British Competition Forum

[ravenflight]

Has this become the 'British Competition Forum'?

Is there any point in anyone else logging into the FoG:R slitherine site?

[timmy1]

You are welcome to log in and tell us how much you admire our competitions...

[kevinj]

Personally I'd be very happy to see reports from competitions in other countries or anything else related to the non UK scene. But also, as a UK competition organiser, it's a place that I know I can reach the majority of the players that I deal with.

[ravenflight]

Personally I'd be very happy to see reports from competitions in other countries or anything else related to the non UK scene.

Well, I made a post on CanCon 2014. ZERO response. 129 people looked at the post and nobody made a single comment.

But also, as a UK competition organiser, it's a place that I know I can reach the majority of the players that I deal with.

It's also a good place to log in and see discussion about the game in general... but that doesn't happen.

If you're from somewhere else OTHER than the U.K. you will end up getting nothing and leave... and therefore the rules will suffere accordingly.

Considering I get next to nothing out of the site these days and most of my friends haven't logged into the 'slitherine site' for months, I would have thought that may be a little alarming to people who want to see the rules used widely.

I guess not.

I made a post on the painting site for my Japanese a week ago. Nothing in response. I'd have welcomed a 'those are shit' more than 'crickets chirruping'.

Anyway - have fun with your site. It is the British Competition Forum.

Just recognise why people may not be playing the game if there isn't any discussion on it.

[madaxeman]

I think the lack of comments are probably more about;

- the (relatively low/declining) level of the popularity of FoGR rules in the US/Aus/NZ,
- the dearth of competitions for FoGR in these countries
- Much of the competition-specific traffic for non-English-Language countries takes place on their boards on the AM part of the forum, with most (all?) of the events in Europe covering both AM and R, rather than having specific R-only events such as we have in the UK.
- the fact the rules are pretty stable and reasonably clearly written, so there's no real need to debate or question them

All of these look to me as if they are more likely reasons for low non-UK traffic than suggesting that people are being put off by too much UK content.

As another benchmark, the "Oz FoG" Yahoo group (AM, R and N) has only seen 20 messages all year, and the North American FoG Yahoo group is similarly quiet (the last post actually being a very similar "Where is everybody?" question!). Neither of these two groups have more than the odd Brit posting in them, so their declines in traffic levels over the same period as this list can't be down to people being put off by too many Brits.

If you look through the other threads on this and also the AM list about painting/modelling, it also looks as if anything involving sharing pictures of painted models rarely generates any responses either - maybe 1-2 "that's nice" is about as good as it gets. Your Japanese thread has had 3 other people posting, so again I don't think that is especially unusual - it simply looks as if peoples default reaction to these sorts of threads is to look at them but not to comment.

In terms of views, that thread has currently over 600 and counting, which makes it one of the most popular threads on the whole board right now...

So I actually think you are doing very well and there is a lot of interest in what you are posting, but if you use comments as your metric you probably have the wrong metric...

[ravenflight]

So I actually think you are doing very well and there is a lot of interest in what you are posting, but if you use comments as your metric you probably have the wrong metric...

Perhaps correct. I look at it from the perspective of I log in every day (sometimes several times a day) to find out what's going on and all that seems to be going is the little icon next to 'tournaments' goes green, and each time I look in that site it's something about the British tournaments.

I think that's a good thing that the British tournaments are getting a following, but I think that those people posting in there could keep the flame alight a bit by commenting on the other things too.

With regard to the OzFog it's actually a little more complex than that. The reason was that the original owner of the group decided he wasn't interested in keeping it and so closed it down. I was a moderator and he could have offered me to take ownership... unfortunately he didn't (probably didn't cross his mind) and so when it was closed all memberships were effectively cancelled. I tried to 'get on board' with making a new group, but it really hasn't taken off at all. I'm not sure what membership is at, but it's pathetically small.

