversation is dominated by Auticus because he keeps responding to people responding to him!" - like... no **** dude. Thats what a conversation / discussion is. You talk then I respond, then you respond, etc.

The world can do with less tangents and I have already corrected myself on that a while back so that I don't go off on another one because its a waste of energy. But continuing to step on my nuts every time I make a response is also not going to be met by silence from me.

If you can't do that for whatver reason, stick me on ignore. If you see someone quote me and it raises negative emotions within you, meditate to some enya or something and don't respond.

I don't attack people. I don't go after people. I don't attack their integrity or their person. I discuss topics, and on this thread its about this particular game. I don't tangetize anymore because there is no point to that and no one cares. The GW fanverse is as massive as it is because it props itself up on massive the massive whales (that being the term that GW management calls the big spenders to clarify 100%) and gets by knowing that people will play specifically because people are playing. Arguing against it is like peeing into a hurricane. It does nothing. I know that. There is no point in going off on any more tangents. You all like what you like, GW isn't changing, people know that, they are happy with half balance because they know they can always get in a game. Thats for good or bad.

However ther eare people that do care about the balance aspect, and that is why I post. And will continue to do so in a less tangent rant way because the other side of the story needs told, not just the positive reinforcement of trying to make dude feel better after spending a ton of money on models that have garbage rules and gets pwned down at the store because no one wanted to tell him different because they didn't want to be "negative".

 auticus wrote:
The problem as I see it right now is that the people that have complained all want a place where there is no criticism of a game that they like and no negative comments allowed. The whole "safe space" concept that has blown up this decade

Multiple Times I have said it, and I am sure other people will say it, this is not what anyone wants. I even pointed out that I don't like that about TGA. It seems like you just can't understand that there is a difference between criticism and the constant negativity that you post, that goes far beyond critique.

When I employ hyperbole and go off on a tangent next, which won't happen because I haven't done so in a while and have emotionally distanced myself a while back, you can dogpile me legit.

Again, this is just a culimination of multiple people's feelings on the matter. The critisims against you are completely legitimate, and are held by many people here. Why don't you instead just work on your posting habits so it never has to come to this kind of a blow again?

In the meantime, if a poster asks a specific open question about the game and I answer with a simple sentence, you can all kindly step off my nuts.


If there is a thread asking people to rate something about the game, or warcry, or whatever, I am going to respond with my opinion. And you can all kindly step off my nuts.

Sure looks like you are advocating for your own echo chamber or "safe space" here.

You won't have back and forth responses from me if you and your buddies would simply step off my nuts so that I didn't have to respond in a machine gun fashion.

See, again trying to discredit the fact that other people have the same views on your posting as "my buddies" These are just other forum goers that have the same opinion. Again, if so many people have this opinion then maybe you need to evaluate your posting habits, because it's clear you are the one with the problem.

Discussions aren't popping in and dropping a one liner and then disappearing. Literally no conversations work that way. Poster makes a comment. Another poster responds. It is generally known that there will be a response back. I literally am reading complaints by some of you saying "but the conversation is dominated by Auticus because he keeps responding to people responding to him!" - like... no **** dude. Thats what a conversation / discussion is. You talk then I respond, then you respond, etc.

The problem is that people become less and less inclined to have a discussion when you are involved, because your posting habits. It's driving people away and shrinking the interaction on this forum. I've been here over 10 years and I don't want to see this happen. As I have said before, you can have a great opinion on some things, but it's drowned out by your other posts.

The world can do with less tangents and I have already corrected myself on that a while back so that I don't go off on another one because its a waste of energy. But continuing to step on my nuts every time I make a response is also not going to be met by silence from me.

We would just all prefer that you tone down the extreme negativity that you post. As I said, you are capable of posting great things, but, as Nels said, it seems like you have made your hobby to post nothing but negative things about AoS all the time.

If you can't do that for whatver reason, stick me on ignore. If you see someone quote me and it raises negative emotions within you, meditate to some enya or something and don't respond.

Again Auticus, I am not going to do that. If I need play counterpoint to your posts sometimes, then I will. Again, this is a problem that multiple people have. You are the one that needs to evaluate and clean up your posting habits. If you are getting to the point where you have to ask people to "step off my nuts" Maybe you are the one that needs to step away from the keyboard.

However ther eare people that do care about the balance aspect, and that is why I post. And will continue to do so in a less tangent rant way because the other side of the story needs told, not just the positive reinforcement of trying to make dude feel better after spending a ton of money on models that have garbage rules and gets pwned down at the store because no one wanted to tell him different because they didn't want to be "negative".

