Hyperloop - Change Needed?

By Hida77, in Star Wars: Destiny

31 minutes ago, Hida77 said:

Cut to what I wanted to comment on............

Back to the OP - I do think if something isn't done with the Falcon ability, it will be a problem at some point. I personally think it is already not very fun right now, but that is my opinion.

As stated earlier I see your contention as justifiable concerns to monitor not something that needs action taken on immediately.

I find this last part interesting. I've got the Falcon into play quite a few times now. I've rolled its special at least a dozen times and have never executed a Hyperloop. Most of the times I've rolled the special I wished it was something else. Do you really think the Falcon special is not fun? If there is a problem with the Hyperloop, I would prefer changing Hyperspace Jump to the Falcon.

2 hours ago, Hida77 said:

I'm not sure how this turned into "should we have sideboards?" thread, that has very little to nothing to do with the OP. It is a solution I guess, but that has even more implications design and game wide than simply making the Falcon RFG the card it uses.

Just because something has been done for a long time doesn't make it right. Just because everyone holds up Magic as being the pillar of CCGs doesn;t make everything they do the absolute best way to do it for every game ever. Do you think that Magic as a game would crumble without sideboards? I sure don't. It would still sell just as much as it does, and competitive people would still be competitive and find ways to mainboard around the loopholes as you say. It would be different, certainly, but hardly game breaking. Especially if WotC designed with the idea of no sideboards going forward. sure, people might complain initially if they tossed it now but only because people are resistant to change.

My personal issue with sideboards is that they lead to cards that can ONLY really be used in sideboards as silver bullets. Anyone remember Perish? or Gloom? Now, count the number of times those cards were main-decked vs sideboarded. This also meant that if I was playing a green deck I had to constantly accept that my opponent may just decimate my board in a given match. Which is not fun at all. Why is my deck being punished so harshly? While Block and Dodge are somewhat similar, you do see those cards in Destiny decks based on the meta and what people are playing right now. Adding a sideboard would mean those cards would only ever be sideboard cards, and would lead to other similar cards. I just don;t like the idea of playing the "I'm tech'ing against my opponent's tech" game. And while that is my opinion, I don't think it as an uncommon one

I am also not in favor of best of 3 really. Which is surprising, because initially I would have said I preferred it. You cannot realistically have 90 minute rounds (going off FFG's standard for it). Even X-Wing has 75 right now and that is a horrible, horrible beating if you have to go through 7+ rounds of it, not even including the cut. In the few tourneys I have played in thus far for Destiny, having the rounds be short and sweet has been really refreshing. You feel like you could actually go 7+ rounds and still be having fun at the end of round 7.

Back to the OP - I do think if something isn't done with the Falcon ability, it will be a problem at some point. I personally think it is already not very fun right now, but that is my opinion.

Again, color hosing is not the end-all of sideboarding. In fact, it's hardly used anywhere these days outside of eternal formats. There's far more depth involved in standard deck construction than anyone has yet to point out, but I can easily show you all the most recent winning decks, if you like; then you can feel free to point out all the color hosing you see. As far why Wizards prints certain cards the way that they do, that's a whole other issue entirely, and I don't think we're quite ready to revisit the topic of limited Destiny play (drafting, sealed, etc). The bottom line is this: we already have cards that are obvious hard counters , and nobody is going to play those maindeck, not at such a high opportunity cost. You can expect to see more such cards, and there'll be nowhere to put them.

I stand by my original point: there has been one game, to my recollection, that I've played which didn't end in less than 20 minutes. The fact that a serious proportion of Destiny players are coming from non-card games or other FFG Star Wars properties does not mean that we should casualize a system dedicated to competitive play. If you're coming to win, you either need to learn to play faster, accept a tie (or lesser tiebreaker) as a consequence of your slow play, or stick to a more casual atmosphere. Remember, you can always do whatever you want in pickup games or at the kitchen table.

Edited by WonderWAAAGH
1 hour ago, Starbane said:

As stated earlier I see your contention as justifiable concerns to monitor not something that needs action taken on immediately.

