Shame to hear you're leaving QG, always thought you had thoughtful and interesting things to say about the game. While I get some of the exasperation you're expressing, I disagree with the majority of it. - Power creep: I guess, kinda. The game is shifting gears up in power levels for sure, and the imbalance visible is real – but not really in relation to Haqq who are a solid faction. If you were an NA2 guy I could seriously relate; the reinforcements update has been pretty bloody harsh on most NA2 factions. Not even increased availability of the units that they get access to in reinforcement mode, which is baffling. CJC is an army that got nerfed hard and left behind, Tohaa and Spiral have been treated awfully, etc. There are lots of examples out there, just not Haqq imo. So overall, yes, you're right, the creep is real, and unevenly distributed. - Profile bloat: I guess, kinda. Yes it makes more demands on a player, keeping up with all the new units, and it's certainly not ideal, but this point relates to CB's development cycle; they have to make money and produce new models, and hopefully Warcrow will take some of the heat out of the Infinity release cycle. In terms of faction bloat, I straight up disagree, and love the variety of factions in N4, and give CB credit for their efforts to keep so many plates spinning. I don't know how many factions you played, but I bloody love the sandboxing feeling I get when trying out a new faction. Shasvaasti have absolutely rocked my boat over the last six months, I'm having so much fun with them it should be illegal. - No rules support: yeah, I get you. While there are some tiny early signs of improvement (in terms of comms), I do think CB needs to seriously rethink how they update, and how they communicate. I especially agree on your point that the rules are dispersed and hard to access. It all needs a comms rework, for sure. - Bland Models: Nope. There are, as always, some absolute bangers, some near misses, and a few stinkers. But the bangers remain some of the very best sculpts in miniature gaming, done by a handful of friends, in a small indy company. They deserve applause. - Outdated mechanics: Nope. Reinforcements is a bit naff, we can all agree, but the core mechanics are solid gold. I've been playing miniature games for nearly 40 years, and Infinity is head and shoulders above every system I've tried. Others scratch a different itch (MESBG for example), but Infinity is a beautiful game system. - CB neglect: kinda, but not really. Bear in mind they're a bloody small company putting out better product than their behemoth competitors, and are in the final dev phase of two big new game systems. Give them a break, I would suggest. Again, related to the earlier point about their poor comms, I think that just a recognition of this by them would go a long way. Best of luck with whatever new games system scratches your itch, you'll be missed!
You will be missed. I really enjoyed all the games of infinity with you over the past few years through TTS. You are and have always been a good guy, and a great community member. Hope to see you around somewhere, sometime.
I share a lot of what is written here. For me the core rules of N4 are fantastic. By simplifying many things compared to N3 and giving more possibilities in terms of variety by separating certain skills (TO camouflage in hidden deployment and mimetism -6, for example). Then the renewal of the fireteams came out... here, for me, everything began to go wrong. I hoped that distinguishing between pure firetams and mixed fireteams would revitalize many profiles. In practice this has not been the case. In my opinion, many problems have been generated both with balance regarding the factions that DO NOT have access to mixed fireteams (and mixed ones that count as pure), and with internal balance between profiles of the same faction. Now there are profiles that are a must simply because they count as a pure fireteam being mixed (Volkolak + Rokots). Other profiles are very good on paper, but are overshadowed by profiles from the same faction that are wildcards and simply link better. The powercreep has not only become more pronounced, in my opinion, the profiles are becoming less and less imaginative... No wound incapacitation + shock immunity for everyone! Do you want a new broken profile? +1 to Burst and linkable!!!. In the past, the ammunition that made you roll several saves was relegated to the ARO, since you rolled one or two dice, it was compensated. What sense does it currently make that a Yaogat, for example, on its active turn has the potential to make 8 armor rolls on you with a single order and without criticals? When I started playing a long time ago, a Lasiq sniper without being part of a fireteam was a dangerous ARO profile for the opponent, but tell me who can endure something like that xD The problem has been accentuated as Corvus Belli has adopted a "rotation" dynamic with the factions, leaving a lot of them discontinued and giving prominence to others. There have always been certain imbalances, perfect balance does not exist and in fact Corvus games have always been more balanced than others, but currently if you compare, for example, Caledonia with Kosmoflot it makes you want to cry (I play both). In my particular case, also, as a player who also really enjoyed painting, I invested many hours in painting my Tohaa army. Now I look at my shelves full of unpainted miniatures and I don't feel like investing time in them because I think: Are they the next discontinued faction? Will I still be able to play them but in a totally obsolete way and suffering every time I play against a new faction? And it is something that saddens me enormously, because I still believe that it is the best game on the market, despite everything. And