12 hours ago, Psalm 112 said:

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.

This ^

I just play with my friends. I haven't done a store event yet (mainly because I am always busy on X-Wing night), but someone in my playgroup runs Manaroo and her flying babies now, and I am sad. I'll keep playing against it though, since I've gotten some good shots off on it and can pull off wins. The math really isn't in my favor though.

Having played against Jumpmasters, I can see why everyone gives Han a hard time in the movies now "What a hunk of junk!" lol

In RE spirt of the thread, I don't mind some ships not being "as good" or outdated. That's how progress is supposed to happen, even with real life ships. The issue is that FFG (I say this, being new and probably will say something incorrect and stupid) won't print replacement pilot cards to correct point costs. That would be an easy fix imo; Drop down point costs when older ships are obsolete, that way you can squeeze one in as an extra ship and give the newer ships a run for their money.

I wouldn't quote MTG for good design concepts. They benefited more from being a first mover in the market than from solid design and later from solid marketing. You can run a successful business without necessarily making the game balanced.

First, I think for a game like X-wing, even though it is hard to achieve, balance is indeed a goal. It should be a playstyle question what you choose to put your equal amounts of points into and they should perform reasonably equal for those points. You also as a game designer has to trim the hedge, take the ships/playstyles/whatever that sticks out and becomes too strong in the meta and handle them via releasing counter upgrades and/or issuing erratas that makes the game playable for all. That said, that's pretty much where we in fact are today. There are 4 issues in the design right now I would say and I bet they are all under supervision by the designers.

Second, magic has to be understood from its own use case. It is indeed designed for some cards being stronger then others. The booster packs are created the way they are as a selling point but also to be able to draft from them. Magic supports a multitude of different formats in various competitive forms. X-wing has a single one. Magic has about 17000 cards released. X-wing has ~50 released ships and perhaps 200 upgrade cards (?). The balances of these games are very different.

So while I feel that the quote is relevant, the magic lies in the interpretation of is.

22 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.

DAT... and for the noisy people who think that we casuale happy players are not good at this game or just do not take it seriously as something to fully understand and to use correctly for the facilitation of absolutely great STAR WARS games: rather than marred meta-competitions... YOU ARE WRONG.

Enjoy your frustration... One day some of you will GET IT, and some of us will still be here for you, and we will welcome you into the fold of GLORIOUS STAR WARS GAMING. Prolly be EPIC too I bet!

21 hours ago, Jdling said:

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.

I just saw this in the above quote of your post and as I can not just stand by and let the internet be wrong without correcting it, I will do my duty and say that I assume that you really have not played Magic, have you? I guess it will depend on your perspective, but 2-3 viable decks is off by at least a factor 10 or more I would say and that naturally only counting the ones that are standard legal. One can for sure argue that even that is too little given the size of the game, but at least its not two or three...

This is stupid.

On one hand you're saying complaining (about lack of game balance) is annoying. Then you go on to complain about complaining.

If you don't like feeds then unfollow them. If you don't like the forum don't visit it.

Criticising others, who want change, for voicing their opinion then thinking you can affect change by voicing your own opinion shows a serious lack of empathy and some serious hypocrisy.

As bad an analogy as people here are claiming, i think it is a good one. You just have to get the points that are important.

Wizards (Mtg company) and FFG have the same goal, they both want to keep making money.

If you want to keep making money you have to keep selling, if you want to keep selling you either release something better and more appealing than the rest or program an obsolescence to the elements.

What is FFG doing?, clearly they release new and better stuff, thats why old ships dont see play, thats why they release a fix for old ships so you dont cry for the old stuff not being played but you still bought the new one really to play it. Mtg meanwhile just simply rotate all the cards, so they dont need powercreep, if you have played a few years of magic you can see that some sets are more powerfull than others but the fact that they dont coexists makes it irrelevant, since you are playing with the pool available at the moment.

