Probably doesn't need to be said, but just because all the factions are at 33% with each other doesn't mean it would stay that way for very long, even if there were no new releases.

Because it's being averaged over time, changes will appear more gradual. The meta is already slow though, the even points are probably more of we're all bad than they were any high points for balance or anything.

43 minutes ago, Brunas said:

Probably doesn't need to be said, but just because all the factions are at 33% with each other doesn't mean it would stay that way for very long, even if there were no new releases.

Because it's being averaged over time, changes will appear more gradual. The meta is already slow though, the even points are probably more of we're all bad than they were any high points for balance or anything.

Alright Eeyore. It’s not all always doom and gloom.

2 hours ago, Tlfj200 said:

This is fantastic!

Can we create a metric to determine the magnitude of gap?

Is the simple largest-smallest good? (I suspect this is too naive)

I would just advocate for monitoring the size of the least represented faction, but that wouldn't tell us if the other two are evenly split, or if the next larged faction was also similarly small.

Here's a plot with both of those metrics. It's pretty jerky but for the current meta it's not great, and we have a lot of lists for the last couple of months so the recent trend will be genuine. I'll post swiss versions as well.

1 hour ago, GreenDragoon said:

This is really cool!

you can also see the harpoon/gunboat bump for imperials, for example.

Something similar for arcs would be nice. How many ships or lists with turrets were used over time?

Too many! I have done this, but need to make it readable by adding things like "labels" and "axes"

25 minutes ago, apoapsis said:

Too many! I have done this, but need to make it readable by adding things like "labels" and "axes"

All graphs become more interesting with "axes."

1 hour ago, Dreadai said:

Alright Eeyore. It’s not all always doom and gloom.

Haha, I just mean I'm not sure it's a good measure of a good/stable meta. If you have three correlated lines on a graph it's incredibly likely that they'll intersect, it's just not necessarily meaningful!

What we need is one a than thar dead cat bounce and some Batman ears.

!Gut Feeling Experience Based Garbage Biased Scrub Statistics Warning!

• Rebel/Scum: Assume 80% Include a Turret + Defense Combo Card Archetype ( 1% is Blair's Zombie Swarm, the other 19% is Wookies ).
• Imperial: Assume 20% Include RAC
• Faction balance is meaningful to me only in the sense that 2 of the 3 factions are basically representative of a specific type of gameplay.
• So you can just view Rebel/Scum vs Imperial and draw very clear conclusions about Area of Effect Damage + Defense mechanics.
• A turret is just a giant moving AOE. Bombs are just a 1 time use AOE. So Bombs and Turrets are the same thing but one requires more planning and feels different.
• Mechanically it makes perfect sense that AOE + Defense is generally better than Target Shooting + Defense.
• Rebels/Scum have more of those things. So they tend to get used more.
• The fact that Arc Shooting is mechanically worse might be a fundamental part of what makes small base arcs "feel" more rewarding.
• Though even a bunch of easy mode move last Boost Barrel Roll shooting "feels" inherently more interactive than a turret.
• Basically you just move the ship more times so your monkey brain activates 1 or 2 more times. This also gets boring eventually though.
• Its never as rewarding as Moving first being out of arc and shooting with an arc still, or laying and springing a trap, or blocking an ace monkey.
• The ultimate rush in X-Wing is beating the odds. And im not talking about muh dice.
• In summary Gameplay Balance matters to me more than faction balance.
• AOE is better because FFG basically can't get the stat line math perfect and has chosen to weight the power curve that direction.
• Balance between AOE and Forward Thinking Target Shooting just so happens to be the same thing as comparing Rebel/Scum to Imperial representation in the Top Cut.
• ARC ships that can take damage are bad. Thats probably a feature and makes them fun for some people.
• AOE ships that don't take damage are good. Thats definitely a feature and makes them fun for some people.

Live Free, Don't Join. Arc Knights United.

31 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

!Gut Feeling Experience Based Garbage Biased Scrub Statistics Warning!

