48 minutes ago, Stoneface said:

[...]

The lack of patience with the designers is kind of mind numbing. As someone pointed out the designers are working 12-18 months out. The number of players far exceeds the number of play testers and op combos are bound to slip through. That's reality. Have some faith that the game will change and anything that is really OP will get changed.

[...]

I don't think 'lack of patience' is the point.

With respect I really don't think that's the problem. Some of us have been collecting since the early waves and have quite a bit of money invested in ships, storage, etc. A few are hoping to have a balanced game after several hundreds of dollars in purchases. Some, including me, think the game isn't so bad. But the game does lend itself well toward micro-balancing, by its very design. With constant upgrades, ships not seeing play because if few percent of efficiency or their reliance on dice is too high, new mechanics, hard to follow rules, an FAQ almost the size of the rules.

I don't think a 'lack of patience' is the always the reason for asking for nerfs and/or buffs. How long as the X-Wing been out classed by TIE fighters? Has it been since the release of the game? I don't know, I still play them head to head and have fun.

19 hours ago, Pewpewpew BOOM said:

Agreed.

I don't know why folk always jump to augmenting ships. The 65 needs to be inferior to the 70. Balance issues? Just mod the cost of various pilots if FFG seeks to do anything.

That wont necessarily work. You'll still have a ship which lacks repositioning after maneuvers. You have an old design that's too expensive. While dropping cost by 1 point would allow 5 of them to fly together you're still facing the same design flaws as before. I think the problem goes back to the original game concept where FFG wanted ships to fly differently. Both Tie and X-wing have K turns but the Tie gets a barrel roll. All ships should have a barrel roll but then the ships aren't different enough. They would differ only in the stat line and by pilot ability.

Imagine for a moment that all fighters could barrel roll, sloop and Tallon roll. Modern combat aircraft wirth vectored thrust can accomplish most of those moves. The stat line of the ships would differ and so would small changes in the maneuver dial. A low cost Defender wouldn't be much different from a T-70. Similar attack, similar health. In order to make the game more interesting and diverse certain decisions were made that we have to live with. If you want a historical comparison just look at the P-40 vs the Japanese Zero of WW II. They could perform all of the same maneuvers, Zero was faster straight out, could turn tighter and climb faster. The P-40 had better fire power, armor for for pilot and fuel tanks and was faster in a dive. This is where X-Wing started but as the game progressed the X-wing got left behind as better fighters appeared. This is where we are now and have been for several waves. The Tie still has its original advantage of speed and maneuverability.

When you talk modding pilot costs this also has a correlation to WW II. There pilots who got use out of their AC long after the plane was considered "top tier". Bong in a P-38, Saburo Sakai in the Zero are too off the top of my head. The very best pilots are the ones you see played all the time competitively. Poe, Wedge and poor Biggs.

I don't know if there is an answer at all to making the X-wing better.

36 minutes ago, Cerve said:

Me too. I'm always ready to learn something new. Don't know why this run to call the nerfs :-/

Human nature. The drive to win.

14 minutes ago, Ken at Sunrise said:

I don't think 'lack of patience' is the point.

With respect I really don't think that's the problem. Some of us have been collecting since the early waves and have quite a bit of money invested in ships, storage, etc. A few are hoping to have a balanced game after several hundreds of dollars in purchases. Some, including me, think the game isn't so bad. But the game does lend itself well toward micro-balancing, by its very design. With constant upgrades, ships not seeing play because if few percent of efficiency or their reliance on dice is too high, new mechanics, hard to follow rules, an FAQ almost the size of the rules.

I don't think a 'lack of patience' is the always the reason for asking for nerfs and/or buffs. How long as the X-Wing been out classed by TIE fighters? Has it been since the release of the game? I don't know, I still play them head to head and have fun.

Read my post below this one.

14 minutes ago, Ken at Sunrise said:

Some of us have been collecting since the early waves and have quite a bit of money invested in ships, storage, etc. A few are hoping to have a balanced game after several hundreds of dollars in purchases.

This is starting to stray a bit to "sunk cost" or "concorde" fallacy. Because you invest time and money on the product, you will continue to spend time and effort on it, and may make irrational decisions or demands concerning it because people are generally averse to "wasting" resources. But the money and time is already spent, it wasn't wasted. Other people feel an irrational sense of entitlement - they feel like they are "owed" something by the game because they've spent a lot of time and money on it (but you aren't "owed" anything but the stuff you paid to purchase - which you still have).