Also MtG clearly tries to achieve balance. Not necesarily between all the 1000 cards available in the pool of standard, the actual format, because as already stated they support tons of formats and some cards are designed for one or another. For example, they have realeased a card called "Mental Missted", in standard it was absolute garbage, meanwhile was a supreme card in eternal.

FFG obiously tries to achieve balance, but achieving balance with a growing pool when you want to keep selling, which clearly implies powercreep, is hard af.

I dont think everything needs to be perfectly balanced for competitive gaming, but i do think you aim to it and you really need obsolescence. That way you can dive into different seas and explore other alternatives without worrying about breaking the game right away.

2 hours ago, Elavion said:

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.

Not every card is for every format, but every card printed is playable somewhere.

Again, this discussion was started about balance, and has nothing to do with comparisons to MTG. They are vastly different games. However, the opinion of a well respected game designer (his talk at GDC was given to video game developers, not TCG designers, so they respect his opinion on things) is not to be ignored.

X-Wing is balanced, but not every ship is playable. Show me any mass produced game where every possible unit is playable in every format.

40 minutes ago, Ram said:

First, I think for a game like X-wing, even though it is hard to achieve, balance is indeed a goal. It should be a playstyle question what you choose to put your equal amounts of points into and they should perform reasonably equal for those points. You also as a game designer has to trim the hedge, take the ships/playstyles/whatever that sticks out and becomes too strong in the meta and handle them via releasing counter upgrades and/or issuing erratas that makes the game playable for all. That said, that's pretty much where we in fact are today. There are 4 issues in the design right now I would say and I bet they are all under supervision by the designers.

I would go one further and say that the format is purposefully seeded with powerful ships/upgrades with the intent to release a counter further on. This keeps sales going and allows the business to continue. If there isn't a powerful ship, there isn't a reason to upgrade to the new stuff and there isn't a reason to buy new ships that beat that powerful ship.

43 minutes ago, Ram said:

Second, magic has to be understood from its own use case. It is indeed designed for some cards being stronger then others. The booster packs are created the way they are as a selling point but also to be able to draft from them. Magic supports a multitude of different formats in various competitive forms. X-wing has a single one. Magic has about 17000 cards released. X-wing has ~50 released ships and perhaps 200 upgrade cards (?). The balances of these games are very different.

So while I feel that the quote is relevant, the magic lies in the interpretation of is.

X-Wing is also more than just 100/6. Epic, HotAC, and kitchen table play probably factor more into sales then the results of the last tournament.

The interpretation still stands from my initial post. The game has balance, but everyone's favorite ship and favorite play style aren't always going to be viable. If that happens, the format stagnates.

32 minutes ago, Ram said:

I just saw this in the above quote of your post and as I can not just stand by and let the internet be wrong without correcting it, I will do my duty and say that I assume that you really have not played Magic, have you? I guess it will depend on your perspective, but 2-3 viable decks is off by at least a factor 10 or more I would say and that naturally only counting the ones that are standard legal. One can for sure argue that even that is too little given the size of the game, but at least its not two or three...

As an avid standard player who weekly plays EDH, drafts at least once a month, and maintains a cube for casual play, and has managed to have MTG in my life for the last 23 years, I will say that yes, I have really played Magic.

Lets keep it restricted to standard, as that is the format most like X-Wing. You are welcome to make the argument for Legacy as it is an eternal format like X-Wing currently, but I don't think it will matter. The last pro tour had three decks in the top 8. 5 were Temur Marvel, 3 were zombies, and one black green energy deck. That doesn't look like 20 or 30 decks are viable in the format. Yes, it is possible to play outside of those main shells, but people gravitate to what wins, and if most of the decks you see on FNM, a GP or a PT are in one of three buckets, then those are the viable decks.

2 hours ago, Jdling said:

As an avid standard player who weekly plays EDH, drafts at least once a month, and maintains a cube for casual play, and has managed to have MTG in my life for the last 23 years, I will say that yes, I have really played Magic.

