4 minutes ago, Scopes said:

Bam. You nailed it. Ex D&D player?

And there's even more to unpack in your post. The bit about Risk and Monopoly...jeez, what do you mean by making such an articulate and well-reasoned post? What a great point as well.

Seriously, though, you are on point. I just participated in my first regional event ever (came in to the game April 2015) and man, it was all about who min/maxed the best AND who could apply those advantages to the best result. There were several really talented players there that didn't make the cut to top 8, however.

X Wing is not a straight-up comparison to D&D style min/maxing, because there, the DM could (theoretically) find a challenge that even a 20th level character, replete with all the good stuff, couldn't handle easily (Demogorgon, Tiamat, for example) if at all. I understand that you weren't comparing the two games, I just wanted to make that point.

1 hour ago, LordBlades said:

Just curious: what exactly in D&D did you think inhibited roleplay ?

Which of the 5 editions are we talking about??

1st Ed. Nothing. D&D was roleplay; choosing a class, race, etc. was a totally new concept, and the first time your "playing piece" was something you designed by hand.

2nd Ed I feel expanded the game with more classes and races, so that if you had been playing an elf magic-user for 10 years you could be a wood elf mage or a human fighter could now be a human barbarian. Essentially, however, the game stayed the same.

Somewhere between 2nd and 3rd Ed, the game began adding new ways to generate stats, class "kits" to emphasize certain abilities, and class power abilities that accumulated as your rose levels. Armor Class became THAC0 to make the math easier (because we are moving towards just crunching numbers for combat success), and game mechanics like Attacks of Opportunity were aimed solely at success in combat. The game stopped being about choosing a character you would like to be , and more about creating a game piece that is the most likely to defeat foes in mortal combat (so you could get XP (more math and check the chart), a magic items.

To the extent that 4th Edition was nothing more than a tabletop wargame with a personally designed game piece, no roleplaying required (or allowed). Ironically, this returned D&D to its roots, since EGG got the ideas from Chainmail, a table top wargame.

I have no idea what 5th Ed is about, because I have not played the modern game of D&D since the mid 90's. My gaming group played some throwback D&D for nostalgia reasons a couple of years ago, but at the 2nd Edition rules level.

Now that I've played a "real" RPG (GURPS), even D&D seems a bit thin in the roleplaying department. In case you are not familiar, GURPS designs characters completely on points, and "classes" do not exist. Want to be a wizard with a sword? No problem. No random stats (crap, I rolled a 3--I guess that goes into Charisma), and you can even buy things like Status, Wealth, and Rank, to make your character a big shot in the world. Skills are both combat and non-combat (something D&D tried to get into with 2nd Edition). And, for me, the most important thing is Disadvantages--character flaws that give you points back that you can spend elsewhere. . .but that also completely define who your character is. So, I'm an elf mage who is greedy (-15 points) and afraid of the dark (-10 points). Most importantly, XP is Character Points, which are NOT rewarded based on gold pieces earned, monsters killed, or magic items found, but on how the GM felt you as a player acted out your PC's traits for the day (your scotophobic mage didn't run/panic when the lich cast Darkness?--no points for you).

And, I guess as long as I'm on a roll here, since getting better in the game (character points) is not tied to killing things (XP), you can avoid scenarios like:

DM: You kick in the door and there is nothing but rotten potatoes and a few giant rats.

Player 1: I draw my sword!!

Player 2: Casting!!

DM: I said there's nothing in here but giant rats?

P1 + P2: But hey are worth 25 XP each!!!!

Ergo, the mind-numbing sameness of 100/6 for every single X-Wing game (Kill them! Kill them all!!!).

4 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Somewhere between 2nd and 3rd Ed, the game began adding new ways to generate stats, class "kits" to emphasize certain abilities, and class power abilities that accumulated as your rose levels. Armor Class became THAC0 to make the math easier (because we are moving towards just crunching numbers for combat success), and game mechanics like Attacks of Opportunity were aimed solely at success in combat. The game stopped being about choosing a character you would like to be , and more about creating a game piece that is the most likely to defeat foes in mortal combat (so you could get XP (more math and check the chart), a magic items.