I find this last part interesting. I've got the Falcon into play quite a few times now. I've rolled its special at least a dozen times and have never executed a Hyperloop. Most of the times I've rolled the special I wished it was something else. Do you really think the Falcon special is not fun? If there is a problem with the Hyperloop, I would prefer changing Hyperspace Jump to the Falcon.

The issue isn't the power of the special to play a card for free itself. It's that you can use the same card over and over and over again.

Hyperspace Jump is just the first example of a ton of potential future headaches if it stays the way it is. At best, it limits the design for all yellow events. At worst, they try to put out interesting cards and someone comes up with a way to trigger and event over and over that wins them the game that is highly abusable.

EDIT: To put it another way - if they change Hyperspace Jump it fixes the problem at hand, but we would still have to consider all cards going forward. If they change the Falcon, then you will never create an infinite combo again based on it's ability and be able to not limit your design space.

Edited by Hida77
9 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

Again, color hosing is not the end-all of sideboarding. In fact, it's hardly used anywhere these days outside of eternal formats. There's far more depth involved in standard deck construction than anyone has yet to point out, but I can easily show you all the most recent winning decks, if you like; then you can feel free to point out all the color hosing you see. As far why Wizards prints certain cards the way that they do, that's a whole other issue entirely, and I don't think we're quite ready to revisit the topic of limited Destiny play (drafting, sealed, etc).

I stand by my original point: there has been one game, to my recollection, that I've played which didn't end in less than 20 minutes. The fact that a serious proportion of Destiny players are coming from non-card games or other FFG Star Wars properties does not mean that we should casualize a system dedicated to competitive play. If you're coming to win, you either need to learn to play faster, accept a tie (or lesser tiebreaker) as a consequence of your slow play, or stick to a more casual atmosphere.

I get it, but you see my point. There are many games which do not include sideboarding that do just fine without them. Granted, none are as big as Magic, but none of them were the first real CCG either. Would I quit if they added sidboards? No likely not, but I don't really see the need, especially if it means we have 70+ min rounds,

Maybe you guys are just super geniuses I guess. So far every event I have been to has had at least 2-3 matches (amongst around an average of 10) pushing the 30+ min mark each round. Sure, sometimes you finish with some extra time, but I wouldn't say that was the rule. I think limiting it to fewer than 30 minutes would be way too punishing, even for me. And I have played multiple card games since I was 12 years old (including Magic) some 21 years ago and consider math a strong suit. Lets say they went as low as 25 mins (which again, I would be against, but for argument's sake), you are still talking about at least 70 mins for a round. I just don't see that being necessary or needed at all.

Edited by Hida77

We're not geniuses, and we're not necessarily better or worse than anyone else. I'm not passing judgment on people's competency, just their experience, and I'm basing that off of what I see here and at my LGS. People love Star Wars, people love FFG, and they love those things so much that we've gotten a lot of people taking a break from X-Wing to try out Destiny. There are already some serious growing pains with the whole collectibility aspect, and we're going to have a few more issues with other things, the competitive environment among them. It really just boils down to perspective, and that's something we can fix together.

I get it, 35 minutes is a breath of fresh air coming from 75 minute X-Wing matches, but a single game really isn't enough to differentiate between two players by the end of an event. With X-Wing there really wasn't anything that could feasibly have been done; there's no good way to implement a sideboard or on-the-spot counter play, and even one 75 minute game is already testing the boundary of people's patience. The result is that matchmaking and tiebreakers have gone through some rough transitions over the years, and it left a bad taste in a lot of player's mouthes.

Here we have an opportunity to implement an objectively solid mechanism at the outset of the competitive environment, and a lot of people want to pass because a) they don't have the experience to know that < 20 minute games are even possible, and b) "oh no, Magic does that! Stay away!". Playing best 2/3 does a couple positive things for the game: it allows for counter play, it mitigates luck - both the deck you're playing against and having one potentially very bad game, and it fixes what is, to my mind, a really really bad tiebreaker.

And as for the hyperloop - if it's not fun, just ask your friends not to use it. If you encounter it during a pickup game (your opponent's characters should be rather telling), you can politely ask them to use something else or walk away. I play a lot more casual Magic than standard, and my friends are gracious enough to leave out the land destruction in our EDH games because they know how unfun it is for me to be locked out of a game. So, there you have it, a solution for casual play and a solution for competitive play. Maybe we can have our cake and eat it too.

