Its cute that you are trying to make NPE a thing, but please don't make me post the mean girls meme about how its never going to happen.

Yeah this is far from the first time i've heard that term used, though I associated it most with video games.

There was one dude using in this forum the other day, and no one knew what he was talking about. NPE is not necessary as you can easily use "bad game" or "wasn't fun" which also helps place a better context on your NPE

Edit: I have never even heard someone say the words "Negative play experience" in that order before, why turn them in to an acronym?

Wait, this is just a rip-off of my TIE fighter thread from the off topic board.

Boo!

Also 'fetch' is never gonna happen.

I'd love to play 10 games with 4 X-wings against a good player playing popular meta lists. Even if I lose all 10, which I won't, I'll have learned a lot it would have been fun. More of a PPE.

Null Pointer Exception.

L2Program.

I can't stop reading it that way every time I see NPE. Please, people, just use real words. Acryonyms help no one but yourself. It takes far more time for people to figure out what you're saying than it does for you to type a few extra letters.

There was one dude using in this forum the other day, and no one knew what he was talking about. NPE is not necessary as you can easily use "bad game" or "wasn't fun" which also helps place a better context on your NPE

Edit: I have never even heard someone say the words "Negative play experience" in that order before, why turn them in to an acronym?

NPE is fairly well known concept across various game systems and game design. I think part of this thread is to inform those who weren't aware of it where, when and how it is appropriate to use.

I know that I first encountered the term in L5R and largely it was a case of a card or card combination synergy that far exceeded the cost of it. Examples from there included the ability to be locked out of the game by having no resources, or losing a province with a high probability even before you had a chance to start playing. Both cases there was appropriate meta available to defeat said decks, but you were on such a tight clock that if you didn't see it early enough you couldn't win. Largely the NPE comes about due to consistency and as such the probability of the combo working is high.

X-wing has mostly been good in terms of preventing NPEs. The Phantom was certainly one which was just due to how far above the power curve it is (or was), unparalleled maneuverabilty, offense and defence together in the same package. You'll note that is also the attributes that two ship builds have, though I wouldn't necessarily put them in the NPE category, they are just really efficient lists, but also rely heavily on play skill.

Jeff mentioned fortresses which really are the perfect example of an NPE in X-wing, it just goes against so many of the principles of a game X-wing, there is nothing about a fast-paced dogfight in a fortress match up. Fortresses aren't unbeatable but they are dumb. Luckily for us they aren't necessarily good enough to make a splash on the tournament scene. I fear the day when someone does well with one.

The only other one I can think of is in Epic with the unkillable Biggs. Typically this involves pushing Biggs' agility up to 4 with Stealth Device and the Droid, and then giving him multiple focus tokens with Comms Booster. Sure you can play around it, i.e. kill the Transport first, but that is easier said than done. As easy fix for that combo is making Comms Booster limited.

I would be remiss to not mention Twin Laser Turret here (hereafter *Tiny Lasers), the problem with tiny lasers isn't necessarily how good they are, but the fact that they become exponentially better the more you have of them, aka the Spam NPE. The version of spam does apply to a couple of other lists, it is not unique to Tiny Lasers, both TIE swarm and particularly Feedback Swarm share similar characteristics, but we aren't seeing a lot of those around at the moment. TIE swarm is no longer considered NPE (I am sure some people thought it was) because it is considered a counter to some list archetypes (thus it is a list people want to see other people play). Feedback Swarm is hard to put on the table so is mostly a theoretical construct as this point. Compare to Tiny Lasers which are relatively cheap and easy to drop down. I think we will see an evolution of Tiny Lasers heading into Worlds anyway. We have already started seeing it with Morgan Reid's list at Aussie Nationals where it was 3 Tiny Lasers plus Jake. In order to be good across the field you need to make a more well-rounded list. Even dropping a single tiny laser makes the match much more enjoyable for both players and remove some of NPE associated with playing 4 of them.

Natural performance enhancement

Non Personalized Enemas

That's so wrong on many, many levels.

Surprisingly as it may sound not everyone is going to like X-wing. Not all X-wing players will prefer to play standard competitive format. And not every game of X-wing can be enjoyable, especially when the dice conspire against you.

Someone's list should not generate a NPE, that is just an opportunity to learn, adapt, get better.

The only NPE in my world are when people ***** and complain the whole time or they are actively trying to cheat.

