We don't even know if IA is coming this year. This is half the reason why people are so angry. All we have is @Bostria making a really dumb really snarky comment about how it's going to be a "bad year" for Yu Jing, and all the Vanilla players should go and play ISS instead while he drinks their tears. As far as anyone knows we're getting Shas'd and won't see crap until 2019 or later. I hope we're not, but I can't say with any degree of certainty we're not. Right now we don't even have a commitment that IA is anywhere on the horizon or even being actively worked on period. As for delays? That's why you're a professional and plan your shit to release on time. If you fuck it up, you communicate the fuck up, apologise, and do something to mitigate the effect. Let's say there's a metal shortage and they can't meet a deadline for model releases. They should communicate this, release the profiles, and give an update on new mini release windows. If that happened I wouldn't even be mad, shit happens, I get it. It went wrong but I've been kept in the loop and you're doing what you can for me and I'll appreciate that. What they're doing right now instead of communicating effectively? That just makes people angry. You may have noticed this. We'd want the changes to switch in seamlessly when the JSA moves out. Nobody cares if they're limited to Vanilla, the ISS players aren't affected by this whole dumpster fire event anyway. And trying to pretend that buffing some otherwise totally untouched profiles for a Ninja as a "sorry we screwed you over" will send Vanilla's power levels spiraling out of control is ludicrous. Or do I need to remind you things like Ghazi still exist? I wouldn't have my company participate in shitty, consumer unfriendly, bait and switch moves. In bird culture, this is considered a dick move. You don't have to telegraph you're going to obsolete some models with resculpts, but you shouldn't pretend that your models are for one thing then not. Do you honestly think they couldn't have delayed the first Shikami sculpt? Or hell, just not sculpt it and do something else god knows there's enough other models they could've done. Personally, I'm not stupid enough to cock this entire event up like CB have. And if I did, I'd have the intelligence to come to terms that I'd screwed it up and the balls to apologise to my customer base and take steps to appease them. Not threaten to ban everyone, promise answers, then post thinly veiled advertising instead. Amongst other things I've also got the integrity not to pull bullshit like the Shikami bait and switch, or bare minimum at least if I did it I wouldn't pretend I didn't.
I'm really baffled where's this "IA most likely next year" argument comes from. We know there are more regular sectorials coming out this year. One of them was JSA, OSS was mostly confirmed as well, that leaves three slots and it makes perfect sense for IA to fill one of them. Sure, it might be that CB decide not to release it this year, but I doubt it. And throwing in an angry rant just after we've been told by both CB staffer and Moderator to behave isn't really a good move.
Bostria made the comments that it's going to be a bad year for Yu Jing and we should play ISS for the rest of the year. That's what's fueling speculation that we're not getting IA. Does it seem outlandish that Vanilla players get hung out to dry for more than a year? Sure, but so did losing a huge chunk of my faction 4 months ago and yet that's happening so all bets are off. It all comes back to god awful communication from CB, you know, that thing about the bad blog post and bad comments by company members we've been discussing. That's all part of the problem and it's continuously doing way more harm than anything else. If they wanna reimburse me for all this JSA that doesn't work for me anymore I'll be less angry. But right now, still extremely angry due to piss poor treatment by CB. If they don't want me to flame the other users that are trying their damn hardest to troll everyone, sure, I'll play by that. But demanding that we not be angry? Pull the other one.
It comes from one of the videos, where Bostria says that the year will be hard for YJ, and that ISS should be played a lot. Plenty of ways to think about it, but most people, given the lack of real data and the situation at that moment, plus Bostria's smile (that I never, ever, have been able to see in his eyes... maybe he had some eye surgery to correct short-sightingness or something), all lead to conclude that no IA until next year, or so. As for Vedic being confirmed, it's all in the air, with the usual smoke all around and non-answers. Personally, I'm betting on Tunguska for christmas...
I took some time to read most of the previous 70/80 pages. Just a quick note on the content : most of the 60+ last pages are rants, insults and namecallings (plus some out of the line comparison between CB, a toy company, actions an actual real war crim and slaughter). No one trully listen to the other side and mostly throw mud at it. This whole discussion need a lot more cool head. Regarding the subject at hand, while I agree that CB could have handled it better, I don't think that they fuck it up like some people says. On one side, CB give a lot more space to one of its best selling product to be developped both from a mini range and fluff POW. However you present it, that's a smart move that can draw more people to the game and/or to JSA. In term of operating result for CB (which is a commercial company who need to make money), it will likely have a positive impact On the other side, regarding Yu-Jing. I agree it's painful for some Yu-Jing player but we have to remember : - CB says JSA unit didn't get much use in Vanilla Yu-Jing. Some may not like this idea, but it's fact. Infinity army doesn't cover all players but more than enough players use it for it to be big enough to do statistic representing the whole community. So when CB says not many player used it, they are talking about statistical fact. - IA is coming. Very much likely this year (I would guess late fall/early winter). Yes we have to wait but we are all adults here. Waiting a few months hardly ever killed anyone. CB is not dumb and it's very likely they won't wait many months to fill the void created by JSA PS : I'm a vanilla ariadna player. If something similar had been done to me, removing caledonia, I would be asking for more related game content (like uprising special mission replacing standard ITS ones or added to it), to crush the scots rebels. To me, the biggest fault from CB is not exploting more the Uprising to push players to be part of it. Having missions about how ISS crush the rebel and JSA sabotage their effort (for example : passing as a crane agent to make crazy statement to warcor) would be a great fun.
