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Casual, Narrative and Competitive are all valid play styles and should be supported; WAAC is not and should never be.

As for ruining the game it's a mix. Players that run the numbers and point out X is better than Y, "Dont run Y!" are not the problem, they're a symptom.

The problem boils down to how things aren't being properly tested and / or active power creep in codexes. If everything was 'balanced', Competitive, Casual and Narrative players would become the same player group (After all, everything's balanced) but WAAC would still stand out.

 lolman1c wrote:


Btw, to me competitive means to win at all costs (super cheese and abuse) and to be a super sore loser.

If that's competitive to you what's WAAC?

 Eonfuzz wrote:

 lolman1c wrote:


Btw, to me competitive means to win at all costs (super cheese and abuse) and to be a super sore loser.

If that's competitive to you what's WAAC?

Someone that kidnapes your children and tells you to let him win if you want to see them again.

 Enigma of the Absolute wrote:

Table wrote:
Id have to disagree a bit. Alot can be done better by GW while not throwing the baby out with the bath water. They are particularly bad at point cost. Alot of the time that is driven by sales and marketing (custodes currently) and some is just sheer idiocy (888 point lord of skulls). If they stopped intentionally under costing the new hotness to push sales and did a better job 40k would be much more balanced.

Sure, but I've been in the hobby for over 20 years now and people say the same thing every year. It's like the guy who says "I'm going to get in shape this year, I just need to cut out the junk food and start exercising" and then does neither of those things. When there's a will there's a way and GW simply doesn't have the motivation to balance their games to that degree. That's why my proposal is to have a team dedicated to competitive and tournament play. This would hopefully result in fewer unhappy match ups between hyper competitive and casual/fluff players as it would be agreed from the outset which ruleset would be used.

Never said they would, only that its possible. But I understand your statement.

Competitivness is one part, GW not properly playstesting agasint cheese is another part of the problem.

The playtesting they do seems to be from the perspective of how the armies should be played; mono force vs mono force.
Then players comes in an breaks stuff whit their soup mixing cuz they cant stand having weak elements in their armies, something that began in 7th if not sooner.

This is why there should be more limitations in matched play sutch as making soup lists illegal and a limit to how many identical units one can bring.

No, because competitive 40k always existed and always have been a fraction of the game, not the normal.

It may ruin a specific meta though.

I don't care about the competitive scene and find most of their lists and playstyles boring. But I like that they find loopholes and undercosted units and since 8th edition can make GW to actually balance them, which is a win for casual players like me, too.

I think anyone who say "X is ruining Y" is shouting sensationalist nonsense. It's basically a load of crap every single time.

lolman1c wrote: Is competitiveness ruining/ruined 40K?

Depends on how you define competitiveness but the short anwser is no. Games tend to become more balanced the more competitive players it has. This is due to the fact that when you have people looking critically at a game they find imbalances and discrepencies, and point them out so they can be corrected. The idea that people wanting to win will somehow make the game worse seems naive to me. The competitive players don't make the rules they just play with them. GW is responsible for the creation of the rules, and as such responsible for the balance and how fun the game can be.

lolman1c wrote: Why is it ruining 40k/ what really is ruining 40k?

I think it is a plethora of things, the main cause being GWs pay to win buisness model. They have no way to sell the models they make, so they make rules for a game and make the perticular thing they want to sell a bit better then everything else.

lolman1c wrote: And how would you fix it/ how would you stop people complaining?

You will never stop people from complaining, and if you do then you have probably become tyrant, or there is nobody to complain.

Fixxing the problem is a bit more complicated. You need to get rid of the pay to win model, create a relativily well balanced game, and then decide what kind of business model you want to run. Some sort of equilibric system where having multiple armies is not only viable, but encouraged would be the best.

As an example you could create Hub armies with sub-factions that focus on specific aspects of that army. Then within the sub factions you create units that are specific to that Army. Then when you start putting out new models you can simply revamp old lines when somebody has a defiler that's 10 years old it's not really a stretch that they might want to replace it even if they already have one. You could do this with every single faction Tau have farsight enclaves so you create a codex for farsight enclaves and you create some unique suits for that army and whenever it comes time for them to get an update of you revamp the base models for the hub armies and add a couple of modification sprues so that some other armies can take advantage as well. The key to maintaining balance here would be you have to pick your army faction in some way.

