Here's an empirical, commentary-free snapshot of the current General forum for those curious. I looked at the first three pages worth of topics and broke them into categories: Balance Problem (threads talking about nerfs, fixes, or problems with balance) and OTHER (threads talking about anything else).

The rough count is below:

Balance Problem Threads : 22 (32.3%)
OTHER Threads: 46 (67.6%)


The majority of the OTHER threads were based on HotAC, Epic Play, custom cards (alt art for existing things or new things that don't exist), new podcast episode notices, and a few (about three) threads discussing strategy.

Yep. Sounds about right.

Did you happen to catch how many were about actual existing game mechanics or cards? Like... Relevent and useful?

I'll check....One sec.

Well analyzed, thanks.

How many covered the best beverage choices for weekend X-Wing games?

Including the trade thread I found 6 with a possible seventh.

So in three pages of....X posts.....Such and such percent....Etc.

(I'm not good at doing the number things in my head and I'm not privvy to paper at the moment.)

18 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Balance Problem Threads : 22 (32.3%)
OTHER Threads: 46 (67.6%)

The majority of the OTHER threads were based on HotAC, Epic Play, custom cards (alt art for existing things or new things that don't exist), new podcast episode notices, and a few (about three) threads discussing strategy.

Yes, I was noticing that there were a higher number of threads about Epic, HotAC, and other really great topics. I was thinking that many of them were really relevant. I've been really pleased with how much discussion there has been on really interesting things about X-wing.

10 minutes ago, Velvetelvis said:

Did you happen to catch how many were about actual existing game mechanics or cards? Like... Relevent and useful?

The OTHER threads were 67%, so a lot of them relevant!

1 minute ago, Velvetelvis said:

Including the trade thread I found 6 with a possible seventh.

So in three pages of....X posts.....Such and such percent....Etc.

(I'm not good at doing the number things in my head and I'm not privvy to paper at the moment.)

Yup, for relevant and useful that sounds about right. The "nerf" threads are obnoxious, of course, but in my opinion the vast majority of the OTHER threads were also pointless or uninteresting to me as an X-Winger (discussions of the Rebels cartoon, more jokes about the gunship, custom titles for Epic ships (at one title per thread...wtf?), pleas to FFG to make certain ships, notes about podcast episodes, many that were podcast episodes about inside jokes about the podcasts, etc.).

In reality, X-Wing is a game where there isn't that much to talk about on a day-to-day basis given the very slow flow of news (announcements about new waves, cards, prize support, events, etc.) and the game is old enough that the vast majority of basic discussion topics (Reviews, Faction Strength/Weaknesses, Basic Strategy, Storage Solutions, etc.) have all been discussed to death and are readily searchable from the game's history of discussion. Yet, these forums have become a place where multiple new discussions are begun each and every day, so it's unsurprising that most of these discussions end up being about nothing at all.

I think the basic problem isn't that there's too much negativity (read: complaint threads), but rather that there is too much discussion period . There's simply not enough worthwhile stuff to talk about and to sustain as much discussion as these boards generate daily, given that there's very few folks generating novel, interesting, worthwhile content.

14 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

The OTHER threads were 67%, so a lot of them [are about current cards or mechanics]!

No, the majority of OTHER threads were not about existing cards or game mechanics. As @Velvetelvis reports above, only about 6 or 7 of them were about actual cards or mechanics, (so something like 10% overall). Many of them were about things like "hey here's a podcast April Fool's joke" or "hey guys, I'm back!" or "Gunship!" or "here's a custom title for an Epic ship" or "FFG MAKE THE HAMMERHEAD!" A minority of that 67% was actually about current cards or mechanics, even if we count the threads about work with HotAC (which I think we should, HotAC is an excellent expression of this game and this community).

I wonder to what extent the existence of subforums amplifies this - the list building, painting and rules questions that dominate the X-Wing subreddit and some of the facebook groups are less visible here when casually browsing. There does seem to be a lot more threads about balance here though - I searched the subreddit for the word nerf and found one result in the past week talking about possible future changes, and when I searched for some of the other common topics (e.g. Biggs, TLTs, Sabine) there was very little on balance.

Good point forums are not as nerfed up as some may seem. However this is also the classic example of small amount of negativity overshadowing the whole thing.

Glad there is considerable interest in pic play (no calls for nerfs there, except maybe for IG-2000 ), however yeah the nerf threads are the worst part and they do stand out the most.

So why not just tell all those Nerf Herders to Nerf Off!

What are they going to do? I'll Nerf their list right up!

This thread is so meta ...

1 hour ago, Hawkstrike said:

This thread is so meta ...

This thread is metawarping and needs a balance adjustment.