9 hours ago, BadMotivator said:

Maybe, but still. Trust me, as a veteran of around 20 years of table top gaming, people can deal just fine with some adjusted statlines. The owning player just needs to have a copy of the errata handy if questions are raised.

And in competitive circles, the errata should be common enough knowledge that nobody gets surprised.

I can't really think of many examples where a big company have changed points values on printed media at all. Games Workshop refused to do it under any circumstances. Don't think Flames of War did. I'm not big into warmahordes but I don't think Privateer Press do it either? Are there any good examples of this?

I don't think the concern is 20-year veterans handling it, it's pissing off casual players who don't actually care that much about the nitty gritty of tournament-level balance is what they're worried about, that they'll be frustrated the first time they hear "oh yeah man your cards are out of date".

1 minute ago, The Inquisitor said:

I can't really think of many examples where a big company have changed points values on printed media at all. Games Workshop refused to do it under any circumstances. Don't think Flames of War did. I'm not big into warmahordes but I don't think Privateer Press do it either? Are there any good examples of this?

I don't think the concern is 20-year veterans handling it, it's pissing off casual players who don't actually care that much about the nitty gritty of tournament-level balance is what they're worried about, that they'll be frustrated the first time they hear "oh yeah man your cards are out of date".

This argument is made a lot, but it never seems to acknowledge that that frustration already exist. Errata have happened already. Can open. Worms everywhere. Bag open. Cat out.

Players are pretty resistant to changing holy points values too mind. If you played Warhammer (RIP) in the last 10 years competitively, there were a whole range of player-derived comp systems designed to rebalance the game, but no one actually did the one thing that would work best: change the actual points values. Some of these comp systems were incredibly detailed and essentially added a whole secondary point system designed to even out the first, which was intensely more work for tournament organisers and players alike than just redoing the points values. But they're sacrosanct for some reason.

While I do agree with you on the errata, once they start with errata for balance reasons, where do they stop? But I don't think all things are equal. Most people wouldn't care that much about a deadeye errata unless they're cardcore competitive. But literally everyone who uses a jumpmaster would have to care about a points change.

In any case, my point isn't so much about what the practicalities are, but that the game makers themselves don't seem to ever errata points values. I'd be pretty shocked if FFG did so in this case.

2 minutes ago, The Inquisitor said:

Players are pretty resistant to changing holy points values too mind. If you played Warhammer (RIP) in the last 10 years competitively, there were a whole range of player-derived comp systems designed to rebalance the game, but no one actually did the one thing that would work best: change the actual points values. Some of these comp systems were incredibly detailed and essentially added a whole secondary point system designed to even out the first, which was intensely more work for tournament organisers and players alike than just redoing the points values. But they're sacrosanct for some reason.

While I do agree with you on the errata, once they start with errata for balance reasons, where do they stop? But I don't think all things are equal. Most people wouldn't care that much about a deadeye errata unless they're cardcore competitive. But literally everyone who uses a jumpmaster would have to care about a points change.

In any case, my point isn't so much about what the practicalities are, but that the game makers themselves don't seem to ever errata points values. I'd be pretty shocked if FFG did so in this case.

How else do they fix it though?

The only other fix I could see potentially working would be to scrape basically every slot off the base ship and move them all onto the title (leave the base ship with crew and either illicit, astro, or torpedo, maybe) - and even then, that doesn't account for how cheap Dengar (or Tel, he could do well with the title too) is.

GW didn't change point costs much, though it did happen. But they did change special rules and statlines fairly often via Errata. What was printed in your codex could often be very very different from what it actually was. The FAQ could also totally change how a rule was interpreted.

PP has recently become a lot more free with changing stuff. Though Warmachine uses an official list building app, and all erratas are immediately changed there so everybody has access to the changes since PP no longer makes physical cards. Points changes have been occurring with WMH in the last year or so.

As far as pissing off "casual" players. If they're not in the loop enough to hear about a specific errata, their group is probably insular enough to where they'll just keep merrily playing on without it. Which is fine for them. If one of them decides to play at an event where the errata is in effect that's on them for not checking when they stepped into a competitive arena.

