The head designer of Magic: The Gathering has this to say:

http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/162222792693/agree-or-disagree-balance-is-a-bit-of-a

It is unreasonable to thing that every ship has to be competative. If you want X-wings on the table, play them and don't complain about it. Why would anyone else want to try to them out when all they hear you do is whine?

Competative MTG has only 2 or 3 decks that are viable, but casual has hundreds. Play what you want and stop clogging everyone's feed with your whining and wish list fixes that are not going to happen.

7 minutes ago, Jdling said:

The head designer of Magic: The Gathering has this to say:

http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/162222792693/agree-or-disagree-balance-is-a-bit-of-a

It is unreasonable to thing that every ship has to be competative. If you want X-wings on the table, play them and don't complain about it. Why would anyone else want to try to them out when all they hear you do is whine?

Competative MTG has only 2 or 3 decks that are viable, but casual has hundreds. Play what you want and stop clogging everyone's feed with your whining and wish list fixes that are not going to happen.

There's a useful and a useless way to use that quote.

Usefully, to design a game, things need a function. That function doesn't necessarily mean, for example, a TIE fighter should be equal to an X-Wing in capacity. However, there has to be a point to TIE fighters or you simply aren't going to sell them as a company, other than for nostalgia. When this game was originally released, that point was there...TIE fighters swarmed, were more maneuverable, but had no shields. Like the lore, but also the game had entertainment, balance-ish in its point format, but a TIE fighter obviously one on one, no upgrades, was not balanced against same condition X-wing.

Now that quote used after production? Just a handy excuse for not doing your job.

I'm not calling out this guy, but it isn't the best quote ever, basically being able to have its context tailored to any purpose, good or poor.

39 minutes ago, Jdling said:

The head designer of Magic: The Gathering has this to say:

frosty-mage-stuff asked: Agree or disagree: "Balance" is a bit of a misnomer with regards to games. The goal of development is to create an enjoyable format, not necessarily one where all aspects are even with each other.

There is a desire to have a balanced environment which doesn’t mean all the components are necessarily of equal power.

You might as well put in the darn quote instead of linking to it. Save some people the time and bandwidth of looking it up.

I guess I've haven't kept up on MtG over the years but most of the time there are more than 2-3 viable tournament decks in any given full format. If you look at variations there get to be more. Maybe there has been a time where you only had two decks but those quickly turn into something else as someone else finds the "solution" to defeating them. You can't really have a "2 deck meta" because one is likely superior to the other so that is the one that gets played. Of course the other is changed to compensate and at that point you're really moving past a 2 deck meta.

Does EVERYTHING in X-Wing need to be competitive? Heck no! However X-Wing doesn't have nearly the same amount of material to draw from as MtG so it would be really nice if at least one version of each ship was competitive enough to see regular play.

It's impossible for everything to be perfectly balanced. But it's always possible for balance to be better. The former should not be an excuse not to do the latter.

What is possible is for every ship to be within an acceptable amount of the norm. Where nothing is chronically under or over powered and skill is the primary factor.

Using a MTG designers opinion on how game design should work is somewhat dubious. MTG is a rabid cash cow where balance is only achieved through planned obscelesence, which also conveniently means you have to keep shelling out $$$ to even play. It's game design based around ''how can we keep the players giving us $$$'' instead of genuine desire for a solid game.

20 minutes ago, BadMotivator said:

Using a MTG designers opinion on how game design should work is somewhat dubious. MTG is a rabid cash cow where balance is only achieved through planned obscelesence, which also conveniently means you have to keep shelling out $$$ to even play. It's game design based around ''how can we keep the players giving us $$$'' instead of genuine desire for a solid game.

Isn't this why FFG keeps printing waves?

Also, I don't think you have an argument for the solidity of MTG. You don't last 20+ years in this market without a solid foundation. MTG spends more time designing/developing/playtesting an expansion then most games are in print.

Yes, standard has planned obsolesence, but the eternal formats are doing just fine and they contain cards from all years of MTG. However, that does not mean that all cards ever printed are viable in those formats.

It is hard to ignore Rosewater on any aspect of game design. The guy knows way more then MTG, and his address at GDC last year speaks to all game design, not just the most successful TCG of all time.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023186/Twenty-Years-Twenty

36 minutes ago, StevenO said:

I guess I've haven't kept up on MtG over the years but most of the time there are more than 2-3 viable tournament decks in any given full format. If you look at variations there get to be more. Maybe there has been a time where you only had two decks but those quickly turn into something else as someone else finds the "solution" to defeating them. You can't really have a "2 deck meta" because one is likely superior to the other so that is the one that gets played. Of course the other is changed to compensate and at that point you're really moving past a 2 deck meta.

