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Is CB trolling?

Discussion in 'Yu Jing' started by Zewrath, May 11, 2019.

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  1. atomicfryingpan

    atomicfryingpan Well-Known Member

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    @Section9 While idk if China certainly wrote the book on dealing with armed insurrection, for the sake of arguement let's go with it. Maybe that attitude could have caused them to grow lax or lazy and create some blind spots that were able to be exploited. Maybe they felt too comfortable since they wrote the book on how to deal with it so no one will get past them.

    Also can we really say that because a nation was good at something they will always be good at it?
    There is a lot of time for things to change and happen between now and the infinity universe. Heck how many people thought Trump would never be elected and how that's been changing some of our cultural and societal norms.
     
  2. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    If you're a good writer you will realise that if you draw cultural comparisons by basing it off a real entity that to a reader they will fill in the blanks by looking at what you based it off, so when you make changes you need to show these differences to the reader. Between the effectiveness of the ISS and Yanjing in what we are told about them being very good at their jobs, and their real world cultural comparisons it's a fair expectation that the reader will assume that they are actually pretty good at their jobs

    So if that was Gutier's intent that they are no longer that good at being spies and counter insurgents, and he actually was as good at writing as he believes the whole Uprising arc would've been lead into with a degradation in the effectiveness of the Yanjing and the ISS. Whether through nepotism, corruption, lack of practice etc that these agencies have indeed become lax and a shadow of their former selves and that they are not, as we are last told, some of the most effective and ruthless agencies in their fields out there the whole story arc requires less handwaving and wizard did it suspensions of disbelief.

    But that wasn't done so we instead of having one flowing coherent story piece, we have two very jarring different realities to try and resolve.
     
  3. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    I said that China had literally written the book on how to win a popular uprising. It's in Mao "little red book", Chapter 8 IIRC.

    There's also a publication from the Marines, FMFRP 12-18, that is purely how the Maoist Insurgency works, but it's a translation of Mao's writings found in the Little Red Book.

    If you know how to win at an insurgency, you by definition know how to at least prevent the insurgents from winning.

    The Party in YJ is still the Chinese Communist Party of today, there are comments about how there are pretty substantial ideological debates between sides of the Party in the N3 Core Book, and one of those sides is the old Communists/Socialists (whatever you want to call them). So people should still be reading Mao's Little Red Book to let them get ahead in the Party.

    And yet everything YJ did could have been purpose-made to let the Uprising succeed. It certainly reads as thought it could have been done intentionally to allow the Uprising to succeed...

    The Yanjing is an intelligence agency so competent, so successful, that it forced PanO to completely scrap their old intelligence agencies and create the Hexahedron in response.

    This super-competent intelligence agency somehow did not track a single individual who was the sole person meeting with all the various mercenary groups to arrange their support of DaiNippon during the Uprising.


    Part of the Imperial Service is the Kanren Counterinsurgency group, whose fluff reads:
    The supercompetent Kanren didn't see the pushing of Nipponese faith in the Japanese Emperor as being a potential threat, didn't chase down the identity of the leaders and financiers and support networks and allies.

    The behavior of the Yanjing and Kanren during the Uprising does not match their fluff.
     
  4. Benkei

    Benkei Well-Known Member

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    Yes, but in a coherent setting that kind of things get explained, they don't just happen out of the blue nor are they left for the readers to maybe imagine.
     
  5. xagroth

    xagroth Mournful Echo

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    Look at it from this angle: The first words written of Uprising were "And so JSA got independient from YJ". Everything else was written to reach such end.
    ClumsilLy.

    Also, a way to justify the "everyone wants to vote against YJ" would have been to start by placing YJ as the #1 human faction "a few months before Uprising" (and being a point projected and predicted beforehand by intelligence services), so Haqquislam and Nomads allied with PanO to vote against YJ to ensure that YJ would be "reduced" again to a position in which their allegiance was needed.
    Again, a way not taken, because the focus was on the end, and not on the way to reach there.
     
  6. Benkei

    Benkei Well-Known Member

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    It is kinda the GoT finale, only even worse
     
  7. SKOZZOKONZ

    SKOZZOKONZ Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, people need to realise that these are not good faith arguments and stop responding to them. Arguing in good faith with someone who isn't is a waste of time and diverts away from the actual critiques.
     
