I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s followed your posting with the expectation of intelligent and insightful content. Now we can rest assured that the high quality will continue.
This is an outstanding suggestion. It would probably give the CB team what they want in terms of community interaction, without further complicating an already too-complicated system.
I dunno... too many games have separation of story and gameplay and eventually it gets to the point where stuff on the table bears no resemblance to stuff on the page. Infinity is one of the few games where the two are kept together, and imo its all the better for it, even if it is occasionally painful.
I'm lucky to play one ITS event per season, and happily, don't use any of the sidelined characters (because none of the armies I DO play use them anyway) so it's going to have SFA to no effect on my gaming "experience". It might make games against certain opponents less tiresome, but that's about it (although the whining about stuff getting taken away will probably make up for it).
Yeah at this point I've got no confidence that CB isn't out of their fucking minds. Asuka, Neko, Shinobu and Yuriko just got pulled from the Yu Jing line up, and now Xi Zhuang? It's ridiculous before you go back further into Ko Dali territory. Did they use ITS data to justify pulling Xi Zhuang too? Cos near as I can tell, there were no adjustments on that slide for how long a profile has been available. Losing Xi Zhuang is crippling to one of my IS list trees. I can't believe anyone who can interpret a stat block can think of losing Xi Zhuang and Veronin as in the same ball park, it's not the same league it isn't even the same fucking sport.
probably just Xi Zhuang by default since the only alternative was Sun Tzu and he's off limits due to being a recreation.
Yeah, I very much doubt it's got anything to do with relative power levels or usefulness of the characters.
I guess I just don't understand why they had to remove profiles in the first place. It's just... not an idea that makes any sense to me. Just... why? Isn't the improved HVT enough of a prize?
Technically they were for different things, CA just happened to win both. One was from being at the top of the ITS rankings, the other was from winning B4ckd00r. I agree that taking things away is a shitty "reward" for the end of B4ckd00r. You know what forum doesn't have a thread about the end of it? The CA forum, because our prize was NOTHING HAPPENS. That's boring. The faction that won it is the least excited, because everyone else is negatively excited (i.e. stressed out from losing a character). A better prize would have been the winning faction gets the services of an O-12 alien hunter or something like that.
I feel CB just failed to advertise the event enough. There's a load of butthurt over the outcomes when the outcomes were clear in the outline of the event - ergo, nobody read the event... Presumably because they didn't know about it. Looking over ITS stats, I'd also say that there looks to be a massive overuse of 1 game event codes, and that this is probably also sidled up with selective reporting by those individuals. I get that not everyone has local tourneys and they make do with what they get... But I feel like these events are just plagued by falsified reporting and loaded reporting.
(Nice reply @cazboab; and bonus points for mentioning Danger Mouse, obviously ) I'm curious about this 'retreat incident' and would like to make up my own mind about whether it clouds that player's ethical history and how it might affect this story line event, but - like almost everyone reading this, have no information beyond an oblique and derogatory remark here. It's pretty easy these days to research situations by directly speaking to the person in question, or at least someone who themselves witnessed it. We can then fairly report the story along with a reference to the quality of our research. Of course I know that lacks the sheer wildfire rush of repeating lazy, gossiping Facebook bullshit but if we made it a common practice we'd be part of a community that - even when members might vehemently disagree with one another, is still hallmarked by honesty and trust. Just saying. So back on topic: this 'retreat situation' certainly sounds interesting and possibly relevant to the thread, too. Can someone please provide a more useful report of this incident and how they've substantiated it?
I'm on record as a big fan of their designer sensibilities; but I've never tried to suggest said that isn't true!
The report, such as it is, is this thread, https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/responsibilities-for-right-hidden-info.3284/ Naturally, it is now locked.