Edited by WonderWAAAGH
1 minute ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

We're not geniuses, and we're not necessarily better or worse than anyone else. I'm not passing judgment on people's competency, just their experience, and I'm basing that off of what I see here and at my LGS. People love Star Wars, people love FFG, and they love those things so much that we've gotten a lot of people taking a break from X-Wing to try out Destiny. There are already some serious growing pains with the whole collectibility aspect, and we're going to have a few more issues with other things, the competitive environment among them. I get it, 35 minutes is a breath of fresh air coming from 75 minute X-Wing matches, but a single game really isn't enough to differentiate between two players by the end of an event. With X-Wing there really wasn't anything that could feasibly have been done; there's no good way to implement a sideboard or on-the-spot counter play, and even one 75 minute game is already testing the boundary of people's patience. The result is that matchmaking and tiebreakers have gone through some rough transitions over the years, and it left a bad taste in a lot of player's mouthes. Here we have an opportunity to implement an objectively solid mechanism at the outset of the competitive environment, and a lot of people want to pass because a) they don't have the experience to know that < 20 minute games are even possible, given just a little more experience, and b) "oh no, Magic does that! Stay away!".

First, I didn't mean to insinuate that you were being condescending or whatever. Just trying to illustrate that I generally consider myself to be the type of person who can make decisions in a pretty reasonable time frame and that I would feel constrained by fewer than 30 mins. I apologize if it came off otherwise.

I played Magic at the PT/PTQ level years ago, so I am not completely ignorant to what you are talking about. I understand why people like Magic and its system for tournaments. I am not trying to make a case that there isn't merit to that.

What I am trying to say is that in my opinion a single game is enough to determine a clear winner. I have had fewer than a handful of games where I felt my opponent simply got more lucky than I did, and that's saying a lot for a game where there are two random factors. I had a game just last night where my opponent got decidedly more lucky than me and still lost. That's all anecdotal of course, but what I am trying to say is that I don't think best of three in the Swiss is really necessary to differentiate the players in Destiny. Or at least not more needed than it is in AGoT or SWLCG or whatever which do not use the system and still tend to have the highest tier of players rising to the top every time.

Again, that's my opinion, and I understand and can empathize with yours, even if we disagree. What FFG decides to do is up to them, and I am sure I will adapt either way. I will say that thus far my experience in tournaments has been very positive for Destiny under the current rule set, even more so than many prior games I have played which includes several of FFG's games. I wouldn't adjust it just yet personally.

That's fair. Remember, FFG hates errata. Like, with a passion. They're going to print an active counter to something that spoils the fun, that pretty much seems a given at this point. The question is, how effective will that counter be if people don't want to play with only 28 cards of their choosing just for a chance to not get locked out of a match? Consider this: 1/15 means you have a reasonable chance of drawing into a dead card once every 3 game turns, and that's not even taking into consideration other cards that are situationally unusable. (And let's not bring up discarding for a re-roll - every card has that option without the associated opportunity cost.)

Edited by WonderWAAAGH
Just now, WonderWAAAGH said:

That's fair. Remember, FFG hates errata. Like, with a passion. They're going to print an active counter to things that spoil the fun, that pretty much seems a given at this point. The question is, how effective will that counter be if people don't want to play with only 28 cards of their choosing just for a chance to not get locked out of a match?

Yea, we had the same thought as well. I find that solution to be probably the worst. If there was a Neutral Grey event card that cost 0 and said "Remove on card from your opponent's discard pile from the game" if might stop the Hyperloop shenanigans a bit, but would I feel like I had to play 2 just to ensure I could stop it? I don't know, that seems to me like it would really make the game less interesting.

I do think there is some reality that FFG needs to face about having a CCG that they want to be competitive and their stigma about errata. I personally believe that you cannot have the former without the latter at some point. But that's another topic entirely.

I have a feeling they will just do nothing for now and see if the problem goes away, which is not totally unfair. I do think they may want to put it on watch though and start formulating a plan now. That way if it does get out of control they can be quick with a response instead of letting it languish.

