It's because Reinforcements are supposed to be played with ITS15 in mind, not 14. They just pre-emptively released the extra to not overload us with a too massive amount of new datas at once, considering there's also a lot of changes coming to the game between the new season and the new classified deck + the online campaign happening on release.
That is no excuse for a lack of playable missions. @Savnock; you're right. I edited my post to be more constructive. You know what's worse than the constant whining about rules and balance? The constant bitching about the whining, and then whining about that bitching, and on and on and on. That is what leads to this constant torrent of insults and derailed threads.
The torrent of negativity in this thread would be funny, if you weren't all flushing the useful bits of your suggestions down the toilet on a tide of whining and personal insults. You guys have some decent points about game balance. Stop messing your message up by being dicks. You're actively working -against- the ideas that you want to get through by associating them with irritating (even to third parties) and childish statements, as well as weird egotistical poor-me focus on yourselves instead of the rules. You want something better and feel CB doesn't listen or make changes fast enough? Coordinate a community mod with the minimum set of changes needed to make N4 work better (and/or Reinforcements work better). Test and then publish it yourselves and get it played and adopted widely, including a major event or two. That'll get the publisher's attention and/or get your fixes into play directly. Or you could just whine and be dicks to the publishers on their own forum, instead of doing anything useful.
I think that the people who are resistant to any criticism (whether on these forums or at CB) will use the "being dicks" excuse to avoid taking feedback, regardless of the tone given. I've already experienced that. You also have to consider the tone received from CB, and their representatives - it's not always good.
That's not what's happening here. You in particular have some decent thoughts on balance: that criticism of the game system's balance is frequently valid. The way it's being said by both you and others flushes those useful insights away (and hides them in walls of ridiculous interpersonal arguments). What I'm saying is, state your opinions clearly and stop getting personal and taking it personally (i.e. being a dick). Your feedback is not actually being discarded because other posters are telling you to stop the insults and histrionics. You are unfortunately getting your own, often very valid, opinions dismissed. In the process, this sort of negativity has poisoned the forum and basically killed it. That sucks, because the other venues for discussion of this material are just not as good (Discord isn't easy to search/read, Dakka is a wall of 40K-loving idiots negging Infinity while they play a shittier game, and personal blogs don't incorporate enough outside views). If we want CB to have a good set of recommendations and reading of community opinion, start by -not- puking personal attacks and pessimism all over the forum.
No. I've said in plenty of ways and tones - it's always disregarded in the same way. "You have no right to criticize CB," essentially, and by the same people. Considering that I'm personally attacked quite frequently... yeah, nah. Especially given the way some FB groups run. I disagree. What's killed the forum is people who argue in bad faith - the people who drag CB no matter what, and the people who support CB no matter what. If it weren't for them we could have actual discussion. Pessimism *must* be acceptable, otherwise you're trying to shut out criticism. Pessimism is sometimes reasonable. And, again, for the personal attacks - in my case, people frequently personally attack me. I seem to be a favorite topic on a few FB groups to circlejerk about. Can thank [Name Redacted] for that. And sometimes forum behavior is absolutely unreasonable - like unreasonable defense of the current state of balance... and that has to be called out. A lot of people are going to interpret that as a personal attack even if it's well-reasoned, because they have a parasocial relationship with the company.
That is a lot to unpack, but as far as moderation goes, do not drop name of people like that in the forum, if you want to discuss a person use their forum user name, if they do not have one then it is not good to accuse someone who is not in the forum to defend themselves. But all this is extremely off topic for the discussion at hand.
I mean none of this is in private. Go ask the dude, he thinks I shouldn't even be part of the community. Anyway, the Interplanetario results are indicative of bad balance; Steel Phalanx is oppressively good at the FtF/interactive part of the game, and the only effective way to beat it is with an almost completely noninteractive game plan. Most factions don't stand a chance.
I was about to quote it... but unfortunately it was what many expected. At this point I think the best way to enjoy reinforcements is to leave them on the shelf.
I do find it funny when in the thread about TTS/IGL and how it may be indicative of problems with balance its shrugged off "it's own meta". Then at Interplanetario we basically just saw that same meta play and win there. Guys GML is fine... don't worry about what's it gonna do? Win every international event online and off?
Has it though? what Interplanetario has shown is Steel Phalanx was ideally suited for this tournament format and Guided was ideally suited to counter them. I still wait and hope to see the army lists and someone to do the statistical analysis to see how prevalent guided was in the tournament.
Has what though? I said nothing prescriptive. At Interplanetario at least at the top table both players were playing GML lists, an archetype that has a dominant presence in the TTS/IGL meta. And 80% of the factions at Interplanetario were SP a faction that since it's rework has had incredible growth and presence in the TTS\IGL meta. This is fact.
80% is a bit overoptimistic 10/80 players in Kraken is not 80% neither is 9/80 in prodigies. Combining them together its 19 players out of 160, so Assault Subsection had more or less a 12% presence in the Interplanetario, what was the presence of Guided we do not know, and more importantly how crucial was the guided for the list, so far the analysis I have seen do not think Guided was the crucial part of the list, the battle report of the final game is mixed in its conclusions.
Then is it possible that this could be indicative of GML being a problem, or at least over-representative in top level play?
What requirements do you need to say that a particular build or game element is overpowered? And saying that "Steel Phalanx is ideally suited for this tournament format" is just saying that Steel Phalanx is better at Infinity... because almost all people play ITS! I'm a bit annoyed that it's become clear that GML is an overpowered game element in N4 - as I've been saying since the edition dropped, more or less - and we still have naysayers who say that it's fine, because to say otherwise would be criticizing CB. Bluntly speaking, he doesn't reply to questions like that with a straight answer.