I think it's all a matter of perspective and what you are used to. I've started playing in 3.5, so many of the things you see as negatives, I see as positives, and things I like to see in a good RPG. I like mechanics, I feel they give a structure to the world (much like the laws of physics give structure to the real world) and, when properly mastered, allow you to build a character that leaves his mark upon the world in the way you choose. I like that, if my concept is of let's say a character who is a good swordsman, there is actually a measuring stick in the world (the game mechanics) that tell me whether he really is a good swordsman or just a guy who thinks that he is a good swordsman. I found 3.5 did a pretty good job connecting mechanics to the fluff tbh.

13 minutes ago, LordBlades said:

I think it's all a matter of perspective and what you are used to. I've started playing in 3.5, so many of the things you see as negatives, I see as positives, and things I like to see in a good RPG. I like mechanics, I feel they give a structure to the world (much like the laws of physics give structure to the real world) and, when properly mastered, allow you to build a character that leaves his mark upon the world in the way you choose. I like that, if my concept is of let's say a character who is a good swordsman, there is actually a measuring stick in the world (the game mechanics) that tell me whether he really is a good swordsman or just a guy who thinks that he is a good swordsman. I found 3.5 did a pretty good job connecting mechanics to the fluff tbh.

I'm not sure how well X-Wing compares to the various versions of DnD. I got started in 2ed and saw some 1st stuff which seemed very similar. The 3 and 3.5 stuff I could see as extensions on 2ed but in some of the attempts to make things different but equal they really messed up balance as linear fighters and quadratic wizards shows. As 3.5 went on I'd say there was definitely power creep in the game to the point that when the game ended some classes were mostly voided yet you still needed to rule other things down. I looked at 4e but never did more than get my foot in the door with the box set when it came out.

Of course RPGs don't need to be all about power creep. I absolutely loved the StarWars SAGA Edition RPG as even at the end of its run you could still make great characters using only the Core Rulebook. Other books widened the game and some of the new options may have let the player with razor focus get a little sharper but as a whole there was a minimal amount of power creep in that game. Perhaps the hardest part for some was getting away from the idea that just because something is called something that means that is what the character would call it; you could easily make character sheet decisions based on game mechanics but when it came time to roleplay you could likely describe the same mechanics multiple ways. As I like to say on a SWSE Forum you can often take the same mechanical build for a character and play it several different ways; at the same time there is almost always multiple ways to build a character's mechanics to fit a certain concept.

If you want to say X-Wing suffers from Power Creep I certainly agree and I believe part of that has to do with the restrictions they placed on points, numbers, and the need to "keep things different" which is hard to do when it seems most number just range from 2-4 with a few outliers. Had they doubled the points on everything that would have given more room for tuning things that should cost half points now and similarly if there were more dice rolled that would give more of a range such that adding one or two wouldn't be the entire difference between good and horrible.

18 minutes ago, LordBlades said:

I think it's all a matter of perspective and what you are used to. I've started playing in 3.5, so many of the things you see as negatives, I see as positives, and things I like to see in a good RPG. I like mechanics, I feel they give a structure to the world (much like the laws of physics give structure to the real world) and, when properly mastered, allow you to build a character that leaves his mark upon the world in the way you choose. I like that, if my concept is of let's say a character who is a good swordsman, there is actually a measuring stick in the world (the game mechanics) that tell me whether he really is a good swordsman or just a guy who thinks that he is a good swordsman. I found 3.5 did a pretty good job connecting mechanics to the fluff tbh.

I totally agree that mechanics are critical, even in roleplaying. Like you said, they are a measuring stick for performance (success and failure) and make the world "fair" in that all PCs and NPCs alike are subject to the same set of effects (if you fall X feet you take Y damage). But if the mechanics begin to provide a metric to calculate success or failure, they you are no longer roleplaying. . .you are min-maxing. (Which is one reason I ignore (and slightly despise) MathWing. . .I guess the best way I can put it is that is sucks the soul out of the game and is an obvious attempt to munchkin and min-max (sorry, Majorjuggler).)

I have to say that 90% of the time when my roleplaying group talks about old campaigns, we don't talk about what we killed or when we succeeded, but rather we talk about the times it all went to hell in a handbasket. Or we laugh about well played PC traits that had nothing to do with nothing at all (the lisping mage who planted a vineyard to make a wine called Summer Susurrus (schummer shusher-rush) and complained for years that he had lost a fairly useless magical silver whistle (I want my shilver wishtle!).

