2 hours ago, FangedChicken said:

The second part of your argument is subjective.

No it really isn't. It objectively takes more skill to properly use Palp now than it did. Because prior to this it took zero skill to know when to use him. Now that you no longer have perfect knowledge it requires actual thought on if you should use him or not. That is by any reasonable definition requiring more skill.

Also I'd argue that it didn't introduce more variance, because it's not like you have to roll a dice to use him, you still have 100% control over when you use him. Using him may have no real impact, but that doesn't mean there's a random chance of his ability being used, just how much effect it's going to have.

2 hours ago, heychadwick said:

The majority of players....not just tournament players...agrees with there being a problem with all 4 cards.

Do you have proof of this? Numbers? A poll? I'm legitimately curious.

1 hour ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Yes, the JM5K was a mistake. Designers and playtesters are human. News at 11.

First, it didn't actually require "repeated rule changes." That's an FFG choice. FFG could have fixed it with a broad-based change: +2 to JM5K costs across the board, -2 to PO title, Jankymech moved from base chassis to PO title. For various reasons that I personally believe to be dysfunctional and non-sustainable, FFG chooses to correct symptoms, piecemeal and ad hoc, rather than correct the actual problems that come up. That's also not news ... ******* Large-Boost is still a problem waiting dormant to break the meta again.

But, to be fair, if they had corrected the actual problems, you would see just as much bitching ... just from different people.

As for "why" we screwed up the JM5K, I can only speak for myself (and to a limited extent for my group): I simply didn't see all of the possible combinations in the vast number of upgrade slots the JM5K has. The strongest of those combinations, combined with the JM5K's durability and maneuverability, broke the ship. It's simply too cheap for what it is does, and as more and more Jankymechs, Illicits, and Crew are released, other broken combos using the JM5K are sure to be discovered. And, FFG being FFG, unfortunately they'll be dealt with piecemeal, too.

The main problem is too much in-ship synergy, that's the problem of having TOO many good slots. Something that FFG seems to not have real sized, giving more and more slots to ships. Large ships also generally suffer from too aggressive costing recently.

On the problem of large ships and large ship boost itself: A lot of you know I really hated large ships and boost in wave4-6, however TLT, the new meta and the half points nerf really hit the 2 ship lists hard. I don't think they now pose a credible uber-tier1 threat anymore. They are good, and fun, and not overpowered. That's my official stance as a one-time large ship hater.

13 minutes ago, defkhan1 said:

Do you have proof of this? Numbers? A poll? I'm legitimately curious.

In my conversations with FFG staff, they have stated that the majority of players are casual and never do a tournament.

Do I have actual hard data on the number of opinions of all X-wingers? No, but I have talked to many types of players and feel more are pro nerf than against. Yes, it is just as subjective as what you think as I have no way of proving it, but I talk to a wide spectrum of players and feel a good pulse on the community. Heck, just look at the reactions in this thread and you will see most are OK with the changes.

22 hours ago, Thepreacher said:

welcome back mr Howlrunner , will you have any friends joining you tonight ?

-yes i believe i will

22 hours ago, Parakitor said:

"That's Mrs. Howlrunner, thank you very much."

Perhaps Ms.

26 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

I think that's a dumb rule, especially when there's only a single generic pilot for a ship. I'd like to see more pilots with EPT slots, not less.

Then create two generics and have the more expensive one get the EPT. The problem with giving the lowest cost ship an EPT is because you get your cake and eat it too. Generally speaking, you get two choices with generics (although the older generics didn't do this, unfortunately). Either A) Take the cheap efficient version, but no EPT, or spend the points to get that EPT slot. That's a cost-benefit scenario. But giving the lowest generic an EPT, at pilot skill 3, was a HUGE mistake, and we've seen the consequences. The problem with putting the EPT on the lowest is that there is no longer a Cost-benefit analysis. To me, the choice of going for the most efficient ship in a given class should cost you that EPT. So yes, I do firmly believe that the rule: "Thou shalt not give the lowest generic in a given ship an EPT" is a crucial rule to maintain. If the contracted scout didn't have an EPT, half of this mess never would have happened. If you want that EPT slot, pick up Manaroo. She's only 2 more points, and gives you an ability. Make the player pay for that EPT slot.

