44 minutes ago, Stoneface said:

The game is fine. It's all the "buff this, nerf that, this is NPE, doomsayers" that make reading some of these threads so depressing that I've put the Suicide Hotline on speed dial.

Just grow Dat IGNORE List... these hate-thingers WILL NOT mess up my time here.

17 minutes ago, ViscerothSWG said:

Seriously, imagine the world of x-wing balancing on the back of a space turtle.

Er, I, um, my brain hurtses. . .

16 minutes ago, Joe Boss Red Seven said:

LOVE STAR WARS AND KEEP YOUR VERSION OF IT SAFE AND STRONG AND THE FORCE WILL REMAIN WITH YOU... ALWAYS!

. . .but this I can get behind. STAR WARS for the win!!

4 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

I totally agree, it's definitely time for the podcasters to quit.

edit: @Darth Meanie , take a telegram. "To: Scum & Villany Podcast. Congrats stop. Have found only podcast in world less interesting than yours stop. Name: Carolina Crates. stop. Signed, FTS Gecko stop". Oh, and put a P.S.: "Please, please, please... stop."

I kid of course. Never listened to any of them.

Yeah thanks to F-wing and R-wing the X-wing community has became hostile, to the point where the next thing that wins tournaments is now in the cross-hairs of hate and cries for nerfs. To add salt to the shotgun wound the podcasts have jumped on that bandwagon in its discussion and delivery adding more to the hostility of the X-wing community. The one that is the least offender these past weeks was Kessel Run as they did mention X-wing is still fun, and R-wing and F-wing only amplifies the Negative Play Experience. Still it was only a few excerpts.

Honestly I think all this is salt is unwarranted and really an exaggeration. I heard it all before, TIE Phantoms and Han Solo. I do get the mistakes made with Jumpmasters but the way people make it sound like X-wing has reached Star Trek Attack Wing level of imbalance. Ask anyone which has better balance X-wing w/jumpmasters or Attack wing w/borg and people will tell you X-wing even with the Jumpmasters.

I am greatly disappointed in the senior members of the community, the TOs, the podcasters, the volunteer playtesters. These are the members of the community that should be curbing all the NPE bleeding from forums and reddit but instead they have contributed more to it. I get it that it isn't an obligation for them but in taking those positions they do assume some responsibility or leadership within the community, but as of now they are failing that responsibility.

2 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

In my opinion, this is a really bad idea. I've been in gaming communities long enough to know that you're likely undertaking a world of thankless work and inviting lots of headaches upon yourselves. You can't please everyone, and it's very unlikely you'll please even most people, since everyone has their own visions and ideals about this game. But lacking any official authority to speak for the community at large beyond volunteerism initiative, folks will be even less accepting and more critical of your decisions. For instance: from your community design team, how many Regional, National, Continental, and World Championships do you collectively have? It's one thing if Heaver and other well-documented performers sat down to do a remake of the game, because they would have a claim to some level of demonstrable expertise and understanding of the competitive game. But it's another thing if a team of 'theory-crafters' without a demonstrated 1.0 pedigree of performance does it.

People will still complain about whatever balancing decisions you've made or whatever metas you shape, the difference is that your team lacks any official status so people will be more inclined to critique, challenge, criticize, and crap all over your decisions. For instance, the Player Committees that attempted to keep the Star Wars CCG or the Star Wars CMG alive after both properties ceased official production. A loyal few stuck with those games, but in my experience there were still lots of criticisms of the decisions made by those self-declared leaders of the community. Bloodbowl's NAF probably has had the most success, and the NAF Board is a group of elected individuals from the organization, and even they do not fidget much at all with the core mechanics of the game (moreso with tournament structure, ranking metrics, etc.) and even they take a surprising amount of flak and resistance from the community.

Finally, any fan-made alternative is going to lack the most important thing: official support. It's hard enough to get folks to come out for events nowadays even with official FFG Swag to support it. Without official swag support, it's going to be much harder to get people out to try or invest in the format, even if the gameplay is generally more enjoyable. Fun is great, but you typically need FUN and SWAG to get people out to events in this oversaturated gaming market. The more "unofficial" support you do for the format and its events, the more you risk getting a C&D request at some point down the road for all your hardwork, as the BB community is all too familiar with (though, granted FFG is not GW, but still).

