1 hour ago, willow560 said:

I think there is some social pressure by referring to lists as "cancer" to making it a larger hurdle for someone to choke down their doubts and slap that said "cancerous" list on the table. At the same time, even if we tried to socially stigmatized certain lists, that won't make them not good. Winning with a worse list is hard, so most of the tournaments will still be the most powerful components. And seriously, there is some majority powerful lists right now, even the lower tiers. The problem I think, is that the scale just keeps getting wider, which means the bottom tier lists are just so much worse than even the lower tier "good" lists.

I love flying Corran Horn. I can pretty much only fly him now because of Fenn and Lowhrrick. And Corran is stupid good. He will definitely die, but there are games he just simply can't be killed. Just like Sontir and Kylo, the game basically can't be won at a certain point. And even though Corran isn't at the top of the heap, he can still crush your enemies and see them driven before you. I have hear tons of people saying that Kylo and two boats is "wholesome". Kyle is not wholesome. He is only wholesome in comparison to a ship the gets an evade, two passive mods on attack, passive mods on defense, big ship boost at ps11, and can chose between 4 dice primary (the best natural attack dice in the game) or TLT (the best turret slot in the game) and can attack twice.

I really love this game and the people in it re great. But I am getting pretty concerned that the vitriol is increasing. The polarization of these issues very easily can create toxic environments. If that happens, I will simply stop playing as much. I am already getting there. Beware the silent flameout of the community. Right now I see rage, but silence means the game is dying. At the end of the day, the only real hope is for FFG to invest in fixing these issues that are driving the community apart. Don't be that guy and rage against people for what they play or for fortressing or for doing what is permitted in the rules. Being a **** and ostracizing legal things probably won't convince people, but it just might increase animosity.

In summary: don't be a **** because I want to keep playing X-wing.

On the topic of Kylo and Corran, I recently (about a month or two ago) played a game with Kylo on one side and Corran on the other. In the end, they were both at full hp squaring up, and I, the Kylo player, had to choose to let corran shoot me so I could have a chance at killing him. Interesting decisions all around.

On the topic of vitriol, I think this has to do with the power of the internet. I know someone at my FLGS browses the forum, and in some ways it keeps me in check, because I know they will avoid me if I act like a raging jerk on the internet. Joke post though, that's fine. However, I do think that silent flamout is very real right now - almost everyone I know who played X-wing when I started has moved to entirely campaign nights (Which are great, don't get me wrong, but don't contribute as much revenue as competitive players) or quit entirely. X-wing is now less popular than armada in my region.

31 minutes ago, pheaver said:

One thing about playing tier 1 lists: they are fun for me when I'm playing against other tier 1 lists, but much less fun against lower tier lists.

This is why a local player and I taught new player Ghost+fenn - so we can play a game that is interesting for us, and give them a chance (we both only really bring tier 2-1.5 lists, and this guy was building super bad jank). Eventually, I want to move him to playing other stuff, but until he get the hang of dice mods, and positioning, and what he can/can't joust it might just be better to make it an uphill battle for our list.

So I played a match against a guy flying 5 Autothruster Interceptors, he set up a fortress and waited for me to attack before deciding on an angle of attack, he knew I would have to act as a fifteen dice final salvo isn't beatable by my list.

I was impressed by the V pattern he ended up using to initiate an engagement and generally found the game to be a fun one overall.

I believe that this harkens back to what Chris said on an earlier podcast in reference to how each persons idea of what X-Wing is can be traced back to how they first came to find the game. He mentions a Dash player finding autothrusters distasteful and I have anecdotes of people finding turrets to be NPEs or stating much the same about double reposition arc dodgers. This seems to be a valid idea for most of us players.

i was introduced into the game at a point where fortressing is very much a thing, I saw it as a reasonable strategy implemented by certain lists who knew that the onus was on me to come and face them. I accepted things like Kylo, Palp aces, Dengar and FSR as the standard for what I would come up against, to me, they were all aspects of this game that I took as just being the "nature of the beast" so to speak.

The outcry at fortressing stems from a widely accepted view that fortressing is a "d!ck move" and that the majority of the community don't consider it to be playing the game due to the "feels bad" aspect of playing a one sided puzzle when players have signed up for a two player dogfight only to be presented with an assymetric rationing of pressure.

I don't believe that fortressing can be, or should be, fixed. To me it is no better or worse than regen turrets or Ghost/Fenn in terms of being an NPE, I enjoy playing X-Wing against it even if it is a noticeably different game, just like dodging Scum Alpha is a different game to Palp Aces. It's a part of X-Wing for better or for worse, and I'm willing to accept it.

5 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Of course not. Nor do I. But you (and I) get to shame them if "what they find fun" is actually bull@$%. And you (and I) do that.

