This idea game up at our game night on Monday and, weirdly, I think it kinda makes sense. So here's what I'm positing: what if, in some future version of the game, the evade action wasn't even in the game? To be clear, I'm NOT saying that it should be taken out of the current game; predicting the aftereffects of that revision at this point would be way beyond my level of expertise, especially considering all the "assign an evade token" stuff that's out there . . .

BUT, if there were to be an X-Wing 2.0, would you object to having the evade action removed? Some benefits I can think of:

1. More Variance

Yeah, I'm saying that like it's a good thing, largely because I think it is. Listen, I love playing competitive X-Wing, and I accept the need to be able to control variance. HOWEVER, I feel that the game in its current state has too LITTLE variance, particularly on the defensive side of things. Look at Dengaroo -- how often are you going to roll zero evades? Hell, how often are you even rolling less than two evades? Same goes for Defenders, and Palp Aces, and PtL Corran, and so on -- basically, for all the most negative play experiences in the game. They're annoying to fly against in no small part because their dice vary so little, which means you have no hope of pushing through the damage you need. Variance makes the game more fun, plain and simple, because it allows more of those exciting, edge-of-the-seat moments where you really don't know what's happening.

More variance also leads to the other stuff:

2. Lower Barrier to Entry

Jumping into X-Wing can kinda suck. You basically get ROFLstomped consistently for the first few months you play. Of course, that makes it very rewarding when you manage to start winning consistently; but it's nice for newer players to have the ability to punch through the defenses of other ships. Even if you don't win, at least you got some damage through, right? Plus, like I said, it's more exciting that way. But don't worry, veterans, because greater defensive variance means . . .

3. Greater Focus on Maneuvering

It's the difference between flying Fenn Rau and flying something like Soontir Fel or a Defender. With Fenn, you have to make a lot more decisions centered on controlling range and arc, whereas with Soontir, if you get caught in an arc or two, you can just shrug and turtle up, knowing that there's just about no way you die this round. If green dice are more iffy, there's a greater incentive to avoid rolling them at all. And if you're looking for proof, let me refer you to our World Championship matches. In my opinion (and most folks I've talked to agree with me), the 2013 one -- with the X-Wings and B-Wings and TIE Fighters -- is the most exciting and well-played game out there, and that's the one with the most variance. Past that point, you get things like Fat Han, Regen Poe, and Dengar, all of which are focused to an absurd degree on mitigating the effects of fickle green dice.

Basically, if you don't have an evade, you get a lot more excitement. Living and dying by the green dice is, IMHO, a lot more fun than shrugging and turtling up. The Fang fighter is the most fun arc-dodger in my opinion (both playing with it and against it) simply for that reason: your decisions matter more.

Anyway, just some thoughts. What say you?

I agree with almost all of your premises ... yet wouldn't want to see your implementation.

Evade isn't the problem. (See if you can find some tactical advice articles from early in the game, when Evade was strongly considered to be the weaker alternative to Focus for nearly every ship.)

The problem is ridiculous, often unintended, action economy. (And by this I'm including things like Dengaroo's reliance on Zuckuss, Manaroo, and Overclocked R4; so things like, "overlooking instances when stress as a drawback is not actually a drawback." (For my part in that, mea culpa.))

X-Wing 2.0 can and should have Evade actions and tokens. It just needs to be more cognizant of stacking. (For an apt comparison in another gaming genre, look how elegantly 5E D&D fixed the buffing problem that began in 3.0 D&D.)

Meh

Rather take a page from armada where evade is moreeffective at longer ranges

Ex:

Defending at range 3: evade result

Ramge 2: sensor jammer effect

Range 1: reroll 1 of the attackers red die

Only problem is timing changes from range 3 to 1/2 might get slightly annoying

I have 3 response points:

1) Competitive games and competitive gamers are entirely centered around removing variance. This is true across all game types and all genres. The suggestion to make competitive play more interesting by making this more difficult flies directly in the face of this and is somewhat bizarre. It's impossible to measure skill entirely accurately with randomness thrown in so removing as much as possible goes hand in hand with competitions to determine the most skilled player.

2) I often hear the statements you've made here on the forums: Dengar always rolls all evades, defenders and Soontir are nigh impossible to crack, turtling and 'tanking up' is a consistently good strategy. I've never managed to consistently replicate these 'in a vacuum' statements because it turns out they rarely reflect real life scenarios outside of an extreme skill mismatch or some rather good luck.

