Competitive: Becoming the dark side of the game?

[Evil Eye]

Their VDR / CDR could have been absolutely awesome, but since they decided not to give points values to anything no one uses it.

I hear you, but at the same time I wonder how much of that is GW's fault and how much is the community's fault for adamantly refusing to use PLs for anything. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

[Gederas]

Their VDR / CDR could have been absolutely awesome, but since they decided not to give points values to anything no one uses it.

I hear you, but at the same time I wonder how much of that is GW's fault and how much is the community's fault for adamantly refusing to use PLs for anything. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

Because Power Level isn't a balanced option.

 

In a 50 Power Level game, I saw a Tyranids player have something like 90+ Genestealers, all with their best possible gear options, along with a couple Broodlords.

 

Because you don't pay for that super powerful equipment in Power Level.

[Evil Eye]

 

Their VDR / CDR could have been absolutely awesome, but since they decided not to give points values to anything no one uses it.

I hear you, but at the same time I wonder how much of that is GW's fault and how much is the community's fault for adamantly refusing to use PLs for anything. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

Because Power Level isn't a balanced option.

 

In a 50 Power Level game, I saw a Tyranids player have something like 90+ Genestealers, all with their best possible gear options, along with a couple Broodlords.

 

Because you don't pay for that super powerful equipment in Power Level.

 

That is seriously broken, but it sounds to me more like a problem with powergamers being powergamers and bringing that WAAC attitude where it didn't belong- and sadly, there is no way of writing rules to prevent that short of some kind of Voight-Kampff test (I hope I spelled that right) that can detect munchkins.

 

PL is on paper a great idea; it speeds up list building and allows greater flexibility for fluff-driven games where winning by any means necessary isn't the ultimate goal. The problem is, of course, that some people take this as "Build the cheesiest list you possibly can with absolutely no restrictions" rather than "Play whatever you think looks cool, including stuff that wouldn't work in Matched Play".

Now I'll admit I'm biased, as I find the idea of "competitive gaming" absolutely absurd (not restricted to 40K either) and really think the competitive mindset, and people bringing ultra-optimized lists to friendly/narrative games, is the height of silliness. But again, it seems less like a case of a badly made system and more like a case of there being no way to make an abuse-proof system that isn't also highly restricted.

Basically, what needs to change isn't the rules, it's the people deliberately exploiting the rules and ruining it for everyone else.

[Marshal Rohr]

Didn't someone win LVO a few years back by pulling some gamey shenanigans and someone gave his opponent money for being beaten so cheesily?

[toaae]

Didn't someone win LVO a few years back by pulling some gamey shenanigans and someone gave his opponent money for being beaten so cheesily?

 

Famously, "Tony got Tony'd". In a semi-final game, Tony Gambodorodingdong (probably not his actual last name) refused to let his opponent move any units after he placed his reserves on the table. One of the founders of Riot was watching this on Twitch and said he'd give the slighted player (Alex Fennel) $5000. Alex instead had this donated to the children's hospital his wife worked at, which was matched by his employer, and then matched by GW.

 

In the Finals, Nick Nanavati (AKA, Brown Magic, AKA, legit professional 40k player, AKA, on-the-short-list-for-best-player-in-the-world) beat Tony, in part because he wouldn't let Tony play a stratagem out of phase (I think it was one that allowed eldar jetbikes to charge after advancing; as I recall; you have to use it in the movement phase [iE, when you advance], and Tony was trying to do it during the Charge phase). Nick claimed he would normally never do that, but since Tony had just done something similar to Alex, he felt compelled to.

 

In the end, a children's hospital made $15k and the bad guy didn't win.

[Marshal Rohr]

 

Didn't someone win LVO a few years back by pulling some gamey shenanigans and someone gave his opponent money for being beaten so cheesily?

 

Famously, "Tony got Tony'd". In a semi-final game, Tony Gambodorodingdong (probably not his actual last name) refused to let his opponent move any units after he placed his reserves on the table. One of the founders of Riot was watching this on Twitch and said he'd give the slighted player (Alex Fennel) $5000. Alex instead had this donated to the children's hospital his wife worked at, which was matched by his employer, and then matched by GW.