That's all we're talking about. We're talking about social pressure. Again, are you seriously claiming you don't exert social pressure? Are you seriously even claiming you're not trying to do so?

Bull@#$% false dichotomy, and shame on you. You know better. There is a difference between "sallying out like an ignoramus to tackle the bomb-wall" and "not fortressing." You know those aren't the only two options, so quit BSing me (and yourself).

Why do you feel as if you have a good gauge / monopoly on what the X-wing "moral compass" is? What expertise do you have in dictating what other people think or feel?

And Paul illustraites perfectly why I don't believe a social engineering project run by pod casters would work. Besides, where does one draw the line? What's the 'cancer' and what's a perfectly fine but powerful list?

The way out of this is FFG releasing new things to shake up the meta, or another errata.

Keep up the good work gents, as a fellow data nerd i would love to hear your analysis process on a future Kraytent podcast. are you selective in the events you draw from? what makes an event worthy to include in your dataset? what is useful information to focus on, what is not useful information?

here is an old example of what i look for before an event: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PGhFmErNRHosEqTLzOE2xU01C1KkKG8UxbzgGJqWZZg/edit#gid=917498169

2 hours ago, LagJanson said:

And Paul illustraites perfectly why I don't believe a social engineering project run by pod casters would work. Besides, where does one draw the line? What's the 'cancer' and what's a perfectly fine but powerful list?

It depends on your definition of work. At least my point was that they're already, unintentionally it would seem based on responses, exerting pressure in that direction. What would the X-wing world look like without that collective pressure from them and other podcasts? What percentage of Ghost/Fenns or Nymrandas would we see vs what we see now? How many more people would feel comfortable plunking down those lists at their 15 person store champs vs now? To what degree has fortressing and intentional final salvos been normalized by them repeatedly telling people that they're not only the correct move but that they shouldn't even feel in any way bad about it? Obviously Paul's behavior hasn't and won't be changed one way or another, but how many other people further out on the margins have had their behavior altered? All honest questions to which I don't have the answers, I'm just pretty sure that none of the answers are zero effect.

As for the line... I'm not sure there is one as it's not a binary proposition. Basically the more and more passionately people, especially influential people, complain about a list the more negative pressure is being exerted. Those people can have a variety of viewpoints which will at times overlap. That pressure will effect individuals differently and in a non-linear manner, in cases even having the opposite effect as it increases past a certain threshold. So no line, more like a series of overlapping density fields. But just because it's difficult to quantify doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

This is all a tragedy of the commons problems in the form of a series of multiplayer prisoners dilemmas. Running certain lists is beneficial to the individual (they win tournaments) but harmful to the group (X-wing is less fun). There are sufficient untrustworthy (or even naive) actors that in almost all cases at least someone is going to defect. The question is, in this hypothetical, is the group better off if less people defect? And if so then does social pressure cause less, even if it's not zero, people to defect?

I see what you're saying there, @Makaze and I agree... it depends on how you define success here. Indeed, many podcasts are indeed highlighting certain lists as being rather toxic to play. I would wager pretty confidently that some individuals didn't choose a toxic list based on what they've heard online, even if they wouldn't admit to it. There's a reason why propaganda and political redirect is so common, after all.

Is it considered a success if one person doesn't bring a toxic list? Two? Fifteen?

That said, it is an almost certainty that podcasts defining what is toxic will not make the lists go away. There are too many people who would see through, not care or do it for spite to pretend this is a solution. It just takes a couple of these lists to win to further encourage using them or discourage those that will not and hate running into it.

So clearly we are not arguing the end result.

On the positive side, hey, I entered my first list into List Juggler. Data math-type people rejoice! Ok, nobody'll care about it because it's not a meta powerful list, and I made enough mistakes to not do especially well...

Let's use a Destiny example here, because, well, I'm not sure why actually.

Back in Spirit of Rebellion meta, Poe/Maz was the meta bogeyman. Horrendous societal pressure ensued. Eventually, people just stopped using it.

What's weird though, is that in tournaments that didn't have Poe/Maz present, Rey and Darth Vader became overpowered nightmares and players of those decks became the unbearable trolls. Just because you get rid of one meta bogeyman doesn't mean another one won't immediately rise up to replace it.

And plenty of people just played Poe/Maz at the big tournaments, and enjoyed how many easy wins they had because nobody else was playing it.

People got tired of losing to random people who didn't care about their shame-inducing reindeer games, and also realized that getting curbstomped wasn't fun versus Poe, Rey, Vader, or anything, and so everyone bit the bullet and ran Poe/Maz. And FFG had to nerf/errata the deck into oblivion.

What I'm saying here is that the only proper way to deal with horrific cancerous garbage isn't to bury your head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist by trying to shame people out of it, it's by openly embracing the cancer, rubbing it in FFG's face, and forcing them to change the rules if they don't like it. Because rules is rules and in a game, I should be allowed to do whatever I want as long as it's within the rules - part of the fun of games is trying to find fun loopholes and janky combos, right?