This depends on how far you have to change a deck before it is new. Does dropping from four Fatal Push to three mean a new deck? Or do we count two similar decks as one. It is a Ship of Theseus question at that point. The developers have done well to keep at least two viable decks in standard at any given time, unlike the old days where one deck made up 80% of the meta.

The X-wing question here is how many viable builds does a healthy meta need?

I'm sure he knows a lot about how his game is designed. But trying to apply that to other games that are radically different is not a good idea. And just because there are formats where outdated cards can be used isn't an excuse.

I just don't like games which are ''pay to win'' like MTG. The fact that its also designed just to churn cash is another thing I dislike. Doesn't help that most MTG players aren't exactly... Well, they just give other nerds a bad name. Every negative nerd steriotype is personified in MTG.

I would say that MTG has lasted as long as it has because it plays into human addiction, while also having a rediculously high profit margin. It's also subtle in how much money you spend on it. You spend $20 a week on boosters. Doesn't seem like much, but that is over $1000 a year. And that's what I see casual players spending. Anybody who is decently into the competitive scene spends way more. Its like cigarettes. Once your hooked you don't realize how much you are spending on it.

It's even more hilarious when you try to get a magic player into a table top wargame and they balk at the price. Then I get to show them how I spend less than half of what they spend on MTG each year on table top wargames.

As for what balance is ideal. I would say that ideally every ship would have at least 2-3 potential competitive lists. Even if they are niche. And as long as the top ships aren't too far ahead so other choices are pushed out.

5 minutes ago, BadMotivator said:

I'm sure he knows a lot about how his game is designed. But trying to apply that to other games that are radically different is not a good idea.

Dude, check out the talk, his other writings, and the authors he recommends. Everything in his GDC talk applies to every game, not MTG. Don't knock it until you give it an honest look.

7 minutes ago, BadMotivator said:

And just because there are formats where outdated cards can be used isn't an excuse.

And people don't want to fly outdated X-wings?

8 minutes ago, BadMotivator said:

I just don't like games which are ''pay to win'' like MTG.

Palpatine.

8 minutes ago, BadMotivator said:

Every negative nerd steriotype is personified in MTG.

I'm sorry you have had to deal with that, but lets be honest, the grognards show up at X-wing tables as well. I haven't had a negative MTG experience in 15 years.

11 minutes ago, BadMotivator said:

I would say that MTG has lasted as long as it has because it plays into human addiction, while also having a rediculously high profit margin. It's also subtle in how much money you spend on it. You spend $20 a week on boosters. Doesn't seem like much, but that is over $1000 a year. And that's what I see casual players spending. Anybody who is decently into the competitive scene spends way more. Its like cigarettes. Once your hooked you don't realize how much you are spending on it.

I don't begrudge a successful company their profits. I willingly spend a portion of my disposable income on MTG and X-Wing. Add up your purchases and entry fees into competitive events for any game and you can get up their in cost. My children haven't missed a meal due to MTG or X-Wing, and I have even brought all three of them into the fold on both games.

15 minutes ago, BadMotivator said:

It's even more hilarious when you try to get a magic player into a table top wargame and they balk at the price. Then I get to show them how I spend less than half of what they spend on MTG each year on table top wargames.

How is you spending less then them hilarious? Again, I don't know a single "addict" in any of my playgroups or at the LGS. Each person comes to gaming looking for something, and some find it in tabletop while others find it in TCG. Some of the lucky ones find joy in both.

19 minutes ago, BadMotivator said:

As for what balance is ideal. I would say that ideally every ship would have at least 2-3 potential competitive lists. Even if they are niche. And as long as the top ships aren't too far ahead so other choices are pushed out.

Worlds had 10 different ships across 4 different builds in the Final Four. That is some huge variance already. Letting there be 120+ viable builds means that no one can make any plans for tournament play. Players look at the meta and adjust according to what they might see that day. Most guys prep for weeks for store championships season and beyond. Too many options means you can't prep/practice at all.

We need to be reasonable. 4 meta builds with slight variation is about all that be managed by a development team. Pushing every ship leads to more unseen interactions that break the game.

Eternal Formats... nothing goes obsolete there, or does so very slowly, because nothing changes. It also doesn't hurt that the top decks in some of those format are worth more than a lot of people's cars are and there is next to nothing you can do to really break in with a large sum of cash. Those format aren't even "pay to win" they're often just "pay to play competitively."

If you play VERY casually, as in you don't pay much attention to the various format block restrictions, it's certainly possible to play MtG relatively cheaply but if you then run into someone using the same rules they might just have something that completely destroys you yet is still completely unplayable in any competitive environment.

