Your open secret is fantastic in context that the play testers are not complete morons. It is an open secret that FFG is ignoring them ;-)
And btw, you make it sound like all the preview articles and news are written in house, while they themselves seem to be often fan-created content. ;-)

1 minute ago, SEApocalypse said:

Your open secret is fantastic in context that the play testers are not complete morons. It is an open secret that FFG is ignoring them ;-)
And btw, you make it sound like all the preview articles and news are written in house, while they themselves seem to be often fan-created content. ;-)

I wouldn't be surprised if there are often major mistakes in preview articles because they're written months before they're posted, in order to give enough lead time to ensure they're approved by LFL licensing.

I'm not sure why you think playtesters are being ignored. Again, keep in mind that the timeframes between playtesting and actual product becoming available are LONG. It isn't particularly a surprise that there are combinations that go unnoticed (or that simply weren't possible during testing because playtesters lacked certain pieces).

Just now, mightyspacepope said:

I wouldn't be surprised if there are often major mistakes in preview articles because they're written months before they're posted, in order to give enough lead time to ensure they're approved by LFL licensing.

I may add to the rumors here, but as far as I know they are often written last minute by externals for free. ;-)
And no idea why I think playtesters get ignored. Have I said something like that? I would not dream to assume that playtesters see an interaction and ask the same question the community does within 5 minutes of posting a preview with half a written card.

Who knows what the playertesters think about this situation ... or how complete their collections are. They can't tell, they are under NDA.

10 minutes ago, mightyspacepope said:

Interesting. From my admittedly second-hand nature understanding of things (having friends who have done writing or art duties for major comic book companies), it would seem really unlikely for FFG to allow any of those things (aside from maybe free tickets to events, but that might even be out of FFG's hands now that major events are done by outside companies like Cascade). My impression of major pop culture IP companies is that employees are super-careful to go out of their way to avoid fan-created content..

You've done a significant amount of good for the community, so please don't take my posts as being entirely critical.

Thanks for saying so man! And yeah I know you are being constructive, and appreciate you thinking through these things with me.

Re: tokens of appreciation, I don’t really don’t need the swag, it is more the thought that counts. But if they were to do something like, say, fly geordanr and Fergus (Yasb and voidstate) authors to worlds one year, that would be a good start. (This is a common practice for companies that appreciate their open source devs). Or make a custom Slicer range Ruler for all the devs. Or ****, even give us a private handshake and a thank you would be enough for me. The fact that they haven’t done these things is, for me, quite telling. They are happy to freeload off our work — I know they use ListJuggler to observe the meta - but don’t give two figs for us otherwise.

1 minute ago, sozin said:

They are happy to freeload off our work

You make this sound like they are treating the open source devs different from everyone else.

3 minutes ago, sozin said:

Thanks for saying so man! And yeah I know you are being constructive, and appreciate you thinking through these things with me.

Re: tokens of appreciation, I don’t really don’t need the swag, it is more the thought that counts. But if they were to do something like, say, fly geordanr and Fergus (Yasb and voidstate) authors to worlds one year, that would be a good start. (This is a common practice for companies that appreciate their open source devs). Or make a custom Slicer range Ruler for all the devs. Or ****, even give us a private handshake and a thank you would be enough for me. The fact that they haven’t done these things is, for me, quite telling. They are happy to freeload off our work — I know they use ListJuggler to observe the meta - but don’t give two figs for us otherwise.

Interesting. I'm significantly lower on the totem pole in terms of community contributions (I did a lot to organize and recruit players my region) and I've felt the exact opposite in my brief interactions with people like Wade and Alex when I've reached out to try to get special prize support for larger local events. Again, I don't mean to invalidate your own experiences.

Heh, interesting point. Who else is getting freeloaded off of? The playtesters get store credit (or used to at least). The TOs get swag (but that is apparently like pulling teeth from whT I have heard). The freelancers get paid ... who am I missing here?

2 minutes ago, mightyspacepope said:

Interesting. I'm significantly lower on the totem pole in terms of community contributions (I did a lot to organize and recruit players my region) and I've felt the exact opposite in my brief interactions with people like Wade and Alex when I've reached out to try to get special prize support for larger local events. Again, I don't mean to invalidate your own experiences.

Yeah I guess the open source community has never asked for contributions like that. It isn’t the same if you have to ask I guess

7 hours ago, Koing907 said:

1. RAW, the interaction works. The terms on the cards are clear and easy to understand. Which is why everybody was using it that way.

By your interpretation, sure. But my interpretation is that it doesn't. Who's backing your interpretation again? Is it FFG?

57 minutes ago, MacchuWA said:

By your interpretation, sure. But my interpretation is that it doesn't. Who's backing your interpretation again? Is it FFG?

your interpretation is incorrect, and you are willfully obfuscating the issue because you want to. by all accounts, it works 100% as people have been using it until this week.

