It's not a new problem. Every single ITS season, they write another damn monologue about it's total war, humanity on the brink of destruction, it's our desperate hour bullshit. They never even resolve any of them, they just wait a year and then write another one as if we won't remember that the CA was already on the verge of winning a year ago. Nobody wants it, we're all here because we were sold a cyberpunk hypercapitalist corporate black ops setting, but it is what it is. Bottom line, CB are good game designers, great sculptors, and terrible writers. If you're here for the fluff, you'll just be disappointed. Enjoy the overall setting (which is excellent), ignore the fluff, tell your own stories and play the game. It's sad but it's the only option as long as CB keeps writing 40k fanfic.
Time is a Flat Circle. The game started as a Cyberpunk Hypercapitalist Black-Ops Skirmish Tactical Game, and had fluff and lore accordingly to it. CA and EI enter the picture, along Tohaa. Fluff slowly evolves into first-contact war, then contained war, then invasion war and now it is all-out war. The game stills works as a Cyberpunk Hypercapitalist Black-Ops Skirmish Tactical Game. What I think is going to happen is that the all out war of CA and EI are going to get resolved in a way that the game and fluff are finally in equilibrium allowing a Cyberpunk Hypercapitalist Black-Ops Skirmish Tactical Game... where the CA and EI are just another (Alien) Cyberpunk Hypercapitalist Faction that has a truce and economic deals with the Human Sphere... while at the same time the old Blackops are still going all over the Sphere and inside the EI territory. After all, isn't the morat having a Coporation Mining in Tag Raid?
Personally I think the fluff is great, the fluff is good is what the majority of the community holds, there is a minority of people who do not like the fluff, oddly they coincide with the ones who do not buy the fluff books and know the fluff from what they read online or in free pdfs. Raveneye had a great example were "Joan's six" is a perfect infinity fireteam playing their own mini war inside a wider battle.
I bought Daedalus Fall. It was unreadably bad. Some of the worst sci-fi writing I've ever seen. It was kind of amazing. But I mean, your post is no surprise. You work for CB, and CB clearly thinks it's doing a great job on the fluff and isn't going to change anything. I'm not even complaining, just commenting to other players that the game is a lot more enjoyable when we tell our own stories and avoid CB's awful storytelling. By all means, keep telling yourself that the fluff is popular. You do you, man.
Not sure if this was intentional, but the two recently released novels did shift the focus back onto a smaller scale, much in contrast to the "main" fluff. Maybe CB is trying to compensate for the relative lack of that facet by outsourcing some of their work.
Looking throughout history, I believe that humans have continuously downplayed existential external threats in favor of settling local grievances. Multi-generational grudges and tribalism are powerful and can override a sense of common unity. Humans are really, really, stubborn.
I think that most players agree that the overall world-building is cool and in general well done. At least the general backdrop. Sadly the quality isn't that great when reading individual fluff pieces. Especially the different unit descriptions. The in-game cinematic, so to speak, is engaging and the fit between the actual game (what's going on, on the table) and story/theme (what you can read about) is pretty close. In my mind at least closer than many other miniatures game. 40k for instance has a great world-building and theme but always fell short on the delivery on the gaming table (imho). I hope that the inclusion of professional authors with both the novels and comics will be a major step up quality wise. But even so, if you want to read decent sci-fi you have to look elsewhere. Which is the same for pretty much any game setting. There are a few exceptions. Abnett's 40k stuff or Thrawn from Star Wars but otherwise even with professional authors it is just a short step up from fanfic. I buy most books, including the novels and comics, and still think the fluff is...not great. But I love Infinity and that goes a long way. Downfall was a great read but I would never have bothered if it would have been a Halo novel or whatever. All in all I feel CB is staying on the good side of keeping everyone engaged between fluffbook, novels, online campagins and ITS campaigns. It's only when you try to hard core analyse the setting or every detail (like the silly threads about the shapes of magasines or case-less ammo or what not) that it breaks down. If you enjoy the ride and don't fret the small stuff you'll have a better time (like with everything else). 2c
Good for you! Or do you think this professionally, since you're an obviously biased CB employee? No need to answer that, really. No, it's not, lol. It's a horrible teenage heartbreaker. A 3rd rate, early 2000s cyberpunk/anime/sf fanfic heap of drivel. It's not only a completely unoriginal blob of random cliches, but it's also written in Spanish of unknown quality and then translated into atrocious English. I dread to think it might have been written in English, it would explain a lot of its syntactical and lexical quirks. Regardless, it's never seen a proficient editor's desk either way. CB once had neat standalone unit ideas and passable, if bland, factions with only minor distinguishing features. Blue, Christian and shooty with TAGs! Yellow Asian (wow, srsly?) and elite heavies! Red and commie/anarchist (wow, srsly?) hacker furries! Green and lowtech frontiersmen and enslaved werewolves! Desert Muslims (wow, srsly?!) on bikes in spaaaaaaace! Black carapace aliens with a Hive Mind and a mind control kink! Wow, so much original. And then they went and gave all the minor traits to other factions. Green has TAGs and bikes, Red found religion and is shooty, Yellow got eff all and became meh at most. In the meantime, the actually fairly original factions like Tohaa and Exrah got scrubbed. Great job, CB! You will need a data citation to prove that. Ah, yes. Here, ladies and gentlemen, the company representative tells us what the company really thinks about us. What? You don't like the fluff? WHAT ARE YOU, POOR?!
