CB and their development cycle

Different perspectives in life I guess? I do not go out assuming the worse in something or somebody.

If the formula had a bug in the particular troop then it can produce an incorrect result, it can be anything even a simple typo.

 

Look, I know English isn't your first language, but FFS. A FORMULA CAN"T HAVE A BUG. A formula isn't software, it's a mathematical equation.

"We discovered that the software we use to apply the formula had a bug which produced a wrong result but only for the Bulleteer" would be an explanation (albeit an implausible one).

"We discovered that we'd entered the wrong inputs into the formula on the Bulleteer" would be an explanation.

"We concluded that the result produced by the formula leads to an overpowered unit, and adjusted the formula to produce a different result" would be an explanation.

Your actual statement of "We found that the formula on this unit did not produce the expected and correct results," is, as @Dragonstriker says, simply not an explanation. What did you "expect" the formula to produce that it didn't produce? It's a formula. By definition it produces one expected result for a given set of inputs. Likewise, if unit prices are assigned according to a formula, then how can the result the formula produced not be "correct"? It's correct by definition.

Again, I really don't care whether CB explains why they recosted the Bulleteer. That's an issue for others in the thread. I do care about being treated like an idiot to my face. Don't keep repeating to me that something is "a reasonable explanation" when it's self-evidently, on its face, a meaningless non-statement.

 

Fair enouph, I would expect option one to be the likely scenario, I do not think anybody expects CB to do the formula by hand but have it on some program that does it automatically, maybe that malfunctioned in the case of bulleteers.

 

You don't seem to know how math works

 

How do you imagine a formula can malfunction?

 

Well, the NASA was sending ships to space for decades until they note a small error in the formulas, that could be the cause of incidents like Challenger or Columbia. But not always.

I know, this is not rocket science, but shit happens with maths

 

I immediately dropped $500 on new Conquest minis the day I saw that came out. After 8 years of being in the infinity scene, seeing a comprehensive update to a wargame came as a real surprise/wakeup call to me.

 

You might want to read what QueensGambit wrote again. That's the formula producing an undesirable result; formulas can't produce results that are incorrect according to themselves if there isn't a bug or error with the method the formula is calculated.
And there was an error with it as anyone who bothered enough to check the Bulletteer would have noticed, although that doesn't mean they cared. They'd also notice that there's other places where the formula hasn't been entirely followed, such as with the Peacemaker.

 

But you don't know? So why are you stating anything with authority?

 

Time to wade in! I think this discussion has been interesting but I wanted to interject with what I think is a simple summation:

It's not that people are just blindly angry at CB for not catering to what they want etc. etc., it's that people are often frustrated by what appears (notice this word is in bold and probably carries alot of meaning in this sentence) to be a lack of care for things that are considered (ditto) to be somewhat basic.

Even if CB is actually very very concerned with ensuring that things are "well balanced" (whatever that might mean for them) the appearance can frequently contradict players' expectations/considerations.

Several months ago I commented on a netrods vs volunteers thread (its own can of worms) to identify another very basic costing issue regarding the cost of guided missile bots in various factions, and how it was clear that despite having precisely identical stats in every single way, not only were they costed differently, they didn't even reaelly make a ton of sense for the context they were costed in:
"Aleph doesn't even have turn 0 midfield repeater networks (unlike PanO 16pt ML, YJ 16pt ML, Nomads 17pt ML, O-12 17pt ML) OR reliable dep reps/fast pandas (hunzakuts/hecklers) OR better pitchers."

Great news! They did fix this just a few months later (which I really appreciated!) but the fact that this disparity existed for the entirety of N4 despite being extremely easy to compare (once again, completely identical stats) was very frustrating to players because it appeared that CB didn't even care enough to fix something this simple (whether or not they did actually care and had other reasons that were never shared with the playerbase)

When CB makes these changes that were "errors" years later, it suggests to players that its not something they actively look at, or at the very least, the people who are in charge of building this game look at armybuilder less than the people playing the game which feels a bit wrong. To make an analogy (apologies I work in healthcare so that's the analogy you're going to get):

Imagine you have a doctor prescribing you a medicine that you have been taking for a few years to manage a minor kidney condition. Over the years you haven't really felt that your condition has improved that much so you do a bit of your own searching and find that the medicine you are taking does nothing to treat your kidney condition, it only treats liver conditions instead. You confront your doctor and he just says "woops, yeah lets get you started on a kidney medication instead."