3 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

I totally agree that mechanics are critical, even in roleplaying. Like you said, they are a measuring stick for performance (success and failure) and make the world "fair" in that all PCs and NPCs alike are subject to the same set of effects (if you fall X feet you take Y damage). But if the mechanics begin to provide a metric to calculate success or failure, they you are no longer roleplaying. . .you are min-maxing. (Which is one reason I ignore (and slightly despise) MathWing. . .I guess the best way I can put it is that is sucks the soul out of the game and is an obvious attempt to munchkin and min-max (sorry, Majorjuggler).)

I have to say that 90% of the time when my roleplaying group talks about old campaigns, we don't talk about what we killed or when we succeeded, but rather we talk about the times it all went to hell in a handbasket. Or we laugh about well played PC traits that had nothing to do with nothing at all (the lisping mage who planted a vineyard to make a wine called Summer Susurrus (schummer shusher-rush) and complained for years that he had lost a fairly useless magical silver whistle (I want my shilver wishtle!).

Regarding min-maxing I think X-wing and RPGs are not really comparable, for me at least. RPGs are cooperative storytelling, where everybody works together for a common goal, while X-wing is a competitive game, with a winner and a loser. Personally in X-wing I want to be the winner (and I'd love it if my opponent wanted the same), therefore I min-max. I totally understand the desire of other people to explore more thematic play, but then you can simply not min-max? What's stopping you?

Regarding mechanics in RPGs From my group's perspective our most memorable moments have RP and mechanics intertwined and I feel they wouldn't be as awesome without one or the other. We all understand that the main goal of an RPG is to collaborate, not make the most powerful character, so we don't actually use the mechanics as a means to be the best, but as a means to bring the character concept to life, and create an in-world representation of our characters that fits the concept as much as possible.

9 minutes ago, LordBlades said:

I totally understand the desire of other people to explore more thematic play, but then you can simply not min-max? What's stopping you?

Well, the desire to explore thematic play . What's stopping you is that you already have a different point of view on why to play. . .you want to pursue as story, not victory, so min-maxing is not necessary, and more importantly, likely to ruin the experience of pursuing the theme.

1 minute ago, Darth Meanie said:

Well, the desire to explore thematic play . What's stopping you is that you already have a different point of view on why to play. . .you want to pursue as story, not victory, so min-maxing is not necessary, and more importantly, likely to ruin the experience of pursuing the theme.

That's not what I meant (sorry if I made it unclear): if you're into thematic play, you can choose not to min-max. If you do so, why would the existence of min-maxing bother you?

I mean 'you' in a generic way, not you specifically.

4 minutes ago, LordBlades said:

That's not what I meant (sorry if I made it unclear): if you're into thematic play, you can choose not to min-max. If you do so, why would the existence of min-maxing bother you?

I mean 'you' in a generic way, not you specifically.

Mostly, because min-maxing (especially in the case of X-Wing) is driving the development of the game. This affects both development priorities (will be every see a campaign set?) and development of specific components (will we see a ship like the Lady Luck that is not an obvious dogfighter?).

And whatever happened to the use of the pronoun "one." Then one would know one was not being called out.

12 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Mostly, because min-maxing (especially in the case of X-Wing) is driving the development of the game. This affects both development priorities (will be every see a campaign set?) and development of specific components (will we see a ship like the Lady Luck that is not an obvious dogfighter?).

And whatever happened to the use of the pronoun "one." Then one would know one was not being called out.

FFG seems to want to treat X-wing as a tournament game first and foremost (unlike Armada for example). It's not something coming from the players, it's something comping from FFG, and to be honest I have no clue how players could convince FFG to offer more support to alternative play-styles.

Also, regarding 'one' vs. 'you', it probably comes from being a non-native English speaker and interacting in English daily with other non-native speakers. If I think about it, then yes, 'one' is more appropriate, but I can't even remember the last time I heard anyone use 'one' in a conversation (beyond the movie Bicentennial man), so 'you' rolls of the keyboard easier I guess

The latest edition of DnD gets the balance perfect with its combat mechanics, in my opinion.

It comes across a bit superior when you refer to GURPS as a 'real' RPG, though. There are plenty of systems nowadays with zero mechanics which rely purely on storytelling or more innovative solutions for combat resolution.

