9 minutes ago, takfar said:

Which is why I suggested a) quarterly updates and b) an app

Which is why I suggested, again, an app.

The problem with 2nd ed is the same thing that devs have already stated in their interviews: They just can't get everything right out of the door. It's impossible. Even if they have learned stuff as they say they have, something will slip through the cracks, and it could be a big thing (eg. the jumpmaster). Plus, a bunch of new stuff being adjusted at the same time won't be easy to balance. Plus, after the 2.0 release, they will still keep expanding, so, problems may STILL arise.

That said, I'm fully on board with the idea of a 2.0 edition. I think X Wing needs it, I just don't think it will solve all the problems by itself. I also don't think (no evidence whatsoever) that it will be coming out before X-Wing sales start to lose steam or before the current trilogy is over (whichever comes first). Also, 2.0 would be a chance to add a QR code to the cards and integrate them with an app (yea, this again).

I'm ok with that. Heck, they could even provide official paste-on stickers to put on cards (preferably on top of a sleeve!) for those who wanted. As long as it's optional, anything would be welcome that improves game balance while solving people's needs for physical components.

Oh, definitely, copying for the sake of it is not a good idea. But while you think the current setup for X-Wing is fine, I personally disagree, and I feel a lot of other people do, as well. The current model is simply prone to balance distortion (see: on one hand, a huge stable of abandoned ships and upgrades, and on the other a history of clear imbalance in favor of fat han, phantom, super dash, palpmobile, jumpmaster, jumpmaster, jumpmaster, jumpmaster). It's also slow to correct itself, and it forces people to buy "fix" cards to play their outdated ships, which is both fiddly and not customer-friendly.

Again, take all of these opinions as coming from someone who does not play competitively and collects all ships because they are pretty toys, but is nonetheless aware of the balance issues in the game.

So on the app, sure that would be acceptable, but FFG does not have that good of a track record with their Apps that have applications in X-wing. You had the dice app that some hackers proven it could be used to alter dice results more than a salt bath test. Then there is also their TOME that never left beta and was abandoned. Now with FFG's new digital studio it could be something that helps them with such things considering their more recent failings, or it could be something to make more App augmented board games like XCom.

However there are multiple 3rd party apps that do keep up with list building and changing point values and verifying that they are current is easy to do. But as I mention I don't like the idea of requiring completely out of date cards a requirement at tournaments. Even with the outdated instructions, they still are useful and valid in list building, change that and you just move them to completely worthless and a more ridiculous demand than matching faction dials before the dial upgrade kit was out.

26 minutes ago, BVRCH said:

I like how you curated my post to suit your argument. I stated why a disagreed with the idea of an app in that post.

I did not feel the need to have the entire post quoted. I answered to your concerns (about changing the game "whenever they like") in the following line (and my answer was: get the rebalancing updates on a fixed schedule). Which part of your argument do you think I did not take into consideration in my response?

26 minutes ago, BVRCH said:

This 'balance' that everybody speaks of and wishes for realistically does not exist, its not possible in a game as large as this. There will always be an advantage somewhere to turn the tables. There will always be an 'Anakin" that the Dev's miss, or deem not note-worthy. I completely agree some things need to be tweaked, but I detest this idea that the game needs to be overhauled as so many say. I don't believe this is an effective way to achieve a 'fix' for the game.

I'm OK with there being different "tiers". It's cool for someone to choose to bring an underdog to the table. It's not fine for a majority of ships and a huge majority of upgrades to not be viable at all. The clear problem is: the devs did notice, say, the jumpmaster, and the did deem it noteworthy. And it took them several months (a year?) to do something about it. That I think is way too long. And the ships that are outclassed, well, these have to wait one to two years for a "staple-on fix" due to the development cycle. That is entirely unreasonable when they could be reinstated to the tables with a simple point cost fix instead.

26 minutes ago, BVRCH said:

Have you played Overwatch? There's a bunch of characters that never see competitive play. Its exactly like X-wing in that regard.

I'm not an expert in Overwatch. But it does have 25 heroes and maybe what, a half dozen of them are considered bad and see little use. X-Wing has over 50 ships at this point, amounting to several hundred pilots at this point and you'd be hard-pressed to find over one or two dozen different pilots in the top tables. And if you count upgrades, well, that ratio of good/bad gets even worse.

26 minutes ago, BVRCH said:

Quarterly is too frequent an update in my eyes. With regulating competitive tournaments etc, and players can go an entire season playing a single list. This is the disruption I'm talking about, and not to mention the fact that the Dev's said it takes up to 18 months to get a new ship from concept to table. Annual updates I could get behind, or an update released with a new wave perhaps.

