I understand why people are upset. Yu jing has taken a hit, people have models they won't know what to do with right now. People trying to attribute CB with some kind of malicious, cash grabbing entity when theres a perfectly justifiable reason why they are doing things, and have actively taken some steps to try lessen the blow and explain themselves. Just because those actions don't suit YOU, doesn't mean they haven't occured and deserve being dismissed out of hand.
What actions have CB taken? All I've seen is JSA sale hype articles and vague assurances that IA is coming at some point maybe.
I agree with most of your points, but consumers have more rights than you think. Consumer Rights In this case, I see that a lot of people think their right to be informed had been infringed upon (They bought mini they thought they could use in their army, which now is no longer the case.)
Changes to the proxy rules. Shikami release in YJ colours was a mistake. The section of adepticon where Bostria talked about why, design wise, fluff wise and statistics wise why they moved JSA to NA2. None of those needed to be done. You might argue they're less than satisfactory, but many posters have straight up ignored these actions or belittled them. How would you feel if you were on the receiving end of some of these complaints, compassionate? or infuriated. Edit: try look at this differently. If we remove the now aspect from complaints, whats left.
You'd be getting into very difficult ground as to why miniatures are bought. Their purpose is not singular, and arguing that the profile of a model is part of a consumer right would set a pretty awful precedent for a game which we all want to see keep growing and evolving.
I know some posters are hyperbolic, but as a company, CB has to have thicker skin. It sucks, but it is true - I strive to be fair and reasonable and I've gone out of my way to remain cordial in tone. That said, I do think CB could make something more official than a few statistics at Adepticon, because I think most YJ players would be fine with the split if we just thought we had A: For competitive players, something to fill the gap, which I guess the CBLs may provide, and B: Some profiles that vaguely resemble the aesthetics of the JSA minis we are losing for proxy purposes for casuals who care about their army 'looking right' like me, or C: Just some forewarning. And C isn't something they can do now, but they can learn from this and never do it again. In all honesty, I'd just appreciate them saying 'hey this was maybe too sudden, and we're sorry, we hope you'll stick with us.' Just a little bit of 'hey we kinda mishandled this' would be nice, and honestly, if they could just confirm we're getting something relevant before 2019 that would be great, because JSA IS NOT A YJ RELEASE AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED SUCH. So the fact that there is 1 (and only 1) YJ release which is for a support pack resculpt in the months following the JSA release... yeah, people are angry because they lost a lot and got nothing.
Bostria 'gonna Bostria. But it was still ill advised. And, to be fair, if they didn't realise that there was going to be some negativity that his comments would aggravate then they SHOULD have.
Please, there's no need to be personal here. Taken some steps to try lessen the blow and explain themselves? Honestly, I didn't quite get that message and I'm even a bit closer to the source. Where could be the problem... hmm.
Well, what was going to happen was laid out when they announced stuff. So I don't really see how this chain of events is preemptive: Uprising announced, say JSA is going away Vanilla YJ players upset about losing a bunch of profiles People telling those upset to not be upset JSA goes away in almost its completely entirety *shrug* I know that I, for one, am a pessimist. I'd rather be happy that something less bad happened and be prepared (as best I can be) for the worst, than expect more and be even more disappointed. I'm still upset by losing many units I greatly enjoyed running in vanilla (and because it was in vanilla YJ at that), even though I was somewhat mentally prepared for everything to go. I mean, it's a sensitive issue. These are things people paid for, to use in a certain way because that's, at least in part, how they were marketed to them. While Bostria might be renowned for trolling, this hasn't really happened before - Exrah, yes, although that was at least only a handful of models (with a cult following, sure, and it was still an issue for those players). It's like saying, "I know I punch you jokingly a lot, but why did it bother you this time? So what if you're just had an operation and I punch you in the still-healing wound?!" While I agree for the most part, in this case, some respect is literally paid for. Treating paying customers like shit is a quick way to lose future custom. Also, while that adage is pretty solid, there has to be a baseline - if you go around treating no-one with respect, you end up with assholes talking with other assholes, complaining that no-one has any respect! A good baseline for respect is being reasonably neutral and then seeing their actions: in this case, it's a major spokesperson dumping a bucket of salt over your freshly gaping wound. Edit: Not to mention that "The Community" basically doing the same thing is not helping - if listening to upset people complain about an issue upsets you...maybe just let it die out on its own, instead of pouring petrol on it?
However, obsolescence happens all of the time, and where does a consumer's "right to be informed" conflict with a company's right to trade secrets or following their own business plan? Additionally, it could just as easily be argued the consumers product is still valid, since there are options for its use, but simply a matter of these particular consumers not liking the uses available to them now. Any and all JSA units purchased by a YJ player are still valid in the game, either as part of the NA2 JSA, or as ITS legal proxies. Again, not liking those options is a player's right, but insisting that they are invalid, or that the only valid response is what a certain group (of unknown size) of consumers want is rather far fetched.
Look, this definitely does hurt for vanilla Yu Jing players right now. If you have oniwabans and shikami you were regularly using, you just can't. Short term that sucks. However, long term it means there's interesting "design space" for vanilla Yu Jing. We can expect new units to rebalance it. There's space for 1-2 new sectorials now. You may have to wait a few months, but there's no reason to quit the faction. Also, focusing right on the short term, we're the ultimate enemy for all the new JSA players trying to learn what works. I recommend you go out there and enjoy it. I had great fun playing ISS versus JSA at Adepticon, where I was able to win a 10-0 game of acquisition with Sun Tze as my datatracker. I had time to finish with a flourish and coup de grace Saito Togan for a classified before scoring the central objective for the win. We don't really need new models for game balance reasons. I just managed to take ISS to a 4-0-0 record at Adepticon. In my opinion vanilla Yu Jing is still competitive and has a bunch of flexibility that ISS doesn't have. I have plenty of models to paint up and try out in my backlog and still haven't recovered from a year of fast and furious releases.
