22 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

I think you can probably go a level or two deeper than that, and when you get right down to it you'll notice that the only thing that isn't an NPE to some of these people complaining is winning.

"It's perfectly OK if I fly Miranda/Dash but GOD FORBID someone plays Dengar/Nym against me, what an NPE"

Few people complain when the list they're flying is doing well.

And no one else is using it.

8 hours ago, VanorDM said:

What I've found that really diminishes my enjoyment of the game is this message board. As it stands every single system or ability in the game is a NPE. Turrets? NPE. Arc dodgers? NPE. Large ships? NPE. Upgrades? NPE.

In fact if you were to remake the game based on only those things that aren't a NPE... You'd have part of wave 1, and 2 ships from S&V. I still enjoy playing the game but the toxicity in this forum has gotten to the point it reminds me of the WoW or SWTOR message boards.

Which is a shame because this used to be a great community, one in which we actually talked about what was good with the game.

F-wing is OP plz nerf. R-wing is NPE plz fix. Yeah that sums it about up.

I dont think the game is balanced at all. Power creep has hit really hard, and i have the feeling of playing paper/rock/scissors a lot of the time.

I actually dont mind people playing the same list if the games where different enough, i dont mind playing against the same deck a couple of rounds in a mtg tournament since games differ enough, as well as i dont mind playing agains the same deck in swDestiny as long as there is not a clear winner since minute 0 and thats what i feel in xwing.

More often than not games feel exactly the same, not only the ones i play but also the ones i see. As an example while watching worlds, props to the guy for his preparation, Dengar/Tel always made the exact same opening in all the games i saw streamed with basically the same result.

In another topic i actually find Majorjugglers opinion quite interesting since i feel he is trying to make analitical and logical decisions on the desing while it seems the real designers are doing it by their feelings.

A true NPE - not someone ******* about the thing he can't win against because he's a childish noob and refuses to blame himself for not learning or adapting - can be defined in one simple word:

Boring.

Being boring is the One True Crime of any game; transforming something that's meant to be fun into a grinding chore? Are you kidding me? It's one thing to do it in a solitaire style game or MMO where you grind with a goal in mind, but in a two-player or more game becoming boring is the exact opposite of what it's meant to be.

Take the old Tolarian Academy deck from MtG back in '98 that existed for less than a month before its key components were banned. Won on turn one almost without fail and turn two for sure, but that wasn't ALL that made it an NPE - what made it an NPE is that the other player sat there for ten to twenty minutes, looking at their hand, waiting for the Tolarian player to finish their turn, which never happened because he would just keep drawing... and playing... and untapping... and drawing... and playing... and untapping...

That's my problem with the Fairship Rebels list. It's not unbeatable, not by a long shot, but first and foremost it's BORING. You just keep rolling dice against it until either it cracks or you go to time. Deadeye Jumpmasters may have been lethal, but they weren't BORING to play against - win/lose would be decided in a single turn. Thug Life at least had the thrill of trying to donut their ships before they sanded you down, a race against time. Full-fledged Soontir at his height may have come close to boring, but there was always the chance of just blanking out.

Frankly, not being boring has been the saving grace of X-Wing. You don't have 10 minute downtimes while your opponent moves their squads or the constant lack of interaction that so many other wargames have; it's tense, and every decision counts. Lack of balance, failure to support the entire range of ships, allowing constant power creep... all strong signs that the game is on its way to becoming even more boring.

But I still love the core mechanic of the game. It's all the bad design tacked on top which is making me think more and more of Attack Wing.

On 8.8.2017 at 7:24 PM, Chibi-Nya said:

Never not had fun in X-Wing. But I mostly play with my friends, so never see all the dumb stuff. X-wing still fun game if you have people to play with that won't bring Metawing lists! However, some ships still suck even in Casual <.< RIP Punisher.