3) Evade tokens can be used as 'save my ass' tokens certainly and they can protect against bad flying sometimes. They also can serve as decision points for good flying though. Do you spend your evade to fully dodge an attack but risk the gunner shot? Do you keep your evade at the cost of damage so you can juke someone? They're as key to the core of the game as focus and I think that it's important to have all 3 core tokens (focus, evade, target lock) as good decision points for players to use to make the game more than just a 'get highest ps and outfly/out react your opponent'.

1 minute ago, nigeltastic said:

1) Competitive games and competitive gamers are entirely centered around removing variance.

Demonstrably untrue. There are few games with more competitive players, for higher stakes, than hold'em, for example.

The variance in no-limit hold'em is tremendous, yet none of the top players -- and yes, there are recognizably more-skilled players in no-limit hold'em -- would significantly lessen it. (This is easily demonstrated by the fact that there's a version of hold'em -- limit hold'em -- that was created specifically to limit variance ... to protect weaker players. Like, for example, me. I'm a fantastic limit hold'em player, because of my on-the-fly probability skills, and routinely get crushed at no-limit.)

X-Wing has become increasingly centered around removing variance, yes, and IMO it's strangling the game. Poker, on the other hand, even with its high variance and crushing outcomes, keeps pulling in new whales ... because even a fish can win against a 10-bracelet holder.

23 minutes ago, nigeltastic said:

I have 3 response points:

1) Competitive games and competitive gamers are entirely centered around removing variance. This is true across all game types and all genres. The suggestion to make competitive play more interesting by making this more difficult flies directly in the face of this and is somewhat bizarre. It's impossible to measure skill entirely accurately with randomness thrown in so removing as much as possible goes hand in hand with competitions to determine the most skilled player.

2) I often hear the statements you've made here on the forums: Dengar always rolls all evades, defenders and Soontir are nigh impossible to crack, turtling and 'tanking up' is a consistently good strategy. I've never managed to consistently replicate these 'in a vacuum' statements because it turns out they rarely reflect real life scenarios outside of an extreme skill mismatch or some rather good luck.

3) Evade tokens can be used as 'save my ass' tokens certainly and they can protect against bad flying sometimes. They also can serve as decision points for good flying though. Do you spend your evade to fully dodge an attack but risk the gunner shot? Do you keep your evade at the cost of damage so you can juke someone? They're as key to the core of the game as focus and I think that it's important to have all 3 core tokens (focus, evade, target lock) as good decision points for players to use to make the game more than just a 'get highest ps and outfly/out react your opponent'.

Re: 1) See above, I think Wilder covered it pretty well. If I wanted a game with no variance, I'd play chess. But to me, chess is boring as hell because I've got no chance against an experienced opponent. Throw in some dice rolls and at least I've got something to root for. People play cus it's fun, first and foremost.

2) You see those statements for a reason. Either that's because tjhe staements are accurate, or it's because people think they're accurate; either way, it's an NPE. Me personally . . . I feel like they happen all too often. I just got back from flying Corran at a Regional, and it's stupid how many times I just shrugged and turtled. With focus and evade, there's not a whole lot that can punch damage through on him. But I admit that my experience is just my experience, and if it's not admissible as evidence, I refer you back to my first point

3) All of the examples of evade tokens being used as decision points that you bring up spring up from upgrades and additions, not the token itself. Besides which, they usually have more to do with the ship you're flying than anything; if you've got the health, save it. If you don't, spend it. That ain't exactly exciting gameplay in my book. In my opinion, the evade only exacerbates the high-PS problem. If I can catch Soontir in arc, I should be rewarded with a juicy shot, not punished by him turtling and so on.

46 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

The problem is ridiculous, often unintended, action economy. (And by this I'm including things like Dengaroo's reliance on Zuckuss, Manaroo, and Overclocked R4; so things like, "overlooking instances when stress as a drawback is not actually a drawback." (For my part in that, mea culpa.))

True to some degree. Focus + evade has been an annoying action shell pretty much since the game's inception, though, and the removal of the evade action makes it easier to avoid broken defensive combos like the ones you bring up. Of course, you could just go with the "design better" approach . . . but if you could do that, I have to ask: why aren't we already doing it? Honestly, broken **** will always crop up eventually. The best goal is just to delay and mitigate.

this ain't poker, though

it's a "minatures game of tactical space combat."

