I see lots of problems with the future for the JSA fluff wise and mechanically. My biggest concern is this. By the looks of things CB has committed fully to the separation of JSA and Yu Jing in the fluff. As abysmal as the execution is you don't get to write yourself out of that without making it even worse. But I look at obvious Yu-Jing/JSA head choices on Shikami, and the "eugh, that had better be temporary" JSA status as basically a highly limited lame merc sectorial instead of a real faction. And I worry that making it even worse by backing out is actually possible since they left in "outs" both game mechanically "well its not like they became a real faction, they just went on a merc holiday!" and physically with the whole head thing. And then I realize that if they DON'T make it worse by backing out then that means that either BOTH Yu-Jing and JSA are going to be left to rot with highly limited lists and product support, OR the focus of at least the next major event/campaign/book will have to ALSO be on bulking out JSA into something resembling a real faction. So yeah. Brace yourselves. Because frankly the next step planned is either "Lulz, just kidding guyz, it was multi-sided ethnic mega-genocide just in order to prank Pan-Oceania!" or its "Hey, you loved Uprising right, well here is Uprising 2 where we actually commit to finishing the material needed in mere game mechanical terms alone to actually make JSA a new faction, and yes that pushes the material needed to restore Yu-Jing to major faction status back another year or something too! Ha ha!" Well that or both JSA and Yu Jing rot as second rate half factions with poor product support and really short lists compared to real major factions for at least a couple of years. Is the Tohaa business plan really that good it needs duplication?
I think you got it wrong. JSA is pretty much done, they will get three more boxes, maybe a couple or 4 blisters and they are done. A closed sectorial. Yu Jing on the other hand still has 2 sectorials that are confirmed as coming (one next year, one in 2-3 years or so probably in a starter box vs PanO). I may not like the way Uprising was handled, I did call Gutier a hack, but while CB has done some things that proved dumb in the past ("hey, HS and Paradiso are not gonna be updates... 2 moths later: Oh shit, they are shit, we have to update them" "let's put the starter in this complementary 300 points box" "let's release the USARF starter from the USARF Army Box") I don't think they are going to go that way. We are like Aleph now, and Aleph is not rotting.
So I agree with you except for this. Is there a common perception that USAriadna was released to make up for shortcomings with the HSN3 release? I would've expected a much more cynical (and accurate) view that CB made a pandering cash grab for their large American market. And it totally worked.
I think he means literally the starter box models, and how it can be confusing for new players and end up buying both the 150pts army box and the starter USAriadna box (which means they get the starter twice). As for the 300pts box with a starter, it's right now a 50/50, and it seems like they stopped doing it: Onyx has the CA starter (dunno if it's been relabeled as Onyx starter, and CA is without one), and Tohaa has the Tohaa starter (inside a deal box that is 50% of what it costs about buying the stuff piecemeal).
I dunno, I wasn't talking about that. I'm talking about releasing an army box that wasn't limited, and then releasing one of the contents of the army box as a separate box. That was kinda dumb because they stole sales from one another.
You don't need faction pop for that. Hell,you don't even need to know how to calculate retreat threshold.
