Hey fellow Xwingers!

Haven't been to the Forum in awhile (besides the Rebels discussion thread), but I saw this video, and thought it was insightful on power creep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxszx60ZwGw

I was thinking we could discuss power creep, and instead of freaking about the sky falling and the end of Xwing, we could discuss ways we can help new players have a positive experience, even though there are tons of super powerful and intimidating lists out there. Please feel free to share!

-Orrin

I think the only real power creep in x-wing is the red die creep. I'm not sure how you make 2 attack die ships relevant when there are ships throwing dice at the level of proton torpedoes (which was supposed to be a "super weapon" at the beginning of the game). I would like to think that the designers will be creating synergies or other mechanisms (like Swarm Leader) that make these ships useful again.

Having said that, most of the power creep issues level out in Epic play.

3 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

I think the only real power creep in x-wing is the red die creep. I'm not sure how you make 2 attack die ships relevant when there are ships throwing dice at the level of proton torpedoes (which was supposed to be a "super weapon" at the beginning of the game). I would like to think that the designers will be creating synergies or other mechanisms (like Swarm Leader) that make these ships useful again.

Having said that, most of the power creep issues level out in Epic play.

Sorry Darth, you know the rules. You either think the game is awesome, everything is awesome and perfect, and thus truly understand the game and can help new players. Or You are freaking out that the sky is falling and the game is ending. I'm going to have to put you down for the second option. I know your quibble is small, but gosh dang it there's no room for nuance here. Stop freaking out, man the game isn't going to end.

22 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

I think the only real power creep in x-wing is the red die creep. I'm not sure how you make 2 attack die ships relevant when there are ships throwing dice at the level of proton torpedoes (which was supposed to be a "super weapon" at the beginning of the game). I would like to think that the designers will be creating synergies or other mechanisms (like Swarm Leader) that make these ships useful again.

Having said that, most of the power creep issues level out in Epic play.

Yea, I agree, the Red dice is the only power creep I really see. Then again, I still rule my local store with my TIE swarm. I'm just curious about new players, and what having to deal with such a built-up meta right off the bat is like. I joined at like wave 7, which was before things really started to pick up.

There is a certain need for double or even triple actions. action Economy became more and more important and it was always important in the first place. Evade, Focus, TL is something that a lot of ships do these days. Some even more. Complexity creep is still imho the bigger thing, while there is a certain power creep for sure, but most of that lies in the upgrade cards.

4 minutes ago, Sir Orrin said:

Yea, I agree, the Red dice is the only power creep I really see. Then again, I still rule my local store with my TIE swarm. I'm just curious about new players, and what having to deal with such a built-up meta right off the bat is like. I joined at like wave 7, which was before things really started to pick up.

As it happens, I've played a few games over the past few weeks with a couple that are both new to the game.

What has been interesting is the process of guiding them through list building, helping them understand card synergies, and why certain things are powerful.

I've also been deliberately building my lists to not have the"screw you" elements that Scum are well known for.

I am, however, taking TLT Kavil, Predator Fen Rau, and Misthunter Zuccas as my backbone. My friends are learning the value of positioning and dice control as they play. If they want to prevent those 4 and 5 dice attacks, they need to learn how to predict my movements and find the weak points. Similarly, they're learning how to mitigate damage by appropriate token usage, and by good list building.

They haven't quite learned how to make me dance yet. But they are getting there...

Unfortunately, yes. They are not taking A-Wings or TIE Fighters. Because those are just not going to put out enough damage.

Having started around the end of wave 1, things actually got sort of crazy with two ships, Outrider, and Phantom. There has always been power creep in the game. But as time rolls on this game is getting progressively more into an almost exponential power curve. I truly miss the days when you had your couple ships, a few carefully picked upgrades that have you more options than bonuses. Back when there was one Maneuver, one action, one shot. The game left that behind first in wave three, than a little more was lost in 5 and now you have unlimited focus/TL proton rocket shots out of Rau with our to much effort. I miss those days. I try and get the fairly large group that's in my area to play classic style games, but they have been playing comp so long they can't put their comp lists away.

