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Rules bloat?

Discussion in 'Off-Topic English' started by regelridderen, Dec 2, 2018.

  1. regelridderen

    regelridderen Dismember

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    Have had gaming on a bit of a hiatus in the last year. Coming back I’m considering whether there is an unhealthy rules bloat?

    I like the new variation on armies, mercs, JSA, varuna, they all add variation to playstyle.

    Stuff like tactical awareness and full auto seems like rules bloat. Not really adding anything to the game despite ‘newness’ - and perhaps ‘incentive to buy more models’. Which is all good and fun, except that it doesn’t do any game any good to have heavy rulesets.

    So how do you feel about this? And would it be time for housecleaning and an N4?
     
  2. inane.imp

    inane.imp Well-Known Member

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    The issue isn't actually new rules, it's when CB 'breaks the rules' with their new rules.

    Compare Lieutenant L2 and NCO. LT2 is really simple, NCO is not. The reason NCO is not is because it breaks the rules. This creates lots of new complexity.

    The same is true of Zondnautica and Puppets. Zondnautica are actually really simple: the Bikes and G-Sync with a way of transforming between the two, the only reason their rules are so long is because of the need to write an actually playable version of the Mount/Dismount process. Whereas Puppets throw up so many edge cases; they wouldn't if they'd been something simple like G:Servants with Guns rather than Engineer/Doctor.

    The solution to reduce bloat is for CB to implement the 'new cool' with rules that make as much use as possible of existing rules in really obvious ways.
     
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  3. regelridderen

    regelridderen Dismember

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    True, in the same way Guardian could have been a simple G:Sync solution instead of making a third version of MA. The Red Fury could have just been a Spitfire with MA ammo and so on.

    It is more about controlling the urge to develop new rules, when the potential for variety and tactical options are already present in the old rules, if they’d just been applied creatively.

    And although WIKIs and other stuf means, that you do not ‘need’ to carry a pile of books around. Minimizing the need for checking rule books is an art in itself.
     
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  4. Sparrow

    Sparrow Well-Known Member

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    I am confused why NCO is not simple? It seems very simple. NCO can use Lieutenant order for self. How does break rules? What are complications? Can you tell me?
     
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  5. Solodice

    Solodice Freshly Squeezed Troll

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    It's what NCO and TA let you do in link teams. Where using a standard LT order in a link it will break the link (it being an order only the LT can use and not everyone else). NCO lets you use it like a regular order (which can only be done when the NCO is the link leader). Same with TA which lets you use that "irregular" order in the link as if it was a regular order (which can only be done when the model using TA is the link leader).
     
  6. CabalTrainee

    CabalTrainee Well-Known Member

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    I still have no idea if my NCO needs to be link leader to do it. Only he can spend the Lt Order as a regular order but if i activate a link the rules specifically tell me to use one from the order pool. The example shows that is definitly not the intent tho.

    "During the Active Turn, all troopers who are part of a Fireteam activate with a single Regular Order from the Order Pool of their Combat Group."

    When exactly does a trooper use his order? When he is part of a link? Link Leader? At what point does it count as him actually using it?
     
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  7. inane.imp

    inane.imp Well-Known Member

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    Pretty much (although I disagree NCO says that it can only be used when the NCO is the Team Leader). Also it's a regular order now... So how does Isolated affect it? Not to mention that spending the Special Lt Order broadcasts who the Lt is...

    These problems are all really clear if it's a Special Lt Order that is used to activate the NCO.

    There's issues around Sectorial vs Vanilla balance if that's the case (which honestly I don't think is actually a problem). But you can get around that by making NCOs good solo pieces (oh look they pretty much all are) or adding a Strategos 1 profile (instead of the LT2, or hell in addition) to Daoying in IA.

    The point is: with the tools that CB already has they don't really need to be building entirely new tools when simply extending the existing rules would do (especially when the new tools explicitly break exisiting interactions).

    Re: NCO. The rules are being discussed here.
    https://forum.corvusbelli.com/index.php?threads/26093/

    @psychoticstorm can you move this thread to an appropriate location. The Rules Forum is not it.
     
    #7 inane.imp, Dec 2, 2018
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2018
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  8. regelridderen

    regelridderen Dismember

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    I think, discussing the individual rules is a little off the point of this thread. Pointing to rules that are problematic or superfluous is fine and dandy, or discussing how they add to the game is great. But the actual rules mechanics is irrelevant.
     
  9. psychoticstorm

    psychoticstorm Aleph's rogue child
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    Moved to off topic.
     
  10. n21lv

    n21lv SymbioHate

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    New rules may override older rules, but if there are too many overrides, traversing the rules becomes a very daunting task. On the other hand, if you look at Magic: the Gathering rules, there's an extremely long document that covers all rules in the game, including overrides, replacement effects etc.
    But the core feature of M:tG rules is their consistency and organisation. Infinity rules are becoming more and more convoluted, and the baseline becomes more and more blurred.
    I wonder, how far would CB rules designers get in Magic Great Designer Search if they ever took part in it? That contest is a great KPI for game designers.
     
