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Wayniac wrote:
You can't really "play competitive" without sacrificing all the flavor and often the fluff of the army.

On the other hand, it often seems like you can't "play casual/narrative" without sacrificing all of the fluff. I can't even count the number of times I've seen "casual" or "fluffy" lists that were just a bunch of random units thrown together that had nothing to do with any element of the background fiction. Far too often it's people assuming that because they made terrible unit/upgrade choices from the point of view of winning the game it must automatically make it "fluffy" by default.

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).

The same applies to casual/narrative gaming. A group that gets a casual itch follows it to the exclusion of all else, shunning anyone who dares to bring an army that beats them. A group that gets a narrative itch follows it to the exclusion of all else, insisting on always playing unbalanced story-based missions where a competitive contest is impossible. I've seen plenty of people/groups who pick a play style other than competitive tournaments and insist on it to the exclusion of all else.

Also, power levels are ignored because it's an incredibly stupid and broken system that has no reason to exist. Making your point system less accurate and poorly balanced does not, in any situation, add to the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
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.

Nah, 40k's main failing is that it is made by incompetent rule authors (I hesitate to call them game designers given their utter lack of ability at game design), so that even with a coherent vision of what it should be the game would still be terrible. The lack of design focus is bad, but it's insult to injury at that point.

Never change Peregrine.
I voted Meh, probably, because it is one of the problems, but only because most people in the hobby (at least it seems so from looking at Dakka) struggle to communicate properly and adjust to each other's play styles.

 Peregrine wrote:


Nah, 40k's main failing is that it is made by incompetent rule authors (I hesitate to call them game designers given their utter lack of ability at game design), so that even with a coherent vision of what it should be the game would still be terrible. The lack of design focus is bad, but it's insult to injury at that point.

So much bravery in this thread.

Well, 40k has not been built as a competitive game.
There is not even a component of the game which aims at competitive play and GW does even say so.
A competitive game requires balanced armies, a strikt ruleset (not a cartoon-esk one), appropriate missions, and a clock based setting.
Have a look into WHM and steamroller and you know what I mean.

 auticus wrote:
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.

I think its less about not knowing what it wants to be and denying what it is. You can claim to not be competitive all you want, but if your primary game mechanic is to put two players against one another and play until someone wins; well, it certainly quacks like a duck to me.

40k's issue is that its built on pretty dated game design; its core comes from an age before Catan created the era of meaningful decisions that define modern gaming. Mostly the game needs a stronger win condition to shift player decisions into something more interesting than attrition. From there the game turns need to be reduced to where tabling isn't very practical and there will be far more interesting choices to make during the game to make the system less of a predefined gear check sort of encounter.

 LunarSol wrote:
40k's issue is that its built on pretty dated game design; its core comes from an age before Catan created the era of meaningful decisions that define modern gaming. Mostly the game needs a stronger win condition to shift player decisions into something more interesting than attrition. From there the game turns need to be reduced to where tabling isn't very practical and there will be far more interesting choices to make during the game to make the system less of a predefined gear check sort of encounter.

I disagree with this on a couple of points.

Catan doesn't mark an era of gaming, at least not in this context. It's absurd to suggest that nobody had meaningful decisions until Catan showed up to introduce the concept, and Catan's mechanics have little or no application to the wargaming genre. The primary thing Catan did that is noteworthy is succeed in that very difficult balance between being simple enough to be accessible to a mass audience as a casual game and deep enough for players to stay interested in it.

40k's problem is not attrition and tabling, it's a lack of interesting decisions in getting to that point. Terrain doesn't matter, range doesn't matter, movement doesn't matter, all that matters is how efficiently you optimized your dice and how well you identify your priority targets each turn. 40k could be a much more interesting game by fixing these flaws, even if the win conditions were 100% unchanged since 5th edition. And making the game shorter to prevent tabling would be a disaster. A game that short would be far too short for interesting moves and counter-moves to develop, and would almost always feel like you're cutting it short and declaring a winner far too early.

 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.

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!!!

Get off your high horse dude. My thread was not to start an argument for or against anything. It was for people to discuss with each other what THEY feel hurts the game. Hence why it was a poll and not just a rant about competitive players.

Also, just to play devil's advocate here, why not flip this around: Why can't the competitive minded people "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"? What makes them the default approach, and everything else has to be segregated into its own?