If a "fish" can beat a "10-braclet holder" here, all it means is that said tactics are utterly irrelevant and the game has failed horribly

and yes, I know there's a lot of mental strategy and mental mathematics to these card games, but those aint x-wing

you don't get randomly dealt a "hand" (squad) and then have to make do on a hand by hand basis, you've built the squad already. All the bluffing and such goes on during the planning phase, as dictated by pilot skill order

variance really doesn't have much of a place here, other than to add the necessary variety on a game by game basis. It does not need to dictate the game, or even play a larger part at all. Hell, it probably plays too much of a role as is.

now, more emphasis could be placed on said Tactical Space Combat by only allowing reduction of variance as a reward for good flying (i.e, benefits dolled out if positional requirements are met, such as range or arc placement etc. ala auto thrusters or outmanuever)

but adding variance by removing mods is not the way to go

Ah, the whooshing sound of an analogy flying between the ears of the over-literal. Every time you hear it, a Rogue Squadron pilot gets his or her wings!

I dont think there is anything wrong with evade token/action. All the problems OP described are mostly related to the same problem, limitless abilities/game effects. Soontir turtling up is just an evade and focus protecting 3 hull. It's Palps limitless range ability that makes him near impossible to kill. Enter zuckuss, another limitless game effect. Reroll as many green dice as possible and get limitless stress tokens in return. Manaroo, limitless range. Overclocked R4, limitless focus tokens for limitless stress tokens. All these abilities/effects with no limits are the problem. EDIT: Even limitless regen.

Here we go again:

They just need to cap some of these abilities.

Cannot use Zuckuss if you have any stress.

Manaroo range 1-3.

Palp range 1-3.

Overclocked, Once per round, when you spend a focus token, you may receive a stress token to immediately receive a focus token.

But for evade token, I mean, if they really wanted to, it could get changed to "Spend an evade token to reroll 1 green die." That way the evade token still is relevant to things like juke, etc., keeps variance, and still helps turtled ships in a way but does not guarantee anything.

Lol, I knew I'd have a hard time convincing you, Fickle

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be ways to control variance, just that the evade action shouldn't be one of them. I'm down with stuff like the Concord Dawn title and Autothrusters; they very clearly reward good flying. But the evade action can be . . . arbitrary?

Plus, even with all the variance control we've got these days, variance still happens. What about that Dengar that took 9 damage in the Activation phase? It's always gonna be a thing, and in a weird way, making MORE variance means it has LESS of an impact (because the more variance there is, the more likely it is that both players will suffer from it). Like . . . maybe my green dice crap out and I have no evade, but that's not super unlikely; in fact, it's likely enough that it could easily happen to my opponent during the same game. Compare that to "Well, ****, I just lost Dengar in one turn before he even shot," or even stuff like "Well, ****, I had two rounds of Range 1 Gunner'd shots and missed them all" (which I think happend to someone at Worlds?) and you realize that, the more common variance is, the easier it is to recover from. That make sense? Prolly I'm just crazy

1 hour ago, Jeff Wilder said:

I agree with almost all of your premises ... yet wouldn't want to see your implementation.

Evade isn't the problem. (See if you can find some tactical advice articles from early in the game, when Evade was strongly considered to be the weaker alternative to Focus for nearly every ship.)

The problem is ridiculous, often unintended, action economy. (And by this I'm including things like Dengaroo's reliance on Zuckuss, Manaroo, and Overclocked R4; so things like, "overlooking instances when stress as a drawback is not actually a drawback." (For my part in that, mea culpa.))

X-Wing 2.0 can and should have Evade actions and tokens. It just needs to be more cognizant of stacking. (For an apt comparison in another gaming genre, look how elegantly 5E D&D fixed the buffing problem that began in 3.0 D&D.)

For this reason, I don't think the solution is going to be "X-Wing 2.0." I think there's plenty of design space in X-Wing 1.0 for a pilot ability or upgrade that restricts action economy and token stacking, just like there's space for an ability or upgrade that punishes those who stack stress tokens.

Evade needs to be a thing.

1. PWTs exist with no drawback for firing out of arc.

2. Imperials would need to be completely redone, considering 80% of their ships live and die by the green dice

I do, however, agree that guaranteed evade tokens/results (X7, Palp, AT) need to be at least looked at, but not removed entirely.

36 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Ah, the whooshing sound of an analogy flying between the ears of the over-literal. Every time you hear it, a Rogue Squadron pilot gets his or her wings!