Like someone mentioned earlier, it's not any more powerful than the people who were crying about Sith Holocron before were implying. Not yet, anyways. It would have to be truly format warping, and we shouldn't expect to see changes for 6 months even if it is. Just look at the TIE Phantom and Imperial Officer. We could easily see something in SoR before we get to that point.

Edited by WonderWAAAGH
1 minute ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

Like someone mentioned earlier, it's not any more powerful than the people who were crying about Sith Holocron before were implying. Not yet, anyways. It would have to be truly format warping, and we shouldn't expect to see changes for 6 months even if it is. Just look at the TIE Phantom and Imperial Officer.

Two perfect examples of why they should start planning now LOL. One hurt the game significantly for months, the other nearly killed the game entirely by the time it was fixed. Obviously both bounced back, but still...

I do miss good old pre-nerf Whisper though, sad as that is.

I do think being able to regurgitate stuff out of your discard endlessly has a pretty huge "abuse me" sign though.

Scenario.

Resolve Poe special for falcon special to trigger hyperspace in my discard. Am I still allowed to play the falcon as part of Poe's "then" even though the action phase has ended?

Put them in the stack and then resolve the stack, from the bottom up. Tell us what you find.

On Wednesday, February 01, 2017 at 2:36 PM, WonderWAAAGH said:

There's a reason why Wizards no longer prints counterspells or land destruction, and it's got nothing to do with how good those deck archetypes are. Marinate on that one for a second.

Not hip on why; not a big magic fan. Guessing because they are control/choke cards?

9 hours ago, Rogue 4 said:

we built this deck and played it a ton of times, it is not consistent and a lot of other damage/ aggro decks/ dice removal decks kill it. I do not think it is tier 1

I don't think it is tier 1, but that is not the core issue. I think this is:

6 hours ago, Hida77 said:

Back to the OP - I do think if something isn't done with the Falcon ability, it will be a problem at some point. I personally think it is already not very fun right now, but that is my opinion.

42 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

Put them in the stack and then resolve the stack, from the bottom up. Tell us what you find.

Dunno man. I mean, we can change the number of cards in our hand by playing noble sacrifice (action: play a card) while not having a blue character as a target and somehow it is considered as passing.

So if my opponent rolls 2 mind probe specials, then I dump my hand by playing hit and run x2, it's a trap x2, then a random 5th card that also has no effect while I have no red characters or dice, why is that considered a pass?

I don't always have all the correct answers nor do I pretend to know it all which is why I come here to ask questions I am unsure of.

I will conclude, by your condescension, that the correct answer is that "then" allows for the falcon to be played. Thank you.

22 minutes ago, Keigi said:

Not hip on why; not a big magic fan. Guessing because they are control/choke cards?

No, they just aren't fun to play against. You can play a control game without thoroughly locking your opponent out.

5 minutes ago, nismojoe said:

Dunno man. I mean, we can change the number of cards in our hand by playing noble sacrifice (action: play a card) while not having a blue character as a target and somehow it is considered as passing.

So if my opponent rolls 2 mind probe specials, then I dump my hand by playing hit and run x2, it's a trap x2, then a random 5th card that also has no effect while I have no red characters or dice, why is that considered a pass?

I don't always have all the correct answers nor do I pretend to know it all which is why I come here to ask questions I am unsure of.

I will conclude, by your condescension, that the correct answer is that "then" allows for the falcon to be played. Thank you.

I wasn't being condescending, I just prefer a "teach a man to fish" approach.

Edited by WonderWAAAGH
1 hour ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

Put them in the stack and then resolve the stack, from the bottom up. Tell us what you find.

That’s all well and good if you are using a "stack" like MTG, but this is FFG not Wizards. With a stack system triggered effects that trigger in the middle of other triggered events go on the stack and wait for the currently resolving effect to finish resolving.

FFG like to have nested actions where effects triggered in the middle of another effect resolve immediately before the rest of the original effect can resolve, If Able.

When using Nested Actions (assuming FFG are doing so of course) Hyperspace jump finishes resolving prior to Poe's ability trying to finish resolving, now due to the action phase being complete, does/can the rest of Poe's ability resolve? Not sure.