• Rebel/Scum: Assume 80% Include a Turret + Defense Combo Card Archetype ( 1% is Blair's Zombie Swarm, the other 19% is Wookies ).
• Imperial: Assume 20% Include RAC
• Faction balance is meaningful to me only in the sense that 2 of the 3 factions are basically representative of a specific type of gameplay.
• So you can just view Rebel/Scum vs Imperial and draw very clear conclusions about Area of Effect Damage + Defense mechanics.
• A turret is just a giant moving AOE. Bombs are just a 1 time use AOE. So Bombs and Turrets are the same thing but one requires more planning and feels different.
• Mechanically it makes perfect sense that AOE + Defense is generally better than Target Shooting + Defense.
• Rebels/Scum have more of those things. So they tend to get used more.
• The fact that Arc Shooting is mechanically worse might be a fundamental part of what makes small base arcs "feel" more rewarding.
• Though even a bunch of easy mode move last Boost Barrel Roll shooting "feels" inherently more interactive than a turret.
• Basically you just move the ship more times so your monkey brain activates 1 or 2 more times. This also gets boring eventually though.
• Its never as rewarding as Moving first being out of arc and shooting with an arc still, or laying and springing a trap, or blocking an ace monkey.
• The ultimate rush in X-Wing is beating the odds. And im not talking about muh dice.
• In summary Gameplay Balance matters to me more than faction balance.
• AOE is better because FFG basically can't get the stat line math perfect and has chosen to weight the power curve that direction.
• Balance between AOE and Forward Thinking Target Shooting just so happens to be the same thing as comparing Rebel/Scum to Imperial representation in the Top Cut.
• ARC ships that can take damage are bad. Thats probably a feature and makes them fun for some people.
• AOE ships that don't take damage are good. Thats definitely a feature and makes them fun for some people.

Live Free, Don't Join. Arc Knights United.

That all sounds about right, but that RAC number seems really high. I think the actual total is closer to 5-10%.

1 hour ago, Brunas said:

That all sounds about right, but that RAC number seems really high. I think the actual total is closer to 5-10%.

Palp Aces is 25% so yea...RAC cant be 20%

I was thinking the comment about trying to determine what was un-fun may not have come to the right conclusion. You were on your way there, but I think you ended up at turret heavy meta was less fun.

I think turrets are a symptom. Getting a shot with a turret is easy. Getting a shot with an arc is harder. Auto-evades are easy, dodging arcs and choosing the right moves so you have actions for dice mods is hard.

Successfully doing a hard thing is rewarding and fun. Successfully doing an easy thing isn’t very rewarding and is much less fun (it can still be kinda fun, but not really fun). Risks give a rush, and risks are a bad choice competitively. When all choices have a bit of risk, the competitive choices have risk. When the option to eliminate risk and make things easy is there, it is the correct choice competitively and

blah blah blah you are all smart and get it and I don’t need to keep going.

Live free, don’t join.

Get home from work, turn on twitch to day one of Canadian Nationals.. Greeted with a terrible play by a Ghost/Fenn driver who wins anyway... Ef. Em. El.

18 minutes ago, AEIllingworth said:

Risks give a rush, and risks are a bad choice competitively. When all choices have a bit of risk, the competitive choices have risk. When the option to eliminate risk and make things easy is there, it is the correct choice competitively and blah blah blah you are all smart and get it and I don’t need to keep going.

IMO, this is very insightful, and worth quoting so people take a closer look.

Every time risk is heavily mitigated or eliminated by a list-building choice, with no downside, the game gets less fun. This is not directly the fault of the highly competitive segment of players, because the ability to do it relies on the developers. But the developers listen, and the highly competitive segment does have their ear, so think about that every time an upgrade is dismissed out of hand because it has "roll a die" in its text.

19 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

IMO, this is very insightful, and worth quoting so people take a closer look.

Every time risk is heavily mitigated or eliminated by a list-building choice, with no downside, the game gets less fun. This is not directly the fault of the highly competitive segment of players, because the ability to do it relies on the developers. But the developers listen, and the highly competitive segment does have their ear, so think about that every time an upgrade is dismissed out of hand because it has "roll a die" in its text.

The problem is the cat is out of the bag. We have enough “consistency cards” already. People will just keep playing them until more come out, and the inconsistant things have to power creep really hard to be considered.

If im feeling philosophical, predator means your maneuver matters a little less because you can barrel roll instead of target locking sometimes.

5 minutes ago, AEIllingworth said:

The problem is the cat is out of the bag. We have enough “consistency cards” already. People will just keep playing them until more come out, and the inconsistant things have to power creep really hard to be considered.

... X-Wing 2.0! (Although, in all seriousness, I'm not sure the current development team even realizes this, so as to be able to design for it in a new edition. It really is a non-intuitive truism. If you do some searching on the boards, going back years, you can find me arguing that "X-Wing needs a significant percentage of luck," but not very many people really understand that.)

Quote

If im feeling philosophical, predator means your maneuver matters a little less because you can barrel roll instead of target locking sometimes.

Passive mods, in general, are bad for the game. We're seeing the near-ultimate expression with Fenn-Ghost, but it's been leading to this for a good long time.