I'm not sure I understand. How is competition between players ruining the game? Are players playing with different goals in how they want the game to be played when they are playing against each other?

Darsath wrote:
I'm not sure I understand. How is competition between players ruining the game? Are players playing with different goals in how they want the game to be played when they are playing against each other?

Quite possible. Not everybody cares one whit about who wins or loses. What they do care about however is interesting story that comes out of game and that is rarely case if one army roflstomps other. And 40k being unbalanced as hell means if both players aren't playing on same level means often just that.

One player uses what models he likes or feels appropriate for scenario. One goes for mathematically most efficient and even exploits rules as hard as possible while staying within RAW. You can guess who's going to win.

I don't enjoy competitive wargaming. My only real brush with it was a few local Warmachine tournaments, and I decided I didn't like the idea. I play wargames to refight a battle, not just to play an abstract game to see who wins. If I wanted to do that, I'd take up chess.

So, from that point of view, competitive play doesn't affect me. Where it does affect me is when it drives game development. Warmachine stripped out any vestige of morale/psychology rules, which was one of the reasons I stopped playing, in the name of tournament play. I like the way 40k is going, with open, narrative and competitive play being different - that way they can remove something from the tournament scene without affecting the rest of us.

 BlackLobster wrote:

Competitive play is about winning, although not necessarily WAAC. It's turning up with a perfect list and playing it to achieve victory. That is fine when it is competitive versus competitive. More often than not though I see competitive players using that same style against less competitive players and casual players, usually to detriment of the opponent's enjoyment of the game. It is almost as if some competitive players cannot tone their play style down to accommodate the play style of their opponent. That however is not the fault of the game but the problem of having two different play styles. I sometimes wonder whether traditional historical war gaming has the same issue?

It can do, BlackLobster (the infamous “big cats in Normandy” approach to WW2 Germans comes to mind) but the difference is generally that you can point to history to explain why this thing could/could not have happened. GW army lists are rather more generic than that - for instance, take the Falklands War. According to “Codex: HM Armed Forces (1982 edition)”, we may well have been more comfortable taking Chieftains and mechanised infantry with air cover provided by the ultramodern Tornado’s of the RAF. Obviously, real life considerations had different ideas.

The only thing ruining 40K is GW's inept rules-writing and development.

 BlackLobster wrote:
Competitive play is about winning, although not necessarily WAAC. It's turning up with a perfect list and playing it to achieve victory. That is fine when it is competitive versus competitive. More often than not though I see competitive players using that same style against less competitive players and casual players, usually to detriment of the opponent's enjoyment of the game. It is almost as if some competitive players cannot tone their play style down to accommodate the play style of their opponent. That however is not the fault of the game but the problem of having two different play styles. I sometimes wonder whether traditional historical war gaming has the same issue?

Casual play is about fluff, although not necessarily FAAC. It's turning up with a perfect story and playing it to achieve victory. That is fine when it is casual versus casual. More often than not though I see casual players using that same style against less casual players and competitive players, usually to detriment of the opponent's enjoyment of the game. It is almost as if some casual players cannot tone their play style up to accommodate the play style of their opponent. That however is not the fault of the game but the problem of having two different play styles. I sometimes wonder whether traditional historical war gaming has the same issue?

 Blacksails wrote:

 lolman1c wrote:

Btw, to me competitive means to win at all costs (super cheese and abuse) and to be a super sore loser.

You definitely should have clarified that.

This forum has a bad habit to use terms like WAAC really fast and loose. Winning at ALL costs is a whole stretch from simply being competitive.

I didn't want to clarify that because I know it means many things to different people. The point of this post was to generate discussion and not to interject my own opinions into the original question (only writing my own opinions in later posts in response to arguments).

 lolman1c wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

 lolman1c wrote:

Btw, to me competitive means to win at all costs (super cheese and abuse) and to be a super sore loser.

You definitely should have clarified that.

This forum has a bad habit to use terms like WAAC really fast and loose. Winning at ALL costs is a whole stretch from simply being competitive.

I didn't want to clarify that because I know it means many things to different people. The point of this post was to generate discussion and not to interject my own opinions into the original question (only writing my own opinions in later posts in response to arguments).

Which then feeds miscommunication and divide. I'm certain more than a few people walked away from this thread with the wrong impression.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Daedalus81 wrote:
Nope. The problem lies with the community and it's ability to communicate.