Now I do agree with you that the EPT needs to be more used, but I think FFG figured that out a few waves ago, and overall have been doing really well with it (other than this one example). Too bad that they will NEVER go back and fix some of the older generics that could use a native EPT.

3 hours ago, VanorDM said:

Wow that's some flawed logic there.

Having to know ahead of time when you're most likely to need him means it takes less skill? The change didn't add more variance, it made it so you no longer had perfect information on when to use him, which is why it took no "skill" to use him, because you knew as a fact if using him was a good idea or not. Now you no longer need to do that so you need to be better at reading the board state, predicting future events and knowing how vital that die roll is to make the best use of him. This inherently requires more skill then deciding after the fact.

Maybe I misspoke a bit, what skill it does take is mitigated somewhat by the randomness of the dice, which indeed means there's way more variance involved with new Palp than there was with old. Like I said in my initial response, yeah, you probably have a pretty good idea whether or not an upcoming roll would be worth using Palpatine on. You still have that same information when you make the decision on whether to use Old Palpatine, you just additionally know what this particular roll was. Assuming you didn't roll all evades or all crits, using Old Paplatine on any given roll is always 'good', it's a matter of determining 'how good', or how important it is to improve this particular roll. Unless it's a no brainer where it makes the difference between life or death, you're still weighing all the same information as with New Palpatine, you just have more information.

It turns out that additonal information is really important to Palp's effectiveness though. New Palp, you still know ahead if a roll is important enough to weigh using him, but on Defense he could just be wasted depending on your results. Lets even ignore the obvious where you naturally roll all evades. Going with one of those life-or-death extremes again, say you end up rolling so badly that even with the one Palp flip you still lose your ship, or you roll something like (eye)(eye), have a focus token and need to dodge both to live. New Palp you know its a vital roll, declare his use, and can still get screwed by the dice. In the same situation with Old Palp you'd see he would do nothing and could save him for later. These are edge cases but the fact they're possible makes New Palp worse. At least on Attack a (crit) is always still better than a (hit)...you know, unless it'd be overkill, or the ship still has shields.

And that's really the key issue with new Palp and why he's not nearly as strong. Old Palp was still almost always useful unless you just had a particularly good round of dice, new Palp can sometimes, good or bad roll, just do nothing even if you make the 'right' call on which roll is the most important or most likely to need help. Both require you to make a decision, but the nature of the decision is drastically different, changing from "is definitely improving this roll I'm looking at the results of worth it over having it for another roll I'll be making this round?" to "this roll is important, more so than the others I'm likely to make, do I hedge against something bad happening on it and possibly get no benefit?"

So, to tl;dr this, it doesn't necessarily take less skill to make the choice with New Palp, but the skill involved in making the decision is mitigated by the randomness of the dice on the roll you choose to use it on, good or bad. We'll see how it shakes out in the meta but I don't feel like New Palp is worth 8 points and two crew slots, even if Old Palp was probably undercosted.

2 minutes ago, SirCormac said:

Then create two generics and have the more expensive one get the EPT. The problem with giving the lowest cost ship an EPT is because you get your cake and eat it too. Generally speaking, you get two choices with generics (although the older generics didn't do this, unfortunately). Either A) Take the cheap efficient version, but no EPT, or spend the points to get that EPT slot. That's a cost-benefit scenario. But giving the lowest generic an EPT, at pilot skill 3, was a HUGE mistake, and we've seen the consequences. The problem with putting the EPT on the lowest is that there is no longer a Cost-benefit analysis. To me, the choice of going for the most efficient ship in a given class should cost you that EPT. So yes, I do firmly believe that the rule: "Thou shalt not give the lowest generic in a given ship an EPT" is a crucial rule to maintain. If the contracted scout didn't have an EPT, half of this mess never would have happened. If you want that EPT slot, pick up Manaroo. She's only 2 more points, and gives you an ability. Make the player pay for that EPT slot.

Now I do agree with you that the EPT needs to be more used, but I think FFG figured that out a few waves ago, and overall have been doing really well with it (other than this one example). Too bad that they will NEVER go back and fix some of the older generics that could use a native EPT.

