This is FFG we’re talking about here, not the NFL. Organized Play, it bears repeating, is like a three-person department.
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I mispelled “even more unrealistic”, I’m really bad about that kind of thing.
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I like using them. It reminds me of the Anarch Dark Ages, when filthy and starving peasants tried to rub Knights and Darwins together to keep warm.
Then someone found a Cache of free food and the rags to riches story began. (Then went on way past where it was cute.)
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“D’Argenio on fire here - he’s on the Eli - he’s on the Data Raven - OH and the Femme Fatale bypasses, she has been on FIRE today! The Teflon Don is in, and this is just where he puts up big numbers late-game - he accesses ONE - TWO - THREE-”
“Hang on, Jim, there is a FLAG on the play - there’s a claim here that he’s accessing too much - and, oh, look at this, there is only one RDI on the table, oh my, this could be huge. Judges are conferring - they are going to CALL UP TO DAMON. Now for a message from our sponsors.”
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This is not the first time I’ve heard the term WAAC. (Win At All Costs) I first heard it in 40k, which has a miniscule tournament scene.
It’s a stupid term. WAAC strictly means you’ll cheat to win, which obviously no one supports. Following the written rules is not cheating. And if you’re not cheating, you aren’t in the WAAC camp.
More accurately, the problem is described as some people having problems with Rules Lawyers, those who attempt to defend any action they take with the Rules and to press on any offense their opponent makes, no matter how slight.
To an extent, I’m a Rules Lawyer. I want my play to be accurate and correct according to the rules, and I expect the same from my opponents. However, I only hold myself to that standard while at a tournament. Casual play? Nah, it’s cool.
I’m getting the vibe that we’re generally talking about Tournament Play here. If we aren’t, then my observations won’t be much use. Let us imagine a Tournament that allows takebacks. What would the Rules for such a tournament look like? Some people have proposed (admirable, in my opinion) rulesets such as ‘takebacks allowed as long as no information was gained’. But a reading of that rule wouldn’t have prevented the Multithreader issue that was so terrible presented earlier; He gained information. In a Tournament setting, you must enforce the rules that are prescribed for that Tournament. To do otherwise calls into question why you are calling it a Tournament in the first place.
I’m also confused why MtG is ‘the enemy’ here. The game where people will routinely call judge on themselves when they goofed? The one that has an all-volunteer judge community with more than 2000 people in it that take pride in ensuring tournament fairness? This is what we want to avoid?
Maybe I’m just weird in that if two players are matched, and one of the players makes a mistake, his opponent should have an advantage in that game. I’ve lost a ton due to my own mistakes in all sorts of games. I don’t feel it’s my opponent’s responsibility for my own mistakes. I made the mistake, I should have to live with the consequences.
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Yeah, I do want to avoid becoming MtG.
I have a friend – so this isn’t me trying to slander the guy, understand? – who called a judge on a 12-year-old because the 12-year-old was bridge shuffling face-up. I resist the idea that every single interaction between opponents must be filtered through a duly-appointed official or the rules framework of the game, if not both. If I were playing against the kid, I’d have said “hey, you shouldn’t shuffle those face-up, that lets you see my cards, you know!” I’d only have bothered with calling a judge if, for some reason, the kid had a problem with not shuffling facedown. There’s no need to get a judge to penalize a 12-year-old kid for just not knowing things adults know. But I think calling a judge like that is part of MtG tournament culture, at least as far as I have observed, both from playing the game back in the day and from observing it. I don’t want to see that become part of ANR tournament culture.
Thus, I’m fine with allowing takebacks. I’m also fine with not allowing takebacks! I just don’t think we need to mandate it via the rules one way or the other. If someone asks for a takeback for an obvious error - “oops, I should have spent the Cyberfeeder credit [last click], can I just take that credit?” - I’m fine if their opponent says “yes, that’s fine,” and I’m fine if they say “we are in a tournament, you know, and I’d rather not.” I consider the first one more sportsmanlike than the second, but it’s not like the second person is acting egregiously or anything. But I’m not fine with insisting that we enforce “no take-backs” in a tournament setting, disallowing the first hypothetical opponent from allowing the Cyberfeeder credit, because that seems to me to do nothing except stifle sportsmanlike behavior.
