Here is the statistical data. I don't know what the situation was like in N3, since I only started playing Infinity in N4. However, I have always felt that there are several difficult-to-ignore issues with the game's balance. 1. Misjudging faction strength NW not only has a high win rate statistically, but also consistently performs well in tournaments. Yet the community often rates its overall strength as merely "average" or "good." O-12, on the other hand, performs poorly in the win-rate statistics, has a poor win rate in The Monday Signal, and has achieved very little in tournaments. Yet there are still people who describe O-12 as a very strong or solid faction. From my observation, part of this discrepancy comes from confusing how difficult it is to build a good army list with how high the faction's actual performance ceiling is. From my observation, this discrepancy mainly comes from confusing the difficulty of building a good army list with how high the faction's performance ceiling actually is. There are quite a few people in the community who claim that Infinity is an exceptionally well-balanced game. But I don't think the actual data supports that conclusion. 2. CB puts considerably more effort into factions that are popular or that it wants to promote When N5 was first released, CA was dominating the meta. The way CB nerfed CA was extremely careful, almost as if they were afraid of upsetting CA players. For example, Ikadron was not simply nerfed by increasing its cost or removing equipment. Instead, it received compensation in the form of Dogged and Discover (+3). Units that were previously underperforming were also adjusted. Overall, it felt like a very carefully designed balance pass. Then we have NW. I really don't want to keep bringing up NW, but the situation is simply too obvious to ignore. When NW was already performing quite well statistically, one of the complaints from the community was that its KHD options were not good enough. And shortly afterwards, Harbinger received a KHD profile. And, by the way, Harbinger is currently the cheapest Line Trooper in CA. Morat, Shasvastii, and Onyx all have a minimum-cost Line Trooper of 14 points. Harbinger is the only one that costs 13 points. It even has a 13-point FO profile with a WildParrot and a DTW. There are also many other units that are clearly undercosted, such as Wraith, Teucer, Puzzler, and Achilles. PanO has shown similar patterns over the past few versions. In N4, one of the common complaints was that PanO lacked access to Smoke. In N5, PanO received the Discoball. Apparently that wasn't enough, because if you're going to give PanO a Discoball, it has to be on the cheapest possible unit. And that's how we ended up with a 13-point Discoball unit. Then, if the goal was to let PanO participate more actively in the hacking game, giving them Pitchers apparently wasn't enough either. The unit also had to come with an Xvisor and BS Attack +1B, while still being relatively cheap. MO even has one of the highest-BS Pitcher units in the entire game, as well as the rather unusual combination of Infiltration + Minelayer + Deployable Repeater. 3. Balance adjustments can be heavily influenced by community volume Some factions that had effectively disappeared from N5 suddenly returned after enough community complaints. MO is another example. Because it is popular and the community complaints were loud enough, it has received some form of buff in almost every major update since N5 launched. The adjustments to CA and NW also appear to have a direct relationship with the amount of community attention and discussion surrounding them. Ariadna's adjustments seem to have followed a similar pattern, with a large amount of community dissatisfaction preceding major changes. Of course, from a business perspective, it is completely understandable for a company to prioritize the satisfaction of the majority of its customers. But if you happen to enjoy a relatively unpopular faction, then I guess you're just out of luck.
The statistics don't surprise. Corregidor had an increase, but Corregidor was not in a bad spot... only with old minis. Still NW has the biggest post-update increase of matches played. Very good analysis, but your conclusion is a bad market strategy: CB does not sell cars for which if you don't sell one line you just stop making it and nobody will complain. CB sells a game and one main parameter of said game is re-playability. Now with the number of factions available one would think re-playability isn't an issue... and one would be very wrong. The balancing of a higher number of faction is more complex and in turn there are not enough hands to keep an eye on everything. Both these end up leading to a reduction of variability in the game. The choice to satisfy only the vocal majority, without any regard for the game as a project of its own (I'm sure CB had an idea in the beginning of N1 and I would really like to know how far away are we today), often leads like in politics to horrible outcomes. Interplanetario is ongoing and I really want to know how differentiated it is. I have a friend who wanted to go to that event... long story short: he decided NOT to go because he did not want to play against just 2 factions. I work with customers, definitely not the kind CB works with, and I can tell you that sometimes the customer does not know that their satisfaction may lie where they don't think it possible to be. That happens when you have control of the data and the customer only has control of the wallet. They think spending less is better, but data tell a different story and it's the data you should follow, not the guts. That being said the customers I work with have a considerably higher amount of money to spend so everything gets a great deal more serious. Still, sustainability is a concept CB should be aware of because it doesn't take much to end up with 9 flavours of a single faction VS 8 different other factions. What do you think led other manufacturer to such an incredible disparity? Sales only. A statistical analysis of the market will reveal that a general alignment to the statistical norm means 80% of people will go to the average while 20% will populate the wings of a Gaussian distribution. What comes out first will be the market affecting variant. If you don't break the cycle you'll always have an 80/20 which is a non remarkable situation. The bucket of the "usual". What happens next is that in order to keep the 80, you loose the 20 that will never stick. Sure there will be turnover, mostly in the 20%, and so there will be no real affection to the game overall and for a low population game like Infinity that can lead to a sad outcome. The vocality aspect is the main reason why I keep this thread active...
