The current complaining is based on two things: misinformation (we were told one thing a good long time ago; then told suddenly the opposite very soon to release), and poor communication (Bostria's terrible perception for a good time for a joke/the right kind of joke, especially when contrasted with Koni's reserved presence with usually very small tidbits that had been interesting, and very helpful in calming the forum down). I don't know what you like, besides toy soldiers as we all do, but imagine that you got a new laptop. It said that it had a 1TB hard drive - great. It actually comes with a 283jibblyflop drive; what?! That's not what it said it was going to have, and what even the hell is that measure of storage?! That's fundamentally what's happening with the Tigers and Daofei and why there's such an issue: they're the 1TB drive that we expected (and were told to expect, by CB) that is a good, trustworthy standard. Liu Xing and Zhencha are the random replacements: they're probably fine but their introduction has been marred by numerous unknown elements (eg, Explode LX's operation and power) as well as some clear issues (eg, 1W+NWI removing a lot of meaning from the HI classification; the SMG Zhencha profile being the only good one). Point being, the complaints are, predominantly, pretty reasonable considering the way that CB has given us information about the sectorial previously (ie, pretty poorly) and that CB have relatively recently shit all over the faction with Uprising, which makes any kind of misstep be received much worse - so why do such a shitty job of handling it (ie, by having Bostria come in and make a stupid, tone deaf joke)? Yeah, you really don't have to read it. You also don't have to interact with it if you don't want to. Yet that little compulsion that drove you to post that post is exactly why the people who are upset continue to post. Besides, the complaining was dying down some, mostly thanks to being close to release and Koni being a star (not the shitty Shooting kind) - but Bostria had to have his own fun. Yay... Again, a lot of the current bitching is about the poor information handling. There's not actually much to talk about until the Army drop - I'd love to focus more on Koni's tidbits though, but Bostria shit on the positive spin Koni managed to put on things. And we do actually have grounds to analyse what we've been shown (Liu Xing, Zhencha, profile snippets), we just have to (and generally speaking have, with one or two exceptions) acknowledge that it's not the full picture and withhold full judgement - again, mostly done, with only a couple of outliers. He did? Well he did stoke a bunch of anger that was becoming only embers, and got you to post about how we shouldn't be angry. Great, perfect community management![/sarcasmifitwasntobvious] As others have mentioned, there's been a lot of good debate in that thread once people stopped going for one another's throats.
The cries for the communication demanded are never going to be answered because CB cannot win and therefore will not play. Would you wade your communications director into this? Where guys call them clownish manchildren? Don't be ridiculous. The more angry and agitated people get the less likely you are to get engagement with CB because they don't have to do it and who wants to try and sit down and open a dialogue with some of the threads we've seen recently? That said, the trolling probably didn't help. I imagine that it was quite satisfying but I wouldn't have said it was wise. My suggestion would just be to not engage at all, if I worked at their office.
Sure, post-Uprising they'd spent pretty much all of their goodwill. But if they'd gone in top Uprising with good communications this whole last year wouldn't have been nearly as toxic - and that's the point. It's not that they should have started post-Uprising: they should have started before. - Announce that there's going to be a big upheaval, and that there will be some roster changes, and that there will be a new sectorial slightly later. - Uprising happens, bring in **something** about IA at the same time: not even a profile, necessarily, but give us more than, "it's going to be bad for a while," they should have given us a life raft to cling to or even just some debris. The Mowang is kind of the perfect unit: both out of the ashes, utilising advances pioneered in the Daiyokai project and 'perfected' by Yu Jing. - Release a few minor details about IA throughout the 'dark times' such as Wildcard options: think what Koni did recently, that kind of thing. - Then we're up to the Army release of 3O with everyone else. That kind of minimal effort management would have done a huge amount to assuage fears. It would have let people focus on JSA if they like it, and if they didn't then they'd have a ray of hope for IA. Or just organise their release schedule better: IA should've been out 3-6 months before Uprising... But those ships have sailed, and CB has a split, toxic community because of their own actions. Any loss from that is entirely on themselves for poor communication.
On the other hand, there's the possibility that IA simply wasn't ready for announcement at the time of uprising. I mean look at the whole tiger soldier dossier mishap and how it turned out. Even worse, imagine if they had introduced the idea of 1W HIs right after the uprising? We still don't know if they genuinely though they were things we would get excited about, or if they just decided to throw them to the dogs early on just so we would be accustomed to the idea for the release, but if it's the later and they had already decided to announce the bad news first then yeah they couldn't possibly start teasing IA right after the uprising.
I'm going to repeat that one should be careful before attributing the feeling of some posters in some threads in the sub forum towards the wider fanbase. I have no evidence that Uprising as in, the new JSA release, was financially and socially successful in the Infinity community but I have strong suspicions it was. I think that the dissatisfied people have not won the argument as perceived by the wider community and CB.
Because Uprising was, objectively, well handled, right? Objectively, they did bad by the established Yu Jing playerbase. They stripped out peoples' purchases, not to mention the Shikami, and they didn't do anything to manage expectations for vanilla Yu Jing players other than saying, "It's going to be bad, haha!" I'm certain that not everyone thinks it was and I don't assume that the majority thinks it was, but Uprising was not, objectively, well handled. Hell, we even had players from other factions giving their commiserations for how it panned out. Edit: Remember, there were at least two participants in the Uprising: JSA and YJ. Only one got anything, even though the other got gutted of basically any identity.
Objectively is a strong word to be throwing around with value judgements attached. Objectively was it well handled? Questionable, I have criticisms myself. Objectively, was it poorly handled? Also questionable. JSA players seem very happy, that subforum is largely extremely positive. Objectively is the wrong word to use here, especially by people who are close to the topic (i.e unhappy YJ players). It's probably more accurate to that there was mostly a response compiled of "not my faction, eh, " "ohh JSA are awesome!" and "I dislike this" and of all three, the response that has not managed to get any traction outside itself is the third.
