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Units removed

Discussion in 'News' started by Arg, Jan 27, 2020.

  1. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Did you just call the largest vanilla faction "small vocal group"? No other vanilla faction had as many games last year as Tohaa and most sectorials didn't, either. Last year's showing for Tohaa is remarkable considering how few releases they've had, and while it is quite simple that if a game or a faction in a game doesn't get releases they will also sell poorly and players will lose interest - with that in mind in light of the fact that CB has basically not released anything since before the Year of the Tohaa, they've got a remarkably large and dedicated player base just waiting for CB to feed them more than just morsels.
     
  2. Solar

    Solar Well-Known Member

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    The biggest problem with Tohaa is that they are the worst designed faction in the game. In N4 that could easily change.
     
  3. Bohrdog

    Bohrdog Santathematics

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    I don't think we will see any sectorials go away, I think this is a lot of panic chatter for nothing. They have never removed a sectorial in N1, N2 or N3 and I don't think they will start with N4. If they thought there were to many they wouldn't have added 10 new ones.
     
  4. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Well, we can echo chamber ourselves into comfort all we want, but we have more or less knowledge of at least one sectorial that's going to go away at some point. Not necessarily immediately with N4, but one of the first sectorials to go will be NCA.

    Some thing I missed the first time I watched the video was that Bostria also said "we can not exceed 50 SKUs" (for reference, Pan-O is currently at 51 unique items in Corvus Belli's store, which includes 1 merc, 1 HVT, and 2 Dire Foes to my count which might not count as well as 1 two-player box that will be split out and 1 Beyond box whose fate is unknown) Svalarheima may cause Pan-O to hit the roof.

    Also, somewhere among the early questions in that video Bostria notes they have a lot of factions, 37 to be exact, and heavily hints that it's very difficult to keep all of them both competitive and not going to excess. My take away from how those questions were answered is clear - there's a lot of sectorials and it's starting to cause them problems.

    @Bohrdog Exrah were removed in the transition from N1 to N2 (if memory serves this is the correct edition transition "carbon-14 dating" for this event), and they had a short period of time when they had a somewhat updated list similar to what MRRF and Acon got last year (although they were supposedly more clear that Exrah were going away). I think a total of about 5 sculpts were made without rules and unsalvaged.
    At that time the reason for removal was the miniatures themselves were causing problems, not that the line up was crowded
     
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  5. Shiwen

    Shiwen Commissar, Yu Jing Political Work Department

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    Any removal of a unit, let alone a sectorial, is unfortunate... as seen in @Arg 's OP for this thread there's the confusion that can arise over people wondering if they should buy in to things that might soon go 'poof', and there's the dissatisfaction of those who bought and use those things, now told that army/unit they bought, they loved, is gone. Objectively I don't think you can term buying metal soldiers as an investment their manufacturer can't later 'devalue', but this is a hobby, people's feelings will be more passionate and personal than objective. At the same time, supporting units and sectorials takes up money and labour-hours, and the more total 'stuff' in a game the less room you have to make new additions.

    And so there is the calculus at CB. No illusions about a core motive here, they aren't nerds motivated only by love for sharing their game, they want to keep selling product, making money. Simplest idea to make money would be to delete units regularly, forcing players to constantly buy new ones like we would packs of a competitive CCG. At one point it seemed like the industry titan GW was considering it, but even they set it aside and thankfully Corvus Belli has never given signs that's the plan. With good reason, because while that constant replacement cycle can drive sales, and while maintaining old units and sectorials costs money they arent making back this fiscal quarter, there is absolutely a cost to getting rid of things from a game: loss of community goodwill, brand loyalty.

    So how much is customers' brand loyalty worth to Corvus Belli, how much of that loyalty is at stake versus the costs of keeping a particular unit or sectorial in operation? That's some complex math. Not being able to see all the data, hard for us to predict with certainty... we don't have much choice but wait and hope CB has some good mathematicians.

    They won't be perfect, but as someone who very much didn't like Uprising (more for the writing than anything else, though my vanilla YJ still pines for the Oniwaban and Ryuken) but who then bought a whole bunch of Invincibles, my personal experience is their math on that worked out.
     