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  11. Wolf

    Wolf https://youtube.com/@StudioWatchwolf

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    I witnessed a really interesting conversation between three people from different parts of the game that relates to this topic. They were 1) one the best ITS competitors in the world; 2) a relative newcomer to Infinity; and 3) one of the company Directors.

    There were discussing Haris Fireteams, and the newcomer suggested that the different Fireteam versions created complication, rather than desirable complexity, unlike the best and most enduring games that are often described as ‘simple to learn; a lifetime to master’.

    He and the champion player agreed that Infinity has outstanding core mechanisms that do combine like this, but that it also has too many extra rules and details that are unnecessarily complicated, making the game harder to learn and play.

    Thus the same opinion was being expressed by two players from their different standpoints at opposite ends of the gaming experience spectrum, and who arguably somewhat represent the full breadth of Corvus Belli's consumer base.

    Now if I were that Director, and talented enough that CB were the company I’d founded with my friends and spent my whole adult life developing into an international success story that’s the pride of my home town, I'd think that might be an opinion worth hearing...

    But he just said “It's not complicated at all. It's a simple game” Which told me something rather interesting about the personalities at the heart of our game and their attitudes to its rules. In short, that we needn't think Infinity’s going to get any simpler any time soon!
     
    #11 Wolf, Dec 2, 2018
    Last edited: Dec 5, 2018
  12. solkan

    solkan Well-Known Member

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    It's two completely different perspectives resulting in two completely different results concerning complexity:

    If all you want to do is learn how Decoy works for this new model you got, the way Decoy is structured is great. All of the mechanics are right there, you don't have to cross reference much, and it's all organized similarly to the Holo-echo rules that it resembles.

    But the Decoy rules are terrible from the perspective of someone who has to deal with both Decoy and Holoecho, because none of the differences are called out. For instance, the termination clause for Decoy is declaring an Order or ARO, where the termination clause for Holoecho is certain skills or declaring an ARO.

    And it's the same sort of problem that you see in the various ways to activate more than one model with an order. Individually, they're all easy to use. But when you get G:Servant and G:Sync mixed up... Or, more importantly, if a mechanic has an interaction with that sort of thing, now it has to start specifying (or get FAQ'd or argued about) all of them individually.

    It's the same sort of thing you see in games that give all of their models unique special rules vs. games that put all of the special rules in the rulebook as skills and equipment.

    I don't think it's reached the "Write Universal Special Rules and then don't use them in army books" level of self-sabotage concerning rules complexity.
     
  13. inane.imp

    inane.imp Well-Known Member

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    Decoys also provoke an ARO on Deployment. ;)

    But yes. They'd be easier to understand if they had Limited Holoecho. Which was Holo 2 (without Holo 1) and no ability to re-enter the state once it's dropped. Done (with maybe a price bump, because being able to Move+Move a Neurocinetics model into LOF of something your opponent absolutely wants to use next turn is really strong).

    Which I think is one of the reasons we're seeing what we're seeing. CB uses restrictions in particular rules as a balancing point (see FA2 not stacking with Suppression Fire) to avoid having to cost rules more expensively or using another methods to offset the cost. This introduces complexity in favour of balance and shows that, ultimately, balance is a wicked problem.
     
    #13 inane.imp, Dec 2, 2018
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2018
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  14. solkan

    solkan Well-Known Member

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    Which choir are you in, anyway? :ghost:

    Technically, if you gave a Spec Ops both Holoprojector L2 and Combat Jump, when it arrived on the table and activated Holoprojector, those Holoechoes do exactly the same thing. Decoy just includes the statement because they're acknowledging the interaction.

    Honestly, I think the Sibylla's Advice quote right before Decoys can be used as poster child for the situation.
    SIBYLLA’S ADVICE

    This Special Skill can be summarized as: when deploying a trooper possessing Decoy, the player can also deploy two Decoy Markers in ZoC. Players must note which one is the real trooper. The Decoy State is cancelled when declaring any Order or ARO. The game mechanics of this rule are very similar to the Holoprojector L2 piece of Equipment and Holoecho state (See Human Sphere N3).
    The mechanics are very similar to Holoprojector L2, but have all of these crucial differences that aren't highlighted very well.

    The thing is, if you tried to write a "Limited Holoecho rule" you'd have some primary big options:
    1. Write about six or so paragraphs explaining all of the differences between Limited Holoecho and Holoecho, so that a new player has to understand two rules instead of one.
    2. Publish an errata to Holoechoes and AD changing how they work, and explaining the whole AD using them situation.
    3. Write essentially the current Decoy rules.

    The frustrating thing is that all of the fancy formatting in N3 really increases the amount of work that someone would have to do if they became desperate enough to do something like the 2nd Edition fan-edits.
     
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  15. inane.imp

    inane.imp Well-Known Member

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    Compare Ltd Camo to Decoy. I think Decoy would be better as Holo X: Ltd Holoprojector. Then you'd only need to understand one set of rules (the Holoprojector rules).