Gonna give CB a D for effort and an F for execution on this one, which works out to an F+ overall. (If there is such a thing - and if there is, it'd still be a fail.) The event was poorly advertised and, as most community events are, far too open to (seemingly) being manipulated. Allowing this to have real world ITS repercussions too (instead of just being for bragging rights or fluff purposes) was also particularly dimwitted. But the most "hilarious" part is that YJ has just lost one of their last two characters for the rest of the season due to this poorly handled "event" - bravo CB, bravo, your public relations triumphs continue to pile up! As GW seems to (finally) be pulling their heads from their posteriors, CB seems intent on taking their place. A bit more of this, and I may have to dust off my CSM warband and give WH40K 8th edition a try.
Ah, thread locking - that most efficacious of all sanctions! Thanks for the link, I'll presume this to be a Lazy Facebook Gossip (LFG) situation until I read something more substantial, then. [edit] Ok, I actually laughed out loud when I checked this link, because I realize I had read much of that thread and did know about the situation. I guess I hadn't realized that our third party deconstruction (including my own dubious contributions) should fairly convict that person of questionable ethics! Not quite Lazy Facebook Gossip then; I'll take that back. My point about building trust by speaking directly to the people involved and otherwise checking our sources remains.
Good suggestion. A Mercenary or neutral character would let CB’s designers have their jollies, and if they showed us the fabulous artwork and concept design all through the season, we might even want to compete for our factions right to use it in the subsequent half year. They’d still need some way of making it clearer that it’s an actual thing.
I didn't participate, but I voted unfavourable opinion, the main reason being that Tarik was the Haqq character chosen. Very odd choice after including him in a box designed for new players to combine with RV to make a 300pt ITS legal list. Apart from that, YJ losing another character (from their 2/3 left), the fact that it's not clear how long they'll be gone for, some factions lost characters that are used more than others, I don't think it was handled great. If they are getting reworked (which seems to just be a rumour anyway), did they have to be removed in the meantime?
As far as I've heard around, "CB's pulse never wavers when they feel something is needed". Which kinda devolves easily to "they listen only to what they want to, ignoring the rest". Well, considering how the dice have so big an impact on the game, and how those big tournaments also give big prizes already (boxes, usually, of expensive stuff), what would you give to the people who cares enough to play as much as possible? Nothing? That would mean the death of ITS as more than tournaments here and there. Also, while Leirbag was called on on the retreat situation (which was explained several times as plausible, how he would win nothing since he already had a spot in the Interplanetario -and the box prize? less valuable than the expenses to go there-, and how that would be totally out of character for him), I am not aware of any ethical problem with Logan, on the contrary, he was upset because a set of "private FAQ" was pulled out of the hat in the Interplanetario, and has not been playing this whole season. Maybe the problem is not the players, but how the rules are redacted and how people gets more and more exhausted with so many games. Yes, it would. It would also open options for playing the system, which is the reason CB presents for not doing it. The recent mix of ITS ratings with Aristeia, points to how bad that policy is going on for them, but it's a valid one, just they treat secrecy like Gollum's the One Ring. Their position, however, seems to be that "not many people protests, so many participates!", which can be real or not, but certainly I can hear the "don't look at the man behind the curtain!" everytime I look into this online events. I disagree, people who looks at the ITS rankings and goes to tournaments knows of him. That means spanish people mostly, since he lives here, and there is little reason to keep an eye on him when a player might face him only in the Interplanetario or a big Satellite. He doesn't post, but then again there is a certain culture of "the forum is filled with dumb, crying idiots who don't know how to play" in certain communities, which doesn't exactly promotes people to come in here. JSA and YJ were one for this challenge, and NA2 had been announced that would not lose any character. As for why Xi Zhuan? Sales. You can't cripple the nascent JSA with the removal of a character (Neko or Shinobu would have been the only real choices...), and apparently letting YJ win something was out of the question, probably to "prove" how the challenge was not rigged (to which the victory of the CA and PanO's abysmal results seems like it was an answer to the claims that numbers where everything in this campaigns. Aleph being at the back is no surprise there). In fact, any JSA character was a valid option aswell. But that would cripple sales, so... In theory, to "improve" those profiles using a in-story vehicle. Some choices, however, put that into doubt. We shall see.
