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Did the process and conclusion of "backdoor" improve your Infinity experience?

Discussion in 'Access Guide to the Human Sphere' started by Plebian, Apr 3, 2018.

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How do you feel about Backdoor

  1. I have a favorable opinion

    49 vote(s)
    28.5%
  2. I have an unfavorable opinion

    63 vote(s)
    36.6%
  3. I have no opinion

    49 vote(s)
    28.5%
  4. I do not know what that is

    11 vote(s)
    6.4%
  1. paraelix

    paraelix Seed Embryo Scholar

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    No, I don't feel that is the point being made.

    When the commentary is "They did this wrong" - then there has to be a case where it can be done right. Meaning there is some means by which you can decide if something is wrong or right.
     
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  2. inane.imp

    inane.imp Well-Known Member

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    It's not a simple net positive good, net negative bad. It's about better or worse.

    CB chose an implementation that has resulted in a response that's been mostly tepid, outraged at worse and 'I kinda liked it' at best. That's hardly a good use of resources: doing nothing compares favourably.

    Compare Alive. The responses were still mostly tepid, but no notable outrage and much more positive reviews. That model was one of 'adding an optional narrative element'. I'd argue that it minimised the negative experience while achieving similar or better positive experiences.

    So their experiment did worse than the established model. Ergo the Backdoor design is not the best.

    The experiment succeeded in showing something that should already have been obvious to CB, and WAS obvious to the community.

    Tl;dr you're being overly simplistic in your analysis.
     
    #182 inane.imp, Apr 6, 2018
    Last edited: Apr 6, 2018
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  3. ZlaKhon

    ZlaKhon New scale enthusiast

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    @inane.imp already answered, but let me try to break down my viewpoint:

    CB is a company in the hobby sector, which means the are most likely driven by three motivations:
    a) creating their idea of a great product
    b) positively impacting the life of their customers
    c) making enough money to keep the business running and possibly expand activities

    So the measure of success should be whether or not an initiative helps to achieve these goals or not. Best case is to consider this for larger time frames.

    For example: loosing only a few new players, who bought Red Veil and the expansion, is really bad for the community in the long run even if the majority of players feel positive about backdoor (net positive).
     
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  4. alchahest

    alchahest Well-Known Member

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    "I kinda liked it" at best? I've seen people posting that they really liked the move to a more non-stagnant meta. I personally love it. especially as the "Cost" for losing is a single model for a few months.

    Is it the result people wanted? in a lot of cases it isn't. But despite CB not having to answer to shareholders, they still are trying to run a successful business, and what they're doing is setting themselves apart from the competition by keeping the meta fresh and changing in ways that aren't just throwing out more and more new models. forcing hard or evne unliked decisions on players is going to result in better emergent gameplay as good players pivot and adapt and use the models that were previously shelf warmers. People talk about spending hundreds of euros/dollars/currency on the game, but are upset when forced out of their comfort zone and into using some of the other models they spent money on. I don't get the mindset. I can understand being frustrated at not being "The winner", but in a game with so many rich and varied options, being temporarily denied one of them is a very small penalty, and I think that it's ultimately healthy for the state of the game.
     
  5. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    Banning Andromeda is not "changing the meta."
     
  6. Del S

    Del S Tunguskaball

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    It's like banning salads in a Glasgow takeaway.
     
  7. alchahest

    alchahest Well-Known Member

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    OK. would you say any of the other bans are consequential?

    If not, then there's no reason to be mad. if so, then yes, the meta is changing and being dynamic - which might be frustrating but is ultimately good for the game.
     
  8. Del S

    Del S Tunguskaball

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    Yes - Kusanagi was a useful Haris component in Bakunin, allowed for SWC-heavy builds in Bak and Vanilla.

    Tarik is also an extremely potent Vanilla unit thanks to Fatality, and also had options to fuel the SWC builds.

    Yujing also have had insult added to injury losing half their characters here, and they also have a fireteam option weakened a little bit in ISS. Not an impressive character by any means but it's the principle with them.

