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Minijack wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

Minijack wrote:
40k Tournaments are try-hard fests..always have been and always will be.

They are for those that simply must prove they are the best at toy soldiers.

Yes, trying hard to win is exactly the point.

Are you suggesting that people don't try hard to win at tournaments for other games? Or are you suggesting that you shouldn't try hard to win at a competitive event?

All im saying is that its a hobby,not a sport .Many tournament players seem to think that its fine to throw the hobby aspect out the window,play with subpar "proxie models.terrible paint jobs and absolutely unfluffy army lists just in order to prove they are better at toy soldiers than their opponent when in reality,no one cares except the micro group of fellow try-hards around them.Sorry but its an attitude thats bad for the hobby as a whole.

And in the great vastness of space nothing is going to be disturbed by the fact that one group of 11 players manages to handle the ball slightly better than another group of 11 players, and yet people get in fights over who is better at kicking a ball.
You're not playing to impress the world at large. You're playing in whatever way you want to feed your own impulses first. Yet for some reason you have decided that if they don't enjoy the hobby like you do, it's bad for the hobby. I don't know what metrics you're using to say that, because I just don't see it.

Minijack wrote:

All im saying is that its a hobby,not a sport .Many tournament players seem to think that its fine to throw the hobby aspect out the window,play with subpar "proxie models.terrible paint jobs and absolutely unfluffy army lists just in order to prove they are better at toy soldiers than their opponent when in reality,no one cares except the micro group of fellow try-hards around them.Sorry but its an attitude thats bad for the hobby as a whole.

As far as I'm aware, most larger tournaments are filled with nothing but beautifully painted and converted armies.

Have you ever considered yours is the attitude that's bad for the hobby? You know, the attitude that gaks on other people's enjoyment? Sounds a lot more toxic than some like minded people getting together and playing the way they like to play.

You need to up your posting game.

Yeah, as someone who has attended larger tournaments (finally!) I am particularly offended by the idea that most tournament players throw the hobby out the window.

At worst, they put good money into making their armies look absolutely ace, and at best, they put their own blood, sweat, and tears into the models to make them look amazing.

I've put my own efforts into my models, and consider myself a hobby-focused individual, and I am put to shame by some of the best tournament players out there - not in gameplay, but in painting and modeling.

Competitive warhammer privileges spam because the people who are interested in competitive play are too simple minded to define the competition in terms besides spammy bs netlist ridiculousness.

The competition could easily be redefined in terms of army design and thematics, painting and modeling, sportsmanship and depth of awareness of the background along wit representing this awareness on the tabletop both in models and style of play and army composition.

Instead, competition is defined in then lowest common denominator as befits the mindset of the crowd that ruins the genre.

IMHO of course. Just an opinion.

 jeff white wrote:
Competitive warhammer privileges spam because the people who are interested in competitive play are too simple minded to define the competition in terms besides spammy bs netlist ridiculousness.

The competition could easily be redefined in terms of army design and thematics, painting and modeling, sportsmanship and depth of awareness of the background along wit representing this awareness on the tabletop both in models and style of play and army composition.

Instead, competition is defined in then lowest common denominator as befits the mindset of the crowd that ruins the genre.

IMHO of course. Just an opinion.

Uhm, what? I have been to tournaments that give out awards based on best painted, best sportsman, best theme, and even a quiz on background knowledge ("fluff") that earned prizes for those who got the questions right.

I am not a hyper-competitive player; just look at the "Now that the Imperial Guard Codex is out..." thread to watch me get yelled at for taking a suboptimal list because of fluff and theme.

And I still enjoy tournaments.

 jeff white wrote:
Competitive warhammer privileges spam because the people who are interested in competitive play are too simple minded to define the competition in terms besides spammy bs netlist ridiculousness.

Ah yes, because randomly selecting one of every unit type from your codex means you are of far superior intellect.

Tournaments and Competitive environments, by their nature, requires a WAAC mindset. That is just the nature of it since the entire point of a Tournament or a Competitive setting is to be the best. While I can understand being willing to lose in a casual environment and being a dick to bring something horribly powerful there, bringing your absolute best is sort of the price of entry for this sort of thing. If you dislike it, just don't participate in competitive scenarios (which is what I choose. I only attend "Friendly" tournaments where there is no prize on the line and is more or less an excuse for friends to gather once a week). It's like telling a Corporation that it's being a dick to defend it's IP....where it's literally required by law to do so.

