No. You painted models that you can still use at any time *except in roughly the next 2 months of ITS*. Sat through Vaul's video and found it pretty laughable. He consistently applauds CB for making changes without any notice, then backflips and says this one change is horrible. Says that he'd be ok with CB deciding some models needed to be removed and doing it across a broad number of factions, except in this case. Says it's ok for CB to drastically alter the meta by changing profiles or adding units to a single Faction at any moment, but this was "too far". He also needs to stop using the word "Arbitrarily". Additionally, Vaul was caught out in the Winter Winner vs Backdoor event. Winter Winner = slightly buffed HVT that literally no Combined player cares about and most wouldn't know what it did. Backdoor = character removal. There's a load of focus on the game being broken in his video, and some posts on here, by the "arbitrary" buff given to one faction as a result of the Winter Winner. Can't help but notice that common consensus is that it is ok for CB to give something as a reward, but not take it away - and then straight up there's hate for CB giving a reward.
And that is a confusion many have fallen into, myself included, because the two are announced side by side without a whole lot of clear separation. Yes, a bit of reading comprehension would help on the part of some of us (Vaul seemingly included as he thinks it was all a result of one tournament for some reason) but there does seem to be an issue in clarity regarding how CB explained the outcome. But in terms of rewards, it's not that CA got a reward for anything in Backdoor: They already had the only reward going, immunity from a penalty. It's not exactly a fair approach to tournament play, is it? Everyone else has been punished. If it was just a reward to the winner its maybe easier to accept, but the eventual winner already having the only "prize" on offer is questionable.
I definitely agree that 'goth teenagers' was way harsh (kinda nonplussed he got away with that, but I guess the Eye of Sauron was elsewhere) but ... this wasn't more inflammatory than it needed to be?
I do enjoy the irony inherent in you stepping up to lead a conversation on inflammatory behavior. Much lols
You're saying this to back up Stargorger, or to pour a little more gas' on their blaze generally, Imp? Be fair - I have a reputation to maintain here and can't very well spend every post sticking my tongue down Corvus Belli's pants - I need to vary the routine a little.
Assuming @HellLois is still watching this... What are the opinions in the room on what should impact global event/campaign results and how much? I'd personally argue quite strongly against brute quantity of wins, as it makes it virtually impossible for half the Factions to take the victory for themselves. However I'd still like to see effort rewarded and matches played per Faction should have impact. Winrate seems like something fluent enough, favouring different Factions for different missions. It is also the most natural indicator for success. Including WR in the calculation also prevents that spamming as many games as possible has as much impact as in the past. Lastly a multipart event should probably grant buffs and handicaps for the losing and winning Factions. Not to completely level the playing field, but to ensure everyone retains a shot at winning and we won't see another Wotan. As for my personal preference I'd suggest about 50% Winrate, 25% Quantity and 25% Buff/Handicap to determine results. This seems like a sound basis to give give each individual player and each Faction some incentive to stay in the race till the bitter (or happy) end.
@Teslarod I think that quantity should be ditched altogether but I like the way you're thinking. Personally I'd like to see specific story awards being granted to the winners of big tournaments; things like GenCon etc. rather than whoever's at the top of the Interplanetario rankings.
@Hecaton I'm not sure if that's a good idea, it really reduces the amount of agency anyone who doesn't live near the big events has, and that's before we consider problems with controversial wins, byes, early concessions, and the near certainty that some missions and mods prevent some sectorials from scoring 10 points, or even making a valid list...
As someone who'd hate to be accused of defensive posting , but one who's also accused of blindly championing Corvus Belli's by you on a more or less weekly basis, I think I'm beginning to understadn your rationale. Is it that anyone who doesn't come into every forum thread howling their outrage at CB's latest decision is by that glaring omission a groveling lackey?
Yes... I knew if you could stop working CBs shaft for a second you would understand. All joking aside I still think my argument stands that such tweeks to the balance of the game should be made with more care or at least the illusion of more care. I mean it's not like we are at wizkids level of awful or anything but still.
Ok, fair enough. For those of us not playing in the major clubs around Madrid or Barcelona, the whole thing was rather underplayed.
So, I like the fact that they are benching some characters for part of a season. I just think the communication was handled poorly. They should have: 1) Let us know which characters were "on the chopping block" at the start of the season. 2) Made a bigger announcement of this. (some ITS webpage we have to go to and drill down into is not enough. Needs to be on main website.) 3) Made weekly / biweekly announcements of where the statistics were for each faction. (statistics on said ITS webpage is not enough) 4) Let us know that they will be getting new profiles when they come back and when they will be available again.
1) while it would take away from the potential showmanship and hype a mystery can generate, if people had known that they would lose Voronin and Andromeda anyone who played Ariadna or Aleph and YuJing or Haqqislam would have known they were wasting their time with the first two and could put their efforts into preventing the loss of actual useful characters... 2) The ITS challenge was announced on the front page of the main site, with a post on the forum, IIRC with Facebook and twitter posts as well... What might have helped was to announce that it was coming a few months before it started, maybe made people know that they should look out for the challenges, but I think there was enough warning that it was happening... 3) In any other year I'd probably agree, but this year CB has set a very high target for themselves, with a very packed release schedule, so the fact is that they probably just didn't have time to do that... Could they have found other ways or passed the challenge updates off to a partner or brought in Warcors or podcast people to crunch the numbers and spew out the updates? I'm sure a bunch of us forum dwelling troglodytes would have been happy to help. That could have been a solution but that would require a lot of trust from CB in whoever they tapped for it. 4) Well that's another black mark against the communication... They're not getting new profiles, but they're getting some kind of bonus, and they are returning before the end of the ITS season, more likely to be during or after the Beasts of War campaign in May.
Re: 3. That's part of the problem. Uprising is already a major shake up of the meta. In Nomads the arrival of Kriza a few months ago (6 or so IIRC), Starco and the impending arrival of Tunguska is a MASSIVE change. The options for how I use my minies / monies has increased a lot. The same is true for YJ players. And arguably Haqq players (the QK / Druze / Starco overlap means that the transition is relatively seemless with proxies). This leaves PanO who is mostly unaffected outside of ASA players (honestly the boring rework of Bipandra is a bigger negative here) and Aleph who've essentially been left alone by Backdoor. Backdoor is largely lost in the noise until it's over. My meta and the nearby ones haven't played a single Challenge relevant game since Cancon back in Jan (that I'm aware of). There has been absolutely no change in ITS participation. It's a chunk of effort for relatively meaningless outcomes. Tying it more clearly into the upcoming campaign by applying the bans to the campaign (either in total or just the initial phases) would have worked better and would have clearly been a part of the 'Infinity Narrative Arc' which is largely seen as distinct from the 'Tournament System' (see history of Tournament games not affecting Campaigns). Also, while Backdoor makes no sense to apply to Tohaa and CA: the penalty does. We know that Bit is on Paradiso so having her sit out of the campaign on Dawn makes sense. Arguably the same could apply to Neema.