    PanO, Ariadna, and ALEPH lost characters that are underwhelming.

    To say that because the meta changes is good, is a fallacy. The meta has changed in an inconsistent way, in a way that does not quite sync with previous approaches. They seem to have taken the tepid response to ALIVE as a sign they needed to try harder, and they've gone too far the other way.

    Coupled also with the way the campaigns apparently don't mean a whole lot because today's Fluff update seems to just ignore a whole lot of efforts (not just Yujing's headcanon, BTW, but that ) by players, it's less a meta changing and more like the DM railroading. Which is actually bad. We've been sold an idea of having an influence on the narrative but so far what influence we could have, has been minimal at best.
     
    #188 Del S, Apr 6, 2018
    Last edited: Apr 6, 2018
  9. kinginyellow

    kinginyellow Well-Known Member

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    That logic i disagree with. Banning important models from one faction but not another does not always make this game better.

    As an example, take it to the extreme. Banning an entire faction is not inheritly good for the game. If the faction is too much of an issue and there is no other recourse it isn't even bad for the game. But just saying banning significant things is good for the game is wrong.

    I would go as far as to say banning things from the game is one possible solution, but it does indicate there is an existing problem with this game that smaller more preferred solutions cannot fix.
     
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  10. alchahest

    alchahest Well-Known Member

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    I've read and considered your responses, but I am stuck in meetings all afternoon - I'll come back later on to sort of explain myself, hopefully a little better.
     
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  11. Sanjuro

    Sanjuro Active Member

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    and which is really sayng something given the usual stance of his videos right. Sure his kind of idle punditry has some merit but its rarely pro CB. so if his viewers are not actually holding pitchforks and blazing torches thats the same as unbridled enthusiasm right. Maybe people are really positive do we know what they’re saying in the Spanish forum?
     
    #191 Sanjuro, Apr 6, 2018
    Last edited: Apr 6, 2018
  12. alchahest

    alchahest Well-Known Member

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    Actually - had a little bit of time before lunch I was able to squeeze this one out. - writing in notepad and gonna copy/paste

    My thoughts are this - the bans could be selected for different reasons - it could be that in some cases (Voronin, Andromeda) they're looking into changing a rule or rules interaction that makes them more desireable to take. in cases like Haqq, Yu Jing, or Nomads it could be that there is a change coming to the unit or faction that requires gaining data without these models in play. Not every change is automatically "good" but without trying changes, we cannot determine which of them (that could be good on paper or with internal playtesting) will be good for the game as a whole. Iterative processes like a living rules set sometimes have rollbacks or multiple changes in rapid succession. Not every step is positive, but motion is.

    Like in that really awesome remote presence podcast - think of it as a topographical map. sometimes to ascend a higher peak, you've got to cross a valley to get there. In the moment, you're in a valley, but at the end of the valley is a higher peak than you were at before.

    As for the insult to injury thing - it can be rough for a vanilla YJ player for sure. But CB, despite flippant wording in some communications, isn't looking to make a portion of their player base actually feel bad. To ascribe a design decision (that has likely been in the works for a long time) to malice would be folly, I think.

    Had another faction won (like, Say, Ariadna) perhaps the particular model would have recieved changes at a later date following testing on the other banned models. There's no way for us outside of CB to tell what the plan is for these models, except that we know the the ban is only for a few months.

    I prefer to think positively, and I think that regardless of how you feel about a given change, now is the best time to learn other things - there's millions of ways to build a list, to execute a list. work outside of your comfort zone, because at the end of the day, it's just a game, and your models will be playable in ITS again soon. It's a great time to stretch and grow. because most other factions will be stretching and growing with you. Even CA and Tohaa (who, like YJ, don't have a lot of characters to lose right now)
     
  13. Aldo

    Aldo Spare 15

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    Not much

    Mainly because nobody cares about those suckers who got imprisoned.

    Like, the only enthusiasm was in case characters were getting a rework, and that was a misunderstanding, so "nobody cares" sounds like an option.

