@Alphz Given that CB has shown models' rules can and will be taken away at the drop of a hat, why should players get excited about new models? Shouldn't they just buy a bunch of fusiliers or whatever and proxy them as whatever army they're playing, since they can't count on them being around tomorrow? To be honest, CB was rude to YJ players first, by taking their financial support for granted. If you're the kind of person who thinks that a company like CB is under no obligation to treat its customers well but its customers must treat them well, well then...
If you think a company changing rules for models you brought is being mistreated I don't know what to tell you. Not only does it completely discard any artistic value, or acknowledge any enjoyment already gained. But also asserts that cb pricing is so high that the ensuring value gained must be enormous. I do think CB should treat customers with respect. I don't think they're under any obligation to treat people who think they can be rude with any attention at all, because they've shown they don't think CB deserves respect for reasons that are completely personal and in some cases pretty unreasonable.
That’s the sticky wicket right there. They’re not under any obligation or to say anything, especially to people who are rude. In fact saying saying nothing is the easiest course to take as it requires no effort. Taunting people requires effort. If your “they’re rude, they don’t deserve what I have to say” read of the situation is correct, then so be it, I’d much prefer that to sarcasm. Furthermore the “rude and unreasonable” contingent of the forum is not the majority. There’s just as many folks who have been very positive and just as vocal as the naysayers, nevermind everyone who has taken a neutral stance on the matter. Are we also deserving of silence and ill timed jokes?
Well, if a player invests money in purchasing a set of models to use together to play the game, and then they no longer can, they've lost value. It's not a huge amount of value, but CB is competing with every other gaming company for people's leisure bucks, and there are other companies who don't jerk them around as much. And yeah, the artistic value is nice, but what's to stop people from just buying the 15-20 models they find aesthetically appealing and just proxying those for what they want every time? Especially given if they try to make things WYSIWYG they're liable to have the rug pulled out from under them with no warning.
There's nothing stopping you actually. In fact, that was my point is part of the mistreatment was officially supporting doing that post uprising, if that helped people continue to use models. I get that most people want to use the right models for their faction, but that's a personal limitation to some extent (it's obviously a bit more nuanced than that) so find it hard being used as a primary justification for some behaviour.
Well CB wants to sell models. And right now they seem to think that making the playerbase uncertain of the future and yanking models out of their available pool is the right way to do that - I think that's extremely wrongheaded. People buy models based off of their utility - at the LVO last year it was shown during the seminar that the highest selling blister was the Imetron + Ikadron combo pack, because they're so useful for all of the Combined Army factions (or at least the Ikadron). If players can no longer count on these utilitarian buys being still in factions - then why buy them?
The argument that you paid good money for your (assorted nerdy items) sounds suspiciously reminiscent of those who've argued that Star Wars should have a less diverse cast, because y'know, "us geeks made it". Strikes me as more than a little entitled, especially as (going out on a limb) the majority of us posting here will be male, middle-class and white. Looks fairly ugly to me.
Yeah, I agree it's potentially not a great move. I don't see how that relates to perceived mistreatment and therefore reasonable justification for certain behaviour?
@Fire@Will That's a non-sequitur if I ever heard one. "The people who disagree with me are racist nerds!" Try harder.
Woah, I don't think it's that heavy. Id hypothesise it more relates to a customer is always right mentality.
While using mixed and matched models can be good, you generally want at least matching weapons for the profile and a standard colour scheme in the absence of visual design cohesion. In JSA's case, the giant pile of CCWs does not actually translate well to Yu Jing Vanilla as it is quite starved for hard-hitting CC units, save for Shaolin, Cranes and Pheasants. Also, the painting takes a lot of time to apply, and if neglected it becomes difficult to remember which mini is supposed to be which profile. @Hecaton raises a very good point about sales, I know I am unlikely to pick up Neoterra or expand my Nomads until I know for sure I'll be able to keep using them for more than a week. Randomly invalidating purchases just isn't a sustainable model unless you are Apple, so that's where a lot of the criticism of the communication and business plan is coming from. @Fire@Will, the argument actually sounds a lot more like what most major sporting organisations would be discussing if the specialist clothing restrictions changed every three weeks. Sure, it's still football, but now you're learning to play in stilettos and a kilt a week before the World Cup while your 300$ running shoes gather dust in a locker. You might be able to deal with that once or twice as the game evolves, but you'd have to be mad to keep going if it becomes a regular occurence. And you'd certainly be exceedingly, vocally annoyed at the body responsible for it, especially if one of them decided to mock you for it!
My point is maybe better put like this; "could you explain, and justify, the levels of your anger in front of someone with more pressing concerns"...
Ok, so say a bunch of people order food at a restaurant. But before everyone starts eating, the staff come out and cordon off a quarter of the flloorspace and tell everyone in it that they're taking back their side dish and not giving them a refund. "That's not fair!" say the patrons. But the staff respond with "You still have your main course, you're still getting a meal out of this." Do the patrons have a right to be indignant?
That's hypocritical, since your concern over my complaints is equally as "frivolous." In fact, let's stop playing miniature wargames altogether, it's a pastime of the privileged first world! On a serious note, I won't, because I think quality is worth expecting (and striving for).