I deeply disagree that the miniatures are worse now... almost all the designs look fantastic to me! It is also assumed that we are at some point at the end of N4, with the game showing signs of exhaustion (something normal). Coming this far, Reinforcements must have been a shock... I don't know how it is outside of Spain, but in Spain it Reinforcements is a disaster, they are not played in any tournament at all. It is true that we can simply act as if Reinforcements did not exist, but that does not mean that the opportunity to give the game a little boost has been lost. And just to close and not go into too much detail... Corvus has data of incredible value at his disposal... and they doesn't use it! I am referring to that enormous feedback that is the digitized STI system. Thanks to it you can see which units are in each and every one of a faction's lists, or in none. Which ones are played the most, which ones are played the least, the win and loss rates of each faction... This information is wonderful for periodically releasing patches that adjust the game. So, in addition, maybe they could get extra sales without having to continually release new factions or sectors... "look, in the last update they rebalanced this unit that I didn't use from my faction, I'm going to buy the box!" Anyway, in my case I will continue playing, but sometimes and increasingly the sensations are bitter. Also around me many players who adopted Infinity as their main game years ago are abandoning it and returning to other games. I hope N5 comes along and fixes many of these things, otherwise I predict a very bad future for the game (I hope that doesn't happen and I'm wrong). PS: my English is quite poor, forgive me in advance if there are any mistakes.
Relatable I think most miniatures games are on a turning point: create higher quality rules or disappear in favor of miniature agnostic rules. I still play with infinity miniatures but on Stargrave, Majestic-13 or RPGs. Still big fan of the system and miniatures, but Infinity don't find its place in my gaming nights anymore. Have a lot of fun in your new adventures!
@QueensGambit I can´t say I agree totally or disagree absolutely with what you said, but, what I can´t deny is sad to read you leave. Last months I feel we are loosing more and more players. I hope this will be only a matter of time so "things change" and many of you will be able to come back. However, I wish you best of lucks and tons of fun.
Sad to see you go, but I think any N4 Haq player understands. The power creep feels way more apparent for us as we have had the least N4 support (even with black wind). O-12p and these minor nerfs are a bit of a kick in the teeth with other factions getting a decent boost. I'm not quiting but I am buying/painting other games. At least until we get more regular rules updates / some new Haq support (aka not profiles we have needed since N4 began)
I'm sad to see you go but you need to do what's right for yourself. If you are not having fun, then why do it? I understand you in many many ways. I was feeling the same on all of this. I was thinking of stoping as well but then I just decided to play other games as well as infinity. In a way it's been good for me that they have hardly come out with anything for Yu Jing until recently. I'm now playing Stargrave, Frostgrave, Moonstone, have figures for but yet to play Bushido and MCP, really want to play Shatterpoint, and there's always interesting games popping up. I'm even interested in Warcrow. I'll probably never give up Infinity but I'm certainly going to play less. If I hadn't bought some O-12 for cheap I'd probably be playing even less by now.
I started playing Infinity back in 2011/2012 (N2). At the time, Infinity was a cutting edge game and I was drawn in by the low model count and ARO system (bailing on 40k when they announced 6th edition). In the lead up to N3 and the early N3 era, Corvus Belli seemed really engaged with game, developing and iterating the sectorial and fireteam systems with each new release. Originally a Vanilla Haqq player, I was immediately drawn in by the QK sectorial and the aesthetic of the models. Graduate school occupied much of my free time but I kept playing intermittently in local tournaments until around 2017 (a bit before Uprising). I kept tabs on the forums over the years, but got back into the game after N4 released, hoping that CB has a new spin on the game for the new edition (like they did with the N2 to N3) transition. I was disappointed. I wholeheartedly agree with all of your points, but the profile bloat and lack of CB rules support/communications have really worn me down. It doesn't feel like CB is excited to play their own game anymore. Changes are minor and take forever, implying that they are either too afraid to take big risks or not willing to dedicate resources to undertake larger changes. The Fireteams update was entirely underwhelming, and wiped out a lot of the uniqueness of sectorial fireteam compositions. Then the Reinforcements game mode, which should have been groundbreaking, landed with a wet thud and crickets when the player base attempted to provide actionable feedback. The Army Builder update that they released last week really is too little, too late and further exacerbates the Vanilla profile bloat problem. I don't play tournaments anymore. I've bought some models in the last year, but mostly older sets as I don't appreciate the new bulky look they are releasing for Haqq. But I am definitely on the downward trend when it comes to my engagement with Infinity. If CB doesn't want to support their game with robust rules support, that's fine, they are still an excellent miniatures company. Just license the game IP to someone who actually cares about making a solid and balanced playing experience.