3 minutes ago, nikk whyte said:

your interpretation is incorrect, and you are willfully obfuscating the issue because you want to. by all accounts, it works 100% as people have been using it until this week.

Wrong. Your position may have been valid a week ago, but you no longer have a leg to stand on, regardless of what you think the reading ought to be. Think about how the legal system works. It's a decent analogy, even given the mich lower stakes. The US decision on same sex marriage is a good example. Same sex marriage was illegal in many parts of the US until 2015. The legal interpretation that this was a legal use of state's power was widely accepted, including by circuit courts, which are pretty well respected senior legal authorities in that system. It took a Supreme Court decision - the highest legal authority - to make the final say that it was unconstitutional to deny marriage to same sex couples.

This is the same scenario (though again, clearly on a much smaller scale). FFG are the supreme authority on how this game works, and they have made a decision. Previous decisions by TOs and senior Marshalls are the equivalent of rulings by lower courts: They're invalidated and overwritten by a higher authority.

Judges ignoring that ruling are the X-Wing equivalent of that county clerk or whatever she was who was refusing to hand our marriage licenses to same sex couples at this point.

I would personally love it if FFG made Genious/Simulator not a thing, even though it makes no sense RAW.

Just one less cancer to worry about for the few regionals left!

None of this stuff happened under the original design team. New guys track record is not so hot.

31 minutes ago, MacchuWA said:

Wrong. Your position may have been valid a week ago, but you no longer have a leg to stand on, regardless of what you think the reading ought to be. Think about how the legal system works. It's a decent analogy, even given the mich lower stakes. The US decision on same sex marriage is a good example. Same sex marriage was illegal in many parts of the US until 2015. The legal interpretation that this was a legal use of state's power was widely accepted, including by circuit courts, which are pretty well respected senior legal authorities in that system. It took a Supreme Court decision - the highest legal authority - to make the final say that it was unconstitutional to deny marriage to same sex couples.

This is the same scenario (though again, clearly on a much smaller scale). FFG are the supreme authority on how this game works, and they have made a decision. Previous decisions by TOs and senior Marshalls are the equivalent of rulings by lower courts: They're invalidated and overwritten by a higher authority.

Judges ignoring that ruling are the X-Wing equivalent of that county clerk or whatever she was who was refusing to hand our marriage licenses to same sex couples at this point.

This is all well and good, but FFG didn’t decide anything.

You are assuming that a man 3 people removed from the decision making acted in full authority of the decision makers, and you can’t prove that’s true.

To go back to the court method: shadow of a doubt, yo.

Wouldn’t it be more like the Supreme Court didn’t actually making a ruling, but one of the justices tweeted, said they had talked the the other justices too, and also said what they said was only for the district of dc and other states could do what they wanted?

14 minutes ago, Velvetelvis said:

None of this stuff happened under the original design team. New guys track record is not so hot.

Idk who the new guys are, or why you dislike them so much. But let's not forget that the OLD GENIUSES gave us the Falcon turret mechanic in the first place. And Fat Han, and pre-nerf Whisper, and Dash, and no large-ship counter, and no large-ship half points rule.

Let's be fair. Xwing testing and balancing has been a mess from the beginning.

I love this game, but I absolutely detest the lack of testing this game has.

2 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

Idk who the new guys are, or why you dislike them so much. But let's not forget that the OLD GENIUSES gave us the Falcon turret mechanic in the first place.

That was Jay Little -- he planned out the mechanics for that and that was before it was going to be such a big game.

12 minutes ago, AlexW said:

That was Jay Little -- he planned out the mechanics for that and that was before it was going to be such a big game.

Its okay. I'm not crucifiying him. He probably thought itd be okay, and it was the most simple and elegant design.

I still think primary weapon turrets should only gain Range 1 bonus while in arc.

Just now, Blail Blerg said:

Its okay. I'm not crucifiying him. He probably thought itd be okay, and it was the most simple and elegant design.

I still think primary weapon turrets should only gain Range 1 bonus while in arc.

I always thought turrets should be measured from the center post.

3 hours ago, AlexW said:

That was Jay Little -- he planned out the mechanics for that and that was before it was going to be such a big game.

Plus, from interviews with Jay, I don't necessarily think he foresaw the game becoming "competitive" in the way that it has since become.

5 hours ago, MacchuWA said:

Wrong. Your position may have been valid a week ago, but you no longer have a leg to stand on, regardless of what you think the reading ought to be. Think about how the legal system works.