This is think is where patience comes in (an argument I espouse) because X-Wing is not a "complete" game (I/e it is still being developed and released and will be for some time), FFG is not inclined nor does it make business sense for them to wave a magic wand and fix things (which would only appease a subsection of their player base anyway) instantly without making you pay more cost in - which makes logical sense because they need to make money so they can pay employees who then do the work on fixing and development. And this is something they are willing to do, as seen with small ships bundled in epic, or packages like Veterans which took Defenders from basically too expensive for any purpose to top-tier usability (and interestingly, changed the game regarding PS a little). If FFG feels like a design element or gameplay experience is running too contrary to their general idea of the game and poor for the health of the game as a product and a community who buys that product, they aren't averse to errata - but opinions of a few people who speak out in small groups and aren't even unified are not necessarily the yardstick FFG will go for.

On that end, to use an analogy, Dark Souls 3 (IIRC) sold like 10 million copies total - their subreddit has like 100,000 subscribers. So even if we're active and engage, and spent money in the past - we aren't necessarily the people FFG needs to hit to keep the game going.

3 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

This is starting to stray a bit to "sunk cost" or "concorde" fallacy. [...]

This is think is where patience comes in (an argument I espouse) because X-Wing is not a "complete" game (I/e it is still being developed and released and will be for some time), [...]

But that is in part my point, thank you. While you feel this is a fallacy, some may feel that after these few years and monies spent they might expect a "complete" game. Perhaps one that is still growing to be sure, but still one that is readily balanced and easy to play. That is why, if patience is the issue, patience may be thin. I don't know Dark Souls, but comparing one broken system to another broken system does not fix either. That is like saying X-Wing is cheaper than buying something else. So? There will always be something more or less expensive, there will always be something more broken, but we are talking about X-Wing so I don't see how the comparison fits.

Oh my. So some internet trolls needed thier daily dose of elitism and desided that building an ivory tower against players wanting to discuss ideas that might improve a game they're invested in was the path to shoring up their ego? Cute.

So where, pray tell, would you think was the appropriate place for a person who'd like to see irrelevant ships get back into the meta to go post and converse with likeminded individuals? Game designer's active forums seems sensical to me.

This mostly isn't people who have lost a game logging on the FFG forum and trying to get their pet squad to worlds. If you missed that, then yes, you completely failed to comprehend something you read.

I've got every single expansion, save 1, and can build any meta list out there. I'm pretty confident that many of the others that have posted ideas about how an off kilter meta could be stabilized are in the same boat.

Just because you're clearly unable to see the game objectively, don't start whining and trolling those who can. I've got no personal stock in any one list, but I feel very confident in saying token generation and dice mechanics have become bloated and too many ships are sidelined or at least require some very lucky match ups and dice rolls to compete.

All of these threads have had very clear titles. Feel free to not read... or do... but trashing invested fans because they care is pretty intellectually dishonest

I think people have massive rose-tinted glasses at the first three waves of x-wing.

The game was simpler, but not well balanced in that era.

So many of the suggestions seem to try to remove every wrinkle in the game except dice, where the only good ships are the most cost effective for their stats.

41 minutes ago, Stoneface said:

That wont necessarily work. You'll still have a ship which lacks repositioning after maneuvers. You have an old design that's too expensive. While dropping cost by 1 point would allow 5 of them to fly together you're still facing Tue same design flaws as before. I think the problem goes back to the original game concept where FFG wanted ships to fly differently. Both Tie and X-wing have K turns but the Tie gets a barrel roll. All ships should have a barrel roll but then the ships aren't different enough. They would differ only in the stat line and by pilot ability.

Imagine for a moment that all fighters could barrel roll, sloop and Tallon roll. Modern combat aircraft wirth vectored thrust can accomplish most of those moves. The stat line of the ships would differ and so would small changes in the maneuver dial. A low cost Defender wouldn't be much different from a T-70. Similar attack, similar health. In order to make the game more interesting and diverse certain decisions were made that we have to live with. If you want a historical comparison just look at the P-40 vs the Japanese Zero of WW II. They could perform all of the same maneuvers, Zero was faster straight out, could turn tighter and climb faster. The P-40 had better fire power, armor for for pilot and fuel tanks and was faster in a dive. This is where X-Wing started but as the game progressed the X-wing got left behind as better fighters appeared. This is where we are now and have been for several waves. The Tie still has its original advantage of speed and maneuverability.