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What I do not like about magic is the rigidity of its community, or, at least, of the communities that I saw. It seems like lawyering has a big part in the game which could be why the MtG community is said to be often harsh or frustrating. I would like to keep this out of the netrunner community and play to have fun, trying to win – as opposed to playing to win, trying to have fun.
I have nothing against a self-organised judge system to solve possible disputes during a tournament, provided players do not abuse it as in case mention by @Brodie.
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MTG has definitely some bad aspects and some rotten community members but the judge program and the tournament rules enforcement is a great accomplishment. If Netrunner keeps growing you’ll see more cut-throat players and rules lawyers here too. Just look at jinteki.net. There’s a lot of hostility going around in the random matches. At least, that’s my experience.
Ye, I saw matches ending up badly on Jnet, so I decided to keep an excel file with my personal blacklist. Still this is very silly, what’s the motivation for throat-cutting and rule lawyering in casual games? It must be a way of living.
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Regarding “call a judge culture” in MtG, the entire point of judges is to be impartial. Bear in mind that calling a judge doesn’t mean I’m seeking a penalty for my opponent. If I tell my opponent “hey you shouldn’t shuffle like that”, although I may be giving them genuine advice they are in a competition against me and that is always going to imply a level of bias. Having a judge on hand means that my opponent gets to hear an explanation from someone who isn’t invested in that particular game. I consider myself to have a pretty decent level of rules knowledge for both MtG and Netrunner, but if my opponent in a game has a query I will tend to call a judge even if I know the answer.
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I don’t mean to be rude, but this sounds crazy to me. I don’t see where my bias as your opponent comes into the matter at all when I say “please don’t shuffle faceup, it lets you see my cards.” This is what I’m talking about. I don’t know what else to do but repeat myself: I resist the idea that every single interaction between opponents must be filtered through a duly-appointed official or the rules framework of the game (if not both). I resist the idea that I have to question my opponent constantly because of his or her bias, that I shouldn’t take anyone at their word, give anyone the benefit of the doubt, or believe they’re acting in any kind of good faith. That seems crazy. I’m all for calling a judge if you have a question, or if you believe your opponent might be mistaken about something; I’m not saying judges are bad and we shouldn’t have them. I just think that the default assumption that my opponent is trying to deceive or swindle me is a harmful one, and I do not want to see it propagate at Netrunner tournaments.
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That specific scenario is crazy. The sentiment is not.
Edit; I mean the sentiment that calling a judge to provide clarity or impartiality, not the sentiment that we should want a judge for every single interaction, obviously.
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Edit: I didn’t mean to say that calling for a judge to be impartial was wrong; I tried to make that clear. The part that seems crazy to me is assuming that my opponent must constantly be trying to get one over on me, and so I need to call an impartial judge because I can’t trust anything my opponent might tell me. Maybe that’s not what @echo meant, but that’s how it sounded, and I have seen that sentiment expressed before at MtG tournaments enough times that I’m pretty well sick of it.
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I don’t see how it’s productive for discussion to bring in an example involving a 12 year old, and conflate that with the discussion presented by the other complex issues with rules lawyering versus takebacks versus speed of play and such. Whether any particular competitor is 12 years old or not and needs to be treated differently as a deviation from the desirable standard is irrelevant from deciding on what that desirable standard is.
Personally I loved competing like an adult when I was much younger, and I played chess with men 5 times my age who refused me takebacks (or let me deny them from myself, either one, don’t recall), even though I was younger. I got to make the same moves as an adult. But if you want very young players to be allowed to play the game, but with a different treatment that eschews some consistency in favor of inclusivity, that’s not a crazy or unreasonable notion at all, that’s cool. It’s a totally separate, separate conversation though.
