[April], come she will...

But that's something that the players can decide for themselves. As example, me and a buddy still play that old LoTR sbg from GW (one of their best game systems IMO) for super relaxed games. We just decide which era we're setting it in before we choose lists. Removing access to models that players have paid for (and often lovingly painted) is a bit of a kick in the teeth.

 

'Yu Jing doesnt sell well, so we'll split off the one part that does. and toss the rest' strikes me as both very pessimistic AND terrifying in that I can't dismiss it out of hand.

I sure hope not, it doesnt feel like thats how things have gone, Yu Jing (well, specifically ISS) has gotten many releases over the past couple of years, but new product isn't evidence unless we see the sales figures... positive take is thats because they sell and more are being put out to meet demand, negative I guess that they were pre-planned and/or kept being pushed out in hopes it'd reverse a downward spiral?

Perhaps its a perspective worth adopting until next week, though... it means worst case being right (with the mournful smugness that would provide), and in the event its wrong whatever the actual truth is is going to seem so much better by comparison!

 

And then you walk into a tournament where you find Boromir and Smaug vs Frodo and The Night King

 

Although I'm not sure that specific combination is possible, that's fine for competitive tournaments. Build your best list, play to win, some people prioritise gameplay over lore. If you don't like it, that's fine: play in store tournaments that are lore friendly instead. Or just take your themed list to a tournament anyway. Just because I personally don't like something doesn't mean it should be taken away from people who do like it.

 

Both armies will eventually some day be redesigned cause they are not appealing to the crowd right now. Non-humanoids already had a hard time selling. Then they shipped off the Exrah (who had mold issues as well) and Shas got fridged in favor of a more humanoid CA sectorial that they anticipated would sell better. They were right in their anticipation.

There was no doubt USAriadna would be a success given how well they were received in the seminars over at the States before their release. So the best financial decision was to shaft the least popular of the Ariadna bunch.

Now I am not even angry about what they did here in YJ's case or the cases before. They need to make money, it's as simple as that. I don't see why stating the obvious and linking their decisions to profit oriented views is even a bad thing. YJ had their chance and failed to reach the mark. JSA have performed well with little to no new release so they are the better choice to push forward.

CB's actions and decisions themselves. They are currently pushing JSA for this very reason.

Also read what you said,

The thing is, they haven't said anything. They haven't communicated cause its nothing pretty. They ain't gonna go on BoW and say the last two year's YJ releases didn't meet our expectation of profit while even old Neko is selling pretty well compared to our investment in JSA. So yeah it's time to focus on success rather than trying to sell what hasn't sold upto expectation.

I said,

They are doing it now. I said they pushed Yu Jing hard for a couple of years without good enough result. Now they have shifted their attention to the more lucrative JSA. Instead of being fixed on me saying "comparative neglect" (which is happening now, not something that has happened before. Also compared to JSA unless it wasn't obvious enough) you would be more on the mark if you fixed on me saying "failure".[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

 

So if Yu Jing (non-japanese) were selling so poorly they wouldnt split JSA off in a rebellion faction. They probably would have done a coup d'etat style story. Making ISS and any additional non-japanese sectorials the less played, less supported subset. To me, what they have done is set things up so JSA can be developed on its own in the direction the game is developed and how sales go. This free CB up to then work on making the rest of Yu Jing more "attractive" based on its own game development and sales (attractive in this case is assuming all this is stimulated by less than desired Vanilla Yu Jing sales).

I don't see this as Yu Jing is selling poorly. I think they are trying to sell the JSA even more because those sales are very high compared to Vanilla Yu Jing. But they also want to boost sales of Vanilla (I don't think they are anywhere near bad enough for CB to consider dropping them) because they are a business, so who doesn't want to sell more product. So if that means splitting them to improve both, then that makes business sense to me.