 

In the Finals, Nick Nanavati (AKA, Brown Magic, AKA, legit professional 40k player, AKA, on-the-short-list-for-best-player-in-the-world) beat Tony, in part because he wouldn't let Tony play a stratagem out of phase (I think it was one that allowed eldar jetbikes to charge after advancing; as I recall; you have to use it in the movement phase [iE, when you advance], and Tony was trying to do it during the Charge phase). Nick claimed he would normally never do that, but since Tony had just done something similar to Alex, he felt compelled to.

 

In the end, a children's hospital made $15k and the bad guy didn't win.

 

 

Ah, pretty good illustration of the tournement gamers then. 

[toaae]

 

 

Didn't someone win LVO a few years back by pulling some gamey shenanigans and someone gave his opponent money for being beaten so cheesily?

 

Famously, "Tony got Tony'd". In a semi-final game, Tony Gambodorodingdong (probably not his actual last name) refused to let his opponent move any units after he placed his reserves on the table. One of the founders of Riot was watching this on Twitch and said he'd give the slighted player (Alex Fennel) $5000. Alex instead had this donated to the children's hospital his wife worked at, which was matched by his employer, and then matched by GW.

 

In the Finals, Nick Nanavati (AKA, Brown Magic, AKA, legit professional 40k player, AKA, on-the-short-list-for-best-player-in-the-world) beat Tony, in part because he wouldn't let Tony play a stratagem out of phase (I think it was one that allowed eldar jetbikes to charge after advancing; as I recall; you have to use it in the movement phase [iE, when you advance], and Tony was trying to do it during the Charge phase). Nick claimed he would normally never do that, but since Tony had just done something similar to Alex, he felt compelled to.

 

In the end, a children's hospital made $15k and the bad guy didn't win.

 

 

Ah, pretty good illustration of the tournement gamers then. 

 

 

That when someone is a dick, they get their just deserts, memed to oblivion, and the competitive community improves? Yeah, that's a pretty good illustration of the tournament gamers.

[Marshal Rohr]

 

 

 

Didn't someone win LVO a few years back by pulling some gamey shenanigans and someone gave his opponent money for being beaten so cheesily?

 

Famously, "Tony got Tony'd". In a semi-final game, Tony Gambodorodingdong (probably not his actual last name) refused to let his opponent move any units after he placed his reserves on the table. One of the founders of Riot was watching this on Twitch and said he'd give the slighted player (Alex Fennel) $5000. Alex instead had this donated to the children's hospital his wife worked at, which was matched by his employer, and then matched by GW.

 

In the Finals, Nick Nanavati (AKA, Brown Magic, AKA, legit professional 40k player, AKA, on-the-short-list-for-best-player-in-the-world) beat Tony, in part because he wouldn't let Tony play a stratagem out of phase (I think it was one that allowed eldar jetbikes to charge after advancing; as I recall; you have to use it in the movement phase [iE, when you advance], and Tony was trying to do it during the Charge phase). Nick claimed he would normally never do that, but since Tony had just done something similar to Alex, he felt compelled to.

 

In the end, a children's hospital made $15k and the bad guy didn't win.

 

 

Ah, pretty good illustration of the tournement gamers then. 

 

 

That when someone is a dick, they get their just deserts, memed to oblivion, and the competitive community improves? Yeah, that's a pretty good illustration of the tournament gamers.

 

 

The dude trying to pull a fast one is more indicative of the average tournament gamer than the founder of riot games giving someone 5,000 dollars.  Unless you can point to that happening one more time. 

Edited December 16, 2019 by Marshal Rohr

[toaae]

The dude trying to pull a fast one is more indicative of the average tournament gamer than the founder of riot games giving someone 5,000 dollars.  Unless you can point to that happening one more time. 

 

No, the average tournament gamer isn't much different then the average non-tournament gamer. You're choosing to focus on a bad apple, to whom the community reacted excellently to (even ignoring the heart-warming donation story) at the expense of the large number of people that play in tournaments for a myriad of reasons that have nothing to do with being a dick. Your bias is tunneling in on a negative, instead of seeing the bigger picture.

