The correct answer to skill floor is definitely understanding 1: Skill floor means skill barrier-to-entry. When the Silencer first came out, everyone was talking about it as a high-skill-floor, high-skill-ceiling ship. Interceptors are the same. You can't just shrug off an attack. You have to have x level of skill (be it 25, 35, 45) or you will just die. Tournament piñata as someone earlier said.

Performance floor would be understanding 2: Even the worst player will still perform at x level (be it 25, 35, 45) because the list just can't do worse than that.

Low skill ceiling means that the best player effectively can't play it because the maximum decision interaction level (be it 65, 75, 85) just doesn't reward any skill whatsoever after a point.

Low Performance ceiling is similar, but is on the scale of how well the list is able to perform in tournaments (be it 65, 75, 85), even in good hands, meaning it is a trash list.

So Lothal/Fenn is a low skill floor, high performance floor, low skill ceiling, high performance ceiling list.

Or in other words, a death sentence for the game as we knew it.

21 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Yes. But the list is always the same.

Think about it that way: the first understanding asks about the floor „given my true skill AND this list, what can I expect as minimum?“

The second asks „given this list, what can I expect as minimum?“

And this is following the way we use ceiling, where we all agree and which asks „given this list, what can I expect as maximum?“

Yes, I can read into and understand both versions of the concept. I simply prefer to prioritise player focused definition, because as I noted it is them who are " responsible" providing the skill to the equation.

I'd probably talk about a matrix of skill/powerlevel ceiling/floor .

Skill ceiling - how well you can fly it. (E.g. Plot Armour - high, Heragator - low)

Skill floor - how well you have to fly it. (E.g. Interceptors - high, Ghost&Fenn - low)

Powerlevel ceiling - how well the list performs being flown well . (E.g. Brobots - high, turret-less HWKs - low)

Powerlevel floor - how well the list performs being flown bad. (E.g. Ghost&Fenn - high, Interceptors - ocean-bed low these days)

For any given list...

10 minutes ago, Firespray-32 said:

For any given list...

Agreed, except it hurts my eyes that skill-related asymptotes are deliberately being casted onto the performance axis.

Also, now that I thought about it for a while, this graph tells us nothing about the manner. There is no information about the scale whatsoever. Is zero-level skill in there supposed to represent a completely unskilled player? Or is it the minimal skill level allowing to mark any performance? Because that's what the discussion gets down to in here.

List performance is perhaps misleading: I mean the performance of the list in practice which is a combination of the list itself and the skill of the player flying it. I'll amend the initial post.

I disagree with the chart. I think this is a better representation:

Edit: Of course there are lists that have a Performance Floor greater than Zero. Didn't think to represent that.

37 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

The correct answer to skill floor is definitely understanding 1: Skill floor means skill barrier-to-entry.

I was going to say this same thing with the same phrasing. In my mind I always replace floor with barrier to entry. That puts me solidly at option #1.

7 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

I disagree with the chart. I think this is a better representation:

Edit: Of course there are lists that have a Performance Floor greater than Zero. Didn't think to represent that.

That‘s awesome, thanks!

I think the red line should continue along the x axis as soon as it intersects the performance floor to represent that you can‘t have lower performance?

Anyway, maybe we can refer to this in the future in case of confusion.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/878359-overwatch/75428722

Someone polled overwatch players. Seems like the answer is people are split down the middle on what high/low skill mean.

Understanding 2. High floor means it is easy to pick up and carries the unskilled.

14 minutes ago, Kaptin Krunch said:

Understanding 2. Low floor means it is easy to pick up and carries the unskilled.

Wait, that‘s nr1!

4 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Wait, that‘s nr1!

Typo, edited. I meant to say High floor.

I don't think skill ceiling's a point of contention. I don't believe anyone disagrees that it's how well a list performs when played perfectly.

Skill floor is the point of contention and I think the answer to it depends on how we define a player with zero skill.

Is an X-Wing player with no skill...

• ...a player who can't play the game at all?
• ...a player who knows the rules and is attempting to win but who always makes the worst possible decisions? They're not going to deliberately sabotage themselves (they won't fly off the board on purpose) but they'll always pick the worst target, spend their tokens at the worst times and misjudge their opponent's maneuvers.

