Do you play to win?

"The objective of a game is to win. The point of a game is to have fun."

I think that perhaps some people missed the point. Either way I will continue on to my thoughts.

First of all the article is suggesting playing to win is the mindset you should have in a tournament. If you don't agree with that then don't play in a tournament. Play on non-tournament days. Many people do that and have quite a lot of fun. You can be more liberal in trying new ideas, deck testing, and just being laid back.

Secondly, it is my belief you can be playing to win and be enjoying yourself at the same time. But, first one must focus on winning the game rather than just having fun. If you aren't focused there are quite a few things you could miss. Lets equate this to any other alternative game or major sports. Whether it is the hated Magic game (at least by most VTES players) or something like Basketball the game face is put on first. Focus is everything and you give 110% as the goal is to do your best and hopefully win.

If winning didn't matter there wouldn't be second place.

That being said many professional athletes love playing the game they aim to win at every time they enter the arena. I think everyone in VTES has seen others get upset in a tournament. That is mainly due to the fact it is a multiplayer game and other people can screw their plans over (sometimes messing up table balance or giving someone else an advantage). Heck, I think everyone is familiar with the term "build a better deck." With that being said I don't believe in poor sportsmanship with paid athletes, video gamers, or alternative gamers such as VTES players. This should be a bigger note to VTES players who often bitch and moan (and everyone has one or more of those guys in their local play group it seems). Don't take it so personally when a nube makes a bad movie, just do the best you can to educate them. And if they aren't a nube and just made a bad play move on.

The number one thing I have heard as a complaint of VTES (by observers and those who have quit) is the nasty verbiage and insults that many seem so fast to dish out. Some people will say if you cannot handle that in VTES don't play. True or not it isn't something that should be going on.

So just because you are focused doesn't mean that you cannot end up having fun. Further, it doesn't give you the go ahead to be an a$$hat either.

RoddimusPrime wrote:

I think that perhaps some people missed the point.

Using Sirlin's PTW articles as the foundation of the blog, as it says right up front, means that it's going to specifically be about mechanics abuse in the face of social pressure not to do so. I don't think there's anyone on these boards who'll disagree with the notion that you should play to win while playing VTES, so that's kind of an uninteresting topic of conversation.

RoddimusPrime wrote:

First of all the article is suggesting playing to win is the mindset you should have in a tournament. If you don't agree with that then don't play in a tournament.

Sure. The blog is preaching to the choir, though. People who do stuff like rolling dice to decide who to bleed with Kindred Spirits or otherwise doing dumb stuff in tournament play "for the sake of lulz" aren't likely going to bother to take the time to read a blog about playing to win.

Here is what I would have posted to the blog if I could have figured out a way to post without logging into something:

In the ideal, playing to win is fun for the tournament participants. If it's not fun to strive for victory, then, in theory, the player shouldn't be playing the tournament.

I've never thought V:TES is a good tournament game. The multiplayer feature causes a lot of competitive problems; for instance, social factors shouldn't be relevant to competition. Then, few people I play with are strongly motivated by victory. Leaving only the players who care a lot about winning and there would only ever be a single table tournament, at most.

As with virtually everything, there's a spectrum. Specifically, I'm talking about how people play and putting aside deck construction and the like for the moment when I state that there's a spectrum. I play to win tournaments, to the point where I don't play to win individual games (a lesser thing) as much as efforts have been made to try to encourage such. But, while that may be my goal, I'm not so strongly committed to that goal that it's my primary interest. My primary interest is in having fun games. Striving for victory is more of a guideline than it is an all consuming focus.

Should I be playing tournaments? Not in the ideal. The world hardly has an ideal. In order to field enough players to make a tournament worthwhile, you will end up with people who don't see winning the only desirable outcome to playing tournaments.

Then, there's the other elements of competing besides play. The dominant one with CCGs is deck construction. With two-player CCGs, I will play the best decks. With multiplayer CCGs, it's less clear whether there even are best decks, but let's assume there are for argument. I doubt anyone would argue that I make any attempt to play the best decks in multiplayer CCGs.

