Ah ok. So sounds like more smoke was being blown when they said they'd be correcting for faction populations.
Just wondering... the counter seems to have stopped? Nordic Masters and GWT Esslingen from last weekend are not counted so far.
Yeah, from what I saw there was a massive dump of points that put PanO in a stunning lead, and then things were frozen. Seems strange.
I think Specops are out of this specific fire, they will all be reviewed once the ITS Extra Specops get reviewed
Really interesting rumors on the backdoor crisis page... Seems like some hints towards an involvement and double agents for USAriadna? Introduction of the Dawn campaign? Would also mean that maybe the Wotan incident was a fake and there were no Shasvastii on the Nomads ship and that the plan was to isolate Nomads from the rest of the Human Sphere and stir up a conflict and uprising ;) in the Human Sphere as well? And maybe they want to kill witnesses now in the "Kill Don Peyote" part of the future events.
This is just amazing, its very exciting. Its to tight. Lets go!!! 21 days to finish. More info unlocked
@HellLois , the JSA still gives points to YJ, or they go to NA2? How will the Character ban work? Is the Secessionist army safe from that thanks to Asuka's "cosplay" into Kuroshi rider? We wanna know!!! ^^
Yeah, I've made 11% of NA2 score :D :P Almost proud ;) And @xagroth is right - what with JSA and all the new stuff? PozdRawiam / Greetings
I remember it was said that results will account for faction population. Are these numbers given before aforementioned normalization?
As for JSA, the release of the book will show up after the end of the challenge if I remember well, so no problem. @Barrogh These are after normalization as much as I've understood.
JSA for now counts for Yu Jing. the Challenage end before the JSA goes to NA2 ;) The numbers are normalized ;)
Well, while I see why you're saying this (PanO and Nomads in the top three), CA seems to perform way much than usual in the previous campains where there wasn't any normalisation. And Aleph has a really good amount of data points for their playerbase if you think there isn't normalisation. So maybe it is just that the most part of the above average players tend to prefer playing PanO, CA, Nomads and Haqq or maybe that those scenarios are easier for those factions. After all, there are two exclusion zone scenarios that are in favour to PanO and Morats while Ariadna can have much more difficulties to play with. And Nomads are good for Rescue and Transmission Matrix for example. Numbers would have been different I think with Tic Tac Toe, Supplies, Hunting Party where Ariadna can show better its infiltration strength.
I can see thought process at play here, they want to cull and iterate a bunch of characters across the board, the faction/s that win clearly don't need help winning games thus all the 'losers' get prioritized for revamping. The 'winning' of the narrative portion of this campaign means you don't actually get the prize of having your units reworked. The 'Can't use it temporarily' is just a false punishment as a way of making it feel like you lost without actually losing anything.
That is assuming strengths of certain factions hinge on using particular characters. Which I don't see.
Juana, Wallace, and Thrasimedes for their sectorials, without thinking too much, are very needed for certain things (the last one, specially, for Thorakitai fireteams that don't start at 75 points or 1.5 SWC).
I would add Layla for HB there, but then again, the competition is not sectorial-specific, and seeing leader faction as "definitely carried by their special characters who evidently don't need rework" is a little bit reaching. Especially when you consider that you have, if we are to go by your examples, Bipanrda/Konstantinos, McGregor and Thamyris in those factions, who range from "just bad" to "meh" to "carried by unique useful ability in certain lists" in quality, and even when it's the latter they still could use some update to modern realities (DHDs anyone?). I do understand the logic that buffing factional character is definitely not a nerf to his/her faction, but only if we don't go into details beyond very broad strokes.
Wallace is only really necessary for the Highland Charge style lists or a 5 strong Wulver fireteam, in fact pretty much no Ariadna character is the lynchpin of a play style, mostly they just add a little bit more to something that's possible to do with the generic units, and I'd bet that's true for pretty much everyone but steel phalanx...
Well, use of characters is certainly a vector for improving a factions overall viability so I think it has merit. I'm not suggesting you could balance all characters against each other cross-factions because you are right that some factions don't tend to rely on them to do well. If a faction that does well has a poorly designed character, I would say it's less of a priority to fix than an underperforming factions poorly designed character