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  6. Bohrdog

    Bohrdog Santathematics

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    Yes but Exrah were not a sectorial it was a few units in vanilla CA made by a different company. I can see them cutting SKUs but I still don't think they will kill off armies. If it was getting to big for them to handle why are they adding 3 more this year?
     
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  7. daszul

    daszul Well-Known Member

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    Yeah,
    make JSA a YuJing Sectorial,
    Spiral a Tohaa Sectorial,
    and change NA2 into a 'Mercanary Faction' with a Vanilla option!
    (Of course not with all available sectorial profiles,
    but just those that are not to heavily linked to other factions.)
     
  8. RolandTHTG

    RolandTHTG Still wandering through the Night

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    Counter Proposal:
    Promote JSA to a full Faction, with a Vanilla list, Put Ikari in as a second Sectorial, so Options are Japanese Army, JSA, Ikari. This will give you 10 Vanilla Factions for CodeOne.
    I agree with having Spiral as a Tohaa Sectorial, but also make a true Vanilla version of the faction, and the current list with triads update to "Tohaa Relief Force" or something. This gives commonality with all other factions, and lets you have a vanilla non-fireteam version for CodeOne.
    I'll agree with having a Human Mercs Faction as a replacement of NA2 in N4, and with the above changes you still have Druze, Starco, Foreign Company, and Dahshat as Sectorials. This brings the number of internal Na2/Merc sectorials in line with current Pano/Ariadna, and even adding white company leaves you equal with where Pano's number will be after Sylvarna is added. Having a Vanilla Mercs also gives you a place to park all the older Mercs that people complain about crowding their faction vanilla lists, while still making the Sectorial lists unique.
     
  9. archon

    archon Well-Known Member

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    I think the answer is clear, to make money, to drive the game forward and keep it interesting, especially for the veteran players, that already have X-Factions and Y-Sectorials and also the new ones because this is a new and shiny Faction/Sectorial and will be next cool stuff. Not forgot, that people like me wait a long time for two of them - for me, it could have been earlier.

    But I don´t see a reason, why the should kick a sectorial completly out with N4. Yes, the have to work over the retired sectorials to make them compatible with N4. But than, the pure data of the sectorial eats no bread in Army, or?
     
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  10. Space Ranger

    Space Ranger Well-Known Member

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    As much as I Love NA2, particularly Ikari and Dahshat, I almost feel they over did it a bit. I feel they could actually bring some of them together into one. QK is not NA2 but it behaves like it as well. So I think they could combine Ikari, Dahshat, QK, and Druze, all into one force of "Mercenaries". Think of it as a company merger. Almost all of these sectorals have several things in common. Druze, Al Faseed, Hunzi, Brawlers, Bashi, some remotes, etc.

    Edit: as I was writing this @RolandTHTG put up about JSA being vanilla with Ikari being a sectoral. This to me also makes sense as long as Ikari has troops that can not be in Vanilla JSA.
     
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  11. RolandTHTG

    RolandTHTG Still wandering through the Night

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    Heh. @Space Ranger , QK was actually my inspiration for putting a mercenary force under the main sectoral.
    A force that is 1 Main army + mercs makes sense as a sectoral of the Main army, where something like Druze or Foreign Company are more mixed in where they draw their troops from and how they play them. Even Haq-heavy Dashat draws enough from Ariadna to make sense as a Merc to me. It's actually Starco that should get the "what exactly do you do here?" talk of the independent mercenary companies. I wonder then if dropping Starco and adding some mercs into Taguska could then be a way to help Tanguska (based on the chat I see in nomads, it's the weakest sectoral).
    As a potential look for sectoral expansions, White Company might then be a Aleph or O-12 Sectoral instead of an 8th NA2 option if they draw the main force from that Faction.
     