When you talk modding pilot costs this also has a correlation to WW II. There pilots who got use out of their AC long after the plane was considered "top tier". Bong in a P-38, Saburo Sakai in the Zero are too off the top of my head. The very best pilots are the ones you see played all the time competitively. Poe, Wedge and poor Biggs.

I don't know if there is an answer at all to making the X-wing better.

I still think it is a cost benefit issue.

Keep Biggs as-is, or even increase his cost. Leave Wedge as-is. Drop the others.

Ships that get played have stong benefits for their cost.

44 minutes ago, Ken at Sunrise said:

But that is in part my point, thank you. While you feel this is a fallacy, some may feel that after these few years and monies spent they might expect a "complete" game. Perhaps one that is still growing to be sure, but still one that is readily balanced and easy to play. That is why, if patience is the issue, patience may be thin. I don't know Dark Souls, but comparing one broken system to another broken system does not fix either. That is like saying X-Wing is cheaper than buying something else. So? There will always be something more or less expensive, there will always be something more broken, but we are talking about X-Wing so I don't see how the comparison fits.

Well, I don't want to say that all arguments about people who invest in the game are fallacious - there is still rational choice there. I just don't think people always act rationally about the subject, or present it that way. Expectation of a "complete" game is not rational, the game is still releasing products and is in development - it's not reasonable to expect all the kinks to be ironed out instantly and without the need to buy new product (as I'm sure that helps determine how much budget and employees the X-Wing division gets and thus people who are able to devote time and resources to new releases and to work on rules fixes) and for a game in on-going development to have an ideal state where everything works perfectly. Sadly, since I think the only way X-Wing will "finish" is if it stops selling, the only way to "complete" X-Wing would be to stop supporting it, so that no new releases are forthcoming thus no reason not to just adjust the rules to account for the fact that new product won't "fix" i t.

I mentioned Dark Souls as an analogy for engagement and audience. FFG does do work to further the game while it is "incomplete" and is known to improve on old ships with new elements (requiring more cost for logical reasons) and if things are too bad will even directly adjust the rules. But it's not necessarily sound logic to think that the forum community specifically (who aren't united in this) are the actual slice of the audience FFG needs to hit. Sure - we're the most engaged, but Dark Souls is a game which sold an incredible amount of copies (and I'm sure a **** sight more than X-Wing has sold) yet even on one of the largest social media platforms on the internet, has a WAY smaller amount of people associated with it - this isn't even accounting for people who don't engage, just lurk.

EDIT: Actually, this is kind of what I'm talking about when I say sunk cost. There's no rational expectation that the game will be "better" or should cater to you just because you put more money in it. Buying X-Wing tells FFG you like the product and want more of it. X-Wing's design did drift, but people still bought and continue to buy it. The way to tell FFG you want X-Wing to be different is actually to stop supporting the game. You have to stop buying product, stop attending official events. Make it known to FFG you are no longer a paying customer because of that reason. They already have your past money, and owe you nothing but the plastic and cardboard you already own for it. So the logical path of economics is to cost them your future money, that actually incentivises them to do something to bring back in customers to buy new product again. This is where sunk cost comes in - people who have invested so much time and money aren't willing to actually bite the bullet and stop their monetary support of the game and so they make unfounded "demands" that FFG should do something about some thing. If FFG actually "should" so something about a thing, they probably will and may already be planning for it. And if they have lost your custom and do not change then people may have to accept the fact that the official game format does not need them as a customer, cut their losses, and feel free to get enjoyment in non-standard or unofficial formats out of the product you already paid for.

1 hour ago, Lobokai said:

Oh my. So some internet trolls needed thier daily dose of elitism and desided that building an ivory tower against players wanting to discuss ideas that might improve a game they're invested in was the path to shoring up their ego? Cute.

So where, pray tell, would you think was the appropriate place for a person who'd like to see irrelevant ships get back into the meta to go post and converse with likeminded individuals? Game designer's active forums seems sensical to me.

This mostly isn't people who have lost a game logging on the FFG forum and trying to get their pet squad to worlds. If you missed that, then yes, you completely failed to comprehend something you read.

I've got every single expansion, save 1, and can build any meta list out there. I'm pretty confident that many of the others that have posted ideas about how an off kilter meta could be stabilized are in the same boat.

Just because you're clearly unable to see the game objectively, don't start whining and trolling those who can. I've got no personal stock in any one list, but I feel very confident in saying token generation and dice mechanics have become bloated and too many ships are sidelined or at least require some very lucky match ups and dice rolls to compete.