I understand why companies are resistant to point changes. But they really should not be. If you really care about game balance, everything should be on the table. If you make a mistake, you should fix it. Don't try to fix other stuff around your mistake to cover it up. Some mistakes, like the JM5K, can't be fixed that way.

4 hours ago, BadMotivator said:

If you make a mistake, you should fix it. Don't try to fix other stuff around your mistake to cover it up. Some mistakes, like the JM5K, can't be fixed that way.

This right here is so true about the JM5K. Ban the thing from competitive play or fix the base ship. There really is no way, and they have freaking tried lord have they, to hemhaw around those 2 options. Rip the band-aid off or amputate but do something, pouring the neosporin on is not gonna mend this.

Let's be honest, while some players like tournaments, the real reason to have organized play is to sell even more ships. Generally having new broken things constantly coming out plays right into grabbing easy money. In FFG's version of the Star Wars universe, you'd wonder why anyone ever flew a rebel x-wing or sn imperial TIE fighter. Easily you could change the game name to: Star Wars - New Plastic Crazy Esoteric Lore Pull!

The problem with the Jumpmaster and its upgrades, to me, is that in its state, it kills the money making machine tournaments were designed for. Casual players will still buy x-wings and not ships that they don't recognize. But tourney players will mostly buy 2 jump masters and call it a day.

Too cynical?

7 hours ago, KelRiever said:

Let's be honest, while some players like tournaments, the real reason to have organized play is to sell even more ships. Generally having new broken things constantly coming out plays right into grabbing easy money. In FFG's version of the Star Wars universe, you'd wonder why anyone ever flew a rebel x-wing or sn imperial TIE fighter. Easily you could change the game name to: Star Wars - New Plastic Crazy Esoteric Lore Pull!

The problem with the Jumpmaster and its upgrades, to me, is that in its state, it kills the money making machine tournaments were designed for. Casual players will still buy x-wings and not ships that they don't recognize. But tourney players will mostly buy 2 jump masters and call it a day.

Too cynical?

Cynical sure, logical you bet, true most likely. That's why the new hotness comes in high dollar ships. When's the last time a must have card has been in a $15 blister. I started right before wave 7 and I can't think of any. Even AT and TLT both were sqeaked in a 20 pack. What FFG needs to realize much to the disagreement of several here, things like the jump master and to a lesser extent any OP card is going to get people to quit this game, at least at a competitive level. People can only take so much bull **** before they realize, hey I can eat a steak instead.

edit: forgot crackshot, thanks SEApocalypse there has been a must have in a 15 dollar ship. The ship just sucked so bad I forgot lol

23 minutes ago, LordFajubi said:

Cynical sure, logical you bet, true most likely. That's why the new hotness comes in high dollar ships. When's the last time a must have card has been in a $15 blister. I started right before wave 7 and I can't think of any. Even AT and TLT both were sqeaked in a 20 pack. What FFG needs to realize much to the disagreement of several here, things like the jump master and to a lesser extent any OP card is going to get people to quit this game, at least at a competitive level. People can only take so much bull **** before they realize, hey I can eat a steak instead.

Well they have probably sold as many jumpmasters as they were ever going to sell, considering you had to get 3 packs for the good ol'deadeye torpscouts, so maybe it's time for a proper nerf now? Please?:)

I get that it's a business and you do what you can to make jack, like sell people an $80+ dollar Epic for a crew card.

However, this is not the case for the Jumpmaster Expansion. In FFGs defense, they needed to give the Scum faction something besides 2 Aggressors to take to tournaments. So, they made a wishlist ship, under-tested it and then under-costed it. Intent for the faction and sales? Good. Intent on holding game balance? Poor at best.

It is being playtested for a nerf to the actual chassis, that's true. Yes, it's taking a long time, this is the actual mystery for it was broken before it was ever purchased or played and it seems such a simple fix from this side of the game, but alas; I've been told the Jumpmaster and Biggs nerfs are tough for the head designers to pull the trigger on....for some reason. I'm thinking the designers wanted Selflessness to at least be announced, digested and Vassal-ed before Biggs gets the hammer so Biggs lovers would not mutiny too much; but they will, we all love salt. Right? Perhaps the same is true for the Scrugg, IDK.

