My personal expectation (and, no, the WarCors don't know anything special about what will stay in Vanilla Yu Jing) is that the Ninja will stay (which means the Shikami will stay) but that everything else will go. I base this on two things. 1: Ninja in Red Veil 2: Yu Jing scheme Shikami Corvus Belli have known about this for a LONG time... neither of those things make sense if the Ninjas (at least) aren't staying in Yu Jing.
Not much of a headache if the era splits are kept rare and you make it clear what is considered to be apocryphal (for casual, non-ITS play) and what is considered current. Mostly useful as a way of keeping your line evergreen without willfully invalidating models people have purchased from you. The main head scratcher is that retaining loyalist Japanese forces honestly seems more logical than treating a post human diaspora Japan as a hivemind mono-culture (especially considering that previous to now, the Japanese relationship with and within Yu Jing has been presented as more nuanced than that). Renaming the JSA that appears in HS as the Japanese Regional Army (JRA) and not changing them a bit while developing the NA2 JSA as a brand new faction incorporating some old JSA units would be the best of all worlds and would make more sense (and lead to more interesting conflicts in the setting in my opinion). But suddenly having Japan Order 66 and make a clean split seems incongruous with the conflict as it has appeared in the background. The bottom line is that the "can't make an omelette without pissing off your fans" thing people have been touting is a false dichotomy. There are innumerable ways CB could have gone with this without it alienating anyone while also building solid hype. There is still a chance this may not be as bad as it appears, but CB have a hole to dig themselves out of here and this apprehension has made the hype surrounding this release go off like a damp squib.
Unless their goal is a Star Wars-style "virtuous rebellion against evil empire" story without any of that nuance you talked about.
Because that's what they see in their vision for the army. If there's either no "buff" or no "buff" that's ready, why would they do something outside of their vision to placate a group, when it could throw off the game or be taken away in the future? Again, they have done what they think is best for their game, and if you are truly so upset about it, then you have options. Take them, or move on, one of the two.
that's why, in anticipation to a controversial release, you would take the time to playtest buffs to placate affected players. Again, not very hard to do. Or are you trying to argue something like remove CC Tax from units that obviously have no reason to have it, like Zhanshi, would upset the balance of the game? Or models like Bao Troopers that barely see play receiving changes, or profiles like the MSR/Boarding Shotgun Guilangs getting changes to try and help them actually compete with the various CR options. Are you seriously trying to say nothing could be done in fear that it would make YJ an unstoppable juggernaut? Because I'd like to remind you Ghazi continue to be allowed to exist, and the game seems to be ok in the meantime.
If you think it's good for your vision of the game to do so, then you would. If you don't, you won't. I get it, you're upset, but you're being upset doesn't mean a company should move away from what they think is the best way to move forward for their game.
There is no sane "best way to move forward" where you piss off a portion of your customers you could've avoided pissing off by doing a minimal amount of communication and providing an alternative to. Anybody who thinks this was the best way to handle this event, that it could not have been done better, is as naive as whoever from CB was in charge of running this. There were so many options to help the transition happen smoothly. None of them were utilised. At this point pretending this event was handled well is nothing more than heavy fanboying. It wasn't done well, it's very clearly left a decent chunk of the community angry. It could've easily been done better myself and others have already pointed to a wide range of easy steps that could've been taken to help the problem ranging from better communication, to release timings, to reparations. That's not just an opinion, that's a fact. It would've helped the pissed off part of the community (i.e. us) not be pissed off about this.
CB's main guy says they are going to do changes that will piss people off. CB states JSA is splitting from YJ Some players: "Oh my god, how could they do this. Why wouldn't they tell us!?" Jumps to the conclusions before they state what will happen to vanilla YJ. Assumes no play testing or any testing is done in anyway and that CB is a bunch of pants on head meanies that do this for the LOLs. Am I getting this right? As someone who plays YJ, this is cool and I find this hilarious. Keep going. Akiraaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!
Largely taken as a light hearted joke, along with AC explodes. You mean the part where CB have printed JSA is leaving YJ, and that they've already begun deleting JSA models from the YJ catalogue on the website? Yep. Jumping to conclusions I guess.