A great implementation of a "consistency card" was Accuracy Corrector. It gave consistency, but cost a notable amount of points and it was a middle of the road consistency, not a maximum effect. All the consistency combos now offer consistency at the top end of possible effects.

1 minute ago, Biophysical said:

A great implementation of a "consistency card" was Accuracy Corrector. It gave consistency, but cost a notable amount of points and it was a middle of the road consistency, not a maximum effect. All the consistency combos now offer consistency at the top end of possible effects.

That's exactly the card I was thinking of as an example of how to do risk-mitigation right. In addition to the factors you mention, it also makes you use your Systems slot. You pay for that consistency.

2 hours ago, LagJanson said:

Get home from work, turn on twitch to day one of Canadian Nationals.. Greeted with a terrible play by a Ghost/Fenn driver who wins anyway... Ef. Em. El.

Tim's a good player (and a super nice guy), though I'm not sure he had much Ghost Fenn practice. We're down to one monthly tournament in Ottawa so tough practice is lacking short of casual nights.

And, to be fair, the other list was Nymranda and the decisions were not super either.

59 minutes ago, drjkel said:

Tim's a good player (and a super nice guy), though I'm not sure he had much Ghost Fenn practice. We're down to one monthly tournament in Ottawa so tough practice is lacking short of casual nights.

And, to be fair, the other list was Nymranda and the decisions were not super either.

I was referring more to the Ghost/Fenn the game before that but... Uhg. Welcome to Toronto, the most toxic meta in Xwing. (Exaggeration: I can't possibly know that...)

I know of more than 1 local that just picked Ghost Fenn for the National because it was the easiest way to run a competitive list. The Ottawa meta has always been weird and since I'm the only really active TO left and I prefer wacky rules tournaments, people don't get many reps in with meta lists. I mean, I still get **** for running Paratanni at our regional in early 2017, that's how anti-meta the whole region is.

We were supposed to go, but had to cancel because the finances of bringing a family of five for multiple days couldn't be worked out. My eldest would have run triple crackshot Glaives, because he loves "flying ships" and I have no clue what I would have brought, but it probably would have been something I've never flown before, cause I like the stress of figuring it out live. Well, that or defenders, we don't have 6 for nothing

13 minutes ago, drjkel said:

I know of more than 1 local that just picked Ghost Fenn for the National because it was the easiest way to run a competitive list. The Ottawa meta has always been weird and since I'm the only really active TO left and I prefer wacky rules tournaments, people don't get many reps in with meta lists. I mean, I still get **** for running Paratanni at our regional in early 2017, that's how anti-meta the whole region is.

We were supposed to go, but had to cancel because the finances of bringing a family of five for multiple days couldn't be worked out. My eldest would have run triple crackshot Glaives, because he loves "flying ships" and I have no clue what I would have brought, but it probably would have been something I've never flown before, cause I like the stress of figuring it out live. Well, that or defenders, we don't have 6 for nothing

Yeah. I mean, I don't really blame folks bringing what's good. It's certainly not a shot at your local guy or anybody else for taking the list.

Forgive me. I know you and your son wanted to go so me making it sound like a chore is really unfair.

8 hours ago, LagJanson said:

Get home from work, turn on twitch to day one of Canadian Nationals.. Greeted with a terrible play by a Ghost/Fenn driver who wins anyway... Ef. Em. El.

Good thing you didn't get home earlier. I think there were three on stream the last three games (though only one won).

7 hours ago, AlexW said:

Good thing you didn't get home earlier. I think there were three on stream the last three games (though only one won).

Looked like two. Thweek only pushed a non-double damage crit through due to an evade token, leaving the Ghost at one hull. Could be mistaken, but that's what I saw.

Anyway... I'm up, I've turned off the salt, and rolling in thirty minutes.

Ha! I asked Tim about the list (so did many locals, making fun of him) and it turns out he hasn't played since the end of January. So, that was Ghost Fenn learned while at the National and still going 4-2

The thing with Ghost Fenn is that it's a list which punishes opponent's mistakes much harder than anything else in the field. I think it's more about how much experience against ghost fenn the opponent has rather than how much experience the player with ghost fenn got that matters.

Ghost Fenn is a easy list to get going and with just average luck with pairings going to the cut, but any experienced player not bringing a list pulled out of his *** can and should be able to outplay.

It's also an hardcountered list in any evolved meta (and by evolved meta, I mean any meta that had a couple of big tournaments happening close from each other), which tends to raise the pairings luck requirements

LIVE FREE!!!! DON'T JOIN!!!!! ARCS ON TOP!!!!!!