Again, the lowest generic fire spray for scum ALREADY has an ept. You try to get around this by saying it's ps5, which isn't so bad for having an ept, and by saying the imperial generic doesn't have an ept.

the first doesn't work as an argument because previously it wasn't the PS you claimed as an issue on the CS, just that it was the lowest generic. The same applies to the fire spray, and there's a couple other PS3 generics with EPTS in the game (green squadron a-wing even gets 2 with the title), so it's not unique in that regard.

The second doesn't work because scum can't USE the imperial generic. It's not like the choice is a PS3, a ps5 with an ept or a named pilot. It's just "generic with ept" or "named pilot" just like the jumpmastwrjump master

2 minutes ago, SirCormac said:

Then create two generics and have the more expensive one get the EPT. The problem with giving the lowest cost ship an EPT is because you get your cake and eat it too. Generally speaking, you get two choices with generics (although the older generics didn't do this, unfortunately). Either A) Take the cheap efficient version, but no EPT, or spend the points to get that EPT slot. That's a cost-benefit scenario. But giving the lowest generic an EPT, at pilot skill 3, was a HUGE mistake, and we've seen the consequences. The problem with putting the EPT on the lowest is that there is no longer a Cost-benefit analysis. To me, the choice of going for the most efficient ship in a given class should cost you that EPT. So yes, I do firmly believe that the rule: "Thou shalt not give the lowest generic in a given ship an EPT" is a crucial rule to maintain. If the contracted scout didn't have an EPT, half of this mess never would have happened. If you want that EPT slot, pick up Manaroo. She's only 2 more points, and gives you an ability. Make the player pay for that EPT slot.

Now I do agree with you that the EPT needs to be more used, but I think FFG figured that out a few waves ago, and overall have been doing really well with it (other than this one example). Too bad that they will NEVER go back and fix some of the older generics that could use a native EPT.

The EPT slot on the Contracted Scout didn't cause the problem with U-Boats. It was the aggressive costing paired with a great selection of upgrade slots that created the U-boat. Since the U-boat build got broken up, exactly what problems with the meta is the Contracted Scout responsible for? It still has an EPT slot but I haven't seen any Jumpmasters other than Manaroo or Dengar on the tables around me for months.

We don't need more pilots in this game that don't get played just so we can have more choices available. A bad choice that never gets chosen is at best an illusion of choice, at worst it's a trap.

1 hour ago, Blail Blerg said:

The main problem is too much in-ship synergy, that's the problem of having TOO many good slots.

Realistically, the U-Boat build self generated entire 3 ship combos FFG has tried to make Rebels use since like... Wave 1. Turns out those combos are a lot more effective when they're self contained at a third of the points.

1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

OK, fair enough. You did reference my second graphic, however

My completely unfounded opinion: design was so focused on the uniqueness of the imbalanced dial (which absolutely no one talks about as a weakness) that they let the rest of the ship's abilities run heavier on the side of capability. And since the dial does not actually hinder it as planned in terms of maneuvering predictability, the ship does really (read "too") well.

Gimme your best shot back.

Makes sense. What was seen as an internal balancing factor, wasn't, and as Blail Blerg said, there were two strong ships with good cross and internal synergy and a third undercosted headhunter.

Though I'm usually on the other side of this, in this case I wish they'd just cost adjusted more and nerf hammer less (though the idea of making Maneroo and x7 less easy button, I support).

I wonder if they play tested the JM5K extensively with other scum ships and testing within the expansion just wasnt as prevalent? I'm also curious if there was a last minute point tweak (I used to playtest PC games and as off as not the problems game from late fixes that themselves did not get tested).

23 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

The EPT slot on the Contracted Scout didn't cause the problem with U-Boats. It was the aggressive costing paired with a great selection of upgrade slots that created the U-boat. Since the U-boat build got broken up, exactly what problems with the meta is the Contracted Scout responsible for? It still has an EPT slot but I haven't seen any Jumpmasters other than Manaroo or Dengar on the tables around me for months.

We don't need more pilots in this game that don't get played just so we can have more choices available. A bad choice that never gets chosen is at best an illusion of choice, at worst it's a trap.

The Ept slot was the cause of the U boat deadeye problem.

22 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

The EPT slot on the Contracted Scout didn't cause the problem with U-Boats. It was the aggressive costing paired with a great selection of upgrade slots that created the U-boat. Since the U-boat build got broken up, exactly what problems with the meta is the Contracted Scout responsible for? It still has an EPT slot but I haven't seen any Jumpmasters other than Manaroo or Dengar on the tables around me for months.

