TBH, I think they figure they can make more money doing Kickstarters that are made in China rather than selling Infinity itself, that plus the lack of interest CB seems to have at going back and doing revisions over putting in new stuff has really made me rethink the game and company as a whole. Which is unfortunate.
Resisted it for a long time, but starting to fall into that negative point of view as well. But hey, at least TAG raid gives us a really sweet dragon monster. Wondering how to incorporate it into a table as like special scenery...
Same here. One thing that made me realize it was the printed profiles in N4 (more specifically, the lack thereof). At first I was pretty pissed off with that as I like to have a hardcopy in case CB goes under, deletes something or makes sweeping changes I hate, or just to preserve stuff for random scenario play. As time went on my stance gradually shifted from that to "eh whatever, if that happens I'll just drop N4 entirely, no big deal."
To partake in some doomsaying just briefly: There does feel like a bit of a lack on enthusiasm for infinity at the moment. At the same time, they've been plugging at for over a decade so I kind of get it. I don't necessarily think its profit driven, obviously they need to make profit, but I think these decisions are driven by cost to maintain profit to feed the families rather than moar profit. Maybe infinity game design needs some new blood? But how do you fund that? Its a bit of problem statement of 'game design to sell minis' model.
Not even a PDF or a downloadable Army. Oh, yeah, and the customer base checking the online Army for typos, or more like a game of guess if anything is a change or a typo... specially for those things that should have changed but did not (all that dance about known unknows, unknow unknows, etc).
Unfortunately I agree. The power creep in N4 has had a terrible effect on the game imo. It is now way too easy to perform a devastating alpha strike. Alpha strike is not fun for anyone: spend time to prepare for a game, set up the table, deploy and then don't even get to play for real. It also kills any kind of mission or scenario play. When they introduced mechanics for additional orders in N3, it was to compensate 10 order list to have a chance vs spammy lists. Now that the 15 model limit is in place I think any additional order rule should be removed, as well as counterintelligence.
New Blood is literally the fan base, but CB needs to not hire people who have been towing the line by agreeing with them about everything and kissing ass. Just someone/s who have stuck with the game because it was the best thing out there (subjective) while voicing disagreement. The rules makers who have been doing this for 10+ years need to take a step back because I've noticed the obsession with trying to force some rule or way of play so its "exactly infinity" and has as few similarities as possible with other games is a hitch in its own stride. Optimized new troops is not a problem, no revision of the old is a problem. CB can always rotate out new or modified designs for even good CAD designs the same way Malifaux does in order to keep sales up on old armies. Somebody needs to sit down with them at the board room table and tell them that. Especially because not all players agree with one design or another and then also because of the hobbyist enthusiasm of CB models in general. Not to mention they could always fish for designers... then the profiles themselves, CB has given themselves an incredibly good breadth of variability with their new way of nodding skills and attributes. The possibilities are virtually limitless. Which is great, it means 2 armies can have very similar units and yet still be unique. Like, the second they start slapping skills on weapons, then we are going to see some cool shit. Like imagine if a troop didnt have MSV goggles on their head but MSV on their Sniper Rifle..., then once the enemy is within 16 inches, theres a larger choice made, do I want to use MSV or a + ranged weapon... or let's say instead of slapping NBW on every fucking troop like this new HI, only have it on the untransmutated profile to show it's just a nut that needs to be cracked, or have it only on let's say, trench hammer so its limited use and give that weapon the B2 and AP anti material. That way this miner wouldnt be a fucking martial artists in disguise cause it's like Jack Chan in every movie hes not the son of a cop or martial arts expert, hes just some random dude who can fight dozens of dudes at the same while he works at a grocery store. Instead hes just a regular dude with a very disruptive mining tool thats being wielded like the hammer of the gods. Or shit, imagine if WildBill had Total Reaction on his Multi Pistols to show he was a real duelist and didnt have the rifle profile at all, he'd still be incredibly dangerous but different than others. That's all I got to say about that for now. I will say this one more time though. They need to revise every army equally at the same time as making new armies.
When I started playing Infinity, just when N3 was releasing (Operation Icestorm), one of the things I liked about Infinity was the release schedule: there was a nice and steady cadence where each of the 8 Factions got something new every one or two months. It could be a miniature with a new profile, it could be just a resculpt of an old design now in CAD... Then it changed to the current "Army of the Month" system, where they release with much fanfare a new box and some supplemental boxes/blisters... only for the "new" army/sectorial/whatever to fade away in a couple of months when a newer and shinier Army gets released and steals the thunder. I can understand that, right now, Code One needs some kind of push to have several Factions playable and with enought options, but I'd say it's time to go back to the old times. Specially if Corvus wants to keep trying to diversify their range and milk the Infinity franchise with all this new KS products: employ one half of your workforce in keeping Infinity alive and healthy, filling spots in the cataloge, resculpting old models and tweaking rules/profiles, while the other half of the workforce develops new games.
Yeah, that exactly. I mean in the last 5years, they put money into branching put into a lot of categories. An RPG, 2 Manga, and 3 different board games, a new edition along with C1. It's all cool but they could have held off on TAG raid for 1 year. They also had given us quite a few mercenary models or models in the line up that sjpuldnt have had high priority. Obviously this is subjective but mercenary models is more objective than not. Lastly, I want armies to feel like what we think they're are supposed to be. How I think about that is the 80/20 rule. If at least 80% of your army gets fielded 20% of the time, it means the units of that army, for the most part, play like what you expect them to for your army. Alternatively if <20% of your army is fielded >80% of the time it means the army is hugely dependent on those units and CB should be careful what it does to that army.