Bostria also said that as a YJ player, he wasn't bothered by JSA splitting because he knows what's coming. Next year, Yu Jing will win big. 2018 to build heat, 2019 for the payoff. You don't just replace everything immediately. Hype for 2019 IA and White Banner.
The fun thing about that you see is that requires the customers having trust in the company which you may have noticed is at a historical all time low for many of them. It could have something to do with recently being stabbed in the back and their goodwill being completely taken advantage of by said company that some players aren't very trusting of vague promises and a lack of concrete answers. Could be a coincidence though, who knows.
Actually we could make a perfectly viable campaign/event on our own, as players. Main narrative would be YJ/ISS vs JSA, with narratives for other factions exploiting the situation (PanO stirring the pot to make life harder for YJ, Haqq intervening to protect shipping lanes, caravanserais, or - for Bahram - following obscure Old Man orders, Nomads acting as mercenaries (helping the JSA to secure that Human Edge space stations, for example), etc. It'd require time and effort on the organizer's part, but could be fun. Some of us have some experience writing missions, from what I know. On a side note I'd really like PanO to lose a sectorial as well. If YJ was blocked by JSA design-wise, PanO is even more so. And it'd work to keep YJ in the race.
Won't bring the Uprising book some new misions to play? Some of they very tematic and some designed to join the ITS.
As someone who has to deal with big data in my job you have to be really careful of what that data is showing you. For example, in the rumble video Bostria said that the ninja was taken in 47% of lists and that was much higher than anything else from JSA. I totally believe that number as TO infiltrating specialists are valuable/vital in just about every mission in the game. There is only one in YJ so any attempt at filling that role will be filled by a ninja (how many times were any other ninja profiles taken?) Now compare that to Shinobu. She fills a primary strike role against hard targets. This role can also be filled by an Oniwaban. That means a usage of 24% here probably has the same effective value as a 47% on the ninja even though it looks much lower. Now lets complicate that further as if you were worried about how to deal with a TAG (due to other bits of your army) then a Tiger Soldier assault hacker or HMG wielding HI such as a Hac Tao could partially fill this role (but without the LT assassination threat) so now I've got 4 models filling one roll (if not more) so a 12% usage could signify the same overall value. So I have no doubt they have data (again with the issues around exactly what is being recorded others have alluded to) but I have no visibility on how its used beyond a comment by Bostria implying their analysis is flawed. See elsewhere around why people feel IA may well not be this year. If YJ players had faith that this would resolve itself in a month or two then I think we'd be in a much better position. Very little information is being forthcoming to build that trust though (and actually most of what has come out is undermining it instead).
Heck we don't even know if the Shikami count as Ninjas in terms of secession. They're part of a single Clan fluffwise. But that Clan is very Merc flavoured. With the release still elatively close to the split, I'd say might very well be a Bostria fumble (Ninjas=Ninja&Shikami). Oniwaban are gone though, we know that. The Uprising book will have the updated Dire Foe missions (btw that's where all those Objective Rooms will find some use now).
I remember hearing/reading somewhere that shikami and oniwaban are part of the big ninja clans only. This clans were the ones with the big governemental contracts for army support. They chose to go to the rebel side so Yu-Jing lost their support and troops. Yu-Jing still kept basic ninja because some minor Ninja clans saw a business opportunities and took over the "free" yu-jing governemental contract. This small clans are viewed as traitor by the JSA ones. With such a fluff we could imagine some Yu-Jing only ninja units being created in the future.
The shikami are from one of the Japanese corporations that has defected, Fukurö security (it was named somewhere in the videos, possibly while showing a unit's description). The NA2 book seems to have all the Dire Foes background and (I think) missions, updated and expanded into the Uprising, but the JSA box has its own collection of missions, and I think at least one requires an Objective Room.
Wow! Emotions are running high. It took a while to read through all the pages. It seems the Yu Jing players have some legitimate complaints, but some members have really lost their cool. Personally I am positive on the experience and see a lot of potential to make a better, and more interesting game. I am even one of those affected, because my vanilla Yu Jing army is now split into two, too small to use factions. I am going to have to buy some miniatures to get playable lists again. However, full disclosure, Yu Jing is my third army, so I will be playing some Aleph or PanO while I wait for the dust to settle from this shakeup. There has been a lot of criticism of CB's PR. I think the major mistake they have made is underestimating how quickly things can blow out of proportion. I have my suspicions that they have some stuff in the works that will make this sting a lot less. If I was a betting man, I would wager the BOW online campaign will center around the JSA uprising this year, and they wanted to release the JSA army box early, to give players a chance to buy and paint for the campaign. I also suspect that if the BOW campaign is going to be the JSA uprising, I think Yu Jing is going to get destroyed, thanks to the 'New Model' effect. It truly will be a dark year for Yu Jing. I don't think CB has forgotten them, and I am sure they will get some love. The biggest worry is that they have so much going on, that it might take some time to release the IA sectorial. I would rather them be slow to release it, and release something good, than to rush it and do a crap job. Best of all, they may have done the preliminary work, and be quick to release a good sectorial, but as long as I am wishing, I might as well wish to be rich and good looking! (non-sequitur: Realizing that a forum for an international game is likely to contain members whose nationalistic experience is different from mine, means I need to be careful about the idioms I use. They may not read the way I intend them in all cultures. An interesting and vexing situation!)
2019 i won't be playing Infinity if there are factions with 4 sectorials while i only get 1. And i don't think I'll be the only one, plenty of good games around whose parent companies don't laugh at their clients.