We don't need more pilots in this game that don't get played just so we can have more choices available. A bad choice that never gets chosen is at best an illusion of choice, at worst it's a trap.

As per Jeff wilder: the JMK is just undercoated.
As per me: JMK also has too many upgrade slots. And upgrade synergy within ship is bad bad bad for the game. As opposed to multi-ship synergy, see Howlrunner, requires flight pattern.

Reasoning: JMK has over and over caused problems since its release:

3 jump original list.
3 jumps post r4 nerf.
Manaroo -> Dengaroo
Manaroo -> Paratanni
And top lists still included random Dengar lists, like Dengar Bossk
3 of the 4 pilots dominated tables, and required 3 or 4 nerfs to bring it back in line. Ship was a mistake. And I'm glad they tried to fix it. Imo, Manaroo's fix was a tad harsh, R2 would have been more reasonable. (And that's saying something: I'm not fond of Manaroo and JMK at all)

4 minutes ago, VanorDM said:

No it really isn't. It objectively takes more skill to properly use Palp now than it did. Because prior to this it took zero skill to know when to use him. Now that you no longer have perfect knowledge it requires actual thought on if you should use him or not. That is by any reasonable definition requiring more skill.

Also I'd argue that it didn't introduce more variance, because it's not like you have to roll a dice to use him, you still have 100% control over when you use him. Using him may have no real impact, but that doesn't mean there's a random chance of his ability being used, just how much effect it's going to have.

Did I miss the definition of words? Let's break it down!

subjective -

38 minutes ago, VanderLegion said:

Again, the lowest generic fire spray for scum ALREADY has an ept. You try to get around this by saying it's ps5, which isn't so bad for having an ept, and by saying the imperial generic doesn't have an ept.

the first doesn't work as an argument because previously it wasn't the PS you claimed as an issue on the CS, just that it was the lowest generic. The same applies to the fire spray, and there's a couple other PS3 generics with EPTS in the game (green squadron a-wing even gets 2 with the title), so it's not unique in that regard.

The second doesn't work because scum can't USE the imperial generic. It's not like the choice is a PS3, a ps5 with an ept or a named pilot. It's just "generic with ept" or "named pilot" just like the jumpmastwrjump master

I still stand by the fact that the lowest generic should NEVER get an EPT, based on cost-benefit analysis. That's the problem. You're right, the Mandalorian Mercenary does have an EPT, but like I said, it's a weird case. Were else is a PS 5 the lowest generic? Also, as I mentioned, for that ship class, the lowest class generic does NOT have an EPT, which is ACTUALLY what my rule said, which, to restate it:

"Thou shalt not give the lowest generic for a particular ship class an EPT". I still stand by this, and it still hold up as the Contracted Scout as being the only case in point. Is the JM5K horribly underpriced? Yes, by at least 3 points, but I think giving the lowest generic an EPT is just as egregious a problem, because the whole reason you buy the lowest generic is for efficiency, and efficiency should not be rewarded with an EPT. You can still stick a Torp Scout in an Attanni Mindlink list or run three of them with Attanni Mindlink, and to me this is a fundamental problem of giving the EPT to the lowest generics. There needs to be a Cost-Benefit to taking the lowest cost ship. Period. The problem with giving it an EPT is that cost-benefit is thrown out the window. On pretty much every other ship, you need to 'upgrade' to the next level generic to get that coveted EPT slot, and that, to me, is quite fair. That's all I am saying.

53 minutes ago, Otacon said:

So, to tl;dr this, it doesn't necessarily take less skill to make the choice with New Palp, but the skill involved in making the decision is mitigated by the randomness of the dice on the roll you choose to use it on, good or bad.

The old Palp took zero skill to use, so even a small increase in the amount of skill it takes to effectively use him is a fairly massive change, relatively speaking. So it is completely correct and completely objective to say that the new Palp takes more skil.

If your argument is that it actually took any skill to use Palp before... Then I just won't bother discussing it further, because there is no way we'd ever agree on the basic premise involved.

Quote

We'll see how it shakes out in the meta but I don't feel like New Palp is worth 8 points and two crew slots, even if Old Palp was probably undercosted.