Everyone cares about the balance of the game, and I don't think there is a single person here would say that AoS is perfectly balanced. The discussion comes in to the degrees of the balance, the metrics for evaluation, anecdotal, etc. Once again No one here is asking for constant reinforcement or to be an echo chamber of validation for their purchases. Again, there is a difference between talking about the pros and cons of an army instead of just crapping on the system, and soapboxing about how terrible your local area is.

Why don't you instead just work on your posting habits so it never has to come to this kind of a blow again?

Again, if so many people have this opinion then maybe you need to evaluate your posting habits, because it's clear you are the one with the problem.

If I had gone on some rage filled tangent in this thread, you would have a point and have something to consider.

However, you have nothing to stand on right now because all I posted was a simple sentence answering a question, which was then responded to with this whole mess.

So there's really nothing to clean up. The actual actions in question here are: do not respond to any questions negatively, or we will dogpile the hell out of you.

That is not acceptable.

You cannot in any way shape or form change that reality.

Cause: question asked about list building.
Action: answered with what almost everyone would consider an accurate answer.
Result: dogpile because answer was negative.

Had ANYONE else answered with an identical post, nothing would have been said.

SO -> your version of cleaning up posts can therefore be distilled down to "don't post anything that is not positive about the game on this forum". Which I consider to be the same as "echo chamber" - where there is no negative posts allowed. You can deny that, and say that is not at all what you are after, but any of those above actions and logical conclusions lead nowhere else that I can see.

You will not get that desired result. I will not censor myself and not post an answer just because it is negative.

I have already "cleaned up" my posts by not going on tangents any longer for some time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

and I don't think there is a single person here would say that AoS is perfectly balanced.

There are literally dozens of angry retorts to things I have stated in the past year claiming the game is "good enough" and "fine the way it is" and "tournament results prove that the balance is great", so I disagree with you here, fairly strongly.

Cause: question asked about list building.
Action: answered with what almost everyone would consider an accurate answer.
Result: dogpile because answer was negative.

Had ANYONE else answered with an identical post, nothing would have been said.

Because you don't answer with something that's just an accurate answer. You answer with something that has such a harsh, negative tone regardless if the situation requires or even wanted it to a point that even people who would agree with such disagree because of the way it's said. There can be a drastic way things happen because of how one posts..

Of course what you consider accurate and what others do may not align at all, an opinion is an opinion, but opinions can be wrong.

SO -> your version of cleaning up posts can therefore be distilled down to "don't post anything that is not positive about the game on this forum". Which I consider to be the same as "echo chamber" - where there is no negative posts allowed. You can deny that, and say that is not at all what you are after, but any of those above actions and logical conclusions lead nowhere else that I can see.

This doesn't really work because others with negative opinions post as well without any issues but calm discussions and rebuttles, which in general means that it's certainly not an echo chamber like you keep claiming.

 auticus wrote:

Why don't you instead just work on your posting habits so it never has to come to this kind of a blow again?

Again, if so many people have this opinion then maybe you need to evaluate your posting habits, because it's clear you are the one with the problem.

If I had gone on some rage filled tangent in this thread, you would have a point and have something to consider.

However, you have nothing to stand on right now because all I posted was a simple sentence answering a question, which was then responded to with this whole mess.

So there's really nothing to clean up. The actual actions in question here are: do not respond to any questions negatively, or we will dogpile the hell out of you.

That is not acceptable.

Once again Auticus, you are missing the entire point. I am fairly certain that you are just doing this on purpose though since you

Still, I'll go through this again for you though. The post I made was a culmination of the issues with your posting habits. It was not about a post in this thread, it was about the body of work that is your posting history. It was a response to your quip about why I suggested putting you ignore. So I laid out the exact reasons why someone should do that.

I have plenty to stand as my stance is based on the evidence of your posting history and I laid out the issues in a pretty concise manner. The fact that multiple people have come in and agreed with this shows that there is indeed some legitimacy to what I posted.


The actual actions in question here is that people have gotten fed up with your overly negative behavior in this section of the forum and it just reached a tipping point. One poster even mentioned that "it was a long time coming" So please don't pretend like you are some kind of martyr and that every single post you make is inundated with people dogpiling you because of some misguided illusion that we only want to hear positive things. No one here is attacking people for posting l criticisms about the game and GW. You just take things to the extreme and poison discussion.