Well, that sounds more like personal preference, and it's something that could be adjusted over time. Annual is close to what they're doing with the FAQs now, which in my opinion is too slow and forces us to be stuck with imbalanced ships for too long. If they do decide to go all-out and adjust point values, tho, then yea, it might still work.

If they do it for every wave, then that would be almost quarterly, wouldn't it? Also, I think they should wait a couple months AFTER the wave so they could judge how the new ships panned out, and then release the update halfway between the wave and the major tournament seasons.

3 hours ago, Lobokai said:

I wish they’d just suck it up and release a $10 tournament pack. Have corrected cards, updated costs, etc.

Or a Tournament "Codex"

3 hours ago, sozin said:

Prediction : new faq will come out on Thursday with Guns For Hire !!

Difficult to see. Always in motion, the future is.

3 hours ago, BVRCH said:

I hate the idea of them changing the point values without providing a replacement card, otherwise the card itself is essentially meaningless. If there is nothing that is left as 'out of bounds' in terms of the errata, what's the point of the cards at all?

We'll end up like 40K and have to by new codex books every 12 months to keep up with all the changes.

Like I say, it counts for 'casual play' - a few points either way don't hurt much there, and it's when you're not expected to be reading an errata document.

That said, I do appreciate some of the balance patches out, so I'd hope they don't abandon them completely: Defenders are way cooler for their respective titles than if it'd been simply a points patch. X-wings feel like they want a benefit in similar terms.

18 minutes ago, takfar said:

I did not feel the need to have the entire post quoted. I answered to your concerns (about changing the game "whenever they like") in the following line (and my answer was: get the rebalancing updates on a fixed schedule). Which part of your argument do you think I did not take into consideration in my response?

I'm OK with there being different "tiers". It's cool for someone to choose to bring an underdog to the table. It's not fine for a majority of ships and a huge majority of upgrades to not be viable at all. The clear problem is: the devs did notice, say, the jumpmaster, and the did deem it noteworthy. And it took them several months (a year?) to do something about it. That I think is way too long. And the ships that are outclassed, well, these have to wait one to two years for a "staple-on fix" due to the development cycle. That is entirely unreasonable when they could be reinstated to the tables with a simple point cost fix instead.

I'm not an expert in Overwatch. But it does have 25 heroes and maybe what, a half dozen of them are considered bad and see little use. X-Wing has over 50 ships at this point, amounting to several hundred pilots at this point and you'd be hard-pressed to find over one or two dozen different pilots in the top tables. And if you count upgrades, well, that ratio of good/bad gets even worse.

Well, that sounds more like personal preference, and it's something that could be adjusted over time. Annual is close to what they're doing with the FAQs now, which in my opinion is too slow and forces us to be stuck with imbalanced ships for too long. If they do decide to go all-out and adjust point values, tho, then yea, it might still work.

If they do it for every wave, then that would be almost quarterly, wouldn't it? Also, I think they should wait a couple months AFTER the wave so they could judge how the new ships panned out, and then release the update halfway between the wave and the major tournament seasons.

I don't mind breaking a post to address certain points, that's fine. But in doing so, it conveniently ignored my point about why I thought an app was a bad idea, for the purpose of your first point, when read in conjunction it would have debunked your point altogether. I'll reiterate, hard evidence for those arguments in a shop is useful, as everyone has that identical information, and yes it could be provided by means of an app for convenience, but that would facilitate the means for updates to the game to become flippant. The restrictions of printed media means that it is harder to implement change, and said changes will in turn be considered more thoroughly. As @Marinealver also said, it's hard to mandate physical cards as a necessity, when part of the games rules are only in a digital format. That then has the potential to spiral downward quite quickly.

I agree that I've hated how OP the jumpmaster is for a long time now, but for one; I don't want changes as important as that to the jumpmaster to be rushed, and two; a point reduction is an easy fix but it doesn't always achieve the intended effect. For example the TIE defender. People were saying "this thing is a good ship but its too expensive for me to consider even playing one ship". TIE/x7 came around and people then completely flipped to "sweet its costed better now I'll fly three" and they became a bane on the game. Now I realise /x7 wasn't just a point drop, but after the subsequent nerf to the wording, /x7 doesn't have the same effect on the meta as it did when it was first released. This shows that it was the ability of the ship that affected the ships value, more so than the point reduction. We are yet to see what effect the vaksai title will have on the game, and whether that will be a healthy fix or one similar to the /x7 title.

Overwatch at its highest level is a bit more elitist than that. Most top teams play identical heroes, but I'd say more like 8 heroes are considered top tier, the rest have varying levels of use but don't see the 'top table' per se. The 5 or 6 that are considered bad have been that way since launch, so the game is a lot like x-wing in truth, and some areas worse when it comes to balancing.

