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Post by Blargaliscious on Feb 11, 2018 0:45:07 GMT
If you are a competitive player that is looking to recruit new players to become competitive players just like you, I have 1 suggestion:
Stop it! You are doing more harm than good.
Your local meta does not need more competitive gamers - it needs all types of gamers.
Instead of recruiting more competitive players you need to focus on recruiting more players in general: casual gamers, competitive gamers, Company of Iron gamers, newbies, veterans, more-painter-than-player players, whatever. Cultivate the local meta so that *ALL* gamers are welcome and have a place. Once people see that a lot of people are playing Warmachine then they will play it also. It is from that greater number of people that you will get your competitive gamers just like you.
Then, once things are going, figure out who wants to be a competitive gamer and bring them up to speed. But, you still need to foster an environment that welcomes all types of gamers.
You are wrong and you need to pull your head out of your ass, because your myopic vision of the game is part of what will kill a meta.
My local meta has gone down significantly because the competitive gamers drove away all of the other gamers, and I doubt mine is the only one where that has happened.
I would suggest that for every white-knuckled Steam Roller tournament that your local place has you follow it up with some sort of fun / goofy / unusual rule type of tournament or event. Constant pressure-cooker Steam Roller events, one after another, will burn out all of the players who have either not gotten that good or don't want to play competitively. Once the number of people playing a game goes down and the other games see a larger number of players you will have a harder and harder time recruiting any players.
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marke
Junior Strategist
Posts: 187
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Doooom
Feb 11, 2018 19:04:00 GMT
via mobile
Post by marke on Feb 11, 2018 19:04:00 GMT
Have you guys noticed all new releases seem to be resin/metal?
Idk what to think about that.
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bundeez
Junior Strategist
Posts: 325
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Doooom
Feb 11, 2018 20:06:38 GMT
Post by bundeez on Feb 11, 2018 20:06:38 GMT
A lot of regress in my meta as well. We do have tournaments, but way less participants than in mk2.
0 new players since mk3. Even lost a handful old ones.
For me personally I think it is 2 things: New releases. Now with the separate books for each faction once a year, it really sets a damper on the excitement for the faction(s) you own. Waiting 12 months for new shiny stuff, or for CID to fix old crap is just way too long imo. (especially for the bottom tier factions)
List creation. In mk2 I enjoyed list creation very much. Try out new units, combos etc. Now all of that is pretty much gone. With Theme Forces, the lists pretty much creates themselves due to the build in limitations. Booring...
Ebay here is flooding with armies that people can't sell. A new player could pick up a whole army at 1/3 prize, but for some reason no one wants to.
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Luebbi
BattleBox Champ
Posts: 54
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Doooom
Feb 11, 2018 20:33:38 GMT
Post by Luebbi on Feb 11, 2018 20:33:38 GMT
marke I think the rerelease of the Cryx Slayer was hard plastic. It's the most complicated and expensive kind of mould, so they only do that for very few kits bundeez that's true. I kind of miss the feeling of a new release being something you wouldn't know about beforehand, and people rushing to see where it fits into lists. Then again, I think the amount of viable warcasters is huge now, and it seems you have more choices there.
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Doooom
Feb 11, 2018 20:52:12 GMT
Post by haraldtorvatn on Feb 11, 2018 20:52:12 GMT
Chosing a warcaster is not the same as building a list. During MK2, i eventually bought all of Khador, unit by unit. When painting each new purchase, I was planning an army to try it in. That was fun. I still love to play the game, but packig what I need to take to the club has become more like work than fun.
Here (trondheim norway) the meta is also shrinking. (To be fair no game has any large folowing here now.)
If anyone asked me (no one has done it for a long time) whether Warmachine is a good game for a casual gamer, I would want to say yes, but I am to honest to say that, and would have to say no, it unfortunately is not.
I will probably keep playing as long as there is any meta left, but I wonder how much of the MoW stuff I will feel like buiyng.
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Doooom
Feb 11, 2018 21:48:31 GMT
via mobile
Post by pvtjoker on Feb 11, 2018 21:48:31 GMT
Chosing a warcaster is not the same as building a list. During MK2, i eventually bought all of Khador, unit by unit. When painting each new purchase, I was planning an army to try it in. That was fun. I still love to play the game, but packig what I need to take to the club has become more like work than fun. Here (trondheim norway) the meta is also shrinking. (To be fair no game has any large folowing here now.) If anyone asked me (no one has done it for a long time) whether Warmachine is a good game for a casual gamer, I would want to say yes, but I am to honest to say that, and would have to say no, it unfortunately is not. I will probably keep playing as long as there is any meta left, but I wonder how much of the MoW stuff I will feel like buiyng. I'm in the same situation. I will keep playing as long as people show up, but less of them are and I find it hard to recruit new players knowing that it's got a significant buy in cost, has a lot of daunting rules interactions/combos to watch out for, and constant salt mining online. I guess this post contributes to that last point, but I'm worried my local meta won't last another year and I find that depressing.