If corvus sphere is accurate, the field is vast. Looks most rep'd factions appear to be next wave, oss, and vanilla haqq at a glance, but only na2 seems absent.
Specifically regarding the topic at hand it is Aleph in total that has problems. vAleph has a good increase in matches (higher even than OSS), but with a total number of matches of 52. With the exception of some notable outliers (PanO, CA and Yu Jing) I'd say that vanilla factions are not doing so well. The first we encounter is Nomads that has 50% the matches played by Yu Jing, then Aleph at less than 1/4, Ariadna at 112... it seems like the measures enacted to bring Vanilla play back in the game did not work a lot and that is yet another promise that was not satisfied. One should not forget Steel Phalanx either, to go back to the main topic. While SP may need less love than OSS since it still gives a feeling to play a balanced game, it needs some attention due to roster reduction. Both in game terms and in lore terms this is not acceptable: how can you expect an AI with access to the best intel there is not to react to a desertion like that of the Achilles team? Again the lore should be the compass. Aleph should have been able to anticipate the formation of Next Wave with the control it has on the communication systems of the Human Sphere, even more so now that CA is in that network too. As I said before the betrayal should trigger the formation of a unit aimed at solving these issues. In particular since we talk about betrayal and the fact that Shinju is the planet we talk about now with caves and location that seems taken from Dante's Inferno, the new unit should be revolving around this topic. The 9th ring is the place for those that betrayed their peers, their nation and god in Caina, Antenora, Tolomea and Giudecca. These places are in eternal darkness and icy temperatures due to Lucifer that waves his wings constantly. It could potentially be a very strong background evolution justified also by the respond of Aleph to CA's Avatar (the AI made Achilles for this major threat, it's only fitting it does so again with the NW sectorial).
As we speak OSS has overtaken SP almost reaching top 10 with 196 matches... it's a long way to the top though... More timid increase for SP from 160 to 163...
Although it might be a bit late to bring this up, if we're going to discuss overall game balance, should we move to another thread? After all, this place is specifically for Aleph.
We are talking about Aleph. We have done comparisons before with units in other factions to highlight what was not going so well with Aleph units. Now the main topic of analysis, in my opinion, is what to do with SP and, yes, I brought up again the matter of a potential third sectorial to revolve around the betrayal of Achilles team. You're more than welcome to participate in the discussion or, if you feel so inclined, to open a thread about overall game balance (which I am sure will attract a lot of attention in either direction). Right now I am dedicating some thought to the Erinyes and Heracles for SP while the idea of the Punishment sectorial is still in embryonic stages.
To be honest, there's so few people here now, I don't think it matters. I'm not sure if it's in a more generic thread, there's going to be more participating.
The Tarkshya is such a mindlessly strong profile that it lessens the experience of Infinity as a whole for its existence. Fliers were already toxically overtuned. I'm not sure where CB thought that taking that bar and raising it even higher was a good idea. Especially since OSS is already so strong without it. We're getting to GW levels of powercreep with this. I hate it when faction comp devolves into 'take the fucking flier or you're a moron.'
That's a thing, still it wasn't Aleph that started the fliers craze. Aleph was merely given what, following the standards, equated to Elite. If the baseline is already high, what is supposed to be higher (and costly so) can only become OPed. Look at Marut and Agamemnon. Then we can talk about the self-balancement the comes with Elite factions that pay the eliteness paired with non elite factions that field more units in general (WWII docet). As for the levels we're getting at I'd say we started when certain factions, because they sell a lot, they need to be loved more. A way to avoid it is: just don't give a damn to what sells more, carry on and trust the process of building a game on the bases it had. The game became significant with 8 factions... like a mother: love your sons equally and you'll see that the game itself will benefit from it. Having a fun faction is what everybody looks for, but having fun enemies makes the game even more interesting otherwise it becomes "Anabolized foot soldiers on a religious craze AND their whatever enemies we don't wanna know that are kind of a black box without identity" (and yet even on the other side of the Channel, things are moving...)
