I suspect, with the ITS relaxation of proxies (and the fact you can't police every gaming group), that CB are well aware there's a try-before-you-buy mentality already out there. In fact, I rather suspect that's part of the plan - enough people tempted to get the box is all they need to break even. And, for all the dissatisfaction aired on these forums, the sheer quantity of posts suggests something else. After all, if nobody was playing the game, there'd be tumbleweed. Question is, (with respect) why are you still here?
If Warmachine hadn't gone down the shitter I honestly wouldn't be here. If a better alternative with a less tone deaf company pops up who do a better job of maintaining their rules instead of a spaghetti mess of community based arguments they're too chicken shit to make a ruling on I'll jump ship. As for quantity of posts, that's hardly a good sign of anything. We had one single "Uprising storyline fluff sucks and is badly written thread" with more posts in it than the entirety of the Ariadnan forum. I'm not sure what you're using that as a barometer for.
That's the exact example I was thinking of. I don't mean to tell people to leave, but as long as the money comes in, how much influence do consumers generally have with producers? That's why the argument that somehow Yu Jing players 'deserve' anything strikes me as odd. If you don't want to buy something, there's an easier solution than logging on to complain...
Consider it warning shots. They've fucked up, we've made it known, if they keep fucking it up and we get a better option, we'll leave. Plenty of people have been down this road with other mini companies. Hell if somebody did Chinacast knockoffs of Infinity I'd be buying that just like everyone in Australia has been boycotting the shit out of Forgeworld. It got so bad that just recently GW head office flew out to Australia's office to ask "Why has forgeworld sales dropped by NINETY PERCENT OVER THE LAST QUARTER?" That conversation ended with the recent price drop on FW products for Australians. Right now CB are sustaining a portion of their sales completely on the fact that alternatives aren't yet available. It's a question of when rather than if they will materialise, and whether they've cleaned their shit up by then. I still haven't received an apology over the goddamn shikami bait and switch I fell for.
Because I'd rather have options. Infinity/YJ were good before, CB need to step up and show that it still is by fixing the mess that they made of YJ. I could sell off my YJ now, or I could wait and sell them off later - if I sell them later, there's a good chance I'll get some decent money for it anyway, with someone coming in being like, "Oh, YJ are great, they have so many not-HI, that's exactly what I want"
It's hard to give up after you sunk a couple thousand in between the minis and terrain. Not to mention the time investment on assembling and learning this super complicated game. Sunk cost fallacy, but buying a luxury good like this is hardly rational. Honestly, it's my local community. Good people to hang out with. Helping people get good at something feels good. As does matching wits and watching a game go down like a good bad soap opera.
Y'know when you see someone in the dying embers of a relationship, and they keep telling you things will get better? I'm not sure CB could deliver on half of what the community wants - produce a super powerful Yu Jing? That's the quickest route to making the game irrelevant... Make a faction interesting for some people? Everyone else isn't that interested. Honestly, it's a little baffling to me why people who felt hurt after Uprising should stay, expecting things to get better. Can you think of a games company who turned those sorts of feelings around?
Games Workshop. No joke. In the last year/two years they've become great company after the previous about 10-15 years of being money grubbing bastards. They're actively trying to balance the game in a good time frame without going overboard with updates every other week. And they're a big ass, established company.
That's exactly it. The gang I'm in has been through a few games, with varying fortunes, but Infinity strikes me as (mainly) a balanced game. Nothing seems that overpowered - and I'm actually keener for that to continue, than for IA to be awesome...
Give options back basically, particularly for the Vanilla players that got screwed over, address common complaints like paying a CC Tax on everything for no goddamn reason anymore (or fix Yu Jing so they're actually a strong CC faction again and not just a running joke). Nobody's saying make Yu Jing over the top, but what they're saying is they want their cool unique shit like the Oniwabans back. Mowang's just a meathead and we've already got a tonne of them, Zencha's not really lighting any fires or doing anything super interesting or new. The closest potential option is the Liu Xing but its announcement is totally clouded by the fact that nobody knows what the hell Explode does and @Bostria wasn't clever enough to figure out that he needed to spoil the rules on that to actually excite the more analytically minded players.
