Is the game getting too complex?

That's why i wrote double shock marksman rifle. As twin;) Its same as Red Fury.

As for sustainig community - guys, have You ever wondered why someone plays any game?
40k for example. Balance? NOPE xD Rules bloat? YUP. Unclear rules? As hell. Actualy not many rules, just interpretations, depending on community/ETC FAQ/ITC FAQ/Big FAQ/Index/Codex/Regular FAQ... Siiiiick xD On top o this beatiful competetive tables like this one (photo from one of highest rank tournaments here xD)



So... Why play this game? Why defend this table, whole event, whole game at all when people are making jokes about it? Why bother?
Reasons must be not in game, but something different - like what games community gives You;)

And its same for Infinity. Or every game. Only way to keep players in game is to have something bigger than game, real community.
Do You organise and encourage fellow players to visit tournaments in other cities? Do You organise leagues, campaigns, whatever they like? Game nights? Do You drink beer together? Because if You do and people still leave, than I have no clue:)

Truth is - its not your game/rules, its You!;) To keep people in game You need to have community that will keep them interestedm excited, included:)

 

In the case of perimetral weapons, I think having a separate page for boost doesn't really help. It could all be put in a single page: Standby mode and Boost as the possible actions a model with perimetral weapons and a perimetral weapon itself may declare. The way it is right now would make sense if there were other things that could declare Standby mode and boost, but those two skills are exclusive to perimetral weapons so there's not much sense in having them as separate entries on the wiki

 

That's partly why I'm asking, because I feel I'm missing something - Perimeter, Stand By Mode and Boost are all on the same page in the Human Sphere book and PDF, and on the wiki.

 

@ijw I stand corrected. I remember this being on separate pages before, but I just checked and it's in a single page. I think it works this way.

 

The general rule, in programming at least, is that you want to write something exactly once. If it can be re-used, link to it and include it as a separate module. The exception is where a piece of information will be used only once in the whole structure. From the above example concerning Perimeter Weapons, unless there is an indexing reason I'm not aware of, I'd include Stand-by Mode and Boost in the rules for Perimeter weapons; there's nothing else in the game that uses them (Above comments noted, OP of the example probably got it mixed up).

On CB's side the rule division problem is actually fairly well handled, with a few excellent examples of nested skills (CH2+, Morat, Veteran L1) and a few bad ones (Veteran L2 appears once and saves one word, the ridiculous mess of CC skills). From what I can tell, something like half of all complications involve Marker States or the order of resolution in the few circumstances that it matters. More consistent rules about ARO against unusual states and general fallback rules along the lines of "In situations where the order of resolution matters, the active player resolves first" would go a long way to clearing up confusion.

CC is a dumpster fire of weird tables and needs a serious re-examination when N4 rolls around. The -3 and -6 CC on half of the tables could be swapped for Evasion 1 and 2 for example. There are many cases in the CC rules that skills could be nested in a less confusing way. It's needless rules complexity, not game complexity.

 

On the existence of the Red Fury vs. Twin Shock Marksman Rifles: TSMRs cost more points, RF costs SWC. It's pretty much there because of the point formula.

 

Thanks for the reply. To make sure I'm understanding correctly, you wouldn't even want Perimeter, Stand By Mode and Boost restructured as such, just to be written as a single big rule?

Zone of Control and Line of Fire are basic game concepts that all players need to know, so I don't really understand why it's an issue for them to be elsewhere - you can't include them again every time they're mentioned.

Weapon names aren't really the same issue, as that's about flavour.

 

I think Pen-Dragon makes a good point in that Infinity is “messy.”

It sure is. It’s messy as heck.

In my opinion, Infinity gets away with this messiness because it’s mostly cosmetic. It doesn’t erode the functionality of the game.

Guardian, for example, is silly. It’s a bad trade off in depth vs complexity. It muddies up the wiki and makes the game seem intimidating if you are trying to ‘learn all the rules’.

But Guardian means what to the outcome of a game, or even a FtF roll? It maybe shifts a roll a few percent in a direction you weren’t expecting. But again, when does that matter very much? Most of the time you engaged that model with one that is so disproportionately better in CC that the modifier is pointless. What does Saito Togan care about Guardian?

If you didn’t, it was most likely because you were backed into a corner as the result of getting out played on the fundamentals, and you weren’t expecting to win anyway.

So yes, I 100% agree that Infinity is messy as heck. And I think CB could streamline the rules a lot, because where the game shines is its fundamentals. Cut the weapons down by half, nix a good number of edge case special rules (like guardian), streamline the terminology, etc.