3 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

How else do they fix it though?

The only other fix I could see potentially working would be to scrape basically every slot off the base ship and move them all onto the title (leave the base ship with crew and either illicit, astro, or torpedo, maybe) - and even then, that doesn't account for how cheap Dengar (or Tel, he could do well with the title too) is.

Haha I don't know. My guess would be based on previous decisions:
1) Ignore it
2) Nerf the title
3) Just accept it is the new baseline and make everything else better or bring out upgrades that specifically hurt jumpmasters somehow

2 hours ago, BadMotivator said:

PP has recently become a lot more free with changing stuff. Though Warmachine uses an official list building app, and all erratas are immediately changed there so everybody has access to the changes since PP no longer makes physical cards. Points changes have been occurring with WMH in the last year or so.

I didn't know that. That's pretty cool!

1 hour ago, KelRiever said:

The problem with the Jumpmaster and its upgrades, to me, is that in its state, it kills the money making machine tournaments were designed for. Casual players will still buy x-wings and not ships that they don't recognize. But tourney players will mostly buy 2 jump masters and call it a day.

Nah. Most tournament players buy 1 of everything and then spam what they want after that. And I know few players even top tournament players who really stick to one list all the time, even if it is the bestest ever. And the lure of new shiny is strong even for tournament players. I don't think jumpmasters are categorically the only ship in the game right now. I've not got a second jumpmaster yet myself but I've had some tough lists with a single jumpmaster in it. I doubt there's many people who bought three jumpmasters and ebayed the cards they need and called it a day. I'm skeptical jumpmasters being good is making that much of a dent in powergamer spending habits.

7 hours ago, SOTL said:

3 points is maybe enough on the Jumpmaster. Plasma Torps are probably fine. Guidance Chips should cost 1.

Push up +3 on the Jump and +1 on Chips and we're right.

Plasmas are fine, nerf guidance chips. Plasmas are the most common torpedo for a reason and that reason ain't guidance chips. If you see 4 points plasmas, we would see again at least some protons used.

4 hours ago, The Inquisitor said:

Players are pretty resistant to changing holy points values too mind. If you played Warhammer (RIP) in the last 10 years competitively, there were a whole range of player-derived comp systems designed to rebalance the game, but no one actually did the one thing that would work best: change the actual points values. Some of these comp systems were incredibly detailed and essentially added a whole secondary point system designed to even out the first, which was intensely more work for tournament organisers and players alike than just redoing the points values. But they're sacrosanct for some reason.

While I do agree with you on the errata, once they start with errata for balance reasons, where do they stop? But I don't think all things are equal. Most people wouldn't care that much about a deadeye errata unless they're cardcore competitive. But literally everyone who uses a jumpmaster would have to care about a points change.

In any case, my point isn't so much about what the practicalities are, but that the game makers themselves don't seem to ever errata points values. I'd be pretty shocked if FFG did so in this case.

I don't miss those comp packs, that's for sure...Some even longer than the actual rule book it seemed.

3 hours ago, KelRiever said:

Too cynical?

There are genuine issues with FFG's business model (selling patches, putting must-have upgrades in packs you otherwise wouldn't be interested in, putting highly desirable cards in expensive boxes you might not even put on the table), but you have not described them. The notion that they're deliberately invalidating prior models to encourage new sales is hilarious, and also unsupportable. If that is what they're doing, they're unbelievably bad at it. If we presume the Jumpmaster was deliberately OP (and to a much lesser degree, I guess the Ghost), well. What about Zuckuss's ride? What about the TAP (Inky is good, yes, world-beating...not so much)? What about the U-Wing? The Batwing? Striker? They're, what, picking a couple ships per year to be way too good and the rest are going to be at or below par and this is going to help them sell tons of ships how, exactly?

The actual explanation is that they're not that good at evaluating power before release, partly because they can't afford Juggler, and they're really not very good at forecasting what the meta is going to look like 18 months out (but then, who is?).