That said, "spam" isn't just for competitive either. It's used in general listbuilding too. The more polite name would be "Target Saturation" and it literally means bringing extra copies of something specifically for them to eat cannon fire; if you only have one copy of a powerful unit, the enemy is going to focus everything on it from the word Go, but if you have three copies you'll at least stand a chance of one of them surviving to actually be used). Say I have 3 squads of 10 Berserkers; this is pretty damn expensive, but if I only took one squad and then took something else fancy, that one squad is liable to get shot to pieces before it reached combat. If I take 3, two of them might be shot to pieces, but the third one will make it into combat, and all I really need is one squad there to, as the vernacular goes, feth gak up.

The reason people hate spam is because of unit design; Often some unit is designed with either no weaknesses, a very small weakness, or is just flat out more cost effective at doing everything than the niche choices. This results in someone's army being essentially comprised of a single unit, with any "tax" units essentially being ignored even during the game. And when you have to fight something like 20 copies of the same thing, and everyone is bringing the same armies, it gets boring and repetitive extremely fast. This is why the Heldrake was hated in 6th edition; on top of being a frustrating thing to fight, almost every single chaos player had them in their armies with almost half of the points dedicated to them.

Take away the W/L record of the players in determining the "best player" and the whole dynamic of the tournament will change. Spammy net lists? Gone. Players who only care about winning? Mostly gone. Most will get it, but there are always some Alpha Level Hyper Competitive players that just can't understand the idea of playing in a tournament and W/L not meaning anything.

There was a time when tournaments ran by GW, the official ones, the GT's, where your W/L record only contributed about 35% to your overall score. Painting was judged, sportsmanship was judged, your army list was judged, and they would give a fluff quiz. Attending a GT was an amazing experience, and yeah, it had its issues, but compared to what we have now... I'd take a GT and all it's issues any day of the week compared to the that is out there now.

Unfortunately, those spammy lists and bad tournaments will only continue while the ITC and those power gamers that run it keep making decisions on how we should play our game.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Tournaments and Competitive environments, by their nature, requires a WAAC mindset. That is just the nature of it since the entire point of a Tournament or a Competitive setting is to be the best. While I can understand being willing to lose in a casual environment and being a dick to bring something horribly powerful there, bringing your absolute best is sort of the price of entry for this sort of thing. If you dislike it, just don't participate in competitive scenarios (which is what I choose. I only attend "Friendly" tournaments where there is no prize on the line and is more or less an excuse for friends to gather once a week). It's like telling a Corporation that it's being a dick to defend it's IP....where it's literally required by law to do so.

That said, "spam" isn't just for competitive either. It's used in general listbuilding too. The more polite name would be "Target Saturation" and it literally means bringing extra copies of something specifically for them to eat cannon fire; if you only have one copy of a powerful unit, the enemy is going to focus everything on it from the word Go, but if you have three copies you'll at least stand a chance of one of them surviving to actually be used). Say I have 3 squads of 10 Berserkers; this is pretty damn expensive, but if I only took one squad and then took something else fancy, that one squad is liable to get shot to pieces before it reached combat. If I take 3, two of them might be shot to pieces, but the third one will make it into combat, and all I really need is one squad there to, as the vernacular goes, feth gak up.

The reason people hate spam is because of unit design; Often some unit is designed with either no weaknesses, a very small weakness, or is just flat out more cost effective at doing everything than the niche choices. This results in someone's army being essentially comprised of a single unit, with any "tax" units essentially being ignored even during the game. And when you have to fight something like 20 copies of the same thing, and everyone is bringing the same armies, it gets boring and repetitive extremely fast. This is why the Heldrake was hated in 6th edition; on top of being a frustrating thing to fight, almost every single chaos player had them in their armies with almost half of the points dedicated to them.

Best at what? My sole point is that this is defined by the participants and organizers. There is a community of so called competitive players who determine what they want to be best at. Basically this is charging up a credit card to pay someone else to paint all the units necessary to break rules written by gw lackeys andn playtested by so called competitive industry people and ex MTG players. The result is WAAC as you demand it. Not the only way to do things however.

The reason I hate spam is because it is mindless abuse and exploitation. Misses the entire point of the hobby .


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Blacksails wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
Competitive warhammer privileges spam because the people who are interested in competitive play are too simple minded to define the competition in terms besides spammy bs netlist ridiculousness.

Ah yes, because randomly selecting one of every unit type from your codex means you are of far superior intellect.

Uh huh.
Except this is opposite what I intended so... Thanks for confirming my original point about simple minded WAAC idiocy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
Competitive warhammer privileges spam because the people who are interested in competitive play are too simple minded to define the competition in terms besides spammy bs netlist ridiculousness.

The competition could easily be redefined in terms of army design and thematics, painting and modeling, sportsmanship and depth of awareness of the background along wit representing this awareness on the tabletop both in models and style of play and army composition.

