Player Numbers by faction

Aight, so he wasn't exact - but, regardless, the factions that are winning more should do better in the campaign.

 

A shame your "improvement" is inherently a negative thing, then, isn't it. Only you seem to care and you don't even play. Your approach will cause existing players to leave.

Why should we bend over for a guy who seriously thinks "the odds are stacked against" an army that gets swc bonuses, points bonuses, no territory to defend, and does pretty well in ITS but for whatever reasons don't play these? Everyone else has to shift to accommodate the CA players, or rather, you? How about no.

Also - there's no evidence to back your claims either, or your assumptions of human nature. What there is evidence of - not very many people like the idea.

 

Of course not, campaign had not ended when he posted it.

Like some others, I disagree. Nomads are a good example. Almost every Meta has Nomads and often they are used as beatsticks for other factions.

Nomads _always_ has more losses than wins. So we always would be penalized for being a Newbie-Faction and a faction that is played everywhere.

Nomads have more losses than wins, CA does as well have more losses. Aleph, Pano, Haqq and Ariadna are +/- Zero, O-12, Tohaa and Yujing are in the positive. So O-12 with only 66 wins would be more sucessfull to your calculation than Nomads with 135 wins.

And not to forget, if not every player in a given meta is playing the campaign (in my meta I am the only one), it would encourage to only post wins, never losses. Several really good reports would never have been written.

But hey, you have your oninion, that's okay for me.

 

The issue with this then is that it excludes new players as they would be an existing detriment to their factions. We already have a system for this, ITS. The campaigns are not meant to be competitive in that way. They are competitive but its focus is on the narrative and interactions more than simply winning.If we focus on losses being a detriment, I can guarantee you new players will not play as they will feel like they are hurting their peers.

 

The award for effectiveness has to go to Nomads. Holding the most Locations with the least amount of points and still being able to attack. Yes there was a lot of luck (and some help from our allies) involved, still ... very effective.

We even dropped more points on the Maze than Aleph. While getting less points per victory. It's not getting more effective than that

 

No, it's not, and your bleating that it is so doesn't make it so.

Perhaps, but I don't think the BoW/OTT fanboys are really adding much to the Infinity community. That's the only people who'd be upset.

I was specifically commenting on Wotan in that context. Besides, given the fact that you can report any mission at any location, why should a player ever agree to playing a mission with a Combined Army player where they have an advantage?

The mathematical evidence that it would solve the issue of faction populations is pretty self-evident.

The current system doesn't really "include" new players, either, since "faction leaders" and emergent social hierarchies serve to exclude them.

Also, the focus is not on the narrative. It's a railroaded story that basically ignores player input. It's not competitive, it's not narrative, it's just sort of crap.

That's just a matter of how many players in the faction are aware of the encouraged rule-breaking of reporting a mission in a given zone based on who wins. The whole system stinks.

 

I know the conversation has moved a little beyond, but I wanted to share the statistics @Wizzy put together in the Tohaa Briefing Room for end of campaign.

This one has # of players as reported on the campaign site



And down here is one where I plugged @cazboab 's reported numbers from the OP



This is probably stuff you already have figured out independently, but I hope this helps your discussion.

 

Oh, I realise @Wizzy already shared this here in its own thread! Ack, but here it is again for you guys!

 

That's pretty much what you're saying. Or rather, my interpretation. Because IMO, making it harder isn't positive. You have nothing to back up your claims either, as per usual. You have an opinion. Not facts, and the way it looks to me is your opinion is skewed by many other factors.

Just stop, accept that this whole campaign thing isn't for you. You just go do you, don't try and make us do you. It's not going to be a thing. Stop trying to make it a thing,

And for a guy who doesn't seem to like the campaigns (or the entire goddamn game for that matter) you do seem to like complaining about it. Why? Does it hurt you knowing that others enjoy that thing you hate?

If the price of people bringing a mindset like you not playing is that the system isn't pants on head stupid and masochistic, I'm seeing no issues at all.

I play for fun. That's why I don't mind losing so much. That's why I played five different armies, with Nomads my primary. But if we have your system I might as well not play at all. Because I will be hurting those factions unless I win. I will in effect take six points away from the faction I beat, not just denying them three. For all your talk of math, you don't seem to be able to add up the results very well.

Why on earth are you so damned obsessed with the zero sum anyway? Did it save you from a house fire?

 

How does one make a campaign with a bunch of players playing each other "harder"? Someone has to win.

Are you disputing that a zero-sum scoring system could solve the player population discrepancy?

