First off I want to say I love to play x wing I am so obcessed with it I only play one other game right now, before x wing I had a little over 20 games in our rotation.

X wing could be my all time favorite game.

I also play a game called summoner wars, plaid hat games uses an extensive approach to play testing, they try to break everything they design by trying everything including sub optimum playing to avoid those "wow I didn't think of that moments" in the end summoner wars if considered to have near perfect balance.

So much of X wing is unused and this could have been avoided don't you think.

I am mostly referring to unused cards and the need to adjust, now don't get me wrong, I love x wing, this is why I am taking the time to bring it up, if I didn't love the game I would just ignore the problem all together.

I think that if they play tested more we would have use for all pilots, all ordinance, and all ships.

In summoner wars all cards are used and I see only 5% of the number of complaints, that X wing components get.

This may get me attacked here, but I just want to use all my cards, I hate building and saying "that sucks", "that is too expensive", "this is no good".

A few cards ended up being super powerful, sure. Like 3P0 on 1-agi ships, and Phantoms with VI. OT some extent, we do a fair amount of their playtesting, they read through the forum (though rarely acknowledge it) and they take things into consideration. I'm not saying we tell them what to do. They simply see our opinions. Every card in this game has a use...some are just more useful than others...

Also, don't post in your own thread 3 times in a row. Just edit the first post.

The balance and evidence of playtesting has already improved leaps and bounds from the initial waves. And I'm pretty sure some cards are purely for theme/cool factor (Lando crew, Greedo, etc.), and are not necessarily built with tournament efficiency in mind.

X-wing is well play tested and when there are issues they FAQ it with well reasoned changes.

you want a poorly play tested game...check out STAW and post this question on their BBG board.

More playtesting = more time and $$$. There are limits to both schedule and money, so you can't simply throw more bodies at the problem. There are real world constraints.

Fundamentally it is not an issue of playtesting "more", but designing and playtesting "smarter". This is FFG's first real experience with this sort of a miniatures game, so they are learning as they go. As Alex Davy said in a recent interview, the designers are all smarter now than they were at the beginning.

Work smarter, not harder.

There is much more that could be said on this. Knowing how to use the appropriate mathematical tools is the first step. There are many other factors in working smarter that go well beyond just jousting values and MathWing, but I'll keep those in my back pocket in case I ever decide to start my own game company some day.

I've never been a playtester for X-Wing, so I don't really know what that's like, but FFG seems to have a problem getting products out in a timely fashion. I imagine that the playtesting process is pretty fast to try to get products out sooner rather than later, so I have no idea if they take the time to go incrementally through all the cards. Going through every combo just may not be feasible in this game. That is to say, you couldn't play out every game with every combination, and even if you did, you'd need multiple games. What you could do is just build a whole bunch of squads with different combinations and ask how each combination of cards would interact on a specific ship or set of ships.

I agree that a lot of the unused cards are there for thematic play rather than for tournament play.

I've never tried Summoner Wars but it looks pretty cool. It's nice to hear that its pretty balanced.

A few cards ended up being super powerful, sure. Like 3P0 on 1-agi ships, and Phantoms with VI. OT some extent, we do a fair amount of their playtesting, they read through the forum (though rarely acknowledge it) and they take things into consideration. I'm not saying we tell them what to do. They simply see our opinions. Every card in this game has a use...some are just more useful than others...

Also, don't post in your own thread 3 times in a row. Just edit the first post.

They listen to me when tie avengers come out I'll be four for four.

What makes you think FFG does not do extensive play testing?

Why does each and every card/pilot need to be used in competitive play?

well, summoner wars is a poor comparison, the list (re: deck) building in that game is much more limited, so they have a smaller pool of interations to deal with. they've also errata'd some cards from early releases.

saying that, FFG does a good job with x-wing, they've really come a long way in their development process from even 3 years ago. while there are weaker cards, you see those taken many times in 'fun' or casual settings. but you need cards with varying degrees of usefullness. with the openness of design, upgrades are more or less useful depending on what other parts of the list are used. look at Expose - one of those extremely weak cards, that now has a decent home on the decimator.

The quality of upgrades are getting more on par with the best of the older upgrades. Predator/Outmaneuver are strong cards to compare with the old PTL on everything mindset. A person may call it power creep, but it really feels like they are getting a better handle on proper costing of the various upgrades.

you can always do better, but FFG does a pretty darn good job. Ordnance being the obvious exception.

With each wave they are releasing more and more cards that are good/great. There isn't a whole lot of garbage cards the last couple of waves. They are also little by little buffing stuff that wasn't all that great initially. Ten Numb + Mangler or Expose + EI comes to mind. Unfortunately, with each wave, some cards get worse.

It's something that typically happens in the evolution of a miniature game. As the game expands, certain things will either fall out of favor, or just never see much table time.

It's an extensively playtested game but there's only so much you can do with twenty five or so playtesters. Some things aren't as popular as anticipated.