That's fair, but there is no probably about it, he was way undercosted.

He is maybe not two slots but he's easily worth the points considering what he does compared to other cards. Someone compared him to 3PO which is pretty universally considered to be hugely undercosted, and yet Palp offers a great deal more utility than 3PO does, since he can change any type of dice to any result and can do it for any ship on your side.

14 minutes ago, Lobokai said:

Though I'm usually on the other side of this, in this case I wish they'd just cost adjusted more and nerf hammer less (though the idea of making Maneroo and x7 less easy button, I support).

I find cost isn't that great of a balance dial, personally. It relies too much on everything being perfectly costed and still runs into issues with how points fit together to form 100 points total. More often than not in games that try to tweak points I see things go up and cost and become problematically expensive because they stop fitting into a slot without falling back on inefficient filler somewhere. A 1 point increase ends up costly 3-4 in "slack" elsewhere in the list and the whole thing falls apart. I'm generally far more on board with designing the point range something should fit in to give it a place and adjusting abilities to put it in line with that shape.

2 minutes ago, VanorDM said:

The old Palp took zero skill to use, so even a small increase in the amount of skill it takes to effectively use him is a fairly massive change, relatively speaking. So it is completely correct and completely objective to say that the new Palp takes more skil.

That's fair, but there is no probably about it, he was way undercosted.

He is maybe not two slots but he's easily worth the points considering what he does compared to other cards. Someone compared him to 3PO which is pretty universally considered to be hugely undercosted, and yet Palp offers a great deal more utility than 3PO does, since he can change any type of dice to any result and can do it for any ship on your side.

And, to piggy back, C3P0, under normal conditions, gets it 'wrong' 3/8 of the time, if he is guessing 'No Evades', and he is still amazing for 1 AGI ships. So now Palp will be wrong once in a while, (and I am not willing to work out the percentages right now) but if C3P0 can be wrong 3/8 of the time and still work, than Palp can probably roll with a similar ratio.

16 minutes ago, BlodVargarna said:

The Ept slot was the cause of the U boat deadeye problem.

That's an oversimplification. It was a combination of upgrades and a low base cost that caused the problem and not the EPT slot itself. If the EPT slot was the problem we'd still see Contracted Scouts all over the place but we don't.

Just now, SirCormac said:

but if C3P0 can be wrong 3/8 of the time and still work, than Palp can probably roll with a similar ratio.

Not to mention that C3PO is considered to be power creep by a lot of people...

7 minutes ago, SirCormac said:

The problem with giving it an EPT is that cost-benefit is thrown out the window. On pretty much every other ship, you need to 'upgrade' to the next level generic to get that coveted EPT slot, and that, to me, is quite fair. That's all I am saying.

How many ships have generic pilots or named pilots that don't have EPTs that never hit tables? Having more pilots just for the sake of being able to eliminate a bunch of them through cost-benefit-analysis is a waste. Honestly, the Jumpmaster should be the model for how ships are designed going forward. FFG might have made the base ship a bit too cheap but they have 4 solid pilots that could all see play (depending on where the meta is at the time).

I think it's Jeff Wilder that was tossing this idea around: All Jumpmasters should be 2 points more expensive and not have an Astromech slot. The Punishing One title becomes two points cheaper and gives an Astromech slot. That right there fixes the majority of the problems that people have had with the Jumpmaster while still leaving the platform with no dead weight pilots.

42 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

As per Jeff wilder: the JMK is just undercoated.

Really? All 3 of mine have a really nice finish.

13 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

I think it's Jeff Wilder that was tossing this idea around: All Jumpmasters should be 2 points more expensive and not have an Astromech slot. The Punishing One title becomes two points cheaper and gives an Astromech slot. That right there fixes the majority of the problems that people have had with the Jumpmaster while still leaving the platform with no dead weight pilots.

To be clear on this, this is a combination of ideas from me and Geordan. (His was the genius move of Jankymech to PO title, which IMO makes the whole fix work.)

34 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

That's an oversimplification. It was a combination of upgrades and a low base cost that caused the problem and not the EPT slot itself. If the EPT slot was the problem we'd still see Contracted Scouts all over the place but we don't.

As a test case, FFG could give the TIE Punisher an EPT and see if it jumps to the top of the meta. Bet it doesn't (although I'd still like to see it happen).