Troubling Player Attitudes

[CoffeeGrunt]

I...actually agree with Charon. People enjoy the game in different ways, and for some that involves smashing faces and gloating about it. I dunno if it's really fair to go Armchair Psychologist on them and start claiming it's because their life has no meaning and their parents never loved them, (or some of the other accusations that float around towards WAAC players.)

Speaking as a casual-as-heck gamer who just uses 40K as a reason to get a chat and some time with mates, and have a bit of a laugh.

People of different clans are going to be abrasive towards each other, though. You see it online with the eternal Warmachine vs 40K arguments that go nowhere, and people approach 40K from different directions for different reasons. Is it a symptom of a complacent, sedentary society? No more so than anything else, really.

[Path Walker]

Like having to read your personal opinion presented as a fact with the added value of insulting as many people possible.

I can understand your "no sports and no competition for me attitude" but blaming people for having fun doing this is moronic.
But I guess you will enjoy your place with Mystery and Pathwalker on my ignore list because, like them, there was never any value in your posts anyways.

Whats brilliant about this is that the troubling attitude was (as it always is) from a competitive player who spat his dummy out because things didn't go his way, these attitudes are directly correlated with trying to make a hobby into a competition.

The trouble stems from that and saying that its a problem when it threatens a group of players in an area is appropriate.

[Defenestratus]

I can understand your "no sports and no competition for me attitude" but blaming people for having fun doing this is moronic.

Well, I don't think that I confused anyone with these "facts" versus "opinion". Anything posted on a forum without a reference citation should be taken as "opinion". And while I think that competitive toy dolls is a rightfully moronic enterprise, I'm actively engaged in competitive sports all over the place. Heck, half of my entire income depends on sports. I played football (American, not the panzee type) in college and semi-professionally... My spouse operates on professional athletes every day. Don't think she's ever had to treat a competitive 40k player (amazingly she did see a professional poker player for injuries related to a disfunction in his facial muscles).

Well then....

If you don't have enemies, you don't have character. --Paul Newman

[Path Walker]

I dunno if it's really fair to go Armchair Psychologist on them and start claiming it's because their life has no meaning and their parents never loved them, (or some of the other accusations that float around towards WAAC players.)

It probably is though.

[Mr Mystery]

Reason #586 why "competitive" plastic dolls is the most moronic, stupid, inane, fruitless thing ever.

Just go play games and worry less about keeping track of who wins and more about how much fun you're having not being in your office or on the job site. Once this is achieved, all the artificially created drama surrounding your beloved plastic dolls seems to never happen.

I swear that our society has grown so complacent, so comfortable in our own existence - no need for day to day struggles to stay alive and exist - that we go out and willingly look for things that give us trouble and cause us hardship. For something that is supposed to be fun, escapist, and relaxing, the tournament scene almost universally turns it into a miserable experience.

Congrats idiots.

This.

Absolutely this.

It gets doubly absurd when others feel super-competitive-bet-your-grandmother-type-stakes are the correct way to play.

There isn't a correct way to play. At all. Sure, there's the strict rulebook version, but then this is a hobby game, and since it got going, large part of it has been very Crowleyesque - Do What Thou Wilt.

[Path Walker]

This.

Absolutely this.

It gets doubly absurd when others feel super-competitive-bet-your-grandmother-type-stakes are the correct way to play.

There isn't a correct way to play. At all. Sure, there's the strict rulebook version, but then this is a hobby game, and since it got going, large part of it has been very Crowleyesque - Do What Thou Wilt.

I am always amused that the WAAC crowd love quoting the rules but convineintly ignore all the bits about it being a fun narratvie game and you should feel free to change them with your opponent if you want to. Its a very fundamentalist way of looking at 40K.

[Defenestratus]

It probably is though.

I wouldn't have a problem with the tournament participants if their little whacked out view of 40k stayed inside the confines of their events.