 

So honestly the best analogy I can think of right now is when playing BlackJack you can split doubles. But in this case CB is sort of counting cards. So they are delt two Ace cards. CB splits them the first ace which will be JSA they know has a 98% of paying off hitting 21 on the next card. Sweet who wouldnt do that. Then on the second Ace card is Vanilla well they know their chances of beating the dealer or lower but hey the already have a winning hand why not play that one as well? Hence the split.

 

Completely this. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough but YJ definitely aren't selling so poorly that they would be discontinued or anything. But JSA would now have even better sales and popularity. While CB can work on making rest of YJ more attractive. It's similar to how they will work on FRRM and Shas but without completely freezing the line.

With that said YJ didn't do as expected with the chance they got in last couple of years and it's time the popular guys get more attention. This isn't a pretty reason that can be directly communicated. But it's a rational decision based on the goal of every business - making more profit.

 

So watching todays BoW video. Guess there's Magic in the infinity universe now.

 

It's magic you know
Never believe it's not so
It's magic you know
Never believe it's not so
Never been awake
Never seen a day break
Leaning on my pillow in the morning
Lazy day in bed music in my head
Crazy music playing in the morning light
It's magic you know
Never believe it's not so
It's magic you know
Never believe it's not so
I love my sunny day
Dream of far away
Dreaming on my pillow in the morning
Never been awake
Never seen a day break
Leaning on…

 

For people that don't want to watch the video there's a Chinese Wizard (Lo Pan inspiration without being a direct copy unlike other recent things) that uses magic. Mini is cool, he's got souls swirling around him (haven't seen a screen cap that's not on facebook so I don't have one to share as I don't care to host it and hate the forums image uploader)

 

Rant on.

@kepkeilen :

1) Your replies continue to imply that financial considerations are the principle driver of all of CB's decision-making where there is no evidence--none--that that's the case. I'm not so deluded as to believe that it's not a factor, but you've yet to adduce any evidence that it's overriding other considerations such as customer satisfaction, game balance, etc.

CB told us they wanted to redesign SEF and MRRF, they never said "this shit isn't selling so we're going to yank it." You're right that they said they were also going to redesign the Shasvastii sculpts for future releases to make them more appealing to players, but what you fail to note is that they could have done that without redesigning the whole SEF sectorial. CB's decision to put in time and effort toward creating a new and unique sectorial suggests, contra your naysaying, that they actually care about their game design and player experience, not just minting some pretty new minis to push on their customers.

2) You are putting the cart before the horse with USARF. The decision to release them had already been made by the time the stateside seminars took place. You are also failing--quite spectacularly--to come to terms with the fact that their stated rationale for pulling MRRF was not sales, it was a desire to redesign the sectorial to have a special niche in-game that reflected its status as a "rapid reaction force." You keep asserting, "they did X because $$$," while studiously avoiding any evidence to the contrary.

3) Re: YJ/ISS vs. JSA, you have produced no evidence to support any of your claims that YJ/ISS are selling poorly. None. As above, you're just making a claim, waving your hands, and then hoping none of us will notice that you've wandered off into the weeds of your pet theories. Conjecture is not evidence. Averring that JSA was split off and is getting attention now because YJ/ISS wasn't as popular as it could be does not ipso facto make it so.

If the grocer stops stocking the apples I like and replaces them with something else, it could be because they weren't selling. It could also be that they're out of season, or that their distributor suffered a delay, or that bad weather impacted production, or that they sold so damn well they sold out and are waiting to get more. The world is complicated.

Here's what we know: We know that Red Veil sold well because CB has said that both the 2-player boxes were very popular releases. That's why we're probably getting another this year, and it's why they released the Beyond boxes. Red Veil was a YJ/ISS release, not a JSA release. We know that CB has continued to primarily support YJ/ISS--not JSA--since the release of Red Veil with a steady stream resculpts and new units alike.

You keep claiming that CB is being driven by financial considerations; well, what do you make of all that?

If your assertions (because all you have is assertions) happen to be true, then why has CB focused so heavily on releasing YJ/ISS models the past two years? If JSA is so bloody popular, why didn't CB--who are, you claim, primarily driven by their bottom line--spend the last two years releasing models for that? Your argument does not track with what has transpired here, back in the real world.

