With the release of ITS Season 11, a number of missions have been removed. It seems they wanted to slim down the amount of missions to an even 20. As part of this the following missions have been retired and won't be playable in tournaments this season (and perhaps ever again). Comms Center Deadly Dance Engineering Deck Frostbyte The Grid Rescue Tic-Tac-Toe While I'm not particularly shocked about the removal of some of these missions, I am pretty surprised and disappointed that they chose to get rid of Frostbyte. As the mission was brand new, unique and was very popular in my region. I also think they could have kept 1 of the 9 objective missions, and thought engineering deck was quite enjoyable as well. What are other peoples thoughts on this? what mission are you going to miss most? What other missions do you think they should have purged instead?
eh, this one wasnt very popular in my area – I could take or leave it I liked this one – I liked any of the missions that incentivized TAGs. It was also in the game since ive been playing and im a little sad to see it go, even if it was annoying I like Armory missions but this was the worst of them. oh well! Kind of unpopular in my area – didn't really like it all that much so I could take or leave it. I think I played this like once back in ITS 8 or 9 and hated it. Great! hate this mission I liked this one and will be sad to see it go – button heavy missions are always fun
I miss engineering deck and frostbite. Although engineering deck could be a little less about that 2nd turn bum rush, many missions could be.
Bear in mind that you can include one custom mission in a tournament, so you can still include the old missions if you want.
I would have thought more missions to choose from means more people able to pick a list of missions that they like, given how subjective things seem to be.
I find the fact that Decapitation and Looting & Sabotaging made it in over Frostbyte especially egregious. Frostbyte takes the best aspects of those missions and combines them to make something that, unlike the two previously mentioned scenarios, isn't complete garbage .
This is probably the most irritating thing: why remove missions if one is still allowed to play one of them in tournaments? I would have preffered a larger catalogue of missions to choose from or the option for more custom scenarios. Choice is (almost) always a nice thing for a TO. Anyways: I really miss missions like Emergency Transmission, Antenna Field, or Nimbus Zone or Coffin Raiders from earlier days. Frostbyte was somewhat different and I liked it a lot...I even enjoyed Rescue though this was probably one of the more tricky mission to include into tournaments, especially larger ones, due to the need for distinguishable civilians. I like to encourage people to play older or alternative missions but most people pretty much stick to the current ITS document, which is a pity. There are a lot of very interesting scenarios out there, especially assymetrical ones like Dire Foes: Flee or Die, some of the Campaign Scenarios and especially the Fat Yuan Yuan mission set...I just love them. Sorry to say that, but compared to these fun missions, ITS11 feels a little dull to me.
Deadly Dance: I liked this mission very much. And used a house rule in casual games and at tournaments that in the first round you roll for the first quadrant and the other quadrant is the mirrored one. Frostbyte: A very popular mission over hear and shouldn't have gone. Tic-Tac-Toe: Very different and I liked it. Exactly this. It would have been better to create a database of missions with the Comlog programmer to have a tool just like army. And from that on a suggestion @Koni @HellLois: Use both these tools to be able to update profiles and tweak missions on a regular basis if needed. Maybe like the FAQ every three months.
There are only two possible explanations I can think of at the moment: 1. The looked at what missions were actually being selected at tournaments and cut those on the bottom end. Seems this might be unlikely, though, as I hear Highly Classified is near universally hated in the tournament scene (I personally like the list-building challenge, but I can see how hard it would be to make a tournament with that as one of the missions). 2. They wanted an even 20 so people could roll a die they already have for random missions... instead of hitting up an RNG... or something...?
Frostbyte was not my favorite since i lost it every time i played it XD the mission off are not that cool. I was expecting more NEW missions, i hope the campaing brings more missions.
It *is* overwhelmingly hated but the calculus changes when someone is picking missions for a tournament they're not playing in... some TOs are more sadistic than others.
I see the combined, direct and joint operations clasification being removed, i liked that since it divides between type of tournaments for more variety.
that removal was already in ITS 10. I liked the classification but some TO were running missions disregarding it (and then going on to tell us they have trouble setting up the tournament in OTM therefore we won't be getting any ITS points or official tournament ranking). If TO don't respect the division then I agree with CB decision to remove it altogeter.
The classifications were removed after HellLois asked the community if they should be kept and the majority replied that they'd rather have them removed.
Our community is sad about the Frostbyte removing, it was very popular and I have a big amount of beautiful heating modules for ITS tournaments...
