Your issue, bud, is that you are obviously unable to understand what "objective" and "subjective" means. Instead, you mistake it for "what I say is objective, what you said is subjective". But hey, believing is everything, go on bud! :)
Oh I did, it's not as deep and complex as you think it is ;) The game isn't intrinsically broken/unbalanced/unplayable/whatever, as tons of people (probably even a very large majority, forums are just a microcosmos) are enjoying it just fine. If you want an example of what "objective" means, here it is. You're welcome!
I have literally never claimed that it's complex... The game is not objectively balanced between factions, many interactions have, objectively, been handled badly and the recent FAQ-fiasco made that even more clear. So when a person says they enjoy the game despite what I mentioned above, I basically said "fair enough, that's your subjective opinion". Not sure WTF you went on about from that point on, except you somehow take personal issue with the fact that someone is talking negative about your game. IDK ;););););););););););););););););););););););););););););););););););););););););););););););););););););););););););)
If we had N3 hacking I'd be much happier with things. N3 hacking is an overall improvement over N4 hacking, though it is a bit more obtuse.
Funny, I don't think N4 is an improvement over N3 in terms of gameplay. I like some of the rule improvements, but far from all of them. Some rule iterations are a complete disappointment, Total Immunity doesn't make sense and causes problems left right and center to make just one example. Overall it doesn't have less complexity either, so it's just a different branch version of the game to me instead of an evolution from N3 at this point. All things balancing is the worst offender. N3 already had massive issues, making TAGs/HI cheaper across the board without factoring in context and the CC changes, with D-Charges and easily available MA2 being far too good and far too common. Why did lots of very effective troops that anyone was already taking get massively cheaper? Why did most MI get 4-4 and nothing else? Why does CB refuse to fix their outdated approach to pricing? Nothing ever pays the real price for the kit they have, which ends up creating a pool of clearly more viable Profiles. For the average Sectorial Around a quarter of Profiles and Troops are clearly better bang for their buck than others. What the game really could use is a cheaper SWC guns on small fry. A HMG costing the same points on a Fusilier and a Swiss Guard never made sense. That could have been done in multiple ways. SWC guns could be cheaper on Linetroopers, or just be free in terms of points and cost 0.5 - 3 SWC depending on who's carrying them. N4 is not exactly unplayable. But it's very easy to game listbuilding in giving you more value out of your 300 point budget than the average player gets, just because they didn't want to take the most effective troops or wanted to play a Sectorial that's not up to the task. Everyone is allowed to have an oppinion, that's not negotiable. However the big problem is that there's a lot of people who do not understand or do not care about balancing and the gaming cycle. There's always room for improvement, the process never stops. In a game like Infinity the game has to constantly change to keep people entertained therefore constantly breaks and fixes things. New editions, ITS Seasons, Sectorial updates. We've come a long war from start of N3, the game used to be quite different at various stages in recent history. HSN3 release and end of N3 look very different. Back then Factions and Sectorials had a lot more limitations they had to work around. There were no Kamau Snipers, Fatality L2, Kriza Boracs or <20 points top tier Hackers. The ceiling was lower and the playing field simpler. Was it better? No. Did the game get better between those checkpoints? Also no. The game changed a lot, eroded old limitations left right and center, exploited and bent the points formula to build troops that were ridiculous and should have never existed. On top of that everthing got flooded with new native troops on top of increasingly viable mercs. Up to the point where Vanilla Factions became untameable. N4 needed to reign that in. They tried a bit with the slot limit. That prevented the approach to just spam the cheapest most efficient troops available past saturation. The overall problems that prevent the game from being better remained. Back when everything had a couple crosses to bear, even in Vanilla, having a couple inheritly overtuned and imbalanced troops wasn't as much of a problem. Most armies had to bring some less optimized and weaker options to offset that or were forced to abandon certain aspects of the game. That wasn't pretty, didn't apply equally to everyone and did break in spectacular fashion pretty fast. The single most problematic addition during the 2nd half of N3 were Wildcards or RPG Party Links in general. For all the same reasons why everything else in the game had problems. If done right and carefully selected, Wildcards add a lot of options, mostly to make suboptimal troops suddenly worthwhile and playbale without fixing their inherent problems, by allowing to mix and match to cut points or add capabilities. And for some Sectorials it was done that way - spoiler: these were not the problem. For some other Sectorials they took the absolute best troop they had access to, maybe even buffed it, and let it slot into anything it wanted. "Back in the day" you had mixed links of a certain kind of LI+MI or a certain kind of MI+HI and maybe a character based on one of these components. Suddenly you had Wildcard Kamau Snipers slotting into 4 Fusiliers that your completely viable lists were supposed to deal with. The overwhelming additions kept coming. Kriza Boracs, Fatality L2, the Liberto and Dashat's unprecedented swarm of min maxing a horde. There was an arms race going on and you had to participate if you wanted to compete. Then N4 came along and changed a lot, no more 25 slot spam lists, Jammers nerfed, all HIs and TAGs cheaper, loads of special ammo everywhere, E/M automatically became E/M2, MA beyond MA2 stopped having any FTF impact, D-Charges became the best CC Weapon you could ask for. Several Factions that started strong early in the N3 arms race but hat long since been put back in line by powercreep elsewhere, suddenly looked as if they were abandoned concepts. The ages old problem of inconsistently applied restrictions struck again. Some Sectorials got basically unlimited AVA and linkability for their best troops, combined with a few standout supporting troops they got to have their cake and eat it too. Elsewhere harsh restrictions were applied or upheld for no discernable reason. Some Vanilla armies massively benefited from the cheaper high end troops and reworked standout profiles while finding ways to circumvent N4s slot restrictions with extra bodies and ways to increase Order efficiency. Some were supposed to rely more on dirt cheap Irregular troops and struggled finding replacement strategies. Sectorials varied from virtually unfazed by the changes to becoming a hot mess over night. The arms race got fresh coat of paint. You now have the pleasure to build any list with multiple new, fun and interactive strategies in mind. Who doesn't love facing Pitchers into Guided, 18 Order Avatar lists and AD(X) in the mix. Especially with Loss of Lieutenant affecting various armies according to roulette game design. Maybe it's devastating, maybe you don't have to care at all, it appears to be completely arbitrary who gets to play this fun and interactive little mini game and who gets a free pass. Fireteam Update to the rescue. Firstly it breaks a lot of things. A lot of Wildcards gutted over night. Pure LI Links suddenly are a thing again. But as usual with CB's design philosophy, not everyone is created equal. Some Factions just suffer, some get to keep their native mixed links, and Morats get to finally not suck by just not playing by the rules at all. Meanwhile some Vanilla players, including myself, get to enjoy watching the mayhem from mount Olympus. Now here we are, end of story. To me it all sounds so familiar, different actors, same play. I gaze through my hobby room and see half a dozen Warhammer and 40k armies collecting dust. Accompanied by Warmahordes and various other systems that outlived their usefulness. There is nothing I could have done, no one could have been convinced to save those systems, no point in even trying. Yet another arms race without fixing the core problem surely won't lead my Infinity collection to the same fate, right guys? Everything is fine, all these parallels are no reason for concern.
