I understand where you are coming from. At least you and others have provided feedback and ideas to make the game more balanced and fun. Not many companies have such a forum to provide feedback and opinions. At least we know we have made the effort to provide feedback. It is out of our control with how CB decide to use the feedback. It is their product, not ours. Players can adopt their ideas into their local gaming club and test it out, or just make it a house rule for the club.
Congratulations, your sycophantic fanboyism is chasing CB's customers away and causing them to disengage from the product. It's feedback that keeps happening because CB does not adequately address the problem. This particular result could've been potentially avoided by you not being a twat and pouring oil on a fire, and CB acknowledging the issue and giving a timeline on when they plan for the 1.1 update to reinforcements.
Seriously, at what point does it become an abuse of mod powers? The mods should not be arbiters of what is and is not relevant feedback. I don't consider Psystorm to be a sycophant or fanboy, I generally consider him to be acting as a representative of CB. Although I am uncertain of his status within CB, beyond his capacity as moderator. I've asked, but I have yet to find out if his posts (other than red text), should be considered official statements. My issue is the shutting down of threads and deletion of posts, that have not clearly broken any forum rules. That only amplifies the frustration with the topics at hand, and with CB as a whole.
Congratulations, you and yours sociopathic and psychopathic behavior drove off the CB partner they entrusted with working feedback and communicating rules. Physician, heal thyself!
@burlesford , sorry you feel that way, I thought this thread was a great idea. Isn't there a feature for dissatisfied forumites to just ignore those they don't like hearing from? Really, apart from actual hatespeech, there shouldn't be a reason to delete posts. For those less easily offended, even vitriolic and redundant opinions are still relevant data.
They were busy writing exiciting texts* to promote the sales for the OOP miniatures on their webshop. Interplanetario had to be cleaned up currently its hot in spain (in whole europe). They are kinda busy, there was not even time for proofreading ITS 15 (which, I guess was already finished, if not ready for release). Seriously I did not expect an update so soon. Its not realy an error, its more, something that someone forgot to think about... *) this one is still great, clearly written by someone who has a deep insight in the game (and its for a bundle, that has one (1) IA unit in it):
I usually prefer to lurk, but I just wanted to say thank you for the well-thought out suggestions @burlesford. As someone who has followed and collected Infinity for years, but played very little, I really appreciate this kind of thread. It's the exactly the kind of conversation I come to these forums for and it'd be a great shame if the suggestions outlined here weren't at least considered. Anyway, thanks again for the hard-work that went into the original post.
Bluntly, there is some ego involved in the design process. If people are saying you aren't playtesting - that means that whatever process you have is missing very important things. Whoever's making decisions should consider that. The lack of transparency on the issue is going to make people assume worse and worse things, and situations like the points hike on PanO remotes (!) with no communication comes off as insulting to the playerbase. They entrusted the wrong person there. He was making my play experience actively worse. He also did *not* interface with the community, and seemed to be hostile towards the idea that anybody outside of his circle had good ideas or even the right to point out something was up.
His uncritical support of whatever CB is doing atm could qualify as fanboyish, certainly. It also impedes CB's ability to improve.
@Triumph, I hope we get to meet in person and have a game and a beer some day, or at least play on TTS. And I really like your rules and tactics insights. But let me say this: The rudeness and negativity of yourself and other (remaining) frequent posters on this forum is what has caused the forum to lose users and become an echo chamber. The negativity and decline of the forum are discussed regretfully and frequently at every single in-person Infinity tourney I have attended over the last 6 months. That negativity has driven users away from the game, because the first place where most people would turn to approach the product has become instantly visible as toxic. People picking up the Operation boxes have come to me as one of the known local Infinity nerds and literally asked "How do you find good information when all I can find on their forums is constant slagging? Are most players of this game really that grumpy?" The fact that you call someone a twat in the same post where you blame rules balance for community loss is particularly ironic. CB's rules quality in N4 could use some work, true. It's not anything NEAR as big a turn-away to existing players as the complete degradation of the forum into a mountain of griping and insults to the game's creators. [...And I say this as well as someone who is quite concerned that Infinity remain viable by tweaking and fixing the core rules around hacking/repeaters (add Blackout back basically).] Despite psychoticstorm having erased a few of the worst and most redundant. There are -plenty- of posts left where you and others poop directly on CB and the mods of this forum. What signal remains among the noise could communicate your points decently except that the language of the posts is frequently overwhelmingly awful. Unfortunately by being jerks directly to CB and their staff, you all have -harmed- our ability to get things fixed. What I'm saying is, chill out. It's time for a reset. Continuing to hammer at people interpersonally is going to get you banned most likely, and I would be sad to see your ideas gone. EDIT: Remember when we used to play N2 with community-agreed rules because the official rules actually did not work? Putting effort into something like that (a minimal set of fixes) would be a better use of everyone's time and emotion. That's sort of what Burlesford was attempting, until he got (IMO) turned away by a wall of negativity. Reinforcements and N4 itself need a few simple fixes to the core rules. They're pretty obvious IMO, as you and others have done a good job describing what they should look like. Stop losing your mind about it, help us come up with constructive solutions of our own, and implement them in your play group.