Anyway - perhaps I'm expecting too much in the form of responses. My perception is that 'not much interest' and so 'why bother'.

I'll complete that thread because I have almost done the army, but I wouldn't necessarily expect me to be a power poster in the future... for what it's worth.

[madaxeman]

I think that's a good thing that the British tournaments are getting a following, but I think that those people posting in there could keep the flame alight a bit by commenting on the other things too.

I'm just not sure what else there is to comment on - the rules are stable, the FAQ exists and so there are very few queries anymore, there wont be any new lists published probably ever, and the number of new players has clearly dried up to a trickle ......all of which means there are very few reasons for questions or posts.

There's also not a vast amount of new products being released, so that's out as well. I do the odd AAR every few months, no-one has done a scenario, a campaign of a player-designed list in almost 10 months ... the reason there are so few other posts is because, well, nothing else is going on...!

Whenever we have a periodic "change the bloody artillery rules" thread it does get a lot of traction and posting, but other than that, UK competitions are often literally the only thing to talk about.

[nikgaukroger]

there wont be any new lists published probably ever,

You could pay me to do some

[timmy1]

I would like to see a GNW/WSS suppliment with official rules mods and approved army lists. However until I win the lottery not quite in a position to pay you to do it...

[list_lurker]

Hi,

I don't mean to be argumentative, but I'm just trying to understand what the problem is here. Is it

1.that the rules are 'stuck'? with no development in the pipeline? or
2. is it that there is no community spirit here?

If its 1, then as said here, things are 'finished', and are pretty stable. Its seems to me - in the modern vernacular - the publishers have issued the desupport notice, and we should really be seeing this as a legacy product. It seems to me that this seems reasonable, as there isn't going to be much of an on-going revenue stream. Renaissance was probably always going to be a niche. If we paid more for our products there might be more of an incentive for the publishers to make more , and keep the money machine moving along (contentious view I know). But for the publishers its not a hobby.

For AM players its even worse. With the debacle of the V2 release, then at best the UK comp scene is 'flat'. I see a lot of regular casting their gaze at alternatives. A lot have already moved to FOW, but now we see possible ancient replacements in Sword and Spear or L'art Guerre (English translation) out next month.

If its 2, then unfortunately it is going to be linked to 1 intrinsically. People will be drawn to new and shiny things. If FoG is perceived as 'dead' then it will become a self fulfilling prophecy. Its easy now for anyone to self publish, and to a very high quality. With the rise of kickstarter and the like I see a lot of new shiny things, that can attract peoples attention ... and money and time. For a gamer you could are that it is the golden age, where you can get good quality rules & figures for every scale and period. But ultimately given the finite amount of wargamers then this will lead to fracturing in the hobby. You can see this as good and bad. Everyone is doing what they want, but if we see it in a sense of 'wargaming' fraternity and 'community' then its bad, unless we all move to a more generic fora (TMP,LA,TGN,W3D etc)
but then without common cause these are just vulnerable to nerd rage attacks - and we are all probably too grown up for that really

Obviously this is all my opinion But for me the FoG:R scene is OK. It is probably at its peak, but you've got to make hay while the sun shines. In the UK you can always find a reasonably attended tournament, with good company , and without the 'tournament tigers' (generous ! )


thanks
Simon

[nikgaukroger]

I would like to see a GNW/WSS suppliment with official rules mods and approved army lists. However until I win the lottery not quite in a position to pay you to do it...

I still reckon GNW/WSS would be better served by a different set of rules - I've been told these are quite good http://legio-wargames.com/#/close-files-wss/4537125084

I've been meaning to do a GNW Russian army for ages, just never seem to get round to it

[nikgaukroger]

If its 1, then as said here, things are 'finished', and are pretty stable. Its seems to me - in the modern vernacular - the publishers have issued the desupport notice, and we should really be seeing this as a legacy product. It seems to me that this seems reasonable, as there isn't going to be much of an on-going revenue stream. Renaissance was probably always going to be a niche. If we paid more for our products there might be more of an incentive for the publishers to make more , and keep the money machine moving along (contentious view I know). But for the publishers its not a hobby.