Even if your community model catches on to some significant degree, you'll have split an already waning playerbase. You'll have those folks who want to do the Official Format, and those who want to do the Community Format, and all you've really accomplished is potentially halving the playerbase at a time when many regions and local communities are seeing decreasing event attendance.

I think anything like this only has a remote chance of being successful if it's democratized: that is, you need some sort of "organization" that interested players can join (manged through an organization website, eg The XWing Community Iniatitive or something), and the members of that organization can then elect Design Committee members from their ranks through elections. This at least gives some airs of official authority, and the most successful Community-Run gaming efforts tend to follow this approach, in my experience. It could also then poll members to identify what the overall opinion is on various game elements, themes, mechanics, and the like. Then it can always be said that "these design decisions were made based on community preferences, and not on the whims of a few individuals whose subjective preferences won't necessarily match that of the greater community's.

This is all true.

However major juggler thinks he is smarter then everyone and can easily balance the game. He is dead wrong, for the simple reason that everyone has a different idea on what is balanced or overpowered or weak. All they will deliver is major juggler's version of balanced, not a more balanced game regardless of what math he tosses at it (the math is all based on values he decided based on his view of balanced)

There will be people who take it up (there are quite a few here at least who think he is the god of game design). But it will not be more then a blip on the radar.

To the main topic of the thread. These forums are utter garbage. Stop reading the forums and the game will all the sudden be much more balanced and exciting.

2 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Er, I, um, my brain hurtses. . .

* FROM MY POINT OF VIEW WE ARE THE TURTLES.

LOVE STAR WARS AND KEEP YOUR VERSION OF IT SAFE AND STRONG AND THE FORCE WILL REMAIN WITH YOU... ALWAYS!

. . .but this I can get behind. STAR WARS for the win!!

Right on Star Brah!

4 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

Yeah thanks to F-wing and R-wing the X-wing community has became hostile, to the point where the next thing that wins tournaments is now in the cross-hairs of hate and cries for nerfs. To add salt to the shotgun wound the podcasts have jumped on that bandwagon in its discussion and delivery adding more to the hostility of the X-wing community. The one that is the least offender these past weeks was Kessel Run as they did mention X-wing is still fun, and R-wing and F-wing only amplifies the Negative Play Experience. Still it was only a few excerpts.

Honestly I think all this is salt is unwarranted and really an exaggeration. I heard it all before, TIE Phantoms and Han Solo. I do get the mistakes made with Jumpmasters but the way people make it sound like X-wing has reached Star Trek Attack Wing level of imbalance. Ask anyone which has better balance X-wing w/jumpmasters or Attack wing w/borg and people will tell you X-wing even with the Jumpmasters.

I am greatly disappointed in the senior members of the community, the TOs, the podcasters, the volunteer playtesters. These are the members of the community that should be curbing all the NPE bleeding from forums and reddit but instead they have contributed more to it. I get it that it isn't an obligation for them but in taking those positions they do assume some responsibility or leadership within the community, but as of now they are failing that responsibility.

Well spoken, I can't like this enough.

2 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

In my opinion, this is a really bad idea. I've been in gaming communities long enough to know that you're likely undertaking a world of thankless work and inviting lots of headaches upon yourselves. You can't please everyone, and it's very unlikely you'll please even most people, since everyone has their own visions and ideals about this game. But lacking any official authority to speak for the community at large beyond volunteerism initiative, folks will be even less accepting and more critical of your decisions. For instance: from your community design team, how many Regional, National, Continental, and World Championships do you collectively have? It's one thing if Heaver and other well-documented performers sat down to do a remake of the game, because they would have a claim to some level of demonstrable expertise and understanding of the competitive game. But it's another thing if a team of 'theory-crafters' without a demonstrated 1.0 pedigree of performance does it.