I really, unironically, wish the SoCal Regional guys had decided to just not play the final table and final salvo the game just to show FFG how broken their game has become.

13 hours ago, pheaver said:

One thing about playing tier 1 lists: they are fun for me when I'm playing against other tier 1 lists, but much less fun against lower tier lists.

When I taught Mrs. Rick how to play X-Wing, with a history in IA right-off-the-bat she insisted on flying a list that killed things fast. So I gave her Dash/Missile Miranda. That was before GUNBOATs, so now she flies 3BQD. She refuses to fly anything with TLT, because she thinks it doesn't hit hard enough. She also thinks QD doesn't hit hard enough and is a support ship. When I give her a list she feels jipped if something on there doesn't roll four red dice. It's hilarious.

Anyways, as a result of this we very rarely fly "funsie squads" - and I have found it to be MUCH more fun when both players bring heavy hitters to the table.

5 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

What I'm saying here is that the only proper way to deal with horrific cancerous garbage isn't to bury your head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist by trying to shame people out of it, it's by openly embracing the cancer, rubbing it in FFG's face, and forcing them to change the rules if they don't like it.

I think implicit in this entire discussion is that almost everyone acknowledges that it would be great if FFG would step in and actually fix things. But I also think at this point we all kind of have to acknowledge that no matter what kind of poop smearing tantrum we throw they probably won't, at least not in a timely and sufficient manner. So is that actually the best strategy? Did Poe/Maz get nerfed because everyone started running it again or because they had decided to do it months prior and finally got around to releasing the FAQ? Was the intervening period better or worse in terms of variety and general play experience as a result of people shifting away from it due to social pressure in the intervening period?

Right now X-wing is laissez faire capitalism all hopped up on 2 liters of diet freedom jumping on the bed. Eventually it's going to jump high enough to whack its head on the ceiling fan, fall down, and bleed all over the floor. It would probably be best for everyone if Governing Body Regulator Mom came in and calmed things down but she's got 3 jobs and isn't really into this whole kid thing so isn't really paying attention.

23 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

Because rules is rules and in a game, I should be allowed to do whatever I want as long as it's within the rules - part of the fun of games is trying to find fun loopholes and janky combos, right?

Depends.

I'm coming from the viewpoint of a videogame developer, and no, this attitude will often find you banned from a game due to exploitation of the games mechanics.

Just because its "legal" and falls within the confines of the game framework you've been given to work with ("They designed the game that lets me do this!"), it does not mean that its ok to do some game breaking things.

4 minutes ago, kris40k said:

Depends.

I'm coming from the viewpoint of a videogame developer, and no, this attitude will often find you banned from a game due to exploitation of the games mechanics.

Just because its "legal" and falls within the confines of the game framework you've been given to work with ("They designed the game that lets me do this!"), it does not mean that its ok to do some game breaking things.

I guess this is just a difference of opinion.

I happen to really like breaking the game.

My greatest personal victory was when they had to errata the IG-2000 title to "scum only" because of the TIE Aggressor, and a bunch of trolls like me who were like "hey, the title says Aggressor only! Lol"

ANYWHOZLES

Anybody going to Adepticon?

8 minutes ago, Timathius said:

Anybody going to Adepticon?

Not I, but I wish luck to those going.

If anyone wants to get me any legion promos that are there (If there are any) I will send you some swag from the invitational.

Also, I'm sure it's all legion stuff, but there's some small chance there's new X-Wing stuff at adepticon?

13 minutes ago, Brunas said:

Also, I'm sure it's all legion stuff, but there's some small chance there's new X-Wing stuff at adepticon?

They ususally have the models on display from the new wave, we can investigate and confirm if the t65 wings move.

The FFG guy speaking at that conference for game store owners a few weeks ago confirmed that they do in fact open and close.

video in this thread:

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/271509-gama/

34 minutes ago, catachanninja said:

They ususally have the models on display from the new wave, we can investigate and confirm if the t65 wings move.

Was confirmed at GAMA. But there was no video of someone going FLAPPITY FLAPPITY FLAPPITY BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT

1 hour ago, Timathius said:

Was confirmed at GAMA. But there was no video of someone going FLAPPITY FLAPPITY FLAPPITY BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT

Sooo, not confirmed then ?

Fake news. Until it's confirmed by a Krayt, it doesn't exist.

I'll be at Adepticon. Kinda hoping to 0-2 drop so I can enjoy the rest of the con and watch games...

Tower Defense is to generous.

3 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

Tower Defense is to generous.

But look at how much fun they are having...

You know, looking at my dusty collection, I don't think we have enough Lt Colzet in the meta. That little troll needs to make appearance... I'm putting him on the table next.