11 hours ago, FrogTrigger said:

So because we didn't get any word on the app at celebration, what exactly did they talk about ? The future of Star Wars games, was that just Destiny and X-Wing? Should we take that as a sign?

Well, we are not seeing any news for FFG miniature games recently (MoM, IA, Descent, etc). I think its just some time to Runewars or other branchs shine for a while. Just chill out lol.

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" Road to Legend was released on Steam, iOS and Google Play stores earlier this year and was widely praised for smartly handling the game’s combat and exploration. In fact, during the publisher’s annual press conference at Gen Con this year, Fantasy Flight Games CEO Christian Petersen noted that sales for Descent have tripled since the release of the game’s free companion app."

Looking at that Quote in the Article http://www.polygon.com/2016/8/11/12440742/mansions-of-madness-gencon-review-preview-steam-ios-android-app-2016 , I am pretty sure they want to do that for Imperial Assault, too.

14 hours ago, RogueLieutenant said:

i wasn't at the panel, but I thought they did again confirm that the app is coming, and didn't say anything more about it. Which is still good news.

Yeah, pretty sure they did. There was also a tweet from their official account that it was still in the pipe, but no hard news about it was available.

Tripled? Wow. That is impressive. Any time you can do that to your sales... you do it. lol.

I can't wait for all the WHERE CAN I FIND BOBA FETT posts that pop up when the App launches We will need a FAQ stickied just for that question.

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"All told, we’ve spent the better part of a year developing both companion app clients and backends."

So assuming they didn't start the IA app until they had tested the market with RTL, I'd say we could see the release any time now.

I will be honest, app would make me buy some Imperial Assault stuff. Now, my copy is sitting and waiting. And so am I

I can't say the App would make me buy more IA products....because I bought the whole collection already in anticipation of the App

I have the entirety of IA already (irrespective of the app), but eagerly await the app to get even more out of the game

I also have atleast one of everything and would love the App so that we can all feel great when the rebs win! I would also like to use some tiles from other expansions with each other, especially the twin shadows tiles.

So the way they did this in RTL is that the first campaign was core only, then the Delve that uses a mix of everything, then the Seeds of Corruption campaign which focuses on using the Nerekhall expansion.

Now, like IA there are side quests between the story quests in campaign mode, these side quests draw upon ALL of your products. So that means owning multiple boxed expansions will increase your pool of possible side quests (as well as Monster and Villain packs, which are the semi-equivalent of our blister packs I guess). So you won't see say Twin Shadows tile in the first core campaign story missions, but there will most likely be a TS specific side mission that can possibly show up. And possibly having R2/C3, Boba, etc.. will add even more possibilities of seeing TS themed side missions appear.

Now the Delve is a randomized dungeon crawler that is like playing a mini campaign with full character progression compressed into one session, sans story line. There are 6 Delve quests in a session chosen randomly from the products you own, every product you own adds another Delve quest to the pool. Obviously if they picked a Delve quest from say the upcoming Endor box then that Delve quest is going to use those tiles, monsters, bosses etc..

So in a way you can use all of your components in every single play mode for Descent, BUT there are some modes that are focused specifically on certain content (IE the Nerekhall campaign, The Delve sessions, the Core campaign etc..).

It's a great way to mix and match things AND in all of this you have a massive pool of monsters that can show up in ANY Quest. So it is just as likely you could see Gamorians or Jet Troopers showing up in a core only campaign. Now to me that is cool as there are just so many choices and it keeps things fresh.

Now again, this is all speculation, and I promise no animals were harmed in the making of this speculation, but RTL is the best example we have to go off of. I fully expect IA to be at least SLIGHTLY different though and innovative.

I'm just waiting for the Admiral Ackbar "It's an app!" memes to appear.

5 hours ago, FrogTrigger said:

So the way they did this in RTL is that the first campaign was core only, then the Delve that uses a mix of everything, then the Seeds of Corruption campaign which focuses on using the Nerekhall expansion.

Now, like IA there are side quests between the story quests in campaign mode, these side quests draw upon ALL of your products. So that means owning multiple boxed expansions will increase your pool of possible side quests (as well as Monster and Villain packs, which are the semi-equivalent of our blister packs I guess). So you won't see say Twin Shadows tile in the first core campaign story missions, but there will most likely be a TS specific side mission that can possibly show up. And possibly having R2/C3, Boba, etc.. will add even more possibilities of seeing TS themed side missions appear.