    Ten Thousand Arrows likes this.
  8. atomicfryingpan

    atomicfryingpan Well-Known Member

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    @Section9
    @Triumph
    @Benkei

    Ok I think I see your guys arguement better. Basically, and I may be over simplifying it, since infinity has a lot of cultural callbacks and influences from the past. Because of this people will fill in the gaps of the story, timeline, and details with ideas/draw conclusions that they know especially since they are dealing with a familiar entity, China.

    I do wonder how much of this is the fault that yu jing is the closest to a real life entity. Anyway I can definitely see where you're coming from with that. I definitely would concede that those are fair arguements to make.

    I think maybe the biggest difference between us on the subject is I'm probably one of those people who doesn't draw that many conclusions or tend to fill in so many blanks myself. Admittedly my Chinese historical knowledge is quite poor. If you quizzed me on it my answers would be a mix of dynasty warriors 3, mulan, and crouching tiger hidden dragon lol. I tend to just take the stuff at face value and I look at infinity as a whole like a big cyberpunkish anime. Basically if I think it would make sense in an anime I just pretty much go with it. When things do come up that contradict things in the fluff like the examples you guys used I tend to just go ok well that happened and most likely the stuff said about that group was pro propaganda.

    I know alot of people aren't fans of the everything is propaganda articles style of writing, I definitely find some flaws in it and it can become hard to read very quickly. But I assume or atleast wonder if it's done in that style to allow gutier to sort of quickly handwave away and contradictions and stuff like that in the overall narrative? I could see that being done to sort of quickly put the narrative where they want it without having to worry so much about the consistency. Basically like things are true until they are proven otherwise or like what all is said things in the fluff may not be the complete factual truth. Hard to exactly put that last bit into words but I hope you see what I'm getting at. Also don't get me wrong I'm not saying this the greatest work of fiction or pinnacle of writing styles. This is basically how I rationalize the stuff and can enjoy it.

    The thing I wish CB would do is actually hire some authors to write actual stories that follow characters and aren't written in the propaganda style articles. This way we could say ok this concretely happened this way. I think the uprising stuff would be a great setting for a couple books and way to really flesh out stuff that happened and it would be cool to meet characters on all sides of it and get really invested in them. That way they could expand the fluff and it would be a way to fix the uprising stuff in some peoples eyes.
     
  9. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    In their defense they did that with Outrage and that was actually awesome, and they're doing it again with another unnamed manga project so we've got that to look forward to.

    If I had to bet on it my money is this manga is gonna be tied into Defiance which could be pretty cool.
     
    chaos11, Section9 and atomicfryingpan like this.
  10. atomicfryingpan

    atomicfryingpan Well-Known Member

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    I'm glad that outrage was successful enough that they decided to do another manga. Hopefully it sends the message that people are genuinely interested in quality fluff content and world building. I especially liked the characters from outrage and regularly try to put them on the table. Though for my personal tastea I'd love to see them do a novel. I generally prefer those over a manga. Either way I want more high quality fluff stuff. I think though for the higher quality stuff CB has to bring in outside help though.
     
  11. Benkei

    Benkei Well-Known Member

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    I think the main problem is Gutier does not want other people doing quality things (read: better than his) with his world
     
  12. DaRedOne

    DaRedOne Morat Warrior Philosopher
    Warcor

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    I don't think that's a fair thing to say. We can all tell that CB (not just Gutier) really loves this setting and even though they have some obvious darlings they have an overall care that is very nice to see from a games company. That they would be worried about putting this setting they obviously love into the hands of someone else is something only natural.

    Focusing on the positive aspects, like the fact some people liked Outrage (I didn't) or the Modiphius stuff (I did) is way better than these stealth insults to CB's writing ability. Even though I've said myself I think Modiphius presented the lore better than CB itself, I don't think they can just start throwing their IP around like a certain distinguished competitor does.
     
  13. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Thing is, the Yanjing being hypercompetent is game lore, from the Hexahedron fluff.

    That is PanO saying that the Yanjing is scary-competent!


    That would be really good.



    Yeah, CB needs to keep a tighter control over their IP than, say, GW.

    But Privateer Press did manage to get a bunch of writers involved in the setting, including Larry Correia. Actually, I think it was Larry who got the book-writing project going, when he stepped up on the PP forum and laid out what you needed to write a good book. Nothing quite like a guy with multiple NYTimes bestsellers under his belt stepping up and saying this is what you need.