Ironically for me it is different. If someone brings weaksauce lists, I am not satisfied with the game. Though even more painful are people who ***** about their dice, usually the same kind who bring lists without dice mods. ;-)

Casual or not, I want to see interesting and strong lists, not necessary meta lists, a lot of non-meta lists can be super strong as well, just not against the type of lists currently strong. Take rebel regen for example at the times when triple jumps were omnipresent in the meta. Strong lists, not meta lists. (BTW, I hate them with a passion, they are my personal NPE). Meta or not, I like to see strong lists. Why? Because it is fun losing against them, while trying to figure out how to beat them. Losing against a bad list? Dressing. Finding out how to beat one of the OP lists? Awesome.

Still, the current state of X-Wing is in general not to my liking, because I started to play X-Wing to fly Soontir Fel. To fly Vader, to fly squishy imperial arc dodgers. That is what sucked me into the game, that is what I bought together with our first core set. That is my style in space sims, that is what I am enjoying about internet and miniature spaceships. Though in that regard Fair Ship Rebels might be actually a blessing. Looking forward to try out some arc dodgers again.

2 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

I think you can probably go a level or two deeper than that, and when you get right down to it you'll notice that the only thing that isn't an NPE to some of these people complaining is winning.

"It's perfectly OK if I fly Miranda/Dash but GOD FORBID someone plays Dengar/Nym against me, what an NPE"

Few people complain when the list they're flying is doing well.

And then they fill the forum with tears and passive-aggressiveness when you call them on it

2 hours ago, iamfanboy said:

A true NPE - can be defined in one simple word:

Boring.

Being boring is the One True Crime of any game; transforming something that's meant to be fun into a grinding chore? Are you kidding me? It's one thing to do it in a solitaire style game or MMO where you grind with a goal in mind, but in a two-player or more game becoming boring is the exact opposite of what it's meant to be.

I know this is not what you mean, but from my POV this is exactly what "git gud" boils down to for me.

I do not want to have to fly the same list 3 score times before I can do well with it. That is HUGELY BORING. If I wanted homework, I would not take it up as a hobby. I freely admit that this game has a pretty steep learning curve, but the "git gud" mentality (and reality) is a large negative about the game, IMHO.

38 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

I know this is not what you mean, but from my POV this is exactly what "git gud" boils down to for me.

I do not want to have to fly the same list 3 score times before I can do well with it. That is HUGELY BORING. If I wanted homework, I would not take it up as a hobby. I freely admit that this game has a pretty steep learning curve, but the "git gud" mentality (and reality) is a large negative about the game, IMHO.

I mean...

Yes. Saying "Git Gud" is an insult, spiking the person when they're actually feeling vulnerable and right in the spot WHERE they're vulnerable; it's the most unhelpful thing anyone could ever say. And while the learning curve is real, I also learned a lot from playing Heroes of the Aturi Cluster, one of my beginner buddies credits Kessel Kup for his newfound ability to actually place dials correctly - just PLAYING the game is enough to teach.

My main issue is that there is a massive power gap between the bottom and the top. If you fly four Interceptors and I fly Dengar and any other wingmate, you're ******. There are so few valid options in the game, and no easy way to assess the value of anything - is it any wonder that the meta is so follow-the-leader when discerning what's good and what's bad is so DIFFICULT?

This means that newbies can lose just because they flew terrible ships - what's to learn from that? In a better balanced game with more equitable points costs, they'd still lose, but they wouldn't lose to the horrific power curve, and that would be much better.

If some podcaster makes you wanna not play X-Wing its time to find a new podcast.

3 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

I do not want to have to fly the same list 3 score times before I can do well with it.

What do you want then? To be able to just pick up lists and do as well as people who have actually practiced theirs?

4 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

I know this is not what you mean, but from my POV this is exactly what "git gud" boils down to for me.

I do not want to have to fly the same list 3 score times before I can do well with it. That is HUGELY BORING. If I wanted homework, I would not take it up as a hobby. I freely admit that this game has a pretty steep learning curve, but the "git gud" mentality (and reality) is a large negative about the game, IMHO.

