So, what are the Issues the 40k Community needs to Address?

[morella888]

And what are the Questions that need to be answered?
What are the Important Things that require a broad research effort to uncover Players' Opinions, Attitudes, & Behaviors?

Note: These Big Questions will reappear in a new and improved form soon. But if you are just starting this (and where have you been? and why would you do that anyway? it will take a long time. and most of the thread really is discussion of pie anyway.)

But Will really summed up the spirit of the thread with the following quote, so will immortalize it here:

I think the problem is that I left the community......

In all seriousness though, is there anyone manning the post of, new person enters and gets attacked with humor and introduction? Just saying..... I know when I first started back in the BFG days it was tough for me even though I had an in through Thomas and Brandon S., and even with having my loud-mouthed, boisterous, comedic, often inapproprite self, it was still an uphill battle. I have REALLY gotten away from anything competitive as of late. That is to say the competitive mind-set, not a competitive list or desire to win a particular game. I play a pretty even mix of lists now, both fluffy and hard. I TO up here in Dallas for our local events and we don't really have similar issues. It may be important for a few of the more experienced and "older" gamers or players to take the reigns on this one. I ALWAYS make sure to engage any new people, even on a stop in to "check it out". Additionally, I am always aware that without new players there will be no community, eventually.

I think most of the issues lie in leadership. This is in NO way targeted at Chris because he is domineering the tournies, nor is it targeted at John Cook for being the oldest (age and time playing), nor at Splug for being the most Presidential, or any other members of the Austin scene. I have been away from Austin long enough to look at it from the outside in, but not long enough that I forgot how great it was. Seems to me things just lack the right people doing the right things to nurture and grow new and existing members. I think a lot of great ideas have been formulated and if implemented will have a positive impact to push things in the right direction. It will only really take a few of the right people to step-up and make the small differences to see a drastic improvement to ALL aspects of the community as a whole. Who that might be, individually, or as a group I do not know. All I can say is I try to be that way here and it seems to have a positive effect on the places I play and hang out. I am by no means the only one up here either, but I prefer to contribute instead of break down. When I do vent it is to a select person or two...... Just thoughts.

My old, much less elegant introduction follows:


I have decided to break this into 2 parts. This first part is sincere and should not offend anyone. The second is not so nice and may offend a few or more. Take any of it as you like. I have got no skin in this game.

In that other thread (and several others from the past two months), everybody's arguing about the minutia, but there doesn't seem to be any clear idea about what it is all meant to achieve. If it is just about creating a once a month event where newer.or fluffier players can show up, be competitive, but avoid crazy hardcore opposing armies, then that seems like an exceedingly narrow goal to me.

So to me it seems the necessary questions and issues might include:
How do you prefer to interact with other members of the community? (Meaning casual, competitive, hobby, etc.)
What kind of organized events would you want to participate in?
What behaviors (include or separate to address army lists) detract from your enjoyment of or choice to participate in an event?

There's no doubt many more questions that could be asked, either specific to various negative play experiences or more general. But it is clear that some effort needs to be made to bring the larger population of 40k players into any discussion that potentially alter the nature of the community, its norms and mores.

Had suggested a few elsewhere, but will recap some thoughts on data collection:
*surveys, either online or distributed in some way at the stores
*town hall type discussions with generally accepted rules of polite discourse
*just face-to-face interviews with people you see playing the game

I would like to see you all tackle these meta issues first. I feel the process itself could do a lot to enhance the community dynamic as well as bring some closure to, as Beamo so eloquently puts it, this neverending circle jerk.


Which segues nicely into my second, not at all polite observation and query:

I've said this in conversation with several of you, and the consensus is I am just naive or something, but I don't really get why it is so difficult to adapt to a cultural more of "Don't BAD" (that's an acronym I will use. I am confident you can all figure it out). Because my thought is, everybody knows when they are BAD. It is generally pretty simple, if you have to ask yourself."Am I BAD?" the answer is probably yes. Even people who supposedly 'don't think they are', are often just trying to see how far they can push the boundary to where they are almost, but not quite, BAD.

So it seems to me, a lot of the arguing and side-taking and generally excessive level of rancor suffusing all these discussions does more to harm the community than the few people who show up determined to BAD. And it would seem a pretty easy solution to stop a handful of people from BAD. Call them on it and tell them to Stop BAD.

I said there was a query here, so I guess it is this: Why the hell is it so unthinkable that a group of supposedly mature adults,who mostly I am sure have to moderate their behavior and learn to compromise in their work and home life, can not be expected and trusted to exhibit that same sort of social cognizance in a competitive environment?

And yeah this is all mostly serious, and I genuinely am interested in the suggestions and opinions that may arise here. And why doesn't everybody also use this thread to simultaneously practice polite discourse.

Love, your testosterone challenged friend

[Salubrious_vampire]

Ooooh, testosterone challenged friend. I hate to break it to you, but not all jobs require you to moderate your attitude.

[morella888]

Is funny that only person to respond so far probably has more estrogen in her system than me.

