I have been long resisting the call for a 2.0 version of X-Wing, but it really is about time. Or at least a 1.5 upgrade.

The very minimum that needs to be tweeked is the point system, and completely redo it for each and every card. Older cards which were good in the beginning are now over priced. (Like Sensor Jammers). Or vice versa. Also some revision of text would be nice as well. I have a few ideas what I would do but this thread it really is not about the.

How can FFG still make money (it is still a business), leave the customers happy and upgrade the game logistically?

First, there would obviously need to be a Core Set 2.0. (Uniquely painted core set ships, and cardboard & cards to replace both core sets AND Most Wanted.)

Then for each faction have a wave 1-4, 5-8 & 9-12 expansion packs. Each with a uniquely painted ship. For example a Wave 5-8 Rebels pack with all the cardboard and card upgrades that would be included in those wave, and a Uniquely painted T-70 (with a bonus pilot for the particular ship.) Charge about the same amount as the Most Wanted expansion pack. And then FFG can sell individual ships as well from the waves as a 2.0 version with just new cardboard. Also add more cardboard to known popular ships, like the tie fighter.

And then have an EPIC ship pack, maybe sell an Epic ship that can be used with all 3 factions (Corellian gunship?) and have the cardboard for all the Epic Ships in the game. And definitely a re-write the rule set from what they have learned from Armada.

This way it is good compromise. I don't have to replace all the models, FFG still makes money and the game gets upgraded. (If I had to purchase every ship again, I just would not.) A less expensive, but more labor intensive would be stickers for the cards.

Any other ideas how FFG could get a 2.0 version out satisfying old time players, plus still making them a profit?

I was talking with someone about this the other day, and came to the conclusion that that the best possible solution would be $15 packs for each faction that contain rewritten pilot cards for every ship in the game. Don't touch actions, ARCs, PS, or statlines (all things that can be avoided) and you don't need to add cardboard. you might want to change one dial per faction (HWK, Punisher, JM5K) and put that in there. People still need the blister packs to play the game, so FFG isn't stabbing themselves in the foot, and you just mandate the new pilot cards for tournaments. Updating would cost a player 45$+tax, and would get them everything they need. An easy enough solution for players, and requiring the same amount of work from designers as other 2.0 solutions.

3 minutes ago, Do I need a Username said:

Don't touch actions, ARCs, PS, or statlines (all things that can be avoided) and you don't need to add cardboard.

One important change that would be left out that way is mobile firing arcs for all PWTs. There are not many though.

13 minutes ago, Do I need a Username said:

I was talking with someone about this the other day, and came to the conclusion that that the best possible solution would be $15 packs for each faction that contain rewritten pilot cards for every ship in the game. Don't touch actions, ARCs, PS, or statlines (all things that can be avoided) and you don't need to add cardboard. you might want to change one dial per faction (HWK, Punisher, JM5K) and put that in there. People still need the blister packs to play the game, so FFG isn't stabbing themselves in the foot, and you just mandate the new pilot cards for tournaments. Updating would cost a player 45$+tax, and would get them everything they need. An easy enough solution for players, and requiring the same amount of work from designers as other 2.0 solutions.

Yeah, this would probably be the best way to do it. But I'm not sure why every pilot would need to be updated, unless you wanted to redo the costing system and go for 200 pt lists? Most ships are reasonably costed if you work from something like a tie fighter base line. Keeping the reasonably costed pilot and upgrade cards would save a lot of printing costs and space. The pack would simply replace the over/undercosted ships, problematic or stupid pilots abilities and upgrade cards (biggs, lowhrik, all things jumpy, lt. lorrir, mindlink, TLT, EU on large ships and so forth). If a new version of an upgrade or pilot card is included in the pack, the old ones are not allowed in tournaments. And yeah, cardboard for mobile firing arcs and a few new dials.

Don't touch upgrade cards, FFG has designed those to be commodities, and thus have value. Pilot cards, don't (for the most part, there are very few possible exceptions) so new upgrade cards is something they will be reluctant to do. Including cardboard would also make it harder to sell to FFG, for much the same reason. I think you'll find that changing point costs on a lot of the problem stuff will fix things enough, without touching upgrades (not to mention some of the specific things I have seen people suggest on these forums that I have other problems with).