4 hours ago, mxlm said:

There are genuine issues with FFG's business model (selling patches, putting must-have upgrades in packs you otherwise wouldn't be interested in, putting highly desirable cards in expensive boxes you might not even put on the table), but you have not described them. The notion that they're deliberately invalidating prior models to encourage new sales is hilarious, and also unsupportable. If that is what they're doing, they're unbelievably bad at it. If we presume the Jumpmaster was deliberately OP (and to a much lesser degree, I guess the Ghost), well. What about Zuckuss's ride? What about the TAP (Inky is good, yes, world-beating...not so much)? What about the U-Wing? The Batwing? Striker? They're, what, picking a couple ships per year to be way too good and the rest are going to be at or below par and this is going to help them sell tons of ships how, exactly?

The actual explanation is that they're not that good at evaluating power before release, partly because they can't afford Juggler, and they're really not very good at forecasting what the meta is going to look like 18 months out (but then, who is?).

Batwing? Kylo Ren.
U-Wing? Expertise! Expertise everywhere!
GA-1? God **** Zuckuss himself (crew)!
Striker? Our last best hope for imperial victory, together with the TIE/SF and lightweight frames (oh and good girl Whisper)
TAP? The Inquisitor was basically the default ship to go for Palp Aces, before even Soontir. Remember Ìmperial A-holes? Palp, Inquisitor (or a small jax), Wampa, OL? Hurray, Raider, Gozanti, TIE/FO, Lambda expansions all need and two PTLs on top, so Imperial Aces too.

Now I am not saying that you are wrong, I am just saying that actually all those examples check out as perfect sales for FFG. Kihraxz might be crap, but it comes with crackshot and might be one of the most bought expansion ever, because everyone got 4 TIE-Fighters already from the core-set + gozanti and a lot people got more than one core-set. ;-)

It's almost like FFG tries to have at least one golden card per expansion, in case that the ship itself turns out to be bad. ;-)

Now your explanation that FFG to stinted to pay Juggler might be correct still, but their track record shows a certain pattern since a while now. Something which negates bad balancing mostly by just having awesome cards in those expansions, something which allows for having a bad play testing environment.

Now if this does not fall under NDA, maybe one of the testers can tell us the methodology of FFG for play testing? How many people are involved, are there closed discussion forums, online support? I mean, it sounds hard to test properly when you can not use some online tool, because FFG most certainly does not want to have a larger group of players coming together in public for testing, but I have no idea if vassal supports custom private ships.

Jumpmasters are simply not winning ANY of the store tournaments in my local meta and there are store tournaments every single weekend. Maybe a single Dengar list places in top8, but that's it. Groupthink is a real thing that happens. Jumpmasters place in the meta has been fine since 'The Great Nerf.'

2 hours ago, Dengar5 said:

Jumpmasters are simply not winning ANY of the store tournaments in my local meta and there are store tournaments every single weekend. Maybe a single Dengar list places in top8, but that's it. Groupthink is a real thing that happens. Jumpmasters place in the meta has been fine since 'The Great Nerf.'

Anecdote versus months of data. I know which one I would trust. And they just won world's so there's that.

9 hours ago, Dengar5 said:

Jumpmasters are simply not winning ANY of the store tournaments in my local meta and there are store tournaments every single weekend. Maybe a single Dengar list places in top8, but that's it. Groupthink is a real thing that happens. Jumpmasters place in the meta has been fine since 'The Great Nerf.'

Oh Jumps are still doing great. Yeah, can't wait to put Cad on one....broken on OP with a side of tears and wailing.

11 hours ago, Dengar5 said:

Jumpmasters are simply not winning ANY of the store tournaments in my local meta and there are store tournaments every single weekend. Maybe a single Dengar list places in top8, but that's it. Groupthink is a real thing that happens. Jumpmasters place in the meta has been fine since 'The Great Nerf.'