 

Since I started going to ITC events last October, I've met a great deal of excellent, swell people. I've played some beautifully painted armies. And across all that, I've had 2 games where I didn't enjoy the person I was playing against. Count that against the new friends I made, or the club I found because they hosted an ITC on the BCP app, and I'll easily say that that was a price well worth the rewards. In my experiences, across 16 years of this hobby, I've never found an appreciable difference in regards to if someone is a dick to play against or not between people that attend tournaments and those that don't. Yes, the cutting edge gamers find every nuance of the rules they can, and exploit it to showcase their skill. Those people are still incredibly nice folks, in my experience.

 

But, without a doubt, the biggest elitists and snobs in this community are people that look down on an aspect of the game. Most of the time, these are people who deride the competitive scene.

[PeteySödes]

 

The dude trying to pull a fast one is more indicative of the average tournament gamer than the founder of riot games giving someone 5,000 dollars.  Unless you can point to that happening one more time. 

 

No, the average tournament gamer isn't much different then the average non-tournament gamer. You're choosing to focus on a bad apple, to whom the community reacted excellently to (even ignoring the heart-warming donation story) at the expense of the large number of people that play in tournaments for a myriad of reasons that have nothing to do with being a dick. Your bias is tunneling in on a negative, instead of seeing the bigger picture.

 

Since I started going to ITC events last October, I've met a great deal of excellent, swell people. I've played some beautifully painted armies. And across all that, I've had 2 games where I didn't enjoy the person I was playing against. Count that against the new friends I made, or the club I found because they hosted an ITC on the BCP app, and I'll easily say that that was a price well worth the rewards. In my experiences, across 16 years of this hobby, I've never found an appreciable difference in regards to if someone is a dick to play against or not between people that attend tournaments and those that don't. Yes, the cutting edge gamers find every nuance of the rules they can, and exploit it to showcase their skill. Those people are still incredibly nice folks, in my experience.

 

But, without a doubt, the biggest elitists and snobs in this community are people that look down on an aspect of the game. Most of the time, these are people who deride the competitive scene.

 

 

This 100%. You can find the same unpleasant people in the die hard fluff players and your store regulars as well. We should take care not to over generalize.

[Marshal Rohr]

 

But, without a doubt, the biggest elitists and snobs in this community are people that look down on an aspect of the game. Most of the time, these are people who deride the competitive scene.

 

Chill, no one is looking down on tournaments, we're looking down on :cussholes. 

[CaptainMarsh]

Cheaters and bad mannered players will exist regardless of what the competitive scene is up to. One can argue that perhaps trying to make a beer and pretzels game that has at best questionable balance into a competitive event and the mindset that fosters perhaps increases this number, but there'd be no real way of showing that. It is an ouroboros of a topic. 

I just find the idea that a judge and voice of that said competitive community supporting cheating (which is what is described in the article, full stop) to be alarming and in need of correction. A beer and pretzels game with questionable balance is one thing to take competitively. A beer and pretzels game with questionable balance where judges and influencers of the scene support cheating? It becomes a farce to take seriously in any capacity. It also puts into question any event he was a judge at or played at.

[Marshal Rohr]

You also can’t just walk away from a tournament game like a pick up game. That’s what most people have a problem with. Not competition. You cant choose your opponent or ostracize the :cussholes and weirdos. So if you get a weenie you have to play that weenie. If every event you go to has a weenie and you might end up playing said weenie, it’s perfectly acceptable to dislike that format. Tournaments and narrative may both have weenies but no one is adding the weenie to the group chat to come up with a cool campaign or inviting him over to meet the wife and kids. Edited December 16, 2019 by Marshal Rohr

[toaae]

 

But, without a doubt, the biggest elitists and snobs in this community are people that look down on an aspect of the game. Most of the time, these are people who deride the competitive scene.

 

Chill, no one is looking down on tournaments, we're looking down on :cussholes. 

 

 

You clearly haven't read this thread, then.

 

I just find the idea that a judge and voice of that said competitive community supporting cheating (which is what is described in the article, full stop) to be alarming and in need of correction. A beer and pretzels game with questionable balance is one thing to take competitively. A beer and pretzels game with questionable balance where judges and influencers of the scene support cheating? It becomes a farce to take seriously in any capacity. It also puts into question any event he was a judge at or played at.