They just need a floating points cost system. After each tournament season, any card or pilot that was present in more than 20% of top cut lists increases in cost by 1 point. Any card or pilot that was present in fewer than 3% of top cut lists decreases in cost by 1 point. Updated points costs are posted online by FFG long before the next tournament season so everyone has time to adjust squads.

Virtually all imbalance issues would disappear. Power creep would no longer be an issue. The X-Wing would no longer need a fix (Biggs would eventually rise in cost while all other X-Wings would drop until they reach a price making them viable for the current power curve). There would be no need for any further card erratas, as "broken" cards would increase in points cost until their cost/benefit ratio was on par with other cards. Even Expose becomes a viable card when you get to include it for 0-1 points. Jumpmaster doesn't need an FAQ because its popularity will just cause its points cost to rise, which is the fix it really needs anyways. FFG could then just focus on making cool new stuff, and not have to worry about game balance anymore, as the system would automatically sort that out (it would actually reduce direct development costs to FFG, reduce development and testing time of new products, and reduce time to market from idea to on the shelf).

Every single ship, pilot, and card would be quote "viable". Winning overpowered netlists automatically kill themselves off after a single season when it makes the cut in too many tournaments and all the cards in the squad rise in price. Ships like fragile Interceptor aces that are currently being pushed out of the meta suddenly come back when their price drops to the point where you can fit in an additional ship, or better upgrades than you could before. The TLT problem fixes itself if too many people are using them.

Casual players could continue using points cost as printed if desired. Online balanced points costs would only be required for tournaments.

Depends, if the new "Balance" changes in the rumors are to be true very much likely, however as of now very much unlikely.

Despite how bad and unbalanced people claim the meta to be, the list power differential isn't as much as Armada, IA, or even Attack Wing (either one).

Nope. Go play 40k.

2 hours ago, Joe Censored said:

They just need a floating points cost system. After each tournament season, any card or pilot that was present in more than 20% of top cut lists increases in cost by 1 point. Any card or pilot that was present in fewer than 3% of top cut lists decreases in cost by 1 point. Updated points costs are posted online by FFG long before the next tournament season so everyone has time to adjust squads.

Virtually all imbalance issues would disappear. Power creep would no longer be an issue. The X-Wing would no longer need a fix (Biggs would eventually rise in cost while all other X-Wings would drop until they reach a price making them viable for the current power curve). There would be no need for any further card erratas, as "broken" cards would increase in points cost until their cost/benefit ratio was on par with other cards. Even Expose becomes a viable card when you get to include it for 0-1 points. Jumpmaster doesn't need an FAQ because its popularity will just cause its points cost to rise, which is the fix it really needs anyways. FFG could then just focus on making cool new stuff, and not have to worry about game balance anymore, as the system would automatically sort that out (it would actually reduce direct development costs to FFG, reduce development and testing time of new products, and reduce time to market from idea to on the shelf).

Every single ship, pilot, and card would be quote "viable". Winning overpowered netlists automatically kill themselves off after a single season when it makes the cut in too many tournaments and all the cards in the squad rise in price. Ships like fragile Interceptor aces that are currently being pushed out of the meta suddenly come back when their price drops to the point where you can fit in an additional ship, or better upgrades than you could before. The TLT problem fixes itself if too many people are using them.

Casual players could continue using points cost as printed if desired. Online balanced points costs would only be required for tournaments.

Well, I think you win worst idea of the year. This sounds awful.

3 hours ago, Joe Censored said:

They just need a floating points cost system.

Casual players could continue using points cost as printed if desired. Online balanced points costs would only be required for tournaments.

Sorry mate, in an ideal world that might work, but we have enough whining now without everything being up for grabs with point ups/downs. Way too complicated to administer.

RoV

X-Wing has been around for 5 years now. Some kind of 2.0 or update wouldn't surprise me at all. I think the OP is thinking along the same lines as FFG would if they were to attempt something like this. Faction update kits could cost as much as $30 and probably not raise too much ire as long as the changes make sense and the contents can create excitement for the game among both those who have quit, or are thinking about quitting, as well as those still playing regularly. It would be a huge job and the play testing would need to be needle in a haystack thorough. If they dropped the ball and let something like the Contracted Scout make its way into an update kit, it might kill the game.

