I do not argue with that, as I said it is an excellent positioning tool, but it does not offer much in the actual attack if the hacker does not already have surprise attack. As far as the bite marks? I do not know, maybe they checked and it is not as severe as people think? maybe they leave it to an actual tournament season that is mostly not online to get data?
I think that that sniffiness about online play is at the route of this. It's Infinity. The exact same game. Different variables, sure, but extremely useful data, gathered from an competitive international scene that would be impossible otherwise. In that regard its the best data CB could ever hope for. What does it reveal about GML? Nothing pretty, I'd guess. Woof.
I would argue the same thing I always argue, while bigger than most meta, if not all meta, online play is still a small closed meta that has solidified itself in its gameplay, a gameplay that is not shared with most live plays, and this is something I hear from people who play both. It is not a case of "ewww TTS players", it is a case of, ok this is this meta and these are its constants and variables and this is the conclusions you can draw from it, do the other meta reach the same or similar conclusions? if they do why? if they do not why? is it an issue completely localized? and if so why? Waiting to see if an issue is a problem from many meta and not a single, however big, meta before seeing if it needs to be addressed and how it needs to be addressed is logical.
It's pretty twisted logic to dismiss IGL and TTS play as 'small' and 'closed'. It is in fact the single biggest and most open meta in Infinity's history. The reason that other metas might not reach the same conclusions are numerous, and many are related to player psychology; GML play can be perceived as pretty scummy, and so f2f use of it can be a bit uncomfortable, unlike on TTS. It's a negative play experience that makes new players lose interest in the game, so experienced players tend to 'lay off' it if an event has newer players in it. TTS play isn't restricted by models owned and painted, and tend instead towards more effective lists, meaning overpowered tactics are adopted and countered faster than in f2f metas, and top tactics rise to the top and dominate. Please note that none of these reasons indicate that GML is over-represented in TTS play, but rather that in an ideal test environment (ie international data, high quality players, no arbtrary restraints on unit selection, etc.), you find that GML flourishes. Again, it's been over 3 years since multiple rule changes combined to enable the strongest guided play in the game's history. How long will this wait be? Why is it logical to ignore data and players, other than what looks, frankly, like a form of bias against how the game is often played online these days?
In fairness, if the reinforcements change coming later this year is functionally upping the points limit on games it will have the desired effect of toning back the bang for buck value on GMLs.
It's not twisted when you factor in it's the only meta where everyone plays in the same table for each mission and can actually practice on it before an event. In-Person meta are far more variable because no 2 tables are alike; and you can end up in a cluttered "Shotgun Heaven" as easily as you can end on a sparse "Sniper Wet Dream." Despite having a big player attendance, it's nearly impossible to replicate outside cyberspace. That's what makes it small and closed.
Help the old man: I expect on TTS there exist a bunch of premade table-setups which are used on a regular base, am i correct? So an experienced player knows the maps, the gaps, the ranges, etc, because there is no "table building up", am i right? No one bumps at the table and changes the position of a handfull of buildings between games (experience - completely - fictitious), so everyone plays on the exact same battlefields. Like Dust2 and inferno. Correct?
Yeah, people preload tables to check em out and are much more lawyery and 'gotcha' about los on tts, i think, which is one reason I don't enjoy it as much as irl. But there are a huge number of tables on tts now, and a lot of great work being done to create new ones all the time. And, I have to say, Danger Rose, that's a very particular and non-standard meaning for 'small and closed'. Normally in talking about a meta, those words reflect player pool size and variability, as I think they did when PS first used em.
"Some people told me that GML isn't a problem in their IRL metas" is also a pretty clueless take. Some people told me that GML is such a problem in their IRL meta that they're on the verge of quitting the game. But whose anonymous sources are you going to prefer? Or, y'know, you could look directly at the experiences of a large number of people across the world who play a high volume and include some of the world's top players. Alternatively, you could try to come up with convoluted reasons why those players' experiences don't matter.
in this situation I realy have to ask: Which group of people (or meta) is so eager to win that all of them prefer to play the way NO ONE has fun doing it? Cause if I recall it correctly: I never heard ANYONE say the GML-meta is an enjoyable or fun or satisfying way to play this game It´s not fun to play against and it´s not even fun to play it by yourself! And for whatever reason everyone and his mums and dads seem to play solely this. Just this. Unenjoyable, unfun, unrevarding, for everyone at the table, user and reciver, winner and loser. This seems like very soziopathic selfpunishment. I played GML once on a tournament. I noticed: It is amazingly good, so easy a trained baboon can execute it and it has little to no effective counterplay to achive the intended goal. And I also noticed: my opponents did not like it (I mean: sitting down, rolling eyes level of bored unexcitement) and I didn´t like it either, cause... well.... it is freaking boring non-interactive shit. So i stoped using it and i will not use it again till they changed it for the better. Ok, i see, maybe my ambitions of winning a game of dice and tactics are not strong enough to sacrifice everyones enjoyment for it, and yes, it´s a competetive game with a winner and a loser and for some winning is the pinnacle of enjoyment (and there is nothing wrong with it: competetive games are also played to win). Maybe I am a dancing little flower-girl, prancing around blooming fields and singing from happiness and love, and my lack of ambition is the reason why I sit in an old Opel Corsa whilest Elon Musk shoots rockets into space. But.... i realy lack the understanding of this. In this forum does not exist one threat without this discussion. No one likes playing this. No one likes to be played by this. How comes everyone is using it? The top players on the world don´t NEED such this to win games against people with lower skill, even if they use it themselfes. So why use it nonetheless? We are a small community. We are not soccer, we are not football, we are not even Warhammer. We are a world wide scattered amount of people playing a FCKING DICE GAME for FUN, cause the most we win is a FCKING 90 DOLLARS BOX OF METALL DOLLS! And we pay half of that as entry fee and double that for the journey to the tournament. Our worldwide community is small enough, if we all sit on a plain and it crashes, CB has a serious problem. As said: I see and understand everyone saying the GML META is a problem. I also understand that is is dumb from me to assume that people then should just stop playing it, because no one seems to want it even in existence. Because at the end of the day: it is effective, and affactiveness wins games, and winning is what this is all about. Or is it? Maybe I lack the ambitions to use GML for optimizing my game and sacrifice everyones fun for that. But this is the moment when my pride kicks in and I never want to be the guy who "just won cause he abused the meta". So.... sorry for getting so emotional. I hope i kicked no ones knee. Spoiler: edit: Just to make this all clear, in case it´s not: I don´t want to attack anyone playing meta. That´s part of the game. It exists, it´s there to be used. What i mean is just, that i cannot understand why people play a game they obviously don´t have fun playing because of something they do themself.
