I’d like to start off by saying that like most people, I don’t like it when changes are made to physical cards and components of a game. In an ideal world, cards should do exactly what they say the do, but I more than understand their necessity and support change if it helps the game. However, I also believe that when making these changes, you should make sure they are as simple to understand as possible, and easy to implement.

For those of you not familiar with Netrunner, FFG created a system a while ago where it would post a list of cards that were too powerful. Without going into detail, these cards had an increased cost when you included them in your deck.

X-wing’s list building is built around point costs for everything. So I am really curious why FFG did not simply adopt this system for competitive X-wing.

If you are playing casual, you just carry on with the printed costs on cards and the text effect as written, just like in Netrunner.

If you want to play competitively, just make sure you check the list of upgrades/pilots with adjusted point costs.

The best thing with this is that, just like netrunner deckbuilding apps, when creating an x-wing list, you could select whether you want it to be a competitive or casual list, thus allowing the app to automatically have the correct point value for each card when you start building.

I am sure there are some weaknesses to this system, but the question is, wouldn’t it still be better than the system (if you can even call it a system, FFG is just literally rewriting cards) we have now ?

*shrug* if they're publishing such a list, why not just errata the point costs?

I'd be perfectly happy with them errata-ing point costs.

I think a lot of good could come from this approach, indeed I've proposed something like this and a selection of things I'd change. There would still be some errata as not everything can be fixed by recosting the card - sometimes the way a card works means there simply isn't an acceptable cost.

The costing of so many upgrade options is bang out of whack meaning slots like the EPT has like 40 possible upgrades and only 5 or 6 you regularly see. Fire Control System is something like 95% of all system slots equipped on ships, so maybe it should cost 3pts along with Sensor Jammer while Advanced Sensors/Accuracy Corrector should cost 2pts...

A recosting exercise would be able to address specific 'problem' cards and also twiddle with the costs of other cards to open up options and create difficult squadbuilding decisions.

1 hour ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I think a lot of good could come from this approach, indeed I've proposed something like this and a selection of things I'd change. There would still be some errata as not everything can be fixed by recosting the card - sometimes the way a card works means there simply isn't an acceptable cost.

Could you elaborate? I'm not sure I understand what you are getting at.

Also

1 hour ago, thespaceinvader said:

*shrug* if they're publishing such a list, why not just errata the point costs?

I'd be perfectly happy with them errata-ing point costs.

this.

1 hour ago, thespaceinvader said:

*shrug* if they're publishing such a list, why not just errata the point costs?

I'd be perfectly happy with them errata-ing point costs.

Well basically you are repeating the same thing I said, however there are two key differences in this:

a) You don't change the card. These are costs for tournament play only, and you only need to take them into consideration when building a list for a tournament. Push the Limit for example is a 3 point card, period. Its just for tournaments that its value can be adjusted, you shouldnt bother the community with this. Its also better for presentation purposes to just post a list with 10 cards and their values for tournament play, rather than stuffing errata in the faq.

b) The cost may change, again PTL is a 3 point cost card, period. However for tournaments in 2017 it might be costed at 4, for tournaments in 2018 it might revert back to 3 due to the meta. No need for complete errata. If you just want to play x-wing PTL is a 3 point card, dont errata it. If you want to play competitive x-wing go check out whats different at the time, and use a "competitive list" filter in your builder like in Netrunner.

But in a way yes, you could say its an errata of numbers, i ll not debate the wording of it

My point is that they absolutely should change the costs. I see no reason why a 'tournament costs list' should exist, as opposed to just straight up errata.

What;s your argument for the former, but against the latter?

8 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

My point is that they absolutely should change the costs. I see no reason why a 'tournament costs list' should exist, as opposed to just straight up errata.

What;s your argument for the former, but against the latter?

It's mostly a semantic thing, but roughly that it means it doesn't affect all the people who aren't bothered about tournaments and just want to carry on playing X-Wing. All the information they need is on the cards in front of them, while people who are doing tournaments are assumed to be involved enough to bother finding out about the revised points cost.

There is a break point where this approach would be superior. I don't think we're quite there yet.

I'd much prefer an errata box. No ships, just reprinted cards, with any necessary rewording or points changes, and enough of each for spamming. Then players will only have one single cost to get up to date.