If it's the first then the skill floor is the minimum level of skill required to have any chance at winning. If it's the second then the skill floor is the performance of a player with zero skill.

2 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

Yes. But the list is always the same.

Think about it that way: the first understanding asks about the floor „given my true skill AND this list, what can I expect as minimum?“

The second asks „given this list, what can I expect as minimum?“

And this is following the way we use ceiling, where we all agree and which asks „given this list, what can I expect as maximum?“

So basically, we always assume a perfectly skilled player for maximum, but for minimum, the different views depend on whether YOU are playing it, (and what level) or your kid sister might be playing it. (at what level)

What's happening?

The issue with these is that they attempt to conflate two different things, a list's raw potential and the impact a player's skill has on it, all wrapped up in the idea of a floor and ceiling. It doesn't help that people at times use both criteria as being definitive during a single discussion.

If one must pick, I prefer using the definition whereby the list is evaluated and where you can consider the player's skill as a force multiplier. Therefore, to me, a low floor is a list that can be horrifically bad, while a high floor means it'll always be at least middling, whereas a low ceiling means there's a hard cap as to what it can achieve and a high ceiling means there is not.

However, since the usage of the words is confusing as it is, I doubt we can get people to "agree" on one way or the other. Short of thinking up completely new words to explain the concepts, that is.

Here's what I think:

The skill floor is the skills neccesary to just sit down and actually play in a tournament without help, regardless of performance. I know a few people who haven't crossed this yet. Examples of what these people do is not remember triggers, go a whole game without using some of their upgrade cards because they can't build their own list and had someone build it for them, and ask their opponent basic rules like how many dice they get to roll and how many hits their ships have left.

Skill ceiling is when you reach that point where you lose a game and realize that there was literally nothing you could've done to win. You lost before the game started. It's easy to say this happened to you - I've only actually seen it truly happen once or twice. There's always an opportunity to git gudder. And it doesn't count if you purposely built "jank". I'm sorry, but if the devs want us to fly Ghost/Fenn, we fly Ghost/Fenn. Worlds showed us that there's more than one list that can win if you're right around the skill ceiling.

I'm hopeful for 2.0 because the floor is lowering, with more things being self-explanatory with the card wording being simpler, and then the ceiling is raising becuase there's more luck, more things to think about like mobile arcs and bullseye arcs and no slop in barrel rolls and few perfect-information triggers.

52 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

So basically, we always assume a perfectly skilled player for maximum, but for minimum, the different views depend on whether YOU are playing it, (and what level) or your kid sister might be playing it. (at what level)

Not quite. Regarding performance floor and ceiling (understanding 2, the now less popular one) it is interesting to consider where you start with a list assumin no skill, and where you can end up assuming perfect skill.

That informs whether putting it on the table without practice is already good, and whether practice is worth it. At least that‘s one part I‘m interested in

How about?

The skill floor is how difficult it is to make a non-poor/non-bad/non-awful/ decision no matter what your opponent does.

In my terminology a low skill floor is very easy to make a non-bad decision. 360 degree arc is low skill floor. A front arc and a rear aux arc is a middle skill floor. A ship with only a Bullseye arc out of the front is a high skill floor.

The skill ceiling is how much benefit can be derived from making the optimal or "best" decision even when your opponent makes their optimal decision.

Skill floor = the minimum competency a list will always have.

Skill ceiling = the maximum competency a list can have.

If we're rating lists on a 0-100 scale, a high floored list may be 60-100, or it may be 60-70. A low floored listed may be 0-10 or may be 0-100. What this means is that if a total scrub is going to play the list, what's the worst he can do with the list? Often times, high skill floor lists are also low ceiling lists, as is the case when its 60-70. As such, the individual skill a player has ends up having a much lower outcome on the overall success of the list. In the days of Fat Han on Fat Han, what each individual player did really didn't matter, if Han had a shot, Han had the same shot back. Therefore, Fat Han had a very narrow band of skill, but since it was high floored, it still ended up with a high ceiling, perhaps a 70-80 list.

A high ceiling list are the type of lists that a players skill is very apparent. Whisper might be the best pilot in the game with her 4 dice primary, FCS, cloaking, double actions, repositioning, etc. But only in the hands of a skillful player. Often times, a high ceiling goes along with a low floor, but as we stated above, that is not a requirement.