This is the old argument I've seen repeated dozens of times across dozens of mediums for years and years. It was the same thing in WoW when you had people who wanted to speedrun dungeons versus people who didn't; it was always "if you want to take your time, make your own group, the default should be going as fast as possible" without ever actually answering the question why it should be the other players and not them (or, worse, simply twisted the question around without answering it).

What makes them the default approach, and everything else has to be segregated into its own?

* the community's acceptance that that is the default overall

* the heavy skew of forum and facebook topics that center around optimizing lists making it the default vs topics and threads about narrative campaigns

* the distinct lack of public narrative events vs the over abundance of min/max tournament events makes it the default

 auticus wrote:

What makes them the default approach, and everything else has to be segregated into its own?

* the community's acceptance that that is the default overall

* the heavy skew of forum and facebook topics that center around optimizing lists making it the default vs topics and threads about narrative campaigns

* the distinct lack of public narrative events vs the over abundance of min/max tournament events makes it the default

Survivorship bias.

There is no need to deeply discuss narrative campaigns in the same terms, because you can deal with everything right then and there.

If you actually wanted to discuss narrative you'd make a post about a branching campaign you set up and not worry so much about points or competitiveness.

Wayniac wrote:
What makes them the default approach, and everything else has to be segregated into its own?

This is a competitive game. It has victory conditions, and there's only one winner at the end of it. That alone makes the default approach competitive. This game isn't an RPG, not even close, so playing it with the specific intent not to win or via some elaborate scenario or campaign will always be the exception.

It may be (survivorship bias), but when you have competitive gaming pretty much always on the table, always being discussed, and always having an event running for it compared to other styles of play, it is easy to meld it into the default.

Competitive matched play is the sun shining bright in the sky. Other forms of play are as asteroids or other night time objects that you have to struggle to see and find.

 auticus wrote:

What makes them the default approach, and everything else has to be segregated into its own?

* the community's acceptance that that is the default overall

* the heavy skew of forum and facebook topics that center around optimizing lists making it the default vs topics and threads about narrative campaigns

* the distinct lack of public narrative events vs the over abundance of min/max tournament events makes it the default

Since I joined this site I tried to start a couple narrative threads. I remember one fall when one of them gained wind for something like three-four days and then died, while competetive-centered OP/UP/fix_this/fix_that/GW_hate threads can go for dozens of pages without even trying. The current status quo is tournament-centered and all narrative talk is pretty much deviation. There is more narrative approach in Painting&Modeling section, especially from some people that don't even play actual games... Judging from thread history there was way more narrative threads demand during 7th than it is now with 8th, when pretty much everything devolved to "discovering the still unformed 'meta'"...

It's also worth noting that competitive gaming is about the only way you can have a community.

The reason narrative and fluff gamers are the ones that have to find each other rather than competitive players is that, in the end, everyone wants to optimize their lists.

As soon as someone asks "Which is better, armoured sentinels or scout sentinels?" Then they're asking a question that competitive players are far better at answering than narrative players.

I suffer from this too. Every time I see (or hear in my FLGS, or whatever) "which superheavy is best for me to build" I have to decide what they mean. If they mean "best" from a Narrative perspective, the answer is probably a Baneblade, since it's the "default" Imperial superheavy and is probably the most common. From a competitive perspective, it's the Shadowsword, because it's pretty awesome. And from a casual perspective, it's none of the above, because apparently Imperial Guard LOWs are ridiculously OP and unfun.

Wayniac wrote:
Also, just to play devil's advocate here, why not flip this around: Why can't the competitive minded people "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"? What makes them the default approach, and everything else has to be segregated into its own?

This is the old argument I've seen repeated dozens of times across dozens of mediums for years and years. It was the same thing in WoW when you had people who wanted to speedrun dungeons versus people who didn't; it was always "if you want to take your time, make your own group, the default should be going as fast as possible" without ever actually answering the question why it should be the other players and not them (or, worse, simply twisted the question around without answering it).