NPE NullPointerException (Java)

NPE Network Processing Engine

NPE National Policy on Education

NPE New Pantai Expressway (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

NPE National Plastics Exposition

NPE Natural ***** Enlargement

NPE Non-Practicing Entity (patent law)

NPE Nutrition Program for the Elderly (now Nutrition Services Incentive Program)

NPE Nonyl Phenol Ethoxylate

NPE Network Planning and Engineering

NPE Non-Paternity Event (genetic genealogy)

NPE Network Protection Equipment

NPE Navy Preliminary Evaluation

NPE Net Premium Earned

NPE Non-Permissive Environment (security)

NPE Network Provider Edge

NPE Non-Production Environment

NPE Non-Person Entity (computer security)

NPE Non-Polar Extractives

NPE Nikon Precision Europe GmbH (Langen, Germany)

NPE Nonpartisan Education Review

NPE Nuclear Packing Efficiency (correlation of volume & DNA content of a cell nucleus with microscopic analysis)

NPE Network Performance Endpoints (Ganynede)

NPE Non-Personnel Expenditure/Expense

NPE NOBL Protective Enclosure

NPE National Power Equipment, Inc. (Newark, NJ)

NPE National President-Elect

NPE Nuclear Planning & Execution

NPE NavipPlan Extended (financial planning software)

NPE New Product Execution

NPE Natural Power and Energy, LLC (Scottsdale, AZ)

NPE Non-Public Education (North Carolina)

NPE Non-Permanent Employee

NPE Nonlinear Polarization Evolution

No. Please. Enough.

Nitrogen Phosphorous Energy

tiny laser

You do know the card is called twin laser turret, right? That's why it has two attacks...

Um, tiny lasers refers to two attack strength swarms, TIE Fighter, Z-95, that sort of thing.

tiny laser

You do know the card is called twin laser turret, right? That's why it has two attacks...

Of course I do. Blame the Scum and Villainy podcast. Kelvan and Sozin has been using Tiny Lasers to refer to TLT. I think it is funny so I call it that too. I can see how it would be confusing since I didn't refer to them as TLTs first. Without knowing the origin it would definitely be confusing. I'll edit for clarity.

Um, tiny lasers refers to two attack strength swarms, TIE Fighter, Z-95, that sort of thing.

Um, no, it doesn't. Tiny Lasers has never been used to refer to those anywhere that I have seen. See above.

This thread is NPE

I consider the exemplary NPE to be the infamous Time Elemental deck from MTG, an old combo that involved cycling your own turn endlessly while the other player could only watch and basically do nothing. There's always some chance that the opponent has something special, but that often means you have to be prepared for the specific circumstances.

X-Wing has some risk of bringing about this situation, and the constant appearance of players who want this or that fixed is testimony to that. Some games just seem locked in place and this can be frustrating (admit it - you've been there and it was not the best thing in the world). The opponent's abilities and upgrades appear to cover everything you brought to the table and the rest of the game is just a predictable slog towards the inevitable outcome. Factors causing this are, probably among other things:

- The same cards have wildly different effectiveness on different ships, even though their points cost is always the same.

- The steadily increasing amount of upgrades, that make more optimisations possible.

- The limited number of ships per side; it's hard to cover many eventualities with just 2-5 ships and still play on your own strengths.

Now, the problem with the whole NPE business is that while it is reassuring that most if not all combinations can be beaten without superhuman effort, this matters little when you're actually playing. Knowing that an entirely different combination of ships would go through those TLT Y-Wings like hot butter just isn't very helpful during a game. Preferably you want a close game with what you actually brought to the table, not a theoretical win with what the forum says you should have brought. And basically having your opponent dictate what you should play - because you have to bring paper against his rock - might also be less fun for some.

If you're very concerned with 'the meta' and how the game develops on a larger scale, then a lot of switching of strategies, rock-paper-scissors style, might be an indication of a healthy game to you. But during actual play, this might be just a string of NPEs where players are just hoping they have gambled on having chosen the right answer to whatever they supposed their opponent would bring. So a balanced meta is not an unambiguous indication of a balanced game, or simply a fun game.

It's good to hear that, in some form, the above is a consideration for the designers, because I really feel it's an issue for this particular game. Hopefully, some more creative "out of the box" solutions will also be considered, like greater emphasis on matches with more points or more possibilities for engaging cinematic play.

N.P.E = Not Particularly Explicit

since it varies from person to person, really

for me, personally, an NPE is something that turns an otherwise fun game into a complete one man wankfest by removing one of the players from the equation

good examples are counter-spell heavy decks in MTG (no you don't get to play the game), Mage Hunter Strike force in warmachine (no your positioning doesn't get to matter ****), and fat Han in X-wing miniatures (no your maneuvers don't mean **** because I can still throw dice in your face)

I'm going to declare any event I encounter in this game and dislike to be an NPE and blame the game designers. Because, obviously, it's them. And not me.