Is the game getting too complex?

It seems like a distinction without a difference. A special sub case within Dodge or a separate rule all together is matter of preference, more than anything.

 

What's the practical difference?

 

Gotta agree with IJW here. It IS a small distinction, but getting shot in the back is a common enough occurrence that the minor difference in the outcomes makes it a distinction worth keeping.

 

If you need some grievances with the rules:

• The 'stuff classification' rules, and their applications. Trooper, model, figure, marker, enemy, etc, aren't used consistently. For instance, "Can you make a CC Attack against a structure?" Doing so requires taking this sentence "The user must be in base to base contact with an enemy." and pretending it says "The user must be in base to base contact with the target." instead.
• The number of times that the rulebook uses "Short Skill" when it means just "skill". For example:

Declaration of the First Skill: The Active Player declares the first Short Skill of the Order, or the Entire Order he wants to use. If movements are declared, the player measures the movement distance and places the trooper at the final point of its movement.​

• Requirements that are in the Effects section, and effects that are in the requirements section. And setting the text style to a bullet pointed list without committing to organizing the rules into discrete bullet points. (Count how many times a bullet point is a continuation of the immediately preceding bullet point, instead of a separate point.)

Just sayin'.

The game could be so much better if the rules author was forced to spend the next month to three months doing another revision of the rules.

 

personally, nested skill should be un-nested.
Example: Morat, MA (with courage, stealth) and all the others.
This way, you gain rule clarity and at the same time you gain "design space" for particular situation (example, a good martial artist that's not courageous, or an MA tag without stealth).

 

I dont have anything original to add to this discussion, but i want to say that game complexity hasnt changed that much in N3, you still have to pick from existing profiles, they are your constants, you still need to aply variables ingame, these are your rolls, everything according to the rules that are supposedly fixed.
Thing is, i have trouble with correlations between certain rules that we all know about, it's 75% of Rules subforum and as far as i am not really vocal about it because it is not my job to change the rules, nor to respond to the topics that are as old as this game, it is disheartening for me to have to break ingame immersion to spend some time on browsing forums or wiki to find an answer. Reading up on rules is easy during the game, thanks to Wiki, but if you have one of those weird between-skills interaction that you dont know sure answer for, but you can imagine multiple outcomes and you end up on the old forum reading trough 30 pages of discussion just to be more confused, that means something. Especially if you have situation like that during demo game and new guy tells you "wow, couldnt it be easier?" and you dont have an answer.
I say its not getting too complex yoo fast, its the lack of cohesion in between rules that throws me off.

 

@solkan agreed on the classification of stuff into different categories. Like sometimes "trooper" means troopers and troopers only, and other times it means anything with a profile. And it's been FAQ'd every which way, so clearly there's no consensus at CB.

 

I will throw in my 2 cents about the OP. I consider myself a very new player.

After doing some reading and researching about Infinity I made a decision to jump in July 2018. I did this because I loved the idea of the systems core rules. I love great games that are complex with depth. I find them rewarding over time. I know im the rare type of gamer like that. I love infinity because every decision you makes matters.

I live in an area with a thriving gaming community. However, no one plays infinity. I would say most of the community is into board games and DnD. Thankfully, I was invited into a small group of gamers who love tabletop skirmishers. I learned that there are a few people in the area that have an army but never got around to playing. I thought that was crazy business.

To my knowledge I will be the one the person growing Infinity in my area. It makes the game doubly hard for me. I don't have anyone to teach me the ropes. I would not have made it this long without the forums and people willing to teach me here.

I have only played 1 full 300 pt game in the last six months. That was last week. It was awesome. Even though we made mistakes. Before that, I have been playing Red Veil and Beyond starter missions 1 - 2 times a month with a friend. It's taking me a long time to get things going.

I have spent WAY more time reading the rules, rereading the rules, and rereading the rules than I have playing the game. That is sad. I still don't have them down. When I learn/discover about the way certain interactions happen that make me question other interactions in a different way that I though I understood. Then I need help making sure I know them correctly or "as intended".

Aside from the fore-mentioned things I was not aware before this post, shooting people in the back from the front and whatever this engage business is, I can't say that the rules are too complicated. From my point they just take a LONG time to learn correctly. My first 300 pt game was less than 45 minutes. I had a blast playing. I spent hours going over the rules with my opponent before that. That was my second time teaching him the system too. He is a veteran and he wanted to know the system more than the basic rules the first game we played. I would not have done with with a newb. We didn't even get into hacking.

I think when you know the rules the games goes by very smooth and intuitively. The issue is the time it takes to know the rules like that.

My BIGGEST complaint so far is that its so convoluted on how to dig into the rest of the game after the basic rules. Thankfully someone on the forums was able to get me straight but anyone else not willing to get on the forums would bail. Now, let me explain the HUGE issue.

After a starter set and basic rules there is ZERO clarity on how to move forward. CB throws all of this product at you and documents but does not give you a linear path to follow. Why are there so many down-loadable PDFs on the site and in which order do I use them? Which ones are relative to the game now? What is the difference between the N3 Rules and the New Rules pdf? How to does Human Sphere fit in? They all have different version number listed, what does that mean?. What is a dire pack? What are the bootleg models used for? What Operation Paraiso? a book that is not even relevant anymore outside of spec-ops.... /facepalm. I'm sure I have missed something here. And I have yet to play an ITS game. How am I supposed to know that the Army builders are bugged/not updated and when? Why do they different builds? Why do units in the Army build have fireteams listed in there profile (Yu Jing Zhanying ) that can't even use them in a fire team????