Lets keep it restricted to standard, as that is the format most like X-Wing. You are welcome to make the argument for Legacy as it is an eternal format like X-Wing currently, but I don't think it will matter. The last pro tour had three decks in the top 8. 5 were Temur Marvel, 3 were zombies, and one black green energy deck. That doesn't look like 20 or 30 decks are viable in the format. Yes, it is possible to play outside of those main shells, but people gravitate to what wins, and if most of the decks you see on FNM, a GP or a PT are in one of three buckets, then those are the viable decks.

Cool! I always love to meet Magic friends in strange places.

Looking at some statistics:
https://mtgdecks.net/Standard

There is no doubt temur marvel is the deck to beat, but there are actually a bunch of decks that are really strong. So I will agree that I was high and thinking variations when I said 20-30 but I withstand that it is higher then 2-3.

2 hours ago, Jdling said:

X-Wing is also more than just 100/6. Epic, HotAC, and kitchen table play probably factor more into sales then the results of the last tournament.

The interpretation still stands from my initial post. The game has balance, but everyone's favorite ship and favorite play style aren't always going to be viable. If that happens, the format stagnates.

It depends on what we are talking about here I would say. I agree x-wing is not that far off in balance at all, but if five-ten ships are too weak in a fauna of fifty it is a pretty troublesome. Bottom line, I would love for the early wave ships to get up to par with the newer wave ones.

The problem with competitive isn't that the meta only has rock, paper, scissors for top tier lists. That's expected. The Problem right now is that the Jumpmaster is Rock, Paper, and scissors all at the same time. It's sat through 3 FAQ's and still pretty much cleans house. The last ship of this caliber, the fat han build, got nerfed pretty good when wave 7 dropped. Before that alot of people were suggesting fixes for ships, because the build was much better than the rest of the ships we had to work with (this was pre-TLT). Which is why currently we've trade palp aces (last great nerf FAQ) for Rebel regen+ bombs. But even they have an uphill battle against a Parrattani jumpmaster list. So your complaint, while true, isn't viable to the current situation of X-wing. It's like having a deck that stays relevant through 5-6 formats at the number one spot. That's why all the fix threads keep popping up.

21 hours ago, Jdling said:

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.

A little late to the party and don't have time right now to read all comments, so sorry if this was already touched on, but isn't this the DREAM state of the game? TOO many options seems like a totally backwards idea to me.

Saying you can't practice or prep in such a circumstance is false. Just because you aren't certain of what will be on the other side of the table doesn't mean you can't refine your approach with your own list. And in this case what is going to define the winner? Perhaps... superior listbuilding and flyin? *audible gasp*

double post

23 hours ago, BadMotivator said:

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.

This is the best comment in the entire thread.

"Perfect" balance is literally impossible for almost any game, but any game designer will tell you that perfect balance is never the design goal anyway. Even chess doesn't have perfect balance! So the goal is to have "good" balance, or "better" balance, which for X-wing can be defined as: no pilot is significantly above or below the power curve relative to all the other pilots, and all pilots are reasonably competitive .

How much variance there is in "reasonably competitive" depends entirely on how well you can balance the game. Ideally, no pilot should be so bad that it has little or no chance at winning against equally skilled players who are playing the standard top-end competitive squads. Unfortunately, this does not describe X-wing during any state of its existence.

18 hours 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.

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.

As a disclaimer, I'm not familiar with Magic. X-wing has a certain element of cyclical balance (i.e. autothrusters > turrets, advanced slam > autothrusters, etc). However, all of the top X-wing builds have always had the best cost efficiency (i.e. jousting value), and this has been true going back to wave 1. Even control lists like KineticOperator's triple K-wings have good cost efficiency, by virtue of significantly lowering the cost efficiency of opposing ace lists to be inferior to his K-wings. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of the pilots/ships are incapable of hitting the cost efficiency levels required to be consistently viable for competitive play.

9 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

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?)

Power creep does not have to be inevitable if the game is designed correctly. FFG has been able to add slightly new mechanics to every single wave, so in theory it is possible to have a 11 waves worth of ships that are all functionally different, and yet all are reasonably viable and in good overall balance with each other. Unfortunately, if the designers do not have a very good understanding on the underlying math, then power creep is inevitable.

