Hecaton is making a lot of sweeping statements about the attitudes and opinions of an entire hemisphere.
If someone did that in a game against me I'd be like "oi, you cheeky blighter, roll your dice normally!" Not having any naughty tricks. Buuuuut I've literally never encountered anyone doing that, Spanish, American or otherwise.
Hey, it's not my opinion. I'm just relaying what I was told when I saw "No Spanish rolls" on a tournament information blurb. Like I said, I've never played against anyone from the Spanish community.
I'll be honest, as an American, I'd love the chance to play agains the Europeans in Dropzone, my 'first' competitive wargame. The meta is, I hear, very different. That said, I can't see Infinity being any different. As long as we managed to communicate well enough, should be fine. Infinity, with the private info, might be harder to communicate, but I still don't see that being a huge issue. As for anyone cheating... I've never encountered it myself - in a casual setting I don't care because if that's what they need to love themselves, whatever. In a tournament, I'll call them out on it. Simple as that.
As an American, I am using Interplanetario as an excuse to go to Spain with the wife in a few years. We plan to visit Madrid, and make a trip from Madrid to Vigo seeing some of the country. As for the topic at hand, coming from Haqqislam perspective. We miss Tarik, but we accept the story. I find it interesting. I understand for a game, it could be seen as poor game development to take away rather than reward, but I feel more devoted when something is on the line, I find it more engaging. further the ban is very temporary. for most locations this is only about 3-4 ITS days (assuming 1 per month). Also keep in mind that these characters will come back with a temporary bonus for LONGER than they were out. I am hoping for a Specialist Operative Tarik Mansuri as an easy, non-game breaking buff for a limited time. I personally think this is an interesting and innovative approach to a Tabletop game pushing their narrative forward in a semi-cooperative way with the customer base. While I think it was also a bit sloppy with how Tohaa and Combined were implemented into this in the fact that they can reap the rewards without having any risk. If you have equal reward possibility, you HAVE to have equal detriment possibility, otherwise you have this outcome where everyone loses, but the immune faction wins.
I'm not sure this was handled amazingly... removing models is always going to be a tough sell, and it wasn't clear exactly what that removal would entail in terms of timing and reworks/future benefits (though absolute max credit to @HellLois for providing clarification once it was clear there was confusion!) I'm still not sure of the balance effects from removing certain characters (did anyone run Andromeda? how many new players will be scrambling to fill a Tarik-shaped-hole if they'd planned to start into ITS with Red Veil+Beyond?) But the idea of narrative-driven elements in the tournament system is great to me, and when trying out something new some parts will work, some won't, some will be well received and some poorly received. If we have to get through a few rough experiments this season so CB can find the best approach, I can live with that.
There's no indication to think that they have any sort of attitude change vis a vis removing models from players. It's not a matter of finding the best approach - it seems to be a matter of them doing it whether or not the playerbase enjoys it.
To clarify a lot of this, these characters have not been removed from the Army Builder. You can still use them and lists with them show up as ITS legal. Continue using them. Keep playing with them. If CB makes decisions based on Army data then they will see that usage of these characters did not change at all and their "removal" was pointless.
The good news is, it's literally only applies to tournaments that enforce it. I'd embrace a game that's changing actively, rather than stagnating, but that's me. E: stupidly hit post before I finished typing, flip good at phones.
Well, (being one of his local players) I don't think it's really possible to have anything but a wonderful game with Dexter... even as he kicks your teeth in, it's still a fun game.
That is nice to hear. I am happy if the company wants to experiment and try new things to keep the game fresh. I also expect that they take into consideration all the criticism from these experiments as well. Is losing a character a game breaker for anyone? No. It still isn't as fun as winning something cool with bragging rights, such as a unique bounty hunter as was suggested before (by Wolf I think). Also the fact that some factions had nothing to lose was also kinda off putting, more so than even losing something for me personally. All factions should have a stake in the event and have reason to want to play other than make someone else lose. The only other thing I would do for these events besides focus on winning something rather than losing something is that they be advertised better. No one in my area cared at all or participated as far as I can tell.
Guys the game is played by a D20 with a variable target number, its practically impossible to load the dice or trick roll them. So can we stop the accusations now?
LI last year and SoF this year are good experiments. You could/can opt in to try them but mainstream competitive tournament ITS was untouched. With the model used for Backdoor CB is simultaneously saying 'use ITS for your tournaments, report your results we love the data' and 'we reserve the right to screw with this system as much as we want but you can always opt our and not play ITS'.
Ok, ignoring the whole America vs Spain weirdness which is going on here for some reason I'll cut to the crux of the issue. I'm a BIG fan of developing the storyline of the Infinity universe. And I'm on the record as being one of the most background and setting driven players in the community. But, for me, Backdoor was an unfortunate miss. I 100% appreciate what @HellLois was going for, and I love that he's not afraid to experiment with different small tweaks to the ITS format in order to improve engagement. But the core complaints which are being brought here (removing profiles from ITS is a poor idea overall, "nothing" as the reward for winning isn't very engaging and the inequality of the impact of the removed profiles) are all very valid. The idea that Tohaa or Combined Army could "win" an event about the internal politics of the Human Sphere is equally odd. Running something similar, but with a reward instead (like the access to the "ALIVE survivor" last season) is a far better structure. The reward is interesting but proportional. The similar (but confusingly awarded... should have had its own page, many people think it's related to Backdoor when it's actually totally separate) Winter Winner reward was far better in this regard. I quite liked the focus on a narrower range of missions, this aspect was a positive one for me. This is also a good opportunity to pull in missions which don't get into tournaments regularly (and playtest new ones... hint hint!). In terms of the communication, I think this could have been a little clearer and a couple more updates on the front page and the Infinity Facebook group might have helped. But overall I think part of the issue was the "noise" generated around JSA and there's just no way to deal with that kind of distraction. So, I want to see more things along these kinds of lines... But I think that similar future "mini-events" could be done better.
I've said it before, but what is so good about advancing the story anyway? I want more detail about the current setting, not a Red Wedding every season to keep the kids guessing. Give us a good premise and let the players construct disposable narratives. 10 years from now I don't want to be picking Infinity Eras to play in.