You surely mean PS, who just openly insulted customers who cannot afford or are unwilling to buy the mediocre at best fluff books, thus invalidating their opinion on the fluff they contain, even if they read it elsewhere / from somebody else's book? Also, yeah, I stylized that post a bit. And? It's still factual, despite the fact I'm having a laugh.
It's true that in terms of implausible things, the background in wargames is pretty serious. You have always a war between x factions, while in reality if there was a 3rd player, this 3rd player would wait until the two others are exhausted to take the prize. Then there is also the fact that in each army, you have 50-100 types of combat units with their own roles, equipments, with even officers and characters who each have their own ultra-customized equipment, certainly produced individually (see the grandmaster armor of the military orders). In the real world, it's logistical hell.
This is why we can’t have nice things. Psycho, you need to take a firmer hand. This could have been a nice discussions about the merits of the background and fluff; pointing out strengths and weaknesses. Instead the real conversation is drowned out by the bad behaviour from the students in the back of the classroom shouting over every topic and throwing erasers at the board. The community has fractured over multiple Discords because of the weak moderation. We love Infinity and only want a place to discuss with like minded. There really is no substitute for that than an official forum Come on man. Do something.
Dude, consider the engineering and ammo- / magazine related implications of male / female weapon sizes alone. It's all such a joke. Also, Tohaa should just trample every other faction simply on the virtue of "what? we just grow this stuff..." :D
Ah, yes, take the insults and keep asking for more. CB needs more customers like this if their employees are going to be allowed to treat them like disgusting poor peasants who can't even afford a fluff book.
It is true that miniaure wargaming need perpetual war as their background. That said there are plenty of real world examples from history. Take for instance the Austro-Hungary Empire with its multitude of different units. A historical example of PanO if you will. Flawed organisation and dysfunctional logistics makes a setting more believable. Not less. The more I read military history the more I realise that the winning side is the side that is slightly less incompetent and their enemy.
We can talk about the fact that Infinity speaks quite well in an indirect or direct way about the fragmentation of the employment contract. With a hyper fragmentation of the number of employers, there are characters in Infinity who have so many employers that it's impossible for them to work one full day a week for that employer, I have the beginning of a script for a comic strip on the subject waiting on my hard drive, I forgot who's involved but there are some (A look at the visual guides should be taken). However, it's quite cyberpunk, you work for 50 corporations in addition to your country of employment, everything is on a temporary basis, there's no traditional notion of loyalty anymore.
That’s a pretty cool take that together with double sleeving (cubing?) can begin to explain every unique merc showing up everywhere. You could probably write a fictional essay on how the post-scarcity society paradoxically creates more low-key power struggles as a vehicle for national entities to create an excuse for existing. I can feel the overblown word count already. Academia here I come, to quote Calvin.
Dek from the Corner Case channel had a reaction on the ALEPH news. I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS! New Infinity Steel Phalanx AMAZING! He mentioned Ajax and I remembered that in theory this guy is a giant, Achilles had caught up with him in terms of size, but with his resculpture, will he grow back? If so, this guy will end up being the size of a Marut.
Five midday hours, one tilted appeal to the mighty moderator, other than that a full page of replies and nobody even chimed in with a single word to opine on how actually good the fluff is. Loving it :D