I really wish you would take some time to reflect on this. There is a clear problem with your posting and manner of, otherwise we would not have had so many people chime in about it. We are not some hivemind but instead a wide variety of people from different countries and viewpoints. If you have so many people agreeing on this aspect, then you should take it seriously.

Well if this is going to carry on here's my take:

I agree with Auticus on many positions, but I do feel he can come across pretty negatively. It is something I have been (justifiably) criticized for as well. Having discussed many matters with him in threads and in PMs I think he seems more negative than he actually is. There is a natural human tendency to voice criticism over compliment which can lend to one misrepresenting their own opinion without realizing it. Auticus, I think the position you are trying to present does not get across very well to a lot of people. But to Auticus' critics I say his position is probably less extreme than it looks to you.

But that's just my take and it could be way off. What I can say for sure is this thread has gotten toxic the last few pages.

^ This.

This thread: Jump ship to AoS from 40k. We get way more personal and savage in our forum battles.

AoS is very much a GW game. If that's cool with you it does have some great minis and concepts not explored in 40k.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
But to Auticus' critics I say his position is probably less extreme than it looks to you.

Respectfully disagree.

I don’t think it would have come to this if it wasn’t as extreme as multiple people think it is. As someone said, this was a long time coming.

Unfortunately for some, people this isn't TGA where you can just vote to ban someone for views different than the officially outlined ones (or report him to a mod). You are all free to ignore him, as you are free to present your case to new people, as auticus is free to present his point of view, as per Dakka's rules. Which reminds me that I am also free to alert a mod because this thread has been derailed too far into personal attacks and the following defences.

What in the hell...

...I think several posters here could do with a breath of fresh air and some time to put things in perspective. It's a forum, it's a game, take a breather. Don't hammer negative points if everyone is asking you not to (if that's not the way the discussion is heading then just state it and chill), don't jump down someone's throat who does (rude as heck), just everyone chill.

Be excellent to each other or I'll have to help reeducate people

Thanks Motyak, and sorry OP for the direction this thread went. Sorry to Auticus too. Doesn’t matter how negative someone is, negativity isn’t as bad as being mosh pitted.

 Sasori wrote:


I am sorry that happened to you, but this is a false equivalency. If you were to ask here about any army we would tell you the pros and cons of them. For instance I would not recommend anyone start Nighthaunt in the current state, and Nighthaunt were my first army.

I don't think that many people start the game by checking forums though, specially not after getting the "play what you like" and "every army is kind of a valid" reutin at stores, specially from people that are trying to sell armies to noobs, which they can't normaly sell. But I did come to this forum after asking a few question on 4chan and on some local forums, and getting laughted at best for picking my army. So I would rather have someone tell new player, okey this 4 are good, rest is kind of a meh, and this army right now has double the points, because summoning is broken right now. In the end effect and for player retention it is, IMO, a better thing. you also don't get people unhappy about the stuff they spend money on hanging around forums or stores.

The players locally don't really check forums. They come in and look at the shelves and pick models based off of what looks awesome (and there are a lot of models that look awesome).

I'd say... 3 out of 5 of them will gravitate toward a starter box and the manager and community as a whole cheerlead that. Then they find out later that their initial investment is largely not worth it (a few exceptions ... the stormcast players have a solid starter that is out of the box not getting face rolled for example). From that point 2 of those 3 swallow the loss and exit. The remaining 1 out of 3 closets most of the models and begins doing research.

That leaves 2 out of 5 of our local pool will come in and specifically state that they heard that the balance is not very good, and ask what armies are currently not going to get them rolled.

At that point we have a couple new players. They last on average about 2.5 years before leaving altogether because of burn and churn. Whats good today is hard mode after the dec faq or GHB comes out, and I think that is actually the hardest sell.

Its also important to note where the players reside in player pool. We have two distinct groups in my city.

One group are very hard edge tournament players, playing top of the meta lists 24/7. They have shrunk considerably and are now almost entirely in warcry because competitive warcry is a lot more feasible simply because if you do have to churn and burn, its a warband which is not horrifically expensive and easy to paint up for another season.

I'd actually say warcry is a fairly solid choice for min/max powergaming because of that.

The other group is my group, and thats the narrative campaign group. We don't play AOS by the rules, we have modified AOS to make the game capable of being played and enjoyed for us. That means no double turn, an alternate activation system, terrain rules that matter, no true line of sight, and codified rules that give sudden death victory condition to achieve if one player powergames a casual off the table (largely doesn't help but it at least gives the player getting powergamed the feeling that there is some chance he has to make a good game).