Also, go pull up the Extra Credits video on Accretion. That's another thing X-wing is dealing with. Good example is the upcoming condition mechanics

I still call nonsense on Accretion, it just does not fit the bill and used by people just to *****, instead of making any form of constructive or even just accurate description.

"Upcoming condition mechanics" is a good example as we had those since wave 1 and the new additions are a refinement of the old mechanics and make them easier to track and allow for more elaborated conditions by creating more space for descriptions of conditions. The polar opposite to accretion, yet accretion gets mentioned so often while simple power creep could just have mentioned. You know, extra credits has good episodes on power creep as well ;-)

1 hour ago, EastCoast said:

Sorry Darth, you know the rules. You either think the game is awesome, everything is awesome and perfect, and thus truly understand the game and can help new players.

Fine, have it your way: the game is awesome, but there are Power Creeps out there who try to ram a beautifully designed, narrative game into an ugly, limiting, blood-in-the-sand death match.

1 hour ago, SEApocalypse said:

Complexity creep is still imho the bigger thing, while there is a certain power creep for sure, but most of that lies in the upgrade cards.

For me, "complexity creep" is actually a desirable part of the game. The more working parts there are, the more fun there is in list building, and hopefully more variety as well. OTOH, see above.

1 hour ago, Punning Pundit said:

Unfortunately, yes. They are not taking A-Wings or TIE Fighters. Because those are just not going to put out enough damage.

But, since the players are new to the game, do they feel like they are missing out on something, or are they content playing with the new ships?? For a new player, does power creep even matter--since they have no expectations about how the game "used to be."

On the last part I can say: Seems like they are just as fine as me. I got in into wave 8, and I am totally happy with buying mostly wave 8 stuff plus some older stuff to complement for my early tournament list building. Nothing wrong with that.

Now complexity creep can be problematic for a healthy player population, but I think FFG regulates this via power creep to keep some solid and easy list options avaible. Triple defenders for example has certainly some power creep, but nearly none of the complexity creep, while a elaborated manaroo mindlink lists, for example with Palob and Guri has tons of effects going on. Still both list types are valid … which offers tons of options in list building.

24 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

I still call nonsense on Accretion, it just does not fit the bill and used by people just to *****, instead of making any form of constructive or even just accurate description.

Just watched the video on Accretion, and I have to agree whole-heartedly. FFG has definitively worked to keep old elements of the game relevant. Exploring new design space (Conditions, Turn Zero Effects) is game development, period.

Whether you like it or not many of the additions to X-wing fall under Accretion, not power creep. More specifically new mechanic types. The difference is that acreting layers of mechanics aren't really bad. Accretion can cause power creep overall, sometimes it is the power creep itself, but X-wing actually did it right... Most of the time. Ion, was a new mechanic, but not really power creep. Tractor beams. Cloaking. SLAM. Every time they came out with a new upgrade type like Tech or Illicit. These are all new mechanics that have accumulated over time. And they are the real reason is difficult for new players to pick up the game quickly.

Raw linear power creep is easy to explain to a player just starting out, like ship X is better because it has higher scores in these areas. But even the latest ships don't vary to far from an expected level. Now trying to explain all the different upgrades and their interactions and layers of timing? That's fighting through a lot of Accretion.

But in this case I actually like it. The addition of the new mechanics was not necessarily game breaking most of the time. (I'm looking at you, cloak) They were always more what they were meant to be: new tools. And that's fine. Yes, some of those new tools smashed the old ones, and we jump up in arms and yell power creep! But that's not really what happened. Most of the time when we could point to specific benchmarks of the power creep curve we are pointing to a mechanic that's already in the game, and then got super strong all of a sudden. Like TLT. Small turrets had been around since their addition in wave 1, but not at that damage output level or consistency. Or the Jumpers, those accreted on upgrades had been around, just never able to be combined. Or the Outrider doing boost and Barrel rolls all the time.