Not to rag on you or anything, I both agree and disagree with the lengthy post, but specifically HMG is one of few things that actually costs different SWC depending on who carries it - not by a lot, but it's there. They should do more of that, though. Light grenade launcher on a basic LI shouldn't be 1 whole SWC. Multi Sniper on a basic LI shouldn't be 1,5 SWC, that should be scaled for units with complementary mimetism, marksmanship, msv, etc, and reversely scale with skills that don't really aid the use of the gun like martial arts, excessive wip, courage, etc I don't subscribe to the idea that MI are somehow disadvantaged, but the game has been needing prices adjusted for some time. Whether LI, MI, or even HI, raw stats tends to screw units over by offering small increases compared to skills and some skills have synnergistic relationships with others without paying extra for it. Some have a bit of Skornergistic one. Wouldn't blame this on the rules, though. Rules and unit profiles tend to be developed separately it seems. Aside from assigning a discount for being hackable (scaled quite oddly, I might add), and adressing some of the more egregious offenders like Sixth Sense cost, they didn't do much of a balance pass with N4. And less with the more impactful FAQ 1.2 Still think the most important thing they could do to boost both balance and faction flair is to make more sectorial unique loadouts. That and they probably need to decide on what it means to be MI or just scrap the designation entirely.
Honestly for me, the game needs to be smaller of CB needs to be bigger. It's grown hugely in terms of profiles and factions and it's gotten too big and too bloated.
Speaking as a new player the size of the game is pretty daunting; I'd be quite surprised if there were less than 500 unique units, and that's before talking about the number of profiles any unit might have. Has CB ever fully retired any units? If they haven't I guess the bloat is kind of inevitable.
Good start would be to kill half of newly added characters, or just not make then ITS legal OR make it that you can have only 1-2 characters in list (SP being kinda exception for obvious reasons).
I don't see how that helps given a large portion of characters range from meh to rubbish anyway. Outside of certain Merc sectorials and Phalanx Infinity doesn't really do hero hammer. Toning back crazy not even a character shit like Vostoks though? That'd be a start.
I agree. As much as it might suck for people who bought several hundred dollars of minis of a faction, it may be that they need to start treating retired factions as actually retired. Remove those sectorials from the primary faction's vanilla roster and stop releases or profile updates for them. This would allow them to keep releasing new content by not being forced to maintain the old one. Yes, they've fully retired 5 Combined units (Exrah) and a couple of JSA units (Raiden and Haramaki) during Uprising, the latter got equivalent units (Ryuken-9 and Tanko) in the Secessionist Army that were similar but with different weapons and completely new miniatures. They also retired Tony the named Tikbalang, but they updated the regular Tikbalang on doing so to almost match Tony's unique aspects. That's the only ones I can think of.
Haqq lost their mechanised Infantry that I cannot for the life of me remember the name for. Halqa? They also had Kasym Beg deleted, and his predecessor too? Asuka Kisaragi was renamed as Kuroshi Rider and had some changes made. Are we counting Ko Dali? Oh and of course Magister Knights were deleted, or Teutons were deleted and Magister Knights got renamed as Teutons take your pick there.
Halqa, yes, and Beg. I think Beg's predecessor is before my time and Ko Dali (Combined) isn't even remotely the same as Ko Dali (Yu Jing) so add Ko Dali to the list. I would argue that with the reality that they need a cash flow to maintain the game, maintaining ancient parts of the game that's not generating cash flow will probably lead to long term quality damage as the game's size and maintenance requirements grows each month.
I would argue stop releasing new shit nobody asked for like Kosmo and just redo the old stuff. Seriously, what the fuck is Kosmo why is it taking the place of a MRRF and CHA update to replace their incredibly aged shit? Nobody asked for all those Diablos and random shit in CJC either, Bakunin players would've killed for some updated models though. Or you know, release sculpts for shit people have been complaining about not having forever. Why are we releasing the Gator instead of redoing the Lizard which Nomads have been asking for forever? Do all that first then we can talk about becoming GW.
There is one solution to the bloating of Vanilla profile. Erasing Vanilla. You can field a GENERIC "army", but limited to 1 model per profile. Otherwise you can ONLY field Sectorials. Add "flavour" sectorials at need with mix'n'match effort like done with NA2 armies