You see you misunderstand where I'm coming from entirely. I don't give a fuck if this game burns to the ground. I've been there before, many times. I'm negative about things, because they're negative. I stop being negative about things when they get fixed, which unfortunately CB is really slow about doing. I rode the Privateer Press train the whole way as that company continued to fuck their game up. I sat there telling them the whole time "Hey, you're fucking up. This is a fuck up. Would be really good if you stopped fucking it up." I did my part, they decided to fuck everything up anyway so that's on them. It'd be nice if CB don't fuck it up but if they do I'll just move onto the next game. Psychoticstorm on the other hand is invested, and he's an actual obstacle to this game being better and an active detriment. He's a sycophantic yes man that has no business providing actual feedback on a game and is incapable of genuinely approaching any topic involving Infinity from a critical mindset. So that's why I find it incredibly funny when he, in a desperate bid to in his mind to "protect the image of CB" repeatedly comes into threads, not just these recent ones, go back to shit like Uprising or pick any Pan-O thread with grievances, and manages to achieve nothing but royally pissing people off.
I'll be pretty sad if Infinity burns to the ground. I've never played any other wargames, but I've never heard tell of any that had the strategic depth of Infinity. I hope there is a "next game" I can move on to, but I don't know what it would be. Also I would have to be able to use my Infinity minis. So I am pretty worried about it.
It is very frustrating with all the negativity in the forum. It is possible to give constructive criticism without insulting people or being belligerent. A lot of people provided good feedback, but it gets so lost under all the attacks and hostility really that feels like a heckler's veto. Do you really think a company will listen to you when your actively insult them and their employees? Do you really need to treat people who don't have the same opinion or experiences with such contempt?
They don't listen most of the time regardless. We went through the whole "hey, stop taking toys off people it pisses them off" during Uprising and yet here we are again. CB's communication is terrible, remember that time they said "hey guys, settle down we'll discuss INTENT from an official capacity soon™" then went radio silent instead. We could do with less of Bostria trolling and more communication when they do things like change the points cost on Peacemakers. I'm pretty sure it's a correction on an oversight in the edition change, but it would be good for them to front up and tell everyone why, there'd certainly be less griping if they did. If CB want to burn their product by ignoring customers that's their call. I'm still gonna point out it's a stupid call to make the whole time though.
We're in Hyberbole-ville now. Infinity is -nowhere- near "burning to the ground." Spoiler: state of the game IMO The rules are decent, better than N3 or N4. The fixes to Dodge, crits, and other core mechanics between N3 and N4 were elegant design and well implemented. It plays very well. The main existing problems are alpha-strike potential; repeaters/hacking/GML being a bit too easy to spam; template weapon spam; and some points-to-power issues with Steel Phalanx and Nomads, mostly resulting from Frenzy discount without actual penalty due to link team rules. Of these, alpha-strike issues are the most serious, but are being addressed in structural ways (mission design, defensive abilities, and now an attempt to do so with Reinforcements). The other things take pretty mild fixes (not that CB does the most logical things often when it comes to rules). Reinforcements is not great right now. It is also just a mod to ITS, not the core rules or even core ITS, and explicitly beta level right now. It will get fixed by CB, and/or we in the community will create our own standard and use it (like making Commlink optional instead of obligatory, allowing each player to choose Reinf or no Reinf with +50 points, etc. etc.). Reinforcements sucking is not the end of the world, if it doesn't end up getting fixed well. ITS is pretty good, and gets fixes faster than the core rules or units. It is explicitly iterative and the degree of change from season to season is slowly increasing in some cool ways. So yeah the game itself is solid now. None of the current issues make it unplayable, or even unpleasant to play, unless you are at Interplanetario (which frankly has some issues due to crappy table setup which make all the other problems manifest there). The main "problem" is that a few strange people on the internet demand rapid and direct address from CB explaining design decisions, all the way down to point cost adjustments. This is frankly ridiculous, as is freaking out about Reinforcements being in beta shape for a month. CB are a game company, a small one, and not some MTG-style world tourney promotion company. They move slow and publish slow, that's just the way they are -and have always been-. Using claimed neglect by the publisher as freakout fuel, you guys are then spewing negativity all over the forums. It sucks. You're driving away players new and old. @burlesford just wanted to talk about how we could make things better in this thread, and he made an excellent first post and put thought into some good improvements. Instead of running with what we can fix and how, you guys pissed all over CB until he got discouraged, wrapped up, and left. (It's not like the game or CB's public relations changed at all in the week since he started this thread. Same game, same slow-ass Spanish publishing company, only difference is people barfed hyperbole, insults, and drama all over the thread). I would like to reiterate that this is also unfortunate because you and some of the other people I am describing have some very, very solid feedback on how the system can be even better. In fact, I think you're the poster whose mechanics takes I find most insightful over time. Seeing you, Hecaton, and others get banned so that the forums are less toxic would suck. I like reading your posts when you are not trying to bully the mods or the publishers. If you are _genuinely_ concerned for the game and want to make it better, put your insights into a set of "I fixed N4, play this instead" rules in a pdf. If it's good, you know we'll play it. And you'd be able to prove yourself right. Otherwise, I ask and suggest: try reeling it in, see what develops. Otherwise you're wasting your time and actively making CB less likely to take your good recommendations seriously.