Instead, competition is defined in then lowest common denominator as befits the mindset of the crowd that ruins the genre.

IMHO of course. Just an opinion.

Uhm, what? I have been to tournaments that give out awards based on best painted, best sportsman, best theme, and even a quiz on background knowledge ("fluff") that earned prizes for those who got the questions right.

I am not a hyper-competitive player; just look at the "Now that the Imperial Guard Codex is out..." thread to watch me get yelled at for taking a suboptimal list because of fluff and theme.

And I still enjoy tournaments.

Yes there is that.
And it is welcome.
But not the point of the thread either...
So beside the point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Minijack wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

Minijack wrote:
40k Tournaments are try-hard fests..always have been and always will be.

They are for those that simply must prove they are the best at toy soldiers.

Yes, trying hard to win is exactly the point.

Are you suggesting that people don't try hard to win at tournaments for other games? Or are you suggesting that you shouldn't try hard to win at a competitive event?

All im saying is that its a hobby,not a sport .Many tournament players seem to think that its fine to throw the hobby aspect out the window,play with subpar "proxie models.terrible paint jobs and absolutely unfluffy army lists just in order to prove they are better at toy soldiers than their opponent when in reality,no one cares except the micro group of fellow try-hards around them.Sorry but its an attitude thats bad for the hobby as a whole.

Absolutely this.
Exalted.

Oh Sirlin. Huge fan of his work, but there are definitely ways to take it too far and create a toxic community. The core mentality of reflecting on losses as a question of what you could have done differently first and foremost is a strong one though, while also recognizing that sometimes you just need to play a different game.

As for spam and 40k; tournaments have a lot of spam because 40k rewards spam, nothing more. It's a fault of the game's structure and how it simple it is from a decision making standpoint. There's not enough demand for a real variety of roles and it largely comes down to efficient DPS and target priority.

That's not to say the game can't be competitive, just that the competitive environment isn't likely to reward diversity. 8th edition is a huge step in the right direction though and I'll be curious if GW can recognize the opportunities it has to create release mechanisms for the core damage race of the game that will provide a more interesting competitive experience going forward.

Minijack wrote:
All im saying is that its a hobby,not a sport .

According to you. Since other people are happily defining it as a competitive discipline, this is clearly not a fact.

Be the best at whatever the goal of the tournament is. If it's just gameplay, there's absolutely nothing wrong with commissioning someone to build you your army. If it's a painting competition (even with strict guidelines) are you gonna penalize someone for buying expensive horsehair brushes when the other contestants are using cheap nylon ones? Or using the best paints he can afford in absolute wasteful ways if that's the only way to get results? Are you gonna denounce someone's conversion diorama because he bought 40 copies of the same expensive kit just for one tiny bit that appears nowhere else? WAAC stands for Win At All Cost, and that's a given in a tournament setting, especially if there's a prize on the line.

Taking it from another perspective. If you define your tournament with criteria that has fluff, painting, conversion as also contributing factors to win, then people will find ways to min-max those as well. If you don't restrict it, they will hire the most expensive painters to paint their armies, hire professional resin casters to produce custom, one-of-a-kind bitz for the models and probably hire a writer, analyist and literature professor to comb through the lore to write the best , fluffiest background for his army. Having a professional writer snob your self-written fanfic-esque lore for your own army is no different than losing a match because the other guy used the most broken unit choices in the game. You can pile on restrictions, and people will simply find ways around it. Again, Competitive Environments, by their very nature, encourages the WAAC Mindset.

If you don't like facing people who maximizes every tiny aspect of their army to "be the best" and make you feel inadequate (like me), then just choose not to participate in their tournaments. That kind of mindset is a legitimate way to approach the hobbies and Tournaments and competitive environments is the place to express that. My friend is colorblind, so she doesn't care about the visual aspects of the hobby (everything is more or less a "grey blob" as she describes it). But she's an accountant, and likes to min-max everything in her lists and likes to attend tournaments (not just 40k). I don't like any of that, so I just (politely) turn down her invitations to go to those events (or at the very least, just sit on the sidelines to cheer her on).

Again, no one is forcing people to attend these and they generally spell out the barrier of entry at the door. If you don't like it, just walk away. Don't stand outside shouting at them for being the devil's anus, that just makes everyone look bad.

EDIT: Also, if all the armies turns up being the same, the fault lies with the designers to make more diverse choices (like the Guard codex). When the MTG tournament ended up having 16 copies of Jace in it's semi-finals (like I mentioned before) WIzards ended up having to pull out an emergency ban right afterwards to stop that. it's something that the makers of the game has to do, not the players.