Now the Delve is a randomized dungeon crawler that is like playing a mini campaign with full character progression compressed into one session, sans story line. There are 6 Delve quests in a session chosen randomly from the products you own, every product you own adds another Delve quest to the pool. Obviously if they picked a Delve quest from say the upcoming Endor box then that Delve quest is going to use those tiles, monsters, bosses etc..

So in a way you can use all of your components in every single play mode for Descent, BUT there are some modes that are focused specifically on certain content (IE the Nerekhall campaign, The Delve sessions, the Core campaign etc..).

It's a great way to mix and match things AND in all of this you have a massive pool of monsters that can show up in ANY Quest. So it is just as likely you could see Gamorians or Jet Troopers showing up in a core only campaign. Now to me that is cool as there are just so many choices and it keeps things fresh.

Now again, this is all speculation, and I promise no animals were harmed in the making of this speculation, but RTL is the best example we have to go off of. I fully expect IA to be at least SLIGHTLY different though and innovative.

Based on this, I wonder if FFG will provide options that you can toggle on or off. Like: Do you want to include timeline appropriate characters vs. all characters? From other threads, I know some folks like to stick to "cannon" time periods and others think it's fun to mix. I'd like to be able to customize the Imperial-AI (IAI?) in that way and maybe others. Is there anything like this in the Descent app (not specifically time periods obviously)?

Should the app be like mansions of madness? In what you mark the expansions you have and the game relies on them.

27 minutes ago, Belvasques said:

Should the app be like mansions of madness? In what you mark the expansions you have and the game relies on them.

That's how the Descent one works, too, so it's probably a good bet that the IA one will be similar. So that means that if you're a fan of the time periods you can just turn off your Jedi Luke or Han expansions if you like, depending on the time period of the campaign.

The extra variable that I am most interested to see how they handle in IA are the allies. They have been a sticking point since release with their high price, or even when the cost is lower still wondering - is it worth it? Most times it honestly just isn't. I've seen various developers comment on how they dislike that the Rebels feel they can't use their favourite iconic characters. People pick the game up and go oh wow, Luke Han and Chewie!! But unless they luck into a mission with those guys already in it, they won't ever see them.

Hopefully they come up with something creative in the app to fix it. And they can't just shoe horn them into every mission, that would get old fast and some people prefer the story to be about their characters and not the OT cast. So there still needs to be that on/off switch.

One weakness the IA app will have as opposed to th Descent app is the rather small hero pool in which to choose from.

Descent has 50+ heroes at the moment, and close to 20 classes, meaning there is an almost infinite number of ways to design the party. The replay value is immense.

IA doesn't have the flexibility of character classes, or the Hero and Monster sets, so it's much more limited.

The allies system helps alleviate this problem - if you own all the blisters, then your party will look and feel different every time, based on the wide range of allies you could be assigned. The side missions would need to almost completely random to make this work right.

If they follow the same format as Descent, each physical product will add a side quest which means IA would launch with 37 side quests. Standard campaign has 5 side quests? So you would need to play the campaign 7+ times to get through every side quest. I'd say that is pretty big replayability..

IA is faced with that 'flexibility of character classes' whether the app launches or not... not sure why it would matter then versus now? So you are saying that the lack of character classes in IA is an issue?

Ok, I've looked a little into the Descent app, and I think I understand what it is, but @FrogTrigger , could you explain that a bit? Does that mean that the app would include the side missions that came in the character packs, that we'd get entirely new side missions for those character packs, or am I completely off?

Completely agree that there will be a huge variety in side quests, that's a really attractive prospect for the app.

But I've always been a little disappointed that IA doesn't allow the same range of hero builds as Descent. Whilst I understand why - a lack of obvious generic classes, for one - it does (for me at least) mean that some of the heroes get a little stale over time. Some of the smuggler/ rogue types allow flexible builds, but others, like Gharkaan, don't.

So it's not a problem unique to the app, but my experience of the Descent app is that I love to sit down, try out a new party or hero build, and see how it works out. That won't be quite the same.

(still can't wait to get my hands on the app though ????)

26 minutes ago, subtrendy said:

Ok, I've looked a little into the Descent app, and I think I understand what it is, but @FrogTrigger , could you explain that a bit? Does that mean that the app would include the side missions that came in the character packs, that we'd get entirely new side missions for those character packs, or am I completely off?