People will still complain about whatever balancing decisions you've made or whatever metas you shape, the difference is that your team lacks any official status so people will be more inclined to critique, challenge, criticize, and crap all over your decisions. For instance, the Player Committees that attempted to keep the Star Wars CCG or the Star Wars CMG alive after both properties ceased official production. A loyal few stuck with those games, but in my experience there were still lots of criticisms of the decisions made by those self-declared leaders of the community. Bloodbowl's NAF probably has had the most success, and the NAF Board is a group of elected individuals from the organization, and even they do not fidget much at all with the core mechanics of the game (moreso with tournament structure, ranking metrics, etc.) and even they take a surprising amount of flak and resistance from the community.

Finally, any fan-made alternative is going to lack the most important thing: official support. It's hard enough to get folks to come out for events nowadays even with official FFG Swag to support it. Without official swag support, it's going to be much harder to get people out to try or invest in the format, even if the gameplay is generally more enjoyable. Fun is great, but you typically need FUN and SWAG to get people out to events in this oversaturated gaming market. The more "unofficial" support you do for the format and its events, the more you risk getting a C&D request at some point down the road for all your hardwork, as the BB community is all too familiar with (though, granted FFG is not GW, but still).

Even if your community model catches on to some significant degree, you'll have split an already waning playerbase. You'll have those folks who want to do the Official Format, and those who want to do the Community Format, and all you've really accomplished is potentially halving the playerbase at a time when many regions and local communities are seeing decreasing event attendance.

I think anything like this only has a remote chance of being successful if it's democratized: that is, you need some sort of "organization" that interested players can join (manged through an organization website, eg The XWing Community Iniatitive or something), and the members of that organization can then elect Design Committee members from their ranks through elections. This at least gives some airs of official authority, and the most successful Community-Run gaming efforts tend to follow this approach, in my experience. It could also then poll members to identify what the overall opinion is on various game elements, themes, mechanics, and the like. Then it can always be said that "these design decisions were made based on community preferences, and not on the whims of a few individuals whose subjective preferences won't necessarily match that of the greater community's.

Thanks for your feedback, these are all valid concerns.

It's already been a thankless job working out the fundamental underlying mathematical game theory that underpins X-wing, and then writing >10k lines of Matlab code to implement an evaluation. And plenty of people already crap all over it. This includes FFG playtesters who have taken offense at my work, probably most notoriously when I declared the original TIE Defender dead on arrival without even seeing the maneuver dial. Then later when I said that TLT was quantifiable powercreep and would push generics out of the meta.

Thankfully I don't do any of this because I'm looking for public support, otherwise I would have given up a long time ago. I do it out of intellectual curiosity. Even if nobody else uses Community Edition, I still get to use it on my own kitchen table.

I also don't care if it gets official support, although I do expect that FFG will eventually steal (*ahem*, "build off of") most my balance changes either directly or indirectly, especially if they ever reboot to a real 2.0.

Democratized vs Benevolent Dictator approach is a very real issue. Both have their drawbacks. The democracy approach risks seriously screwing up game balance again, because most people that play this game would make absolutely terrible designers. A democracy also risks lacking a cohesive vision. The Benevolent Dictator approach risks screwing up game balance by missing something. Neither approach can satisfy everyone even when executed perfectly, because everyone has opinions about what they would like the game to be. This is also true of the stock game, anytime new preview content is posted by FFG, the forums inevitably explode with torches and pitchforks.

I agree that anyone who designs / rebalances the game has to have a certain level of competitive success playing the game. My X-wing competitive CV is OK, but I don't travel a lot for the game. It's a personal decision based on how much vacation time I feel like burning. For reference here's my CV:

To balance the game well requires a very particular set of tools and skillsets. Even most of the high level players in the game lack these, but they make for very good playtesters, and make excellent analytical playtesters (a slightly different approach) with some guidance. There will be high level players from around the world working on the closed alpha test, before it gets kicked out to a public beta.

