Private information: Cost and SWC

CoC being private is relevant to all the units that have CoC, just like the points cost is relevant to all the units. Arguing that the points being private should only matter for CoC units or other units with rare attributes is fucking stupid.

When there are 6 models in the Armoury their costs are private, you're not supposed to go "hang on let me just consult my phone to figure out what I need to kill and what I can ignore with perfect clarity so I can win the game." What kind of WAAC shit is that? Just pick what you think is the most important target, fight it, and move on.

 

Unfortunately, CB has made a habit out of making units with CoC have their other profiles have open information skills that the CoC unit does not. E.g. Lei Gong CoC has a unique gun, Adil Mehmut CoC doesn't have Veteran or Specialist, Haidao duplicates the equipment of the least useful profile, Kirpal CoC doesn't have NCO, etc.
I'd give it a 50-50 at best of CoC not being obvious in isolation, let alone context of the rest of the list.

And I certainly agree that PS needs to take a look at this thread. I found Sabin's answer to be insightful.

 

What's wrong with experienced players having an advantage? That literally happens in every facet of life and is why experience is so valuable. Part of the fun of becoming better is increasing your skills and gaining your own experience.

 

People have been calling looking up profiles during a game as cheating since N3, when folks argued you couldn't look at profiles in the core book of all things.

Given that the chances of CB not being aware of this "argument" are basically nil at this point, you basically have to accept the following premise.

CB is aware of the issue, and also has chosen not to make a ruling on it, even through an edition change. Furthermore, in a previous thread (which I believe in linked a few pages back) IJW himself has said that the matter of looking up profiles is merely something that varies (wildly) between various groups, when he instead could have taken the opportunity to correct an erroneous rules interpretation.

Thus, until ruled otherwise, it is currently not cheating. You might think its shady or bad form, and maybe you'll ban it in your local tournaments. But until such time as the situation changes, it is not against the rules. Your have the right to do this if you wish.

 

This is a whole separate discussion but to answer simply: it's a massive design problem for a game if a more experienced player beats a less experienced player one hundred percent of the time (or even close to one hundred percent). Too high an emphasis on skill differential is genuinely a thing that pops up in the postmortems of failed games.

More generally, anything that reduces barriers to entry is valuable to the long-term health and longevity of a game.

 

I think you might be reading my point backwards (I can't tell from your phrasing). What I'm saying is that the points of profiles on army lists should continue to be hidden information, but players should be free to consult whatever resources they want (such as army) when breaking down an opponent's list.

I don't think you even need to know 400 profiles to be able to reason anything else you need during a game. Let's face it, there are really only 50 or 60 profiles per army that ever see the table to begin with, and since point costs are largely formulaic, there's not really any need to memorize each one. If you can remember the costs of one set of line troopers, you pretty much know them all as long as you know the base price (or can reason the base price from another line trooper you know), for example. There's also the fact that a few armies just never see the table -- there's no need to memorize MRRF costs right now outside of the two profiles that see play in vanilla (20/0.5 and 66/2. You probably can tell me which profiles these are without thinking pretty much at all, no?).

Offhand I probably know all of the armies I play point-for-point. The only ones that I feel really hazy about are Haaq and Nomads.

It's really not that hard to expect players to keep track of that. There are competitive Pokemon players who can tell you the base stats (6 values usually between 0 and 150) of a couple hundred pokes and most of the moves they play at the competitive level. Human brains are surprisingly good at this kind of thing with a little training.

 

I fully agree.
I would add that it is also important the reason "why" more experienced players beat less experienced one. Remembering tons of raw data about armies' profiles is one of the worst reasons, since it's not something that can encourage the beaten player to try again. While, if it is a better tactical choice that the new player can learn and try out in the next game, it is a incentive feedback to play again.
The "learning curve" should be perceived within reach, not buried under hundreds of costs and swc to memorize. We hated school just for that reason ;)

 

Nothing is wrong with experienced players having an advantage. It's the source of that advantage that I am more concerned with.

As an experienced player, I want to win by making good decisions, not by beating my opponent before the game even by memorizing tomes of arcane knowledge.

 

@psychoticstorm
I hope you will notice the personal insults this time and act accordingly.

 

Which as already mentioned renders it pointless to make them private for the vast majority of profiles. If I can simply look up what your units cost to see what I need to do to out point them in a quadrant, then it serves no purpose making them private for the vast majority of units.