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Post by smoothcriminal on Feb 11, 2018 21:55:10 GMT
The 2 lists at 75 + different theme composition for both + constant meta updates from nerfs/cid is an unscalable barrier for entry of new people and continuous participation of old. WMH will just implode on itself with this pace PP set up. Ironic how the most balanced state of the game is also the most player unfriendly.
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Doooom
Feb 11, 2018 22:12:00 GMT
Post by jpgreat1 on Feb 11, 2018 22:12:00 GMT
I'm going to go ahead and point out a few things. It may sound like I am directing it at people in particular but I assure you I am not. I am more or less directing this at the whole negative lot.
On social media, warmachine/hordes is the most talked about tabletop game out. I know this, cause I personally measured this. The discussion between games like infinity, Warhammer, and so on don't even come close to the number of posts or discussions. This, however; can be explained because most of those other games have a direct website forum that people can go too.
What I've personally noticed is that communities that seem to draw the most active people do so by having a great storefront/place to play, active community organizers, people who enjoy playing multiple games that can be competitive but also can be casual. Personally speaking, a game like guildball is dead in all parts of the state but my own meta. The reason for that is simply due to one guy who goes above and beyond attempting to organize it and sell the game. Other games like 40k I feel aren't great games (I will go ahead on record and say the game is damn awful) but its easily one of the more recognized games that is often pushed by organizers to capture the imagination of the player (along with pretty models). So what does this have to do with warmachine? Push what appeals to your community and push to Warmachine's strengths.
Warmachine strengths would be its deep tactical play, still cheaper than other big war games, and smoother rule set. Can some folks get taken back by how deep the strategy and interactions are in this game but this is where the community organizers come into play. Instead of playing streamroller 100% of the time, its a good idea to start battlegroup only games or company of iron. Sometimes watchmachine can be fun. But this all depends on the people who want to run it. Because if no one wants to take the time then guess what, that will kill whatever community you have. I've personally see warmachine go in major cycles of dying and coming back simply based upon how the organizer runs things. So if its not doing well in your community, its likely your organizer.
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Doooom
Feb 12, 2018 13:10:55 GMT
Post by ForEver_Blight on Feb 12, 2018 13:10:55 GMT
End of MK2 I found a 12+ player store. Over MK3 it started dropping like a stone. About 4 months ago it become a 0 man store...
However there is another store within reasonable driving distance that has picked up a lot of other players.
Everything is fluctuating and I believe will continue to do so.
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Post by smoothcriminal on Feb 12, 2018 13:33:11 GMT
What PP needs is make non-themes competitively viable or give everyone an irregulars theme to lower the paywall.
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Doooom
Feb 12, 2018 13:38:18 GMT
Post by minmaximus on Feb 12, 2018 13:38:18 GMT
An Irregulars theme for everyone would be cool but I would be terrified of a min unit of Trenchers being good enough to justify it on its own in Cygnar.
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Doooom
Feb 12, 2018 13:39:00 GMT
via mobile
Post by HubertJFarnsworth on Feb 12, 2018 13:39:00 GMT
While New England seems to have had a drop in regular events (three or so years ago there was a whole kurfuffle about stores having events on the same day because there were simply too many stores running monthly events, now there's maybe three doing them on a regular basis) my store has had a pretty stable MkIII. We lost a small handful of people out of both dissatisfaction with how their faction changed in MkIII or just simple exhaustion after playing the game for a decade but we've gained about an equal number of new blood. Most of the new blood has been people moving in to the area or moving from other stores. Our monthly events have been seeing 14+ people for the last three months which is higher than when there were always events going.
Speaking to one of the organizers of CaptainCon this year it was looking to be their biggest year yet (at least on Saturday night having not counted the day-of ticket sales yet) and there were people playing WM/H pretty much constantly from what I saw. So I think NE is gonna be okay.