It is possible to predict game balance with reasonable accuracy during the design process. I have been doing it for several years now -- I'll predict how well I expect a ship / pilot to be before it launches, the tournament results end up bearing it out, and then 2-3 years later FFG gets around to buffing the underperformers as per my original recommendations pre-launch.

The implementation of my mathematical models is not ideal and has quite a bit of room for improvement. It turns out that after writing >10k lines of Matlab code, one is disinclined to do the complete overhaul that is required to keep it up-to-date with the current meta. Thankfully this line still holds for the most part:

On a related note, I'm going through and creating some House Rules to completely overhaul the game balance. Should be good for casual play if people are interested.

2 hours ago, Ram said:

Bottom line, I would love for the early wave ships to get up to par with the newer wave ones.

We all would, but that is why we don't always have to play 100/6. Plenty of other ways exist from the community, and that lets those other ships shine. Let the hardcore tournament guys have their few ships.

2 hours ago, FlyingAnchors said:

That's why all the fix threads keep popping up.

Again, what needs fixed? They didn't ban any ships from casual play.

1 hour ago, MajorJuggler said:

So the goal is to have "good" balance, or "better" balance, which for X-wing can be defined as: no pilot is significantly above or below the power curve relative to all the other pilots, and all pilots are reasonably competitive .

How much variance there is in "reasonably competitive" depends entirely on how well you can balance the game. Ideally, no pilot should be so bad that it has little or no chance at winning against equally skilled players who are playing the standard top-end competitive squads. Unfortunately, this does not describe X-wing during any state of its existence.

I disagree, slightly, with your premise. Why do all ships need to be competitive?

That really can't ever be the case. If the old ships are always viable, then the company can't sell new ships except for nostalgia reasons. The game dies after the first expansion.

1 hour ago, MajorJuggler said:

Power creep does not have to be inevitable if the game is designed correctly. FFG has been able to add slightly new mechanics to every single wave, so in theory it is possible to have a 11 waves worth of ships that are all functionally different, and yet all are reasonably viable and in good overall balance with each other. Unfortunately, if the designers do not have a very good understanding on the underlying math, then power creep is inevitable.

It is possible to predict game balance with reasonable accuracy during the design process. I have been doing it for several years now -- I'll predict how well I expect a ship / pilot to be before it launches, the tournament results end up bearing it out, and then 2-3 years later FFG gets around to buffing the underperformers as per my original recommendations pre-launch.

There are very few knobs that developers can turn to make adjustments to ships and still be in flavor. They are still bound to that outside of the math. Yes, in a vacuum, 50 generic game pieces could be balanced if all released at the same time. However, the story pushes things out of line, and the necessity of selling new ships also adjusts things away from the ideal. It isn't all just the math of the game, it is also the math of the business model and the bottom line. Why would anyone buy a K-wing if it didn't improve their squad's specific gameplay over the Y-Wing? Yes, we all want the ideal world where it is all list building player ability, but that doesn't hold up economically. Plus, I frankly like trying to break new ships as they come out.

And FFG is a business. They know exactly what they are doing by purposefully releasing underpowered ships and then selling the boost two waves later.

1 hour ago, MajorJuggler said:

On a related note, I'm going through and creating some House Rules to completely overhaul the game balance. Should be good for casual play if people are interested.

Count me as interested. Just like MTG, I want more ways to play with the ships I have. Also, why all the MTG hate everyone? Can't we have both? I just played a 12 person furball on Friday while 12 other people were also drafting, another 8 were playing FNM, Warhammer and Bloodbowl were going on in the back and about 20 college kids were playing Yu-Gi-Oh on the side.

32 minutes ago, Jdling said:

We all would, but that is why we don't always have to play 100/6. Plenty of other ways exist from the community, and that lets those other ships shine. Let the hardcore tournament guys have their few ships.

