Just now, PhantomFO said:

I've also been involved in gaming communities for two decades, and I've never seen anyone apply NPE as broadly as you've been. I mean, seriously, "if X-Wing starts to become defined by cards that 75% of the community find to make for negative games?" That's a BS statistic and we all know it.

Uh, no ****, Sherlock? Hence the IF as part of the conditional claim. I was using it as hypothetical example to make a point about what sort of meaning NPE could have and what sort of role it could play in discussion. I was not making an empirical claim about actual statistics. In fact, that's precisely why I said IF...

Wow, has modern society utterly lost it's ability to engage in any sort of nuanced discourse...?

3 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Wow, has modern society utterly lost it's ability to engage in any sort of nuanced discourse...?

Yes, it pretty much has

8 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Wow, has modern society utterly lost it's ability to engage in any sort of nuanced discourse...?

Yes, and your posts here have been prime evidence of that fact... Since the post you seem to have issue with was about how control elements are seen as some as a NPE and therefore need to be fixed. Which could ruin the game for a lot of other people. But you completely missed the whole point I was making.

The term by its very nature implies that something is fundamentally wrong and needs to be fixed, yet people around here keep using to describe anything that is a counter to their prefered playstyle.

I am however not going to continue to debate the proper use of the term, if control elements are inherently bad or even if Kylo himself needs to be changed. The discussion here will have next to no impact on what happens down the road, because FFG relies on empirical data not posts on this message board.

24 minutes ago, PhantomFO said:

... but the Decivader was also a hard counter for Interceptors and nobody blasted that as being a "NPE."

They didn't? Being highly likely to remove Soontir Fel from the board in the first round that Soontir got within range 3 of the Decimator with no way for the other player to prevent it (other than keeping Soontir completely out of range) seems like it would be the poster child for NPE.

If people weren't calling it NPE, it's probably because they were either fed up with Soontir or that it only had high levels of NPE against a very specific subset of squads and was weak enough against the meta at the time that it wasn't too widespread.

16 hours ago, mkevans80 said:

Think about your question for a minute. I'm playing ships with primary firing arcs, no turrets, primary or secondary. The game board has a finite space. It is literally impossible to keep a quickly pursuing PWT ship at range 3 AND still shoot at it. If you turn away from the oncoming enemy, you're not shooting at it. Even turning to get away will not be fast enough to keep them from gaining on you.

Try it with a friend sometime. Give your friend a PWT ship and tell him to try to get you to range 1-2. Then you take three non-turretted ships and see if you can keep every single one at range 3 or further while actually attacking your friend's ship. If you can manage that for the span of a full game, then let me know what your rate is for coaching because I need me some of that.

My apologies, clearly the level of salt and anger this card has provoked has turned you into something of a condescending a**hat.

But you were playing, I didn't have to suffer the NPE.

But... in my humble, honest observation. Given that he's intent on blasting you out of the sky and giving up his action to assign or reassign the "card" in question if you had all 3 ships left vs the Deci.. how was he chasing all of them? I know primary turret (or turrets) require less positioning in terms of actual flying but he can't chase all three. Trying to keep arcs and therefore damage has him burning one ship down (as he did) while your other ships are pounding on him. I'm sure you did that. Also and again I apologise for missing it but you only posted what ships you both had, not specific setups. Did you consider setting up a bump to deny him the action he needs to get Kylo off (as it were)? Of course you did, you're a better pilot than I am and that's fine. I wouldn't have flown the list you did because I gave up on B-Wings a long time ago as I was never much use slow rolling them around and avoiding all the stress they create themselves, whilst Keyan thrives on that most of them don't. The biggest issue you I think you faced against this particular list in this particular case was you were behind on the PS bid. RAC is moving after your list or at best the same time as Cassian (did he have VI??) so he can react rather than trigger your reaction and as your B-Wing and T-70 had repositional actions moving second would have helped you a bit (not a lot).

All 3 of your ships are throwing 3 dice primaries, would you consider attacking the Deci first? Scourge is rolling 2 dice until someone has damage cards (which Kylo provides) generic striker has 3 but no EPT and the potential to over shoot without careful movement (I've played against and with strikers a few times, love 'em). You have to take some hits from the support but would someone with a fast moving large base ship (PWT but no K-Turn) be expecting you to target the big thing with 0 agl first?

2 hours ago, Verlaine said:

Do the players who think Kylo is an NPE find him less annoying when he is in a ship without a turret? Is the problem less significant with Kylo pilot?