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Haight
Junior Strategist
Posts: 396
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Doooom
Feb 12, 2018 13:51:10 GMT
Post by Haight on Feb 12, 2018 13:51:10 GMT
What PP needs is make non-themes competitively viable or give everyone an irregulars theme to lower the paywall. While i totally agree, i doubt this is going to happen. The reason themes are as prevalent as they are is they are an attempt to pen in and create bubbles that require balance, rather than unilateral balance. We could start a whole new thread (forum?) on the merits and pitfalls of that decision, but the simple truth is that's the direction they are going in, rightly or wrongly. So to unweave that rainbow so to speak is to basically give up on the concept of Themes as microcosm balance, at which point they go back to their quasi-fluffy, mostly irrelevant, occasionally disrupting MK2 incarnation. I'd be fine with this, personally, but again, its not the direction they appear to be currently moving ; Giving every faction an "irregulars" would be an about face move unless they have a new method of solving the balance conundrum. At the end of the day i'd love to see them do exactly that as Irregulars basically feels like not playing a theme, but not being handicapped by not doing so, but i just don't see any evidence of that.
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Doooom
Feb 12, 2018 15:01:12 GMT
Post by macdaddy on Feb 12, 2018 15:01:12 GMT
If you are a competitive player that is looking to recruit new players to become competitive players just like you, I have 1 suggestion: Stop it! You are doing more harm than good. Your local meta does not need more competitive gamers - it needs all types of gamers. I actually agree with this. One of the (many) reasons I dropped 40K and AOS in my local community is because no one ever wanted to play narrative games. Just standard 2000pts of watching guard steamroll everyone. I have had a really bad experience trying to play GW games outside of my personal group of friends. Also, the rules themselves bore me. But that's besides the point. You are wrong and you need to pull your head out of your ass, because your myopic vision of the game is part of what will kill a meta. My local meta has gone down significantly because the competitive gamers drove away all of the other gamers, and I doubt mine is the only one where that has happened. I'm sorry your local meta has gone down, but that does not mean every meta functions the same. My local meta is very competitive focused, and a large part of this game is growing as a player, developing better strategies, and becoming more skilled in order to run a efficient fighting force. This game, naturally, has a very competitive mindset. It functions best in the SR format. Have you ever played a vanilla game with no SR scenarios? its kind of terrible, if you enjoy just lining up and avoiding threat ranged for 2 hours until someone breaks the staring contest...well i think you are playing the wrong game (glances at warhammer 40K) SR brings balance to the game and makes for much more easy to balance match ups not only in tournament play but also casually. Yes, you can play SR17 casually, I used to do it a lot when I was living in Lynchburg. But as I have played more up north, the competitiveness of the community makes even pick up games a but more tense than I would like. I think its a mindset thing, which is what you are getting at, but I also think its a product of the game developers making a very competition, intense game. The game gets pretty tense at times, especially when each player is putting effort into making plans with their army. In 40K I find even in tournaments I don't have this tense-ness, mostly because I realize that large portion of winning in GW games is luck of the dice and or list construction. Having said all of that, I personal enjoy a more casual tone to my wargaming, I still get tense, and sometimes I tilt when dice go down the toilet, but for the most part in non-tourney environments (and even in tournaments) I try to laugh it off as best I can. Its a game where a bunch of grown people are playing with little toy soldiers after all. I would suggest that for every white-knuckled Steam Roller tournament that your local place has you follow it up with some sort of fun / goofy / unusual rule type of tournament or event. Constant pressure-cooker Steam Roller events, one after another, will burn out all of the players who have either not gotten that good or don't want to play competitively. Once the number of people playing a game goes down and the other games see a larger number of players you will have a harder and harder time recruiting any players. I also agree with this. There needs to be some more casual events thrown in there. But at least in my Local community, not that many people are super interested in those formats unless its at a con. I would love to do a big thunderdome event, or a caster spell draft event, but finding players that actually show up to those events is..difficult. IME new players prefer to play the standard game and get better with their casters its the older players that get bored of SR all day every day. I also think right now, the big issue with recruiting new players is because of themes. Nothing turns someone off more than having to buy a list of required models to play the game and have a fair fight against the rest of the community. Its expensive to buy into a specific theme and there are not enough generic themes to help new players with fledgling collections.
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Post by jisidro on Feb 12, 2018 15:06:29 GMT
My experience is that these goofy events work for people that play a lot of competitive play and have a lot of time to play. For people with limited time it's hard enough to get games that they don't want to "waste" it in not "serious" events. This game as a steep learning curve and demands a lot of enough to keep up with the changes to regular play... Even champions is residual when compared to masters/steamroller.
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