Why...? Are we to assume that the kitchen table players will be upset if we made the x-wing ship on par with the protectorate? Are we to assume that the new starviper/khiraxz boost pack whos name escapes me at the moment will ripple feelings of light rage amng the heroes-players?

Balancing the game makes the game better.

28 minutes ago, Jdling said:

I disagree, slightly, with your premise. Why do all ships need to be competitive?

I will counter: why not ?

For the game to be balanced, then by definition, you want as many (if not all) ships to be competitive, and as many pilots to be competitive as possible. This results in the most diverse meta, which not coincidentally is also the most fun meta. I'm not alone in this assessment -- the X-wing developers have echoed the same exact sentiment, in particular Alex Davy.

29 minutes ago, Jdling said:

There are very few knobs that developers can turn to make adjustments to ships and still be in flavor. They are still bound to that outside of the math. Yes, in a vacuum, 50 generic game pieces could be balanced if all released at the same time.

And yet, the developers have made every ship functionally different through 11 waves. No two ships have the same tactical capabilities, and this goes beyond just their stat lines and dials. The developers have sufficient knobs to make almost all of the pilots balanced, namely by setting the cost right. Cost is the great equalizer; competitive X-wing is ruthlessly moneyball, and points are the currency. It has nothing to do with all the ships being released at the same time incrementally. Releasing or rebalancing all the pilots at the same time is actually significantly more difficult than doing it incrementally, because you lose the intermediary data points, so now instead of designing just one wave "open loop" without any feedback, you're designing all 11. I'm running into this right now rebalancing the whole game, and trust me, even though I understand the fundamental math better than FFG, that doesn't make it an easy task to balance all the ships at once!

29 minutes ago, Jdling said:

That really can't ever be the case. If the old ships are always viable, then the company can't sell new ships except for nostalgia reasons. The game dies after the first expansion.

... and the necessity of selling new ships also adjusts things away from the ideal. ... it is also the math of the business model and the bottom line.

... FFG is a business. They know exactly what they are doing by purposefully releasing underpowered ships and then selling the boost two waves later.

Intentionally creating power creep to generate sort-term sales is a business strategy, but not one that is sustainable, in my opinion. I know a lot of people that have either quit the game or are burned out because of power creep and poor game balance.

I personally don't think that FFG is really trying to create power creep, they're trying to make the new stuff just a little bit less competitive than the previous best stuff. If you look at their releases, there is a spread of how close they have come to hitting the mark. Pretty much all of wave 10 was dead on arrival, with the exception of a few upgrade cards. Some other ships have been too strong (Fenn, Asajj). Most of the releases are actually not as good as the old stuff -- but because of the design variance, some of the new stuff ends up being better than anything else before it. Voila! Power creep!

It is possible that FFG is trying to create power creep to sell ships anyway, in addition to the above effect, but this is against their stated design goals. It also doesn't help sell all the other dead on arrival ships, unless you really want a particular upgrade card, or you're a completionist.

10 minutes ago, Ram said:

Why...? Are we to assume that the kitchen table players will be upset if we made the x-wing ship on par with the protectorate? Are we to assume that the new starviper/khiraxz boost pack whos name escapes me at the moment will ripple feelings of light rage amng the heroes-players?

Balancing the game makes the game better.

Amen. I'm always amazed at how many people feel the need to argue against a better balanced game. It's one of the most confusing arguments I have ever heard, and it occurs ALL THE TIME on these forums for some reason.

Hold on, there are Tumblr pages that aren´ t adult only? COOL!

10 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

I will counter: why not ?

For the game to be balanced, then by definition, you want as many (if not all) ships to be competitive, and as many pilots to be competitive as possible. This results in the most diverse meta, which not coincidentally is also the most fun meta. I'm not alone in this assessment -- the X-wing developers have echoed the same exact sentiment, in particular Alex Davy.