The first beta version out of the gate will have to use the Benevolent Dictator approach. I have to re-establish an entirely new powercurve to deal with the game's consistent power creep. I don't know that anyone else has shown that they have the technical capability to do this. If they have I would certainly be interested!

5 minutes ago, Icelom said:

Well spoken, I can't like this enough.

Yah but ultimately you can lead a horse to water over and over again... but that doesn't mean they'll have the sense to drink it.

Quit from X Wing? NO. Running away from "The last Codex is the best Army" way of playing? Yes

We play Advanced Squad Leader. Wooden Ships & Iron Men. Over the Reich. Harpoon... Not all at once of course. Perhaps 3 years since our last High Tide Harpoon scenario. But we will maneuver again with F14s and A6s and P3 Orion.

I am not a future teller to know if we will play a lot X Wing. But if we mantain our game group (I hope yes) 100% sure we will maneuver crack plastic spaceships. Because we love this game and SW. Probably veeeery few J5K or Wookie ships on our tables... But XYAB? OF COURSE YES.

PS. I really really want to read Mathwing 3.0

2 minutes ago, Hexdot said:

Quit from X Wing? NO. Running away from "The last Codex is the best Army" way of playing? Yes

We play Advanced Squad Leader. Wooden Ships & Iron Men. Over the Reich. Harpoon... Not all at once of course. Perhaps 3 years since our last High Tide Harpoon scenario. But we will maneuver again with F14s and A6s and P3 Orion.

I am not a future teller to know if we will play a lot X Wing. But if we mantain our game group (I hope yes) 100% sure we will maneuver crack plastic spaceships. Because we love this game and SW. Probably veeeery few J5K or Wookie ships on our tables... But XYAB? OF COURSE YES.

Remember The Old Hammer type groups? That is kinda how I have been rolling with X-WING in my Game Parlor.

These faq-messes all come from tournament crap that I hate and will never support, at it's high level of THIS IS NOT A STAR WARS MINIATURES GAME devolution which has been getting worse over the last two years to this point of utter ridiculousness.

No thanks kids... I'll be over here PARTYING RAPTUROUS LIKE playing X-WING: EPIC CINEMATICS... and YES I've made a number of modifications myself (to replace ace-wing-junk)... YAH!!!

33 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

Yeah thanks to F-wing and R-wing

Sorry, I need these terms defined. . .

31 minutes ago, Icelom said:

These forums are utter garbage. Stop reading the forums

Says every forumite all the time.

"No, man, *sniff* I can quit when ever I want to *sniff, sniff*"

Just now, Darth Meanie said:

Sorry, I need these terms defined. . .

...

Forum-wing and Reddit-wing.

Agree Joe. I am Mr "Adapt and Improve". If we enjoy more the game changing some rules... Improved. Maaaany years ago during the pre internet era game designers usually said "once you play a game it is yours. Play as you want".

The years of Russian Front. Panzerblitz. Air Force... And RPGs of course.

We enjoy face down ordnance cards, new EPTs and Heroes, the TIE Hunter. No complications about "wording" and "Keep it simple, soldier". That way you can play X Wing during your golden years...

2 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Sorry, I need these terms defined. . .

Says every forumite all the time.

"No, man, *sniff* I can quit when ever I want to *sniff, sniff*"

I'm still here after all of these years because I LOVE STAR WARS, and because I have a good few STAR BROTHERS left here that I like and that I know like me.

Also I DO NOT HATE FFG. They do plenty right. The goodies in each of the three expansions we just got are all kinds of fun and add to every faction in the game. As long as the above hold I am cool. And when FFG messes up or missing something I'll just fix it up real easy, and not cry here with useless FIX-baby-Talk!

2 minutes ago, Hexdot said:

Agree Joe. I am Mr "Adapt and Improve". If we enjoy more the game changing some rules... Improved. Maaaany years ago during the pre internet era game designers usually said "once you play a game it is yours. Play as you want".

The years of Russian Front. Panzerblitz. Air Force... And RPGs of course.

We enjoy face down ordnance cards, new EPTs and Heroes, the TIE Hunter. No complications about "wording" and "Keep it simple, soldier". That way you can play X Wing during your golden years...