Probably a realistic view. Whilst the authors will keep supporting the rules on a maintenance basis we don't see that there is a need for a wholesale revision that would justify a new version - although I think both Richard and I would like to tackle the points issue sometime.

In some ways I think doing some lists revisions would be nice - wargamers seem to like changes to lists as they can then play around getting their "perfect" army - but again I doubt it would be seen as viable by the publishers.

[vexillia]

I've been following this thread with some interest and Tim and Simon's posts are thought provoking viewpoints indeed. As interesting as it is to read, I would caution people against drawing solid conclusions from the volume of traffic on this, or any other, site alone.

All such discussions run the risk of becoming an opinion (or argument) based on ignorance. For example it's perfectly possible for people to participate in a hobby forum, and comment on topics, without any intention other than wanting to be part of "the gang" therefore their presence or absence says nothing about the health of the hobby.

There's also a danger of applying inappropriate standards of online behaviour. For instance, I read lots but comment infrequently but I know of other forums where traffic is dominated by simple, and essentially empty, signs of approval for original posts. This is just the Facebook "like behaviour" transferred to a forum without a "Like" function but doesn't seem to arise everywhere.

In an attempt to add something to this thread here's an image showing the decline of FOG AM and the growth of FOGR & DBMM in the UK's Northern League up to the end of last year:

The image is from Competing Views, Miniature Wargames, 374, 43-46 and it's available online.

I expect the trends to be confirmed once I have analysed and added the 2014 data after the final round later this year so I suspect that Simon's comments about FOGR peaking are correct..

[list_lurker]

In some ways I think doing some lists revisions would be nice - wargamers seem to like changes to lists as they can then play around getting their "perfect" army - but again I doubt it would be seen as viable by the publishers.

Perhaps its might be time to rethink the revenue model? I think that army lists and the like are the perfect avenue for small e-book type releases (with associated micro payments)... lets just Timmys example. For your GNW, you could extend the rules up to 1704~ ... a few rules for firing by platoon etc, 4-5 army lists .. about 20 pages lets say ... make it available on android as well to keep the phandroids/plebs happy ... for the cost of an osprey?


low volume, but low investment too. You could farm out to interested parties/authors (much like Opsrey), on a royalty basis..

[list_lurker]

opinion (or argument) based on ignorance

hello! - this is the internet

[vexillia]

opinion (or argument) based on ignorance

hello! - this is the internet

My point entirely!

[list_lurker]

There's also a danger of applying inappropriate standards of online behaviour. For instance, I read lots but comment infrequently but I know of other forums where traffic is dominated by simple, and essentially empty, signs of approval for original posts. This is just the Facebook "like behaviour" transferred to a forum without a "Like" function but doesn't seem to arise everywhere.

Absolutely, its the endorphin hit getting a confirmation of attraction. Tinder for toy soldiers

[nikgaukroger]

Perhaps its might be time to rethink the revenue model? I think that army lists and the like are the perfect avenue for small e-book type releases (with associated micro payments)...

Well I'd heartily agree, as would most people other than those who hold the rights to this ...

[list_lurker]

A long of software houses have had to rethink their strategies in the past 6-7 years. Revenue based on license sale and cyclic reinvention is a tough mindset to break. But we see it change .. the advent of free software with 'in app' purchases has defined this change in zeitgeist. Candy crush can't be wrong , can it?

[nikgaukroger]

A long of software houses have had to rethink their strategies in the past 6-7 years. Revenue based on license sale and cyclic reinvention is a tough mindset to break. But we see it change .. the advent of free software with 'in app' purchases has defined this change in zeitgeist. Candy crush can't be wrong , can it?

JD McBoss can give you a long lecture on why this isn't so in the wargames world