For the game to be balanced, there needs to be multiple viable builds present at the end rounds of any high level tournament. 4 different squadrons with different strategies in the final 4 of any tournament is a diverse meta, in my opinion. Look at any mass produced game that has had any success over the years, and you will see the same thing over and over again. The developers have their own currency (to reference your later comment): their time. They can't spend forever making everything just right. They need to focus on what archetypes that want present currently, and what to do in the future to push the pendulum around and get a new environment.

16 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

And yet, the developers have made every ship functionally different through 11 waves. No two ships have the same tactical capabilities, and this goes beyond just their stat lines and dials. The developers have sufficient knobs to make almost all of the pilots balanced, namely by setting the cost right. Cost is the great equalizer; competitive X-wing is ruthlessly moneyball, and points are the currency. It has nothing to do with all the ships being released at the same time incrementally. Releasing or rebalancing all the pilots at the same time is actually significantly more difficult than doing it incrementally, because you lose the intermediary data points, so now instead of designing just one wave "open loop" without any feedback, you're designing all 11. I'm running into this right now rebalancing the whole game, and trust me, even though I understand the fundamental math better than FFG, that doesn't make it an easy task to balance all the ships at once!

Different does not mean better, and different does not mean useful. Sure I can make a ship with a junk dial and every stat being a "1". But even with a pushed cost, their are other tactical considerations in the game that will likely make that ship unplayable. As much as I love the math behind it (I am not a slouch when it comes to data analysis) there are non-math things that will come into play in any type of analysis. Does the cost of an AP account for what happens when the formation gets bumped and broken up?

23 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

Intentionally creating power creep to generate sort-term sales is a business strategy, but not one that is sustainable, in my opinion. I know a lot of people that have either quit the game or are burned out because of power creep and poor game balance.

I personally don't think that FFG is really trying to create power creep, they're trying to make the new stuff just a little bit less competitive than the previous best stuff. If you look at their releases, there is a spread of how close they have come to hitting the mark. Pretty much all of wave 10 was dead on arrival, with the exception of a few upgrade cards. Some other ships have been too strong (Fenn, Asajj). Most of the releases are actually not as good as the old stuff -- but because of the design variance, some of the new stuff ends up being better than anything else before it. Voila! Power creep!

It is possible that FFG is trying to create power creep to sell ships anyway, in addition to the above effect, but this is against their stated design goals. It also doesn't help sell all the other dead on arrival ships, unless you really want a particular upgrade card, or you're a completionist.

But lets not forget, X-Wing is already near the end of usable lifetime of wargames like this. It is a testament to the designers that they have kept it vibrant as long as they have. Most game designs are one shot and done. Expanding is just gravy, and they need to milk this cow as fast as possible before we all move on to the new hotness.

Yes, they have realized their push into scum was a little to hard and they need to pull back, but they only need to put in one good upgrade card to sell a whole DOA ship model. That is good business, and we keep buying.

Power creep is inevitable without planned obsolescence, either by intention design of the expansions to sell product or by the variance you brought up above.

On 2017-06-25 at 0:43 PM, Jdling said:

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.

So funny you say that. Current MTG standard meta: http://www.mtgtop8.com/format?f=ST

This is far more balanced than what we have at the moment. Plus you cant compare a game with rotations to a game without them. With every cycle MTG has chance to rotate out cards that are OP or bring in cards that help underperforming ones get better.

On 2017-06-25 at 0:43 PM, Jdling said:

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?

Xwing had nothing to do with whats said in your link from what i understand. The first sentence of what he said: " There is a desire to have a balanced environment ". Xwing does not have that at the moment.

Good try :-)

3 minutes ago, Thormind said:

Xwing had nothing to do with whats said in your link from what i understand. The first sentence of what he said: " There is a desire to have a balanced environment ". Xwing does not have that at the moment.

Good try :-)

To help define the terms, what makes a balanced X-Wing environment, in your opinion?\

Also,

http://www.mtgtop8.com/format?f=ST&meta=138

I'll play your game, but take out the MTGO results. Face to face at PT Amonkhet, 3 decks were 82% of the meta. What single dominant build was present at worlds? Can't say jumpmaster is all the problem as it is used in multiple different ways.