All of these threads have had very clear titles. Feel free to not read... or do... but trashing invested fans because they care is pretty intellectually dishonest

No need for personal attacks, friend. Sorry you took my joking so seriously.

16 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

[...]

EDIT: Actually, this is kind of what I'm talking about when I say sunk cost. There's no rational expectation that the game will be "better" or should cater to you just because you put more money in it. Buying X-Wing tells FFG you like the product and want more of it. X-Wing's design did drift, but people still bought and continue to buy it. The way to tell FFG you want X-Wing to be different is actually to stop supporting the game. You have to stop buying product, stop attending official events. Make it known to FFG you are no longer a paying customer because of that reason. [...]

Oh how very true and not to mix thread. In the last year there has been a growing number of thread about the various reasons people are buying less, stopping their purchases or getting out completely. Not just anecdotally as I personally know someone that got rid of their entire collection which was sizable. Plus I know (on-line) a few that have stopped buying or cut back. To be fair there are several reason that people post. Overly complex, too many combos and yes even balance or a lack of it. So I do agree completely with you on this.

FFG is under no obligation to offer a 'complete', as you call it, game. We do have to be careful, on the Internet there is more than a few that will argue that any game, no matter how horrid to play, is complete if playable. But we are talking two different things I think.

I do expect, because of FFG's marketing model, for X-Wing to continue to grow. But many have said that the X-Wing ship has not been balanced from the first release of the game. Yet because of the Star Wars universe, FFG's otherwise known qualities in games or any other number of reasons many have continued to purchase thinking that the core ships would be balanced. I don't think you mean it but one could assume from your argument that they will never be balanced and we should just accept it or buy something else. Hence our disagreement. Many would like the X-Wing, TIE Fighter and a few other core ships to be balanced to each other and playable without having to purchase years of expansions and upgrades often buying other ships some don't intend to use.

I'm not trying to be difficult of simply debate, I'm just sharing the opinions of many that I've read on-line or heard.

23 minutes ago, Ken at Sunrise said:

Oh how very true and not to mix thread. In the last year there has been a growing number of thread about the various reasons people are buying less, stopping their purchases or getting out completely. Not just anecdotally as I personally know someone that got rid of their entire collection which was sizable. Plus I know (on-line) a few that have stopped buying or cut back. To be fair there are several reason that people post. Overly complex, too many combos and yes even balance or a lack of it. So I do agree completely with you on this.

FFG is under no obligation to offer a 'complete', as you call it, game. We do have to be careful, on the Internet there is more than a few that will argue that any game, no matter how horrid to play, is complete if playable. But we are talking two different things I think.

I do expect, because of FFG's marketing model, for X-Wing to continue to grow. But many have said that the X-Wing ship has not been balanced from the first release of the game. Yet because of the Star Wars universe, FFG's otherwise known qualities in games or any other number of reasons many have continued to purchase thinking that the core ships would be balanced. I don't think you mean it but one could assume from your argument that they will never be balanced and we should just accept it or buy something else. Hence our disagreement. Many would like the X-Wing, TIE Fighter and a few other core ships to be balanced to each other and playable without having to purchase years of expansions and upgrades often buying other ships some don't intend to use.

I'm not trying to be difficult of simply debate, I'm just sharing the opinions of many that I've read on-line or heard.

I, too, would like those ships to be better balanced with one another but also kept simple. The x-wing and tie fighter should be simple, cost effective jousters that shouldnt really need upgrades.

I heard y'all need some nerfing...

I see your nerf guns and raise you Red Ring Raging Vader

This thread is rapidly turning into a game of "spot the word being overused as a perjorative when it's definition is completely non-sequitur."

5 hours ago, Ken at Sunrise said:

I'm not trying to be difficult of simply debate, I'm just sharing the opinions of many that I've read on-line or heard.

No, I understand that. Similarly this is why I'm phrasing a lot of my arguments specific ways. I don't want to turn this into a personal attack by naming names or pointing at somebody and saying "You, you're irrational!" But some people are not necessarily making rational arguments or making rational stances to a game which, while entertaining is still an ongoing work by a corporate entity. There's a certain way stuff works that you have to think about (I actually learned a lot about this with Video Games) about buying, not buying, reviewing, etc. that actually moves developers to do something different. And on the original subject of "nerf" threads, the 100th critical analysis of "why the meta is bad" on the forums is not necessarily that move.