The competitive powergamer group has a faster churn rate than our narrative group, because in the narrative group we can play with our models a lot longer whereas in the tournament group you have to be moving models quickly to get the new meta armies if you want to be competitive, and that kind of money and time expenditure lend itself to burning people out a lot faster.

By default I'd say most cities only have a competitive / pick up group. So go into that eyes open. If you want a wider bell curve of viable models, you may have to do the legwork to get a narrative group rolling.

The way I see it, the argument is that auticus posts mostly criticism, pointing out the game's flaws (with good reason). Sure, he will talk about some good parts, but it's generally criticism of listbuilding/churn-and-burn/wombo-combo/git gud/etc. and I think the complaint is this seems to come to the forefront. sort of like "The models are good but everything else is garbage, and here's why".

I understand the complaints, even if I find myself mostly agreeing with auticus. But I think that's the issue here if I'm not mistaken. It's not that the people want a safe space or propaganda mill where it's only painting GW in a good light, but I do get that seeing the same "It's MtG with models" and "listbuiliding is the only thing that matters" and "It's all about combo stacking and changing armies every year to the FOTM, git gud scrub",whether or not it's accurate, seems to drown out everything else.

I don't have a solution because, again, I mostly agree with auticus. All of those are damning things that people need to be aware of so they don't get suckered into dropping hundreds of dollars only to find they get their teeth kicked in for picking the wrong army, but I do see the point that whenever auticus posts it, it seems to consume the discussion. Maybe it's just a polarizing thing to talk about.

Maybe. I post in a bunch of forums on here.

I've tried to start threads on campaign play or narrative play or something to get a conversation going that isn't a derivation of "what armies are good" or "rate my army" or "is this new mini game any good", and its usually silence and crickets.

If the majority of topics that people are going to discuss hinge around balance and listbuilding then thats what is going to be discussed. Its not because I haven't tried to start other conversations on other topics related to the game in the past.

I have already made it a point to not go into a wardance tangent any longer regarding this game. I haven't in some time. If you want to see some other topics, then create some new topics that aren't rehashing the same bullet points. Bearing in mind that I have been a content creator for both WHFB and the first couple years of AOS and had a lot of discussion in those regards over the past 20 odd years.

I'd love for people to discuss how to play the game in a way that is not bog standard pickup gaming or tournament gaming or how to effectively min/max the game. I post in the hobby threads from time to time. Start an event organizer thread on how to generate a community. Start a campaign thread to discuss how to get a campaign to finish successfully. Start a narrative gaming thread to discuss how you can play the game in a different way than bog standard.

I'd participate in those, and it certainly wouldn't be negative, because those topics are interesting to me.

Post a thread asking if the game has balance issues, you bet I'll post a short post stating that indeed it does have serious balance issues and you need to know that going in so you can be ok with that, or find a different game that has a better track record for balance.

 auticus wrote:
The players locally don't really check forums. They come in and look at the shelves and pick models based off of what looks awesome (and there are a lot of models that look awesome).

I'd say... 3 out of 5 of them will gravitate toward a starter box and the manager and community as a whole cheerlead that. Then they find out later that their initial investment is largely not worth it (a few exceptions ... the stormcast players have a solid starter that is out of the box not getting face rolled for example). From that point 2 of those 3 swallow the loss and exit. The remaining 1 out of 3 closets most of the models and begins doing research.

That leaves 2 out of 5 of our local pool will come in and specifically state that they heard that the balance is not very good, and ask what armies are currently not going to get them rolled.

At that point we have a couple new players. They last on average about 2.5 years before leaving altogether because of burn and churn. Whats good today is hard mode after the dec faq or GHB comes out, and I think that is actually the hardest sell.

Its also important to note where the players reside in player pool. We have two distinct groups in my city.

One group are very hard edge tournament players, playing top of the meta lists 24/7. They have shrunk considerably and are now almost entirely in warcry because competitive warcry is a lot more feasible simply because if you do have to churn and burn, its a warband which is not horrifically expensive and easy to paint up for another season.

I'd actually say warcry is a fairly solid choice for min/max powergaming because of that.

The other group is my group, and thats the narrative campaign group. We don't play AOS by the rules, we have modified AOS to make the game capable of being played and enjoyed for us. That means no double turn, an alternate activation system, terrain rules that matter, no true line of sight, and codified rules that give sudden death victory condition to achieve if one player powergames a casual off the table (largely doesn't help but it at least gives the player getting powergamed the feeling that there is some chance he has to make a good game).