IIRC MtG tries to work for a circular balance where if one deck starts becoming too strong the counter will show up and then later the counter-counter. MtG has the depth to do that and while that is the kind of balance I'd like to see in X-Wing I don't think we are close to it.

The horror of mtg and all games like it is random card pack nonsense. Forgive me but I can't stand that.

That quote is meaningless to xwing. Magic has cards that are supposed to be better then others. Some cards are made broken on purpose. Xwing is supposed to be balanced. There should be a viable list for every ship. I agree that people whine too much though.

9 minutes ago, Psalm 112 said:

That quote is meaningless to xwing. Magic has cards that are supposed to be better then others. Some cards are made broken on purpose. Xwing is supposed to be balanced. There should be a viable list for every ship. I agree that people whine too much though.

Where does it say X-Wing is supposed to be balanced all the way across all the ships?

The quote from Rosewater, with my notes:

There is a desire to have a balanced environment (4 different builds in the top 4 at worlds) which doesn’t mean all the components are necessarily of equal power. (A Jumpmaster is better than a Quadjumper.)

X Wing - Magic

Apples - Onions

Not the same thing.

Thing to remember about Magic is there are many different formats. What is a good card in draft or even commander may be bad in constructed. This is the format he is talking about. On top of that, there is collectable aspect and the power of the card drives sales to get the epic cards. The game has a build it power curve as part of the business model.

X-Wing only has two formats and I will say some ships may do better in epic. However the K-Wing isn't a rare and shouldn't necessarily be any more powerful than a y wing for the cost. That is key, the cost of the ships which bring the balance in. Magic, you get 60 cards, each card cost 1 deck point regardless of its power. Not so in X Wing. Rosewater knows his CCGs and no one should contradict him. His comments do not apply to a game like X Wing however.

1 hour ago, StevenO said:

Eternal Formats... nothing goes obsolete there, or does so very slowly, because nothing changes.

(Not ignoring the cost point, just focusing on the design issues) It is true nothing goes obsolete, but also true that new cards make an appearance in the format and force out some of the old cards. Just like Bombers pushed out Aces.

1 hour ago, StevenO said:

IIRC MtG tries to work for a circular balance where if one deck starts becoming too strong the counter will show up and then later the counter-counter. MtG has the depth to do that and while that is the kind of balance I'd like to see in X-Wing I don't think we are close to it.

We also have people making the assumption that FFG doesn't have a plan for the next few waves that set up the circle. I will bet good money Autothrusters were already in the pipeline to beat turrets before turrets were ever pushed. They have an interest in shaking up the meta to keep sales going. Things will become cyclical, but don't expect every ship to be playable.

35 minutes ago, Psalm 112 said:

That quote is meaningless to xwing. Magic has cards that are supposed to be better then others. Some cards are made broken on purpose. Xwing is supposed to be balanced. There should be a viable list for every ship. I agree that people whine too much though.

I personally think some X-wing cards are supposed to be better than the others. There is almost no plausible way something like let's say R3 Astromech goes through design and playtesting in wave 9 unless it's meant to be a niche/sub-par card.

There's an entire demographic of players out there that enjoy list building and theorycrafting, finding the good and the bad. Including stuff of various power levels caters to these players.

However, I doubt FFG designs bad ships on purpose. A pack where few people want the ship itself because it's bad doesn't sell well, and that's not something FFG wants IMO.

19 minutes ago, Mep said:

X Wing - Magic

Apples - Onions

Not the same thing.

Thing to remember about Magic is there are many different formats. What is a good card in draft or even commander may be bad in constructed. This is the format he is talking about. On top of that, there is collectable aspect and the power of the card drives sales to get the epic cards. The game has a build it power curve as part of the business model.

X-Wing only has two formats and I will say some ships may do better in epic. However the K-Wing isn't a rare and shouldn't necessarily be any more powerful than a y wing for the cost. That is key, the cost of the ships which bring the balance in. Magic, you get 60 cards, each card cost 1 deck point regardless of its power. Not so in X Wing. Rosewater knows his CCGs and no one should contradict him. His comments do not apply to a game like X Wing however.

I got pulled into a magic discussion inadvertently. The original point is that a balanced format does not have to mean everything is at an equal power level. We can dream about that future, but the reality is that there are just too many parts.

As far as Rosewater knowing nothing about game design across the board, you guys frankly don't know what you are talking about. Read "10 things every game needs" and tell me it doesn't apply to X-wings success.

I have really no idea the details of Majic...none.