[MOD EDIT - RULE #1 and RULE #2 - Alpharius]

Here was me thinking that there isn't actually anything wrong with tournaments. There are more tournaments being played than ever, more people involved in them and GW is actually talking about them on their various media platforms.

If anything, it's a great time for tournaments, especially considering 8th edition is the most tournament friendly edition of 40k ever (as well as being the most balanced edition so far)

Holy crap what is this!? Did someone just discover that people play competitively at a tournament? This who thread is not even needed it's just complain that power gaming lists are being used.

Back on Sirlin; one thing I find rather unfortunate is that the inflammatory nature of the scrub article tends to make it the one that really gets talked about. The problem with it is its nature makes it prone to being used by players of either side as an example of what's wrong with the other side rather than something that improves how people approach games.

I'm a much bigger fan of this series of articles:
http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-1-definitions
In particular, being able to identify the absolute size of the pool of viable options in a game vs the percentage of options that are viable is really important to appreciating whether a game is competitively balanced or at the very least, how to best appreciate the game in a competitive environment.

The Scrub article issue is usually because people either see it as a personal attack rather than a rational argument advocating a competitive mindset IF you are in a competitive environment, or the other end of the spectrum read it as be a jerk to people who have no interest in competitive play, again wildly misreading the intention and once again muddling PTW with toysoldier WAAC

Minijack wrote:


All im saying is that its a hobby,not a sport .Many tournament players seem to think that its fine to throw the hobby aspect out the window,play with subpar "proxie models.terrible paint jobs and absolutely unfluffy army lists just in order to prove they are better at toy soldiers than their opponent when in reality,no one cares except the micro group of fellow try-hards around them.Sorry but its an attitude thats bad for the hobby as a whole.

The way they are playing is different to the way that you play, it doesn't make your way better. You aren't somehow more pure because you'll sacrifice army effectiveness for fluff.

People put different value on the various aspects of the hobby. Plenty put painting above everything else, tournament players put playing above everything else.

Personally, I like a careful balance of all of the aspects (yes you can have a list that is poweful and fluffy) but I can also adjust that balance to accommodate different opponents.

The key thing with any game is to play with people who have similar expectations. Playing with people who have clearly set out their expectations and then complaining that they don't meet yours make you the problem. (e.g. Complaining that people prioritise play over other aspects at a competitive event)

I think this sentiment is something purists who feel they own the hobby having come to it originally would think. Yet as anything progresses over time, it move away from the original vision. It evolves to suit the playerbase. The existing playerbase does treat the game as less of a hobby and more of a competitive sport. That may be unfortunate to those who only like collecting cool plastic toys but the competitive players are paying the bills and keeping the lights on for GW. These ugly Forge World monstrosities aren't selling for their looks, they sell because they're overpowered, and they can tell that by which ones are selling.

Eventually the game may stop being looked at as a hobby altogether and go full on competitive mode with rules written by actual lawyers. D&D used to be a beer and pretzel game too and then 3rd edition tried to make it hyper analytical and then they went back to beer and pretzels again.

I don't think that's true at all, I think there is a pretty good distribution of the community from full on competive right through to nothing but painting.

Certain portions of the community are much more visible though.

 Scott-S6 wrote:
I don't think that's true at all, I think there is a pretty good distribution of the community from full on competive right through to nothing but painting.

Certain portions of the community are much more visible though.

Competitive are always more visual on forums, they are the ones wanting and hunting out new info/combos and trying to learn "tricks".

Not saying painters and narrative players dont, just competitive clearly does.

People learning what a tourney is for the first time.

 Scott-S6 wrote:
I don't think that's true at all, I think there is a pretty good distribution of the community from full on competive right through to nothing but painting.

Certain portions of the community are much more visible though.

It's the vocal minority. Even just on this forum, generally the posts with the highest sodium levels tend to be all from the same group of people. The problem is anyone without an actual problem tend to not go to the forums to broadcast their mild agreeability. Like when was the last time someone started a thread just to say "this codex was decent and I had an ok game against it" rather than "OMGWTFBBQ I just got beat by this codex and GW is ruined FOREVER". So if your exposure to most of this is from the internet, it tends to paint a picture of people whining until their army is the strongest. Like screaming CoD players, for everyone one guy that is expelling a torrent of toxic waste into the internet, about a hundred more or so are just going about their day trying to enjoy the hobby.

Wait... why can't I enjoy painting and converting my models up really nicely and playing to win at the same time with my army that's actually pretty fluffy?

Why do people who get all butthurt when they lose badly in a tournament always end up assuming that painting and playing are mutually exclusive? I put more effort and care into my miniatures than anyone who's griped to me about their scrub mentality.