Playing badly on purpose is not fun. It's a strategy game. The fun comes from playing as well as you can. I certainly don't want my opponents to deliberately forgo a strong tactic. That's just dumb.
Great Video, I watched that already a couple months ago. And still GML seems to be the worst thing since Jazz behind a Tinbot Firewall. Well, then I happily am. But I don´t get the feeling of needing a shower after each game ;-) Since everyone just straight up hates it, why we don´t just ban GML-REMs worldwide? I´m in for that.
I think realistically there's only a few factions that can leverage it well. Hell, MRRF has access to guided, as do tohaa. Do they use it? Do they fuck. GML can only be reliably used by nomads, aleph, CA, maybe druze and haqq. Kinda need midfield repeaters, decent hackers and/or pitchers and some defensive tech to keep them up. You could leave GML in the game, but make it less effective by dialling those supporting things down a bit. It does have its own issues however, anyone with access to impersonators can remove the GML bot turn one for example. There are usually opportunities for combat jump to be able to trade and take out a GML bot, repeaters or the hacker(s) that enable the strat. There's plenty of stuff that's frustrating in infinity, GML is no worse than slapping an avatar down with a shit ton of orders and ramboing on t1 imho, probably preferable to the old double-dick-punch of avatar/speculo combo too
While it is true that small communities can "self-balance" themselves to remove unfun elements, larger communities and "tryhard" scenarios such as tournaments will always drive people to use the most effective/efficient strategies in an attempt to get an edge. CB likely isn't seeing a ton of GML because most Infinity communities are tiny; maybe a dozen players at a local shop just trying to have fun. There's not much room for cutthroat tactics in those communities, because they'll simply ostracize anyone who doesn't play the game "their way." But, presumably, everyone here would like to see the game grow and expand. And if/when that happens, it won't be just you and your three buddies at the shop, it's gonna be 40 dudes taking up an entire game floor at the largest shop in town. And I'd bet quite a bit of money that if/when that happens, you're gonna see local metas take a good, hard shift towards the stuff that's been dominating TTS. As an example, take the story of the Magic format "EDH" (also known as "Commander"). When it first started it was a bunch of tiny communities. Groups playing games in the backrooms of shops or on dorm room floors. Most of the decks were barely coherent, cobbled together of all the "cool cards" that you always wanted to play but could never find a format to play them in. Big, expensive cards with game-changing effects were commonplace. But then something happened: it got popular. Websites sprung up displaying analytical data for the cards. Entire message boards once dedicated to other formats were split up into subboards discussing how to optimize individual EDH decks. Cards that were once though of as terrible became mainstream, and the cards once seen as great became overcosted trash. It took years, but the game nowadays is completely unrecognizable from those games I played in the common area of my school's library a decade ago. It's faster, sleeker, more coordinated and optimized. Decks that my friends decried as "broken" would struggle to compete even at a mid level today. And that's not a good or a bad thing; it is merely an inevitable thing. As more players get drawn to a game, some will, inevitably, begin to apply Game Theory, meta-analysis, and other tools to it. Some out of a desire to win at any cost, others because they enjoy "solving" the optimization problem. But it will happen, and in some cases (TTS, ITS) you can already see it beginning to. GML is a problem. It's a no-risk method of attack in a game that is entirely about actions having risk. Sure, it's order-intensive and not suited to every scenario, and some factions are better suited to it than others, but in the scenarios it does work in it is simply too good to ignore. There are ways to make it harder or more expensive for your opponent to pull off as well as ways to mitigate its impact, but even when you do pull out all the stops to counter it you end up spending more points and effort than it costs your opponents to bring it. I've even seen some lists that players don't think of as traditional GML lists start popping up with them, like Shas or Haqqislam. And then of course there's the equally important impact that it has on the Casual level, which is to say that a highly effective strategy that requires pregame knowledge to detect and counter makes for a particularly heavy NPE for new players. But then Infinity is absolutely rife with new player NPE's. Hidden Deployment, Airborne Deployment, Avatar... all of these can serve as "Gotcha!" mechanics that can leave new players feeling helpless. I know, I was there, and I quit. Came back when N4 dropped as the changes seemed promising, and for the most part they have. But there's a reason that the game has problems attracting/keeping newbies.
It is also good for showing general defensive deployment techniques. While 1st turn is powerful, having your opponent deploy first allows to set up accordingly.
Here's a thought: Why not disconnect Guided from Targeted altogether and just allow Forward Observers to fire Guided weapons on the field? Leaves Spotlight useful as a BS MOD and gives FOs a bit more space to shine, without making Hacking support obnoxious?