From AD&D up to 3/3.5 or got ridiculously bloated mechanics-wise, and even the developers have admitted they actually ignored some combat rules (weapon speed factors for example).

But every game is as much a roleplay game as you want it to be if you just narrate what you're doing and craft a story around your character/piece. I certainly do so when I play X-Wing. If you insist on playing Monopoly there's nothing to stop you pretending to be Richard Branson in a world of questionable property law!

1 hour ago, LordBlades said:

Regarding min-maxing I think X-wing and RPGs are not really comparable, for me at least. RPGs are cooperative storytelling, where everybody works together for a common goal, while X-wing is a competitive game, with a winner and a loser. Personally in X-wing I want to be the winner (and I'd love it if my opponent wanted the same), therefore I min-max. I totally understand the desire of other people to explore more thematic play, but then you can simply not min-max? What's stopping you?

Regarding mechanics in RPGs From my group's perspective our most memorable moments have RP and mechanics intertwined and I feel they wouldn't be as awesome without one or the other. We all understand that the main goal of an RPG is to collaborate, not make the most powerful character, so we don't actually use the mechanics as a means to be the best, but as a means to bring the character concept to life, and create an in-world representation of our characters that fits the concept as much as possible.

Roleplaying games aren't competitive? Maybe you're lucky and play with a group that is fine with less than optimized characters but I've seen too many min/maxers and even outright munhckins on various forums to believe that some don't see roleplaying games as a competitive exercise. There are people who play roleplaying games and seem to think that then NEED TO WIN; some GMs unfortunately may encourage that but if they don't but run into players with that mindset it can sure ruin a game quickly.

I know I don't like that style of play but have seen far too many "pimp my character build" questions from people who are playing with 0.1%er stat rolls to know it doesn't happen. When it comes to SWSE I almost alway recommend more general characters who can do several things well using "normal" stats. I may like having a plan for a character but I normally leave some room for variety and look at a reasonably "complete" character instead of needing to plot out each and every aspect of the character to the maximum level just so you can be the absolute most powerful X possible; never mind that challenging you at X with a reasonable character may have become impossible 8 out of your 20 levels ago.

Is it possible to play X-Wing at a relatively casual level where all of that min/maxing is avoidable? Yes it is. However even then that doesn't mean things are always going to be even when the rules are followed. The Palpmobile w/ Ace Escorts certain IS a very thematic build that also happens to be very powerful even in today's meta. The triple Defenders is also a powerful, but highly thematic, build. Now when is the last time you saw someone competitively using quad Royal Guard Interceptors? I'm afraid there are a number of thematic builds in X-Wing that are just overpowering compared to other thematic builds yet they still must be consider theme builds despite the power. This increase in theme build power can really be seen as showing the power creep in X-Wing.

1 hour ago, LordBlades said:

Also, regarding 'one' vs. 'you', it probably comes from being a non-native English speaker and interacting in English daily with other non-native speakers. If I think about it, then yes, 'one' is more appropriate, but I can't even remember the last time I heard anyone use 'one' in a conversation (beyond the movie Bicentennial man), so 'you' rolls of the keyboard easier I guess

In truth, the use of "one" has even fallen out of vogue for Anglophones, and is perhaps even frowned upon.

1 hour ago, Sbloom141 said:

It comes across a bit superior when you refer to GURPS as a 'real' RPG, though. There are plenty of systems nowadays with zero mechanics which rely purely on storytelling or more innovative solutions for combat resolution.

Hence my use of scare quotes. I just feel that GURPS has a far superior character building mechanic to encourage roleplaying. And, honestly, I have never felt the need to try anything else since. When we play Star Wars as a roleplaying game, I take all the WEG material and convert it.

19 minutes ago, StevenO said:

Roleplaying games aren't competitive? Maybe you're lucky and play with a group that is fine with less than optimized characters but I've seen too many min/maxers and even outright munhckins on various forums to believe that some don't see roleplaying games as a competitive exercise. There are people who play roleplaying games and seem to think that then NEED TO WIN; some GMs unfortunately may encourage that but if they don't but run into players with that mindset it can sure ruin a game quickly.

I'm not lucky; I choose not to play with those kinds of people. Not only do they ruin the game, they ruin the day I have set aside to have fun with friends.