I think it's poorly written, more than anything (as well as another indictment on the standards of BoLS's editors). Like, I have to imagine the point he intended to make was not the one we all got out of it. I've met Adam, been to one of his tournaments (like, organized by him, not just TO'd). It just feels like a flub.

[CaptainMarsh]

I have a hard time imagining that the article is so poorly written that the intent and point of the article has been reversed. Is it poorly written? Yes. But not in a way that makes his point obscure. He describes the act and then asks is it bad for the game or bad form and he says no, which is the crux of the issue. We can argue whether or not the wording could be better, or if he could have at least used coherent and cognizant examples to defend his position (he didn't), but I really don't think his message is obscured. If someone gets that 'edge' by 'bidding' (cheating) and gets one over on you because of it, he says it was neither bad form or bad for the game. That part was made clear.

I'm sure he is a good guy who tries his best and wants the best. Unless he comes out and says the article/his point is misconstrued though, I'm not going to do the mental gymnastics required to ignore the words as they are written in the article. If he does come out and say that, then good. If he doesn't return to the topic however or address it? Then yeah, I'm going to continue believing he supports a method of cheating that I personally find no different from lying about die results or rules your army has.  

[taikishi]

 

 

Their VDR / CDR could have been absolutely awesome, but since they decided not to give points values to anything no one uses it.

I hear you, but at the same time I wonder how much of that is GW's fault and how much is the community's fault for adamantly refusing to use PLs for anything. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

Because Power Level isn't a balanced option.

 

In a 50 Power Level game, I saw a Tyranids player have something like 90+ Genestealers, all with their best possible gear options, along with a couple Broodlords.

 

Because you don't pay for that super powerful equipment in Power Level.

 

That is seriously broken, but it sounds to me more like a problem with powergamers being powergamers and bringing that WAAC attitude where it didn't belong- and sadly, there is no way of writing rules to prevent that short of some kind of Voight-Kampff test (I hope I spelled that right) that can detect munchkins.

 

PL is on paper a great idea; it speeds up list building and allows greater flexibility for fluff-driven games where winning by any means necessary isn't the ultimate goal. The problem is, of course, that some people take this as "Build the cheesiest list you possibly can with absolutely no restrictions" rather than "Play whatever you think looks cool, including stuff that wouldn't work in Matched Play".

Now I'll admit I'm biased, as I find the idea of "competitive gaming" absolutely absurd (not restricted to 40K either) and really think the competitive mindset, and people bringing ultra-optimized lists to friendly/narrative games, is the height of silliness. But again, it seems less like a case of a badly made system and more like a case of there being no way to make an abuse-proof system that isn't also highly restricted.

Basically, what needs to change isn't the rules, it's the people deliberately exploiting the rules and ruining it for everyone else.

 

 

No, PL is an awful idea. This time last year, when playing the Sisters Beta-dex, I played against a Slaanesh daemons army in a 1500 point game. We ended up with the meat grinder scenario, which makes the lower power level army the defender while the attacker's objective is to wipe out the defender before the game ends. My power level was near 90. His was just above 60. Had he played the mission instead of his army, he would have kited me all game and I might have killed a unit before time ran out. There was no "WAAC" attitude; he wanted to try some of the new Slaanesh stuff that had just come out. I was playing the best units I could field and owned given "Sisters".

Edited December 16, 2019 by taikishi

[taikishi]

You also can’t just walk away from a tournament game like a pick up game. That’s what most people have a problem with. Not competition. You cant choose your opponent or ostracize the :cussholes and weirdos. So if you get a weenie you have to play that weenie. If every event you go to has a weenie and you might end up playing said weenie, it’s perfectly acceptable to dislike that format. Tournaments and narrative may both have weenies but no one is adding the weenie to the group chat to come up with a cool campaign or inviting him over to meet the wife and kids.

 

Actually, you can absolutely walk away from a tournament game as long as you're willing to take the loss to do so.

 

That said, I've been a semi-competitive in other games for most of the last 25 years. Poor behavior has always been a means of ejection from those events, and can even result in suspensions/bans; maybe it's time TOs did the same in GW competitive events?