    I'm saying the difference between Decoy and Holo 2 that you can only use once and doesn't include Holo 1 is not of sufficient value to justify the additional complexity.

    But the fluff of Decoy is substantially different to that of Holoprojector so we need two different rules. Just like with Transmutation and Lo-tech.
     
  16. toadchild

    toadchild Premeasure

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    No, AD provokes an ARO on deployment. If you're using normal deployment (during that phase of the game) your opponent doesn't get AROs when you put down a decoy.
     
  17. inane.imp

    inane.imp Well-Known Member

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    Really? That's not what the rules say. [emoji14]

    To be absolutely clear: I'm not arguing how to play it. I'm saying that the rules state (from memory because on my phone and can't check the wiki for this) "When deployed during the game the Decoys provoke only one ARO." The deployment phase is unequivocally "during the game". This mistake amuses me because the interaction it immediately calls to my mind is both not intended and wrong.

    The reason I pointed this out is because it's a symptom of the complexity in both the rules themselves and the way the rules are designed. There's several different ways to deploy and the Decoy rules need to be future proofed against a possible non-normal deploying version. This in turn means that additional information needs to be included in the rules which increases the scope for ambiguous wording. However, the general rule "when several markers or figures are activated as part of a single order they collectively generate only a single ARO" sufficiently covers the AD Decoy scenario. So there isn't actually any need to spell it out in Decoy if the general ARO rules were sufficiently robust.
     
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  18. Wolf

    Wolf https://youtube.com/@StudioWatchwolf

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    I think from the point of view of gaming, players generally want to understand how one mechanism differs from another, and what that means to the game. And then for the fluff to be agreeably interlinked, providing a story that makes sense of the rules, illuminating the the game.

    And whilst we think of CB as a games company, I think they're really a miniatures company whose commercial interest in the story is to provide fertile ground for creating new mini.s. and whose game illustrates the story.

    With regard to my in my earlier anecdote then, this goes some way to explaining why, despite the interesting quality of feedback he was hearing, the Director flatly disagreed that the game was too complicated. And maybe also why he demonstrates no sincere interest in sorting out the rules issues that cause us so much strife...

    Thus, whilst we in the Rules forum especially might be players who primarily want the game to make sense, and who secondarily love the miniatures and the setting, the CB creative team is different. I think they're not only comfortable with the game's current complicated-ness (more parts). but is actually keen to increase it!

    This company is founded and run by a group of friends who love sculpture, creating miniatures, writing science-fiction and playing combat games. For these guys, every new widget one of them describes in a story (repeaters and jammers and pitchers, oh my! :smile:) is raw material for another to create a miniature from.

    "A 'Jammer' you say. Hmmm what would that look like, do you suppose?" <whittle, whittle, whittle>

    And so if any of this speculation has merit, I have to say again that unfortunately, we needn't expect the game to be getting any simpler any time soon.
     
    #18 Wolf, Dec 3, 2018
    Last edited: Dec 3, 2018
  19. n21lv

    n21lv SymbioHate

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    Infinity rules have a lot of issues with timing and keywords. Why not just define the game phases and steps they comprise of instead of writing this ambiguous nonsense each time new rule is introduced?

    Separate the game into these (at one might guess, I borrowed a lot from the M:tG turn structure):
    1. Preparation phase
    1.1. Command step (draw classified objectives, choose lists)
    1.2. Initiative step (roll for initiative, determine turn order and deployment order)
    1.3. First player deployment step (deploy all units save for reserve unit).
    1.4. Second player deployment step
    1.5. First player reserve step (deploy reserve unit)
    1.6. Second player reserve step
    1.7. Final preparations step (designate Data Trackers, Designated Targets, Fireteams, exchange Courtesy lists etc)

    2. Beginning of turn phase
    2.1. Upkeep step (all before Order count things happen here)
    2.2. Checks step
    2.2.1. Retreat! check
    2.2.2. LoL check
    2.3. Order count step

    3. Tactical phase
    3.1. Impetuous step (spend all Impetuous orders)
    3.2. Orders step (all unspent Impetuous orders are nullified, spend all non-Impetuous orders)

    4. End of turn phase
    4.1. End step (all effects that last until end of turn end here)
    4.2. Cleanup step (all temporary effects and markers are removed from the battlefield, any unspent non-Impetuous orders are nullified)

    Order structure:
    1. Activation substep (choose a unit that will activate)
    2. First Short Skill declaration substep
    3. Initial LoF check substep
    4. First ARO substep
    5. Second Short Skill declaration substep
    6. Final LoF check substep
    7. Second ARO substep
    8. Order resolution substep (roll dice and perform the Order and ARO)
    9. Damage resolution substep (assign hits, roll saves)
    10. Order conclusion substep (successful order declaration effects take place here)

    Assuming this structure, how easy it would be to describe the Decoy skill?
     
  20. the huanglong

    the huanglong Well-Known Member

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    But you can see it from here, and that's when we need to communicate our concern. When it's printed, it's already too late.
     
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