37 minutes ago, Jdling said:

For the game to be balanced, there needs to be multiple viable builds present at the end rounds of any high level tournament. 4 different squadrons with different strategies in the final 4 of any tournament is a diverse meta, in my opinion. Look at any mass produced game that has had any success over the years, and you will see the same thing over and over again.

Oh dear. Please don't say that you are trying to say that the game is in a good spot and balanced right now.

As a reference point, if you don't mind my asking, how often do you play competitively, and how well do you do? I play fairly regularly (although I don't travel nearly as much as others), and I almost always make the cut. I have never lost more than 2 games at any event, including the elimination matches. My overall record at Regionals level events or higher (counting Nova Open 2015) is 32-8, including elimination rounds. To my recollection, in my entire time playing X-wing over the last several years, I can only remember not making the cut three times, at any event:

• MA Regionals 2015, my first large tournament. I went 4-2, was #15 / 72, I think. At least I got shield tokens.
• Worlds 2015, I went 6-2 and was #20 / 287, missing the Top 16 cut.
• Norton MA Store kit tournament, circa 2016. I went undefeated in 5 rounds of Swiss but missed the cut because I had one modified win and one tie.

I don't intend this in a braggadocios manner, but rather just to say that I'm almost always flying against the top meta stuff, whatever that happens to be at the time. And right now, it's not a diverse meta. At all.

Also, to your comment, 11 of the Top 16 at Worlds were mindlink lists. I'm glad those four people got to experience a diverse meta across three games in the Top 4 and it got caught on tape. Everyone else is stuck flying against the same old overpowered stuff.

37 minutes ago, Jdling said:

The developers have their own currency (to reference your later comment): their time. They can't spend forever making everything just right. They need to focus on what archetypes that want present currently, and what to do in the future to push the pendulum around and get a new environment.

I agree that the FFG developers don't have enough time to get the releases balanced "cleanly" before it needs to get shipped. But that's not to say that it can't be done, only that FFG can't do it. This speaks more to the company's business philosophy, which is a very deep rabbit hole.

Also, I will apologize after the fact and in advance for the walls of text. Leaking water line into the house means plenty of free time sitting at home and being unreasonable on the internet.

1 minute ago, MajorJuggler said:

Also, to your comment, 11 of the Top 16 at Worlds were mindlink lists. I'm glad those four people got to experience a diverse meta across three games in the Top 4 and it got caught on tape. Everyone else is stuck flying against the same old overpowered stuff.

I agree that the FFG developers don't have enough time to get the balanced "cleanly" before it needs to get shipped. But that's not to say that it can't be done, only that FFG can't do it. This speaks more to the company's business philosophy, which is a very deep rabbit hole.

And those who chose to not fly that same overpowered stuff had success. Just because people chose not to fly a particular build does not mean that other builds aren't viable.

Does balance mean every ship is playable, or does balance mean multiple strategies/builds are available at all levels even if people choose to mostly fly one of them? I will proudly die on the hill of the second, while many others choose the first.

As to your second point, business concerns will ofter far outweigh gameplay issues, and until people start to speak with their wallets, that is unlikely to change.

40 minutes ago, Jdling said:

And those who chose to not fly that same overpowered stuff had success. Just because people chose not to fly a particular build does not mean that other builds aren't viable.

Does balance mean every ship is playable, or does balance mean multiple strategies/builds are available at all levels even if people choose to mostly fly one of them? I will proudly die on the hill of the second, while many others choose the first.

As to your second point, business concerns will ofter far outweigh gameplay issues, and until people start to speak with their wallets, that is unlikely to change.

I get it. you think that as long as there are at least 4 viable archetypes, that it is OK to have 95% of the pilots be utter garbage, and that constitutes good game balance. Since "good game balance" is a completely made-up and undefined term, you are of course entitled to your opinion. However a large number of others do not share your opinion and are leaving the game or at the very least getting frustrated. Your definition of what "good game balance" is, and dying on that hill will be a Pyrrhic victory if everyone else leaves.