Nobody said it was, dude. Stop bullshitting. You completely misunderstood - or purposefully misstated - @Triumph 's point. I've seen what hugboxes do to game companies when they make bad decisions; I saw it with Privateer Press and White Wolf. The problem is we all started polite about it - and we got the same response, from people like @psychoticstorm and @A Mão Esquerda ; we didn't have the *right* to criticize CB. Given that level of disrespect out the gate, it's no wonder things get heated. And given that those posters and others refuse to acknowledge the existence of balance problems to an unreasonable degree, it's not right to expect people to be reasonable back. There are a lot of people who are community middlemen, like the people who run the facebook groups, who have parasocial relationships with CB and who senselessly and unreasonably shut down any discussion that's critical of CB, or that goes against what they specifically want to promote. These people are very cliquey and very dishonest. What would that accomplish? Why do you think CB would care? I got disrespect and contempt first. I've been banned from facebook groups by some of the same people who criticize me here for saying "Nah, I think Ariadna is going to be ok in N4 with the 15 order limit." Like literally that. And then here at the forums, it comes back to people saying that I, and others, don't have the right to criticize CB's work. People have been saying that for a long time; if @psychoticstorm and others actually acknowledged when CB made missteps occasionally I don't think it'd be as much of a problem, and things wouldn't get as heated. The problem is the hostility towards people who say "This thing seems out of wack" which then promotes escalation. I've been pointing out GML as a problem since the beginning of N4. Mocking me about it has been the topic du jour of at least one facebook group for like a month. Go figure people are starting to come around to the fact that it's a problem.
He said "I don't give a fuck if this game burns to the ground," and "If CB want to burn their product by ignoring customers that's their call. I'm still gonna point out it's a stupid call to make the whole time though." Pretty clear, that. No one -reasonable- disregards your accurate criticisms of game balance. A good audience will select itself. I listen to them, as do others. And you argue them forcefully enough that, don't worry, you definitely drown out whoever is opposing you. But we have unfortunately had to listen while you guys also insult people right and left and take things into hyperbole way too often. Seriously, it makes it hard to hear your decent arguments about game balance. Don't you think it's pretty incredible that you -haven't- been banned here yet? To be honest, I'm guessing that's because you have good ideas. Now stop for a sec and think: what if you weren't rude as you stated those things? When posters who aren't jerks point out serious issues with game balance, it does start CB's (veeeeery slow) wheels turning. Fixes get made. It just takes a long-ass time because that's the culture of the company. It has been since the beginning. [Frankly I find the pace frustrating sometimes too, but the game -still works fine- while we wait for these fixes. You and I are not fighting between positions 3 and 4 at Interplanetario, nor are we (I am guessing) using GML or SP to table newbs in our local groups. ] You gotta shelve the interpersonal beefs, man. Just having better ideas and avoiding insults actually does make people more respected in forums like this one. You do realize that player fix lists and suggestions are how we got many of the N2 to N3 improvements, don't you? And that we had fan-created missions and play mods for that whole edition to make the game playable despite the rules being broken and ITS not existing? What it accomplishes is that players will actually use those rules, if they are minimal, effective, and distributed in a good format. We did in N2, and we probably would now if given a good set. As for CB, the proof is in the pudding. The current ITS objective cards are oddly similar to certain fan-made mission systems, aren't they? :) I think we could probably boil down your current core concerns to three or so major rules fixes that would: - Make GML and Oblivion less dominant; - Make Steel Phalanx and other troops overfavored by Frenzy discounts actually pay for their Mary Sue privileges; - and fix the out of band effects of template weapon spam Funny because I say that things are out of whack a lot, as do lots of other posters, including A Mao Esquerda etc. We just don't claim that CB are burning their game to the ground due to neglect of those issues, nor that these issues make the game unplayable. It's just toy space-soldiers, not curing cancer. And it's still better than anything out there. It could indeed be even better, and I'd like to see your ideas remain part of making it so.