"analogy" is being very generous, considering the gulf of difference between the two games

the application of variance in those card games have absolutely nothing in common with variance in x-wing, other than that variance exists

if it weren't for that, it'd be more of a "non-sequitur"

36 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Ah, the whooshing sound of an analogy flying between the ears of the over-literal. Every time you hear it, a Rogue Squadron pilot gets his or her wings!

That is unnecessarily rude.

2 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

"analogy" is being very generous, considering the gulf of difference between the two games

Quote

1) Competitive games and competitive gamers are entirely centered around removing variance.

*facepalm*

Believe me, that's not the "gulf of difference" that's the problem.

4 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

*facepalm*

Believe me, that's not the "gulf of difference" that's the problem.

so you were replying explicitly to that claim?

that's still not an analogy, that's a counter example

7 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

so you were replying explicitly to that claim?

Did you seriously not notice the direct quotation and reply? Or were you too busy grabbing images and inserting unneeded whitespace to further bloat your post-length (and post-count)?

Quote

that's still not an analogy, that's a counter example

It's actually a counter-example ... by analogy.

Jeeeesus.

As another No-Limit Hold'em player, I'm used to accounting for variance. Once you understand it and accept it, you can account for it with your playstyle while skill still weighs even more heavily on who will win. As said, there is a reason why you keep seeing the same faces at final tables. Attempting to remove variance is swimming against the current.

Jeff's right about nigel's #1 remark that "this is true across all game types and all genres". Yeah, nah. Variance is fine. Sometimes you pocket aces get cracked in both poker and x-wing.

2 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Did you seriously not notice the direct quotation and reply? Or were you too busy grabbing images and inserting unneeded whitespace to further bloat your post-length (and post-count)?

well here's the thing, you later went on to say

1 hour ago, Jeff Wilder said:

The variance in no-limit hold'em is tremendous, yet none of the top players -- and yes, there are recognizably more-skilled players in no-limit hold'em -- would significantly lessen it. (This is easily demonstrated by the fact that there's a version of hold'em -- limit hold'em -- that was created specifically to limit variance ... to protect weaker players. Like, for example, me. I'm a fantastic limit hold'em player, because of my on-the-fly probability skills, and routinely get crushed at no-limit.)

X-Wing has become increasingly centered around removing variance, yes, and IMO it's strangling the game. Poker, on the other hand, even with its high variance and crushing outcomes, keeps pulling in new whales ... because even a fish can win against a 10-bracelet holder.

comparing the variance in x-wing and poker

and citing the lack of variance in x-wing as a negative

because the variance in poker pulls in new players

because newer players to beat the best of the best with variance

which, as I had to point out, is not a good parallel to draw because they are wildly different games with very drastically different

making for a poor comparison

idk, maybe you forgot about all that. Not a huge deal, though, since nothing you contributed here was worth going through those unnecessarily bitter remarks

2 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Not a huge deal, though, since nothing you contributed here was worth going through those unnecessarily bitter remarks

Yeah, I know. My contributions are "Finn/Expose/etc/etc/etc levels of bad."

well no,

those can at least be fun

Please guys, can we all strive to state our opinions in a kind a respectful manner?

I don't think Evade tokens are bad, I think they are necessary to the game of strategic chance that is X-Wing.

The thing I dislike about X-Wing currently is that the elements that are overtly powerful in the current meta are the things that should logically fear superior firepower volume (low PS Jousting lists, Palp defenders have only so many tokens to defend with so logically a wall of cheap ships should be able to break through), but because of overcosting/undercosting and several elements in the current meta, those lists are unviable.

I think that if they do something to bring generics cheaply up to date with the game there would be some interesting changes.

Evade isn't the problem. It is the alternative evade (C-3PO, Palp, Poe) That is the problem, there are many ways to get pretty much the exact results of an evade action without the evade token. Also the free evade is another thing. Make evade + focus and there you go a standard token tank.

Thing is the counter comes in many forms from Omega Leader to Canor Jax. However HM is only a counter to the token, I already said there are many things that do exactly the same thing as the token without being the token.

I like evade because we'll green dice suck,and no matter how well you fly, they can just fail,in a tactical Game,you should be able to chose to be defensive and watch out for shots, or choose to be aggressive ,or well just be focused for what ever happens. It makes sense and some ships need that option. option . I agree the problem is some of the abilities that can be added on top of this. But as the game is, having the option to evade is core on the ship's that get it. It's just when you add palp and triple action economy that it becomes "broken feeling"