Unfortunately, their behavior influences others. I've seen it more times than I care to relate. New players to the game see articles on BoLS about breaking the game (for the purposes of winning tournaments or complaining about it winning tournaments) and they go out and start thinking "this is how the game is supposed to be played!" It's how I show up at a GW store and see the only guy who is there to play says after we've setup terrain and are rolling for deployment "oh btw I'm using my list I'm using for next month's tournament, I need to practice". *EYEROLL* (It ended up being a drop pod SW army with tigirius coming to the picnic with his buddy centurions in a drop pod) Fine - I either play this guy or I drive 30 minutes home and just put my minis back on the shelf. I don't get the opportunity to play very often and subjecting myself to a dreadnought-socking in the nether regions is ultimately better than going home without rolling dice - but it could have been a much more pleasant experience for both of us, instead of just one of us.

So while competitive doll players personally affect and influence my enjoyment of the hobby, I'll feel free to share my unsolicited opinions about them in hopes that I turn around just one player's opinion on the matter.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

The sad thing here is that my experience of the Warhammer Fantasy competitive scene seems to be so much more, I don't know, convivial? Even while the same things - facebreaker lists, crazy combos, a competitive mindset - hold sway. Maybe it's just the people I interacted with.

[Erik Setzer]

I don't think all tournament players have the same mindset, and that's part of the problem here. Some of the guys who went to the tourney hadn't been in many tourneys but still had the "win any way you can" mentality (or just build nasty lists because they thought that was fun). A lot of local people play in tournaments but are still less "WAAC", more fluff... and that's how the tournaments tend to be structured. At one point, they included painting, comp, and sportsmanship in the tourneys.

I'm not going to say beatstick armies are a "wrong" way to play the game, but if you're not playing that way, it won't be fun. Similarly, they might not have fun with a more narrative style of play (as evidenced by the lack of willingness to play Maelstrom missions, much less anything from, say, Altar of War, or Cityfight or Planetstrike). While I could play a beatstick style (assuming I could afford it), it requires me to take the game seriously and get into "competitive" mode, which makes me feel kind of wrong. It's hard to describe the feeling, but it's like bringing out a part of yourself you don't like. So I try to avoid that.

I think T.O.'s should probably say "This is going to be a more narrative tournament" to let people know what to expect. I get the idea of not posting missions in order to not let anyone make a list tailored for them, but I suppose something like "You want to make sure you can complete objectives as well as destroy your foe" might be a way to do it?

[Charon]

The sad thing here is that my experience of the Warhammer Fantasy competitive scene seems to be so much more, I don't know, convivial? Even while the same things - facebreaker lists, crazy combos, a competitive mindset - hold sway. Maybe it's just the people I interacted with.

Probably because you actually interacted with them and do not suffer from an extreme case of prejustice.
Idiots can be everywhere. I once had a game against a BA player with a wonderful painted and fluffy army. He even named all his Troop Leaders and Squads. Failed his 5" charge by rolling 3 scatter all his dice across the club packed and went. Fluff players... the way to have fun... right? Because this guy defines all Fluff fun players... ever. No exceptions and this is why fluff players are morons because of reasons. It is fiction after all... playing according to some whacky story a drunken writer wrote during a weed session... is utterly stupid... right? RIGHT?

The big real difference is that some people are in complete denial mode and when someone has some fun "the wrong way" he cant possibly have "real fun™" because only the way I play is "real fun™". So it is totally stupid that there are people who enjoy playing fluffy when I think this is the "wrong fun". Right? Right!

Also on an interesting sidenote: The target audience is kids. The rule of cool in most cases for them means "My boys should smash faces, if they can't they are not cool". Nearly EVERY starter EVER tries to go over and over with special, heavy and melee wepons because "S8 is cooler than S4". We have all gone through this. I know nobody who did not play herohammer or tried to squeeze as many plasma and lasercannons as possible in an army.
GW want these players badly... these new formations are just another way of "if you buy units for 300 € you will get cool new rules to smash faces".