The campaigns would be my thing if they were high quality. Mostly what bothers me is the deception; the implication that you're supposed to play specific scenarios at specific locations, but then it's more advantageous not to and they don't punish people who don't. There is, of course, the implication that what the players do would affect the story, which turned out to be a lie. It's selling itself as something it's not.

You might ask CB the same question; the B4ckd00r event was actually a negative-sum game, and they seemed fine with foisting that on the ITS community. The consistency, then, is merely poorly thought out campaign systems, rather than any high-minded ideas about positive play experiences.

 

I played only custom missions. And the reason is simple. Cause all my games were either preparation for a tournament, or during a tournament. A win-win in my book. Cause I am bringing my support to the Campaign as well as prepping and enjoying ITS. And most of them battles were across the border, so I would be happy if they just count for what they are, cause I am going a long way to get these reports done.

All the minuses and deductions you are proposing...People should not be punished for their effort....cause they are bringing effort. Custom or not, it does not matter really. Organizing a battle, playing and then writing a mission takes time and dedication. That is why Linking must not be an issue either. People must feel free to make an report, if only one of the parties is prepared to do so, that must be fine as well. I don't want to spend my time whiping my friends (or people I just met in another country) for link codes. If they have other life stuff or do not want to write about a loss, they must be free to do so. I am not their boss. It is weird to get punished for that and rather socially akward. With this kind of campaigns the system must be all about carrots and not sticks.

 

I could have done that with all the games I was playing, but it would seem against the spirit of the campaign. CB intended for certain missions to have flavor and give certain advantages to certain factions... ignoring all that seems to defeat the point in favor of just racking up points for your faction.

I'm interested in good competition and good stories. These so-called "narrative" campaigns offer neither.

 

Yup.

Nah, to be fair, it would.

Because if every faction has almost no players, you do "solve" the discrepancy.

It's also just implausible and inflexible to have people forced to play certain scenarios. You kill off any new players being able to join at all, you make it so people need to have terrain features they might not have, you make it impossible to use tournament games, you make it so some armies have handicaps handling some missions. You basically add another set of reasons for people to decide to not play.

I do note that nothing like backdoor has been tried since. Even though it was basically just a way to railroad a "the combines are a real threat you guys!!1!" thing. Because if they'd actually followed the campaigns as influencing the narrative, the book that became Third Offensive would probably have had to become the humans invading the Ur-Hedgemony because the CA have been utterly crap in all four.

But yeah, way I see it, you can either keep complaining that the campaign doesn't force losers to be bitten by fire ants like a HIGH QUALITY SYSTEM would while shilling ideas virtually no one wants, or give up.

 

You're wrong. Let me know if you want me to educate you, or if you'd rather persist as you are in your ignorance.

The "terrain features" required are just a matter of 40mm objectives and potentially objective rooms. I seriously doubt anyone has played their own scenario rather than the campaign one due to a lack of objective pieces available.

And should tournament games really be counted for these? Those are already going to include people who don't have trouble finding games.

Why are you criticizing CB for making missions where one side has an advantage? Clearly that was their intent.

If the campaign actually portrayed the Combined Army as being as effective as they are in the fluff, it wouldn't be an issue.

I'm going to keep critiquing CB on this until their campaigns shape up, which probably won't happen until they dissociate with BoW/OTT, since that company has no incentive to do anything other than half-ass this.

That would make it equally harder for everybody, which means not making it comparatively harder for anyone.

The main one being, of course, more work for OTT.

To be frank, who gives a shit? If OTT/CB isn't going to post what is required to make the effort someone puts into a campaign actually count, one should assume they don't really care.

Translation: CB will claim that players affected the story when it lines up with what the had planned anyway, and when they do something else, just say "deniability."

I'm talking about the reward. The winner just didn't lose a named character. Everyone else lost one. It was a terrible idea, and the WarCors/PsychoticStorm etc made a point of not ferrying the negative feedback back to CB for some reason.

 

Nah, I'm good, don't need "education" off an arrogant condescending troll. Frankly I'm astounded you're even still on these forums given how everyone is so clearly beneath your vast intellect.

 

Aight, then kindly leave the conversation to the people who actually know what they're talking about.

 

Could you both give it a rest? You clearly don't agree about how the campaign should be run. There's no need to drag this down to insults.

Personally I'm of the opinion that there shouldn't be faction balancing at all; why should the efforts of a Nomad player getting three wins be less valuable than a Tohaa player with the same? A "home field advantage" wouldn't be too bad though, if they went down that route, as it would help low-population factions at least hold their bases.