So basically you're saying you'd prefer X-Wing to be more a game of luck than skill?

8 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

So basically you're saying you'd prefer X-Wing to be more a game of luck than skill?

I don't mind if luck plays a large role. It creates unforeseen situations and gives weaker players a chance, both of which broaden the appeal of the game. I couldn't say what I want to be the biggest influence, but that's hard to say anyway, because you'd have to measure 'luck' and 'skill' on the same scale.

23 minutes ago, Verlaine said:

I don't mind if luck plays a large role. It creates unforeseen situations and gives weaker players a chance, both of which broaden the appeal of the game. I couldn't say what I want to be the biggest influence, but that's hard to say anyway, because you'd have to measure 'luck' and 'skill' on the same scale.

Too much luck will however drive away the competitive players. If you do everything right, outplay your opponent, but still lose a significant enough percentage of games, it's not a pleasant sensation.

5 minutes ago, LordBlades said:

Too much luck will however drive away the competitive players. If you do everything right, outplay your opponent, but still lose a significant enough percentage of games, it's not a pleasant sensation.

That's a matter of taste. Playing well brings its own reward, I feel. In fact, if I clearly lose because the dice were against me, I literally think "better luck next time" and move on.

But the tournament mentality is more that the player who makes the right moves is entitled to win, or the outcome of the game will not be a good measure of skill. I don't subscribe to that.

12 minutes ago, Verlaine said:

That's a matter of taste. Playing well brings its own reward, I feel. In fact, if I clearly lose because the dice were against me, I literally think "better luck next time" and move on.

But the tournament mentality is more that the player who makes the right moves is entitled to win, or the outcome of the game will not be a good measure of skill. I don't subscribe to that.

The vast majority of recreational activities that are played competitively (from sports to e-sports, to board and card games) seem to have this thing in common: even if luck is a factor, the better player/team wins in the vast majority of cases.

If you took that away from x-wing, I think the competitive scene would diminish greatly. Whether that's good/bad/irrelevant is up to everyone to decide though.

2 hours ago, Verlaine said:

But the tournament mentality is more that the player who makes the right moves is entitled to win, or the outcome of the game will not be a good measure of skill. I don't subscribe to that.

edit: disclaimer: given the already present variability in the game (and other situations) I absolutely want the rest to be determined by personal ability'

I disagree on calling that 'tournament mentality'. I play mostly casual games and still want that to be the case.

In fact to me that's good game design and definitely something I want, for any game I play (and generally in life for that matter)

17 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Quote

Verlaine said:
But the tournament mentality is more that the player who makes the right moves is entitled to win, or the outcome of the game will not be a good measure of skill. I don't subscribe to that.

I disagree on calling that 'tournament mentality'. I play mostly casual games and still want that to be the case.

In fact to me that's good game design and definitely something I want, for any game I play (and generally in life for that matter)

FWIW I don't subscribe to it either. That's just 'eurogames' vs 'ameritrash' in an X-Wing context, though. A game without variance doesn't hold my interest because you're not having to react on the fly to unexpected occurances. I find Dominion very dull but must have played ~5,000 games of Ascension, at least, because the variance makes it compelling to replay.

People treat luck and skill as opposite ends of the same axis, when they're actually separate axes.

34 minutes ago, SOTL said:

FWIW I don't subscribe to it either. That's just 'eurogames' vs 'ameritrash' in an X-Wing context, though. A game without variance doesn't hold my interest because you're not having to react on the fly to unexpected occurances. I find Dominion very dull but must have played ~5,000 games of Ascension, at least, because the variance makes it compelling to replay.

People treat luck and skill as opposite ends of the same axis, when they're actually separate axes.

Yes, a luck component makes it interesting.