[Panzer]

Not sure why this has turned to a PL debate, but yeah PL are by design bad for balanced games. Literally the only point about PL is to be able to quickly put an army together that's hopefully roughly as strong as your opponent's army. However as soon as there are units that have different kinds of options balance goes out of the window, not to mention that PL never really get adjusted after the Datasheet gets released.

[DuskRaider]

I personally don't have a problem with competitive players as long as they can turn it off. Don't walk into a casual game with a world burning competitive list, or at the very least ask for permission to do so. Because if you show up with a tournament list to play against my casual one, I'm probably going to be miserable getting tabled in a couple turns and you're not going to get much learning or practice in against me.

[Elzender]

As I have mentioned in other similar threads, I think the problem behind all of this is mostly due to the attitude of some people, as they only think about whether they can do something, and not whether they should. As bad as GW is at writing rulesets in general, their rules have generally tried with better or worse result reflect the lore and to be a means of "Forging the narrative". In my very limited experience reading this forum and other media (I have barely played over the years, let alone in a competitive scene), what seems the most eggregious case is when people actively bend rules as much as possible just for the sake of winning.

I think the clearest example I remember was a 7th edition build of a SM character eith +1 FNP, which was then argued that since it was not a saving throw, a 1 was not an automatic failure. While it was technically possible to argue that (there might have been a way to debunk it but I cannot remember), I think everyone with a bit of common sense could see that a die roll to determine success or failure in warhammer should always have a chance of failing.

 

Sadly, this kind of attittude is likely to be more frequent in a tournament setting, as another frater has said, due to the presence of a reward in case of victory (other than the satisfaction of winning a game). Does that mean that being a tournament/competitive player makes you a bad person? Not at all, it is your actions that makes you a nice player or an unpleasant player.

 

Going back to GW and their rulesets, I have to say I find it difficult to understand some of the more competitive mindsets, but that is mostly because I am generally unable to take competition too seriously when it comes to my hobbies (I generally cannot bring myself to invest so much effort and time into perfecting my abilities in a videogame/boardgame/sport for the sake of competition). I mean, the game is not balanced at all, and it is unlikely it will ever be, due to a mix of GW not being good at writing rules and ghat their intent, for the most part of their history, is not focused on having a perfectly balanced gaming system (it seems this might have changed with the coming of 8th and all GW changes, though).

Considering that the investment for an army is generally quite high, the thought of someone jumping from one army to the other (the infamous "flavour of the month" phenomenon) just to have the most competitive list is baffling to me. I am curious if this is something that frequent, or just something that is overrepresented in forum discussions due to it being an unusual or fringe behaviour that gets subsequently called out (you will rarely mention Tim, your mate that has been sticking to 2 armies for the past 5 editions, but you will mention Jimmy who has bought and Iron Hands leviathan after switching from Ynnari to Tyranids to Imperial Soup to Eldar since the start of 8th and has openly declared that he intends to drink everyone's tears in the FLGS :D).

And if these players are actually not that infrequent, I would honestly like to know if it's due to them liking more or less all the armies, or just that they do not care that much about the actual miniatures and lore? Because if it is the latter, I honestly think they might be better suited to another kind of game, be it a videogame or cards games, which probably require a lot less logistics (building, painting, storing and transporting), might be cheaper (maybe not necessarily in the case of card games such as Magic), and probably have a much more balanced or active ruleset updates.

 

Toaae, I ask you because it seems you are a competitive player, completely out of curiosity and not wanting to single you out nor any ill intention: what army/armies do you play more often, and why do you play them? :). (Mods, if you consider it better not to go that way, do please let me know and I'll edit out this part. I just think it might be enriching to have an example that might open the discussion and help understand better some aspects of the competitive mindset, about which I am completely clueless).

Edited December 16, 2019 by Elzender

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Can’t blame the article on the editors.

[toaae]

Toaae, I ask you because it seems you are a competitive player, completely out of curiosity and not wanting to single you out nor any ill intention: what army/armies do you play more often, and why do you play them? . (mods, if you consider it better not to go that way, do please let me know and I'll edit out this part. I just think it might be enriching to have an example that might open the discussion and help understand better some aspects of the competitive mindset, about which I am completely clueless).