Kylo pilot is assigning the card to the first thing that shoots him.... imo fight him last. Crew Kylo on a turret is rough (but costs your action or experimental interface and stressed...) so imo, kill him first. He can down most small rebel ships in a few rounds of shooting, just pushing crits through.

Negative Player Experience, as far as I understand it, is when playing a game frustrates or bores one or both players. It's that simple. Unless somebody has some super-official reference that they can point to that is more definitive, I'd say that you can use the term to describe quite a bit of different circumstances. From the definition I've provided above, however, it sounds pretty **** subjective to me, and I find it mildly amusing that people are arguing over what constitutes a NPE. You can decide that somebody's NPE is just poor sportsmanship or not liking to lose, or that it's just something they don't like to play against. It can also be mechanics that are kludgy and overcomplicated (Condition Cards in general fit the bill), things that frustrate players, too much (or too little) luck built into the game, or a number of other things.

I would consider flying as or against a quad-TLT list to be right up there. For me, I would add stress-piling mechanics like Dengaroo and Stresshog that feel like they're breaking the spirit of the game. I'd guess that FickleGreenDice has had enough NPE's with his dice whiffing out that it literally defined his identity on these boards. I tried playing a bit MTG a while back and gave up on the game almost immediately. One of the worst things I hated about that game was playing with or against counterspell-type decks. "No, sorry, you can't do that. Nope, can't do that either. ...Well, why the hell are we playing, then?" I experienced far too many NPE's on a regular basis to continue playing that game.

Blinded Pilot is a terrible, frustrating, un-fun card that never should have found its way into the new damage deck. Normally I think you have a 6% chance to draw one every time you receive a crit, considering the normal size of a damage deck, and when you do, it sucks. Kylo Ren bumps that percentage way, way, up.

4 minutes ago, boomaster said:

Did you consider setting up a bump to deny him the action he needs to get Kylo off (as it were)?

Depending on the build of the Decimator, bumping may not even be a useful thing to do. The Dauntless title allows the Decimator to use the Kylo Ren action even if it bumps. The only thing that bumping the Decimator does is reduce the damage that the Decimator takes that round.

I think the feelings of NPE with Kylo Ren crew come mostly with RAC. You've got kind of the perfect storm with RAC:

1. He can kind of spare the action needed to use Kylo.
2. He can take actions even if blocked (Dauntless)
3. He can get a high enough PS to make sure the condition goes onto a target that will be receiving fire.
4. He has the tools needed to be able to trigger the condition fairly regularly (Turret, eyeball to crit, ability to take Gunner and HSCP).

Was this your first encounter with Ren and THE DARKSIDE? Surprises like this are definitely not fun. I did the same thing to an Imp player but I did it with 3 Zs and a Hawk. I won't tell you to get good or anything like that. What I will recommend is to look back at the game and figure what you could have done differently.

Don't be one of those guys that throws their hands in the air, cries BS and goes home.

NPE is very relative. Here are some of the very aggravating things that I have done in the past:

- In the first round of combat, ionised and tractor beamed Miranda on a course that would inevitably lead her off the board.

- Ionised Decimators off the board.

- Brought Kagi during an epic game where my opponent had fully loaded bombers... with long range scanners (now that is just painful to watch as you keep Kagi safely behind your lines).

- Kept a regenerating Poe stressed and ionised as I chipped him to death.

- Stacked insane amounts of stress on Soontir.

- (Thanks to Ketsu crew), maintained 3 tractor beam token on a defender.

- Reduced Whisper to PS 0 with Torkil and have everyone shoot (and kill) her before she could fire back.

- Squashed super elite ships with my Raider.

- Thrown 5 hit/crits with Fenn, Talonbane or Zuckuss (pilot), of course in instances where green dice fail completely)

- Arc dodged a guy so that he never actually had a chance to shoot me for several rounds

- Etc

All of these can be terribly aggravating, but they don't necessarily define a game mechanic that must be changed due to NPE. Sometimes, a card is deserving of a change for the greater good of the game. Other times, we just have a really, really bad game due to a combination of bad luck and / or facing someone who had a list that works really well against ours. It happens.

9 minutes ago, boomaster said:

My apologies, clearly the level of salt and anger this card has provoked has turned you into something of a condescending a**hat.

My apologies, but since we're apparently insulting each other now, I thought your original question had to be coming either from a total newbie or a troll. I wasn't even sure you were serious. Hence my condescending tone.

19 minutes ago, boomaster said:

Did you consider setting up a bump to deny him the action he needs to get Kylo off (as it were)?