This sound interesting was not aware how hot the cold war could get. (do you by any chance have a book suggestion?) How do you explain this as "gang violence"? The Nomades annexed a piece of Yu Jing real estate and a pretty important piece at that. Same with the Wotan stuff, as funny as the image of every human faction trying to look innocent while whistling is. It is just silly to claim at every one agreed that if mommy Aleph and Daddy O-12 asked who made a mess we would blame it on the C.A dog. Again from the narrative guide. So that is occupation of Yu Jing territory and the seizure of Nomad Property. If we consider to PanO Exo Affairs Department Orbilal it was the site of 164 battles that would be approximately 1600-2000 combatants with roughly 50% PanO defenders and 50% Ariadna attackers that means Ariadna deployed upwards of 800-1000 combat troops into PanO territory that is not a clandestine operation but an invasion. You can't hide something like that with a hand wave and claim C.A did it. There are bodies, POW's and a whole host of other evidence of what happend and who did it it. While I agree that PanO committed what would be an act of war in our world. In the world of Infinity we see again and again that states are able to use force in ways that in our world would lead to all out war. As to why Yu Jing would not act in kind... who knows... maybe the univers blinked or maybe the Yu Jing high command realized that all out war would mean the eventual destruction of mankind in the hands of the C.A. and there for swallowed their pride. Maybe they knew that PanO would not do such a thing unless they could count of the support of the other nations (as they had after all the O-12 later supported the action)
Having read the Uprising book, I have to say it is a major disappointment. If you were expecting a serious explanation from this book, well.... Not only is the writing quality worse than what we got with the last few releases (same words repeated multiple times in 1 paragraph or the copy-paste nature of explaining how Haramaki got removed from the game over and over and over and over again), but the whole book is partially recycled material (Dire Foes) and partially just a very boring infodump (whole Uprising Calendar in the JSA section). Maybe I'm spoiled by the detailed and extravagant Malifaux fluff I'm reading lately, but I seriously think that the ball was dropped on Uprising. I just hope that it's not a symptom of some greater problem, just a minor stumble.
Actually another thing that hasn't really been mentioned or discussed is that PanO's "Steel Wall" was deployed to 'protect' japanese civilian population centers on Mars, Paradiso, Dawn (pissing off Ariadna a whole lot), and Svalarheima (mostly fails due to bad weather), not just on Earth.
I share some of these concerns, especially for the Japanese to push in front of yu king both fluff and crunch wise because of sweet weeb Yuan.
I was having a conversation earlier today with @Superfluid and he asked what actually turned out to be a much more interesting question than it first appeared: "What is it about Uprising that you like the least, is it the way the mechanics were handled or the way the fluff was handled?" The reason it was an interesting question (to me at least) was that it made me re-evaluate how I actually think about the fluff as I tried to work out what irked me most and to some extent why many of the conversations in this thread and elsewhere seem to have both sides talking at cross purposes. Ultimately there are two aspects to the fluff and they appeal to different people in slightly different ways. There are individuals who love specific stories within the setting. That might be a tale about a particular individual or it could be an ensemble piece. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that there is a story to be enjoyed the same way any other book might be appreciated. I'll refer to this aspect as Narrative. Equally there are aspects about the world and setting itself which make it an interesting place in which to imagine other stories. I'll refer to this as World Building. These two things aren't mutually exclusive in any piece of fiction and the best works draw heavily from both elements (and with each element enriching the other). Many people find Arya's story in Game of Thrones compelling but it draws on a very rich world in which those stories take place and within that world there are understandable and consistent rules. Which brings me back to the Uprising. I have no issue with the JSA splitting off from YJ. As a Narrative in and of itself I've not heard anything which makes me averse to what's been written (and this would be backed up by the summaries of players like @Yasashii Fuyu ). However, where I (and reading between the lines a number of other people) do have an issue is that there are elements of that Narrative which seem to break the rules defined in the rest of the World. Information is so readily available to the general populace of the rest of the human sphere that the citizens of each nation were ready to rise up in popular support to convince their governments to intervene to help the JSA and yet not a word had reached a single Yanjing operative. PanO were willing to take part in a direct act of war to help the uprising prior to getting O12 sanction. The organisation concerned with counter insurgency within the second hyperpower were so inept that they succeeded at 5% of significant missions despite being the dominant force in those conflicts, having an extensive history in dealing with such issues and having a bunch of other background highlighting how they were so good at what they did the primary hyperpower had to re-invent its entire intelligence operation. Was the original background about what the ISS and Yanjing were just totally off? Are the realistically political drives and methodologies previously shown not actually representative of the World? Do CB simply not care enough about World Building any more and we're seeing the start of a move to more Narrative and army of the week? In game dev terms the events of Uprising, as they have been portrayed, have created a moment of cognitive dissonance. That moment where you're watching or reading something and you do a double take because something just doesn't add up. Now, this can sometimes be a useful tool to a writer if the goal is to bring emphasis to a deliberate change in the rules of the game within the fiction. However, 99% of the time its a really bad thing. When your audience ceases just enjoying the game and stops to question what's going on in your World that's when you lose the greatest number of players so you'd best make sure you have enough other retention mechanics in place. Of course, if you combine this with adding a whole bunch of additional financial and time investment costs (invalidation of models and the need to acquire replacements for one or other faction in this case) plus an overall drop in competition power level (for those players who care less for the hobby and more for tournaments) then you've created a pretty much perfect storm of alienating players that enjoy the fluff, enjoy the hobby or enjoy the competitive scene. Does this mean the game will tank from there? No, absolutely not (you have a number of other factions for a start) but you've probably done as much as you could to drive one particular section of your player base away from the game. As Bostria was saying at Adepticon, the whole reason for writing the fiction is to try and add value for players to keep them engaged rather than move on to other systems but sadly I think the execution of this particular expansion is likely to have the polar opposite effect for many. First they came for the Exrah, then they came for Yu Jing, how long will it be before CB come knocking at your door?
