People get… um passionate about things they like, and we want the thing we like to continue. So, we butt in with comments trying to be “helpful”. I like Infinity a lot. I want CB to do well. Sometimes I just want them to know what they can do to help me become a better customer. But it’s not up to me. It’s up to them. If they want my input, they will ask for it. It’s even harder for me since I work in marketing and advertising, and I see some missed opportunities and mistakes. But I also see some things they do well. I just need let them do what they do. If they lose me, they lose me. Right now, there’s little to no YJ coming out. And what has come out, is not for me. I have little to no interesting in other factions. I’m a little bored with YJ and thinking of “taking a break” for a while. There are a few other games I want to try and now I don’t need to spend it on YJ. But should they ever come back to them I might be back. Edit: I should say I’m not necessarily bored with YJ. I am however sick of being hacked to death by Nomads. Since CB made a choice of updating Nomads two years in a row, now a bit more than half my group is playing Nomads. Then also Morats, Aleph, a bit of Haqqislam. I’m the only YJ player, at the moment. Sure, I could do less HI in my Yu Jing. But where’s the fun in that? It’s like playing MO without any knights.
Comments like “Shut up and Don’t buy what you don’t like” and “don’t complain, it doesn’t help” are not helpful either. It is like trying to close all holes in boiling pot. We have our right to tell, what we are worried about, what we don’t like in a new material, rules and so on. It is a part of accepting in one moment and attempt to do something... You can disagree, say your point, but don’t devalue opinion of the others. It gives opposite reaction. Should developers listen to the community? Yes, but of course not completely. Some topics, for sure, grows like metastases. And they took terrible forms. I saw, how each side used more and more rude words and took uncompromising position, like it gives their words more value. Like discussions inside PanO (and in some other areas of the forum). But there was a reason, why it was started. Fair reason. “What a kids this days... they forgot, how to live together” x) (here I am joking! Ok? Just a joke in this words)
The Hyperpowers should feel like your are playing a hyperpower. There should be answers to defend well enough or outright kill the offending unit causing you trouble. Otherwise one could make the mistake that it is the Nomads who are the true Hyperpower. A t least from what their units' design shows in that they nearly got an answer to everything.
I think the hyperpower stuff falls outside of the scale of infinity. That represents more that the YJ navy could torpedo the nomad motherships to dust in minutes. 60 bearded dudes in a cave tied up thousands of the US's best soldiers and their equipment, support divisions and equipment. That's more the level of infinity. Asymmetric power, but balanced at small squad skirmish size.
Yes... that´s one very nice way to put it... What´s especially funny, cause we are (mostly) grown people playing our little wargames with little puppets and oddly shaped dice. At least we don´t waste our time watching a handful of people chasing a single ball for more than an hour. Communication is key. The communities opinion can be valuable information for CB. Critic and ideas are important, both for the quality of the miniatures and the rules we are given to play with. BUT imho it´s also a matter of how it is communicated. And some things in this forum .... oh boy. That´s a reason to make siesta soon with a couple of beers. This sounds a lot like you would play against roughly the same lists of nomads all the time. Unfortunatly (or luckily) I cannot understand how this can happen. Or in other words; the moment I notice my opponent is frustrated by a certain way of playing (or I see how unbalanced it feels) I stop doing that :-/ I don´t see myself as some mother theresa shit, but what´s the deal of playing a game for 2 that just one player enjoys? Maybe if someone enjoys not the playing but the winning... but that´s not my mindset. Not speaking of a tournament enverionment ofc. There is a way different motivation in form of competetive gaming with the intention to not place last. sorry for this flower-child like mindset. As a Nomad, thats something I see with a bitter taste in my mouth; i started them back in the N2 days, where Nomads lacked those "big guns" and needed to work around the PanO or YJ heavy hitters with shady tricks and softcounters. Ofc nomads had some nasty stuff themselves, like the Intruder/smoke, or ODD-fields and the like. But i did not feel....so much of everything. Nomads even get counter-units against tactics rarely in use (looking at you, biometric lobo). There is nearly nothing Nomads cannot hard counter novadays, and even universally succesful tactics, like the infamouse GML-strat can be pulled of with nomads in the most easy way (X-visor pitchers, FD FastPands, Infiltrating Repeaters, easy accessable exceptionally good hackers, best eng for REM support.....) *sigh* i feel like walking circles with my own argument all the time. Is there anyone questioning that? :-D
Surprising to some, Nomads do not feel wrong for what they are, a minor, well funded, nation comprised of veteran and elite soldiers, the lack of numbers will not show on the skirmish side of an engagement and the casualties impact is not a logistical consideration we have on our games. From a background perspective for the big two to arm and train their forces to the standards the Nomads are they would have to bankrupt themselves. Now for the serious discussion, feedback is important, knowing how to give feedback is more important, knowing how to read and distill feedback from a rant is important but also frustrating to do so. What the quote really says is that a customer sees something from a customer side of things, the company sees (or should see) the same thing from the company side of things and the two rarely align, and the company side of things has more weight. There is a ton of things the customer does not consider and this is logical, they do not have the access to the information the company has, nor the needs the company has, but these are considerations vital for a company to make a decision. As I said above behind a simple question like "why you released X figure?" there is a complex web of decisions and considerations, it is not done on a whim, or randomly.
They don't pay for the Camoflage skill, which is really quite expensive best I can tell? A Zero is only 20pts. Where's the balancing factor, then? It certainly feels wrong to be tiptoeing around the scrappy gangsters and anarchists when you're playing the cyberpunk police, and the superior industry and research capabilities of the larger powers seem to be completely ignored. Even most Nomad players seem disappointed that they just don't need their dirty tricks to win, myself included.