I did think of them, funnily enough. But, I see that as a major reboot rather than recovering from one specific incident. Like you said, they let things slide an awfully long time.
I know, I was there warning everyone that the signs were there for it all going to shit at the back end of 4th edition 40k.
Sadly, I think that's set up for disappointment. I think they intended to get those vanilla players into JSA, and get their Oniwaban fix that way. After all, cold business rationale is a thing.
That's another point - how many of us from back in the day are back playing 40k to the same intensity? I suspect that GWs upswing is as much to do with a new generation, as rebuilding bridges...
See that's a stupid rationalisation, because I already owned a big chunk of the JSA roster as a purely Vanilla player, that's why I owned 4 goddamn Aragoto as a Vanilla player. That's what Vanilla players have a habit of doing, they buy everything they can because their core army advantage is you can play EVERYTHING, therefore, buy EVERYTHING. I already owned most of the JSA stuff, I just didn't play JSA. By taking that away they actually lost some sales and certainly didn't push me towards actually playing JSA as a sectorial. I didn't buy any of the new JSA stuff, like the Keisotsu sculpts I 100% would've shelled out for, or the new Aragoto I definitely would've bought to replace my old ones.
Well, new players will certainly be a big factor, but their new business model (and shift to a more positive footing) is helping them in general. My local club had a decent 40k following before, but now it has a big group of players, pretty much all of whom have been invested in 40k for a long time and came back out of the woodwork for the new edition and new, improved GW. Simply: being a not-shitty company is a good thing for your business. Take, for example, the 40k Indexes. They allow people to use units that they no longer make; that's a good move, because it's more likely to get people playing and possibly experimenting with the new units rather than just going, "Nah, they're gone, sod off" - which is essentially what CB has done with Uprising.
I get that - I played vanilla Yu Jing when Uprising came out. But, I think CB are moving towards their sectorials as the core business drivers. Don't buy this whole new army in its entirety, just get a smaller fraction to start with. It's all about temptation, rather than getting people into one solid choice they keep expanding with multiple units. I suspect you were one of the key demographics they were looking at - vanilla players with plenty of JSA to bring across. No doubt they were expecting plenty to branch out. Obviously, not everyone is interested, but I'm glad I only need one set of remotes, for instance.
I guess CB's proxy decision is partly aimed at this - if you feel (as a Yu Jing player with plenty of old JSA models) like you don't want to shell out for them, then don't. Obviously, JSA isn't for everyone, and nobody's forced to play them, but it feels to me like CB also aren't forcing people to buy a whole new army to keep on top.
Your argument still doesn't make any sense at all. They alienated a bunch of the vanilla players and actively dissuaded them from buying new models. They then isolated the JSA players into Mercs, making it HARDER for them to branch back into another faction by preventing their stuff from working with a vanilla parent army. You see how what you're saying is absolute nonsense? To be clear, I don't think the Uprising move was dictated by some nefarious overarching business decision, it was just a storyline plot that could've been awesome but CB happened to totally bungle in their handling and execution of it and ended up more than anything, just damaging their consumer faith and good will. You're trying to rationalise what was ultimately, a bunch of mistakes and stupid decisions.
Thing is, I didn't buy enough JSA models to make a JSA list work well. To do so I'd need to buy more stuff to actually be able to run a JSA list, and I don't actually want to - I liked using the JSA pieces in Vanilla YJ, and that option is completely gone. I can proxy stuff, but I do like YJ HI, for the most part, and would prefer to have the actual models for units. But then CB has shit on my experience enough already, so I am certainly not going to give them money for their terrible decision making/community handling. CB might not be forcing people to buy a new army, but they actively took away a large portion of an army. As someone who doesn't have a lot of disposable income, that was a serious kick in balls and one I won't forgive easily.