Well I'll agree that it may be personal preference. I personally don't mind waiting 12 months for a large FAQ, but I do think quarterly would be hard to manage without causing issues if costing in relation to the meta became commonplace in such updates. In terms of updates coinciding with wave releases, I meant more as a small update to clear up any obvious clarifications that are needed from day one e.g. Minefield Mapper. I do agree more heavy updates to new ships need real play time to be properly analysed.

1 hour ago, Captain Pellaeon said:

Difficult to see. Always in motion, the future is.

Always emotion, the future is.

I always thought it was 'in motion' too, but nope! Emotion.

I think the answer is the one that I gave a couple of weeks back and got pooped on... Armada, Destiny, Netrunner, Imperial Assault, Game of Thrones are all smaller games struggling to keep their heads above water. This means there's less risk in doing drastic things, and also more urgency in needing to fix bad game states.

X-Wing's monster success is propping up the whole of FFG and they will be a lot more slow and careful in dicking around with it unless they really have to.

I'm pleased to see them reacting so decisively in their other games. If those changes are successful I hope it gives them more confidence to act the same way in X-Wing. I also hope the people who keep white knighting on behalf of the developers and repeating the tired old line that there's always something that's best so nothing needs to change take what's happening in these other games as food for thought. FFG DO screw up, and fixing those screw up IS possible and DOES help. The biggest screw up is when they;re refusing to accept or address their screw ups.

5 hours ago, Kdubb said:

I am starting to accept fully that we have been feeding ourselves a lot of BS. “Xwing FAQs have to be approved by Lucas films and that’s why it’s taking so long for this and that to get an errata!”

Please, please tell me nobody genuinely believed that this was real.

Just now, Aaron Foss said:

Please, please tell me nobody genuinely believed that this was real.

I really hope not.

43 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I really hope not.

I can't see why you would.

I can see the argument of 'leaks are a license issue regardless of what was leaked' (hence the 'they had to rewrite the leaked FAQ' argument, true or not, has at least some sense behind it), and I can understand new ship models/pilots/etc (especially visuals) having to be run past them, but I can't honestly imagine them as a corporation caring about the specific mechanics of a game that's not theirs.

I dislike errata, but they are necessary if something is clearly wrong or unbalancing the game.

Ultimately, if you're going to errata cards, then I don't see why errata-ing points values is some sort of sacred cow compared to rules, or limitations.

11 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I can't see why you would.

I can see the argument of 'leaks are a license issue regardless of what was leaked' (hence the 'they had to rewrite the leaked FAQ' argument, true or not, has at least some sense behind it), and I can understand new ship models/pilots/etc (especially visuals) having to be run past them, but I can't honestly imagine them as a corporation caring about the specific mechanics of a game that's not theirs.

I dislike errata, but they are necessary if something is clearly wrong or unbalancing the game.

Ultimately, if you're going to errata cards, then I don't see why errata-ing points values is some sort of sacred cow compared to rules, or limitations.

I think it's the result of like a weird Stockholm Syndrome type thing with people wanting to pass off any blame for anything to anybody that isn't the X-Wing developers, who could surely do no wrong. It must be those evil Disney corporationy types, being all evil and corporationy.

So, Destiny, a new (relatively) FFG Star Wars game has had hard errata's? It's like the game devs at FFG are having a hard time trying to maintain balance and pump out product...

1 minute ago, Smutpedler said:

So, Destiny, a new (relatively) FFG Star Wars game has had hard errata's? It's like the game devs at FFG are having a hard time trying to maintain balance and pump out product...

It's a Lukas Litzinger game. At least this time they figured out he had messed it up early on, rather than waiting years for him to fail to fix it, like they did with Netrunner.

3 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

It's a Lukas Litzinger game. At least this time they figured out he had messed it up early on, rather than waiting years for him to fail to fix it, like they did with Netrunner.

Don't get me wrong; I think it's good FFG are taking action so early in a games life cycle and I'm pretty sure they NEED to with Destiny. So many people were put off by the low print runs and utter vulture culture in the trading groups that miss steps in balance will kill the game quickly. It just feels a bit like pumping out product regardless of quality is priority one and making sure it works as intended is an afterthought. Still... who knows what tomorrow may bring? Maybe sunshine or maybe the rain...

14 minutes ago, Smutpedler said:

It just feels a bit like pumping out product regardless of quality is priority one and making sure it works as intended is an afterthought.

Welcome to Fantasy Flight Games.

12 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Welcome to Fantasy Flight Games.