Which brings up an important point for ALL gaming. This is what people do for fun. It is a social contract. If you are a WAAC player, you are not a very nice person to those people whose time and fun you are stealing for your own ego.

Power creep, it's how you sell the next wave.

Power creep, it's how you sell repackaged old ships.

Seems pretty obvious to me. With that said, I think they do a good enough job keeping most ships relevant and those they don't keep relevant, well see point two.

12 minutes ago, Mep said:

Power creep, it's how you sell the next wave.

Power creep, it's how you sell repackaged old ships.

Not necessarily. New ships can bring new combos and ways to play that have a similar power level to old combos, but do so with different tools. And repackaged old ships are preferably those that were a bit low in power, to bring them up to average power.

Yeah, average power went up a bit with the last few waves, I'm not saying it didn't. But all the boosts for ordnance brought those up to a competitive level from "we never use those, they're not worth it". The TIE Advanced was improved to "it's playable" from "just too expensive".

Many people aren't excited about wave 10 because it doesn't appear to raise the power level any more. But what it does is, it brings interesting new concepts - a mini-Biggs, a ship you can't shoot, a lumbering behemoth and a tugboat of all things. Personally, I'm excited.

i believe this is in line with the "power creep" issues... even though its not directly the same thing

Xwing is an ever-evolving meta. Without things to shake it up (good or bad) it gets stale and people lose interest.
Right now the new fad at my flgs is Fenn. Hes EVERYWHERE, our recent local tourny was like 80% scum and only 1 list didnt have Fenn in it. I expect him to sorta disappear with the Tugboat autotractor sending him in the wrong direction all the time.

edit: also WOW this new forum posts big videos!

13 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

...

Hence my use of scare quotes. I just feel that GURPS has a far superior character building mechanic to encourage roleplaying. And, honestly, I have never felt the need to try anything else since. When we play Star Wars as a roleplaying game, I take all the WEG material and convert it.

I'm not lucky; I choose not to play with those kinds of people. Not only do they ruin the game, they ruin the day I have set aside to have fun with friends.

Which brings up an important point for ALL gaming. This is what people do for fun. It is a social contract. If you are a WAAC player, you are not a very nice person to those people whose time and fun you are stealing for your own ego.

Am I the only one who is disliking the way quotes work on these new forums? Anyway.

I haven't tried FFG SWRPG but did try the previous ones. It doesn't take much to convert things for the WEG version when all you're doing is rolling d6s; it certainly can make for an organic character but I never really liked how hard it was to balance things especially if you had characters with different outlooks. It cost a lot of character points to advance in the stronger areas but when you were good in those then maybe you didn't need the other areas as much. I found that WEG work great for starting character types but I never could really figure out a "level" when it came to more advanced characters. The OCR and RER d20 versions were far too much crunch for me as they were pretty directly based off of DnD 3.0 where you get a bunch of classes for every individual concept; mixing up things for your own character was at times very challenging. What I loved about SAGA is that a character's framework was pretty well defined but also extremely versatile; you have a good idea what a level 8 character can always do but there are a lot of variations in the specifics.

What's all this go to do with X-Wing? I'm not entirely sure but I certainly can agree that if you end up doing too much of your playing against someone whose only goal is to win then the game becomes less fun. While I've considered it I highly doubt I'll ever go to play in a tournament considering some of the comments I see on these forums especially when it comes to what may be considered pre-measuring and what is often considered "missed opportunities." I see where measuring before deciding an action can be a massive time sink but I don't think you should need to play with your eyes closed (isn't that what picturing everything in your head means-sarcasm) just to give someone with superior spatial recognition a big advantage; I also believe there is a huge difference between opting not to do something and accidently missing something especially when one player notices it but decides not to say something because it is to his/her benefit.

Maybe some people think Power Creep NEEDS to be the model for a game to expand. I call BS on that. Some of it may be unavoidable when new options can get used on old stuff but if you can widen a game you can grow it without needing to make the old stuff all but unusable in the competitive nature of the game. If a game is produced around the idea that it needs to get "better and better" thus utilizing power creep as a selling tool it will inevitably reach a point where it can't be sustained and need to come crashing down in some form. MtG deals with power creep by rotation. I'd say DnD deals with it by releasing a brand new edition which may only resemble previous editions in name and theme only. I'm guessing others can point out other games where power creep inevitably leads to shutting out long time player or having complete resets of some form.