That's not a valid point. Most of the world rejects the very basic idea presented by you as a functioning fair legal system to enforce the law. So I don't even need to bring up the issue that FFG has not released an FAQ update, so no supreme court decision has been made anyway. The random opinion of a supreme court judge would not have force states to change their laws either. ;-)

9 hours ago, sozin said:

Thanks for saying so man! And yeah I know you are being constructive, and appreciate you thinking through these things with me.

Re: tokens of appreciation, I don’t really don’t need the swag, it is more the thought that counts. But if they were to do something like, say, fly geordanr and Fergus (Yasb and voidstate) authors to worlds one year, that would be a good start. (This is a common practice for companies that appreciate their open source devs). Or make a custom Slicer range Ruler for all the devs. Or ****, even give us a private handshake and a thank you would be enough for me. The fact that they haven’t done these things is, for me, quite telling. They are happy to freeload off our work — I know they use ListJuggler to observe the meta - but don’t give two figs for us otherwise.

9 hours ago, sozin said:

Yeah I guess the open source community has never asked for contributions like that. It isn’t the same if you have to ask I guess

Clearly it's time to start! If they wanna fly list-builders to worlds, add in the iOS author while you're at it! Might be the only way I manage to ever get there... . On the other hand, I doubt they've freeloaded off my work much like with things like listjuggler or mathwing (unless an official mobile builder comes out in the future that looks suspiciously like Aurora now that it's open sourced...)

The slicer range ruler is a good call though. Maybe I need to go talk to curled paw about some custom work...

6 hours ago, AngryAlbatross said:

I would personally love it if FFG made Genious/Simulator not a thing, even though it makes no sense RAW.

Just one less cancer to worry about for the few regionals left!

The great thing (when FFG gets around to doing something official) is that for FFG it doesn't matter if it makes sense or works RAW. They can just change what's written "on the cards" (so to speak) in the FAQ to make it not work.

1 hour ago, SEApocalypse said:

That's not a valid point. Most of the world rejects the very basic idea presented by you as a functioning fair legal system to enforce the law. So I don't even need to bring up the issue that FFG has not released an FAQ update, so no supreme court decision has been made anyway. The random opinion of a supreme court judge would not have force states to change their laws either. ;-)

Most of the world rejects the idea that higher courts can overturn the decisions of lower courts? Citation well and truly needed on that. I don't know for sure the details of the Chinese legal system, but that's the only big population block I can think of on the planet that might not have tiered court systems, and it almost certainly does, I'm just not sure off the top of my head.

And while the analogy is starting to strain here, I would argue that the FAQ serves more of a legislative role than a legal one.

TOs are local magistrates, making the day to day calls. Judges employed by FFG to run tournaments at their own headquarters are the highest court, trumping all others. And the developers are parliament, writing and amending the rules, be it through new releases or FAQs.

Ultimately, the specifics of the analogy don't matter. What matters is that FFG as a corporate entity have made a call that people are choosing to ignore. That is just as bad, if not worse, than the oft repeated fears of rogue TOs making up rules about interactions they don't like that some people cite for ignoring the clearly expressed intentions of the game's governing body.

Most of the world rejects the idea of a case law ;-)
The law is the law, raw is raw and if questions about the legitimacy of a law are raised they get cleared up immediately, usually indeed by something like a constitutional court or supreme court. The idea to change the interpretation of a law based on a new interpretation of the law by some judges is an alien concept to a lot of people. A lot of people seem to favor when justice is based on the letters of the law instead of LAI. ;-)

The very basic idea of having laws open to interpretation seems counter to the very idea of a constitutional state, because it endangers any legal certainty. Now the US deals with the problem with their case law system to achieve somewhat of legal certainty, but this concept can be considered as a crook when your laws are not written without room for interpretation.

Which ironically brings us back to X-Wing in regards of RAW vs RAI. A lot of people expect judges not to interpret the rules to their liking, but just follow them. Now actually having an x-wing supreme court does sound not like a bad idea. No law is perfect and having a body with the official legitimate power to "order" FFG to issue a FAQ and temporary suspend rules or certain interactions … well, that has been suggested before. Isn't netrunner even using something like this, driven by the community?

4 hours ago, mightyspacepope said:

Plus, from interviews with Jay, I don't necessarily think he foresaw the game becoming "competitive" in the way that it has since become.

He is on track saying that he needed to develop the core set and the first wave. After that, he wasn't involved with X-wing.
In Wave 1, the only turret present is that Ion Cannon Turret, that few would consider broken overpowered. Range 1-2, 1 damage tops.

However, we also have the TIE Advanced and the X-wing, clear examples of underpowered stuff.
But I think you are totally right about their stance about the game. It wasn't supposed to be that competitive.
He said they used to test the game by trying out random lists: randomly draw pilot cards until no other fits in 100 points, then fill up with upgrades until you reach 100 points.
No wonder they didn't catch some problems there.