You're going to keep some Ninjas, and probably a few other "loyalist" units. That's really the only important bit. If you liked to play with bikes you'll be able to play them easily with JSA, and with more new fun stuff. It's not a big deal, but if you want to be butt hurt about your game getting patched and advanced, go for it. I'll enjoy the new ISS vs JSA stuff.
Again you entirely miss the point. There is no ISS vs JSA stuff, because CB bungled the situation by not doing something in return for the players getting screwed over. If they paired this JSA change with a simultaneous release for new ISS toys (that work for Vanilla obviously) the amount of bitching would be significantly lower because once again it's about give and take, not just take. Instead of "sorry this needs to happen, here's some new stuff to make up for it" It's just "sucked in, you get nothing. Go stare at the models you can't use anymore"
Corvus Belli has been historically awful at breaking news. See the change in Tohaa as being its own sectorial now, rather than a full-fledged faction as the original interviews billed it. Corvus Belli couldn't even announce it themselves, but had to trot out a warcor to tell us. It's for that reason that I think it is healthy to play often and ignore the news threads and CB blogs as much as possible. Half of it is condescension ("you're just not looking at Bolts properly haha"), the other half of it is unanswered wishmaking. If anything kills this great game it can only be the shortsightedness of its designers, and the lack of discretion in whom they select as representatives.
Facebook groups are locking threads that turn too critical, as well, presumably under CB's direction at some level. Kind of frustrating that CB thinks the discourse should be controlled on this level.
And did they communicate that these changes were to compensate for JSA being removed? They weren't, by the way, but if they were, as you seem to think, they did an objectively terrible job communicating that.
CB doesn't moderate the Facebook groups, apart from comments on their own page. At some point, people have to shut down the whining or we'll all drown in salt. They could paint all sorts of pictures and people would still interpret it as them trying to steal the money out of player's wallets and doing it to spite them. CB: We are going to buff ISS, as we have plans for JSA to be removed from YJ in the future. Players: But I just bought some JSA stuff, how can you do this to me CB! I'll never be able to play how I want again! Why would you do this! When are you going to do this, oh my god, why would you tell us now but not release stuff for it yet. CB doesn't do any planning. You need to release new JSA units now so we know how they will work! We need more new YJ stuff now that CB is going to ruin everything for us! My old models will look terrible next to the new models! I bet they aren't even testing this, they are just going to see what we complain about and then change things from there. My whole army will be invalidated soon, wtf am I supposed to do. They better not have any female samurai/ there better be some female samurai! This is fun. Tell me what other things you would say if they told you.
No, it is (and forever will remain) your opinion, no more, no less. You can cry to the sky as much you’d like, and say that any opinion outside of yours is heavy fanboying, but it will remain your opinion. And between the opinion of any number of random anonymous forum users and Corvus Belli’s I’ll trust Corvus’, every day of the week and twice on Sunday. They’ve created, developed and supported a game I quite enjoy, as opposed to the anonymous forum users who’ve done little or nothing.
Why should anyone take you seriously when you say something like this? There have been chick Domaru from day one, and the only complaint is that the spitfire one seems to be sustaining a horrible spinal injury and is one of the worst poses since CAD became a thing.
But don’t you know that they are supposed to get every change cleared by every player in advance, and make sure that there is not a single player who is affected negatively by how CB chooses to advance their game, both on the table and in the fluff?
YJ is also getting IA soon, so the overall faction balance will be kept. We don't know what will stay in YJ, aside from some hints and logic arguments about some units. We know the gap will be filled. If PanO was to lose one of the sectorials (and it still might, with the way CB shakes things up), I'd still find it a good thing. I might be biased, because I'm mainly a sectorial player; if my sectorial switches places from faction to NA2 I can still play it. What he means is that people will complain no matter what CB does, that's all. People complain that there are no female knights. If CB changes it's stance and releases a female knight model there will be a group complaining about that. You can't please everyone, and some people can't be pleased no matter what.