IA will happen, it's simply a matter of when. CB disclosed earlier this year (CanCon, I think) that there will be five new sectorials this year, not including the NA2 (Druze, JSA, etc). It is extremely probable that IA will be one of them.
It's highly likely that there would have been sour/hard feelings no matter how they handled it, so they went about it in what they feel is the best manner possible.
Why take a risk? Why not introduce things that wargames have done for decades in the form of eras of play? BattleTech made tons of changes over its lifetime, but it never invalidated units. Rather it treated various eras like a historical wargame might treat early/mid/late-war WWII. I'm all for CB mixing things up, but permanently altering the current game to invalidate things is not a great way to go. Don't want to produce Exrah anymore? Great, create an era of play where Exrah are still legal, keep the profiles evergreen and move on. Ko Dali sepsitorized? Set an era for her inclusion in either Yu Jing or CA and move on. By actively erasing these old units, making them apocryphal and basically retconning as they go they actually rob the game of a proper history by pushing old stuff to the wayside and only developing the new. When this was just a handful of profiles, it sucked but we could move on. But if they do this with a whole sub-faction? Well, all bets are off. You don't need to go in to full retcon mode to have an exciting meta-plot going on, but forcing people to dance to the tune of the latest meta-plot is a great way to start splitting your playerbase and alienating people. For a company that makes a big stink about careful growth and risk-averse business decisions, they sure do seem to take more than an unusual amount of risk with the good will of their player base. And hey, they can do what they want, but the last boutique minis company that played fast and loose with their fans was Rackham, and I'd hate history to repeat itself because CB took their fans for granted and didn't listen to ardent criticism.
Like, I'm not even bothered by the fluff standpoint that's largely here nor there. If they had someone sane directing this release they'd acknowledge that effectively invalidating models for players is the biggest sin possible in table top gaming. It's just, you don't do this unless there's no alternative. You don't blindside players with it You don't refuse to communicate about it the players with it after it happens, to answer concerns You don't punish them without offering something else in return Somebody sane would've paired this release directly with a major release for the players affected. Somebody sane would've set this event up so IA and JSA release directly against each other, so it wouldn't come across as "haha sucked in you get nothing we don't care about you or your opinions." I'd be alot less pissed off about having to lose Aragoto, if I could directly replace them with brand new Liú Xīng. I'd still be annoyed, but with a nice distraction I'd be alot less annoyed. Somebody sane would've spoken directly to the playerbase, and told them that in return for losing models they were taking another pass on underplayed remaining models. Small things like taking a look at the fact with JSA departing thematically YJ is no longer on the top end of the CC spectrum, and decided that perhaps thematically paying the CC Tax on stuff like Zhanshi was no longer appropriate and altered them to closer fill the departing Keisotsu. Done things like increasing AVA on popular choices like Guilang to make up for other choices being lost. I'm annoyed I can't use my Aragoto or Oniwaban, but I'd be less annoyed if it meant I could get twice as many Guilang on the table. There's so many things they could've done to do this event right or at least better than the dumpster fire it's been, and yet they did absolutely everything wrong. That leaves such a sour taste.
Even just better communication with the playerbase would have probably eased it a bit. Instead it looks like they're trying to play things close to their chest to avoid criticism.
If they think that's actually a viable strategy I feel like nobody in the entire company is under the age of 55, and whoever is in charge of marketing needs a course on how things (like the internet) actually work so he/she can actually do their job right.
In both of those situations, they made a change to the game, both on the table and in the fluff, and explained what happened. Nothing was "robbed" from the history of the game. Ko Dali (like Bit & Kiss) was taken by the EI, while the Concordat got to big for their britches and were eradicated. That's moving the story and the game forward, not retconning.
In your and other people's opinions, perhaps, but not in the opinion of the company or of other players, so... again, not everyone was going to be pleased, there was guaranteed anger, so they went about it the way that seemed best to them.
No, this actually was the worst way they could've done this outside of traveling to your house and throwing your models in the bin and shouting "YOU GET NOTHING. GOOD DAY, SIR." and it's pretty damn obvious this is exactly what the result of their bungling was going to be. I've already pointed out a few brief ways they could've done this event and mitigated the pissed off player base part of how they've run this dumpster fire and still achieved the desired result of a JSA/YJ split.
Sure, if you assume their desired way to run their game is to piss off the community for no reason other than they were too lazy to run the event to offset obvious and warranted backlash that was going to come from the playerbase affected badly by these changes... yes? Nobody is disagreeing with it's their property. What's baffling is about how they're happy to treat it in such a mediocre fashion when they could get the same desired results minus a good portion of playerbase bitching at them for various reason by simply offering some give and take rather than just take.
In your opinion, no more, no less. You're up in arms and enraged. Bully for you. I'm looking forward to the book, the box, and the chance to get into JSA now that they're free of YJ, as are (at last count) seven more of my local players, to the extent that we're already planning our combined order to get our stuff. So, who should CB cater more to, someone throwing their toys out of the pram or someone excited to get into a new army?
Cool. Take it elsewhere if you like. If you're American, it's still a free country. If not, I can't speak for it then. That's the beauty of it.
I just want that awesome SPEC-OPs model. And maybe Celty, but I don't think she belongs in the game. Durarara!! is an awesome anime.
They should cater to both, rather than either side. As I said, you could do the exact same stunt, but offer something in return to the affected vanilla players as a sorry you're getting screwed. Like I've already pointed out multiple times. If you take stuff like Aragoto off Vanilla, but turn around and say sorry about that, have AVA4 Guilang, Mr. Vanilla isn't going to be nearly as angry because he's busy seeing what AVA4 Guilang do. You'll probably find in fact some of Mr Vanilla's friends say fuck it, I like it better this way anyway take my Aragoto thank you CB. Do you honestly think this is something that is so hard to do? It's not. They already did it with Toni. Toni dead! Pan-O players sadface! Tikbalang buffed in return! Pan-O players still sad, but ok with sad. Give and take, you see how it's helpful? On the other hand if you play Vanilla this has only been take.
Introducing some kind of past/historical provision into rules would be nice, actually. Trouble is, ITS balancing. Then again, that same problem applies to the full-split notion too, doesn't it? But anyway, some kind of guidelines for timeline-based things. Like Exrah still being around in games set before X date, certain weapons only becoming available on Y date, major events that happened on Z date, etc. However, that's a pretty big and involved setup, so even if it's non-ITS legal and all just pen-and-paper lists/Army autoflags it invalid for ITS, it's not exactly something quick to set up.
Meh. I think that playing in different eras and trying to make sure that the lists are compatible for those eras sounds too much like a Flames of War headache.