13 hours ago, Rat of Vengence said:

Sorry mate, in an ideal world that might work, but we have enough whining now without everything being up for grabs with point ups/downs. Way too complicated to administer.

RoV

Would just be an automated cron job. The only real administration is gathering tournament results, but that largely is already happening.

15 minutes ago, Joe Censored said:

Would just be an automated cron job. The only real administration is gathering tournament results, but that largely is already happening.

It's a terrible idea because it wouldn't work. Sure- it has some interesting short term implications but it eventually creates a scenario where something like Dengar (or even a card like Push the Limit) has a good season or two, points go up to a breaking point and now no one plays it. At that point the point costs come back down and the stuff that was good is good again. It just creates an arbitrary loop of whatever things are remotely playable.

The "I get nerfed for winning tournaments" mentatlity for balancing is really bad. Mortal Kombat X and other vfighting games by NRS do this somewhat and it's really annoying for the top players since it doesn't give anyone time to "adapt". Knee jerk balance reactions are the worst, the game meta needs a pretty long time to settle after a big change... The Wave XI one is far from determined yet.

45 minutes ago, wfain said:

It's a terrible idea because it wouldn't work. Sure- it has some interesting short term implications but it eventually creates a scenario where something like Dengar (or even a card like Push the Limit) has a good season or two, points go up to a breaking point and now no one plays it. At that point the point costs come back down and the stuff that was good is good again. It just creates an arbitrary loop of whatever things are remotely playable.

A 1 point change in Dengar isn't going to result in Dengar immediately going from played everywhere to no one playing, then suddenly coming back to everyone playing a few seasons later. I guess this line of thinking requires more knowledge of how economics works than games for people to understand. Too much for this forum.

18 hours ago, Joe Censored said:

They just need a floating points cost system. After each tournament season, any card or pilot that was present in more than 20% of top cut lists increases in cost by 1 point. Any card or pilot that was present in fewer than 3% of top cut lists decreases in cost by 1 point. Updated points costs are posted online by FFG long before the next tournament season so everyone has time to adjust squads.

Virtually all imbalance issues would disappear. Power creep would no longer be an issue. The X-Wing would no longer need a fix (Biggs would eventually rise in cost while all other X-Wings would drop until they reach a price making them viable for the current power curve). There would be no need for any further card erratas, as "broken" cards would increase in points cost until their cost/benefit ratio was on par with other cards. Even Expose becomes a viable card when you get to include it for 0-1 points. Jumpmaster doesn't need an FAQ because its popularity will just cause its points cost to rise, which is the fix it really needs anyways. FFG could then just focus on making cool new stuff, and not have to worry about game balance anymore, as the system would automatically sort that out (it would actually reduce direct development costs to FFG, reduce development and testing time of new products, and reduce time to market from idea to on the shelf).

Every single ship, pilot, and card would be quote "viable". Winning overpowered netlists automatically kill themselves off after a single season when it makes the cut in too many tournaments and all the cards in the squad rise in price. Ships like fragile Interceptor aces that are currently being pushed out of the meta suddenly come back when their price drops to the point where you can fit in an additional ship, or better upgrades than you could before. The TLT problem fixes itself if too many people are using them.

Casual players could continue using points cost as printed if desired. Online balanced points costs would only be required for tournaments.

Best fix idea I've seen to date.

Were I in charge, I would look to other games such as Imperial Assault and Armada. X-wing came first and these games had the benefit. I would add in new dice types. A ship with 1-2 attack could be made viable by changing the die to one with more hits per side. Secondary weapons could have devastating effects to offset the single use, that may have to be triggered. Fast and agile ships may have a better die in terms of dodges than less maneuverable ship. We could have an agility and an armour die for defense. One has higer chance of getting more evade results, but the other has more reliable defense.

I would keep shields, and the tokens, but as a finite resource that lets you spend it to reroll a defense die - this makes regeneration still an important choice, but they can be whittled down.

These ideas allow for more variety of ships, without adding many more stats - TIE fighters are High Agility low Armour, X-wings are balanced, y-wings are low agilty high armour, etc.