The competitive powergamer group has a faster churn rate than our narrative group, because in the narrative group we can play with our models a lot longer whereas in the tournament group you have to be moving models quickly to get the new meta armies if you want to be competitive, and that kind of money and time expenditure lend itself to burning people out a lot faster.

By default I'd say most cities only have a competitive / pick up group. So go into that eyes open. If you want a wider bell curve of viable models, you may have to do the legwork to get a narrative group rolling.

All of these games become infinitely more fun if you;

1. Stop tying to drag everything down to points. Every single time someone starts trying to tell me why my model is bad because it is 5 points over costed for what it does, I just want to punch them in the face.
2. Stop trying to make it about wiping your opponent off the map in the first turn. How exactly is this fun for anyone? A good game lasts many turns and swings back and forth between both players. A good game is not one statistics junkie figuring out how to crush my testicles in 20 minutes.

If GW would stop listening to the minority tournament crowed, this game would be a lot better.

Actually its my impression most of the tournament crowd just want tighter and better written rules coupled to improved balance within and between factions. So that armies have variation of choice within them and so that there are no clear "best combo ever I win" setups in the game; nor rotating power levels whereby one army rules for months then another etc...

It's only a subset of the competitive crowd who loudly argue for the "I want an I win button" type combos. There's also a group who are, in my view, missguided, into thinking that balanced battletomes would result in boring armies because there'd be nothing to theory into super-lists - mostly missguided because I think they have latched onto discussions of lists far too much whilst the internet and community in general doesn't educate nor chat as much about actual game mechanics and how to play in a meaningful tactical way beyond the core rules mechanics and "play for the objective" type comments.
Ergo they can only see the puzzle in the army building (which when the army has an overpowered option is often a pretty poor puzzle anyway); andnot the one on the tabletop when they play.

 Overread wrote:
Actually its my impression most of the tournament crowd just want tighter and better written rules coupled to improved balance within and between factions. So that armies have variation of choice within them and so that there are no clear "best combo ever I win" setups in the game; nor rotating power levels whereby one army rules for months then another etc...

It's only a subset of the competitive crowd who loudly argue for the "I want an I win button" type combos. There's also a group who are, in my view, missguided, into thinking that balanced battletomes would result in boring armies because there'd be nothing to theory into super-lists - mostly missguided because I think they have latched onto discussions of lists far too much whilst the internet and community in general doesn't educate nor chat as much about actual game mechanics and how to play in a meaningful tactical way beyond the core rules mechanics and "play for the objective" type comments.
Ergo they can only see the puzzle in the army building (which when the army has an overpowered option is often a pretty poor puzzle anyway); andnot the one on the tabletop when they play.

If that is the case, then I applaud that. I'm not quite familiar with the AoS group, and it looks like I'm going to go into Team Yankee instead due to the interest and game availability in my area.

 Togusa wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Actually its my impression most of the tournament crowd just want tighter and better written rules coupled to improved balance within and between factions. So that armies have variation of choice within them and so that there are no clear "best combo ever I win" setups in the game; nor rotating power levels whereby one army rules for months then another etc...

It's only a subset of the competitive crowd who loudly argue for the "I want an I win button" type combos. There's also a group who are, in my view, missguided, into thinking that balanced battletomes would result in boring armies because there'd be nothing to theory into super-lists - mostly missguided because I think they have latched onto discussions of lists far too much whilst the internet and community in general doesn't educate nor chat as much about actual game mechanics and how to play in a meaningful tactical way beyond the core rules mechanics and "play for the objective" type comments.
Ergo they can only see the puzzle in the army building (which when the army has an overpowered option is often a pretty poor puzzle anyway); andnot the one on the tabletop when they play.

If that is the case, then I applaud that. I'm not quite familiar with the AoS group, and it looks like I'm going to go into Team Yankee instead due to the interest and game availability in my area.

I want to say that the "powergame superbuild combo I want" group are potentially a generational and regional element too. I get the sort of impression its more of a thing in places like the USA, but that could just be because Dakka appears to have a higher percentage of active US members over other nations. There's some evidence Poland might be like it too, but we've only two active people that I'm aware of posting from there which is hardly much of a sample size.

 Togusa wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Actually its my impression most of the tournament crowd just want tighter and better written rules coupled to improved balance within and between factions. So that armies have variation of choice within them and so that there are no clear "best combo ever I win" setups in the game; nor rotating power levels whereby one army rules for months then another etc...