Let's put it this way: what's worse? A dud or two per wave, or something too powerful?

I get the impression that the playtesters may not get to play with all of the toys at the same time as a way of minimizing leaks, so their ability to find all of the broken combos is a bit limited. But there's also the simple fact, as born out by every online MMO in history, that the collective intelligence of the greatest playtesting group in the world is nothing compared to the collective crowdsourced intelligence of the internet. The fans will find combos that the designers never imagined.

Bad cards aren't a bug, they're a feature.

There's a whole article series by the Head Designer of the #1 CCG in the world about why bad cards need to exist in customizable games like X-Wing.

http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/218

To Summarize:

• It creates level-up moments for new players when they finally figure out that a certain card is bad and why it's bad, and those moments of discovery are very important for keeping players engaged in the game.
• Power gaps in cards reward skilled players. If everything in the game was equal power level, then an unskilled player could throw a bunch of cards together and be on equal footing with a more skilled player, and the skilled player would be more vulnerable to losing to variance. Power gaps allow skilled players to get an advantage before the game starts.
• It allows game designers to create cards that some players like but that the majority consider unfun. The players that like these cards will play them regardless of power level, and the rest of the players won't feel compelled by power level reasons to play with cards they consider unfun.
• It creates opportunities for players to feel clever when they find a hidden use for a card that everyone else has deemed bad.
• Sometimes the developers just mess up and push or nerf a card harder than it needed to be. It's riskier to push a card then it is to nerf a card, so designers will usually err on the side of nerfing unless they are really trying push the game in a different direction and are okay with the game being warped by a pushed card (Advanced Cloaking Device).

The current designers of X-Wing have often mentioned MTG as inspiration for their design process, so I wouldn't be surprised if they adhere to this design philosophy regarding bad card.

Wave 5 and 6 had their fair share of stinker upgrade cards, Intimidation, Countermeasures, Greedo, R4-B11, and Bodyguard come to mind. But I think it's also fair to say that the number of "bad" upgrade cards we see has gone down to less than 1 per expansion, which is probably the lowest amount of bad cards needed for a well designed game.

I'm sure they learn from their previous waves, but nothing's perfect

case in point: ******* Bodyguard

Bad cards aren't a bug, they're a feature.

There's a whole article series by the Head Designer of the #1 CCG in the world about why bad cards need to exist in customizable games like X-Wing.

http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/218

From what I've seen and heard, that is not anywhere close to the design philosophy of the current X-wing designers and FFG in general.

Now, the issue is that the original X-wing designer pretty clearly did not think about the game as a tournament game. And I believe the current designers are actually the third set of designers on X-wing. I think it is pretty clear the design shifted in Wave 4. And Wave 3 is when they moved away from the cost formula that was pretty darn accurate for Wave 1 and 2.

That said, not everything can be playtested and balanced to all be top tier viable. Sometimes, you just don't have the time to pin it down. And sometimes, you are just making a fun and thematic card. There is nothing wrong with having something being for those that only play for. Balanced doesn't necessarily need fun. And sometimes, you won't fully know how good or bad something is until you let the full playerbase at it.

Bad cards aren't a bug, they're a feature.

There's a whole article series by the Head Designer of the #1 CCG in the world about why bad cards need to exist in customizable games like X-Wing.

http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/218

From what I've seen and heard, that is not anywhere close to the design philosophy of the current X-wing designers and FFG in general.

Now, the issue is that the original X-wing designer pretty clearly did not think about the game as a tournament game. And I believe the current designers are actually the third set of designers on X-wing. I think it is pretty clear the design shifted in Wave 4. And Wave 3 is when they moved away from the cost formula that was pretty darn accurate for Wave 1 and 2.

That said, not everything can be playtested and balanced to all be top tier viable. Sometimes, you just don't have the time to pin it down. And sometimes, you are just making a fun and thematic card. There is nothing wrong with having something being for those that only play for. Balanced doesn't necessarily need fun. And sometimes, you won't fully know how good or bad something is until you let the full playerbase at it.

The designers shifted starting in Wave 4 with a hand off to Alex Davy and Frank Brooks, who co-designed Wave 4 with the old designers and did Wave 5 and 6 on their own. In their interview at Gencon, they talked about how they playtested 11 different variants of how to implement cloaking into the game, which tells me that the game is not suffering from a lack of playtesting.

I also like to think that the designers are making these bad cards on purpose because I dislike the alternative explanation that they are creating bad cards due to incompetence. I don't think the game is where it's at right now because the designers are putting random words and numbers on cards willy-nilly with no thought or testing, everything that has been coming out for X-Wing feels very purposefully crafted, although I admit that they could use some help on their editing team.

Here is the interview with the current designers that I am referencing where they talk about the design of Wave 4, 5 and 6 at GenCon 2014. Alex mentions MTG by name, which leads me to believe he is in some way influenced by the game and its design principles otherwise he wouldn't have mentioned it, as there isn't a huge overlap between MTG and X-Wing as far as the playerbase goes.