Well we grew up... and know cool stuff now.

You have probably seen how happy I am in my videos, but if you missed this it is a good example of how we (you and I) play I bet.

Notice the guys did not even use all of the rules, because they knew what they wanted to achieve in their awesome badass game!

DATS THE REAL DEAL!

44 minutes ago, Icelom said:

This is all true.

However major juggler thinks he is smarter then everyone and can easily balance the game. He is dead wrong, for the simple reason that everyone has a different idea on what is balanced or overpowered or weak. All they will deliver is major juggler's version of balanced, not a more balanced game regardless of what math he tosses at it (the math is all based on values he decided based on his view of balanced)

There will be people who take it up (there are quite a few here at least who think he is the god of game design). But it will not be more then a blip on the radar.

I definitely did not say it would be easy! FFG has had two full-time developers working on the game for what, 6 years now? If I can get a beta version out that is balanced reasonably well in 1 man-month, I would say that's pretty good. But it's certainly not "easy".

My definition of balanced is that any given pilot can fulfill a reasonably competitive role in the 100/6 format. This requires that none of the pilots are utter garbage, and that none of the pilots are blatantly overpowered. Using math in the design process is a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve this result. You seem to imply that math is useless though, so I'll just leave it at that.

Out of curiosity, how big would it have to be before it was more than a "blip" on the radar in your opinion? Say over a time period of every 3 months, there were many tournaments run using Community Edition, and total attendance was over "X" number per 3 months. This keeps happening consistently for several years. What's your number "X" when its no longer just a blip?

Oh my God! OH MY GOD!!!. I need that Shield generators...

4 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

And you fly them well. I'm hoping that idiotic Mindlink nerf doesn't happen, precisely because it screws over perfectly good and fun lists like yours.

But it's FFG, looking at the easiest thing to do that could be mistaken for a fix, so ... enjoy your Scyk now, RG. Enjoy the **** out of 'em.

Thank you sir. That's my plan, fly them till they're FAQed out of existence, starting this weekend. And, if one day Attani Mindlink is murdered by FAQ, I will follow the teachings of the great Jedi master Gunnery Sgt Thomas Highway - "Adapt, Improvise and Overcome".

"Help me Serissu...you're my only hope!"....now where did I put my Astromech??

14 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

I definitely did not say it would be easy! FFG has had two full-time developers working on the game for what, 6 years now? If I can get a beta version out that is balanced reasonably well in 1 man-month, I would say that's pretty good. But it's certainly not "easy".

My definition of balanced is that any given pilot can fulfill a reasonably competitive role in the 100/6 format. This requires that none of the pilots are utter garbage, and that none of the pilots are blatantly overpowered. Using math in the design process is a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve this result. You seem to imply that math is useless though, so I'll just leave it at that.

Out of curiosity, how big would it have to be before it was more than a "blip" on the radar in your opinion? Say over a time period of every 3 months, there were many tournaments run using Community Edition, and total attendance was over "X" number per 3 months. This keeps happening consistently for several years. What's your number "X" when its no longer just a blip?

If it took off I would play it, if you succeed in making a varient that is more fun and had a large following I would eat my words. But I don't think that's very likely.

Also what I think you fail to realize is balance is entirely lists dependant, I have built list with "unplayable" ships because their stat line served a purpose in the list. I have taken a ruthless freelance g1-a in lists but would have not taken that ship if it had one more agility even though it would be a way better ship simple because I needed a ship that was juicy to shoot at to take heat off my other ships with higher agility. I needed a ship that when my opponent weighed the odds decided to shoot at due to it's low agility but still posed a threat they could not ignore (3dice attack). This is playing into people's headspace, my bigger threats were harder to hit but we're the correct choice to shoot I gave them a safe choice to shoot that would not have been possible if the ship was better defensively. (List went undefeated in a kit tournament and easily won the tournament).

Basically in my opinion not every ship can or should be 100% balanced in a vacuum. Different stat lines have different values based on what you need in your list.