However, equal power is, by definition in this game, practically impossible. This isn't chess thankfully. However, buffing struggling ships (Syck, Kyraxeraxe, Punisher, etc.) should be as much a goal as nerfing a bit the high winning outliers (Zuckuss, Phantom, Palestine, Jumpmaster, Sabine, Biggs etc.) and let the rest be a curve from "not super competitive", to "these can be in great tool-box squads", to "these are really good competitive ships." No super lows, no super highs, that's a great game. They're doing it, albeit slowly, and nerf FAQ 4.3.4 will drop soon and we'll just wait and see what Wookiees and Nym does to the spectrum.

3 minutes ago, Jdling said:

As far as Rosewater knowing nothing about game design across the board, you guys frankly don't know what you are talking about. Read "10 things every game needs" and tell me it doesn't apply to X-wings success.

I am sure if you listed those 10 things we could agree with you. However you listed something about balance and format. In Magic not having the cards balanced is part of the fun. Getting the "good card" in a booster is part of the game after all. It is part of the format of magic so he is right. Being completely balanced would be horrible for a game like Magic. X Wing is not Magic and that comment doesn't apply to X Wing. In the X Wing format you are looking at different yet balanced, or at the very least, a rock, paper, scissors type dynamic.

4 minutes ago, Mep said:

I am sure if you listed those 10 things we could agree with you. However you listed something about balance and format. In Magic not having the cards balanced is part of the fun. Getting the "good card" in a booster is part of the game after all. It is part of the format of magic so he is right. Being completely balanced would be horrible for a game like Magic. X Wing is not Magic and that comment doesn't apply to X Wing. In the X Wing format you are looking at different yet balanced, or at the very least, a rock, paper, scissors type dynamic.

The discussion I started was about balance and all parts being equal. It got pulled into a defense of comparing two games and the credentials of a well respected game designer.

Individual cards do not exist in a vacuum. Lightning Bolt is broken in the current standard, but was fine when it was printed.

Balance is balance. The rock/paper/scissors of x wing is very comparable to the aggro/combo/control of early MTG, so the comparison still stands.

The article in question is here:

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/ten-things-every-game-needs-part-1-part-2-2011-12-19

I could list them all and how x wing has those properties (for example #5 is inertia. A game needs something pushing it to finish. X wing has the clock. Magic has the rule that you lose when you have to draw from an empty library.) but I will leave it to you guys to evaluate.

On 25.6.2017 at 10:23 PM, KelRiever said:

The horror of mtg and all games like it is random card pack nonsense. Forgive me but I can't stand that.

To be honest, those random card pack nonsense is mostly vanishing when you buy into each new edition with about 2 displays. Or at least it used to be that way. Which is about the same as you pay for X-Wing when you collect.

Still, I understand your stand, and answer with this:
http://shop.tcgplayer.com/magic/product/show?ProductName=Black+Lotus&newSearch=false&ProductType=All&IsProductNameExact=true

You can buy every card just fine without the randomness. Though a few cards really need a reprint imho. Black Lotus used be a 100 than a 500 card, now it seems to be a $5,000 card. At some point it becomes a little silly. ;-)

In a random card draw pack, it makes sense that some things aren't as good as others, because you are trying to get more money from people by having an imbalance so they buy even more card packs to struggle and find what they want.

In a game where you know everything you buy in a pack, my clear personal preference by the way, it makes no sense to not have a proper point value assigned to everything, if points are part of your game mechanics

Random packs are terrible to work with. Sure a collector may be able to buy two boost displays of MtG (which do cost more than you'd pay for a wave of X-Wing and they release those three times a year which is more frequently than X-Wing's releases) and collect a copy of most of the cards in the set assuming you don't get too unlucky. Of course if you want to play some of those powerful rares you're going to want/need four of them and that will up your price very quickly as every other "serious player" also tries to do the same thing.

MtG sometime does do an X-Wing like model of releasing some special edition where all of the cards are fixed. Of course what is in those boxes can rapidly change what the price paid for the boxes is especially after an initial MSRP release. If WotC releases a box set with all the power nine in a legally playable (standard back) version how well is that going to go over? Of course it will be a very limited edition and I'd wager that unless you somehow got lucky with someone being forced to sell it at MSRP (which shouldn't be much for a few pieces of cardboard right?) you'll see the price jump immediately as they hit the secondary market.

When it comes to balance there are many kinds and ways to balance most things. How many ways could you balance a typical d4? One? Then you aren't trying very hard but trying to keep that d4 balanced on an edge is going to be difficult at best and keeping it balanced on a point/corner is going to be darn near impossible for anything more than a few seconds at best. X-Wing really doesn't need to be balanced on a base but keeping it on the edge is difficult; I might say MtG is balanced on the point which happens be a big reason they have the rotation so they can keep messing with things to keep it upright.