Its not a separate action to be able to cast the falcon, however the real question would be is any action or part of an action allowed to resolve outside of the action phase.

I'm inclined to say that the intention would be that the ability finishes resolving, however RAW I would say that it doesn’t.

Also, as someone who regularly points out if something is not actually written in the rules WW, I would also point out to you that there is nothing in the rules that refer to the stack :).

8 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

I wasn't being condescending, I just prefer a "teach a man to fish" approach.

I agree. I do not like some of the current rulings being made by game creators and i am just trying to keep my ducks in a row.

7 minutes ago, Mace Windu said:

Its not a separate action to be able to cast the falcon, however the real question would be is any action or part of an action allowed to resolve outside of the action phase.

Ah, that's what I think I was trying to ask! Does the end of the action phase allow for anything else to happen regardless if they are in fact defined as actions or triggers or took place immediately upon ending the action phase.

5 hours ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

Like someone mentioned earlier, it's not any more powerful than the people who were crying about Sith Holocron before were implying. Not yet, anyways. It would have to be truly format warping, and we shouldn't expect to see changes for 6 months even if it is. Just look at the TIE Phantom and Imperial Officer. We could easily see something in SoR before we get to that point.

The game had been out for just over a month and we had 2 rules updates. Our guy is "Plaid Speed" compared to the guys doing the Armada FAQ.

2 hours ago, Mace Windu said:

That’s all well and good if you are using a "stack" like MTG, but this is FFG not Wizards. With a stack system triggered effects that trigger in the middle of other triggered events go on the stack and wait for the currently resolving effect to finish resolving.

FFG like to have nested actions where effects triggered in the middle of another effect resolve immediately before the rest of the original effect can resolve, If Able.

When using Nested Actions (assuming FFG are doing so of course) Hyperspace jump finishes resolving prior to Poe's ability trying to finish resolving, now due to the action phase being complete, does/can the rest of Poe's ability resolve? Not sure.

Its not a separate action to be able to cast the falcon, however the real question would be is any action or part of an action allowed to resolve outside of the action phase.

I'm inclined to say that the intention would be that the ability finishes resolving, however RAW I would say that it doesn’t.

Also, as someone who regularly points out if something is not actually written in the rules WW, I would also point out to you that there is nothing in the rules that refer to the stack :).

There is a stack, they just call it the queue and it resolves FIFO instead of LIFO. I understand why they decided not to go top-down instead, but that doesn't make it a good decision.

2 hours ago, nismojoe said:

Ah, that's what I think I was trying to ask! Does the end of the action phase allow for anything else to happen regardless if they are in fact defined as actions or triggers or took place immediately upon ending the action phase.

I think it's indirectly permitted in the rules, since the RRG says that any actions after you've claimed automatically counts as a decline to act. Kind of infers there is a trigger window.

Edited by WonderWAAAGH
38 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

I think it's indirectly permitted in the rules, since the RRG says that any actions after you've claimed automatically counts as a decline to act. Kind of infers there is a trigger window.

I think the primary issue though in this specific instance is that the action phase ends half way through an action resolving. Does ending the action phase prevent any pending actions (or partially resolved actions in this case) from resolving, there are no more chances to perform actions or pass an action for that matter.

so the main question is, when Hyperspace Jump ends the action phase, does it end all unresolved abilities as well? or are they allowed to resolve still?

Certainty a corner issue but probably one that will come up often enough that it will likely need to be clarified I suspect.

On 2/1/2017 at 9:41 PM, WonderWAAAGH said:

Uh, Pyroblast hasn't really been a thing since the mid '90s. We might be playing very different games if you think color hosing is the reason why sideboards are a viable thing in Magic (hint: nobody uses those cards).

My point was that sideboards counter decks, not 2-card combos. Hyperloop goes in any Hero deck with a yellow character. Devoting any sideboard space to countering Hyperloop will only make your deck worse in the 2nd game. And I believe color hosing would be much more effective in a game like Destiny. If Magic was a game where you could only have 5 creatures in your deck, they began the game in play, and you won by killing them, Pyroblast would be in every red deck's sideboard.