Power creep doesn't make the game necessarily harder for new players. Accretion almost always does.

Power creep does discourage new players because when they compete against experienced players and without the understanding of the evolution of the game... running an T-65 X-wing, a couple of A-wings and a Hawk won't last long with Wave 10 ships.

I think we've seen a number of power creep cards, consistently through the waves. I think the one's below have pushed things the farthest - though. I'm leaving out the phantom because of the current game state. I'm also ignoring the epic expansions - which mainly bring us lots of good cards, but little beyond c3p0, palpatine and limitedly r3a2 as power cards. The aces packs did little - pushing some behind ships forwards - with the exception of veterans tie x7 pushing the defender to the top of the efficiency chain. I'm also ignoring pilot cards and ship chassis.

Wave 2
Engine Upgrade / Push the limit. - the first major power creep, allowing dual actions, at a cost of stress and ept slot and large ship boosting. The strength of engine upgrade wasn't noticed by many until much later.

Wave 3
Fire control systems / Heavy Laser Cannon - action efficiency, limited to systems ships and an increased attack die limited to cannon slots

Wave 4!
Predator / Recon Specialist. - action efficiency expands to crew slots and the ept - but unlike PTL, we now have a "target lock" without stress. (note, that now we really have action efficiency everywhere between ept, system and crew slots.)

!From this point forward we begin to see more efficient and stronger named pilot abilities.

Wave 5
The first large ships with massive upgrade potential - but nothing really exceptional here - HLC makes a turret appearance, but is fairly well tempered, experimental interface is reigned in enough to be tame in comparison with ptl. This is where Stress becomes a large part of the control meta

Wave 6
Autothrusters - the first big defensive upgrade since wave 1 biggs and r2d2.

Wave 7
Crack shot / glitterstim / TLT / extra munitions - This is a huge wave - crack shot pushes the offense + action efficiency values up really high, TLT also cuts through the defenses of most ships, except for the few autothrusting ships that don't care. Stim is a bit more minor, but is effectively access to a "third action". Extra munitions is a huge push for ordnance, maybe more than most people realized at the time - while ordnance certainly needed the boost, it's definitely a power creep in the game.

Wave 8
Guidance Chips, Attani Mindlink, Juke and the Jumpmaster platform - another in the boost of ordnance, and the perfect combination of cheap ship with tons of upgrades. Mindlink is another boost in action efficiency, but one that stacks really really well. Juke is improved crack shot with an element of control, though not as straight forward.

Wave 9
primarily power creep in results added - which is not attributable to upgrade cards as much (think Nora, Finn etc... ) it will be interesting to look back at the longer lasting effects.

So there's a clear pattern of increase in action efficiency which is related to offense and reposition- and as it goes on, they end up stacking on eachother, and we've gone from a game where people had maybe 1 action and 2/3 attack dice, to a game where we've got maybe 3 actions and 3/4 attack dice - with little to no increase in defense. - and that changes a lot of the basic assumptions of how the game plays - low attack single action ships suffering the most. High AGI becomes even more variant, and low agi high HP starts to become reliable.

5 minutes ago, Ravncat said:

I think we've seen a number of power creep cards, consistently through the waves. I think the one's below have pushed things the farthest - though. I'm leaving out the phantom because of the current game state. I'm also ignoring the epic expansions - which mainly bring us lots of good cards, but little beyond c3p0, palpatine and limitedly r3a2 as power cards. The aces packs did little - pushing some behind ships forwards - with the exception of veterans tie x7 pushing the defender to the top of the efficiency chain. I'm also ignoring pilot cards and ship chassis.

Wave 2
Engine Upgrade / Push the limit. - the first major power creep, allowing dual actions, at a cost of stress and ept slot and large ship boosting. The strength of engine upgrade wasn't noticed by many until much later.

Wave 3
Fire control systems / Heavy Laser Cannon - action efficiency, limited to systems ships and an increased attack die limited to cannon slots

Wave 4!
Predator / Recon Specialist. - action efficiency expands to crew slots and the ept - but unlike PTL, we now have a "target lock" without stress. (note, that now we really have action efficiency everywhere between ept, system and crew slots.)