But too much luck renders your own actions inconsequential, so there's definitively a 'goldilocks zone' for the amount of luck. The exact position depends on personal preference of course.

edit: Also what makes X-Wing such a cool concept for me is that you already are ensured to have to react to new occurences due to the dial. Yes you can narrow the options down, but you're still working with expectations and probabilities. And on top of that we got dice rolls, which add more unexpected occurances.

That doesn't mean I want to or can justify 100% mods. I don't. But given this variability the game already offers, I definitively want the rest of the game to be determined by skill.

so my initial post would need the disclaimer: 'given the already present variability in anything I absolutely want the rest to be determined by personal ability'

6 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

I do not want to have to fly the same list 3 score times before I can do well with it.

Fair enough, and you don't have to.

But if someone has played 50+ games with that list, is it not fair that they should be able to do better with it than someone who hasn't?

Luck... hour after hour talking about luck. I have a little hipotesis about this. The best wargamer in my circle stopped playing (3 child). He is very smart, one of those "nerds" with high IQ and you do not want to play chess against him. He was a genius mitigating bad rolls. He usually maneuvered in such a way that a single bad roll did not compromised the general situation.

If attacking and fumble roll OK. Try Overlord later. But while defending allways a Plan B. A master in the vast plains of Ucrania. Because hidsresource's management was superb.

No vaccine agains fumbling 3 timed in a row. But a clever player can create his own luck. To a certain extent of course.

I like to play a boardgame called Britannia. It's very strategic, but luck can play an important role. The battles are decided by dice and the system has high variance. Given the fact that in many games, specific battles can be of key importance while others don't matter much, it is possible to see a good plan go to waste because of the dice. For example, if the Picts attack the Caledonians early in the game and win (usually not a smart move) then the Caledonian/green player's chances of winning are small.

When something like that happens, you can lament your luck and curse the rules that make this possible. But that would only because your chances of winning have become small, and is that really a problem? You're still playing, and the game itself is still there to be enjoyed. Maybe it is a better idea to change your goal, like playing well, or simulating an actual story, or trying a risky tactic that might cost you dearly if it fails. One game of 1830, I got screwed in turn 1 and I reset my goal to creating a healthy company with an extremely low stock value.

Once you can set other goals than winning, it becomes less important how the dice behave. In fact, it will be a good thing if every now and then the dice change the game in some important way. It forces you to adjust. In fact, you might ask the question why winning the game was ever important in the first place.

If a victory is seen as some kind of vindication that you played well, you shouldn't be playing a game that involves dice at all. In games like Britannia and X-Wing, the only thing that can really prove skill is displaying skill. That's what I meant when I wrote that playing well brings its own reward. Tournaments, however, are not the best places for recognizing that, since they disproportionally reward tangible results. It's a good environment if the result is what matters to you, but less so if you play with other goals in mind.

25 minutes ago, Hexdot said:

Luck... hour after hour talking about luck. I have a little hipotesis about this. The best wargamer in my circle stopped playing (3 child). He is very smart, one of those "nerds" with high IQ and you do not want to play chess against him. He was a genius mitigating bad rolls. He usually maneuvered in such a way that a single bad roll did not compromised the general situation.

If attacking and fumble roll OK. Try Overlord later. But while defending allways a Plan B. A master in the vast plains of Ucrania. Because hidsresource's management was superb.

No vaccine agains fumbling 3 timed in a row. But a clever player can create his own luck. To a certain extent of course.

9 minutes ago, Verlaine said:

Once you can set other goals than winning, it becomes less important how the dice behave. In fact, it will be a good thing if every now and then the dice change the game in some important way. It forces you to adjust. In fact, you might ask the question why winning the game was ever important in the first place.

If a victory is seen as some kind of vindication that you played well, you shouldn't be playing a game that involves dice at all. In games like Britannia and X-Wing, the only thing that can really prove skill is displaying skill. That's what I meant when I wrote that playing well brings its own reward. Tournaments, however, are not the best places for recognizing that, since they disproportionally reward tangible results. It's a good environment if the result is what matters to you, but less so if you play with other goals in mind.