    Alive and giving a Holo1 KHD to everyone shocked the meta more than this. Making Lts no longer be specialists shocked the meta more than this.

    This... you couldn't shock a pidgeon with this. Crane links are slightly less optimal, oh no!
    Bagh Mari links now have to pay a 1swc lieutenant or put two Acon regulars in opposite corners of the board, oh no!
    You can't make kassadra lists, what a nightmare!
    You can't no longer use Tariq. If you used him. But you can almos pay for 2 Spitifire Kawarijs. If that's what you're into, I dunno.
    Voronin is gone, oh no! Here lies Voronin, he only saw the table as an HVT
    Andromeda is gone, what a horror. This destroys all Aleph lists ever. Or something. I'm stll kinda mad they didn't got for an overt plagiarism of the pink Zodiac Knights guy. Is CB homophobic? Is that why they didn't do it?
     
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  14. Sanjuro

    Sanjuro Active Member

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    Yeah but they’re not banned are they it’s just an experiment right. It’s not like wizards of the coast who often don’t seem to know what the frack with they’re doing with MTG (smugglers copter anyone?) maybe the cb guys are wrong or right it’s hard to know atm but they DO obviousky know what theyre doing and that’s what’s upsetting the hardcore fanboys who don’t like someone moving their cheese without asking them first
     
  15. Sanjuro

    Sanjuro Active Member

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    I don’t think the angry people here are angry because it’s a good or bad idea. I think they’re angry because CB didn’t ask them about it first :)
    like goth teenagers being taken on holiday to a beautiful place where it’s too hot to wear their favorite black clothes
     
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  16. kinginyellow

    kinginyellow Well-Known Member

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    Even if it lasts only 2 months and is in 1 format. It is a ban. But my point was in using the same choice of word as the person who i quoted saying banning models to change the meta was good.
     
  17. cazboab

    cazboab Definitely not Cazboaz.

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    There's definitely some of that going around, but there are a few legitimate concerns people have, for example only 6 missions out of 21 counted towards the results, so a lot of people who play ITS had no input on the challenge, but they still have to accept the result, even if they don't play those missions ever...

    The simplest solution is for @HellLois to make the narrative challenges and the rewards/restrictions tied to a module, this way even if a character or a unit is altered long term then:
    A. Only the players who participate in the challenge will be affected.
    B. All of the players affected have the opportunity to influence the result of the challenge.
    C. Army can use the same principle as it does now for soldiers of fortune.
    D. Anyone unhappy with outcome can participate in ITS events that don't won't be influenced by the challenges.
    E. Anyone not participating in the challenge won't be able to influence the result of the challenge.
     
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  18. stargorger

    stargorger Well-Known Member

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    That's...probably a bit more inflammatory than it needs to be.

    I dislike it because of the poor communication and because I literally finished painting Andromeda and Tarik the day before the bans were announced. Now I wasted all that painting time for nothing :\ But that's a personal thing. In the grand scheme of things, I think they mostly chose the right units to ban (with the exception of Xi...that one I strongly disagree with, as one of the two remaining vanilla YJ characters left in a faction that already feels emotionally beaten-down by the JSA thing).
     
  19. Andre82

    Andre82 Well-Known Member

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    More then a few good explanations have been given for why some players are less then happy but hardly devastated by this.

    I can't help but feel from your rather inflammatory and rather defensive posts that maybe you are white knighting CB abit here?
    The bulk of your posts being "people who did not like it are stupid baby's" definitely tells me you are not arguing in good faith.

    I realize your just trying to defend and protect your game but those offering criticism are just doing the same.
     
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  20. Del S

    Del S Tunguskaball

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    Trouble is, those changes are
    A) confirmed to be not happening long-term
    B) similar small changes have been done basically overnight, not via benching a unit for a period of time
    and C) the JSA prove even a big change can happen relatively fast without benching units for a transition period.

    Also, this doesn't quite add up when adding the other "not a big deal" reasoning. Some people say these models are barely used, and yet they also are so well used they need to be removed to crunch numbers?
     
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