A second edition, and these changes, should draw on using as many of the original components as possible, but maybe in new ways, like the shields being reroll tokens. I would also make this change be an optional - though near mandatory upgrade. You do this by less of a new version 2.0, and instead make it a x-wing Ace (elite/advanced) edition that is sold concurrantly to the standard x-wing. So, when new ships come out you can have the regular x-wing version and the new advanced version in pack. The X-wing Ace edition will of course have new cards, dice, of anything to be reprinted, while new packs - lets say wave 13+ include the new versions.

This way, you can have your cake and eat it too. The hardcore players will likely pay for the new content/mode but if not they can still buy ships and play the basic game.

cost wise, you can include, in this upgrade kit, new base plates - perhaps generic ones for each ship type, with all important info on the card. This way, new mechanics such as mobile arcs could be implemented, for the advanced version, but the basic ship flies differently. You get a way to upgrade a ship stats but still sell the older skus as they have always been.

Newer wave ships will of course need a higher pricetag to offset the additional development of each regular and advanced version, plus inflation, etc. But FFG cost will be negligible, for materials anyway, as new ships could even have advanced version on one side and regular on the other - dual cards are already a thing. All the old stuff, well, to use those you buy the Ace edition - you could even seperate the Ace editions into three seperate packs, you fly scum, buy that, Imperial you get it. Lets each pack contain more specific items/upgrades.

These ace packs also require you to purchase the starter sets - not standalone. Heck, each one could contain an exclusive repaint of a ship, which will make people buy them up. Or better yet, a new sculpt of certain ships - y-wing with an actual turret, Royal Interceptor with extra wings, etc.

Edit: Future tourney prizes could be dual sided cards of advanced and original versions of beloved pilots.

Plus, you can introduce new mechanics in the basic version, refine them and implement in the advanced.

32 minutes ago, Joe Censored said:

A 1 point change in Dengar isn't going to result in Dengar immediately going from played everywhere to no one playing, then suddenly coming back to everyone playing a few seasons later. I guess this line of thinking requires more knowledge of how economics works than games for people to understand. Too much for this forum.

Right- like I said this would be a long term situation. Eventually the point increase over time would render Dengar inefficient. This inefficiency would lead to him not being played, which would lead to his point cost falling back down, which would lead to people playing him again (while something else cycled up into being inefficient). Everything has a cost breaking point where people wouldn't be able to win with it anymore, and then the points would fall back down until people could win with it. This solution isn't going to reach some kind of equilibrium, it's just going to cycle things up and down the efficiency ladder. What am I not getting?

18 hours ago, Joe Censored said:

They just need a floating points cost system. After each tournament season, any card or pilot that was present in more than 20% of top cut lists increases in cost by 1 point. Any card or pilot that was present in fewer than 3% of top cut lists decreases in cost by 1 point. Updated points costs are posted online by FFG long before the next tournament season so everyone has time to adjust squads.

Virtually all imbalance issues would disappear. Power creep would no longer be an issue. The X-Wing would no longer need a fix (Biggs would eventually rise in cost while all other X-Wings would drop until they reach a price making them viable for the current power curve). There would be no need for any further card erratas, as "broken" cards would increase in points cost until their cost/benefit ratio was on par with other cards. Even Expose becomes a viable card when you get to include it for 0-1 points. Jumpmaster doesn't need an FAQ because its popularity will just cause its points cost to rise, which is the fix it really needs anyways. FFG could then just focus on making cool new stuff, and not have to worry about game balance anymore, as the system would automatically sort that out (it would actually reduce direct development costs to FFG, reduce development and testing time of new products, and reduce time to market from idea to on the shelf).

Every single ship, pilot, and card would be quote "viable". Winning overpowered netlists automatically kill themselves off after a single season when it makes the cut in too many tournaments and all the cards in the squad rise in price. Ships like fragile Interceptor aces that are currently being pushed out of the meta suddenly come back when their price drops to the point where you can fit in an additional ship, or better upgrades than you could before. The TLT problem fixes itself if too many people are using them.

Casual players could continue using points cost as printed if desired. Online balanced points costs would only be required for tournaments.

This.... makes a lot of sense, actually. I don't think you could completely automate it- You would need somebody to look things over and make sure the changes make sense. ie: say that Darth Vader rises to the top for a season and his points need to be adjusted. Do you increase the cost of Darth Vader, X-1, AND Advanced Targeting Computer, increasing the total cost of the build by 3 points? That seems too extreme.

