It's not generous, it's a transaction with mutual benefit. But yeah, I agree with the rest of your post. I assume all the white knights and the loudest critics, at the core of their motivation, share the same sentiment, namely that something they are heavily invested in is in danger to some extent. One half will protect it all at cost and against common sense if need be, and the other half will try to fix the issue even if that means they have to tear it all down in the process. Quite interesting to watch, actually.
There's valid points on both sides of the coin, but the way so much is going for aggressive or defensive postures isn't helping matters IMO. Screaming that one side is paranoid the other side is fanboying, all that jazz... It's not getting anywhere is it? The community ideally should try chill a little. These are as yet unconfirmed claims. Dismissing concerns as entitled behaviour or whatever, not helpful. Dismissing anything not negative as fanboying, not helpful. Fact is people have a right to be worried, and given that this remains speculation they also have a right to be sceptical. We've all put investment in the game. It's frankly abysmal any of us should have to defend ourselves on that point, which is all this seems to be heading down to. That said, CB has shown time and time again they've got communication issues, and perhaps more than anything else, that ideally needs some correction. If this is true, admit it... And perhaps be willing to backtrack or seek alternatives because it's already unpopular when it's just a rumour. If it isn't true, just say "this is not the correct information, please wait until Friday/next week for full details". Earn the trust and benefit of the doubt. And if making an error, acknowledge it rather than simply forcing it through. Look at Privateer Press. Their game and company suffered from bad calls in rules and manufacturing iirc, and to this day still have a shaky reputation. Their new KS is, so far, not quite doing as well as Defiance did, and PP used to seriously be mentioned as a possible 40k killer. Communities build these games, and only one company truly has the resources to recover quickly from errors in trust.
That's actually something i did not consider. As much as i love the concept of Warcor, that kind of system do lend itself to that sort of situations.
I am not angry, I feel great. I quit Infinity a couple years ago because I saw this coming. Because a thing is old, does not mean it is inevitably obsolete trash. In the case of the games industry, because a thing is tradition doesn't mean it isn't trash. Corvus Belli would be ill-advised to follow the model of Games Workshop. People are less willing to put up with fiat and usury from entertainment these days, because there is so much good entertainment available, and newcomers making their own entertainment offerings, and many ways to mod your entertainment yourself and ignore its creators. Throwing away old customers in favor of new ones is exactly the wrongheaded practice that is killing so many franchises these days. Even then, if your product is good, you can keep selling it with minimal (or no) updates. See Minecraft, Starcraft, Elder Scrolls, Star Wars: Empire At War. That's especially true if there's nothing like your product on the marker, and when I was a wargamer, boy was there nothing like Infinity on the market. I didn't want to play anything else! "It doesn't have anything like the ARO mechanic? Not interested, sorry man." There's a principle in sales called the "Long Tail". What it means is, if you graph all your products sold, you're going to find that the biggest spike on that curve is your main product (tickets, DVDs, starter packs, etc). But where the majority of your actual sales may actually be is that long tail on the curve of specialty items, niche items, exclusives, accessories, director's cuts, you name it. Those customers are not like the customers in your big spike. They are not easily acquired, and are very easily lost. I'm looking at the 2019 ITS player numbers, and the Tohaa players tie the number of Invincible Army and JSA players, and almost tie Varuna players. Not including Spiral Corps. That's pretty good, considering they stopped making Tohaa models a long time ago. Regarding other factions, why is it hard to get new buyers for your old merch? Or old buyers back in for your new merch? Do you know how many AWOL Neoterra players would have dusted off that faction again if good word of mouth spread? "Dude, you gotta come back. They dropped the basic Bolt profile down to 16 points. There's even a Sensor Light Shotgun Riotstopper filler profile for 13/0.5, and an AP Marksman for 17!" Yeah, you'd move some old merchandise, and new merchandise too. Is that suggestion balanced? Maybe not. That's not the point, though. The point is to keep entertaining your customers, and to not abandon and sink your product. And regarding Tohaa in particular, it's hard to sell new Tohaa models when you stop making new Tohaa models, and even harder when you discontinue existing Tohaa models. Isn't it? You can bang your head against the industry until you're numb to its usurious practices, or you can decide to stop being taken advantage of. I'd advise everyone who doesn't like what they hear on Friday to cancel their preorders and sell their models. No business deserves your unquestioning loyalty: they are not your family.
It is generous, i could instead buy video games, booze, other minis, books, drugs, a body pillow, etc. But no, i picked them over those other things, that's generous of me, and i'll keep doing it as long as they prove to be a more trustworthy and interesting option. And situations like this (no matter the outcome) erode that trust to varying degrees.
