Article on Concerns about Competitive Play

Netrunner General
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I couldn’t make it through the whole article, the author was really veering off into some assumptions from the top that I couldn’t get behind.

On the subject of this article though:

Are we just dancing around the fact that what these types of players really just want is to play against people who aren’t as good as them?

They feel “entitled” to win because they are creative, and get mad when it doesn’t work as planned. Naturally it’s the fault of players who are actually willing to put in the time and practice to get better.

Netrunner isn’t regulated in any way, all you need to have a weird jank party for yourself is to host your own event.

Put in the work, no one is stopping you. Tons of people do to great success regularly.

What I read here is a lot of deep analysis to justify a lot of whining.

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I don’t feel like the article was some sort of attack on competitive players or something, but the article does seem somewhat opposed to netdecks. I’ll quote:

I feel that this, again, comes from a similar place of feeling excluded. There’s nothing wrong with Net-decking in the same way there’s nothing wrong with taking a day off once in a while if you don’t feel up to getting things done- so long as everyone only does it intermittently, everything is fine, but if everyone starts doing it regularly it can change the whole tone of a scene.

I know players who don’t like deckbuilding and just want to netdeck other people’s decks they like the look of on the internet. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it at all and people should not be chastised for netdecking all of their decks: they’re playing Netrunner in a way they enjoy, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I felt the need to compare it the the other quote because of this sort of paragraph:

The issue is that a culture in which net-decking becomes the accepted norm de-values the potential for creative expression inherent within a game like Netrunner.

If a casual player argues that they hate netdecking because it devalues creativeness, it’s no more right than if a competitive player says that they hate homebrewing because it devalues good testing. I’d argue both requests are stupid. Any party that says these type of thing should stop trying to make people play in a way they don’t enjoy. No one side has to ‘win’, and both can (and in my experience, do) coexist harmoniously.

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I don’t think this is anywhere near a fair analysis. There are parts of Netrunner that are both fun and generally unexplored in competitive matchups. Tags, for instance, are usually only applied in competitive netrunner in decks that intend to win that turn or VERY soon after, and they don’t tend to hang around as a tax. There are cards and builds that focus around playing with tags as a tax and punishing them with economic war via Closed Accounts. These decks are fun to play and interesting to play against, but there is not any room in the meta for them currently because runners can punish wishy-washy openings that tagging ICE tends to give you. If you can’t survive the opening, you never get to get to the gamestate where you’re playing economic war with tags and the game is worse than a loss; it’s a waste of time.

A person playing a deck like that isn’t looking for push-overs; that person just wants to have a chance for their deck to do its job. Depending on the competitive meta, that might be a foreclosed opportunity if a majority of players are playing to that meta, and that can be legitimately frustrating.

If players just want to find opponents worse than them to beat, tournaments are a great place for that. Just tank out your first few matches and Swiss will insure that you’re paired down for the rest of the tournament.

That’s fair; that section seems legitimately opposed to netdecking in a way I disagree with. It’s worth noting though that net decking does change the game and tunes it more to the competitive end, and that has impacts when the avenues for play are all geared towards competitive play. I think the issue is the emphasis on competitive tournaments, though, rather than the existence of netdecks.

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We were similarly thinking about Mushin Decks for every corp.

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I don’t understand the perceived alienation. I’ve done well, poorly, and in between in tourneys. I enjoy playing for fun, practicing for Worlds, or high-level tourneys. I also enjoy running events where I give away a bunch of stuff, and hope people have a good time.

Look to the KOS tourney: it’s going to be both casual, and competitive. There is money involved, but also beer. Nigh every high-end player at Worlds is in it, but, there’s full table talk. People will prob. bring hard dex, but the format forces 32 people to play Weyland. Honestly, it’s prob. the most diverse meta a large tourney has ever seen for the game. I’m surprised FFG hasn’t pushed alternative formats like this before.

I’ll agree with those that note that FFG should promote more casual, FNM-esque play. They have the power to do that. The ANRPC, being fan-run, has a better bet pushing larger events.

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KOS is a great example of something that creates a space where casual and competitive players can play together (and against each other!) and both get what they were looking for from a match.

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Again, one could argue that ‘homebrewing’ changes the game and tunes it more to the casual end. It’s stupid to try and make everyone play a certain way because some people will be forced to play in a way they don’t enjoy.

If this was somehow intended to prove some sort of problem with the way FFG does their events, that’s a disconnected problem to netdecking. People should not be forced to play in a way they both enjoy, and there’s no sense arguing against a subset of people having fun, regardless of whether those players are casual or competitive.

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I don’t understand this sense of having catering to someone elses idea of fun, on both sides. A player should play the way they enjoy playing and not have to worry about it.