So... a new customer walks into a store... "I'll get this starter and something to add... let's get these lovely bikers. They have the same green sign anyway." Or was there some kind of timely info campaign? Store info? Stickers maybe?
Honestly just a confirmation that we are getting a sectorial this year would help. So far we have official confirmation of a single YJ release, and that's our support team resculpt, and while they are very pretty, they aren't really broadening our horizons as a faction. Also I very much hope they are putting info out now to avoid this happening.
And honestly, the weirdest thing about this is I wanted, and still do want, to play JSA. I just didn't want to have it handled this poorly, and now I have a bad taste in my mouth about not playing YJ in events if I go, because I have mostly YJ minis and I wasn't wanting to bandwagon away.
Data you don't understand, don't know where it came from, or how to interpret can be really dangerous. Like making you think it is an extremely good idea to invest in Bitcoin Miningright now to get rich fast where a lot of electricity is produced, just to be told that you are using 90% of the electricity of the city, you are not creating any value for the city, and you will be billed by the excess price your electricty devouring is dumping on all the people of the town (real case, btw). Convenient justification? Tournament lists, when submitted to the OTM, shold indeed have more value than lists "just saved". I'm silently having the laughs thinking how my latest 10 or so lists (generic nomads, limited insertion, 300pts ZERO SWC) fit in their little models, thanks to a narrative campaign we are playing around here. As I said, information without context. Also, just having the % of use of single units is not enough; having the relationship with other units, the sinergy, and what gets picked with what consistently is the real gold. I disagree here. You can't provide an excuse that is blatantly flawed, it is worst than no excuse at all. And while I understand that it was just skimming the top of the iceberg, done by someone whose main job is neither Big Data neither Game Design, it was like carrying a primed gun in the trousers. The front part, at all. And it seems like there was a shot. You do realize you are wandering aimlessly here, don't you? First, there is no reason to show the data as a justification for the JSA split if, less than a day after those images reach the forum, a lot of people claim that as a single frame of a movie, with the explanations even less reassuring than a blockbuster's movie trailer nowadays. And, well... If the JSA profiles were better than the YJ ones, the impact of taking them away should be great... yet it has been claimed time and again that it was, in fact, not... If I don't care, when a company does something I don't like I just go to another alternative, and more importantly I don't suggest the game to other people. Guess what people who care does? It's called feedback. Because... well, data is important, is it not? In fact, farmers get told a lot how to do their job. Those who don't know how, don't listen/adapt... go out of business. Ridiculing those who offer criticism is the very first step to an endless pit while keeping the eyes looking so high the sun blind them... Ah, so I should invest my money in their business, by buying their product and not the one from the other business, because... why? You are telling once they have my money, I can burn for all they care. Pretty good Public Relations here... (and yeah, this was sarcasm). Mmm... CB certainly knows a little better than you, since they made an attempt (not a very succesful one, but even so...) to explain their decisions. Other than "we think this will sell like cocaine in the USA, so we don't care about how many upset customers there will be". Because, well, they know what would happen if they went aroun throwing that kind of declarations. In short, they owe their clients enough information so they keep being their clients. The more you charge into the fray, the more reasons you give the other side to debunk your declarations. I respect that huge amount of faith you have in CB, frankly, but do you know which tools and formed experts do they have? Maybe SiSense? MicroStrategy? Tableau? All pretty tools for Business Intelligence (which is, for the record, the next step in the chain that starts with Data Mining -or ETL processes-), all useless unless the datasets have been defined and the metadata added. Or, said another way, it's not just throwing the Excel Spreadsheets from the Army server into a bunch of formulas that give precanned answers to questions made months ago.
Most companies don't tell you whats coming months in advance. You're asking them to change that because you're upset.
A few months means at least 8-9, probably more like 12 for the first new sectorial, and about 2-3 years for the second one. Just for clarification purposes. Clubbing seals is fun, I guess. Yeah, you can take the Kuang Shi horde and abuse some dumb people who are playing JSA in dumb suboptimal ways because ninja and samurai. I guess that's a positive of this whole thing. Our faction works, yes. It's boringer tho. Let's see those Closed Battle Lists, maybe they will even be 10 orders this time.
Actually, no, lots of companies do. Most games advertise releases months in advance, and give new editions as much as a year of hype. Many games will have info coming out as much as 2 years in advance. Companies planning to discontinue or make radical changes to features (such as Eve altering modules) will give weeks, or even months of warning, and some companies are even so obliging as providing replacement or alternate services for those who request it. I'm not being unreasonable when I say 'they could have advertised this, given months of lead up with narrative tidbits and people could have built up hype for new miniatures without buying stuff they didn't plan to use for a faction they didn't plan to play'.
Games Workshop just announced one of the most anticipated/desired releases a year ahead, with a pledge to showcase the design, as well as intending to have a community Beta version of the Codex before the release for extra playtesting. Privateer Press has their Community Integrated Development, which encourages players to provide detailed feedback about upcoming models (3+ months in advance) and how their rules should work. Those are two of the biggest names in miniature wargaming. And while CB is certainly a much, much smaller operation, transparency (especially when it comes to major upheavals) is a major selling point when earning respect within the games' community.
Hell, Dropzone Commander had active beta teams working on V2 a year before that was planned to release, and even after the buyout with TTCombat, they've a stated goal to release a public version for people to test and give feedback on - they are also releasing teasers about upcoming releases and events even if those are coming down the road 6-12 months. Saying "IA is a 2018 release" is a hype builder and does nothing to CB except actually force them to put out a product. Heaven forbid.
