I'd like to point out @Vaulsc 's new video at this point: I'm not a competitive player myself and therefore have the luxury to just not play the TAG raid profiles, but he makes some very good points about how they dilute the game, and I agree.
I hear this a lot Abrilete. And I think it was a business mistake not to put it on general release, this being on reason why. The pressure to polish the game and fix tgevbeta errors would be much greater if it improved sales and interest in new defiance releases. Ah well.
I hate to say this, but I have to agree with @Vaulsc about balance issues with new additions to Infinity ported in from the other games. The Tagraid units are so steeply undercosted/overoptimized, they make Jazz look restrained. I support CB playing around with crossover products that drive their story, interesting side games, and funky business model stuff... and generally one can trust them to do so well overall. The TAGraid stuff really is a bit worrying though. Until balance is restored, perhaps bans on certain units in tourneys could help get this recent weird unit creep under control. "No Tagraid units" would make a fine rule for a local tourney. Maybe not every single event, but using that measure at least as often as the various official alternate formats could help make the new auto-take units less prevalent.
With all due respect to Vaul and what he's done (and it's huge), he's overreacting quite often. When he finds idea, he feels too stuck to it, putting units in situation without thinking how could they have gotten there, and is it even possible on regular basis. I think in 15 orders meta they will make their way not to every list. These diggers are added to NA2 sectorials (Dashat only one powerful enough) and vanillas, which already have a lot of broken units. And diggers are
A certain CB employee felt the need to DM me half an hour after that video came out, and I've been told that there are no plans to 'restore' anything in terms of balance. :) I'll be implementing a bunch of balance 'considerations' in events that I run personally. I think most actual ITS competitions will run the game purely without any interference though.
This was said many times before: the fact that we perceive some glaring issues with game balance doesn't mean CB sees it the same way. This much was obvious for years. It remains to be seen how this approach will work long-term. In my meta people go straight for sectorials, so at least the issues with vanilla getting more and more tools of variable balance don't surface.
Anytime I hear people crying about things being broken or unbalanced I just remember the cries about Closed Battle Lists and how they were so OP and would take over the Meta. There is always an overreaction, then people start to play with them and almost always it turns out fine.
Have to agree with the core argument as well, which is basically retreading the OP's point with the most recent example. Internal balance is already in a bad place and these kinds of profiles just make it a lot worse. Please reconsider this, CB.
Even if the external balance between factions isn't significantly affected because the new units are (mostly) symmetrically allotted, the issue of units being "strictly better" versions of existing faction units is still a potential concern for me, since I'd rather play a nice flavorful version of my faction than one stuffed with generic mercenaries. Also "Everybody gets X" is a cop-out on balance testing - no need to test it if everyone can get the same potentially OP unit. Likewise, another lazy balancing mechanic is wide-swinging randomness. I didn't really clock the amount of Booty on these units until watching the @Vaulsc video... being able to bring several units that are either bad or amazing depending on a single random die roll may "even out" across many games, but that's not a great way to balance an individual match.
Wait what? I missed this over the loud complaints that CB doesn't play their own game since they made all of them 10-orders when 20-order lists were mandatory.
Huh. Must've been from the Pan-O community. That was back when they still had the dubious honour of being the whiners for the English speaking side of things. I recall spending a lot of time defending the usefulness of Yu Jing list D (the one with a Hsien in a Core) and I think E. (Mind you, when they got around to adding the Yu Jing lists, things had changed a bit reputation wise)
Before my time, but that may have been because those lists featured Fireteams of Nisses- Kamau Sniper equivalents back when CB gave a damn about balancing FTF shooting would have been scary as hell in any mission where the low order count and lack of midfield presence didn't wreck the overall viability of the list.