I agree with a lot of what you say, specially about sorting what is important from what isn’t, and filtering the useful information from within a rant. But, I’d like to point out one thing. Yes CB has more data than we do. But there is one thing data cannot capture, which is enjoyment and fun. As of the moment several people go in the same direction, repeatedly hammering their frustration on the same (bucket of) elements, it means there’s an issue. One could argue: “CB doesn’t need to listen to old players who will always be against change, they need to make decisions that attracts more sales, and old grumpy pals aren’t the ones that will do it. The game needs to evolve, in term of sculpts, and in terms of content”. And yes I agree with this. But, again, people here are the biggest ambassadors to infinity. Piss them off too much and they will abandon the game, stop feeding LGS with their presence, and turn around potential newcomers. There is nothing worst than having a salty player base that hammers constantly their frustration about the same elements, because slowly they will run any kind of platform in a cesspool of toxicity, which will discourage newcomers. And this, no data can capture. And “all” it takes to CB, is to just let the steam go off from time to time, by addressing the elements (some) people are ranting about since several years.
We ignore the fact they are a professional army, trained and drilled, most of them veterans, not a rag tag band of mobsters, with the financial backing of one of the biggest "banks" of the human sphere and the (illegal) research facilities of black labs to back them up, at a fraction of the size any of the land based powers are. Balancing in what? in the background? or the tabletop game? we are discussing background at the moment.
If I may hop in, I think both. It feels quite off for example that PanO, with the supposedly most advanced equipment and military trainings: - cannot provide good leadership training (Strategos? Command token+1) and, - still didn’t figure out how to build a hacking device plus. :)
As far as leadership skills I agree and I would include tactical awareness, but the moment PanO gets them Yu Jing players will state their frustration. Hacking device plus is not something I agree though, it is not an issue of technology but an issue of dedicated hackers of exceptional skill and custom even one off devises giving that output.
That's a misconception, if a rather popular one. PanO does make some of the most advanced weapons and equipment in the Human Sphere indeed. It was, however, explained in the fluff they can't really afford to field it. A function of their large military. It is the much smaller and elitist forces that do - because they have the funding, and due to their small, elite nature, can afford to spend way more money per soldier that PanO does. Aleph, for example. If you dig into the fluff deep enough, you'll find that the small arms Aleph troops use are high-end PanO-produced ones. O-12. Since N1, it was estabilished that Zeta Units, the most advanced TAGs of Human Sphere (as the fluff calls these), is PanO-made - but at the same time too advanced, and thus too expensive for PanO to be able to afford fielding them. Sure, we could ask "what if", and "aren't there small, elite groups given that kind of equipment in very limited numbers?". But there, we get into the game design problem - what would be stopping the players from fielding these rare, elite units every time, if they had that option? And I don't have a good answer to that question. As for skills, Strategos is traditionally limited to mostly characters, or Aleph / EI constructs (Marut, Skiavoros, Avatar). I was able to find only 2 exceptions: Shukra Consultants in Aleph and Alphas in O-12, which are both relatively recent additions. So maybe PanO is going to get some well-trained officers with some update (I agree, Aquilla Guard are practically begging to be given something to justify their status as elite academy's graduates since N1!) Other "Command skills" would require a lenghtier analysis, but while PanO lacks some of them, it seems to me they are not bad off with other ones (NCO, CoC. There's even Inspiring Leadership on Joan, which she shares with William Wallace only, across the entire game...).
From a theme angle, Nomads are played up as individualist, underfunded deviants making do with grit and a knack for repurposing and improving older gear. While they do have backing and experience, they aren't presented as possessing the means to get into stand-up fights with anyone, let alone the special operations groups of the world's industrial powers, instead relying on mobility, subterfuge, courage and subversive technology. This used to come across in both gameplay and fluff, and now does not- because of elevated direct combat ability in-game while their enemies have remained stagnant at best, and in lore because Yu Jing and PanO haven't had a fluff victory in years nor a great deal of focus beyond Military Orders valiantly losing some battle or another.
From the balance point of view, I remember read somewhere that point i asigned in function of what that troop gives to their army/sectorial. That i supposed to explain diferences like: Cheers.
Maybe a TAG - that has the cost maybe a couple of million $ is not economical for Pan O military (they have the Dragoers anyway, not so far away from the Zeta) but a hacking device that maybe three times more expansive than a normal one should be affordable and in the vastness of Pan O there should be one or two military trained hackers, that can even use this piece of equisite tech. I am not realy buying it ;-) Game-wise - all the factions / sectorials even have access to most tech (MSV2*), skills and weapons (ups - in YJ is only one single Feuerbach and its on a character that was not even planned as a the character that he is) anyway. One more, one less. Some HD+ in Pan O and YJ will not be the end of the hacking supremacy of nomads, ca and aleph (even haq has better hacking power, cheap Barids and high WIP). *) Ariadna is the exception that underlines the rule
I'm not selling either ;) Most. Key term there :P I guess I could spend the entire evening looking for pieces of tech / skill / weapon one faction / sectorial or another doesn't have. Just for example, JSA seems to lack any form of Aerial Deployment: no Combat Jump or even Parachutist. Nb. they don't have HD+ either. But that'd be a rather unproductive pasttime, while there are minis on my workbench waiting to be painted :)
Yes most. And especially not HD+ but that is the core point here: Give the Hyperpowers HD+ Can´t realy remember when there were no minis to paint ;-)