It's only a subset of the competitive crowd who loudly argue for the "I want an I win button" type combos. There's also a group who are, in my view, missguided, into thinking that balanced battletomes would result in boring armies because there'd be nothing to theory into super-lists - mostly missguided because I think they have latched onto discussions of lists far too much whilst the internet and community in general doesn't educate nor chat as much about actual game mechanics and how to play in a meaningful tactical way beyond the core rules mechanics and "play for the objective" type comments.
Ergo they can only see the puzzle in the army building (which when the army has an overpowered option is often a pretty poor puzzle anyway); andnot the one on the tabletop when they play.

If that is the case, then I applaud that. I'm not quite familiar with the AoS group, and it looks like I'm going to go into Team Yankee instead due to the interest and game availability in my area.

It's the same thing in my area as well. I don't think I know any tournament players (Including myself) that don't want tighter rules and balance between factions. This is something that can always be improved and seems to continually elude the GW rules writers. No one wants to play against the same meta army and list over and over. It's why I moved from 40k to AoS as I got tired of playing Imperial knights every other game.

 Overread wrote:
Actually its my impression most of the tournament crowd just want tighter and better written rules coupled to improved balance within and between factions. So that armies have variation of choice within them and so that there are no clear "best combo ever I win" setups in the game; nor rotating power levels whereby one army rules for months then another etc...

It's only a subset of the competitive crowd who loudly argue for the "I want an I win button" type combos. There's also a group who are, in my view, missguided, into thinking that balanced battletomes would result in boring armies because there'd be nothing to theory into super-lists - mostly missguided because I think they have latched onto discussions of lists far too much whilst the internet and community in general doesn't educate nor chat as much about actual game mechanics and how to play in a meaningful tactical way beyond the core rules mechanics and "play for the objective" type comments.
Ergo they can only see the puzzle in the army building (which when the army has an overpowered option is often a pretty poor puzzle anyway); andnot the one on the tabletop when they play.

I completely agree; describes the AoS tourney scene near me exactly.

I would agree that the tournament subset of our area is also more in favor of tighter rules and balance.

However since tighter rules and balance are not very likely (after how many years, the writing has been on the wall long ago) they are also fine with buying new armies and selling newly nerfed armies on ebay regularly until eventually the burnout hits them and they jump ship.

Thats the part that I combat. Trying to keep a wider array of models viable and useful to stem burnout (which is where guys will get annoyed when i push houserules or annoyance where I say that running three keeper of secrets in a casual game is something I'd try to avoid because it requires both players playing to that degree), which is where narrative gaming can be extraordinarily beneficial... though it needs a high degree of social engineering to be successful which is taxing, frustrating, and requires a lot of patience.

 auticus wrote:
I would agree that the tournament subset of our area is also more in favor of tighter rules and balance.

However since tighter rules and balance are not very likely (after how many years, the writing has been on the wall long ago) they are also fine with buying new armies and selling newly nerfed armies on ebay regularly until eventually the burnout hits them and they jump ship.

Thats the part that I combat. Trying to keep a wider array of models viable and useful to stem burnout (which is where guys will get annoyed when i push houserules or annoyance where I say that running three keeper of secrets in a casual game is something I'd try to avoid because it requires both players playing to that degree), which is where narrative gaming can be extraordinarily beneficial... though it needs a high degree of social engineering to be successful which is taxing, frustrating, and requires a lot of patience.

See, this is something I don't see. In our local area, which has a very large AoS following (I live in a big metroplex) People don't buy and sell their armies just because something comes into meta flavor. People did not start selling off their LoN and DoK when FeC and Skaven became more popular. Same thing with Slaanesh right now. The people that ended up playing these armies either got a really good deal and had been waiting for a while (FEC) or had just been waiting forever for the release in the case of Slaanesh.

A lot of people will also wait until a new tome if they know it's on the horizon before they start a new army. If that tome happens to become flavor of the month, it usually doesn't seem draw many more people than had already started. What I do see is that people will be more likely to buy into an army that has better written rules than one that does not. This doesn't necessarily mean overpowered, just better written.

The major exception to this that I have seen so far though was FeC. The ease of assembling an army with carrion empire and the start collecting, as well as the Dominance it held for a while probably contributed to more people buying in than normal.

Every area is different. Thats why I want to point out its only my area.

My area is the stereotypical burn and churn guys. Our AOS scene is tiny. The tournament guys that still do AOS mostly gave up AOS for warcry because its easier to move through. 40k is far and large king 100 miles in any direction here.