Private information: Cost and SWC

Can you ever formulate arguments that don't have insults weaved in?

If the information is avaialble to both player, you reward experience.

If the information is unavailable to either player, you punish inexperience.

It's very similar, but it has some key differences.

That, along with the other arguments I listed previously.

 

Then stop trying to pretend this is to help new players, and isn't about the fact that you want to play your games with perfect information.

You complain about inexperienced players being punished unfairly by this, we've already discussed that nobody reasonable holds them to the same standards and expects to assist them while they learn.

You come across like the sort of person who complained about N3 terrain being a negative experience. It's a weird mentality all in your head of "ooh, this thing hurt me. It never helps me therefore bad and I hate it." rather than hey, game mechanics that hinder you are still game mechanics we play around. So now we have super weird terrain in N4 where a dense jungle makes you run faster? Because people needed a dopamine hit or something off terrain being helpful to accept it?

You play around surprises and imperfect information. Both players adapting to an unfolding situation where things don't go to plan is part of Infinity.

 

I'm not pretending anything. This is reflected in the arguments I listed and why I think it's a good thing vs why I think it's a bad thing. Perhaps stop trying to insiuate things that I do not mean.

I think that game ressources containing information that are independant of the game states should be open. It's that way in any serious competitive game I can think of, for many reasons.

I do not understand how your analogy for terrain applies in any way to the conversation.

Surprise and imperfect information is based on how your build your list, basing surprise and imperfection on restricting the usage of ressources doesn't make for interesting gameplay imo.

 

Honestly @Diphoration , what's the point of continuing to argue this? You've already won in every way that matters. @Triumph isn't going to change his mind, and as long as you keep engaging, he's just going to keep shouting insults and profanity at you. His opinion doesn't matter, we all know how Private Information works in the rules. If he wants to add house rules to events he runs, then he can do that whether or not we think they're good house rules.

 

If the kind of of player who couldn't estimate that a sphinx is BS14 and ARM/BTS6, and 90ish points because it's a light TAG with a medium-high tech level, (if they didn't know it as a fact already), is not a new/beginner/experienced player, then what is?

 

You mean serious competitive games like Guild Ball and Warmachine that are dead or dieing? Yeah lets not go down that route.

Infinity is not a game that wants to be an esport... Tsport? wSport? Whatever. Being that kind of game is the last thing Infinity needs or should be.

Infinity should primarily strive to be fun. Games continuing to be unpredictable helps the longevity of things, rather than both opponents knowing how shit's gonna play out.

Bostria mentioned that they changed the terrain this edition because people didn't like that terrain only ever hindered them in N3, so they avoided using it. It was a weird mental thing for alot of players. They didn't like a game mechanic because the mechanic was designed to hinder them.

In regards to wanting to use army to gain information, essentially some people don't like being put in the position of not knowing with a 100% certainty what they're doing is the correct choice of action. The idea that they might be making a wrong decision upsets them, rather than seeing it as just part of the game play experience. Similar to the complaints about old terrain.

You're going to have to elaborate I'm not sure where a Sphinx is involved in all of this.

 

Some competitive games are not doing well, so lets completely disregard any form of rules that would create a structure in a competitive setting? I don't understand the argument there.

If you're doing a casual game, just talk to your opponent and you can decide together what you enjoy.

If you're organising an event, you need to have some sort of structure and uniformity throughout the event, and if you decide to implement some etiquette or house rules, you need to be sure that you consider the positives and negatives of such decisions.

 

Yeah, I'm saying these games killed themselves by trying to morph themselves into some elite super streamlined turbo nerd system that drove the casual players out of the game because they became very dull, solved games. You think you want that but really you don't.

Killing an interesting game mechanic of an uncertain and imperfect information setting for the sake of structure for a competitive setting (aka you're worried about cheaters and feel like you need to structure the game around them) is the last thing Infinity needs.

 

The arguments I listed earlier actually make sure that it keeps the collaborative atmosphere of Infinity and it helps shrink the inexperiences.