So, why the difference? Again, I don't see multiplayer games being well-suited for competitive play. At least, relative to two-player endeavors, they pale in comparison no matter how many multiplayer games are played competitively. I see multiplayer games as having a social component largely missing from two-player games; take a game like mahjong which I started playing for money when I was about eight - it was still a social affair even though money was at stake.

One could argue that metagaming for victory may very well involve playing a suboptimal deck to have gang-up-fire aimed at better decks, but I don't think that's what people are really doing. I think people recognize two things: there's a social element; that winning in and of itself is not the end all and be all of V:TES tournaments. I'd say it isn't even the end all and be all of two-player CCG tournaments, as the greatest value CCGs provide is the ability to bring one's own personality into games mechanically through deck construction. Even among "Spikes", there are few to zero 100% Spikes.

Sure, it's annoying when people are clearly not making a reasonable effort to win, whatever reasonable means. And, it's annoying when people bring decks that don't meet a minimum threshold of viability to the table. But, evidence suggests that minimum threshold of viability is low for this game, so I'm far less concerned with what decks people bring to the table than I am people who make a play choice to not compete. Even then, I can't get too excited by the last since it's better to have tournaments than not if for no other reason than mixing up one's opponents, i.e. strong regional and crossregional casual play would suffice if it existed.

Kushiel wrote:

RoddimusPrime wrote:

I think that perhaps some people missed the point.

Using Sirlin's PTW articles as the foundation of the blog, as it says right up front, means that it's going to specifically be about mechanics abuse in the face of social pressure not to do so. I don't think there's anyone on these boards who'll disagree with the notion that you should play to win while playing VTES, so that's kind of an uninteresting topic of conversation.

RoddimusPrime wrote:

First of all the article is suggesting playing to win is the mindset you should have in a tournament. If you don't agree with that then don't play in a tournament.

Sure. The blog is preaching to the choir, though. People who do stuff like rolling dice to decide who to bleed with Kindred Spirits or otherwise doing dumb stuff in tournament play "for the sake of lulz" aren't likely going to bother to take the time to read a blog about playing to win.

Agreed. Not very interesting. That being said, I am sure people want to win usually, but that doesn't mean some people aren't terrible at the game or build bad decks. I have had plenty of local players only play potence because that was the only fun thing for them. Well, they never did too well and they certainly weren't going to win tournaments. And while they know there are better decks they weren't interested. So it is very subjective. While several of the above things may be true they still want to win, but will only play what's enjoyable to them which may be a bad deck and may further be complicated by bad skills.

Ironically, those individuals moved on to only play on occasion, with non-tournament tables, and some have quit. And to them that is fine as they may not win, they will have more fun. Kudos to them.

I like to win when I play so I don't want to play crappy decks. And as you say, anyone reading this blog is likely going to come away with very little they don't already know.

KevinM wrote:

Dorrinal wrote:

TryDeflectingThisGrapple wrote:

I read Sirlin's articles a long time ago. I decided he and I are radically different people.

He would still be playing a Malk'94 variant in every tournament. It's pretty clearly the most broken 2-discipline combination in the game. It largely reduces the 5 player game to a series of 1:1 duels with your prey, peppered with "I [insert Wake effect] and Deflect." Same deck, 15 times in a row at WoN, for 18 years straight.

Thank God I'm not Sirlin - it might be worse than being Sklansky.

If that's your conclusion, I don't think you comprehended Sirlin's articles. Reread them. Seriously, not trying to be flippant.

"Notice that the good players are reaching higher and higher levels of play. They found the "cheap stuff" and abused it."

"They won't find the most effective tactics and abuse them mercilessly. The good players will. The good players will find incredibly overpowering tactics and patterns."

"Doing one move or sequence over and over and over is another great way to get called cheap. This goes right to the heart of the matter: why can the scrub not defeat something so obvious and telegraphed as a single move done over and over? Is he such a poor player that he can't counter that move? And if the move is, for whatever reason, extremely difficult to counter, then wouldn't I be a fool for not using that move?"

Sounds like Darby is EXACTLY right.

Because the metagame has never changed? Because no one is out there abusing the best decks and cards, and trying to figure out how to beat those tactics? Because there is only one "best deck ever" and you'd be a fool not to play it, right? I think if V:TES really were broken like that, none of us would still be playing after 18 years of Malk '94.