And now for the 2008 GT season, we can all work together to make them better Options

[ArchonCryx]

[EDIT] I should have started with:

Thanks muchly for the huge effort GW put into the GTs this year. I greatly appreciate it and benefitted from having 5 excellent games that were a blast at the Sydney GT. I just loved that we had 6 GTs running in Oz/NZ this year!

WHile I might go on to sound like a grumpy old warhorse yammering on about "The good ole days" or something here, I really did have fun at the GT I went to and I always enjoy the GT season, I mean it caused plenty of conversations and controvery! What more could we wish for??
[ENDEDIT]

Let me start/continue by saying:
Having 7 GTs across Aus/NZ is a brilliant concept - I only wish I was finacially able to attend 2 or 3 just like some of the Sydney Siders, Kiwis, or Nashrak have done. There's always next year! In my experience, One thing GW Oz do do quite well is take feedback.

They generally request feedback for every GT, and Im sure they get swamped.

Note my perspective comes from that of a die hard 40K player. I believe other systems get played at GTs but you couldn't prove it by me

For those who believe otherwise, the 2007 player's pack did, in fact, get a peer review during the leadup by many gamers, not just some who work at GW, and not all from Victoria. Unfortuantly, they will never be able to canvasse absolutely everyone!

Nor could they take all suggestions on board.

My guess would be along the lines that, if anything, GW probably has too much feedback to deal with, and coalescing it all into one GT system takes talent and obviously you can never satisfy every individual's concerns. And this thread only adds to it!

Mistakes have been made, and some of the early concerns didn't get addressed, but that's gunna happen. At least they gave us a GT in pretty much every State and both Islands of NZ. In that respect my hat goes off to them and I fully support a repeat performance next year.

As for the system used, one hopes that we can start fresh. IMHO- any new GT system should hopefully make strong reference to KISS principles in order to aide consistency across events. Locally I aim to support the next Sydney GT in anyway that I can with hopes to get the standards back up to the heady levels we enjoyed back in 2003 or so. I'm sorry to say this seems sorely needed in our case.

What I would like to see:

More encouragement for Hobbyist gamers in non KF states. I think using a system that fits in with most ppls expectations can help, as well as bumping up the component %s for things like painting and army composition.

If we retain the "top 10% bonus, bottom 10% penalty" then I feel it MUST Apply ALL bonuses and Penalties, getting rid of the "judges discretion" since that only puts unecessary pressure on a TO and in my view is basically saying "don't apply the negatives". Consider Angmar's case. WHile he copped a penalty that was legitimate, it was surely hard to take on board casually, especially in light of a much worse infraction being ignored (despite REPEATED acknowledgement of the illegality) at a previous GT.

I agree with the view that even for average level painters (for eg) it's very satisfying to see a measuarable improvement over last year's efforts, if I go from a 40% Paint score to a 60% paint score I'd be overjoyed, yet at this GT I wouldnt have a clue.

Better to score everyone, even if only the top 3 get an bonus added to the overall score if you want to avoid average painters getting "unfair" bonuses, the others can still get marked for comparison. Same goes for composition.

Ranking:

I never like ranking opponents cause there's no way to differentiate if I had 6 great opponents or if I had 6 lousy. Prefer giving an indication by a base score out of 5 (or whatever). If I have 6 x 5/5 games I want to reward and if I have 6 x 1/5 I want to punish (and perhaps also kill myself...) Same for SPorts and Composition.

Peer painting is always rubbish! Sorry, but it is. The GW staff have loads of experience looking at painted models, surely they can differentiate our painting with a lot less chance of bias?

Follow the Pack:
If it's in the pack - enforce it! If you really mean to dissallow unpainted models from being used in games, then do so! This is another downside of not giving everyone a painting score since the only penalty for having unpainted figures is a risk (apparantly small) of not being able to use them. At least if you decide to be nice and let the unpainted models play everyone can see on his paint score that he's suffering a negative impact compared to an average 3 colour army.

Return to basic principles:
Most people who play in tournies expect a structure of peer sport and comp, TO paint scores, and BPs from their games counting towards a maximum of 60% of they're overall score. The pattern is so ingrained that many TOs seemed to expect this kind of format leading to sutuations where what was played was a bit different to what the Pack said.

I reckon instead of running counter to the expectations, exploit them and use to your advantage by having a system that fits in with those expectations. I like the KISS method myself, and the further you get away from that, the more potential for issues to arise. Particularly when you have multiple TOs separated by huge distance, it would seem to me the simpler the system the more likely it gets followed in all widely separated events.

ANyway, there's a start. what would you like to see happen for the 2008 GT season?

This post has been edited by ArchonCryx: Sep 26 2007, 03:14 PM

[Proximity]

I would rather no prizes at all, and that money be invested back into the trophys instead. Don't take that as a dig at the trophies, which I actually thought were exceptionally cool this year, but if the moneys either going to go on prizes OR trophies, I'd rather the latter.
A prerequisite to do this hobby properly is a decent disposable income, in that respect I would think trophies would be rather more meaningful than prizes.

Also, slightly better TO preparation is a must for future years. It would take just an hour per store the week before to have a conversation with anyone over the phone to make sure they fully understand how it works, whilst doing it they could do a 'dry run' with fake results. It saves a whole lot of headache - It would cost no more than $50 dollars worth of time, and would only have to mean in future years you had 1 person return by not getting fed up to balance that out.. more than one person and you're actually profiting. The TO's in Auckland, and by the looks of things with Perth as well, literally had not read the pack. They had NO idea why it was wrong for scores to be 190+, and then tried to argue that it was right when it was pointed out that the theoretical maximum was 77 by some gamers.

Finally, I think you need to keep in mind that a lot of gamers aren't known for their brilliant minds. Whilst this pack wasn't in my opinion complicated at all, you had a lot of concepts that are just too hard for some people to understand. Sure, you only had to read it once or twice to understand it, but you have people in the thread allready pointing out they can't really read properly, and are quite willing to hold someone other than themselves accountable for it (that's not a dig at you Scott, it's a really common trait amongst people sadly).

Sorry to end the season with somewhat of a negative tone, but I feel there is a real obligation to get the basics right, and it really wasn't met in New Zealand this year. If it hadn't been for Andrew running KF so amazingly well, I would have probably been put off the tournament scene enough to just stick to modelling and painting.

- Charlie