!From this point forward we begin to see more efficient and stronger named pilot abilities.

Wave 5
The first large ships with massive upgrade potential - but nothing really exceptional here - HLC makes a turret appearance, but is fairly well tempered, experimental interface is reigned in enough to be tame in comparison with ptl. This is where Stress becomes a large part of the control meta

Wave 6
Autothrusters - the first big defensive upgrade since wave 1 biggs and r2d2.

Wave 7
Crack shot / glitterstim / TLT / extra munitions - This is a huge wave - crack shot pushes the offense + action efficiency values up really high, TLT also cuts through the defenses of most ships, except for the few autothrusting ships that don't care. Stim is a bit more minor, but is effectively access to a "third action". Extra munitions is a huge push for ordnance, maybe more than most people realized at the time - while ordnance certainly needed the boost, it's definitely a power creep in the game.

Wave 8
Guidance Chips, Attani Mindlink, Juke and the Jumpmaster platform - another in the boost of ordnance, and the perfect combination of cheap ship with tons of upgrades. Mindlink is another boost in action efficiency, but one that stacks really really well. Juke is improved crack shot with an element of control, though not as straight forward.

Wave 9
primarily power creep in results added - which is not attributable to upgrade cards as much (think Nora, Finn etc... ) it will be interesting to look back at the longer lasting effects.

So there's a clear pattern of increase in action efficiency which is related to offense and reposition- and as it goes on, they end up stacking on eachother, and we've gone from a game where people had maybe 1 action and 2/3 attack dice, to a game where we've got maybe 3 actions and 3/4 attack dice - with little to no increase in defense. - and that changes a lot of the basic assumptions of how the game plays - low attack single action ships suffering the most. High AGI becomes even more variant, and low agi high HP starts to become reliable.

back when EU cam out it was to powerful on large ships. it should have been small ship only with a separate upgrade card for large ships that was more expensive
Predator was under rated at at the start until people started effectively blocking then it became a must have card
but the last 2-3 wave the red dice have inflated. with 5+ attack dice becoming way to easy to achieve

Stop the emphasis on 100 point tournament deathmatches with zero theme and the problem of power creep is solved!

9 minutes ago, Sbloom141 said:

Stop the emphasis on 100 point tournament deathmatches with zero theme and the problem of power creep is solved!

Then what happens when somebody wants to play their thematic elite imperial fighter squadron (3 Defenders) or their thematic 'Palpatine travels somewhere on a Lambda shuttle with escort fighters' list against somebody else's thematic Rogue Squadron all X-wing list?

Power creep effects casual play just as much, because not everything that's new and powerful is not also thematic.

Jup, the focus on 100 point tournament deathmatches with zero theme is absurd. We all should focus more what X-Wing is really about.

9 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

I think the only real power creep in x-wing is the red die creep.

Maybe you should look a little more at the pricing of ships and upgrade cards, action efficiency, or compare a dial from Wave 1/2 with one from the latest ships.

9 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

I think the only real power creep in x-wing is the red die creep.

I'm not sure I agree with this... I'd argue that action economy creep is, at least if not more, significant.

Your point about 2 red dice ships is noted, but it's not the case that we aren't seeing 2 red dice because of the prevalence of torpedoes, it's because 2 red dice struggle to punch through 3 green dice behind stacked tokens.

So many of the top lists these days are based on action economy (including non-action based modifications) – x7 defenders, dengaroo, mindlink, palpatine.

I think red dice creep is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.

1 hour ago, Giledhil said:

Maybe you should look a little more at the pricing of ships and upgrade cards, action efficiency, or compare a dial from Wave 1/2 with one from the latest ships.

Yea..... I still find the Jumpmaster dial disgustingly good for a larger-base ship. and about the action economey creep, one of my friends had a great idea, that boost should only be allowed on small-base ships, but the falcon title gives it boost. Then the Falcon would actually have impressive speed. Just and interesting thought to me.