If you're asking how good a unit is and you provide zero context you're probably going to get the WAAC perspective. The nice thing about balancing is that SO FEW units fall into that "never take" bucket than ever in the game's history.

Daedalus81 wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Plus some competitive people are just jerks who take it way too far and try and cheat to win. Then there are people who just actively seek out the most broken thing to play like scatbike spam.

You're playing it fast and loose with the competitive term there. Do you think narrative players don't cheat?

Of course they can't really be singled out as the sole issue because someone wrote the broken rules in the first place.

Hooray for no personal responsibility!

Probably. I can only speak of my experience.

People who cheat and act like jerks are responsible for their actions. So are the people who make dumb rules. There's a fair bit of responsibility there.

 lolman1c wrote:


I didn't want to clarify that because I know it means many things to different people. The point of this post was to generate discussion and not to interject my own opinions into the original question (only writing my own opinions in later posts in response to arguments).

Honestly, equating competitive with WAAC makes you an extreme minority, and I'm sure most people will find your definition to be largely incorrect. There's a reason we have the term WAAC, and its to specifically divide the line between people who enjoy going to tournaments and playing with a slightly higher intent to win, vs people who slow play, excessively rules lawyer, have shady dice rolling practices, or are otherwise donkey-caves.

Frankly, equating WAAC with competitive is actually part of the problem. If you equate people who play competitively as automatic WAAC, then you're already judging people and are part of the problem of what's ruining 40k.

Daedalus81 wrote:

 lolman1c wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

 lolman1c wrote:

Btw, to me competitive means to win at all costs (super cheese and abuse) and to be a super sore loser.

You definitely should have clarified that.

This forum has a bad habit to use terms like WAAC really fast and loose. Winning at ALL costs is a whole stretch from simply being competitive.

I didn't want to clarify that because I know it means many things to different people. The point of this post was to generate discussion and not to interject my own opinions into the original question (only writing my own opinions in later posts in response to arguments).

Which then feeds miscommunication and divide. I'm certain more than a few people walked away from this thread with the wrong impression.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Daedalus81 wrote:
Nope. The problem lies with the community and it's ability to communicate.

If you're asking how good a unit is and you provide zero context you're probably going to get the WAAC perspective. The nice thing about balancing is that SO FEW units fall into that "never take" bucket than ever in the game's history.

I think that feeding divide can be a good thing sometimes. When people fight it out you can often gain the best and most passionate arguments. Even if there is only 1 good post in 99 I think it is worth it. however, that's not what I was trying here... I just didn't want to define it because I think people all have a definition in their mind. Nobody would come out as a WAAC player if everyone was hating on them but by simply saying competitive lots of people come out and defend it and I can gain an understanding for their argument.

In terms of people getting burnt out... I was reeeeealy sick of playing Death Guard armies that were just primed Nurgle Green for the first few months of 8th edition.

This thread would have been better off titled,
COMPETITIVENESS IS RUINING 40K FOR ME

To the OP, dude you play in a competitive environment but want a casual one. 40k is a competitive game, a game with objectives and win/loss conditions.

You can't walk in to a public gaming environment and expect to play a casual fun fluffy game against a stranger. You need to find likeminded players and build a crew, play garage hammer, get to know people and engage with them and agree games in advance with conditions that suit you both.

For me being able to log in to twitch and watch the final of the largest competitive 40k gaming event in our hobbies history and revel in the glories of players like Nick Nanavati(Brown?) is simply awesome extension of our hobby. Its like a sport. But I still meet my buddies on a Friday night with a few beers and a bottle of rum and throw dice for fun and build legends that last decades like the time my buddies Daemon prince spawned itself through an act of hubris or the time a lone cultist dealt the last wound to an avatar on a charge. Go find your fun bro but don't hate on others doing the same thing.

Also WAAC is massively different from competitive!!!

The only thing ruining 40k is people who complain unceasingly about 40k and GW, while still playing GW's game and buying GW models. Constructive criticism is be a good thing. Mindless complaining on the other hand is just stupid and tiresome. It is not that I never complain about GW or 40k, but there are people who take it waaaay too far and I can't stand those people. 40k is something I do for fun (and I imagine that everyone who plays 40k ultimately does so for fun), and all that negative energy isn't really contributing to fun.

Some people enjoy a good moan.