I disagree here. First, a lot of the new "sculpts" rely heavily on recycled assets and poses (look at the Haqq/Aleph reinforcements, their hackers are in the same pose... and they look like they are taking a dump and trying to get to the toilet paper...) Second, Corvus Belli is NOT an "indie" company, it's a "PYME" (spanish acronym for "small and medium business"), and they take pains to remain as one because of the extreme tax cost between those and the bigger ones, not because they never sold enough to grow (so yeah, blame the government, it's not a tinfoil hat idea, it's real). To be fair with CB... I'm seeing appalling things like that in big companies too that at the same time claim to be at the vanguard of the digital frontier. Yet we have to do so many things by hand it's maddening, and most people don't even know basic excel formulas besides the basic adding, multiplication, etc...
I agree with all your points. I want to love Infinity, I do love my models, but it just isn't getting table time. Instead we're playing things like Bushido, Killteam, MESBG, Old World, etc. Different games do different things and Infinity is fairly unique, but it's not getting any real attention. Months go by without anything besides "please by new model" updates. There are units and profiles that languish because CB can't be bothered to update them. I play a couple times a year now, usually a big tournament of some kind. Our local scene is mostly dead from a high point of 20 or so players. Hell, it's not even the balance issues that get to me. It's the complete lack of attention CB gives it other than when they want to sell a new model. Even GW does better in this regard.
Shame established members feel this way. I've been playing since n2 and it does feel like infinity has been in a bit of a weird place for a while. N4 launched weird into covid, took a while to get going and then felt like it's been on the back burner (rightly or wrongly). I'm ready for n5, feels like there's some glaring balance issues and bloat that needs fixing and CB won't commit to regular incremental balance passes for this edition.
To be honest, I still feel current N4 is far better than the end of N3, which was kind of a shitshow rule-wise (specially regarding the release schedule and new sectorials).
N4's better-built as a core system (with the single blemish of Hacking), but the faction design went to the dogs. If you like whatever CB's trying to peddle at the moment (had a fun hour or so with a returning friend accurately guessing the age of units from the length of their Skills section alone) or one of the factions/archetypes that got lucky and worked out, Infinity's never been better. If you liked MRRF, or wanted to run anything Hackable in NCA or the like, it's miserable. I actually switched to Warhammer 40K over COVID due to local Infinity almost dying off, and say what you will about the prices and new stuff always coming in OP but it's clear that somebody's trying to improve their already-best-ever balance and breadth of choice at GW. I don't get that feeling from CB anymore. They're always rushing the "next big thing" out the door before they've even published the last one, let alone publishing supporting material like scenarios or making minor adjustments to keep older options fresh and competitive. And some idiot made the Reinforcement boxes (as in, the actual packaging) not even list which models are in the box. I know online ordering is big these days, but that's a pretty sad oversight.
I definitely feel that N4 is better balanced than N3. Hacking feels to have more Teeth. Which is necessary as both TAGs and HI are better than they have been for a long time. I think only some small tweaks are necessary for the system: Re-balancing the programs. You can make having a wide Hacking network still good, just not as punishing for the opponent. Potentially, having Spotlight requiring a Save and tweaking the power and reset penalties of Carbonite and Oblivion. Change the bonus of Guided or make it use the Targeted State. I think such changes would help. Related to Haqqislam, one of our earlier strengths were we one of the few factions that could routinely do a decapitation strike and scalpel out key pieces. The N4 Hacking and guided changes greatly expanded that capability to a lot of factions (repeater drop, then oblivion/missile critical piece). Pulling that back may give Haqqislam that niche again.
I find it hard to believe that ISO state imposes a -9 to Reset while IMM gives a -3... resetting the radio should not be as hard as resetting the whole system! The main problem with Corvus is that when something changes, they ignore any ramifications. For example, Rifle+shotgun have been improved by a lot with the "measure ZoC" chage to the order sequence, but that's a weapon only one faction has, and the price was never checked!