Small note, but a lot of JSA units don't have cubes, for people asking about those. So it may be that JSA just didn't have cubes in the people they sent on missions.
In all honesty, the "they were all too honorable and did the kamikaze and seppuku'd too much for us to get intel" just reads poorly as an excuse for a lack of general intel. Most of the insurgencies we fight these days are against literal religious fantatics (i.e. the kind with people so convinced their worldview is true they're willing to blow up for it), and they provide tons of intel because the actual incidence of true believers who also know which way is up is really low. While the rank and file may be willing to die as martyrs, the higher ups are usually only around for spending those lives so they can gain more power. The higher the rank, the more that lip service to doing your part and dying for the cause is cynical stuff told to make true believers die so you can get fatter, richer, and more powerful on their backs. I doubt the commanders and oligarchs of the Japanese regime are lacking cubes, and even more than that I doubt they all have the conviction to kill themselves at the first sign of trouble (hell, I doubt any of them do if I'm being honest). This is just another instance of writing breaking verisimilitude by making Japan in to a banzai-charing, bushido-loving hive mind. I just hate that the further down folks dig in to this, the more fanwank needs to be created to make sense of all of the shit that breaks worldbuilding and general logic. It keeps feeling like CB started from the point of "Well, JSA have to rebel in this very specific way and in doing so absolutely must make it so that Yu Jing players can't use JSA stuff ever again" and then got to work bending setting conceits and previous lore to fit the specific, convoluted narrative they wanted but in doing so it left a bunch of cracks and holes that require leaps of logic that would make Occam spin in his grave so fast that they'd have to rename it Occam's Lathe. I can't help but think CB should have tried for less bombast and more substance, working within the established lore with the questions "how would Japan gain independence". Trying to work within previous worldbuilding (instead of retconning things at random) to answer the question likely would have led to something more interesting in the long run (or at least something that seemed less at odds with the presented setting).
One of the many things that is stupid about this mess is that I don't think CB has a firm grasp on the modern cutting edge "weeb" culture, or whatever you want to call it. Because back when they created Yu Jing, or rather JSA, in the first place THEN it was kinda weird that they had created a sci-fi themed heavily aesthetically anime influenced game and yet for some reason only included actual Japanese themed models as part of something else. Back then it didn't make much sense from a marketing perspective. But now? Things have changed and I don't think CB knows it. Korean and Chinese comics have broken through in the "weeb" community people who read manga are now just as likely to read something from korea or china instead. I'm pretty sure China is even breaking into the anime market. The cutting edge "weeb" these days isn't just a Japanese fan, they ARE now a "pan-Asian" fan. And at the same time modern geo-politics and economics have made China a much more believable, interesting, better understood (and more widely sympathetic) international power. All the wannabe world war three posturing pushed from the USA via Japan right now also makes the idea of a fictional alliance between China and Japan WAY more alluring as an alternative optimistic bright sci-fi future. The fact is if Yu Jing didn't entirely make sense as a faction when it was created it VERY much makes sense as a faction now. A company that was on the ball, in touch with the current relevant fan culture, who wanted to stay ahead of the ball on this would have taken this opportunity to double down on the alliance. "Hey guys, JSA just got a bunch of new units and dropped the repressed minority bullshit as part of Yu Jing cementing its alliance to strengthen itself to take at least tied position as the strongest super power." That would have been so much better. The correct choice fictionally and as a marketing strategy should have been to strengthen their Japanese themed products in a way that focused on and strengthened the Yu-Jing alliance, not in a way that detracted from it. Because the Yu-Jing pan-asian theme was in fact, accidentally, ahead of its time, and this split is equally BEHIND the times.