There are many reasons for its strength: 1. Abuse of Super-Jump In fact, I don't think there's anything wrong with the VH itself in 8-2; the issue is that the N5 version grants extra inches to Jump. Originally, jumping was meant to be a means of vertical movement, but now it has increasingly become a means of horizontal movement. Even if VH were nerfed today, an Alpha Strike with Super-Jump units would still remain powerful. 2. Abuse of Wounds (W) I don't know why a unit costing a minimum of 34 points gets 3 Wounds... Another example is Haqq's Zeybek. Its ability to soak up hits is simply way too strong. 3. Stacking of BS Modifiers MSV1 + Mimetism (-6) If we consider every +3 or -3 modifier as worth 1 point, this unit sits at a total modifier advantage of 3 points—undoubtedly the highest among all currently released VHs. The only other unit with such excellent modifiers is, again, the Zeybek. However, one of the Zeybek's skills is Albedo, and the list of units that equipment can address is far more limited than Mimetism (-6). Tarkshya definitely has balance issues, and particularly severe ones at that. Increasing its cost by 10 points would still be an understatement; if its current loadout remains completely untouched, adding around 13 to 15 points feels reasonable. Especially with the recent OSS updates providing richer cheerleading options for army lists, having this unit at such a low point cost is even more unreasonable.
Unfortunately, it’s real life that made them add flyers in. We now live in a War by Drone World. A game about future war without them doesn’t make much sense. They just need to be more expensive. In points and maybe SWC. I think all of them should be at least .5 SWC more each. None of them 0. They are almost TAGs and should be priced accordingly. I’m fine with what they have but they shouldn’t be AUTO takes. You need to think about it if it’s right for the mission and your way of playing. You need to make a choice between it and something else.
Angus you forget the Haytham that has min-6 and MSVL1. Then you forget some BS Attack -3 (usually coupled with Mim-3 to a grand total of -6 effectively) which actually is more efficient than Mimetism that can be countered by an MSV to various extent. On that note Albedo works like the complementary of Mimetism: need an MSV to counter Mimetism, need not an MSV to counter Albedo... obviously we don't have a 50% population with MSV and 50% without, but some of the strongest pieces do have MSV (Asura? The Chrontid? Marut? Bolts, Nokken, Banshee, Griffin...). So following your reasoning Albedo is more limited, but also more effective against troopers that are more likely to kill you easily. Super-jump is a mechanic of the game, other troopers have it especially with lower price (see various cats and a couple of Zonds in Nomads to mention but a restricted few). Points-wise I don't have the formula they use to calculate points cost, still the scary Tarkshya is at 41pts a piece which is the most expensive flier in the game. The other two profiles, you bring it because the pilot is actually more scary than the flier itself. I could see a point increase happening without changing the profile and honestly it fits with the Elite faction idea. It's a delicate balance though and I wouldn't personally shoot high to adjust the aim afterwords. I would rather suggest the opposite approach because it's more politically efficient (takes nothing to go from all-in to nothing-in). That's an important point: having something that "just kills everything it sees (Sgt Hartman)" sometimes is an impediment because it sucks up points for mission making purposes. That is a personal approach and some are more mature to understand that and some are less.
Every flier needs to go up at least 10 points. The Tarkshya would be an absolute steal if it went up 15. They're ruining the game. Nothing like watching a learning players eyes when they realize that's what the game is coming to revolve around. I disagree. Infinity takes place in a world of science fiction. You can dream up any measure of minovsky bullshit to justify the technology necessary for the feel you want in a setting. Moreover, the scale of Infinity's combat doesn't necessitate fliers, just as it doesn't necessitate tanks or cars.
I am fine with the concept of flyers, they just need some minor tweaks. I agree with @Space Ranger they should have a SWC cost associated with them like most TAGs do. That and change the movement from 8-2 to 6-4 might be all they need. Its the 11" move and shoot capability that is devastating.
More than that, they all need a severe cost readjustment. They simply cost way too little. Sure, reigning in their mobility to a scale mire functional within Infinity's core systems would improve things, at the end of the day, it still does not change the fact that fliers perform on a level far beyond their asking price. They're not only top-tier attackers, they're cheap and self-sufficient enough that one can afford to play brashly and carelessly with one with minimal impact should they go down. You are encouraged to embrace bad habits with them by design, and they end up being a no-brainer decision for it. Infinity is a game of choices and sacrifices, and fliers just effortlessly go over all of that. They lessen the game.