Are people running it though? In my local store champ, we had an even split faction wise of the 45 people, but the Top 8 cut had 6 Scum, all had Jumpmasters. I even took Dengar/Tel to prove how broken it was with no practice and made Top 4, only person I lost to in Swiss was Kari, in Swiss, who made Top 16 at Worlds in 2015 and he had triple Defenders, a bad matchup for Dengar/Tel, and Joe Desmond, in the Top 4, who made Top 16 at Worlds in 2016, and is probably one of the best Jumpmaster players in the US, and was also running a Jumpmaster in his list.

Yeah, @Tbetts94, that's the kinda thing I see too around here. Personally, I went from the most practiced, intense and calculated Interceptor jock I knew, nocking my head against the wall to try and stay anywhere close to 50% wins, to becoming so salty at seeing Jumpmasters everywhere. They were winning everything, while great seasoned pilots with other squads of all stripes struggled and mostly lost; I had had it, I pretty much just quit playing in environments that that s*** was allowed. It just wasn't right; it wasn't a game. It was sick.

Then, on a casual game night, a friend wanted to learn X-Wing, so I broke it out....it was fun again; I went casual, and we casuals banned the filthy things. Then, a small tourney a friend wanted to do if I did came up and, he let me borrow a JK5 and a Protectorate. I looked on the forum for a build and I just ran FennBosts for the salty h*** of it. It was so d*** easy to fly the boats, torpedo, Boba, etc. and Fenn was like an Interceptor so no big deal. It was, in comparison to 'ceptors, easy mode. Real easy mode. Setting dials and taking actions are so fast, almost scripted and near perfect every time and it didn't really matter my opponent's moves. I have always congratulated opponents either way the game goes from the first game so ever played, but when I fly FennBoats, I now apologize every time, really, I do......weird.

Yeah, we all know, they're O freaking P.

8 hours ago, Tbetts94 said:

Are people running it though? In my local store champ, we had an even split faction wise of the 45 people, but the Top 8 cut had 6 Scum, all had Jumpmasters. I even took Dengar/Tel to prove how broken it was with no practice and made Top 4, only person I lost to in Swiss was Kari, in Swiss, who made Top 16 at Worlds in 2015 and he had triple Defenders, a bad matchup for Dengar/Tel, and Joe Desmond, in the Top 4, who made Top 16 at Worlds in 2016, and is probably one of the best Jumpmaster players in the US, and was also running a Jumpmaster in his list.

We have had a lot of people taking a break from scum in our local meta since World's and it's actually been the minority faction in most SC but it's still won 3 or 4 of 5.

13 hours ago, AlexW said:

We have had a lot of people taking a break from scum in our local meta since World's and it's actually been the minority faction in most SC but it's still won 3 or 4 of 5.

Yeah, I've seen a few people doing the same; but that's what's causing the claims the meta is balanced. Wait till tourneys that matter come again; everyone will go from what they like to the OP again; and Jumps can now have bombs!!!!!!! Yay ?

52 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

Yeah, I've seen a few people doing the same; but that's what's causing the claims the meta is balanced. Wait till tourneys that matter come again; everyone will go from what they like to the OP again; and Jumps can now have bombs!!!!!!! Yay ?

I agree.

On 6/23/2017 at 3:57 PM, GreenDragoon said:

How many successive months do you want before you call it useful?
I don't understand your motivation here - the Jumpmaster is undeniably too cheap and has a dial that is too good for its costs.
You can fit 3 well equiped into a list ffs... something an X-wing can't, for example.

Is the problem large enough to require another change? Probably, yes. Even if only because he destroys the fun of the game for many other players, which absolutely is an important reason for a company that's built on fun.

Do I have to explain why quoting results from BEFORE nerfs doesn't make your case?

My motivation? Perhaps to suggest people stop whining and get on with the game lol.

13 minutes ago, Rat of Vengence said:

Do I have to explain why quoting results from BEFORE nerfs doesn't make your case?

My motivation? Perhaps to suggest people stop whining and get on with the game lol.

Of course not, but the last nerf is already 3 months back - with Jumpmaster consistently at the top. Hence my questions: How many months do you want?
You should define your criteria before we look at the data so you can't accidently move the goalposts.