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  12. Wizardlizard

    Wizardlizard Well-Known Member

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    No I agree the tohaa that are out there are possibly the most rabid fans of their faction. Doesn't mean it makes business sense to keep the faction. Most played vanilla faction....not exactly a fair statistic. It only has a vanilla faction and you need to look at total number of players per faction and sales of that faction. My bet is tohaa is a very slow seller for new players but sells very well to vets looking for a 3rd faction or the few that just love those guys and their crazy rules. Still hold a very vocal minority. Knowing that the total pool of active infinity players is closer to a thousand tha thousands.
    There is definitely some chicken and egg. While I know true tohaa get really bent about spiral corps not being tohaa but it would be interesting to see how they sold. If pretty well than that is a case for bringing more tohaa...if not it's the one full faction we could cut.
    I dont think cb will cut anyone. We know NCA is getting retired and joining the ranks of the tohaa, we may see some na2 pulled back as they realize they may have gone a little overboard and retire. Retire see till means play rules supported just existing stock for sale for them.
    I applaud cb for supporting those who love and built up their armies for the retired factions. I will be amazed and owe the forum a heartfelt apology the first one they rerelease. I just dont see anything of the sort happening until 2021 2022 at all and my real truth is I dont see it at all but am willing to allow cb does things a little differently.
     
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  13. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    I'm not sure I agree. I wouldn't call them vocal nor are they too few. Tohaa is the game's fourth most popular faction out of 37 according to CB's own numbers.

    You need to put out content for people to buy in order to generate sales, and CB hasn't put out content for Tohaa. It's possible that they don't quite know where they want to go with the faction (which is the primary reason why Games Workshop squatted the Squats, because "biker dwarfs in space" wasn't cutting it as the game grew and started taking it self seriously) so it is very possible that CB feels they need to do the same to a faction eventually, but equally possible is that Tohaa gets changed reasonably drastically because it makes narrative sense (though I'd be very surprised if they get subsumed into CA, I think that'd be a narrative mistake even worse than the cardboard villains they made in Uprising)
     
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  14. Vanderbane

    Vanderbane Well-Known Member

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    I think we will learn a lot about whether we should expect a sectorial or faction cut with the release of Code 1. Depending on what units make the list (and what factions get the axe if any), we should be able to tell if something is on the way out.
     
  15. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    We already kind of know that one. Nothing with Fireteams will be in Code 1, but we might see some indication whether Tohaa is elevated to a normal vanilla faction (without Fireteams) or not. We also sort of know what units will be in there; core units only - but remains to be seen if that's limited to SKUs only or if it actually apply to units as well.
    I wouldn't look at Code 1 to get a hint if something/anything is cut, but I would look at it to get a hint of what's definitely staying.
     
  16. atomicfryingpan

    atomicfryingpan Well-Known Member

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    So many bad takes in this thread. Stop comparing the exrah getting the axe with removing a sectorial. The exrah models were unpopular, didn't sell well, had some problematic rules. That's not the same thing. Also @Mahtamori your take away from those YouTube videos is that NCA is just completely wrong. How is this any different than acon, mrrf, or QK? The answer is it isn't.
     
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  17. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Completely wrong what? The others weren't mentioned, but when Bostria tallied Pan-O sectorials he chose to mention NCA being most likely to be removed so my hot take is that Acon is likely to stay. I wouldn't be surprised if they've put those three sectorials out of production because they want to change art direction and/or have vastly different equipment on a large number of units (and equipment changes that wouldn't be reflected until N4).
     
    #57 Mahtamori, Feb 4, 2020
    Last edited: Feb 4, 2020
  18. Melchior

    Melchior Well-Known Member

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    Hell Tohaa got a lot of new models and profiles with Spiral:::::
     
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  19. Space Ranger

    Space Ranger Well-Known Member

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    They did a GW there and it kinda left a bad taste. I at least still use them to proxy. But really they didn't have to totally wipe them out. They could have done better sculpts. The rules weren't bad at all. They were essentially replaced with troops that had close to the same rules.

    I don't think having them no longer make new figs for some sectorals is nearly as bad as taking them away completely (Extrah) for turning half your army into a completely different Faction (JSA). I'm still irritated by both! I always seem to pick factions that get the shaft by the company that makes them!
     
    #59 Space Ranger, Feb 4, 2020
    Last edited: Feb 4, 2020
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  20. atomicfryingpan

    atomicfryingpan Well-Known Member

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    No company is ever gonna make moves that makes everyone happy. There's always gonna be some people who it affects negatively sometimes more than once. It just happens which can definitely suck. I think they took a calculated move with both. Seemed not many people liked the exrah sculpts and they didn't like making them and most players didn't mix there yu jing and jsa stuff as much.
     
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