Given that in the past, FFG has stepped in to make rules changes which fix rules or ships that they feel are performing outside what their intent for the game is, and have commented on the past that ships haven't been doing well and have then made releases which help those ships - I think that if they are given enough time, most stuff will eventually bounce back. But I also would like people to think on and hopefully accept the possibility that their ideal form of X-Wing is not necessarily the designers intent, and that development is a long process - longer if you want more "playtesting". And FFG is constrained by the fact that it's a licensed product they're working on. If they didn't know how good Xs and Ys were in Rogue One or how heavily they were featured, we probably wouldn't get a "X-Wing Fix" pack fully released until this time next year (hopefully something like that is already in the works). And SOP for any company, no matter how friendly and community oriented is to keep things under the wraps until the appropriate time to reveal - usually when all your ducks are lined up.

Nerf threads, fix threads, let's advertise our Podcast threads, what's in wave 64 threads and I know I'll post my squad list in the wrong place threads are a necessity.

If they weren't there forum 222 would be empty.

And leave Joe Boss alone.

Cheers
Baaa

5 hours ago, Panzeh said:

I, too, would like those ships to be better balanced with one another but also kept simple. The x-wing and tie fighter should be simple, cost effective jousters that shouldnt really need upgrades.

Not that this is technically related to the original topic, but do people mean something a little more when they say "jousting"? Because really, in terms of "fly straight at the enemy, shoot them a couple times then come around for another pass", the X-Wing was only ever really good at that vs more fragile ships (Eyes, Squints and Dupes). If people are okay with that "simplicity" then it can probably get some cost adjustment in there which makes it able to more efficiently prey on those sorts of ships - but it'll still be at a disadvantage to heavy fighters and some big-base ships, on account of it's more average health and stuff. Because to me "jousting" implies at least the acceptance that the other guy is gonna plink back.

On 2/15/2017 at 0:41 PM, TitaniumChopstick said:

DAT...

40 minutes ago, Baaa said:

Nerf threads, fix threads, let's advertise our Podcast threads, what's in wave 64 threads and I know I'll post my squad list in the wrong place threads are a necessity.

If they weren't there forum 222 would be empty.

And leave Joe Boss alone.

Cheers
Baaa

Kan't everybody be as cool as we veterans are Brah...

4 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

Not that this is technically related to the original topic, but do people mean something a little more when they say "jousting"? Because really, in terms of "fly straight at the enemy, shoot them a couple times then come around for another pass", the X-Wing was only ever really good at that vs more fragile ships (Eyes, Squints and Dupes). If people are okay with that "simplicity" then it can probably get some cost adjustment in there which makes it able to more efficiently prey on those sorts of ships - but it'll still be at a disadvantage to heavy fighters and some big-base ships, on account of it's more average health and stuff. Because to me "jousting" implies at least the acceptance that the other guy is gonna plink back.

I think jousting is one of the most mis-used terms we see. Jousting was used as a means of defining the efficiency of head to head matches. My x attack and tokens against your y defense and tokens. In reality few if any ships do or should joust. In today's aerial combat it is called the 'merge'. This is where you and your opponent close the distance to each other but at the same time maneuver for the most advantage angle of attack. Yet we use 'jousting' number all of the time to rate how well a ship is. Even MJ who has rated many of the ships says he does not count dials or special abilities, only things that directly affect the raw to hit numbers vrs raw defense numbers, i.e. joust.

For simplicity or reality is really is the 'merge'. Unless you like just lining up your ships, not maneuvering and rolling attack/defense dice; then joust away.

23 hours ago, Pewpewpew BOOM said:

I still think it is a cost benefit issue.

Keep Biggs as-is, or even increase his cost. Leave Wedge as-is. Drop the others.

Ships that get played have stong benefits for their cost.

You're right about the cost vs benefit. But there's always point, IMO, where that breaks down. Look at Wedge. He has a great ability. What would you reduce his cost to? Major Juggler has estimated that X-wings are over priced by 2 points. Is Wedge worth 27 points? In today's Meta, probably not. While he has a great ability he's tied to a ship that lacks certain characteristics. You could give him a title like the Royal Guard Tie and let him take two mods. Might work but you're still looking at the cost of the base ship. You can fiddle with the numbers and get Wedge in a T-65 close to Poe in a T-70. You effectively have Wedge in a T-70. Does this solve the problem? Well yes and no. You can use the original X-wing in games but you've changed the ship into a T-70 with a T-65 pilot. Not a proper fix in my opinion.

FFG may well be working on a 'proper fix' but it's going to be a rough ride. You want to keep the essence of the original while making it relevant again, and that's going to be difficult.