Yes, I bumped him repeatedly with Cassian to deny him actions, but he had Dauntless title so he could use Kyo anyway, and Gunner to improve his chances of hitting even without target locks or focus tokens. I'd have to go back and check, but I'm pretty sure I stated that in the OP or in one of my earliest replies.

26 minutes ago, boomaster said:

how was he chasing all of them? I know primary turret (or turrets) require less positioning in terms of actual flying but he can't chase all three. Trying to keep arcs and therefore damage has him burning one ship down (as he did) while your other ships are pounding on him. I'm sure you did that.

Yes, I did that. I'd say no offense, (but you're already offended) but this question is almost as bad as your original one. If I wanted to keep him from chasing all three of my ships, I'd have had to spread them out across the board. This would have allowed him to him focus down one ship at a time while my other ships were attempting to get into flanking position. He also had two other ships that I had to worry about, and he kept them close to RAC. He would have made short work of me if I hadn't grouped up to focuse my fire. Doing so is the only reason I won the game... because I poured enough fire into his ship early on that I was able to take him out around the time he finished off Keyan. If I had tried to come at him from different angles, he would have been able to kill one of my ships easily while my other two were getting into position, and it would have been a slaughter.

33 minutes ago, boomaster said:

The biggest issue you I think you faced against this particular list in this particular case was you were behind on the PS bid.

With the game in question, my opponent had no repositions available to RAC. He also had a fairly limited range of available moves because he was always stressed from using Dauntless. Therefore, my PS-disadvantage was not an issue at all in terms of positioning or actions. The problem was that he could shoot first. However, given that I like playing pilots that are PS 8 or lower (and find VI boring), I am bound to get beat in PS from time to time. Especially when I'm playing a fun, non-tournament worthy build like the "Anger Management" list I had put together for this match.

I will say that the paramount importance of PS in X-Wing is a big peeve of mine... a personal NPE, if you will. When Pilot Skill is by far the most important factor, only a few ships are ever worth taking. I was getting pretty tired of seeing Veteran's Instincts everywhere all the time. It was worst when every ace on the board was PS9, and many of those had VI too. Seriously, do we really need PS11 Vaders flying around?! The has meta shifted enough lately that it's not nearly that bad, and I'm thrilled. VI is boring and repetitive, and I am glad I don't see it as often as I used to. Even if all the non-PS9+ aces are the same (Ryad, Vessery, Miranda), I'll take it.

As for your final point about how you'd never have taken a B-Wing... well, I like to use all of my ships. I own 3 B-Wings. Might as well play them once in a while. They do often die too quickly for my liking, but in most games, I actually get them to shoot a few times... When they're not being blinded and crit to death through shields by a bullsh*t card that should never have been designed.

3 minutes ago, mkevans80 said:

With the game in question, my opponent had no repositions available to RAC. He also had a fairly limited range of available moves because he was always stressed from using Dauntless. Therefore, my PS-disadvantage was not an issue at all in terms of positioning or actions. The problem was that he could shoot first. However, given that I like playing pilots that are PS 8 or lower (and find VI boring), I am bound to get beat in PS from time to time. Especially when I'm playing a fun, non-tournament worthy build like the "Anger Management" list I had put together for this match.

I will say that the paramount importance of PS in X-Wing is a big peeve of mine... a personal NPE, if you will. When Pilot Skill is by far the most important factor, only a few ships are ever worth taking. I was getting pretty tired of seeing Veteran's Instincts everywhere all the time. It was worst when every ace on the board was PS9, and many of those had VI too. Seriously, do we really need PS11 Vaders flying around?! The has meta shifted enough lately that it's not nearly that bad, and I'm thrilled. VI is boring and repetitive, and I am glad I don't see it as often as I used to. Even if all the non-PS9+ aces are the same (Ryad, Vessery, Miranda), I'll take it.

Sounds like your dislike of VI is a personal problem. You can't decry PS deficit, but then be unwilling to fix the problem- IE if you don't want to be ISYTDS'd and shot first, you maybe need to consider bumping up your PSs. You're basically saying 'It sucks that this list I built has counters, wah the game is broken' PS bid is an important part of the game, depending on your strategy, and I find it hilarious that you call that NPE too. You are basically unwilling to change your strategy, your list, or your attitude and instead you blubber on the forums with cries of NPE. Grow up.

13 minutes ago, Stoneface said:

Was this your first encounter with Ren and THE DARKSIDE? Surprises like this are definitely not fun. I did the same thing to an Imp player but I did it with 3 Zs and a Hawk. I won't tell you to get good or anything like that. What I will recommend is to look back at the game and figure what you could have done differently.

