Legion is truly a superb game. Armada is great but the long periods between waves just does so much damage to the community. It’s frustrating because I assume once article is finally released there will still be a 4 or 5 month wait for the release. Legion will be giving its community shiny new plastic every month for the foreseeable future. That’s the proper way to release new stuff for a game.

Monthly releases for Armada would be well near intolerable, though.

I prefer a 2 wave a year release schedule. I would be thrilled if Armada went back to that. Give me new ships every summer con season, and again at Christmas time. 6 months is just about perfect to play out all the new possibilities of a wave, without the doomsayers screaming that something needs a nerf. New product drops to shake things up. Perfect.

I understand why FFG would want to slow the release schedule for Armada. Each new wave exponentially increases the options for fleet builds. Who knows, we may even get something that makes Tagg and Konstantine viable options.

In a perfect world, for me, we would see two waves a year, with between 2-5 new ships or squadron packs per wave.

46 minutes ago, svelok said:

Monthly releases for Armada would be well near intolerable, though.

Not... really...

I mean, dropping 4-6 things at once - everything - and then waiting 6 months for the next thing... That could easily be one release (one item) per month for that 4-6 month period.

Which is exactly what theyre doing with Legion... taking the whole Wave, and just drip-releasing it instead of all at once... In some ways, its worse as you get small incremental changes before a meta shift - and things are muddied as you dont hagve time to resolve one thing before the next is out.

Its a boon and a bust... Not necessarily in equal measure, but... Y'know... Its kind of how it is.

At the very least, Wave 1 and 2 of Armada could have worked under that format and things would have been essentially unchanged.

13 hours ago, Mikael Hasselstein said:

Hey, at least we're not Imperial Assault.

Or even RuneWars.... how long did that game last????

11 hours ago, svelok said:

Monthly releases for Armada would be well near intolerable, though.

Agreed.

Monthly waves is what destroyed STAW. It creates runaway power creep.

13 minutes ago, Democratus said:

Agreed.

Monthly waves is what destroyed STAW. It creates runaway power creep.

I think the it may have had more to do with bad game balance. They rushed out product without fully playtesting.

Monthly releases are not, by themselves, a bad thing, at least at initial launch. The game company just can't skimp on the playtesting.

They need to have quality expansions ready to go, and dribble them out so the fan base isn't required to buy in all at once. Bonus, now that fan base is trained to budget $50 a month for your game. The problem then comes in that the window for "HOLYCRAP THIS GAME IS DEAD" has now shrunk. One massive, 6 month, overseas issue, and your fan base is jumping ship, where in Armada we call that on time...

You can't have monthly releases and have full playtesting. WizKids (and FFG) simply don't have that many employees.

The biggest problem is that the playtesting cycle gets progressively longer with each release (since there are more combinations to test). It's not sustainable with any reasonable head count.

3 minutes ago, cynanbloodbane said:

They need to have quality expansions ready to go, and dribble them out so the fan base isn't required to buy in all at once. Bonus, now that fan base is trained to budget $50 a month for your game. The problem then comes in that the window for "HOLYCRAP THIS GAME IS DEAD" has now shrunk. One massive, 6 month, overseas issue, and your fan base is jumping ship, where in Armada we call that on time...

Most of this could be helped by more consistent communication. If even just a once to twice a month article about regionals results and the like would be nice.

I think they rely on product releases for content far too much, when even just a monthly interview or the like would at least keep the appearance the game is on the radar. As it stands they just go dark for months at a time.

10 minutes ago, Democratus said:

You can't have monthly releases and have full playtesting. WizKids (and FFG) simply don't have that many employees.

The biggest problem is that the playtesting cycle gets progressively longer with each release (since there are more combinations to test). It's not sustainable with any reasonable head count.

You can, but it requires a huge lead time. You almost need to give yourself a minimum of 1.5 years worth of time from drawing board to release, per product.

Frommy experience, the games with constant delays are the ones the design team actually cares about getting it right.

Let's not be so quick to forget how much info they actually have given us the past quarter. We actually got more than ever.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2018/4/4/always-more-to-learn/

Okay hopefully they are all starting to appear...

"FFG doesnt have enough playtesters to do a monthly"

They can solve that problem real easy........

They have a forum full of players who would readily sign a NDA and playtest new ships for free... and quite a lot of them can do it over vassal/TTS with other playtesters!

Im sorta on the fence with monthly releases. It would be awesome but i wouldnt be able to afford it.

Really i just want monthly content. Articles and the like, with every 6months a wave.

(There are so many talented writers and bloggers and podcasters that play armada and are on the forums that it stupifies me beyond belief that FFG cant get out a article a month. That is what truly saddens me, FFG has so many resources, many of which would be done for free and yet cant be ****** to do it. Why id volunteer to write articles for them (no one would read them, theyd make no sense hahahaha))

13 hours ago, DrakonLord said:

"FFG doesnt have enough playtesters to do a monthly"

They can solve that problem real easy........