Over the last 3 years I've watched it unfold and thought "well, at least they're addressing the errors.". Now it's really starting to feel like a cash grab and the game's just bolted on. Maybe I'm just having a cynical day, hopefully GFH will cheer me up when it arrives this week... although I'd prefer my Starvipers and Kirhahjkgdfkg's to work as intended from day 1!!!

That is pretty bold move! I would be million times more confused than already!

8 hours ago, Sithborg said:

I suspect an X-wing FAQ is coming, as it seems most games are getting one.

For as long as I have played FFG games I think I always see FAQ's, tournament updates, etc all come out in batches across their various games.

If that holds true (and with GoT and Destiny updates so far this week, it look like it will) maybe the long-awaited FAQ will be finally arrive.

So I just got around to reading the Destiny announcement and there's something HUGELY significant going on that I don't think anyone has picked up on yet in this thread.

Lukas Litzinger is off the game and the new lead designer is Jeremy Zwirn. Zwirn has basically walked into the game and made a whole slew of changes right off the bat to fix the game.

Who is Jeremy Zwirn? This is Jeremy Zwirn...

He's been World Champion of THREE of FFG's card games, and before that he played Magic: The Gathering for 18 years to a high standard. He's a PLAYER, and a good one too. Somebody who understands competitive metagames and what makes them tick. These are precisely the type of guys who know how to curate a game, while X-Wing remains in the hands of RPG designers.

3 hours ago, Aaron Foss said:

Please, please tell me nobody genuinely believed that this was real.

I believe they have to be approved.

I don't believe it's the approval process that's causing the repeated delays.

8 hours ago, Sithborg said:

Different designers, different philosophies. Personally, I feel a banned/restricted list would be more effective than huge errata to a card.

Also, I think the differences in releases and the tournament season is a factor. I suspect an X-wing FAQ is coming, as it seems most games are getting one.

Problem with bans and restriction is the people who owns the products wont be happy about the wasted money...

1 minute ago, Thormind said:

Problem with bans and restriction is the people who owns the products wont be happy about the wasted money...

There's pros/cons. If a ship is forcing half a dozen ships to never get played then arguably there's more players unhappy about wasted money than if you banned that ship and let the other half dozen get onto the table.

18 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

So I just got around to reading the Destiny announcement and there's something HUGELY significant going on that I don't think anyone has picked up on yet in this thread.

Lukas Litzinger is off the game and the new lead designer is Jeremy Zwirn. Zwirn has basically walked into the game and made a whole slew of changes right off the bat to fix the game.

Who is Jeremy Zwirn? This is Jeremy Zwirn...

He's been World Champion of THREE of FFG's card games. He's a PLAYER, and a good one too. Somebody who understands competitive metagames and what makes them tick. These are precisely the type of guys who know how to curate a game, while X-Wing remains in the hands of RPG designers.

Great catch! Is Paul Heaver looking for a job? (I joke)

Frankly, with every wave adding new upgrade slots, actions, maneuvers, and new mechanics to the game, I think it's time for an overhaul. Things like the upcoming Reload action are precisely what munitions should have had from the start, and I've heard devs say as much in an interview last year. I think it's time they bring everything into reconsideration for a ubiquitous attempt at balancing the entire game at once. There's no guarantee there won't be further imbalances later on, but at least we'll have ships in the first few waves that have a semblance of design equity compared to those coming out much later. Bring on 2nd Edition!

7 hours ago, BVRCH said:

A lot of people think that, but its not true. There might be a lot of clarifications in the FAQ, but as far as actual erratum, there's barely any cards that have actually been changed.

It is true, and I meant both the fact that there are dead cards in the game (though I know that wasn't what you meant). and the fact that either cards have been changed or there was a need to clarify it because they could not find the space on the card or worded it poorly in the first place. All of these issues are essentially the same thing when looked at from a competitive standpoint, which is what is being discussed here. If I have a card that has needed clarification or changed I need a reference for both of them. If a card is dead from a competitive standpoint, it's mostly waste of material from that standpoint anyway

I think your Overwatch comparison is a bit odd since the game has been out a little over a year and most characters have seen significant and consistent changes from the start.

I don't want to come across as too hard on you here because I do understand your perspective but I actually think it would be rather trivial for FFG to provide even downloadable versions of new cards if that's something people felt they needed.

The bottom line for me at this point is that if a company is designing a competitive game these days, they should embrace technological tools to keep it humming, and a "competitive app" is definitely one way to do that, especially if they are up front about what is printed on the card (or heck, even left off the card) as being meant for "friendly play" and competitive values as changing elsewhere. People are already using community built apps to put squads together -- I don't know anyone that uses their physical cards as the basis for putting lists together.