I always give credit to CB for the fact that since N1 the game has always improved with every new edition. I remember when the only weapon worth to have was the HMG or when BTS was a penality to the enemy hacking WIP roll. What I think it's the issue is that those change aren't enough. The little step approach to change sometime it's not enough. The core rules aren't bad, but they still require more clarity and simplification. Balance is another big issue. Good core rules alone don't provvide a nice playing experience. Coming from WarmaHorde I can say that army internal and external balance count for the 50% of the result. I remember when Infinity came out. The game offered a lot of innovation, the first of all the ARO system. Today the majority of new game don't have alternate turn, but alternate activation. That for saying that new game have or are adapting to the new players requests. Infinity has still a lot to offer, but IMHO CB needs to be bolder and make some significant change to the way the game works.
I believe the more intuitive they make the rules, the simpler they become. What bothers me is how they somehow got to this point of attempting to declare actions before your model is even able to. Like how were they not just making everything have requirements be met before you can declare something? What was the problem they were trying to solve with that little headache? It was incredibly unintuitive. Or why isnt Suppression fire longer but just gets worse the further out you go so that TAGs in the DZ can start in SF? Guns dont lose their range. Or the nonsense about climbing plus not getting cover. The fireteam rules giving skills and bonuses the same for 3 editions. The intuitive thing would have been making them function similarly to coordinated orders and perhaps in order to appease the fearful just impose a fireteam rule that each team can only have 1 high burst SWC BS weapon and 1 low burst SWC BS weapon. Squad mechanics irl are just that with a DM and some sort of machine gun. Theres more to be said cause it makes no sense that a ML or RL troop only have a pistol as a secondary firearm. I feel like these weapons would be smaller in the future and attached to rifles, SMGs or SGs. Just, a fair amount that could be more intuitive. Oh, and Coordinated CC not allowing multiple troops to fuck up one guy? While effectively making hingries as good as a knight or samurai. I think CC should be faught defensively in the reactive turn and offensively in the active turn. A knight being attacked by a bunch of animals or unskilled brawlers is going to fight differently than when he starts attacking them. Where as a bunch of animals or brawlers swinging wildly will fight the same way the whole fight. In UFC and other combat sports you can see when people are on the offensive and defensive. Just saying... maybe then all this NBW nonsense will go away
Thinking about it a little longer, I think MA should only modify the target numbers +/- 3/6 and damage. While the active turn should be a higher burst than the reactive turn with certain units getting increased burst in either turn just like firearms in the gamr. With the cheapest warbands that rely on outnumber their opponent only having B1 in either turn to represent their small mindedness in a CC, meaning some animal or berserker with a giant axe arent throwing combos and counters. To me this is more intuitive and follows suit with the rest of the game. Also this way it doesnt incentivise to only tie someone up in CC to gum up their unit in their active turn if they get higher burst in their active turn even if it's only a 2/1 burst difference except for say musashi and a few others who would be like a 3/1. And those who have martial arts can choose to fight more defensively so instead of giving themselves a positive bonus they can impose a higher negative bonus on their opponents should they have the right skill level.
Just had a thought while painting some Zhanshi, some of which will probably never be played because, why? Why would I not take a Shang Ji APHMG instead of a Zhanshi HMG. He's good by himself but then add the benefits of a core team behind him and he's fantastic. What would make me take the Zhanshi instead. Well how about this little change: "Only the figures of which the the fireteam is made of (parent troop), will benefit from fireteam bonuses." For example, the Zhanshi in the core get the the +1B, +3BS, Sixth Sense; but the Shang Ji or other wildcard or special additional troop does not. They all still move together and must designate the link leader. Anohter example, Shang Ji core, SJ get the bonuses but the Jujak/Haidao does not.
@Space Ranger that's a fix to fireteams that's been proposed enough now that I think it might well be the successful one. It's certainly the most common-sense solution.
Not an easy question. After all, there are many different reasons that make players prefer to play with a Sectorial over a Faction: it may be because of the strong visual identity of the Sectorial, because of the characters included, because of the unique playstyle compared to the main Faction, because of the Fireteam options and certain profile availabilities... One prime example was JSA when it was part of YJ: most didn't play JSA because of its Fireteams, they played it because it's space samurai and space ninja and cyberpunk bikers.
If the goal is to make sectorials just straight up worse and to make wildcards pointless, then removing bonuses from them is the way to go. I really don't think the order efficiency of having a wildcard unit tag along for the walk is sufficient to merit the increased risk associated with having a harder time finding sufficient cover and having the units clustered up so that it is order efficient for the opponent to crack the team completely if they can crack it. Not least because this also extremely heavily restricts what becomes a "good" wildcard (button pushers, I'm talking about button pushers. Preferably with tinbots.) On reflecting on the issue I also find that I'm also not all that fond of a return to a fireteam "identity" system where you need to point at what kind of fireteam it is as this just adds a layer of confusion to an already complicated rule. I think the more common suggestion is to make Wildcards not count against the bonus level, but still benefit from it. Still, I see issues here as this basically makes Wildcards in Haris/Triads cause the fireteam to become mostly worthless and it only really addresses the use of point-man wildcards or slotted in super-specialists. I hold that I think retiring cores as a concept is the way to go. It scales the game back to more skirmish game rather than squad based, it removes the issue with the Sixth Sense shooter that's got sky-high shooting bonuses, but it retains some benefits for being a sectorial. Plus it nerfs long range pitcher spam and you know how I feel about long range pitcher spam. This doesn't allow CB to abdicate from the responsibility of balancing sectorials out a bit more. They do need a bit of variety and can't just rely on a couple of specific builds keeping sectorials competitve. P.s. a mechanical way of making Impetuous/Fury work while in Fireteams is also necessary. Either that or significantly scale back the discounts these rules give.
Killing cores for more fleshed out haris(like) construction definitely appeals to me. I don't like moving cores around, three models at once feels alright, but 5 is cumbersome.