But when it comes to learning the game and teaching the game and playing the game, you can reliably just tell people to pick what looks cool to them, learn how those models work, and play the game.

I play Infinity with my 7 year old son, and he beats me about half the time.

It is not a complex game. I play all kinds of games with my son. He is not some wunderkint. He’s a smart little guy, but some games he picks up easily and some games he has trouble with. He picked up Infinity right away.

 

The Liu Xing has Bioimmunity and V:NWI because it treats Biological ammo as Normal, may choose the outcome of Guts rolls and can enter a special Unconscious state where it can still act as normal. That is not what two wounds does. There really isn't a better way to write what it does than Bioimmunity+NWI.

 

Perimeter might not be the best example, then, as it is already all in one place.

The Liu Xiang has NWI + Bioimmunity because that's cheaper and less effective than two full Wounds.

 

Or you Google "Infinity Wiki Madtraps" and everything is hyperlinked from there.

Physical books are terrible for reference, they're great for introducing stuff in a logical order (sometimes) but inferior for fast midgame checking.

I appreciate not everywhere has decent cell coverage or WiFi, but this is why apps like Infinity Helper and Mayanet that store an offline copy of the wiki exist.

 

I think this is a very salient point. But having a good game also helps with community retention. Having an accessible game helps with community growth. Infinity is a good game, it could work on its accessibility. I wouldn't want it dumbed down, but some streamlining would be welcome.

 

I've been playing for years, and I never noticed the line of text at the top.

Two suggestions:
1) "Weapons Chart (By Type)" needs to be the heading
2) The groups in the chart need to each have a separate table, with a header for their generic weapon type. Ex: Shotguns, Mines, etc

 

I agree with the sentiment in the OP. It's difficult to keep people interested in playing the game, especially when new easier alternatives exist.

I believe it's due to that that we're not experiencing growth on a scale from a couple of years ago - there's simply more selection on the market and people fed up with GW are not fed into CB like it used to be around 2 years back.

 

I would argue that infinity is at an all time high as far as popularity goes. I mean it's certainly popular enough that they can afford to diversify and launch an in-universe tie-in stand alone board game.
Just from personal experience, I notice that new releases go out of stock faster and faster on online retailers, compared to two years ago when I could get whatever model I wanted at any time just by going on game nerds or a similar website.

 

Right now the rules are too obscure for newcomers and casual players.
The amount of rule interactions in existence that aren't obvious but can swing a game, on top of optimal listbuilding, ITS and common requirements (going first/second, clearing AROs, pushing buttons, not folding to an Avatar...) is just too much to handle.

I can tell because I'm having a blast and ridiculous winstreaks. It's never literally impossible to win, but I feel like I'm playing a lot of games that are virtually impossible to win for the other guy.
This happened in WHFB and 40k as well, with the result that people that lost over and over stopped having fun and you end up playing the same few people who can keep up with you.
Fortunately Infinity is different in that area, I use friendly games these days to teach the other guy a thing or five. Dirty trick, rule interaction, thought process, decision making, deployment stuff. There is a lot going on beyond "my list and target priority is better than yours".

We have people in our club making straight faced statements like "can't wait to go to the next tournament this weekend, finally some easier opponents" and they mean that.
Overall knowledge about edge cases gives me a big advantage, things the rules never directly tell you about or mention being possible.
Blasting (Unconscious) models with Shotguns so the template hits secondary targets that can't shoot back for instance.

Spoiler

Then there are things like simply knowing every troop Profile, weapon and Rangeband there is. Being aware your opponent has run out of ammo, knowing something is BS11, 12 or 13 before you shoot at it. Remembering Thorakitai have 360 Visors and Chainrifles to go along with it. There are a lot of Factions and sometimes there are nasty surprises. Someone being unaware a Swiss ML option exists comes to mind. He'll make that mistake once, but maybe it will be a Tankhunter or Noctifier the next time.
I spend an unhealthy amount of time with the game and it's been fun for several years to explore and learn new things the entire time. However this game isn't for everyone at this point. Simply learning how to play a basic game is quite the task and that's without any Advanced Rules included. It's also not a game to put on the shelf and forget about for half a year, seems like returning players have thrown the towel as often as newcomers.
Some stick around for the minis, but quite a lot of people don't manage to get into the game on their own. Even with an active community it's a rather time consuming process.

 

Maybe.

From my anecdotal evidence, the local attendance is at an all-time low and were not getting any new players, who instead go to Kill Team and Shadespire.