Add in some changed dials for a few of the older ships too to address the dial creep issue, which is as much responsible for the current state of some ships as is points cost.

Then FFG can concentrate on not screwing things up again, so we don't have to buy another errata box in 5 years time.

31 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

It's mostly a semantic thing, but roughly that it means it doesn't affect all the people who aren't bothered about tournaments and just want to carry on playing X-Wing. All the information they need is on the cards in front of them, while people who are doing tournaments are assumed to be involved enough to bother finding out about the revised points cost.

The cards would be reprinted eventually, and for those who bought them before that, this wouldn't stop them playing with the printed prices.

49 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

The cards would be reprinted eventually, and for those who bought them before that, this wouldn't stop them playing with the printed prices.

The problem with reprinting is that you ll end up having a circulating Palpatine that costs 9 points and a Palpatine that costs 8 points, which I think most will agree is absolutely terrible and has zero chance of happening. You and I might know which is which, but for a casual player it would be extremely confusing.

Even if you wanted to go check the Palpatine card online, what would you find? 9 point upgrade card listed only? But you have an 8 point physical card in front of you. Would x-wing sites list both? But why? Which one would i use in the builder? The 8 or 9 point one? Who gets to say?

I think the Netrunner system has worked wonderfully to prevent all this confusion from happening. Even for experienced players, the only time they care about this is when creating a list. They can then just go play netrunner -or in this case, x-wing- without having to memorise anything. You can just ignore point costs when playing, its simple, but its really not simple to have a card in from of you that says "Manaroo" and you just have to remember that she is now range 1.

You can make that same argument about ANY errata though.

I mean, it's not like I don't have pre-nerf Deadeye and Manaroo and Zuckuss and /x7 in my binder, and I would have pre-nerf Palp as well if I'd ever bothered getting him.

Any form of errata will always carry the potential for confusion, and any form of errata will always allow people to play with the original printings without taking account of the errata if they want.

The only real benefit you get from your proposed schema is the ability to make a ship or upgrade's price a living value rather than a fixed value to account for meta fluctuations - but I'd honestly say that's probably MORE confusing and MORE open to mistakes than a simple errata list.

2 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

The only real benefit you get from your proposed schema is the ability to make a ship or upgrade's price a living value rather than a fixed value to account for meta fluctuations - but I'd honestly say that's probably MORE confusing and MORE open to mistakes than a simple errata list.

Well a living list can correct any mistakes...

I mean mistakes on the part of the users, not mistakes on the part of the developers. It's a lot easier with a living list for someone to turn up with the wrong points value because they were using an outdated version.

I sugested a similar list to the Most wanted list from netrunner.

1. 1st iteration (back in wave 6) wasn't exactly a straight 1 point increase to cards but instead 1 point increase to pilot/upgrade combinations (such as Whisper and ACD, or Han and C-3PO). Along with targeting power meta pilot upgrade it also targeted naked generics by putting a blank tax on them increasing the point cost unless they put an upgrade on it. It wasn't well received (people would just cry to FFG to nerf everything but their favorite choice like Social Media on an election year). Also with now the prevalence of 0 point non-unique upgrades this is now impractical.
2. 2nd iteration was just a flat list and all pilots and upgrades on that list was +1 point. Again simpler but still not very well received. There was the argument that a simple 1 point increase would either not be enough, or be over correcting. Which one would it be, who knows because FFG went the Pen & Ink route instead of the tournament amendment route. I would have preferred a tournament amendment because it means I can still read my pilot and upgrade cards without having to carry around a printout of the FAQ, but what's done is done.

So such a corrective action is not likely to come up. However since FFG did go the route of Pen & Ink it would have been nice if they used it to fix certain underdogs. Fel's Wrath and Blaster Turret would love a Pen & Ink Errata.

I really, really wish people would stop trying to apply the Most Wanted List to this game. It misses the intricacies of why the Restricted List doesn't work that well with that game.

Frankly, using the Restricted List works much, much better for a miniatures game like this.

6 minutes ago, Sithborg said:

I really, really wish people would stop trying to apply the Most Wanted List to this game. It misses the intricacies of why the Restricted List doesn't work that well with that game.

Frankly, using the Restricted List works much, much better for a miniatures game like this.

