I think a big issue is how political and polarized the internet discussion has become in conjunction with an international poster base from various countries, cultures and backgrounds that make a fine mess in finding what a line is, let alone where that line is. I cannot stress how oblivious many, if not most, posters are for their behavior, it is rare I get a reply from a warning or a PM that acknowledges a poster went too far or they were deliberately winding up a particularly prone to be winded up individual, I usually find a puzzled individual who wonders why his postings are considered problematic, or does not consider their postings out of bounds because those they directed them against are not in their opinion good people! A big component to this is in my opinion the cultural heterogeneity a multi national forum has and how things are culturally offensive and not offensive in each country, as well as a generational gap, were older people and younger people do not agree on language norms (and you do not really need a big age gap for that). As far as feedback goes, to be frank, most people rarely if ever know how to give feedback, they may know what they want, they usually do now know how to express what they want, but usually people instinctively know what they feel is wrong but usually identify the wrong things as the issue, gathering feedback is a great filtration process with a lot of hidden variables behind it. The most common answer to the usual "savior solution post" would be "we tried that already in playtesting and it creates these issues".
As far as the OP question goes, in an attempt to bring the topic back, there is no end to the amount of side games the Infinity IP can support, the wealth of background and worldbuilding can support many different games, game types and player bases that have nothing with each other. Why not a 18XX game game centered on PanO mining corporations stock market? a hidden move game about TO infiltrators going for a secure server, a roll and write game about finding exploitable asteroids in Humans Edge, a tile building game exploring some unexplored Ariadna territory, hell you could make a "love letter" game set up as Shasvastii Speculos trying to assassinate an O-12 high official. Side games are an interesting way to explore and expand more of Infinity's IP and give the players more background wealth, it is also a way to attract more player groups. While I am at it I would love to see the old great wars like the neocolonial wars be explored in such a way.
wheres my dogbowl game? been waiting since first edition (where the only lore for it was "no blood, no fault") for that. lol XD
I'm waiting for a Fantasy skirmish game from CB at some point. a fantasy setting would be amazing and the infinity rules could work in a swords and sorcery setting just as well as in a sci-fi setting. large scale wargame game in the infinity universe would be nice as well with more toys that don't fit the skirmish settings like tanks gunships bigger squads and maybe a space battle game too at some point
The creator of the Dogbowl game made it into a full fledged cyberpunk rugby game called Takkure. It had a Kickstarter last year.
@psychoticstorm side games are not an issue. But Infinity profiles that come from side games can be a problem. For example, CB makes a dog bowl side game with plenty of dog warrior characters, cool. But then they are added in to infinity, and for example Ariadna with already 3 dog types and the bear pode suddenly receives 3 more character dogs, 2 of those are redundant, useless or don't fit in the gameplay of the army, and the last one is a straight upgrade to all the already existing ones, so players only pick that new one for the rest of N4. Ok so that is an issue and a valid criticism, not just random forum hate. And the problem can get worse when for no good lore reason many armies start to receive those dog warrior profiles. Like panoceania, O12, aleph, JSA or other Na2 armies. Those armies receiving the new dog warrior profiles affect the gameplay and infinity as a game gets worse, and it becomes apparent that the reason to add them to so many armies is to make the side game more attractive to potential consumers, and also to incentive those side gamers to jump in to infinity. It's a legitimate marketing tactic, but when it's not well executed, it can affect the game negatively in many ways. Elite non camo heavy armies have access to the libertos for no good reason. Sometimes aristeia characters just don't fit at all. Long arms are present outside of tohaa armies for no good reason, Dart was basically the best skirmisher of the game and obviously better than a Naga. Wild bill doesn't fit that well in to USARF. Cadin was added to TAK just because TAK was the new product even if he didn't fit at all (and then removed thankfully) Overall it just doesn't look clean, they are small off details that you wouldn't expect from infinity. At least from the infinity of some years ago.
I am mainly okay with the side games - in fact I like Aristeia a lot, but do not have much time to play it. Rules wise is has a lot in common with Krosmaster Arenea, wich is a lot of fun and is very tactical. Defiance was more or less a cover to sell a bunch of minis. I am not so found with it. I´ve played a little Zombicied in Space and it was okay, I can not say much for the depth of Defiance. In my local community lots of people backed it because of the minis und some actualy play it. I quit the KS because I am not interested in Shas (I have enough factions). Some minis though I like a lot, like Trisha and (especialy) her Bot. Sadly she is already overshadowed by Pervati. And here some problems start. Like Zewrath quoted earlier, some side game chars are nearly "must haves" und others are just merely fillers, that you play only becaue you like them from the look or otherwise. In genreal I don´t like how many chars are in the game already. Its a flood. Even fromt the N4 side (born through the "need" of C1 I guess). I like Okatavia a lot (I even consider to buy the regular one also, because I like her look) but rules wise she is too expensive for what she does. If she were linkable in WB, she would shine in a different light. Aida for example is a balanced char. She has her use and brings something unique without beeing a must take. And she has cool fluff. Le Muert the half Tohaa is good, but I don´t like him. He is ugly. Lunah is cool and of good use. And so on. Fact is, whe have so many and from the main game I feel there is a spam of 30-40 pts chars in the last time. For my taste way to much chars. From the ITS troops I see many people like Krakot and Libertos are a bit over the top in use/cost. AHBs are okay. For me they are piece of the game fluff. Overall I can live with all the extra stuff but I realy would like to see more focus on the main troops. The Kaldström sectorials are still waiting for unreleased troops and the sectorials before them lack some load outs. So I would like to see that they take more care in balancing the extra stuff and set focus on the main game. TAG raid could be fun, but it lacks the "oh I want this so bad" feeling. With the adaption of cheap TAGs there can be a lot of OP happen. And with Vostok beeing a thing, I am excited for REM Race next year (see Crimson Stone Holo Adds) with even more powerful REMs ;-)
I largely agree with the OP's assessment and I sincerely hope I won't see mining TAGs running around in half my games because they turn out to be highly optimized light TAGs. Pruning army rosters by removing non faction specific mercenaries and named upgrades to existing units would be the first thing I'd tackle if tasked with improving internal and external balance in N4. Problem is CB is unlikely to commit to this, as cross compatibility with their main product is a tangible if not important value proposition for their side game miniatures. The best compromise I can imagine off the top of my head is to make this restriction only for ITS and have Code One or another in between format allowing these non-standard units.