ITT: My idea of fun is different than other people's ideas of fun so they are wrong.

Fafnir wrote:Wait... why can't I enjoy painting and converting my models up really nicely and playing to win at the same time with my army that's actually pretty fluffy?

Why do people who get all butthurt when they lose badly in a tournament always end up assuming that painting and playing are mutually exclusive? I put more effort and care into my miniatures than anyone who's griped to me about their scrub mentality.

This is why -----v

Hoodwink wrote:ITT: My idea of fun is different than other people's ideas of fun so they are wrong.

You sir get an exalt.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:
I don't think that's true at all, I think there is a pretty good distribution of the community from full on competive right through to nothing but painting.

Certain portions of the community are much more visible though.

It's the vocal minority. Even just on this forum, generally the posts with the highest sodium levels tend to be all from the same group of people. The problem is anyone without an actual problem tend to not go to the forums to broadcast their mild agreeability. Like when was the last time someone started a thread just to say "this codex was decent and I had an ok game against it" rather than "OMGWTFBBQ I just got beat by this codex and GW is ruined FOREVER". So if your exposure to most of this is from the internet, it tends to paint a picture of people whining until their army is the strongest. Like screaming CoD players, for everyone one guy that is expelling a torrent of toxic waste into the internet, about a hundred more or so are just going about their day trying to enjoy the hobby.

I think that's spot on. In my recent experience at a nearby GW store, the players are more or less stoked with the edition and don't play tournament-style lists. They're coming back to the hobby after a period of years, excited to use the minis of years past to take a crack at 8th. Maybe the scene is different in someone else's neck of the woods, but I've by and large seen happy players.

Not mine. The entire local area, multiple stores, plays rather competitive lists most of the time. There's a handful of players in the minority who play just for the fluff. We have at least 7 Magnus, 3 Mortarions, 6 Guilliman, and baneblades, conscripts, obliterators, etc. When 8th first came out we had four lists using Tzeentch daemons in the first tournament and it was won by a guy fielding 200 brimstones.

If you're in a densely populated state like Jersey you get more friction.

I frequent the hobby shop closest to me but the ones a bit further out where the rich people live sees regular use of multiple wraithknights, five knight formations, warlord titans in megabattles, all kinds of apocalypse nonsense, and Forge World up the wazoo. Death Krieg and Ad Mech players were top competitors recently due to the sheer numbers of Forge World dreadnoughts they brought with them.

At the the end of the day, this is a competitive game. 1 player vs 1 player, that's the nature of the game. If you include the game at all (you could just have a painting tournament, for eg), this is what it will boil down to. Then you get to the part where you make a competitive list - some armies fail automatically because they're not competitive compared to the others. Then you find the most competitive units, and spam them because they're clearly the best. This is a failing of the game, not the player. Most tournaments are cut-throat, in some instances (like certain e-sports) there are substantial cash prizes to be won. Why would you compete in a competitive environment if you weren't intending to compete?

 Torga_DW wrote:
At the the end of the day, this is a competitive game. 1 player vs 1 player, that's the nature of the game. If you include the game at all (you could just have a painting tournament, for eg), this is what it will boil down to. Then you get to the part where you make a competitive list - some armies fail automatically because they're not competitive compared to the others. Then you find the most competitive units, and spam them because they're clearly the best. This is a failing of the game, not the player. Most tournaments are cut-throat, in some instances (like certain e-sports) there are substantial cash prizes to be won. Why would you compete in a competitive environment if you weren't intending to compete?

The other problem with competitive environments is that a meta will always exist, no matter what you are evaluating.

For soft scores, for example, in the realm of painting, once you get past the level of "I can basecoat and wash my entire army", and into the level of people actually developing an aesthetic for their army, there are going to be certain stylistic inclinations that will resonate better with judges. I'm sure we all remember that nebulous period when everyone and their dog made everything non-metallic metal (especially things that really didn't need to be). Now we're on to a phase where everything is done with poorly done exaggerated object source lighting now that airbrushes are becoming more commonplace. Metas exist in any environment where competition can be derived. At least in a game with specifically defined (or, less specifically so, knowing GW) rules, those metas become more objectively defined.

It's for this same reason that I think that no tournament worth their salt should ever include their soft scores in a metric for determining the overall winner of a tournament, with the exception of potential tie breaking. When I aim to win best painted, and I aim to win the tournament, I'm gearing up for two different things, and two different aspects of enjoyment of the hobby. Everyone enjoys them in different measure, and no one should be expected to hold them to some arbitrary standard of balance.