It sounds like those people have arranged things to their liking and are perfectly happy with it. The basic problem is that CAAC players want everyone else to change to suit them, and refuse to accept that most people are fine with how things are. There's also the often-repeated narrative that all anyone talks about is tournaments and optimising which is simply and observably not true if you go out into the real world and meet other people playing the game - there's at least four distinct groups, including truly competitive players, players who like tournaments but aren't worried about trying to win them, players who will turn up to a tournament just to get three or five games against new people, and players who wouldn't ever bother with it but equally don't care that "competitive" gaming exists.

Then there's the fifth, or Dakka, types who are obsessed with competitive play even though they claim to hate it and actively disavow participating in it.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
It's also worth noting that competitive gaming is about the only way you can have a community.

The reason narrative and fluff gamers are the ones that have to find each other rather than competitive players is that, in the end, everyone wants to optimize their lists.

As soon as someone asks "Which is better, armoured sentinels or scout sentinels?" Then they're asking a question that competitive players are far better at answering than narrative players.

I suffer from this too. Every time I see (or hear in my FLGS, or whatever) "which superheavy is best for me to build" I have to decide what they mean. If they mean "best" from a Narrative perspective, the answer is probably a Baneblade, since it's the "default" Imperial superheavy and is probably the most common. From a competitive perspective, it's the Shadowsword, because it's pretty awesome. And from a casual perspective, it's none of the above, because apparently Imperial Guard LOWs are ridiculously OP and unfun.

Please dont take this as anything but a friendly ribbing but........................you sure like to talk about super heavy tanks alot.

Table wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
It's also worth noting that competitive gaming is about the only way you can have a community.

The reason narrative and fluff gamers are the ones that have to find each other rather than competitive players is that, in the end, everyone wants to optimize their lists.

As soon as someone asks "Which is better, armoured sentinels or scout sentinels?" Then they're asking a question that competitive players are far better at answering than narrative players.

I suffer from this too. Every time I see (or hear in my FLGS, or whatever) "which superheavy is best for me to build" I have to decide what they mean. If they mean "best" from a Narrative perspective, the answer is probably a Baneblade, since it's the "default" Imperial superheavy and is probably the most common. From a competitive perspective, it's the Shadowsword, because it's pretty awesome. And from a casual perspective, it's none of the above, because apparently Imperial Guard LOWs are ridiculously OP and unfun.

Please dont take this as anything but a friendly ribbing but........................you sure like to talk about super heavy tanks alot.

I do, it's true, because I prefer to speak on things I'm experienced with. I don't think it makes my point any weaker, or illegible. Does it? I would hope it makes it stronger, considering I'm speaking from a position of experience.

 Peregrine wrote:
40k's problem is not attrition and tabling, it's a lack of interesting decisions in getting to that point. Terrain doesn't matter, range doesn't matter, movement doesn't matter, all that matters is how efficiently you optimized your dice and how well you identify your priority targets each turn. 40k could be a much more interesting game by fixing these flaws, even if the win conditions were 100% unchanged since 5th edition. And making the game shorter to prevent tabling would be a disaster. A game that short would be far too short for interesting moves and counter-moves to develop, and would almost always feel like you're cutting it short and declaring a winner far too early.

I think I agree, but perhaps through a different line of argument. 8th edition lethality is increased (because terrain doesn't matter, range doesn't matter, movement doesn't matter, and because rerolls are plentiful, and because synergies abound), which incentivizes building toward extreme lethality (or toward extreme durability). Without a reduction in lethality, there are no units on the table to make 'interesting decisions' with. The pendulum has swung too far toward, "making my opponent pick up their models is fun," and too far away from, "making my opponent make difficult decisions about what risks to take is fun."

It's not ruining 40k. In fact, I think it creates healthy feedback in order to help towards balance. Even online competitive video games, with millions of points of data collected, can not be truly balanced. But it gives designers feedback to how they can improve their game. The original starcraft, often looked at as one of the most balanced online competitive games, took years to find that balance. Even then, with the latest re-release last year, they decided to keep a lot of the bugs and quirks from the original game that have since become a part of the competitive scene.

GW is now giving the competitive scene more attention and that is better for the game overall in the long run. I think people just need to understand there will be growing pains. This is the same thing many other games experience through their life, both tabletop and digital.

But what if its GW designers basic intent to make interesting decisions not be a design consideration? What if they want to appeal to a wide audience wherein rolling tons of dice and making your opponent remove models wholesale is fun, and having to use tactics and strategy is considered frustrating?

