That's not a given. MRRF are supposed to get an update, the claim was just "certainly no new models in 2020".
I feel that CB have game-designed themselves into a corner, more intelligent than GW ever has, but there is this problem nevertheless. Just like any other miniature company, they need to expand their games in order to sell minis, but then comes the point where they have done too much. The rules got too convoluted and too many, some even contradict the idea of of some design ideas. There are too many models, so some need to go to make room for more. This is in contradiction to what the customers want: A smooth running game and models that they can use forever. I guess the whole economical concept of companies that sell rules and miniatures suffer from this contradiction. Because this problem exists, we will have to accept that some models will have to go. Maybe even some sectorials. It wasn't so hard to give old sectorials a slight update one after another after N3 had run for a while and all the new sectorials changed the game. Now with N4 CB probably needs to redo all the factions and sectorials at once. In order to get through this, it would make sense that they completely ditch some of the sectorials they are not selling anymore anyway. Would really be sad, though. Maybe CB will come up with a clever solution. Or the old ones will one day return in a neverending cycle of death and rebirth.
That last part is not fully correct as CB said they would come back to MRRF at a future date and them producing a brand new Chassuer model does seem to back them up. The only reason we won't see a brand new MRRF is if CB changes their minds down the road.
I was expecting the cycle of some sectorials' models being in current production and then being put of the backburner for another in-faction sectorial to shine for awhile. That would be the best way to handle the situation as it wouldn't require a sectorial to get scraped (unless there was a lore reason) and the models could come back at a later date. Many with a resculpt or rule change when they do show up again. Considering PanO is the most "simple" rules wise of the factions (most units have a certain job and not many skills added to them) I don't think they'll change much. As for other factions we will have to wait and see.
It'd be really good if CB could at least reliably plan ahead and say, for example - hey, Tohaa is getting frozen in development / removed from Army for the time being, but do expect a rehash in two years, mid-2022. This way people won't get rid of their models knowing that they aren't useless anymore. Unfortunately, with how CB is now it's pure Bostria lies and their planning ahead is at the level of "Kriza Borac soon" (said in 2013).
A company does not run like a 5 year plan from the USSR. Things happens, data let them know what people want to buy, a talent may have a brilliant idea on how to design Tohaa in a way that makes customers interested in it. Maybe they will manage to get a great partnership with a video game company and time releases coincidentally. Anyway, from a business and gameplay point of view, I would like to see some sectorials labeled as permanent, and others to be on a 2 year timer. You can't create an unlimited number of sectorials having distinctive strengths and weaknesses. The mixed fireteams ironed out weaknesses to a lot of them. And as they said in a white noise podcast (Gutier I think) there are that many ways of creating a unique lore for a skirmisher. The greater good of the game won't be to keep all the units/profiles/sectorials/factions ever produced
I hope it is just a case of Bostria telling us (the community) what CB hopes they can accomplish in 1-2 years rather than just out right lying. Agreed.
I said it once already today, in response to @Knauf in another thread - you're more of an optimist than I. I've seen multitude of proof where Bostria said one thing and a completely another happened. I'm sorry, where is your experience in the industry coming from, exactly? A company that doesn't have a release plan for at least 2-3 years ahead is a piss poor excuse for a company. Games Workshop plans at least 3-4 years ahead (a full codex / edition release cycle) if not more, which is evident by when they hire people and how soon we see their work, as well as design cues which show up between large editions (some are very late or very early to the party and this is the way we know the timeframe things were already planned for ahead). Even a much much smaller company like Warlord Games has a 2-3 year plan. It's not unreasonable to expect a gaming company to have one and stick to it. It's not unreasonable to expect a gaming company to communicate with the customers about at least the nearest or overarching principles of that plan. And when they do, like with the "Kriza Borac coming soon" in 2013, it's not unreasonable to expect a gaming company to also communicate when those plans fall through - even a mere "hey, it's not happening in the next year or two" would've been better than what, 5-6 years of silence before it finally releasing.
While updating everything all the time is good for us players it's not for sales and not sustainable in terms of effort required. I'd much rather have a full rework like SAA & MO got alongside Varuna ever so often and just new troops becoming available in the meantime, than stuff changing everywhere all the time. That said I'd also like to see more patches during FAQs, where a rule or interaction gets revisited. And ofc N4 providing a better framework for all of that.
My hope is less big changes, more minor updates. Things like adding Dire Foes or the Defiance characters are great examples of `minor updates' that keep older factions fresh. Add in occasional profile / troop level balance passes (the NCA Bolt update that came with FoCo) and that's enough. Big changes are a large investment by both CB and the community, minor changes maintain interest for far less effort.