And it would probably be better to have a system where if certain cards do too well or too poorly their cost is adjusted, but everything in the middle stays the same.

But anyway, the core idea is very very good. A truly self-balancing system . Just ignore the detractors, I don't think they know what they're talking about. Yeah it would take a little bit of administration- but does anyone honestly think that a system like this would take MORE administration than any other proposed X-Wing 2.0 fix out there? This one requires virtually no reprints, no playtesting, very little expense on FFG's part (compared to other proposals). @MajorJuggler @sozin What do you guys think about incorporating something like this into Community Edition X-Wing?

On 8/10/2017 at 2:03 PM, Do I need a Username said:

I was talking with someone about this the other day, and came to the conclusion that that the best possible solution would be $15 packs for each faction that contain rewritten pilot cards for every ship in the game. Don't touch actions, ARCs, PS, or statlines (all things that can be avoided) and you don't need to add cardboard. you might want to change one dial per faction (HWK, Punisher, JM5K) and put that in there. People still need the blister packs to play the game, so FFG isn't stabbing themselves in the foot, and you just mandate the new pilot cards for tournaments. Updating would cost a player 45$+tax, and would get them everything they need. An easy enough solution for players, and requiring the same amount of work from designers as other 2.0 solutions.

actually i'd be against this. Statlines do need to be tweaked, and quite heavily.

The game functions fine as it is, a 2.0 is not needed unless they were going to address the number issue. What i mean by that is think of the attack value: the difference between a 2 and 3 attack value is immense enough to completely change opinions on how a ship will fare. Likewise, the difference between 3 and 4 is even bigger (smaller pool of examples though).

These numbers are too tight and results in the main issue we have right now: there is no middle-ground ship. We have barebutt-cheap ships such as TIEs that function because theyre so cheap who cares if they arent lethal killing machines and we have monsters like Fenn, Vader, Dengar, QD, BD, Norra, and Nym that are very high end and expensive ships but put out enough work to justify it. Wheres the middle ship? Closest we got to that is a couple specific pilots have an ability that bumps them just enough to be good in the 20s range, but not an actual ship itself.

*beats the dead horse* Xwings should be that middle-ground ship but because of the way the stats are arranged, its impossible to make one without having it dip into the "too expensive" or "too cheap" categories. If the average attack value in this game for a middle-ground ship was 5, with hp values tweaked to compensate so you arent 1shotting literally everything, it would be much MUCH easier to release middleground ships and ships that are just a fraction better than another in various areas. If a stat being bumped up by 1 was only a minor increase in overall effectiveness then we could easily have a much wider range of vessels, but currently even just a single point in any value can potentially rocket a ship from pathetic to potentially insane.

FFG will never sell "upgrade card packs". Why? This is a miniatures game, not a card game.

I think a better way of fixing the game is altering the tournament structure. Make Hangar Bay the standard format. It's way harder to run into a hard counter then.

Another way would be to add objectives or scenarios to organised play. As long as the objective no longer is to just outkill or outlive your opponent.

There are multiple ways to keep this game fun other than a hard reboot.

We're essentially using a floating point costs system because we can dynamically adjust costs post "release", but the alterations are still manual. It would be very difficult to make an AI to balance the game just based on tournament results, even using cost as the only variable. Part of the issue is with low priced pilots, such an AI would end up repeatedly dithering many pilots back and forth between two point values. The 'exact optimal' solution may not exist due to point quantization, so the burden is on the design architect to identify the meta game state and pick the best solution. This is still far better than FFG's approach, because they are stuck with printed costs in perpetuity.

The other issue is that of cyclical balance. There are two main ways to 'fix' game balance. One is point adjustments as discussed here. The other however, is cyclical balance by intentionally introducing soft counters. The balance architect needs to know which tool should be used to accomplish the desired result. Trying to hone in on a purely cost-based mathematical approach is a one-dimensional approach. It can be a good approach, but not a complete one. If you lean too heavily on pure mathematical efficiency then you run the risk of the game reducing to a 'most efficient list' state. You actually want and need some cyclical soft counters to be present.

It's a very interesting idea though, and certainly worthy of more investigation.