What i am about to say I have said before and has probably already been said on this topic, but I feel power creep is unavoidable in any game that can grow as much as x wing has. We always talk about red dice creep, but really that only matters because of action efficiency created by all the finish that get us the players excited for the next wave.

The designers have to entice us with some gimic to get us excited for new stuff, or it won't sell. But these new tricks will add new complexity to the game. Well 10 waves of this later and you can really micro manage and stack onto certain strategies. And no matter how careful you are, and I believe they are careful, it's going to creep the power level and complexity level up. I gave been a casual player since wave 3 and a competitive player since wave 6 and really I have enjoyed my entire time with the game, power creep or not. You have the right to complain about it, but really I don't know of any long going table top competitive game that this does not exist in.

Another thing is people always cry for a 2.0 but who is to say that game won't creep in its own ways. Who's to say we know how to do the developers job better then them. We are players, they are designers, if we players really knew how to do their job better, we would be developers, lol. Not to say they are perfect, or the best, but to be honest this game is my favorite table to game, and I play and try a lot of them. So to me I don't have a problem, with every meta, there is a code to crack.

Also, there is no way every ship and pilot can be competitive in a game this big, everything had its turn, and to be honest I see almost every type of ship a tournaments, of course there are some that are not nearly good enough, but in a years time thatcan totally change. I remember when you couldn't pay someone to bring a defender to a competitive event, or a syck, or even a y wing. With every release there are new winners and losers, and if the losers fall behind, so far they have found creative ways to pick them back up

And one more thing,it's all our fault, we pick the ship's we bring to tournaments, we cry for fixes but cry power creep right after,becareful what you wish for. We cry over powered but once something gets its fix, it goes hella dorment for a while. We want something new to shake up the meta, then complain about the new changed meta, they release something new and balanced or not a little under powered (tie sf for example) and we call it dead in the water, or call the wave a "bland" wave (which I already hear people saying about wave 10)

Bottom line, we are a horrible gauge to listen to lol. Sales and tournament data are the best info we can give them and I am glad that's what they listen to the most

18 hours ago, Dej2 said:

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.

And that's why I believe that FFG is doing lazy poorly executed game design. Good game design would mean that older ships evolve at the same rate new ships are introduced. Variety is great and it keeps things fresh, but it shouldn't be at the expense of the design space.

12 hours ago, asters89 said:

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.

I agree totally. "Action efficiency" is really action laziness, the player doesn't have to make hard choices. They simply get it all.

8 hours ago, LordBlades said:

Welcome to the game

The game is mostly fine if you want to play x-wing (the game in general). It's slightly less fine if you want to play certain ships/pilots and still do well, because not everything is equally good.

Yes it is fine if you want to play X-wing, just don't play an X-wing.

7 hours ago, LordBlades said:

I completely agree that FFG should offer more support to alternative play systems, that's not the point.

The point is that FFG has designated 100/6 and ONLY 100/6 as the 'standard play' format for X-wing. It's their call, not yours, mine, or anyone else's. If a ship/upgrade has been designed for something else (as opposed to simply being a design failure) I would expect it to be clearly stated as such (like it's the case for epic ships, cards and mission tokens).

Their call, but I'm going to criticize it.

7 hours ago, StevenO said:

Roleplaying games aren't competitive? Maybe you're lucky and play with a group that is fine with less than optimized characters but I've seen too many min/maxers and even outright munhckins on various forums to believe that some don't see roleplaying games as a competitive exercise. There are people who play roleplaying games and seem to think that then NEED TO WIN; some GMs unfortunately may encourage that but if they don't but run into players with that mindset it can sure ruin a game quickly.

I know I don't like that style of play but have seen far too many "pimp my character build" questions from people who are playing with 0.1%er stat rolls to know it doesn't happen. When it comes to SWSE I almost alway recommend more general characters who can do several things well using "normal" stats. I may like having a plan for a character but I normally leave some room for variety and look at a reasonably "complete" character instead of needing to plot out each and every aspect of the character to the maximum level just so you can be the absolute most powerful X possible; never mind that challenging you at X with a reasonable character may have become impossible 8 out of your 20 levels ago.