I'm actually not that competitive. I always try to win my games, and I do follow the competitive scene, listen to all the podcasts, attend every event I can, ect. But I've never placed higher than the top 25% (4th in a 19 person event), and have more tournaments with losing records than winning records. I attend tournaments because they are a guaranteed 3 games in a day, often against new people, and often with painted armies (though this swings wildly one way or the other). After a year of attending ITC events (like a dozen, including 4 ITC majors), I can add the social camaraderie as a reason to attend events. To that end, I don't take lists that I know are hardcore; for the first half of the year, I was using 9 nob bikers, and I was the only person in the ITC that took them to more than one event (I asked the guy behind 40kstats.com). More recently, I've been running a list that was built on the question "how much T8 can I stuff into a list?" It's not good, but it's fun and easier to play than 180 bodies.

 

Most people get into 40k because of the models, the fluff, or both. Geoff Robinson, rest his soul, never painted a single model after returning to the hobby in the last decade; he got everything commission painted. He switched armies when he didn't like the competitive chances of the army he had. But he loved the books, often discussing them with people in his Starcraft 2 streams. He latched onto Custodes from their launch, determined to find a way to make them work because he loved their models and their fluff. I use him as an example because he talked about this stuff frequently; 40k dicussions were a daily occurrence on his daily stream. He only played the game competitively, but that doesn't mean he only liked 40k because of the competitive scene.

 

I'm sure there's a few people that got into 40k because they saw the level of competition, with no love for the models, fluff, or hobby aspects. But I'm willing to bet a considerable sum of anything that those are such a small minority in the competitive scene as to be wholly insignificant. The vast majority came into the hobby for one of the other, obvious reasons, and just enjoyed playing the game enough to decide to get serious about how to win.

[Elzender]

Thanks for the answer, toaae! That does not sound too bad for someone as little competition-oriented as me .

 

To be fair, despite being in the hobby for a few years now and mostly for the lore and miniatures, I build and paint at a glacial pace at best. I have basically been accumulating a big pile-o-grey over time, so I can understand people going for commission painting. On my case however, I don't think I could get myself to that, as even if I find it hard to find the motivation and time to put paint into my minis, I consider it an essential part of my hobby, at least for the moment. I also can understand switching to another army if your current one is very difficult to make it work or it is limited to 1-2 builds that do not suit your playstyle or take on the faction; after all, if the part you enjoy the most is actually playing, not being able to win at all has to be extremely frustrating.

 

I guess another problem arises from the nature of forum discussions: since threads are focussed on a single topic on a specific aspect of the game (totally necessary to keep a semblance of order), it is easy to build your opinion about another member based only on his/her opinions on that topic. Moreover, it is easier to see competitive players in threads discussing the rules and other gaming aspects of this hobby. Thus, it can happen that I know a specific member simply as a "hardcore competitive player", because I mostly see him/her in these topics, or I fail to realise when that member is actually participating in other kind of threads such as modelling, painting or even their own WIP threads (not very frequent, but it can happen ). Actually, it did happen to me once with a member of this forum (not going to give names as there is no need to single out anybody, even if I never actually had any problem nor I hold any grudge against him/her). That member was quite active in rules, tactica and list-building related threads, and I admit that sometimes his/her posts appeared as a bit harsh (again, in my completely subjective, personall opinion). This led me to consider that member as a "hardcore competitive player", which while not being a bad thing, did not gel that well with my vision of the hobby. To my surprise, a few weeks or months after (can't really remember), I realised that a WIP topic that I had been visiting from time to time, and that I must say contained some quite nicely painted miniatures, was actually by that same member. That made me realise that since that member was mostly active in gaming-related threads, I kinda assumed he/she was not that interested in the modelling/painting side of the hobby, and realising he/she was also involved in these aspects helped me seeing him/her in a bit of a different light. I guess that the point I'm trying to make is that when communicating in places such as forums and social media, it is easy to pigeonhole (not sure this is the correct expression there) other people as a unidimensional kind of hobbyist, as we don't see the full picture, which can lead to misunderstandings and unnecessary arguments.

Edited December 16, 2019 by Elzender

[Lord_Caerolion]

Oh my god, having just actually read the article, the author worries me with how much he tries to justify the behaviour. Equating it to "wait for someone to be in a good mood before asking a big favour" is just outright dishonest.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Yeah for sure it just seems like actively encouraging it .