100% agree. You can play well and lose, play badly and win.

Victory is an unreliable indicator of success.

1 hour ago, Verlaine said:

That's what I meant when I wrote that playing well brings its own reward. Tournaments, however, are not the best places for recognizing that, since they disproportionally reward tangible results. It's a good environment if the result is what matters to you, but less so if you play with other goals in mind.

I think we agree more than my first answer suggests. I'm very intrinsically motivated and could not care less about "swag" (unless it's crackshots I need so I can play an A-Wing swarm in a future tournament...). I enjoy the game most if I flew well, which probably keeps me going and why I'm usually the only guy flying Jake - and yet I keep doing it because I have fun despite winning or losing.

So let me rephrase and expand (which I realize means my initial post was shortened to the point of being wrong/misleading):

X-Wing has two built-in unknowns: dials and dice. The rest (list building, deployment/turn 0, flying, decisions, targeting) should be a result of skill in my opinion. Of those skills I'm most interested in flying. Also I want to emphasize that dials are not really luck, but you can rarely be 100% sure what maneuver was chosen. So there is an uncertainty involved, which I believe justifies that I group dials with dice.

I disagree that luck should take more space than skill, I want skill to be the deciding factor. But that skill includes the reaction to unforeseen occurrences due to luck. I want the dials and dice to have a large impact, i.e. I think auto damage, too many mods and lack of choice/importance of the maneuver is bad. So bad in fact that it would drive me away from the game if it didn't matter anymore. List building happens before we get to the table, and often as a result of a team effort or outright netlisting. But the rest is happening at the table. So when I'm saying I want skill to be dominant, I'm talking about the portion that happens at the table.

To illustrate that further:
let's say I bring a list of relative strength 50 against a list of relative strength 100. My flying is good, let's give it an arbitrary 60, his flying is ok at an arbitrary 50. The luck amplifies our skill. I'm very lucky, so I add 20%, he's unlucky so he subtracts 10%. This leaves us at 132 vs 135 and I lose. I'm still happy because I flew better, and I was very lucky. Luck was important, but not the deciding factor.

It was Nick Szibicky (the guy who found the rule of 11) who claimed that X-Wing is 30% List building, 30% turn 0, 30% flying and 10% luck. I don't think it's true (definitely not anymore), and it would mean that 60% already happened before the first dial is set, something I think is bad for the game.

But I'm definitely ok with the 3:1 ratio of flying to luck. So that's what I mean when I say skill should be more important.

[As a side note: I would also bemoan that my reasonable list is so much worse (let's say it's the best build with some ships). That's where I believe balance is important. Ideally two well built lists are pretty close. In fact they are so close that their impact is negligible compared to skill and luck.]

4 hours ago, SOTL said:

People treat luck and skill as opposite ends of the same axis, when they're actually separate axes.

That is actually very true, in similar ways how there are two axis for the political spectrum and your yankee liberals are very much to the right on one of those axis. ;-) And back to topic.

Still, if one of those axis gets out of proportions it can quickly affect the other axis in positive or negative ways. Tick Tac Toe gets not more interesting by adding random elements to it, but more complexity, more tactical elements can make it a more interesting game. Like for example adding a bigger play area and more specific rules how you place your stones, you end up with a Connect Four, still no luck element included, but with a higher skill ceiling. (and still with a limit how much skill gets you because the game is easily completely solvable)

What chance elements can do to a game is to make it less predictable and prevent players from solving the optimal game path because of random derivations on that path. This does not increase or decrease the skill level of the game, but makes the game a little more exciting, adding a little bit more tension and might open up several decisions to made which are all "optimal" depending on the chance element. You basically start betting on top of your normal tactical play. That's fine to add tension, but can degrade the feel of control in a game when betting becomes the main focus of the game, even when your tactical decisions have still significant influence on the average outcome.