Don't be one of those guys that throws their hands in the air, cries BS and goes home.

I won the game (barely) and I actually played it pretty well. I'm not sure I could have done much differently. The only "mistake" I'd consider myself to have made was a turn where I wanted to bump Keyan into RAC so that RAC couldn't shoot me. He had used up both of his Blinded Pilot crits, but one more crit would take my last hull and kill me. RAC was almost dead and I was hoping to save Keyan and finish off the Decimator with my other two ships. However, I needed room for the maneuver I had planned with Nien, so I did a 2-straight instead of a 1. RAC did a 3-straight and got past me. He had JUST enough room between Kyan and Cassian to land (and bump Cassian). Therefore, he could still shoot at Keyan. If I had done a 1 instead, I would have successfully blocked RAC, and would have still had enough room for Nien (albeit by about a millimeter).

The other mistake I made early on was ending with Nien a millimeter or two from Range 1, which meant I couldn't remove my stress. It cost me an action the following turn, which might have resulted in a healthier ship for the late game.

Aside from that, I'd say I played pretty well. I always try to learn from my mistakes, and I am happy to acknowledge when they cost me a game. None of that is the issue here, though. The issue is Blinded Pilot sucks and Kylo sucks for making them more of a thing.

6 minutes ago, mkevans80 said:

I will say that the paramount importance of PS in X-Wing is a big peeve of mine... a personal NPE, if you will. When Pilot Skill is by far the most important factor, only a few ships are ever worth taking. I was getting pretty tired of seeing Veteran's Instincts everywhere all the time. It was worst when every ace on the board was PS9, and many of those had VI too.

You know, if you have a point to spare and don't want to take Veteran Instinct, I know of another useful 1pt. EPT you may want to take...

... ok I'll shut the hell up now

6 minutes ago, Johen Dood said:

Sounds like your dislike of VI is a personal problem. You can't decry PS deficit, but then be unwilling to fix the problem- IE if you don't want to be ISYTDS'd and shot first, you maybe need to consider bumping up your PSs. You're basically saying 'It sucks that this list I built has counters, wah the game is broken' PS bid is an important part of the game, depending on your strategy, and I find it hilarious that you call that NPE too. You are basically unwilling to change your strategy, your list, or your attitude and instead you blubber on the forums with cries of NPE. Grow up.

Blow it out your bunghole, dude. I SPECIFICALLY SAID that my distaste for VI was personal. Also, can I do fun things like make a rage-based list if I give all of my aces VI?

The last tournament I played, I used Bossk in a Party Buss, and Ketsu. Both had VI for PS 9. I can embrace something I find distasteful if I need to. I simply don't feel the need to use VI on every ship or in every list I play. I also enjoy the challenge of seeing if I can beat higher-PS aces with lower PS ships that have interesting abilities. I usually do just fine.

Not every list needs or should have VI. That is the point I was trying to make... you might have seen that if you weren't trying to speak for me, you troglodyte.

3 minutes ago, kris40k said:

You know, if you have a point to spare and don't want to take Veteran Instinct, I know of another useful 1pt. EPT you may want to take...

3 minutes ago, Johen Dood said:

PS bid is an important part of the game, depending on your strategy, and I find it hilarious that you call that NPE too.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it NPE, but the way that PS (and fixed initiative) works is kind of one of the worst things about X-Wing and contributes to a lot of the other things that people consider NPE.

2 hours ago, DicesonFire said:

In brazilian portuguese we dont say "NPE", we call It "Mimimi".

It translate close to "minimal personal enjoyment", a contraction of "miodeus miajude minjusto"

I believe that this is a case of mimimi, indeed.

"miodeus"?

Why are Brazilians speaking Spanish?
In Portuguese its "Meu Deus"

"Miajude" is also pretty Spanish, since "Mi" is a Spanish word. Brazilians use "Me".

1 minute ago, WWHSD said:

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it NPE, but the way that PS (and fixed initiative) works is kind of one of the worst things about X-Wing and contributes to a lot of the other things that people consider NPE.

I have been dabbling with a house rule for playing with friends, that changes how initiative and move order. PS is still a thing for shooting, but movement and who gets initiative are different... also simpler and more intuitive, if I say so. I've played that way a few times and it's actually really fun. I'd have posted it to the forums a long time ago but I know it'll just be covered in an avalanche of hate. I can send it to you in a private message if you're interested, though.