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Agreed.

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People like to feel validated for the effort that they put into things they deem important. The trick is to enjoy the experience when someone else is validated for their effort. There is no macro solution for an individual’s experience.

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From the article:

“Sadly, I’ve found competitive communities are rarely either considerate or graceful outside a close-knit circle. Often competitive players view anything but the most superficial respect for another player as something that player has to earn, rather than something to be extended by default, something I have come to heartily disagree with.”

I think what is meant is “nothing but the most superficial respect for another player as something that player has come to earn”. ‘Anything but’ means they don’t view it this way, which is confusing.

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It is also important to note that on MANY occasions (although not always) the random prize is BETTER than the 1st place prize. It really feels nice when a new player shows up and goes 0-6 but wins a sweet promo (or Playmat!) that’s even better than the one they would have gotten at 6-0.

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While I like a lot of what’s being said in this article, I really disagree with the netdecking part. The thing that makes Netrunner such an appealing game to me is that I can take anyone’s deck list and play it myself.

When I’m preparing for a tournament, this will mean looking over tournament-winning decklists and cribbing from them, testing which combinations I like or find strong, and ultimately using the netdeck as an avenue for my own tournament deck. It’s useful to have the original creative work done for me so I can jump to the testing and refining phase (which is creative in its own way). I value the work that has gone into making these decks. Some of these decks have histories that honor the creative work of a few people while other decks have too many origins and so many endpoints in their development that it honors a whole community worth of creative work. My use of that deck in a tournament is a small but worthwhile contribution.

When I’m not preparing for a tournament, I love to try some of the outlandish decks people make just to try out a card or unheard-of strategy. These decks might not perform well against a few key archetypes, but then again how will I know how they perform unless I try them out? I think it’s a great compliment to someone’s work on a fringe deck to try playing it, and if I like it enough I’ll probably end up building my own version.

I think netdecking is a great way to share in the creative potential of my fellow Netrunners and it’s a great way to explore the possibilities of the game at large.

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From the article:

"That kind of play and the players who get the most out of it are privileged [sic] by receiving a whole variety of subtle benefits from the company’s style of supporting the game, as well as trickle-down effects of that style (Eg. Game stores running exclusively tournament-structured events, since that’s all the company directly supports). Ritualized competitive play is already a deeply privileged play-form amongst western communities and particularly those of young men, thanks to ideals that glorify and promote it as ‘enlightened’ or ‘superior’ that have existed for thousands of years (this is probably why it is commonly seen as the default by companies looking to have a professional involvement in developing a community of players). The result is that competitive players receive a whole load of benefits that they might have trouble recognizing as such, where other kinds of player have to make do. To the privileged, privileges just seem to ‘make sense’, like the idea that the player in a tournament who wins the most matches gets the highest prize, or that a tournament where players are completely randomly matched is strictly worse than one where they’re matched by the swiss system. Looked at under a lens where all participants in the tournament are assumed to be competitive players, these make sense, but in reality a good proportion of players won’t be. The response from competitive players might be ‘well why are they playing in the event then?’. Perhaps because there are few to no other opportunities to play against strangers, or to get swag, or just feel like part of something bigger. To be able to get these things in an environment specifically tailored to them are the privileges competitive players are extended that other players are frequently denied."

First of all, I want to point out that GNKs and local netrunner leagues generally have the same prizes, which are somewhat terrible. I gave up my prizes from my local league because I already had a femme, but I really don’t care about prizes anyway. I do like winning, but you can’t win everything.

Now, it definitely depends on the kind of community you have; maybe there are fist-pumpingly-competitive people there who just like playing the best stuff. Maybe so. That, as the article points out, is a sociological issue that can only be addressed with interpersonal communication. So, talk to the people around you. Help your organizer set up guidelines that benefit everyone, but don’t hurt people’s fun. Anecdote time: our local organizer, @Remorhaz, sets it up so that all you need to do is record 6 games with anyone each week - and you can drop 2 of your worst weeks. If you’re doing a “teaching game”, both players get points. And players get a base set of points for playing any games at all. On top of that, everyone gets a prize anyway. This lets players “dodge” competitive players, if they want, and still place very highly in the league. As our league nears its end, the players who are in the front of the pack spend more time playing each other out of courtesy to the other players, so they get knocked down a bit and other players can catch up. It’s just how we do it. In this way competitive players and non-competitive players can find common ground.