Well it is all ways of applying corrective actions. One thing that could be really effectively in balancing is the core mechanic in miniatures list to keep things balanced and that is the point cost. Now the current Pen & Ink errata precedent doesn't allow for such a thing.

IMHO I wish that FFG would have used restricted lists for physical medium games, and Blizzard used more code patches (the digital equivalent for pen & ink erratas) for Hearthstone, Alas we live in a universe where physical medium is patched via printout FAQ, digital cards are cycled out instead of balanced, and Donald Trump was elected president (still a better choice than Hillary IMO but that is not really saying anything good about Trump and not by much so I could easily be mistaken).

The weaknesses of this system are that

1. For people that hate card errata and having to look in the FAQ, it's even more stuff to memorize. Instead of having to treat Palpatine like C-3PO and x7 as a free action, now you have to memorize if Palpatine is 12 points or 14, or if x7 is -2 points or 2 points.

2. You already get people that show up to an event asking you how proximity mines are dropped from a Jumpmaster. Imagine that mess when their squad is 5 points over.

3. It doesn't actually solve the underlying issues of broken cards. They're still broken and overpowered and NPE, just marginally more expensive. A pre-nerf x7 Defender that costs 2 points more is still just as invincible and annoying as if it cost 2 points less.

Id be more in the errata the whole thing camp myself. If you have a separate points cost between casual and competative players it may only serve to alienate them from each other further.

Modifying point costs could address most balance issues (The original phantom was probably broken at a conceptual level due to how drastically its power level varied depending on the pilot skill of the opposing player's ships), but a simple 1-point adjustment wouldn't be enough for certain game elements. This in turn means more playtesting and developer time spent evaluating the results of that playtester feedback. I'm not saying you couldn't do it, but it certainly wouldn't be a quick fix.

21 minutes ago, Turbo Toker said:

It doesn't actually solve the underlying issues of broken cards. They're still broken and overpowered and NPE, just marginally more expensive. A pre-nerf x7 Defender that costs 2 points more is still just as invincible and annoying as if it costed 2 points less.

You're conflating two separate issues here.

-A Negative Play Experience can be balanced or even underpowered. It is defined by creating an unenjoyable play state for one or both players.

-Many overpowered game elements create negative play experiences for one or both players, but this isn't actually a guarantee. Although it is very rare for them not to cause problems in a competitive multiplayer game; this caveat mainly applies to single player and co-op games, where a carefully placed sequence with an over the top game element can create for a fun and memorable sequence (like the supercharged gravity gun in the climax of half-life 2).

The vast majority of unbalanced game mechanics can be balanced by increasing the cost to use them* (either by adding a drawback, or increasing the resource cost to use them). The original x7 Defenders would have been balanced at 0-1 points for the title, because they wouldn't have broken the old model for efficiency**. You can argue that they would still have achieved a level of hyper defense that wasn't enjoyable, but that would be seperate from the balance issues.

*Obviously, you can have game mechanics that are inherently broken in a multiplayer game. These are usually very, very obvious, and thus almost never make it past the alpha phase of design

**It's worth pointing out that there is a case to be made that the old standard set by Z-95s and Tie Fighters was already broken in practice due to the way engagements with arc dodgers actually played out, but reactive power creep is still power creep.

21 minutes ago, Turbo Toker said:

2. You already get people that show up to an event asking you how proximity mines are dropped from a Jumpmaster. Imagine that mess when their squad is 5 points over.

Wait, what? You can't get bombs onto a jumpmaster.

Quote

Id be more in the errata the whole thing camp myself. If you have a separate points cost between casual and competative players it may only serve to alienate them from each other further.

I'd have to agree here. It'd be one thing to seperate competitive from casual via format differences, but game elements should behave the same way whether you're playing in a tournament match or not.

As a casual player I think a Tourney points list would be better. In my opinion, new casual players don´ t want to be told that they have to go online to find out what things should really cost. They aren´ t playing super combos (yet) so why should they care? If a player wants to go to a Tournament they may have a surprise to find that their list is not actually a 100t list, but it will only happen to them once and can probably make quick adjustments to raise or lower the extra amount if the group is willing to help.

Good idea. As people progress in the game they´ d probably start adopting the revised points anyway.