A few cards ended up being super powerful, sure. Like 3P0 on 1-agi ships, and Phantoms with VI. OT some extent, we do a fair amount of their playtesting, they read through the forum (though rarely acknowledge it) and they take things into consideration. I'm not saying we tell them what to do. They simply see our opinions. .

By the time you see a card, it's beyond the playtesting stage.

The designers shifted starting in Wave 4 with a hand off to Alex Davy and Frank Brooks, who co-designed Wave 4 with the old designers and did Wave 5 and 6 on their own. In their interview at Gencon, they talked about how they playtested 11 different variants of how to implement cloaking into the game, which tells me that the game is not suffering from a lack of playtesting.

I also like to think that the designers are making these bad cards on purpose because I dislike the alternative explanation that they are creating bad cards due to incompetence. I don't think the game is where it's at right now because the designers are putting random words and numbers on cards willy-nilly with no thought or testing, everything that has been coming out for X-Wing feels very purposefully crafted, although I admit that they could use some help on their editing team.

Here is the interview with the current designers that I am referencing where they talk about the design of Wave 4, 5 and 6 at GenCon 2014. Alex mentions MTG by name, which leads me to believe he is in some way influenced by the game and its design principles otherwise he wouldn't have mentioned it, as there isn't a huge overlap between MTG and X-Wing as far as the playerbase goes.

Again, Wave 1 and 2 was likely designed by Jay Little, as can be seen by the adherence to a cost formula. Wave 3 tossed that formula out. And then Wave 4 was a complete shift to Alex and Frank, who understand the tournament game a bit better than Jay Little, and probably the Wave 3 designer.

I don't see why it is easier to assume that they make sub-par cards on purpose rather than them being accidents. Quite honestly, Magic designers probably design bad cards because of the sales model rather than any reasonable game design theory. Which is why I have a tough time seeing it being used in FFG games. Especially when you look at their LCGs. Now, somethings may be designed to be more niche than other cards, but niche cards are not necessarily bad cards.

I also play a game called summoner wars, plaid hat games uses an extensive approach to play testing, they try to break everything they design by trying everything including sub optimum playing to avoid those "wow I didn't think of that moments" in the end summoner wars if considered to have near perfect balance.

So much of X wing is unused and this could have been avoided don't you think.

I think it's worth noting that comparing the development process for paper games to digital games is like apples and oranges. Digital games get to crowd source their player base to help them test their game's balance (sometimes called a Beta test, sometimes after the actual release) and then make changes to the game via patches that go out during automatic software updates to fix anything they missed. Paper games do not have this luxury, once the game goes out into the wild, you cannot just force everyone to patch the game with the next software auto-update, any changes you make will be extremely disruptive to players who do not realize that the game they bought is obsolete to the way the game is actually supposed to be played.

Just look at the Daredevil card, most upgrade erratas are just re-wordings to clarify how the card always worked, but Daredevil received functional errata that completely changed how that card interacts with the game rules. I've seen so many new-ish players get confused by that card because of the functional errata changing the maneuver from red to white with a stress token, now imagine if half of the upgrades in the game had functional errata that changed how the card worked compared to its original printing, newer players would feel like none of the cards actually do what they say and quit out of frustration.

It's incredibly hard to have any game that keeps getting expansions and not have something fall behind or out of favor. Especially in a competitive meta where players are trying to use the best combinations of ships and cards they possibly can.

When I'm looking at the majority of the X-Wing ships, pilots and upgrades there are very few I would never use. I can't say that for the majority of collectible games I've collected over the years.

I feel the game has a pretty good balance for the level of complexity it has. Yes...there are some bad cards, and there are a few auto include cards. But I see a good variety and a lot of new lists coming into play, and shifting meta's. I think one of the reasons it feels like imbalance is if you read this forum too much. As far as the balance of the game you mentioned(summoners?)...the game has less of a following, and so my guess is that all the players are hardcore lovers, so they will be more likely to sing praises than nitpick the small stuff. X-wing on the other hand has a huge player base, and we love to complain that things are not perfect.

But in my opinion....it is more balanced than most games I have played, and that is the main reason I love it.

Just look at the Daredevil card, most upgrade erratas are just re-wordings to clarify how the card always worked, but Daredevil received functional errata that completely changed how that card interacts with the game rules. I've seen so many new-ish players get confused by that card because of the functional errata changing the maneuver from red to white with a stress token, now imagine if half of the upgrades in the game had functional errata that changed how the card worked compared to its original printing, newer players would feel like none of the cards actually do what they say and quit out of frustration.

You do understand that the Daredevil card was errata'd to function as intended, right? Because with the original wording, you would not take stress, because you only get stress in the step after you perform the maneuver, which doesn't occur with an action. Same result, as that is how most people played Daredevil anyway, but the new wording was needed to make it actually work that way. It is the same reason why poor Night Beast is screwed out of his ability when stressed.