If I didn't spend a lot of time searching on the Internet I would not have figured out CB will actually have important video's from Beast of War that are not on there website. And so on.... A new player can't just go to the Infinity Site and know what to do. That is REALLY REALLY BAD for business. They do not have a streamed line brand and message.

Not only do I have to put in a huge amount of time learning the game I had to put in a huge amount of time learning to learn where to learn the game. That is fucking ridiculous. This game is NOT easy to get into for the reasons I just mentioned if you don't have someone to teach you. This is why it has taken me Six months to play my first game at 300pts.

I can't say the rules are to complicated (yet). I don't think so. They really need to stream line there New player/Customer experience. If I were them that would be my number 1 priority over a new rule book or edition.

 

I agree, re-organising the downloads section on the website would go a long way in itself. Right now a new player does not know where to start their journey, and making the section easy to navigate is probably a day's worth of work, if that.

 

Not just new players. I've got problems finding the latest ITS season and I've infest- been around the community for quite some time! (It's not searchable with "ITS10" or similar because its text is "Xenotech: Rules and Missions" and there's so many ITS documents hanging around such as "ITS season 9 errata")

Ideally we would have
a "Rules" section containing "Core rules" instead of "Rules", "Quick start rules", "Additional rules" (which contain "New rules" and "Beyond new rules"), and any major expansions too big to cram into Additional Rules such as "Expansion: N3 Human Sphere"
an "Appendix" section containing "Profiles", "Weapons", "Closed Battle Lists", and "New factions"
a "Narrative event missions" section
a "Stand-alone missions" section

 

Your post is basically an excellent User Story. The questions that you add at the end are really good feedback elements and each should be answered in a good reformat.

@Alkasyn and @Mahtamori 's suggestions are good direct fixes for that. Fortunately those are mostly a matter of presentation. Even if CB had some more rules coming out that would need to be juggled in soon, this small reformat could help a lot with new player entry.

 

Or just measure it with a piece of thread - that's easier to get around multiple corners and thus faster, and it only tells you which way is shorter, but not how long it is exactly.

I am not even sure if this would be "measuring", but rather something like "comparing".

 

FYI, found these articles about 40K relevant to the topic at hand. I'd also add Warmachine into the mix, though I think it's somewhat better managed with the move to Warroom.

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2019/01/40k-the-bloat-is-getting-a-little-out-of-hand.html

Lets say you want to play an all Crimson Fists army, that’s a single, no soup, faction, and single sub-faction even, list, what books might you need? Well at minimum, you are going to need:

• The White Dwarf with their rules
• The Main Rule Book
• Chapter Approved 2018
• Codex:Space Marines
• FAQs for the Main Rule Book,
• Chapter Approved,
• C:SM and the
• BIG FAQs 1&2

That’s 9 documents. However it can get a lot worse.

Army Building in 40K
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2019/01/40k-armylist-building-really-needs-to-be-easier.html

Making a 40K List Let’s go over the steps:

Step 1: Grab the core rulebook to get the detachment charts
Step 2: Grab Adeptus Custodes & Index Imperium 2 (assassins)
Step 3: Grab Chapter Approved 2018
Step 4: Grab Main Rulebook FAQ (updated numbers of CPs)
Step 5: Grab BIG-FAQ2 (just to be safe) ​

WHEW, now I can start doing math. Now to make each unit I have to:

• Look up the unit in the codex to decide if I want it and the unit size.
  
• Look up the unit in the Chapter Approved 2018 – if it’s there, use that point value.
  
• If it’s not, use the points in the Codex
  
• Add it to the army total.
  
• Look up each piece of unit wargear in the codex to decide if I want it.
  
• Look up the piece of unit unit in the Chapter Approved 2018 – if it’s there, use that point value.
  
• If it’s not, use the points in the Codex.
  
• Add it to the army total.
  
• Verify the Detachments are valid.

Once I’m good, calculate the CPs (using the Main Rulebook FAQ)

This is not to bash 40K, but to point out that complex rules seem to be the norm for a number of systems.

 

That sounds similar to what an infinity player using only books and pdf would do. (looking everywhere to find the most up to date profile for a model) Doesn't 40K have an army builder ? Infinity had player-made builders, one of them was finally taken as official app and moved to be hosted by corvusbelli website. The amount of 40K player, it should be easy to have an app to see if you want a model and what is the latest point cost.

 

Several I'm sure, but no official apps, like Army6. While it might seem a minor quibble, Army6 is an integral part of the system, and treated as such by CB, making sure it's kept in sync, and delaying releases until it's ready. Most third party apps are going to be behind the official releases, and take some time to catch up.

It's been a while since I used Lone Wolf's Army Builder to make a 40K list, but back when I was using it, it relied on volunteers to create and update the information necessary to take it from being a generic application to something focused on 40K. As such it was pretty common for updates to take a while, sometimes being quick for minor updates, or if the volunteers were particularly motivated, to taking months, if at all, if they were not. Further the generic nature of Army Builder made it challenging sometimes to add whatever new twist GW had inserted into the game. If it was sufficiently complex it could add additional delays while Lone Wolf added the necessary functionality.

 

The trouble with 40k army builders is GW don't really make a worthwhile official one AFAIK, and any fan ones are, as noted above, slow to update.

Or get sued into oblivion.

And then get sued again but by Bethesda this time.

 

They have this:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/combat-roster/

 

That seems to be for the super-simplified army power rating version of the game though, so no use for actual list building points games.