 Nithaniel wrote:
This thread would have been better off titled,
COMPETITIVENESS IS RUINING 40K FOR ME

To the OP, dude you play in a competitive environment but want a casual one. 40k is a competitive game, a game with objectives and win/loss conditions.

Not really. If 40k truly was competive game it would have been designed as one rather than as super crappy as one.

tneva82 wrote:


Not really. If 40k truly was competive game it would have been designed as one rather than as super crappy as one.

Hmm

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The only thing ruining 40k is people who complain unceasingly about 40k and GW, while still playing GW's game and buying GW models. Constructive criticism is be a good thing. Mindless complaining on the other hand is just stupid and tiresome. It is not that I never complain about GW or 40k, but there are people who take it waaaay too far and I can't stand those people. 40k is something I do for fun (and I imagine that everyone who plays 40k ultimately does so for fun), and all that negative energy isn't really contributing to fun.

tneva82 wrote:

 Nithaniel wrote:
This thread would have been better off titled,
COMPETITIVENESS IS RUINING 40K FOR ME

To the OP, dude you play in a competitive environment but want a casual one. 40k is a competitive game, a game with objectives and win/loss conditions.

Not really. If 40k truly was competive game it would have been designed as one rather than as super crappy as one.

No you miss my point. Something being Truly competitive to me is a subjective statement. I'm saying when you engage in a game of ANY sort that has a win/loss condition you are competing in the simplest sense of the word.

I think you're suggesting that because the game isn't designed from the ground up to be competitive then it isn't going to make a good competitive game. You are absolutely right which is kinda why ITC missions go a long way off the rulebook win/loss conditions to try and achieve it and why literally hundreds of players in the US and UK take part in organized play and compete on a weekly basis but in tournaments where rules are applied above and beyond the scope of the rulebook from GW.

I think part of the frustration is that it's often mutually exclusive. You can't really "play competitive" without sacrificing all the flavor and often the fluff of the army. In a game like 40k where the fluff/background seems to be the main appeal (otherwise, why not play the myriad of games with much better rules?), it's a little disheartening if, for example, you really like playing a certain faction and are constantly told to bring in elements from a different faction, sometimes ones that completely break the army theme (e.g. bringing in Tzeentch daemons in a Nurgle force) simply to get a competitive advantage. That feels like something that should be avoided at all cost; the fact it has become the norm to ignore the background for the sake of winning/being competitive means that "competitive 40k" leaves a sour taste in the mouth, because it feels like it's ignoring the main good parts of the system to focus on the poorest parts (i.e. rules and balance).

There's also the issue with competitive gaming in general, not specific to 40k, in that often an area that starts to get a competitive itch often follows it to the exclusion of all else. Many areas already refuse to even touch power level, to say nothing of narrative or open play; it's matched play, points, eternal war/maelstrom/ITC missions only, now and forever because they are too afraid of the other things being abused to actually put in restrictions to stop it from happening such as agreements before the game (basically a requirement in non-matched games) or even just refusing to play somebody if the contract is broken (e.g. if they agree to power level, then turn up with a total cheese list because they can).

Again, this is not specific to 40k, that particular part happens in most games with any sort of competitive style where you see all the other styles slowly dwindle away. Auticus is a perfect example of this; his areas are almost all dominated by the competitive tournament crowd to where it is a monumental effort to get somebody to try something different. My area is similar but less tournament focused, but there is basically only matched play. GW's whole stuff about "three ways to play" doesn't actually exist; I would have to basically hunt for somebody willing to not use points and the (IMHO) bland eternal war/maelstrom missions (nobody here really likes ITC missions) or, god forbid, just want to throw down with a few units and come up with some crazy ad-hoc scenario and have a good time. People are too afraid of "but what if my opponent took X" to take steps to ensure that your opponent won't bring X.

Wayniac wrote:
I think part of the frustration is that it's often mutually exclusive. You can't really "play competitive" without sacrificing all the flavor and often the fluff of the army. In a game like 40k where the fluff/background seems to be the main appeal (otherwise, why not play the myriad of games with much better rules?), it's a little disheartening if, for example, you really like playing a certain faction and are constantly told to bring in elements from a different faction, sometimes ones that completely break the army theme (e.g. bringing in Tzeentch daemons in a Nurgle force) simply to get a competitive advantage. That feels like something that should be avoided at all cost; the fact it has become the norm to ignore the background for the sake of winning/being competitive means that "competitive 40k" leaves a sour taste in the mouth, because it feels like it's ignoring the main good parts of the system to focus on the poorest parts (i.e. rules and balance).