    Though I'm not sure Larry's writing style would quite work for Infinity, he's a bit over the top (end-of-the-world scenarios in every book) and writes main characters that are pretty much him, personally. 6'5" and stupid strong. Owen Pitt, from MHI, really is him, Larry was an accountant back in the day!

    I'd want people like Giannis Milogiannis (or Victor Santos & Kenny Ruiz) writing. They seem to have the right idea. It'd be awesome if we could get Masamune Shirow, but that's unlikely. Junichi Fujisaku would also work (he wrote several of the screenplays for Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex, and a trio of books)
     
  14. psychoticstorm

    psychoticstorm Aleph's rogue child
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    I think the whole WW2 can be summed up as many real life stories of intelligence agencies failing miserably despite their "stellar reputation", but even going further up or down the history lane you can find examples.

    Look we have been through this many times, some never liked uprising each for their own reason and have head-cannoned that it should have never happened any universe explanation of why it could and has happened is countered with a "this would not happen in real life" or why their own perception of cannon would not allow it.

    What has been asked several times is to stop insulting staff members and people you do not agree with and it has not been honoured, on top of that I would appreciate current polarised political speech to be left out of the forum.
     
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  15. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    No. The problem is that it contradicts earlier fluff, and it contradicts earlier fluff in a way that makes Yu Jing look inferior on all fronts.
     
  16. psychoticstorm

    psychoticstorm Aleph's rogue child
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    I disagree with this assumption, it does not contradict earlier fluff and does not place Yu Jing in an "inferior place" yes, they have been bruised, mostly in their pride and they proved they trusted the Japanese more than they should (and probably got complaisant in their internal affairs).

    Nothing the new nation of Japan took was critical or irreplaceable and PanO could not make use of a full civil war to make a move to make any territorial or political gains over Yu Jing.
     
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  17. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    The books explain that Yu Jing is the opposite of complacent - it is very focused on dethroning PanO. Yet when they make a mistake you say "Oh, they must have been complacent." You're using circular reasoning to justify what happened.

    The military emplacements on Paradiso were critical and/or irreplaceable, and PanO aided and abetted sedition in that context. It's been established that PanO can attack Yu Jing and O-12 will support them - why isn't PanO attacking and taking territory further? There's no good reason not to.
     
  18. psychoticstorm

    psychoticstorm Aleph's rogue child
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    Complacent in the loyalty of their internal population it is clear that even with the (reluctant) second class citizen status Yu Jing gave more than enouph privilege and more importantly autonomy (both civil and military) to the Japanese, probably in order to entice them to clean up their house, I do not think they ever questioned their loyalty to the Yu Jing and considered the terrorist groups fringe elements.

    The military emplacements on paradiso were front-line defence fortresses, so the JSA has them as they always had and they must defend them as they always had, PanO can attack Yu Jing and I must remind again that the second Neo Colonial war ended with the PanOceanian fleet bombing both capital planets of Yu Jing, the fact that O-12 restored them to the pre first Neo Colonial wars territories shows how much more "favoured" Yu Jing are in the eyes of Consilium (who needs more power to PanO anyway?).

    Uprising showed Yu Jing cannot have a civil war and risk facing an open war with PanO, but also that PanO could not gain a military advantage over a Yu Jing military even with a civil war ongoing, sure they prevented forces from crossing international waters but it was shown that even with such harassment the Yu Jing army is strong enouph to wipe out the JSA who were saved purely by political means.

    the most worrisome part of uprising is for PanO and how easy is their population manipulated by Maya channels if I was the PanO government or the hexahedron I would worry a lot.
     
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  19. A Mão Esquerda

    A Mão Esquerda Deputy Hexahedron Officer

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    It’s also important to note that beyond the support Greater Japan had on the battlefield, they had as much in the corridors of the Oberhaus and on Concilium in general. As the NeoColonial Wars showed, even if there’s the strength on the battlefield, if it’s not matched at the negotiating table it’s moot. The kuge spent years setting the ground work to survive long enough on the battlefield for their allies to make things happen at the table.
     
  20. Dragonstriker

    Dragonstriker That wizard came from the moon.

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    Like when you said that it's not Gutier's fault that readers are too stupid to understand the brilliance of his writing?
    I assure you, that IS an insult, and not a subtle one.
     
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