And none of that even touches on the timelines involved here. Based on everything CB employees have ever said about how long it takes for them to produce a single model, much less a whole book packed with new armies, the changes to YJ/JSA have been in the works for at least a year, probably longer. Is it your position that CB looked into their crystal ball and discovered that the new YJ/ISS releases wouldn't sell (again, a claim for which you have provided no evidence) before they were even released and thus began to develop a cunning contingency plan? Can you not see how insane this is?

4) Here's where I think you're going off the tracks... You say that "it's a rational decision based on the goal of every business - making more profit." (emphasis added)

Yeah. No. That's just not true. That's Occupy Wall Street economics, which is to say it's a naive caricature and largely at odds with reality.

CB is not, in fact, a publicly traded company. Its obligations and motivations, therefore, are not necessarily to make the most profit possible for its shareholders. CB is not WalMart. You are imposing an economic model on the company that does not fit, and making all sorts of assumptions based on that initial error. Not every businessman is Scrooge, many are Fezziwigs, and many more lay somewhere in between those two poles.

Small businesses need to make money in order to survive, but that does not mean that they're just out to make as much money as possible at any given time. Myriad other concerns drive them as well. I worked at a family-run tavern for years, and while they had to make money to stay in business, their day to day decisions were driven by other factors: what makes customers happy? How can we do right by our employees? What fulfills us not just as business owners, but as human beings? The owner could have made more money had he wanted to--of that I have no doubt--but his little tavern was about more than that.

So too, if we take them at their word, with CB.

Rant off.

 

Not really going to get involved in this argument, but I thought I'd throw out as of January we know that Red Veil was behind Ice Storm in sales (at the same amount of time of being on the market) by only a hundred or two boxes. And Ice Storm is their top selling product ever. So RV is selling really well.

 

On Smoke & Mirrors, that video didn't end with a flash shot of a Korean HI airdropping to Spitfire a crowd of Kempeitai, so I was inevitably going to be a little disappointed.

But while I don't know if I'm enamoured with any of those designs, those are very characterful models, they bring a lot of personality... that makes sense in Aristeia, where the sport is as much about showmanship as combat (and it is very much about combat, so the importance of the show cant be overestimated).



Tao Wu is looking pretty sorcerous here, but BECAUSE Aristeia is all about show I'd assume this is all just holograms and special effects... smoke and mirrors, if you will.

 

They make the game they want to play, in the best way they know how, and trying to take care of their players as best they can. No more, no less. Do they slip up sometimes? Sure. Do they (in my eyes) merit the level of vitriol some folks here direct at them? Not by a long ways. And (in my opinion and my opinion only) if CB were to roll out temporary changes or draft ideas in an attempt to placate folks who (again, my opinion) don't really seem ready to listen to anything that doesn't fit exactly what they want, CB would face the same set of issues and hue and cry when either 1) they moved on from the temporary fixes or 2) released a permanent solution that (since it would be the revised, final version) deviated at all from what the aggrieved players thought they were going to get.

 

A Smoke and Mirrors box of minis. I bought that 2.5 years ago. Steampunk showgirls. Who could resist? I don't recommend the set unless you like really fiddly bits. I'm talking fiddlier than Pan-O antennas or Nomad remotes bits. Plus they are plastic. I'll need to "sleeve" these minis if I ever finish painting them and actually play them. (Normally I stick with the December crew.) So many delicate parts. I'm thinking polycarbonate tubing sections for "sleeves".

 

Any sufficient advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, or you know holoprojectors, pyrotechnics and nanobots, or you did not notice each time Lunah shoots there is a cobra chasing her bullets?

Aristeia is a bloodsport, but most importantly it is a show!

 

And even in the sense, Magic is no more a trick of the mind. Hence I see it as possible in Aristeia. Maybe not Infinity as much perse.

 

stay strong brother (or sister) our time will come and it shall be glorious.