There's also the issue with competitive gaming in general, not specific to 40k, in that often an area that starts to get a competitive itch often follows it to the exclusion of all else. Many areas already refuse to even touch power level, to say nothing of narrative or open play; it's matched play, points, eternal war/maelstrom/ITC missions only, now and forever because they are too afraid of the other things being abused to actually put in restrictions to stop it from happening such as agreements before the game (basically a requirement in non-matched games) or even just refusing to play somebody if the contract is broken (e.g. if they agree to power level, then turn up with a total cheese list because they can).

Again, this is not specific to 40k, that particular part happens in most games with any sort of competitive style where you see all the other styles slowly dwindle away. Auticus is a perfect example of this; his areas are almost all dominated by the competitive tournament crowd to where it is a monumental effort to get somebody to try something different. My area is similar but less tournament focused, but there is basically only matched play. GW's whole stuff about "three ways to play" doesn't actually exist; I would have to basically hunt for somebody willing to not use points and the (IMHO) bland eternal war/maelstrom missions (nobody here really likes ITC missions) or, god forbid, just want to throw down with a few units and come up with some crazy ad-hoc scenario and have a good time. People are too afraid of "but what if my opponent took X" to take steps to ensure that your opponent won't bring X.

There are 3 problems here:

1) Fluff players who don't understand the fluff. Just to use your example: Yes, Tzeench and Nurgle hate each other. But if it came down to "kick the God-Emperor in the teeth and take his lunch money together" or "fight amongst ourselves for eternity" they'd absolutely choose the former. Much like how Necrons and Blood Angels could fight together against a foe (yes, this happened in the galaxy). Warhammer 40,000 is a big place, and you can justify damn near anything with the fluff. Some things are RIGHT OUT, but not a lot.

2) Mechanics vs fluff disconnect. The problem with gaming in general is all this weird and wonderful background stuff has to be translated into the game. Just look at the Elder Scrolls series; in the fluff, there are space ships, orbital weapon stations, entire armies of summoned Daedra to serve a dark lord, etc. but in the games you get like, 15 people and Martin Septim to fight back the "hordes" of Mehrunes Dagon, which consist of like thirty Daedra. It's just mechanically impossible to replicate the background adequately. The same is true in Warhammer, and it's even worse because of the fluff discordance. In certain novels/stories, the Leman Russ can go toe-to-toe with the hammerhead on equal footing. In the Guard codex, the Leman Russ is the BEST TANK EVUH and unbeatable. In the Tau codex, the Hammerhead is the BEST TECHNOLOGY EVUH and unbeatable. How do you reconcile those on the tabletop?

3) Fluff players who don't like losing. This is me, and I admit it's one of my flaws. I run a superheavy tank company, and by rights that means I should be easily wiped out by something like a Necron Pylon or a whole bunch of Neutron Onagers or Predator Annihilators or something. And this happens on the table top. I've gotten better about accepting it (what's really helped is writing the fluff after the battle and realizing that me getting utterly annihilated is actually about what could be expected), but I would be better served by just accepting that in the fluff, and in the rules, certain armies just can't hack it against other certain armies, and losses must be accepted. I got really good at accepting this in 5th edition with my Leman Russ tank company, who couldn't even score objectives, but for some reason I must've lost it. Either way, I've accepted that most competitive lists crush me, and that's fine, but not for everyone.

tneva82 wrote:
If 40k truly was competive game it would have been designed as one rather than as super crappy as one.

If 40k truly was narrative game it would have been designed as one rather than as super crappy as one.

 Peregrine wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
If 40k truly was competive game it would have been designed as one rather than as super crappy as one.

If 40k truly was narrative game it would have been designed as one rather than as super crappy as one.

Isn't that always the case, though? It's because 40k is designed to be everything to all people and fails at everything as a result. The poor rules are bad for competitive play and bad for narrative play. Yet that's really neither here nor there because nothing will ever fix that; you know that as well as anyone.

I think 40k and old WHFB and now AOS main failings is that it doesn't know what it wants to be.

Its trying to be everything.

Thats the problem with it IMO.