I do not disagree with the article’s point that privilege exists within these competitive communities (it always will), neither do I disagree that game companies can contribute to this sense of privilege by curtailing to competitive events (this doesn’t happen very much for Netrunner, though); however, the second point highlighted in the quote above needs clarification. There are a couple of things assumed by the article: one) that FFG favors competitive players, and that 2) FFG views competitive communities as the “default communities”. There is no substantial proof that either of these are true. There is nothing inherently wrong with ritualized competitive play; yes, it does favor competitive players because it is a competition. See Dan’s post somewhere above this one. The article seems to be drawing a line between someone who can only play basketball in her back yard and (if she’s exceptionally talented) become a professional ball player. These are fundamentally different social enterprises that emerge from the same game. I will not do well at a basketball tournament where players play at a level in which I cannot compete (I suck at basketball and would need just about the worst players to be on my skill level). The article also assumes that there aren’t enough opportunities for casual players to play. This is region specific, and I can’t speak to the Australian scene. Recently, at PAX Prime, FFG put on an Icebreaker tournament for newer players, some new and some competitive players showed up, and one of our local guys took it down. That didn’t ruin the tournament. Everyone seemed to have fun joining in with the community. Prizes were handed out to everyone. Everyone was stoked to be a part of this awesome community. :slight_smile:

The article assumes, however, that these communities of competitive players are prioritized by FFG whereas other non-competitive communities are discarded, but this is simply not true, as they have said again and again their focus is to keep the game casual. They are pretty green at competitive organization. Their Organized Play twitter account is no more than a year old. However, I find it difficult to take seriously claims about unfair treatment of casual players, when there have been no actual cases of unfair treatment near or around me. I consider myself competitive in that I fucking love playing this game. I enjoy winning, but more than that I just enjoy playing it. It’s awesome.

If the argument, however, is that competitive players dictate the meta and the kinds of decks that are played more commonly: that does indeed happen. Why? Because good decks are easier to win with. That’s not a competitive player problem, it’s a core mechanic to the game. This is not, however, the fault of “competitive” netrunner players. Whether it is stifling the creativity of casual players is not really substantiated or sustained in the article, though the article does imply that it’s somehow a part of the problem of competition.

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I think the article went a little wild with the theory section and the analysis of competitive players. But the concrete suggestions at the end weren’t terrible. I suggest people who don’t like tourneys get some EDH format going. It seems like that works well for magic.

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IMO a lot of players who are homebrewing are trying to set up combo decks and thus get frustrated when they lose before they get their combo set up. Thing is, these players are largely playing solitaire. They’re frustrated when they can’t set up their Valencia IJ Protestors fast enough to choke the Corp, or their 3 Au Revoirs and Snitch online to start making 3c/click. IMO these players are missing the heart of ANR, which is the back and forth between Runner and Corp. I personally do not want ANR to be a game where both players sit back and try to set up some insurmountable board state. for players who do want that, nothing is stopping them from establishing leagues with whatever rules and restricted lists they want. EDH players are largely very much this way, and I find it the most unpalatable format of MTG. Games are excruciatingly long and most players just want to get some ridiculous board state up and running. I’d rather lose in 10 minutes to NEH Fastro than play a 20 or 30-minute game where Corp and Runner just do their own thing, hoping they get to their ideal board state before their opponent.

last thing, I’d say the reason there isn’t more infrastructure in place across the world for casual players is that they don’t want to invest fully into the game, much less invest into organizing for the game. this is of course a generalization

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I would be willing to bet that the so called divide between the 'competitive" community and “casual” community is a product of a difference in each generations values. Xers were taught that the only way to ear a reward was to do well, where Millennials were rewarded not only for doing well but also for simply participating.

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rescinded, too off topic

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That’s more because the baby boomer generation comprises a majority of the top level management positions and thus its more of a product of the the millennials not having a choice. Either they work for free or they don’t work at all.

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Mostly really good replies to the article on this thread. Been a very good read. One amusing thing that I feel the author neglects, and that hasn’t been talked about too much, is that competitive people are not necessarily those who bring NEH FA, but they are the ones that have put the time and effort in to be a better player. This means that even in formats such as cube drafting or deck restriction formats, where whatever janky deck seems more viable, the competitive players will still inherently have a noticeable advantage. This may translate into similar outcomes.

You do both need the competitive and casual people on board. And I can see where some of the ideas of the author come from. I disagree with the way he put his ideas into words, and the use of the word privilege is not appropriate in this context imo. Beyond that, whilst competitive players will always have an edge, I’m all for more creative events, team events with deck restrictions, cubes, we do 1 core + 1 deluxe expansion events whenever a deluxe expansion comes out, they are always awesome, always up for leagues. But whilst you look to cater to casual players, you most definitely need to continue providing incentive to the competitive players. Otherwise the game will definitely stop growing as it has in the last year or so

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