Road to legend contains quests for the box sets and Hero & Monster packs but not the Lieutenant packs. Currently there is a bug where the 9 H&M quests are not showing up in the campaigns.

EDIT: Also, they are new quests not the published ones.

I wonder if the app-IP will be introduce a new strategic dynamic. An experienced (human) IP will utilize a lot of strategy in their gameplay (sometimes even backing off a bit): For instance, human IPs will often focus fire on specific heroes and choose synergistic class/agenda/deployment combos. It's possible that the app will simplify/randomize it's "decisions" which would make it less strategic but it could compensate by being given bigger threat/deployment budgets overall. In a way, that would be more thematic because it's sometimes strange for a trooper to run past a healthy hero to go pick on the one that is currently the target of the IP. Overall, this could change the Hero's strategies as well.

If they are writing quests for each physical product I can see why it's taking so long.

Also, I looked at the credits in RtL and there were only 3 programmers building that puppy.

Ya that is pure speculation on my part, maybe they plan to just adapt the existing quests or re work them completely.. but it seems weird that they wouldn't include quests with the blister packs as it drives the sales.. otherwise what is the motivation for the App only player to buy them outside of the figurine? I haven't bought a single lieutenant pack for Descent, if you do they have a chance to show up as a "you're taking to long" effect in missions, but that just doesn't seem like enough to prompt me to spend the money.. however if it added a whole mission.. And again this is the grey territory where we aren't totally sure how they plan to handle allies. Will you still need to do a side quest to get them? Will they just show up randomly? Built in to specific missions?

@ellhaynes I understand now what you mean and I do agree, the lack of class choice makes sense for IA but it does limit it. I love the class combinations that Descent offers and the Delve is the perfect chance to try out new builds. Again, not sure what they plan to do with this for IA.. and all of these questions are helping me realize just how much work it is to adapt a game like IA to this app. It isn't simple plug and play, there are enough key differences that need to be handled appropriately. They used RTL as a chance to fix some things or upgrade/update them, like activation order for one, so I can see them taking this chance to do the same to similar systems they didn't like about the base IA and that itself is exciting.

29 minutes ago, subtrendy said:

Ok, I've looked a little into the Descent app, and I think I understand what it is, but @FrogTrigger , could you explain that a bit? Does that mean that the app would include the side missions that came in the character packs, that we'd get entirely new side missions for those character packs, or am I completely off?

It's kind of hard to say how ally packs will be implemented in an IA app, since there's not really a direct analog for allies in Descent.

The Descent app is an entirely-new campaign with entirely-new missions and side-missions (in other words it's unlikely that we'll ever be able to play any of the existing missions against the app). Like The Cocky Rooster said you could buy Hero & Monster packs that unlocked additional side missions, but the monsters in those packs would also be added randomly to all of the other missions as well. It's pretty much the exact model as what we've seen with physical IA expansions like the Hired Guns or the ISB Agents - we get a side mission that sort of centers around those guys but we can also see them show up as enemies in all of the other missions.

The more traditional villain packs can be compared to the "Lieutenant Packs" in Descent. The app doesn't really use them very much - there are a few that are written in to the story, but the rest just sort of show up to hunt you sometimes if you take too long to complete a mission.

My guess (and it's a complete guess) is that each ally will come with a side-mission that, if you win, will allow you to bring the ally with you in other missions just like in the regular campaign. Or maybe they'll just show up from time to time to help? In either case it could be tough to get the balance right (there's no concept of "threat" in the Descent app, at least not that the user can see - it's all just "place this group of monsters here")

Good stuff @FrogTrigger

Another interesting slant will be how the app handles open units. Descent benefits from having all monster groups allocated two habitats (not sure that's what it's called?), which means if you're in a swamp you find swamp-type monsters etc.. really helps to build the atmosphere.

IA doesn't really have that at the moment, but I hope the app does fix it somehow. I want to find squads of storm troopers patrolling on an imperial ship, regardless of what stage of the campaign I'm at. I don't expect to find squads of trandoshans.... or a dewback....

And then there's the trouble of working out when the app should spend threat - as soon as it's available, or save it for something bigger and nastier. Again, the Descent app doesn't have to worry about this quite so much.

Yep, the more I think about it, the more complicated it seems to get the app right. And I really, really want it to be right!