Furthermore some stats gave greater or less value based on the other stats on the ship or what it's need is within your lists. Give me 11pt Z-95 with 1 attack dice and I will take it in certain lists even though it's drastically overcossted compared to it's 12pt 2 attack brother. Sometimes high pilot skill I am willing to pay for sometimes not. In a list with 2-3 other ps5 ships a ps9 ship looses tons of it's value to me compared to if my whole list is ps9. Lastly value of ship abilities and ps drastically shift dependent on the meta. Do you balance Thur phennir based on a PS 5,7, or 9 meta? In a ps9 meta he is weak, in a PS 5 meta he is great. You could simply remove or change all abilities like that but then you are killing a ton off fun in list building and meta guessing.

If somehow (it is impossible) you get everything perfectly cost balanced you will end up with a stale game with no creative space. If every single ship at 25pts will bring the same value no matter what then who cares what you fly. So net lists will be meaningless but so will all new creative lists. You are simply left with checkers.

Long story short this game is currently great fun if you ignore net lists (still considering them when list building but make your own lists). And it feels remarkably balanced. Compared to what I used to play this game has amazingly good balance. Is it perfect? No but it can't ever be and perfection would actually be bad.

Ffg has done some stuff I don't understand or think I'd wrong but if they only did what I thought was good there would be people with different playstyles and skill levels very upset with the state of balance.

1 hour ago, Joe Boss Red Seven said:

Just grow Dat IGNORE List... these hate-thingers WILL NOT mess up my time here.

They've taken a fun game, broken it down mathwise, and instead of just playing the game, turned it into an open discourse in game theory. IMHO, the worst thing FFG did to this game was to hold competitions.

8 minutes ago, Stoneface said:

They've taken a fun game, broken it down mathwise, and instead of just playing the game, turned it into an open discourse in game theory. IMHO, the worst thing FFG did to this game was to hold competitions.

I agree but it's not the competitions, it's just the type of people regardless of competitive play they would be doing the same thing.

10 minutes ago, Icelom said:

If somehow (it is impossible) you get everything perfectly cost balanced you will end up with a stale game with no creative space. If every single ship at 25pts will bring the same value no matter what then who cares what you fly. So net lists will be meaningless but so will all new creative lists. You are simply left with checkers.

I don't understand this attitude.

We're all bringing 100 points to the table. The goal is that every pilot can somehow be used within these 100 points and they will all have a good chance to beat each other. Of course there will always be outright bad combinations, but that's besides the point. Today, many pilots simply can't be used in a competitive environment. Claiming that more choices will remove creative space is ... bold, to say the least.

2 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

I don't understand this attitude.

We're all bringing 100 points to the table. The goal is that every pilot can somehow be used within these 100 points and they will all have a good chance to beat each other. Of course there will always be outright bad combinations, but that's besides the point. Today, many pilots simply can't be used in a competitive environment. Claiming that more choices will remove creative space is ... bold, to say the least.

What I am saying is that if all things are equal in all situations the choice won't matter.

1 minute ago, Icelom said:

What I am saying is that if all things are equal in all situations the choice won't matter.

But that's not true. And you also ignore that the game still needs to be played.
It's like playing chess, but you get a set amount of points to place different pieces. Three pawns should be a knight or bishop. But maybe you prefer bishops, and someone else prefers knights?

Are you opposed to the idea that a list built with Arvel Crynd could be as good as one including Fenn?

5 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

But that's not true. And you also ignore that the game still needs to be played.
It's like playing chess, but you get a set amount of points to place different pieces. Three pawns should be a knight or bishop. But maybe you prefer bishops, and someone else prefers knights?

Are you opposed to the idea that a list built with Arvel Crynd could be as good as one including Fenn?

The fact you think chess would be balanced without a set amount if each piece as long as you gave the correct value is pretty telling. You would just end up with the "optimal" setup and most likely that would be 100% pawns as there value goes up in a curve based on total pawn count.

Arvel is probably very good in the right situation. And I think a list with him can be as good currently as a list with fen depending on the meta of course. One on one if flown well arvel could crush fen.