Unlike X-wing, where you often get to play games with people you don't really know (or even you have to play a certain guy if you get matched with him in a tournament), an RPG is usually a long-term commitment with a stable group. If somebody proves disruptive (for whatever reason), you can simply talk to them and, if that doesn't work, kick them out from the group. That being said, optimization (or lack of it thereof) in itself has 0 impact on the fun of a game. You can play a group of incompetent blundering fools, or you can play Justice League, as long as everyone is on board with the premise it's fun. Problems start to occur when one guy wants to play a blundering fool, and the guy next to him wants to play Superman (which is the same in X-wing I guess: 2 tournament players can play tournament lists and have fun; 2 casual players can play casual lists and have fun, 1 tournament vs. 1 casual player might have some issues).

6 hours ago, haslo said:

Many people aren't excited about wave 10 because it doesn't appear to raise the power level any more. But what it does is, it brings interesting new concepts - a mini-Biggs, a ship you can't shoot, a lumbering behemoth and a tugboat of all things. Personally, I'm excited.

I'm in the 'not really excited boat, not because the new wave raises the power level, but because it fails to match it. I usually play competitive squads and play to win. I see little in this wave (especially for Scum which is my favorite faction) which, when put on the table, would not be a small step back from what I'm currently playing.

12 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

Promotes the most. Epic is also promoted, or at least available, and there are ships that are only for Epic play. As a different consumer, I think that if you are going to limit yourself to Tournament-Level Deathmatches, it is your obligation to sort the wheat from the chaff and decide what you are willing to buy and play. Because I still want to see ships hit the table that don't push the envelope but are fun to play.

And as that same consumer, I think most power creep is driven by "standard play." Personally, I think the game could do well to step back from trying to beat each Wave with the next and instead explore other elements of the game . . .for example, storytelling and missions.

The epic faq seems to be from 2015, and iirc the official rules forget even to mention the epic points of new releases past that point or did they have upgrade this in the recent months? ;-)

Epic looks basically abandoned as tournament format and is purely a casual fun format for missions, campaigns, and enthusiasts with too much time at hand. Minimal support still needed for those, to keep them buying 8 of each for epic, but the target audience is clearly standard play. Which does not mean that each ship needs to be equal valid in standard play, exploration of the avaible game options and cards is part of fun of games with list building, so having "bad cards" is still valid, though normally you should offer at least some value in each product you sell, so there is a good business reason for all those fixes and ace packs we are getting. 4 Ace packs so far and epics becomes more and more of a source to sell pretty models together with overpriced fixes. 3 out of 5 epic expansions can be summarized this way now. (Rebel transport with the astromechs, Raider with the Advanced fix and now the roc with the M3A titles and supporting upgrade cards … and technical the gozanti fixes problems for the epic ships themselves with its upgrade cards ;-))

12 hours ago, LordBlades said:

Just curious: what exactly in D&D did you think inhibited roleplay ?

The player base? Gamey system? Power-curve and character progression? Overblown rules? Limit set of skills, ridiculous talent systems … not all specific to the same edition. But in general DnD is perfectly suited for CRPGs and basically cancer for p&p in general. ;-) Though the world building within the DnD worlds is often really fantastic.

Though a good deal of this would apply to gurps as well at least in versions of the 90s, by modern standards the way gurps handled things is simply clunky and tries to simulate to much without giving enough narrative and characterisation room. Having a character generation which gives you bonus points for flaws is a good example, other systems make the flaws either mandatory or just present you with ideas for them and leave it completely optional often, but not always, with integrating advantages into the flaws themselves. Handing out destiny, fate, style or whatever points for playing to your flaws would be one of those examples, trying to reward and promote roleplay in ways with in general affect your character negatively. Other modern systems just abandon the idea of balance and assume that the group is experienced enough and interested into the roleplay that the players do not need rewards or point costs and will handle this part of the game on their own, sometimes adding just mechanics for social and combat checks, sometimes even abandoning the idea of random based checks at all. At that point we reach basically the extreme side of diceless, purely narrative RPGs which sometimes even abandon the idea of a GM and are purely focused on the storytelling and roleplay.

And if you enjoy D&D, all is fine, there are as many versions of RPGs as there are RPG tables on the planet. Play like you like.