It wasn't well handled. JSA got good units and a strong sectorial, but they still didn't get good communication. What about JSA players that bought some Vanilla YJ stuff to branch out a bit? Those that bought some ISS models to run alongside their JSA in Vanilla, well now those are useless without further purchases. Again, the communication of the event was poor, for everyone. The result might be fine for some, but the method of delivery was poor. Edit: Further, communication was especially poor with regards to the faction that was utterly, purely negatively affected: Yu Jing. You say that there are three camps: - JSA - YJ - Neither Well, the neither camp is utterly irrelevant. They weren't impacted nor were they the audience for it. If they buy into JSA, then they're in the JSA camp; and if they don't then their indifference is irrelevant - it's like saying Warmachine players being indifferent to a Malifaux release means that the release is better than some might say.
No one turned on Koni when he engaged the community and provided information even when it was ‘bad news’ in the form of “I know ya’ll want the army release sooner rather than later, but I can’t tell you when that is, only that we’re working hard to do a comlicated thing correctly.” Perfectly reasonable way to say “no I can’t help you” without upsetting anyone. And he did that in response to everyone getting very excited about a Monday release early in the day on Monday. That’s the point we’re all trying to make. Even the saltiest will respond positively to sincere attempts at communication. Companies don’t need to play good cop/bad cop when managing their communities. Even worse, if the strategy is to use Bostria as some sort of rodeo clown to distract or lighting rod to draw our ire, then shame on them, he doesn’t deserve that.
My theory on the subject is that it appealed to more people than it alienated, but that those people who it appealed to were predominantly not Yu Jing players (as defined by players who consider it their "main"). This easily produces good looking numbers, but I don't think it's a viable strategy in the long run to run too many happenings that by design alienate customers.
Alright, I'm going to talk about my finances here. I just got a check from uncle sam for nearly $1,500.00 more than I was expecting. I could be spending a significant chunk of that on CB minis. I'm talking like $500 significant. I'm not going to. I don't even think I'm going to buy Third Offensive until April. Not because I can't afford it. I can. Before @Bostria's trollpost, I was going to buy the Third Offensive book Dec1 because @ObviousGray had gotten me excited for it, that the fluff made up for Uprising. But between that trollpost and the video at the Warsaw tournament saying that the upcoming changes in 2019 are going to make Uprising look like nothing, I don't have any faith in the direction of Corvus Belli anymore. And that sucks, because I used to love the company. FFS, I sent a hundred bucks for drinks for Bostria and Interruptor to GenCon several years back (~2012, I think). I've been playing the game since before there was a rulebook, just the quickstart guides that used to be included in the starter boxes. Look, I don't mind that an Uprising happened. It had been hinted at since N1 (Keisotsu had been in the game since the beginning, and got a lot more fluff in Human Sphere N2). It is good that the background is changing, that player campaigns can have an impact on the story. Yes, I've heard that Infinity was planned as a trilogy of trilogies, and we're coming up on the middle section where the combined army is kicking humanity's ass. The first trilogy was the Infinity Core book, Human Sphere, and Campaign: Paradiso, where we introduced the characters and established the story, maybe had a partial success to slow down the advance (or blowing up the Death Star). The middle of the story is where the EI strikes back, and things don't look too good for our heroes. (Yes, the original Star Wars trilogy follows good storytelling rules) So I get that humanity is kinda getting stomped right now. Except it's not getting stomped evenly. YJ seems to be getting the worst of it. PanO is getting a crapton of nice things that I was excited about. Hell, I was considering playing VIRD or Military Orders, and I hate PanO (still need to figure out how to make an army that doesn't have any combirifles or multirifles on the models). If all of the humans were getting stomped more or less evenly, I wouldn't be anywhere near as upset. But right now, it still feels like Yu Jing, my primary faction, lost and the entire rest of the Sphere hasn't lost a damn thing. I really appreciate @Koni 's posts. Leaking just enough to manage expectations, or in some cases to get us excited (Mowang is ARM5 BTS6 2W NWI plus Mimetism?!? squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!), or saying that they want to post the PDF and a solid Army Update at the same time. Seriously, @Koni please don't let Bostria post trollbait or drunken shitposts like that anymore. I took that really personally. If we had been face-to-face, maybe I would have heard it as a joke, but what I read sounded dismissive. What I read was "fuck off."
So very much this. "Hey, we're trying to get both the Army update bug-free and the Rules PDF done and up at the same time. And it's just not ready yet." I could hear the frustration in Koni's voice that it wasn't ready to go yesterday at about 9am Spain-time when he posted that.
Except if CB miss the 30th experience tells me koni will get torn apart next time they showed their face. Look guys, players have a track record of being unreasonable, rude and offensive. If you think of CB as human beings, reflect on what some on the unhappy side (I'm not trying to attribute the action of the few to the many, but tone is often transcribed in forum threads where many people weigh in on single topics), have said about CB employees (directly and indirectly), cause you know they read these threads, atleast partially. I understand bostria's reaction. I think it was unfairly pointed @Section9 , and I don't think it was productive. But he's a person, CB are people who I guarantee are more invested in Infinity then you are. Some of things people have said in response to not having their expectations met need to be reflected on, not forgotten in some fugue "oh but I'm upset and I pay their wages".
So, CB is made of people. Guess what, their customers are people too, with some added weight as they are spending their money on CB'S products, so how come they don't deserve respect?
Yes, we've already been over the complete lack of concise communication given from CB with uprising. "LOL! Sucked in." doesn't really cut it.
Are you implying that the current yujing player base acted in such a way to "deserve" the way uprising was handled?