They have a forum full of players who would readily sign a NDA and playtest new ships for free... and quite a lot of them can do it over vassal/TTS with other playtesters!

Have you seen the ‘feedback’ 90% of this forum gives?

The vast majority of people here really don’t have a clue how game design works, don’t know how to fix a problem (or even identify the actual problem to start with!), and don’t know how to present their experience and opinions constructively.

FFG are not stupid. If they felt like they’d benefit from more help they will ask. They know who to ask too, because their playtesters can recommend, or they contact one of the community contributors you mentioned.

11 minutes ago, TheCallum said:

Have you seen the ‘feedback’ 90% of this forum gives?

The vast majority of people here really don’t have a clue how game design works, don’t know how to fix a problem (or even identify the actual problem to start with!), and don’t know how to present their experience and opinions constructively.

FFG are not stupid. If they felt like they’d benefit from more help they will ask. They know who to ask too, because their playtesters can recommend, or they contact one of the community contributors you mentioned.

A number of years ago a (now defunct) company did just that.... they looked at the rules forums & the faction sub forums and looked at those who (like @Drasnighta here) helped out with rules & faction interactions etc and then asked them to help beta test v2 of the game system....

3 minutes ago, slasher956 said:

A number of years ago a (now defunct) company did just that.... they looked at the rules forums & the faction sub forums and looked at those who (like @Drasnighta here) helped out with rules & faction interactions etc and then asked them to help beta test v2 of the game system....

Out of curiosity, What company?

Spartan Games,

There was about 30 or so of us IIRC asked to look at the 2nd beta drafts....

I walked away when they release units for every faction only a few months after the release of V2 that NONE of the forum beta guys had seen

1 hour ago, TheCallum said:

Have you seen the ‘feedback’ 90% of this forum gives?

The vast majority of people here really don’t have a clue how game design works, don’t know how to fix a problem (or even identify the actual problem to start with!), and don’t know how to present their experience and opinions constructively.

FFG are not stupid. If they felt like they’d benefit from more help they will ask. They know who to ask too, because their playtesters can recommend, or they contact one of the community contributors you mentioned.

But many of the things brought up are valid points and many times it seems FFG ignores these or go to extremes to "fix" these issues and many have made great recommendations for fixes, some better than the official ones. Many times the forums have found issues that need to be FAQ'd immediately, yet it made it past the FFG playtest.

4 minutes ago, Cusm said:

But many of the things brought up are valid points and many times it seems FFG ignores these or go to extremes to "fix" these issues and many have made great recommendations for fixes, some better than the official ones. Many times the forums have found issues that need to be FAQ'd immediately, yet it made it past the FFG playtest.

Who are these "many" and what "great recommendations"?

Most of the ideas to "fix" Armada that are proposed here... are not really good suggestions.

3 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

Who are these "many" and what "great recommendations"?

Most of the ideas to "fix" Armada that are proposed here... are not really good suggestions.

Sorry not exactly Armada-centric, FFG forums, Armada has a lot less issues than X-Wing which was my first game and their issues led me to Armada. IMO the only issue in Armada I have felt was/is broken was the life boat, and that was fixed, most others are really complaints or desire for meta change, Flotillas, Relay, nothing really broken in Armada. The forums are a great tool that I think are under utilized. Look at the RLB, how long after release did the forums find an issue and how long before the forums had 2 legitimate ruling/fixes? Yet this made it past the FFG play testers and 6 months(?) to address.

3 minutes ago, Cusm said:

Sorry not exactly Armada-centric, FFG forums, Armada has a lot less issues than X-Wing which was my first game and their issues led me to Armada. IMO the only issue in Armada I have felt was/is broken was the life boat, and that was fixed, most others are really complaints or desire for meta change, Flotillas, Relay, nothing really broken in Armada. The forums are a great tool that I think are under utilized. Look at the RLB, how long after release did the forums find an issue and how long before the forums had 2 legitimate ruling/fixes? Yet this made it past the FFG play testers and 6 months(?) to address.

Yeah, can definitely agree with that. FAQ support is too slow - and sometimes I feel we're the playtesters (RLB I'm looking at you).

I would argue that there are just a few Negative Nabooboo's here that drown out the rest with their constant pull towards the Dark Side.

Just now, CaribbeanNinja said:

I would argue that there are just a few Negative Nabooboo's here that drown out the rest with their constant pull towards the Dark Side.

Spend some time in the X-Wing forum, you will learn to ignore the bi-hourly nerf threads and see what really should be addressed. Like here, I HATE flotillas thematically, I want them blasted into the twin suns of the Tatooine system, but here I will state I wish or it would be awesome "if they were this or that", but I don't cry they are broken and ruining the game. Although they are broken and are ruining the game and should be erased from the movies and replaced with walkie-talkies.

15 Minutes in the Legion forum showed me the difference

1 minute ago, CaribbeanNinja said:

15 Minutes in the Legion forum showed me the difference

Gotta love the Clash of Hobbiest vs "FFG Players".