[Minus67]

Basically because there is no central authority for 40k and DL has no involvement in the running of the tournaments its up to the community on how to run the tourneys. 40k itself has really deteriorated in its "fairness" or balance over the last 2 years and that is causing issues with the tournaments as people seek to balance Balls out smash face 40k and Beer and Pretzels 40k. Not only do we have massive imbalance between the various armies we now have new supplements, data slates and formations spreading coming out every single month. GW has actively said that 40k is not a tournament game and they have no intention of making it balanced like one. Since it is up to us ( the community) to make it work people have varying opinions on what can and should be done. This is compounded in complexity by the fact that the Tournament Organizer is just a volunteer who was the most willing to run the tournament for a bit. Its been myself, Nick Rose, Chris Carlile, Chris Davis and and few others here and there who have been running the DL tourneys since Larry left DL. Chris faces one of the toughest times as the game is broken and gets worse each month as new things are released. To gauge community feedback he has to balance not only his personal findings on the state of the game, verbal feedback of participants and the opinions on this board. This can be tough to do however he talks to several of us who have been around for many years and generally arrives and good ideas to help the tournament evolve and survive.

I have made many suggestion to improve this process and he has dismissed them in favor of the current system. Here are a few of them

- Make a formal gaming club with a due(or not). Every member gets 1 vote. If X of members move to make a rule, than it will be put to a vote.
- Every player gets one vote per tournament they have played in over the course of the year. Every time a contentious issue needs to be decided a vote is taken. The more tournaments you play in the more your vote counts.
- Election style. 3 TO's are elected by the community. They are required to commit to run 4 of the 12 tournaments over the course of the year. This ruling council will decide on contentious issues.

Contentious issues would be the following
- Needed FAQ items for newly released rules and models.
- Tournament Format changes
- Comp systems
- etc...

[morella888]

Thanks for the detailed response. I was aware of part of the history but not all, and appreciate that the TO's are in an impossible position, because as the saying goes, you can't please everyone. I had said to someone earlier today:

Communities need leaders, not a dictator, and a healthy community won't stand for one. (note, not trying to throw anyone under that label, period, at all)

I think your points raise that problem: these decisions are far too contentious and the position far too stressful to be shouldered without some sort of support, specifically for the tournaments. I guess the problem with that is trying, as a group of interested persons, to create such a system of support that doesn't seem oppressive to the TO, but that is useful for delegating responsibilities and gathering information. And note, leaders (plural) have far greater responsibilities than bookkeeping and rulemaking. It is a position that indicates the will to serve and guide others, to set an example, and to teach.

One thing I have noticed, and as a researcher it drives me crazy, is that while anecdotal evidence is necessary, there doesn't seem to be any system to organize the data, which prevents any sort of useful analysis being done. Which is why I suggested a few things prior.

Also, just from my POV, all the attention seems bent on fixing the tournaments. While I get these events are important to a lot of you, I would really like to see more discussion given to other types of events that might allow a broader base to be included in the community as well.

I know a lot of you are invested in this community from effort expended over many years. I would hope that such concern extends to the notion that your contributions to building a community extend beyond your personal friendships to encompass, and really you are creating a legacy of sorts by helping to grow, a broad and diverse player base.

[Minus67]

The problem is that other types of events typically do not draw much if any interest. The community as a whole seems to be able to block on one sunday a month for games and a tournaments with its 3 guaranteed games is what the people want. They also require another dedicated person to run them. This has been tried in the past with leagues, campaigns, apoc events etc. None of them pan out as they require more time then the community seems to have the ability to expend.

As for the data. many have tried none have succeeded, you can scour the web and find many interested players such as yourself trying to gather empirical evidence on how to make the game better. So far none have succeeded. The game is too complex with too many variables to gather empirical data on how to make it better. So all we are left with is the gathered anecdotal evidence of the player base to attempt to make the game better which is what we are trying to do.

[Splug]

I try to not say too much in the public threads on this topic. I think my feedback is more useful as PM's to people making the calls rather than on page 12 of whatever thread is currently running. I've made comments where I feel they were needed.

It doesn't help that a combination of cat and cedar allergies have really disenfranchised me showing up at DL the last two weeks. Last time, I had to bail after about 20 minutes. So I guess from my perspective, the best thing DL could do to improve its tournaments is for Chris to ban cat hair.

[Splug]

Also, just from my POV, all the attention seems bent on fixing the tournaments. While I get these events are important to a lot of you, I would really like to see more discussion given to other types of events that might allow a broader base to be included in the community as well.

Tournament rules tend to trickle into other games as sort of a default rule set. This includes even having the point value that is most likely to be played on a given Thursday being either the point value from the previous tournament, or the one from the next tournament. People will deviate from that point for a random afternoon game of course, but that's kind of the mutually-accepted starting point to migrate from.

[morella888]

I try to not say too much in the public threads on this topic. I think my feedback is more useful as PM's to people making the calls rather than on page 12 of whatever thread is currently running. I've made comments where I feel they were needed.

I get why you feel that way, but I think from the standpoint of issues being in the public, it is helpful to know what opinions are out there, so there isn't all this shadowy speculation or vague references to "people have said". But of course, one should do what they feel comfortable doing. And yeah, burying something in 12 pages of nonsense can feel like putting your hand in a blender.

Also why I advocate for some sort of way of gathering data, other than random comments in person or sprinkled throughout various threads.

Sorry about the allergies. I know it sounds crazy, but I know people who swear by acupuncture for it, and there is a low cost teaching clinic in Austin (2 in fact).

[Geist]

I cant speak for my clone, but I can say this as a T.O. I can not work to please everyone, but I can work to make it equal for all to fail and to succeed with the same chance of either effect happening. In a nutshell yes we T.O.s should not be tyrants but some times its just easier to say my way or else.