Now, do you think you're going to continue going to that doctor or are you going to say "what the fuck dude, i've been taking this medication for 3 years why are you just now realizing this, do you never look at my chart which says the conditions I have and medications I take that I update every single time I come in a for a visit?" The patient knows their own experience better than the doctor, but the doctor has more expertise and responsibility than the patient and is responsible for ensuring that the expertise is applied to the experience.

Even if the patient was wrong (maybe the medication treats kidney conditions AND liver conditions) then the doctor could calmly explain "ah yes, we put you on this medication because it does X, Y, and Z" and then if the patient needs to try a different medication they can.

CB doesn't do that though. People commonly say "doesn't it suck that libertos are so strong and in every faction" and even if CB doesn't give a specific answer libertos or have any desire to change it, then they could at least provide their design principles "we think its really important for vanilla factions to have access to at least 1 cheap midfield unit" or "We find that units that benefit from discounts like irregular training and frenzy offer a really interesting options for players compared to perhaps more 'fleshed out' units". Even if we find that reasoning absurd or silly, at the very least we know where they're coming from and what their vision for the game is. I love this game, its my favorite strategy game of all time including all others tabletops and video games I have ever played. But I love this game despite my frustration with how CB acts because the game is so incredible that I can forgive even glaring and obvious errors/problems. Alot of frustration for me is that this game could actually be even better than it already is.

 

How dare you say something so valid and reasonable. I mean it's not CBs job to manage their own game!! They only have eight hours a day! You must obviously be a basement dweller who plays infinity 24/7 because there's no way you could possibly have had the time to check 5 army's and see that their ML bots are costed differently! They have full time jobs, and they are a small company. They have much better things to do like release short war crow videos!

 

Slow clap, mate, slow clap.

Only shame is that it will fall on deaf ears. Well done regardless, very well spoken.

 

If that's the simple summation, I'd hate to read the complicated and long version! Unless you have a strategy blog that I haven't heard about, possibly one that covers Aleph and list building and all that.

 

Surely composing additional communications mainly for this lot would be an excellent use of time and resources!

Describing internal development reasoning both before and after release will be totally great, not simply adding further ammo for complaints and attempts to exert influence over development by random players.

Such fine fans as ourselves would never hyperfocus, lose perspective, make poorly-reasoned demands and assumptions, and attach overdramatic statements to a simple discussion of communication or release strategy.

Our participation would be a net gain of useful energy/info, not a big distraction and a strange encounter with a bunch of people trying to negg a game company into doing what they want.

And then we all get free ponies and the access to the magic points spreadsheet… right?

Pretty sure that’s how it works when we complain about a game ceaselessly for 14 pages on the game company’s forum, yep.



[In seriousness though: I am just like you guys: a nitpicking, hyperfocusing, opinionated fanboy with a borderline inappropriate sense of attachment to this game.

Yet I’m vaguely aware (and guess you all are as well) that there are good reasons why creators of games and other participation-properties/fandoms keep overly-attached, often-whiny fans like ourselves at arm’s length and don’t give us too much insight into the black box of production.

Yes, a truly-great comms staffer with a lot of time and energy can share enough about production/design to interest us and elicit useful feedback with less grumbling/distractions. That loop can help with product improvement if done right (which it rarely ever is in large games).

However that time/energy to spare is super rare for a multi-product comms person at a small/medium business. Especially one that’s been riding out economic and political insanity for several years. We should probably be asking ourselves what they are doing -right- to manage to grow during this mess.]

 

How insanly boring. Point out why a company works fine and does things costumers could enjoy and take happiness from. I give this statement 12 timeszones till someone comes to tell you that we should not be some damn stupid fanboys falling on our knees and bootlick the feet of CB´s staff for the generous present of us beeing allowed to shove money down their throats.
I think that most of our money is spend for Carlos to fly around the world and hold a gun to each costumers head to praise thy company and order new miniatures.

Yes, Mr. Bostria, Sir. I will tell them it is all overly sarcastic bullshit I wrote.
No, Mr. Bostria, Sir. I will not delete the order cart because I have already too much minis. I love the shiny silver glance, Sir.