10 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

I think the only real power creep in x-wing is the red die creep. I'm not sure how you make 2 attack die ships relevant when there are ships throwing dice at the level of proton torpedoes (which was supposed to be a "super weapon" at the beginning of the game). I would like to think that the designers will be creating synergies or other mechanisms (like Swarm Leader) that make these ships useful again.

Having said that, most of the power creep issues level out in Epic play.

Say what? Ever tried to hit a fully tokened up TIE Defender with 2 dice attacks? And they are fully tokened up pretty much every turn. So is Assajj and Fenn in Paratanni list as well as Dengar in Dengaroo. Together these constitute perhaps 80% of competitive lists out there. Red dice power creep is in no small part a result of the need to break through the defenses of Phantoms, Interceptors and lately Defenders, as well as rebel regenerators and scum atttanni lists. When you face any of these, you need to throw a lot of hits at them or they'll just shrug it off.

It's not red die power creep that is the problem. It's the fact that more and more powerful and accurate attacks are needed to do anything at all in the game. A good reference point would be Armada, where ship's defenses aren't nearly as impenetrable but HP pools are considerably larger to compensate. In Armada a swarm of 6 corvettes is just as efficient as a couple of star destroyers because corvettes don't have to worry about their attacks just bouncing off. For that matter swarms of fighters can be very efficient despite only throwing 1 die at the enemy most of the time.

If you want to stop power creep, you'd need to start by reworking how defense works in the game and make sure it doesn't get any more powerful than it already is. Sadly the problem lies so deep in the game's core mechanics, that I don't think you can deal with that unless they decide to launch a 2nd edition of the game.

9 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

Whether you like it or not many of the additions to X-wing fall under Accretion, not power creep. More specifically new mechanic types. The difference is that acreting layers of mechanics aren't really bad. Accretion can cause power creep overall, sometimes it is the power creep itself, but X-wing actually did it right... Most of the time. Ion, was a new mechanic, but not really power creep. Tractor beams. Cloaking. SLAM. Every time they came out with a new upgrade type like Tech or Illicit. These are all new mechanics that have accumulated over time. And they are the real reason is difficult for new players to pick up the game quickly.

Accretion. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Based on the definition from the video, I disagree with your assessment. Tractor beams did not invalidate Ion cannons in any way, nor any of the other mechanisms you pointed out. They are all independent, viable tools in the game. Now, players may choose not to use them, but that is because of player choice, not design making the old mechanic irrelevant. What we see in X-Wing is player Min-Maxing --if a new element is released that seems more powerful than the old element, players do not choose the old element because they don't want to lose. The loss of old design elements is not because they do not work at all, but because players are focused on a tiny subset of the "best" elements of the game to the exclusion of all else. In fact, FFG has shown a keen interest in preventing willful Accretion by updating old elements of the game to meet the current standards.

Just to be the old curmudgeon, I think most of the complaints about X-Wing stems from the inability to think that playing the game is valid unless you have a more-than-reasonable chance to win. Gone are the days of multiplayer games (Sorry, Monopoly, Risk) where your chances of winning were 1-in-4, or even 1-in-6, and you played to play . Sure, somebody eventually won, but the chances that it would be you were actually pretty small. And we all had fun, anyways.

There is definitely powercreep in several ways:

Red dice were mentioned before. The dials get increasingly better - just compare the quadjumper (a tugboat!) to the B-Wing (a revolutionary starfighter!). The defensive power creep to survive the red dice power creep

But most importantly there's an action efficiency power creep. 3-4 actions are now good, 2 is ok and 1 is outright bad. And even worse: we see more and more actions that can't be prevented in any way! "Assign token", "acquire TL", "boost/barrel roll despite stress"... They are the true problem! 5 red dice are nice, but 5 red dice with focus, TL, outmaneuver, juke, crackshot, lonewolf, predator, zuckuss, ... THOSE are the problem we see.