2 hours ago, Jdling said:

Where does it say X-Wing is supposed to be balanced all the way across all the ships?

The quote from Rosewater, with my notes:

There is a desire to have a balanced environment (4 different builds in the top 4 at worlds) which doesn’t mean all the components are necessarily of equal power. (A Jumpmaster is better than a Quadjumper.)

Cause thats how xwing is designed. It doesn't have legendaries that are OP. It has a point system, and FFG mainly balances around it. Also remember yes xwing has better and worse ships, but FFG tries to fix this. JM5K has been nerfed 3 times. It hasn't worked, but it isn't like FFG releases ships that are broken, and lets them go. They said in an article Jumpy was broken and they would try to fix it.

1 hour ago, Jdling said:

The discussion I started was about balance and all parts being equal. It got pulled into a defense of comparing two games and the credentials of a well respected game designer.

Individual cards do not exist in a vacuum. Lightning Bolt is broken in the current standard, but was fine when it was printed.

Balance is balance. The rock/paper/scissors of x wing is very comparable to the aggro/combo/control of early MTG, so the comparison still stands.

The article in question is here:

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/ten-things-every-game-needs-part-1-part-2-2011-12-19

I could list them all and how x wing has those properties (for example #5 is inertia. A game needs something pushing it to finish. X wing has the clock. Magic has the rule that you lose when you have to draw from an empty library.) but I will leave it to you guys to evaluate.

Xwing sure as hec ain't rock paper scissors. You tell me how you counter Pattaranni, or really any lists with jumpies, protectorates, and Shadow casters. You don't. You can't. Thats why they are good. I understand your being defensive about Magic, since you play or played it, but they really just don't compare, and everything in xwing should be playable. I agree that people should just play what they like though. If nobody cared about winning xwing (which is impossible) it would be way more fun. There would be more variety, and crazy lists.

Yeah, Xwing, and indeed most miniature games, are not Rock/Paper/Scissors. At least not directly. X may counter Y, but if you have enough Y you will eventually counter X. Hence why points exist.

Perfect balance is impossible to achieve, but you can get within a small amount of it. Point based "army" games in general should always strive to have equal points of two different things be roughly equal to each other in terms of power, or desirability. It's when you have something that gets outside that accepted norm you have a problem. T-65 xwings are, with the exception of biggs, all too expensive for what they bring. While Jumpmasters are way too cheap for what they bring.

Quote

Using a MTG designers opinion on how game design should work is somewhat dubious. MTG is a rabid cash cow where balance is only achieved through planned obscelesence, which also conveniently means you have to keep shelling out $$$ to even play. It's game design based around ''how can we keep the players giving us $$$'' instead of genuine desire for a solid game.

A big part of it is not the "new waves come out" (X-wing and frankly every other game does that) but "retire and replace old waves".

Magic, as I understand it, comes in blocks of 3-4 expansions with a theme, and is designed to work within a block, such that competitive restrictions force you to build your deck out of the most recent N expansions (don't know the number, sorry).

Warhammer 40,000 Conquest was much the same - FFG stated that each cycle had a planned retirement date once two subsequent expansion cycles had been through the mill.

Power creep is a bit of an inevitability with a game, because once you fill all the big tactical space, making there be a 'point' to a new ship requires it to in some way be more appealing than the thing either side of it, which means its capabilities tend to be improved, and because the more things are in circulation, the more combinations every new ship needs to be vetted against (how many EPTs are there in play now?)

If X-wing retired its old 'waves', and re-issued them - balanced for current 'meta' levels, you'd see a continuous rejuvenation of older ships. Which is basically what the whole system of "fixes" and "aces" boxes is intended to be, by a different name. However, it'd come at a cost of issuing new stuff - which firstly is probably more profitable, and secondly is demanded of them by their licensors.

19 hours ago, Jdling said:

The head designer of Magic: The Gathering has this to say:

http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/162222792693/agree-or-disagree-balance-is-a-bit-of-a

It is unreasonable to thing that every ship has to be competative. If you want X-wings on the table, play them and don't complain about it. Why would anyone else want to try to them out when all they hear you do is whine?

Competative MTG has only 2 or 3 decks that are viable, but casual has hundreds. Play what you want and stop clogging everyone's feed with your whining and wish list fixes that are not going to happen.

Seeing as MtG is a game where for every card designed to be actually playable they make 10 that are intended to be filler garbage, I would say his opinion is neither relevant nor healthy for X-Wing.