Yeah, sending a five minute email/forum post/ part of a talk saying "hey this is getting delayed/reworked/other trouble" is entirely too much workload to add, especially since this only happens with major/hyped/dreaded releases, which are 1/4 of the releases tops. Oh wait. You'd think you'd have 5-10 minutes per _year_ to check what was promised and give a quick update.
Your company should definitely have a five year plan. That plan is nowhere near set in stone. You shouldn't be emotionally over connected to your plan. Telling your fanbase, who absolutely would be emotionally over connected to your plan, about your plan? Terrible idea.
The later additons to a Sectorial have often been quite hit or miss. Similar to general availability Mercs who are often so so (and sometimes a Liberto). On the one hand there is stuff like Dart and Dire Foes with great utility and then there are additions mostly cluttering the roster like Knauf. There's also Toni and Kovac. Who more or less are better optimized versions of another Trooper/Profile and end up being auto upgrades instead of doing something interesting of their own. Toni got the axe for precisely that reason, so one would assume CB agrees that it isn't ideal design. There's always someone who will absolutely love even the most bland or overpriced addition. But the same guy would most likely be pretty happy if the troop he loves so much would actually see a rework to be a hell of a lot more useful. Worst case is Vanilla PanO. Adding and adding and adding Sectorials and Mercs until you have choice after choice, with more than half of them irrelevant. I'm probably one of the few people who likes playing Vanilla PanO, but boy does it suck to have 2 Profiles that suck for anything you want to run. CA, Ariadna and Nomads aren't far behind on that either. Most of the effort comes from the micromanagement involved. You should playtest, sanitycheck, proofread and communicate that minor change. Then you need to get it into army as well. And that's a small change like adding a piece of equipment to something. Gets a lot more convoluted if it ends up affecting 17 Profiles. Time is finite. We would have gotten the Kriza Borac in 2013 as announced if they weren't scrambling for time in their schedule to do something more important instead. You can tell CB didn't run full test cycles for some of the bigger additions of the last 2 yeas. NA2 armies, Defiance and the freebie Sectorial updates we got for SAA, MRRF, NCA, Corregidor, Morats.... No way did they have the time to properly balance that while supporting a new game, designing yet another one and releasing more new Factions than the year before. IA and TJC don't feel complete to me compared to Shas, OSS, TAK and Varuna. There's a distinct difference in polish in between. Might have a variety of reasons. Mabye development got stuck and they called it good as it was and went on to other projects, maybe it would have needed more playtesting to show some cracks. Both TJC and IA got delayed and had a later release than initially planned if I remember correctly. So yeah, in an ideal world we'd get weekly patchnotes with balancing changes, new Profiles, rule fixes and an FAQ. But CB is nowhere near the size to do that even monthly without it impacting development.
I wouldn't go that far. They've said that they might cycle back. Might take eight years, but at least it's not never.
If CB makes a serious change to a product they sell or have sold, so that it no longer function as advertised, they need to announce that change well ahead of time. So if they are going to nuke, for example, NCA with the release of N4, they are going to need to communicate that with their customers and make sure the product information reflects this 6 months prior to doing it (I think) or the customers have valid grounds to claim refund on their products at least in the EU and probably US/CAN. This is why it's a good idea to discontinue products well in advance of actually killing support for them. Footnote: I don't seriously think many/any fan would do this, particularly since it'd likely be the FLGS who'd have to deal with it, but it's worth noting especially with CB reps talking about removing units and sectorials. After all, I don't think anyone did with Uprising.
You see you are already unreasonable with how you are posting. A company makes plans, yes definitely. A company changes plans as well. See your reaction about the Kriza? Why would they ever tell you/us anything if you can't allow them to change their plans? To follow on your example of GW, first I don't know how you know they prepare so far in advance, nor do you indicate what part of the process they start working on. If they for instance start working on some Skavens of Good allegiance, the artwork come back with freaking Mickey Mouse. Then the decision is taken to scrap the project early in the pipe. When did GW announce AoS will render almost every people armies useless, and at least in need to be rebased? I doubt it was 4 years in advance. CB already tell us what to expect for the year in a neat way. 3 new sectorial, Code One, N4, a hidden project. More seem unreasonable.
They have none of that stuff. They talked a big talk for awhile about "we look at army lists in Army to see what people are looking at", but if that were true we'd have gotten a Securitate with Feuerbach by now. They also don't actually have any real way of knowing "what people want to buy", as they're effectively a retailer rather than a distributor--which is what you would want to be in order to actually forecast those kinds of things. Additionally, it's long been known that there's not really "a talent pool" but rather a limited number of people who have to okay things. This is why their third party things have had delays with approval.