You said it yourself: it's not generosity but the fact that their value proposition to you is better/more interesting compared to other products, otherwise you wouldn't buy their miniatures in the first place. If you buy them despite liking other things more, that could be considered generous, I suppose, but I don't see that happening very often. Agreed 100%
I personnaly don't see any generosity in there either. You just happened to think that this game was the most cost-effective way to spend your money. If genuine generosity exists, it would be to think otherwise (i.e. Star Wars X-Wing being more deserving of your money) and invest into Infinity anyway. I honnestly even doubt this would be generosity, you'd just have bought something else alongside your minis, like the feeling of virtue for example. I see nothing but transactions everywhere. This, however, I completly go by. EDIT : @Knauf JINX !
I'll concede that it's a poor choice of word, my point is that if they want my money they have to dance for me (within reasonable limits of course)
You haven't access to the warcor subforum, I can tell you the shitstorm is there, because we warcor have nothing, zero information, like the rest of the community
It is kind of like Fight Club, we are not supposed to talk about it. Joking aside, I do not have any incentive to defend the company other than it is a game I like playing , so I want it do well despite decisions I disagree with, and temper that with voicing my dissent in a productive manner, and I believe this rumor has the potential to be a terrible decision, but we really have very limited information to go off of. Like will the profiles for those sectorials be ported over or dropped? If they will be, then what does that mean for Tohaa? I am not overly optimistic, but at this point hurling vitriol at the company and anyone who defends it is a pretty good way to get oneself ignored by both the company and the community, and when it becomes continued behavior even a reasonable criticism is likely to be written off as "oh, its that person again"
Well they sure have to give you something you see as valuable, no doubt. I however think that "customer is king" is a pretty wrong trading motto on both side, that doesn't actually benefits the people you'd think.
I completely agree with you, extreme reactions only result in turning oneself into a strawman for the guys on the other side who are just as unreasonable and comfort them in their position. Honestly my remark is not aimed at peoples (like you) who seem to have a nuanced and reasonable position, but those who just go "lol deal with it" with various kind of dismissive answers and other passive aggressive rants.
The funny thing is, CB could release a new profile every...year? For each faction? And periodic updates of existing sculpts. And I'd still get around to buying every faction. The game is *currently* that well balanced. New stuff at breakneck speed is not really something I need to enjoy the game.
Alright then, time to finally toss in my two cents right here. I work in a similar capacity of producing marketing and video content for another company. While I'm not ______'s equivalent to Boistra I'm one of the guys behind the camera. And Yeah, getting told to "replan the information cycle," can't really happen in response to a single tweet that likely either A: Got mentioned at a show, unofficial hearsay that might have possibly been a slip, or even broken an NDA, or B: Was just made up. Anyone can make the tweet that set off this, and the other threads that have taken over the news section this week. NDA's exist so that people can get information based off of the planned information cycle, so when it gets interrupted you can't reshuffle the schedule days before your content releases. Everything from the intros, to the script, to the editing of said videos takes time. Getting told "replan it, rumor came out." . CB likely doesn't have videos like this just sitting on their shelf until maybe a day or two before it releases at best in my experience in this sort of marketing environment. A lot of these Being Lied to threads have some serious grey area. Like people mentioned, the sectorals may not be showing up, but does that mean their models are gone? Who knows. They just may show up in vanilla, sort of like how people had to play TAK before it was a sectoral. My speculation is just as good as the speculation we've seen around here based off of the same tweet. "The armies" can mean their profiles, or their sectoral, or maybe just no longer being ITS valid (though that one is a stretch I'll admit) and that's before we play the telephone game. 3 days may be a lot of time if you're setting your army on fire as we speak. But it's still weeks before C1 releases, nonetheless N4.
It's still uncertain if it will be fully clear information. And Defiance late pledge closes in 8 days. Tick, tock.
Replanning isn't needed, just some kind of formal fifteen second statement to deny or downplay it. "calm yer tits, that's no quite true, wait for mair details, nae need for the radge" (CB has inexplicably moved to Glasgow in this scenario) There's also the fact that code one and N4 are getting confused already in no small part thanks to the rumours, so if they want to avoid further confusion, just throw out something.
That's it, with a living Army builder, all they really need to do to keep me interested is keep tweaking the balance. Instead of flooding Rammah with new units, why not improve the Zhayadan profile to be something that doesn't rely on a freak rules quirk to be interesting. Then maybe would not have to clear out Azrail and Djanbozan to make room for those literally whos in Rammah.
I had to furiously Google when Dragon Age Origins came out, but it misses this mark by just a couple months, so I'm safe. I don't know how I feel about lumping Cloud Imperium in there, the rest of those companies at least aren't literal ponzi schemes.
There is also the chance that they needed more time to put a bit more work on other aspects of the game (armies and sectorials with in production models), and decided that in order to facilitate this the sectorials that are currently on ice get cut from the process. With any luck will show up a few months down the road as additions to army when they've had the time to put some work into them, hopefully, I do want to try my hand at MRRF one day.