Yes, from a costumers perspective that would be some fancy nice thing to be, but on the other hand: someone doing this job means you first need someone who is able to do that AND you have to pay them AND it has to add value, otherwise its just dead money.
And another mouth to feed every month is something you have to think about as a relativly small company. There are big and huge companys, that don´t have such a position, and there are companies that seeem to have something like that but ultimatly just writing BS that can be easily put together by ChatGPT.
I agree wholeheartedly with "beeing in touch with your costumers" can lead to a great improvement in lots of departments of a company. If done properly from both parties. Some stuff that comes from CB sounds properly, some not. Some people on this forum i would consider worth hearing to from a companies perspective (imho) and some are better to be ignored, if just for the mental health of the poor soul paid for reading it.


This company, that relies on people coming together to play with their painted little miniatures, that survived a fcking pandemic with everyone of us grounded and forced to play non-miniature based TTS-games, seem not to be that bad of a management-perspective. Some could argue that this was the time to buy miniatures and paint them, but I know enough people who need this goal of playing with what they painted to buy minis at the first place. At least that´s what i think about. Anough companies got devoured by the last years of global insanity

 

It’s always simpler from the outside looking in. Even more so when you 1) don’t have any skin in the game and 2) are communicating via the Internet, a place notorious for overwrought rhetoric…

 

I might be sidetracking here, and if I do, apologies. However these last comments gave me the willingness to bring my two cents :)

Fully agree with you, buuuuuut, and maybe it’s me who missed some stuff / blogs / studio updates, I don’t think it would hurt CB to be more communicative in terms of vision, in terms of what are big plans, and how they want to do it.

They are already being quite transparent on saying what is down the line, and it’s important to say « kudos to CB » about that.

But to me, it still remains quite unclear about what is their vision on the game future. Again, they they do a terrific work on revamping sectorials, I want to be clear there. But do we have any view on multi year basis on their plans?

I do not. And would it hurt in having more visibility on it? I don’t think so. Imagine being for example a RTF of KQ player, imagine being a Tohaa or Aleph player. Imagine being a newcomer. Would it hurt for example knowing that in their 5 next years Plan they are willing to address this or that issue, release new factions, revamp these sectorials etc? I really think it can give only positive results, whether it is for newcomers to see that there is a ton of stuff down the road or even fatigued players to keep being invested in the game.

But again, that’s my opinion. I might be working in a totally different sector, but what I know, is that a Company with a Plan, with a Vision (with capital letters), that reports on it, will always attract more attention than one that doesn’t. And if they don’t because they can’t commit to this Plan/Vision, this is a very dire sign.

 

Having a company with a Plan and Vision is excellent, and you are not incorrect. I would, however, note that gamers aren't known for being especially flexible in their understanding of Plans and Visions once they are revealed, which could hinder CB. CB has to remain flexible, and if that requires them to shift something that was "promised", well, that's quasi-problematic. In the particular industry, it's a bit of a "devil and the deep blue sea".

 

I find comments like this very very strange. Most successful games companies in the world publish patch notes with intent. I'm not even saying that CB needs to take feedback from players, but the bare minimum that players should expect from a game company is they briefly explain themselves.

Its fine if players disagree or think the game is "going in the wrong direction", but CB still needs to clarify their intentions regarding the changes they make. And saying "oh well the l33t gamers of the internet are too much of children to be okay with being told the reason why a change is happening" is frankly insulting. I think the vast majority of people who play this game are adults (oftentimes with spouses and children!) If Riot Games, whose playerbase comprises some of the greatest scum of the ages 14-18 the internet has to offer, can publish patch notes that say "we thought X was too strong or too weak", then so can CB.

Instead CB engages in bizarre beating around the bush. Its not a "patch" its a "FAQ", pretending as if they are just clarifying existing rules than (often) changing mechanics entirely (see:superjump, impetuous bikes, etc.)

We can be respectful of CB without vapidly defending what is clearly a fairly silly way of handling game patches. CB is made up of fallible humans like any other company, and part of being a fallible human is sometimes giving other fallible humans some context and asking for some compassion.

 

Yes sure, I mean, I can’t disagree with that. But often I hear (and not only on this forum, Reddit or YouTube) people getting cynical about Infinity and where it’s getting to.

And I must confess I can’t really disagree with people saying that CB doesn’t really know where they are heading to. Maybe they do, and communicate too poorly. Maybe they don’t, which should be very worrying. And in both cases, that’s not a good omen. It’s all good when you have an overarching feeling of positivity getting out of the playerbase, but when you start to feel negativity flowing a bit around, it’s not good sign.

Or maybe they do have a plan, which is slowly turning away from Infinity.

Again, I’m positive. I love playing as much as I did the other day, I’m still spending ridiculous amounts of money in this game, but I can’t disagree with what I hear or read either.