That proxy rule: A) Was on the heels of the Shikami sculpt release. B) Merely codifies what players have been doing unofficially. There are a decent amount of orphaned models. The Exrah are the most prominent example, but also included are Isaak Beg, Azrael, and Ahl Faseed. Most players wouldn't bat an eye if their opponent decided to use a Caskuda as a proxy for the Avatar or the old Faseeds as a Asawira or Jannisaries. But they still existed in that grey area where, in an official event, they could be deemed illegal. Hell, that rule is even more necessary now that Montessa, Raiden, and Haramaki are orphans now. I did wait. I would have probably pre ordered the JSA box if I wasn't dealing with other issues. And I did see. I saw Yu Jing get thrown into a direction I was deeply uncomfortable with. I saw our newest Dire Foe, Xi, disabled from ITS right on the heels Yu Jing permanently losing over half it's characters. So I spoke. I saw no ray of hope, nothing official to peg our future on, months in. Not even ackowledgement of that spoiled shooting star. I continued speaking. And kept doing so when it became increasingly clear there wasn't anything for us for a while to come. I saw ghoulish rationlizations, that tried to tell me my concerns were invalid. I saw a bizarre lack of empathy from fellow community members as I worked through these feelings of loss. And so here I am still waiting. Perhaps the wait be worth it. But at least it will be over soon.
ahhhhmmm... You're going to have to explain this analogy as I'm just not seeing the equivalences necessary for this to make sense. Models are food? but CB didn't take your models? are the rules the food? how do you define what you paid for rules? Its probably a bit too much of an oversimplification really. and that feeds back into my original point. All you're really doing is participating in some mental gymnastics to justify customer actions while never bothering to reflect on how they might affect real people on the other end. The fact that its almost never featured as a factor when talking about customer relations is the issue I take. People are more than happy to one-up a post which amounts to name calling or insulting the intellect of people, provided its under the guise of some kind of outrage and makes some reference to personal suffering at the hands of these other people, without ever really justifying or reflecting if thats actually reasonable. To clarify, there have been both rational and irrational posts, and some posters (probably yourself included) who aren't guilty of the worst behaviour. But its a general tone which has both fed that behaviour and implicitly encouraged it (by not calling it out as not your own and even attacking people who do call it out) that is what people read when they read threads (ie. like CB employees). We see it all the time on the forum, people misattribute a lot because it gets hard to differentiate between different posters over a long winding topic.
Do me a favor, and write up a half-page of serious suggestions for a company (remember, I'm a business major) to avoid pissing off their customers. Then have the Brand Ambassador respond to your list of reasonable, fairly easy-to-do suggestions with a trollpost that sounds like "Hahaha, Fuck Off." When I first saw the new JSA models, I was thrilled. FFS, they included my forum avatar in the box -squeeeeeeeee!!!! Pre-ordered box and book together. Then we started getting fluff dropped, and that comment about drinking YJ player's tears. I objected, saying that was uncalled for. Then we got PsychoCrane. I was literally nauseous. I was also stuck with being unable to cancel my preorder. I said that was particularly stupid, and the Emperor should be taking PsychoCrane's head off through the middle of the Cube. I (loosely) explained why that was stupid, and that it should be very out of character for a force that is supposed to be very good at counterinsurgency. More fluff leaks out, and it doesn't make sense given basic International Relations (required class for International Business types, and something I'd been involved in for 5 years in the Navy). I said so, and tried to explain how. And it doubled down with PsychoCrane as the head of the Yuandun Division. I said it quite clearly then, and if I really have to I will go look up my fucking quotes from the time. "Units and mixed links are interesting. The fluff is terrible, straight up War Crimes out of Nuremburg."
I remember a thread somewhere saying that if CB employs any more people directly they'll jump into a much higher tax bracket, so actually employing someone just for community management would not work well for them. However, I too would like real design notes on the exclusion of the Daofei and Tigers instead of jokes, I can provide those myself. I have my suspicions about the gameplay reasons, but it would be nice to see why they backpedalled on the background and would likely do a lot to calm down veteran players. Unless the design notes involve a dartboard in any role, then they better be buried before someone finds them. On Uprising's fluff, the Emperor could not catch Psycho Crane and his minions to deliver them justice, as the villain had already retreated to his fortified lair at Crane Mountain to plot his next nefarious scheme to conquer that meddling kingdom of Japan. On something of an unrelated tangent, the inclusion of a Zuyong character struck me as odd. Much of the propaganda in the unit store entries tries to sell the Invincible Army as a band of faceless heroes, who could come from any background and be united by their training and determination. Tai Sheng must have some interesting background info to be allowed to stand out in the purposely generic IA, especially given most of YJ's "hero" type characters defected to Japan. Anything in the book, lucky owners?
Maybe stop assuming what the infinity universe should be and act like through the lens of an american navy sailor with a business degree? You always bring up your background and use it as evidence for why something in the fluff is weak or not written well. Infinity is not the real world, it doesnt have to follow the rules and logic or the real world. It is the brain child of Spanish anime nerds. You seriously cant suspend disbelief at a faction acting evil and even incompetant but yet aliens, wormholes, werewolves, massive AI are completely ok?