Having a rough idea isn't the same as knowing point for point with perfect clarity because you're looking it up. I play Yu Jing, and only Yu Jing for years. Some units that see constant play I could tell you the costs on because I work with them constantly. Others? I could tell you a Crane is probably mid 40s to low 50s but I'd be fucked if I had to tell you exactly how much a Crane with a spitfire cost.

It has nothing to do with doing some nerdy shit of committing archaic tomes of knowledge. Some people will know profiles just because they like the units and play with them alot, but I guarantee you the vast majority of experienced players you interact with will largely be hazy on a big portion of units they run into. They may know many things, but whether they can recall them all at once and on the spot is very questionable at best. I fucked up tonight and misremembered the AVA on Caliban and wrote a 4th camo marker off as a potential threat after killing 3 Calibans. I was then forcefully reminded that they're AVA4 in SEF and took a loss from it. Making errors is part of the game, imperfect knowledge is part of the game.

You looking up information on your phone mid game isn't you making strategic decisions in a game, it's you running to fetch the strategy guide and consulting it. You want win by making good decisions? Then make the decision yourself not with your phone. To me, if I was relying on outside help and then pretending that's all my big brain at work would be just really sad and hypocritical.

While true to an extent, I don't find the private nature of rules to be the major barrier of entry to new players and I don't think the solution here has anything to do with players being given army to use during a game or before it.

I think there are things that when not handled correctly will definitely chase players out of the game. As mentioned earlier guided weapons literally killed the game locally for me in N2. Things like Speculos versus a poorly deployed link team will ROFLSTOMP it very quickly or a Noctifier or Hundun popping out and murdering a link or TAG, or a TAG being stolen and gutting a player's army are all things that can and will chase players out of the game.

None of these things are even remotely fixed by throwing a phone at a new player during a game and saying "look shit up in this" when they play someone more experienced. Infinity is a hyper lethal game, shit dies when it gets shot at, the only real fix without changing the fundamentals of the game is for an experienced player to intentionally pull their punches against lesser experienced players.

 

Bad faith arguments are rife here...

 

I personally don't want recall and addition/subtraction to be the thing new players are sinking their time into on their quest to get advantage. Your opponent failing to recognise an identifiable threat is an unearned advantage.

Rather than having elite being learning all the points costs, let elite be learning to hide a points gap. Knowing and being open with the facts of the game is sportsmanship.

 

Actually comes up a tonne for me in quadrant based missions. There are alot of skirmisher types that are generally present for quadrant scoring (Guilang, Caliban, Zerats, Locust, Ryuken 9, Trinitarians, Clipsos etc etc) that all exist in a very tight points bubble and knowing the exact cost of whether you need to spend many orders hunt one down on a roof somewhere behind mines to control a quadrant versus just edging one of yours into a zone is a huge difference in order efficiency. Seriously, like the difference in efficiency is knowing I can spend 1 order to score and then 9 steamrolling something into your DZ to kill your LT instead of spending my order pool to focus on the mission instead.

 

Yeah, it all comes down to some people being really hardcore about retaining their gotcha.

 

Personally I don't find that kind of problem just makes for miserable rides home. Finding out if the player is capable of using their army to achieve what is required to win is enough fun without all the accounting to work out what is required to win. Likewise winning because of things like your opponent hasn't fought Shasvastii for 14 months and forgot the dead mentor still scores, and didn't coup de grace it when they had the chance, makes me feel gross. That said, I'd live with that gross feeling if there was an ITS prize mini on the line, I'm not going to lie. The aspiration is getting so good that I could remind someone that the dead mentor scores and still win.

 

That's pretty much why I view this as people obsessed over winning too much to the point where they lose interest in the game, and are desperate to eke out a win to the point of reading a strategy guide in the middle of the game to play the game for them instead of just playing the damn game. If you forgot something and a mistake was made? That's Infinity, basically nobody remembers everything at once. Stop obsessing over playing the perfect game and just make a decision and play the game. If you were right? Well done! If you were wrong? Who gives a shit, if you made the other choice your opponent would probably just crit you out of spite anyway.

It's the journey, not the destination. Or some bullshit along those lines.

 

You keep reading self-interest instead of empathy, it's a really strange conclusion from the viewpoint presented.