1 hour ago, Turbo Toker said:

The weaknesses of this system are that

1. For people that hate card errata and having to look in the FAQ, it's even more stuff to memorize. Instead of having to treat Palpatine like C-3PO and x7 as a free action, now you have to memorize if Palpatine is 12 points or 14, or if x7 is -2 points or 2 points.

2. You already get people that show up to an event asking you how proximity mines are dropped from a Jumpmaster. Imagine that mess when their squad is 5 points over.

3. It doesn't actually solve the underlying issues of broken cards. They're still broken and overpowered and NPE, just marginally more expensive. A pre-nerf x7 Defender that costs 2 points more is still just as invincible and annoying as if it cost 2 points less.

1. Memorize what? Why do you need to memorize anything? You only need to check things when you are building a list, then you re done. Go play. No need to carry rules with you, or lookup on the internet on what the card in front of you does, because it was errata'd. Same would apply on restricted lists that some mentioned.

2. I can hardly imagine people that attend tournaments have no idea about what's going on in the tournament, but maybe you 've experienced it. Still, a good or bad idea shouldn't be dismissed due to the exception of people showing up clueless at a tournament. For casual store days there's no issue cause you just use your regular values and you can read what your cards do.

3. I will agree with you only up to the extent that some cards can fall somewhere between. For example (random example) x7 might be amazing at -2 cost but unplayable at -1. But that's definitively not the case for the majority of cards, because they literally come at a price. This is how our whole world works, you can put a price on anything. There can be no concept of a broken card. x7 still too good at 3 points? take it to 4. Still too good? Take it to 5. Still good? GO OVER 9000.

8 hours ago, haritos said:

You and I might know which is which, but for a casual player it would be extremely confusing.

They could put a border on reprinted cards. Maybe white or black. Or perhaps they could make foil cards. Then us mere mortal casual players will be fine.

It's a mess and not one that FFG can easily solve.

Sure, reprinting cards sounds like an easy fix for X-wing 2.0. You could fix broken stuff and also make a bunch of underused stuff better or cheaper or cooler. Luke and Vader might have conditions and so on (I hate the concept of conditions but whatever). You could fix turrets while you're at it (make them all like shadowcaster perhaps?) Brilliant... except... you can't just redo the packs (no one is re-buying all their ships for new cards!). If you redo the cards as a sort of card set, firstly I think FFG can't do that under their licence unless they bundle it with models (e.g. a new core set). But worse, their business model relies at least in part on collectors and competitive players buying the packs for the cards. And you're going to annoy new/casual players who now have to buy another set to have the cards before they can play.

An errata'd points system or just keep fixing the worst offenders by errata sucks too. It's a barrier to entry, it pisses off casual players ("ahem, you haven't read this morning's faq, your list is illegal"), it causes negative play experiences ("oh you didn't know about this errata that makes this combo work? Sorry dude") and confusion: if you're running an event, having players remake their lists at the event as they're no longer legal is a total pain.

None of these things are impossible to overcome but reality of tabletop gaming is if you try to change things it's going to annoy one group or another. X-wing can probably keep going under the current model for a long time. It's also possible that they can compartmentalize in some fashion a "tournament rules" set either with cards or without that makes it work in a competitive setting better.

20 hours ago, haritos said:

I’d like to start off by saying that like most people, I don’t like it when changes are made to physical cards and components of a game. In an ideal world, cards should do exactly what they say the do, but I more than understand their necessity and support change if it helps the game. However, I also believe that when making these changes, you should make sure they are as simple to understand as possible, and easy to implement.

For those of you not familiar with Netrunner, FFG created a system a while ago where it would post a list of cards that were too powerful. Without going into detail, these cards had an increased cost when you included them in your deck.

X-wing’s list building is built around point costs for everything. So I am really curious why FFG did not simply adopt this system for competitive X-wing.

If you are playing casual, you just carry on with the printed costs on cards and the text effect as written, just like in Netrunner.

If you want to play competitively, just make sure you check the list of upgrades/pilots with adjusted point costs.

The best thing with this is that, just like netrunner deckbuilding apps, when creating an x-wing list, you could select whether you want it to be a competitive or casual list, thus allowing the app to automatically have the correct point value for each card when you start building.

I am sure there are some weaknesses to this system, but the question is, wouldn’t it still be better than the system (if you can even call it a system, FFG is just literally rewriting cards) we have now ?

Preach on haritos, preach on!