Will the feedback at that point matter?

 auticus wrote:
But what if its GW designers basic intent to make interesting decisions not be a design consideration? What if they want to appeal to a wide audience wherein rolling tons of dice and making your opponent remove models wholesale is fun, and having to use tactics and strategy is considered frustrating?

Will the feedback at that point matter?

What kind of tactical strategies do you feel 40k needs that isnt already in the game?

Personally i find that the biggest issues in 8th is a lot of ranged weapons are just too strong and a decent amount of effects end up getting negated too easily. like moral, leaving CC penalties being a big one.

you can deal with the ranged weapons with more LOS blocking terrain and the large cities my group plays with, we find that the game is often never decided turn one or two. ususally 3 and on wards.

the other ones are ususally baked in making it hard to play against so you end up defaulting to kill mode.

I went for "no, but I see what others mean".

The game is not built to be copetitive from a design-standpoint, but it's stll mostly talked about in this way - whether it be online or in FLGS.

People might get the impression that the competitiveness is ruining the game, but the reality is that the game is just not very well designed and that competitiveness exposes all those underlying issues.

Once the discourse shifts away from the game and to the fluff and the miniatures themselves (which all of this, hands down, has ever really been about), that's where a lot of fun can be had.

Of course, you can have fun playing the game competitively, too, if you are so inclined, but you are really trying to fit a square peg into a round hole for the sake of playing competitively with the minatures you love.

 Peregrine wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
40k's issue is that its built on pretty dated game design; its core comes from an age before Catan created the era of meaningful decisions that define modern gaming. Mostly the game needs a stronger win condition to shift player decisions into something more interesting than attrition. From there the game turns need to be reduced to where tabling isn't very practical and there will be far more interesting choices to make during the game to make the system less of a predefined gear check sort of encounter.

I disagree with this on a couple of points.

Catan doesn't mark an era of gaming, at least not in this context. It's absurd to suggest that nobody had meaningful decisions until Catan showed up to introduce the concept, and Catan's mechanics have little or no application to the wargaming genre. The primary thing Catan did that is noteworthy is succeed in that very difficult balance between being simple enough to be accessible to a mass audience as a casual game and deep enough for players to stay interested in it.

40k's problem is not attrition and tabling, it's a lack of interesting decisions in getting to that point. Terrain doesn't matter, range doesn't matter, movement doesn't matter, all that matters is how efficiently you optimized your dice and how well you identify your priority targets each turn. 40k could be a much more interesting game by fixing these flaws, even if the win conditions were 100% unchanged since 5th edition. And making the game shorter to prevent tabling would be a disaster. A game that short would be far too short for interesting moves and counter-moves to develop, and would almost always feel like you're cutting it short and declaring a winner far too early.

I don't really disagree with anything here. I mostly use Catan as the benchmark when the reference point for a baseline "board game" moved away from Monopoly. There were certainly better games than it before, but its still a useful flag in the timeline.

I also agree there are certainly other ways to make the game more interesting, with range not mattering being the big one. I just suggest shifting the win conditions to scenario more as a means of doing so without overhauling the stat and combat engine. It's dated and clunky, but workable with a shift towards doing things other than killing. I think there's more room for counterplay in less turns than you think (Infinity is full of it in 3, but its a very different system for other reasons) but it would only work if objective play had enough back and forth to swing the game around in fewer turns.

I'm not a competitive player by a long shot, but I believe competitive players are necessary for any miniatures game. They push for easy to understand rules, provide a counterbalance to over-complex fluff based rules and are always the loudest voices pushing for balance (even as they try to privately break it).

WMH is a good example. It's heavily influenced by competitive play, but this has generated a clean ruleset that makes casual game much more pick up and go than most game systems. Even infinity benefits from this and Warhammer 40k seems to be getting influenced as well - even if it still maintains that silly LOS rule.

 Desubot wrote:

 auticus wrote:
But what if its GW designers basic intent to make interesting decisions not be a design consideration? What if they want to appeal to a wide audience wherein rolling tons of dice and making your opponent remove models wholesale is fun, and having to use tactics and strategy is considered frustrating?

Will the feedback at that point matter?

What kind of tactical strategies do you feel 40k needs that isnt already in the game?