Some side games are good. Aristeia is what I like. Of course such projects got some time from CB, but I don’t think some free time would solve all the problems with Infinity. So, it is good, that there are other tries to make new things. Makes world of the game wider. The good thing is, some games are one-time releases. (I mean Defiance) and they would not get more time of the company. For me there is a problem not in new things, but in old things, that were discontinued. So, there is a feeling, that there are lots of choices which faction to play, but there are only illusion of choice. New player would not like to hear “Oh, you can go this guys by proxy.” (And that was a real reason, for two people play something other. That’s sad for a small community. And for me too, but I am still waiting for some releases I would like to play.) BUT !!! That’s another story. So, I think, there is no problem in new side games. CB are working with them burning N3 and N4. (And here you’ve got variety of opinions. I am very casual Infinity player, and here is my simple view =)
The IP can support a lot of games- this style of setting isn't common and there's a lot to explore. But the Infinity core game can't take much more of this crazy crossover stuff; the feel of the product is being rapidly altered by the deluge of polar-opposite tone Characters being crammed in. I bet a lot of people haven't seen a match without at least one Aristo in their last dozen games. There's also a lack of support for non-ITS play which seems to be causing an exodus of players in it for the fluff and fun (just look at how much rarer fanfics and non-tournament game coverage are on this forum since mid-2019), which I at least feel would be a better target for effort than niche side-games dragging down the main brand.
How is that a good thing? Being a one-time KS exclusive thing and lack of time they put in it are probably the main reasons Defiance is not as good as it could be. Pretty sure it could be Aristeia equivalent with infinity models (i.e they would only need to add an arena and cards for already existing units).
All it means is that one of these editions, CB will have to deal with the proliferation of profiles, presumably through some sort of shared AVA system. But that's been something that's been a creeping necessity since before the side games. It started with Dire Foes, and whatever special characters got made up for various events.
It does seem like it would quell a good deal of the general community unrest if CB focused on creating at least an Action Pack for each playable sectorial. That creates a bare bones playable army for each sectorial. That would resolve the issue of, “yeah, you can play them, buuuuut they don’t have any models.” It’s a lot easier to explain the CB hasn’t totally abandoned the faction and it’s also easier to say, this is the base army. If you want to expand, these are easy proxies over here. This comes back to one of my personal observations. It feels like CB’s growth in demand outstripped it’s ability to provide a functional (understandable) supply chain to distributors. That’s why I think C1 was a great idea. More effort put that direction would probably show good returns. It would be great to say to a C1 player, “Ok, you like the game eh? You want to move into N4? Great! Here are all of the sectorials and conveniently, EVERY one of them has an Action Pack to make it super easy to start.” Yes, I already have all the models in the ranges I like. Yes, it would mean I’d go almost a year without getting anything new, but I would love it if CB dropped everything else knocked that out. At this point I think I’m rambling so I’m done.
I stopped recommending Infinity because my old arguments for it became obsolete one by one. All the armies have current rules/no codex creep? Not since official staggered updates and since I realized new factions had lists already designed (and costed) for next edition. All the armies are playable? Technically yes, but good luck starting an Acontecimento or Merovingia army nowadays. Hell, I can't even find Sukeuls nor Gorgos for sale. It's not your list, it's you? Growing less and less true. You only need 10 minis to start and can buy stuff piecemeal so it's cheap? Not since everything got bundled or boxed. There are great 2-player starter boxes with an awesome tutorial campaign? Sure, but then you have to mention that only one of them is sold at any given time and if you find the older ones still for sale, only the previous one has current rules. And so on. I mean, Infinity is still a good game and I'm not gonna sell everything I have nor melt my minis in outrage, but it's gotten harder to recommend. And it's not like in the 2000s when GW was completely retarded and the only other competition was niche Warmachine. There's lots of games nowadays. You want fantasy, cyberpunk, alt-history, weird stuff, it's hard to spit without hitting a game maker, many of whom high-quality. This is no time to rest on your laurels.