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Sure, that’s fair. So, ignoring everything about a younger kid participating, my main objection to MtG tournament culture is its rigidity (as @V01d noted). I also object to the idea that I must default to suspicion about my opponent’s motives, which I saw constantly when I played MtG. Those are things that I think would diminish our community.
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When do you play? I’ve never had a game worse than someone simply saying gg and leaving immediately without a chance to respond, but I respect other people’s time as well. As a matter of fact the vast majority of games I’ve had, the other player has been incredibly patient and accommodating. On a recent trip to Japan, I had a really crappy connection that would timeout fairly often. I never had an opponent complain or leave. And when I obviously screw up, there hasn’t been a single opponent that hasn’t allowed me to take it back (though there are times when I refused the takeback for myself). But then, I usually play 9pm+ on the West Coast, and only 3-5 games a night…
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There are so many things wrong-headed here that pointing all of them out would completely derail the topic. Instead, have this nugget of truth: Calling a judge does not mean you are trying to penalize your opponent. When it comes to Netrunner, I would love to see a community that doesn’t believe calling a Judge is a bad thing.
Well it’s a good thing no one is saying this. But when something goes wrong, instead of being the antagonist or enemy of my opponent and telling them they’re wrong, even if they are, I’d rather get an impartial observer to do so instead. Worst case, now they’re the enemy/antagonist and my opponent is angry at the judge and not me. Best case, the judge who spends his free time reading and explaining rules probably explains the situation better than I can and everyone’s happy and enriched.
I’ll repeat for emphasis: Calling a judge is never a bad thing. (Barring calling one over every five seconds, but come on, common sense.)
??? Are… are you saying that playing to win and having fun are mutually exclusive?
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Of course not, sorry if what I wrote was not clear.
I was trying to point out the difference in attitude between players that enter a competition with the purpose of winning at any cost and those who instead take part because of the high-level games and the nice experience that the competition offers. Of course all the players try to win, however the attitude is different and you can feel that difference in a match.
To make an example, if I was playing to win at all costs I would not allow for any take-back and I would even try to act quickly to leave you the minimum reaction time that I regard as fair in order to minimise your chance of reacting. This way of playing complies with the rules and can win games (scenarios like 1) credit 2) hades shard), but playing against people like this is in my opinion frustrating. This is the kind of players that “play to win, trying to have fun”, mentioned also in previous posts by @gumOnShoe
and
I much prefer opponents that make you play the game at your best, granting your reaction time not by their clocks and allowing you to correct misplays in cases where no information was revealed on their side. When you play people like this the competition is much more healthy and your are more likely to leave the table with some satisfaction, independently of the outcome of the game. This is the kind of players that “play to have fun, trying to win”.
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I don’t see a quote feature one here, but I want to pick out a piece here:
“and I would even try to act quickly to leave you the minimum reaction time that I regard as fair in order to minimise your chance of reacting.”
Netrunner actually doesn’t work like this at all, even at (or rather, especially at) the highest level of rules emphasis and enforcement. If you pass priority to someone between clicks, they can hold that priority for as long as they want to, until they’ve decided what abilities they want to activate or that they don’t want to activate any abilities. The only limit to how long you can spend thinking about it is if you call a judge for “slow play” because you think the right is being abused.
I’ve heard stories where people have tried this “you didn’t yell UNO in time” at worlds, and whenever a judge was called they confirmed that you can’t assume priority was passed because there were a few seconds of silence.
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And yet explicitly passing priority back and forth in Netrunner games - even in games featuring Clot/Hades/Utopia - is rarely done.
In fact, here’s a quote from earlier discussion of timing windows:
And because context is sometimes important:
There are implications here as to how competitive and formalised the rules of the game can really be. We’re a long way from chess clocks.
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