Maneuvering and movement is relatively benign and next to useless. ALpha striking and point and click is fairly standard I've found. There are no facings of the troops or vehicles so you can move willy nilly and not have to worry about getting in a bad position because everything moves very fast and has no facing considerations.

Cover and terrain is for the most part not existent and managing the battlefield doesn't really exist anymore.

The most important aspect of the game from a competitive standpoint will largely be the power of your list vs the power of your opponent's list. Listbuilding. Its a game about maximizing lethality in your list and then managing dice probability. The second skill you need is target priority. After that, there isn't much to the game of 40k. Or AOS now either.

The game of 40k has always had issues feeling like a battle, but the modern game feels nothing like a battle and entirely like a board game or close to a board game.

Im fine with facings going away

Its fine on things like a rhino or more accuratly square classical tanks like in Flames of war or team yankee but try and dived up a wave serpant or a land speeder.

Maneuvering and movement.. is pretty useless when people focus more on alpha striking domination but when playing against people that dont bring massive meat walls or spams long range lascannon type weapons it becomes pretty important for the objective game.

cover.. yeah that really needs some fixing. (though as imp fist i just ignore it )

yeah dunno what to do about any of that other than greatly increasing the terrain density and giving them all functions.

im lucky enough to have a group that doesnt go overboard in the power game and so its often pretty even and objective reliant outside of horrable luck.

Saying 40k Comp is ruining 40k is like saying the NFL is ruining local football leagues.

Dont want a comp game, talk to opponent. The game is a social game meant to talk to each other about how you want to play.

The only reason why I did not vote for the first option is that the X word is racist.

 Tokhuah wrote:
The only reason why I did not vote for the first option is that the X word is racist.

Why do you keep repeating that? Is like... are you joking or something? Or do you seriously believe that "xeno" is racist?

Wayniac wrote:
Also, just to play devil's advocate here, why not flip this around: Why can't the competitive minded people "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"? What makes them the default approach, and everything else has to be segregated into its own?

This is the old argument I've seen repeated dozens of times across dozens of mediums for years and years. It was the same thing in WoW when you had people who wanted to speedrun dungeons versus people who didn't; it was always "if you want to take your time, make your own group, the default should be going as fast as possible" without ever actually answering the question why it should be the other players and not them (or, worse, simply twisted the question around without answering it).

It sure seems like the competitive players have done exactly what you are asking for: formed a group of like-minded players and organized the games. The problem is that non-competitive players keep trying to change the competitive group rather than making their own group.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
But what if its GW designers basic intent to make interesting decisions not be a design consideration? What if they want to appeal to a wide audience wherein rolling tons of dice and making your opponent remove models wholesale is fun, and having to use tactics and strategy is considered frustrating?

Will the feedback at that point matter?

Then GW is spectacularly incompetent, determined to make a terrible game, and not going to change their idiocy until it punishes them in their profit numbers. But we have to assume that there's at least a marginal level of intelligence at GW, otherwise expecting anything but an exercise in masochism from the game is a hopeless cause.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LunarSol wrote:
I don't really disagree with anything here. I mostly use Catan as the benchmark when the reference point for a baseline "board game" moved away from Monopoly. There were certainly better games than it before, but its still a useful flag in the timeline.

It's not a useful flag at all, because that "shift" had more to do with Catan's success from a business point of view than any revolution in game design. Catan replacing Monopoly (a terrible game that never should have been as popular as it was) happened because Catan found the right combination of mechanics and marketing luck to break into the casual audience and start selling a ton. It makes no sense to use it as any kind of reference point in the wargaming genre.

I also agree there are certainly other ways to make the game more interesting, with range not mattering being the big one. I just suggest shifting the win conditions to scenario more as a means of doing so without overhauling the stat and combat engine. It's dated and clunky, but workable with a shift towards doing things other than killing. I think there's more room for counterplay in less turns than you think (Infinity is full of it in 3, but its a very different system for other reasons) but it would only work if objective play had enough back and forth to swing the game around in fewer turns.

The problem is that with IGOUGO (a bad mechanic that needs to die, but you're not considering major changes) doesn't leave enough time for interactions in a short game. You can't go back and forth when you can only activate each of your units 3-4 times per battle and you have to do all of them at once before your opponent responds.