I would not consider China remotely sympathetic. They are working on instituting 'loyalty scores' effectively, so just because they are hiding the repression behind some gamification, doesn't mean they are any less of an oppressive monolith than they were 10 years ago. They also now have a 'leader for life' and several other backward steps... I think the global situation ins't 'better' or 'worse' so much as it is merely different. As for chinese/korean comics and animation... some of it is finding wider appeal, but it also receives kickback, and the tensions in the pacific are far from gone.
@Eldritch I agree with a lot of what you're saying. The historical and current animosity between China and Japan can't be understated, but a sci-fi setting in which they were tightly bound together had more promise, to me, than the one we ended up. A marriage/joining of houses between the Chinese and Japanese Imperial families would have been interesting, and might have provided an in-universe reason for a raising of the social status of Japanese within Yu Jing. They did Uprising in one fell swoop, it would have been neat to have it start as basically a "civil rights movement" or something and then stay peaceful or go into full-on rebellion more organically. @Fyeya In the game of geopolitics, we're all bastards. My great-uncle had pictures he had taken of Filipino children and *babies* who had been bayonetted by Japanese troops during WWII. Doesn't mean I don't think that the modern-day Japanese are evil, or even that every Japanese person back then was. Fundamentally I hope for more nuance in a setting that attempts to take itself at least halfway seriously.
That is unfortunate for you. But the fact is on many major issues that have created massive grass roots anger and disappointment in the west... China is providing real leadership. Inequality? China is still an actual socialist/communist nation and has massively enriched it's formerly poverty stricken population, unlike the west where the opposite has been happening for a generation. The West cannot deal with a basic global existential threat on global climate change and other environmental issues, but China is the leading power on those issues and is very clearly taking them very seriously indeed. While the west cannot even run a functional global economy, China manages to be the one engine of the global economy that keeps on going and saved us all from an international economic collapse far worse than the one we ended up facing. And all those complaints about China's undemocratic oppressive police state and controlled media... well actually if you know anything about that the West actually has been looking worse in comparison on basically all those issues lately. And sure, in the USA with it's failed democracy and failed media a lot of people don't know or care about any of these things and just believe crazy stuff instead. But China is my nations greatest single trading partner now. That's true of many nations. I work in an industry where a huge portion of my customers are directly recent Chinese migrants or even visitors. I have been to China on business. Compared to even a decade ago a lot more people than ever actual personally deal with and have experience with China and the Chinese. China is engaging in unprecedented international investment in infrastructure in nations around the world. This is making them VERY popular with both political leadership and populations across the world, especially in third world nations, as China gives them the roads and hospitals that the West refused to invest in. And even in Western nations China has invested heavily in diplomacy, education and cultural exchanges deliberately intended to (and succeeding in) fostering friendship and international ties. You might not personally regard China as sympathetic, but it's an objective fact that international sympathy with China is at an all time high and only growing despite a concerted effort by the USA to pick an entirely needless fight.
I genuinely regret missed opportunities for the west to engage with China on the world stage in the last 2 decades. China wants to take their rightful place in the international community and needs to have opportunities to do that that don’t conflict with the interests of the west. Everyone benefits from China supporting the international system. Yu Jing is an exemplar (or was, prior to Uprising) of this approach playing out.