As for solvability, Infinity is far from it, you got heaps of skills in the game that help reduce the solvability.

The only "solvability" that is gone from letting people game ressources that is independant from the game state is from lists that contains no uncertainty, where the player decided (for a reason of their own, perhaps to increase the powerlevel elsewhere in their list) to forgo that uncertainty.

If someone wants to make their list less solvable, and have more uncertainty, they absolutely have the power to do so, and they can do so without relying on the inexperience of their opponent.

 

There is a difference between.

"I put multiple potential LT, my opponent will have to figure out which one I decided is the right one"

and

"I put a single potential LT, I hope my opponent isn't experienced enough to know that this can be LT"

One is meaningful and interesting uncertainty/unsolvability, the other is very uninteresting.

Concerving the second part of uncertainty for the sake of the situations where it matters does not outweigh the potential downsides I listed earlier imo.

Letting game ressources be open helps incentivise collaborative gameplay between players.(see my explanation a few pages back)

 

No, they really didn't.

If you think that you're naive at best. We're already seeing comments in other threads, even from people defending using army to cheat private information out here, that N4 list building is feeling more solved. We're approaching a point where unlike N3 we're going to start actually seeing cookie cutter lists floating around and the next step realistically when you have two cookie cutter lists it's gonna be just like Warmachine, you know exactly how they're going to play into each other. The main thing that will keep it feeling different is players making unprompted errors to cause things to play out differently.

Which again, doesn't mean either player is inexperienced. Veteran players make mistakes all the time too.

 

Do you think someone asking "Do you have access to Hidden Deployment in your faction?" is something that should be answered?

From my reading of most people's argument on the subject, it seems that most people agree that those kind of questions are very reasonable and you can reasonably expect an answer to them.

If you create a rule that prevents player from answering these questions themselves, you incentivise people from simply denying these answers. Why would someone give information that is explicitelly banned via an etiquette/house rule?

If you force people to answer these questions, because you want to retain that aspect of the game. But don't let people use Army to answer the questions themselves. You end up with a situation where you can get tells from asking those questions to you opponent. Whereas answering the question yourself doesn't impact anything.

If you don't want those questions to be asked and you don't want those questions to be answered, then you can ban the game ressources without any issues.

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"unlike N3 we're going to start actually seeing cookie cutter lists", I'm not even sure if you're serious here. N3 had heaps of cookie cutter lists. I even made a guide in N3 on how to build a cookie-cutter list that applied to any factions in the game.

Infinity also has a lot of way to build uncertainty in your list, so the closer a meta is to being "solved", the more incentive you have to build around those assumptions and trick your opponent.

 

No, because it's pointless question. Ask a WinterFor player that question and the answer is yes, and they're not lieing they've got access to a Kunai. Nobody is taking that Kunai, it's garbage. Asking that question does absolutely nothing.

Absolutely, there was a much bigger viable pool of things you could build in N3. There has been a tremendous shrinkage in N4 towards a much more optimal few, especially with wildcards creating extremely optimal streamlined fireteams.

 

It is, because now you will act differently to an opponent who does. The same as someone who thinks they know the LT candidates and attacks the wrong target will act differently to you as well. That is what makes the game interesting, the fact that you can have identical setups play out differently because players are all operating off different information informing their decision making. That helps the game keep providing fresh experiences, which is a good thing.

As I said before though, you're one of those people who don't like it because they don't like game mechanics that are designed as a a pure hindering mechanics you need to work around. Similar to N3 terrain.

 

Asking that question might do nothing in the example you cherry picked. But that's still a question a TO needs to ask themselves when they decide if they want to create an etiquette based around using or not using Army.

Whether or not you decide if the Kunai is not worth is WinterFor is a fallacious argument for whether asking the available of a skill in a faction is a relevant question or not.

 

If my opponent spends their entire first turn dedicating an assault on a trooper they thought could be LT, but cannot even be LT, I don't think that's interesting whatsoever. Both from a casual or a competitive standpoint.

 

I think this thread has run its course a long time ago.