1 minute ago, mkevans80 said:

I have been dabbling with a house rule for playing with friends, that changes how initiative and move order. PS is still a thing for shooting, but movement and who gets initiative are different... also simpler and more intuitive, if I say so. I've played that way a few times and it's actually really fun. I'd have posted it to the forums a long time ago but I know it'll just be covered in an avalanche of hate. I can send it to you in a private message if you're interested, though.

I've thought that breaking the activation phase into two phases, one for movement and one for actions might be a decent way to minimize the importance of PS while still making it count for something. I also think that making initiative alternate, or having a way to claim initiative during the game (similar to Claiming the Battlefield in Destiny) would be nice as well. The big drawback of either of those seems like they would result in everything taking more time.

Sent you a PM, WWHSD.

4 hours ago, mkevans80 said:

I have been dabbling with a house rule for playing with friends, that changes how initiative and move order. PS is still a thing for shooting, but movement and who gets initiative are different... also simpler and more intuitive, if I say so. I've played that way a few times and it's actually really fun. I'd have posted it to the forums a long time ago but I know it'll just be covered in an avalanche of hate. I can send it to you in a private message if you're interested, though.

I'd hate to think that an interesting house rule would get missed for this reason. I would encourage you to go ahead and post it, I'd be interested to see it and I'm sure a lot of other people (who might not speak up here for various reasons, not least because they might not have read this far into the thread) would too.

Ok, I'll put something out there in a bit.

6 hours ago, mkevans80 said:

I won the game (barely) and I actually played it pretty well. I'm not sure I could have done much differently. The only "mistake" I'd consider myself to have made was a turn where I wanted to bump Keyan into RAC so that RAC couldn't shoot me. He had used up both of his Blinded Pilot crits, but one more crit would take my last hull and kill me. RAC was almost dead and I was hoping to save Keyan and finish off the Decimator with my other two ships. However, I needed room for the maneuver I had planned with Nien, so I did a 2-straight instead of a 1. RAC did a 3-straight and got past me. He had JUST enough room between Kyan and Cassian to land (and bump Cassian). Therefore, he could still shoot at Keyan. If I had done a 1 instead, I would have successfully blocked RAC, and would have still had enough room for Nien (albeit by about a millimeter).

The other mistake I made early on was ending with Nien a millimeter or two from Range 1, which meant I couldn't remove my stress. It cost me an action the following turn, which might have resulted in a healthier ship for the late game.

Aside from that, I'd say I played pretty well. I always try to learn from my mistakes, and I am happy to acknowledge when they cost me a game. None of that is the issue here, though. The issue is Blinded Pilot sucks and Kylo sucks for making them more of a thing.

Ok,I'm a little confused. You claim a NPE experience but you won. I'll take a hard fought loss over an easy win any day. What exactly was causing the bad experience?

7 hours ago, mkevans80 said:

Negative Player Experience, as far as I understand it, is when playing a game frustrates or bores one or both players. It's that simple. Unless somebody has some super-official reference that they can point to that is more definitive, I'd say that you can use the term to describe quite a bit of different circumstances. From the definition I've provided above, however, it sounds pretty **** subjective to me, and I find it mildly amusing that people are arguing over what constitutes a NPE. You can decide that somebody's NPE is just poor sportsmanship or not liking to lose, or that it's just something they don't like to play against. It can also be mechanics that are kludgy and overcomplicated (Condition Cards in general fit the bill), things that frustrate players, too much (or too little) luck built into the game, or a number of other things.

I would consider flying as or against a quad-TLT list to be right up there. For me, I would add stress-piling mechanics like Dengaroo and Stresshog that feel like they're breaking the spirit of the game. I'd guess that FickleGreenDice has had enough NPE's with his dice whiffing out that it literally defined his identity on these boards. I tried playing a bit MTG a while back and gave up on the game almost immediately. One of the worst things I hated about that game was playing with or against counterspell-type decks. "No, sorry, you can't do that. Nope, can't do that either. ...Well, why the hell are we playing, then?" I experienced far too many NPE's on a regular basis to continue playing that game.

Blinded Pilot is a terrible, frustrating, un-fun card that never should have found its way into the new damage deck. Normally I think you have a 6% chance to draw one every time you receive a crit, considering the normal size of a damage deck, and when you do, it sucks. Kylo Ren bumps that percentage way, way, up.

I agree with everything here apart from the bit about Counterspells in Magic. Although even though I personally like Counterspells WOTC did recognise that control elements like that were an NPE. Whole control strategies and key cards got either tuned down or removed from the game entirely.

NPE isn't about being too good, it's about that the majority of players want to play their game and effects that are too effective at stopping players playing their game are bad for player enjoyment and thus limit the games growth and profit potential.