When CB decides so, in this forum. Not taking measures means they keep endorsing his decisions, since the power he has comes only from CB. If people decide to take him as CB's Mouth, the distiction becomes moot. But they said it was that the formula was giving a wrong result... for years... even if they keep revising old profiles and have renewed so many times PanO sectorials with the troop in it... Clearly, it's us who are reading it wrong, like when people thought the Kriza had Full Auto for a specific reason, and had an allucination thinking people from CB had stated said reason, while clearly it has never been... I think I went from dripping sarcasm to fossilized acerbic sarcasm or somthing like that here... Solutions for adressing said negativity: 1) close the forums (but people will go to unregulated and unofficial forums and instead of having the discussion here, they could be happening in places people asks about other games and become nightmarish publicity...); 2) ban the "offenders" (welcome, citizen, to Police State. Unless you start using other sites for said "negativity", thus making the forum an echo chamber of how wonderful all is, like the Spanish part of the forum -I've seen graveyards with more movement, besides the tournaments subforum...- and getting the same effect as closing the forums); or, call me crazy and all that... 3) Adress some of the issues. I think there is a reason people feels like the testing process is not working, maybe it would be a good idea from CB to release their guidelines on how they testers are instructed to test something? At the very least people would stop feeling like it's something like "yo testahs! Dis' da Month o'da Hollow Men! Play all games with a Pure 5Man Core of Hollow Men against otha' stuff!" Or something sloppy like that. To be fair, N4 is N3 without a few niche skills, keeping some, de-nesting of skills to even absurd proportions, but the more things change, the more they stay the same... Just look at the Fireteams rework, a full unnecesary table added when it would have been more than enough to keep the +3BS at 5 man pure, so up to 4 man it would have been irrelevant if the fireteam is pure or not (and also it would have negated the +1 to BS to so many 4men Greek Myrm fireteams...). I find highly ironic how the game has a KISS unit while presuming of the overcomplication... The biggest changes to N4 came into hacking, and they were a huge buff to GML (because Spotlight) despite some claims to the contrary, further compounded by CB given more and more Repeater capability to Nomads. The problem with that is having an international community (TTS, Interplanetario...) so effectively nowadays we would be adding a new document of house rules depending on the opponent. At which point, it becomes better to just make a Community Rulebook like in Blood Bowl or similar, long time discontinued games... We would only loss the Army, sadly, since the last offline version was before N4. I use the minis for sci-fi RPGs, however, but with the advent of 3Dprinting, even niche styles are becoming saturated (WH40k-adjacent is directly bursting at the seams, and fantasy even more so...). Didn't some guys did precisely that and got hardbanned by CB a few years ago? Some were even Warcors I think... I warned about it in january in my local Whatsapp community, got the same thing. They wise up a few months before interplanetario, but never commented on that initial reaction... A) venting B) Acknowledging we cannot do a single thing but bitching around if a company decides to ram the Iceberg because not even God could sink this ship.
The reason people demand explanation is because CB have lost their community's trust. There is no trust that they know what they're doing, or even if they're actually doing anything. Why has it come to this? Because they've cultivated that image. They take forever to even make minor adjustments. The community quickly figured out the fireteams were the main issue with Jujaks, being unable to form a fireteam killed them, it took CB nearly a year and a half to make that single, simple adjustment. Their desire to leave profiles to rot absolutely kills confidence, and then when they do make changes it's completely hit or miss. They leave Shang Ji to rot for most of an edition as sub par Zuyongs. Then they finally show everyone buffed Shang Ji profiles, community rejoices, only to reveal they also put the same fucking buffs on the Zuyongs so they're still sub par Zuyongs. Fast forward to N4 and they over buff the Shang Ji so now Zuyongs are just sub par Shang Ji and we've simply traded one problem for the other. These sorts of continual basic mistakes makes them seem uncaring, incompetent, or a mix of both. It absolutely undermines any confidence one can have in them. CB as a company is not that small that they get a pass on both making mistakes like these and then taking forever, like, literally entire editions to fix them. Please, don't give me that shit. I have pointed out forever that Infinity functions better as a game at 400 points and people won't play that because they've got it stuck in their heads that 300 points is tHe oFFicIaL wAy tO PLay iFinIty. I could rewrite Infinity from the ground up and completely unfuck it and grognards would still play InfinityAlpha Strike: The Game instead For the record, the entire north end of my state has given up on Infinity. I attempted to get them interested in trying out reinforcements. They shot me down as they believed it had not addressed any of their issues with N4 which largely revolve around Pitchers, Hacking, Missiles, and the Alpha Strike nature of the game. Also on the record, they largely refuse to play anything besides 300 points where all of these things are much bigger issues. Again, go figure.
