10 hours ago, Icelom said:

Man your ego... its just to big.

You better go off the grid before ffg hacks into your files to steal all your work.

I think MJ is safe, FFG is Jacking Out after all

As for MJ well I don't know how the app worked but I will say it was almost like his 1st edition mod of adjusting costs for everything. I mean I don't know if the FFG app would support a community set cost format on that app. But the app is not out yet and it will take some time before we figure out what "formats" we can do with it.

As for why FFG doesn't hire him he said it himself, it is not a fit. FFG right now has plenty of paid manpower (even more so for the previously aforementioned reasons). MJ just got a PHd so I am going to assume that there is some student debt behind it so he needs to chase those dollars first and foremost. FFG is not in a position to well give the necessary salary (or at least not one Asmodee would approve of). The table top game industry isn't that big. Heck even with X-wing unseating Wh40K it didn't make as much news as Fortenight overtaking PUBG. Then again the videogame industry these days are notoriously known to stiff employees as publishers close down studios.

Now on to the FFG ap. AS MJ said his model was mostly proactive taking a look at dials and stats and looking at probability and making a calculation on how good can it be expected to be done. I doubt FFG will be as proactive as that. If I were to make a prediction, FFG will be looking at data, what doesn't get picked at all during tournaments will likely start to see a 1 point discount until it pops up in a regional some where. What is making not just the cut but the top 4 everywhere will likely get an increase it the point cost once the season is over. FFG is likely going to be reactive in the costing corrections and not proactive, which could make it seem like they want players to buy the new wave since it will have a lot of undercosted stuff and the last wave would just have been hit with the nerf bat with point increase and upgrade slot adjustments. However FFG is also putting a lot of value on the models as they can be played without the cardboard, hence the expansion pack increase. Players no longer need to have 2 favorite factions (or get one of every expansion released) to make their list. They just need the models/dials and base and they could make what ever list. If you have eight 2.0 TIE Fighters then there is no TIE Swarm list you cannot make past, present and for as long as 2.0's future lasts.

So the game industry is fun, but it isn't the place to go work if you need a buck, and even though FFG is good at making money in that industry, it isn't something that is making the Wall Street Journal.

4 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

counting cards in poker is mathematically determining the probability. you are attempting to gain knowledge the other players lack in order to gain advantage.

The point of determining strengths or weaknesses of game components is to know which has the greatest probability of winning. that knowledge is used to select only the strongest components for play, in the case of my 2nd analogy a fighting game character. if you only played jumpmasters in their heyday because you knew that they had superior probability of winning, you were doing exactly what i described. many people used mathwing to argue that jumpmasters were op, and this contributed to their popularity.

loading dice is sometimes trying to rig the probability in your favor, what jumpmaster players were doing in the OP Toilet era. but more commonly its done in a game where players share dice. the cheaters intention is to have knowledge of probability the opponent lacks. basically what mathwing is aimed to achieve.

as to buying a script to help you aim, slightly more complex analogy but still spot on. In a first person shooter Aim is one of the defining aspects of play, and an aim-bot assists you in gaining an advantage. Basically X-wing is a game about decision making, not reflexes or timing. what to fly, where to go, when to use what. by researching what is most likely to win and allowing the research to make your decisions for you, you are essentially following a script. many posts on this very forum discuss specific lists using specific placements to maximize the probability of an opponents defeat.

when done in x-wing none of these things are exactly cheating, but they are all at odds with what the game is. if my janky squad of cutthroat raiders gets blown up by your No nonsense ace, it should be because we're having fun and you outflew me. Not because you spent 2 hours on the internet researching math

There's so much wrong with this it's hard to know where to start. I'm not even sure what you mean by counting cards in poker but, if it means what I think it means, that's part of the basic skills in poker. You're not using knowledge others don't have, you're paying more attention than they are, which is part of the skill of the game. They have the same access to the knowledge you do, it's hardly the fault of the player using that knowledge that others refuse to use it. There's a massive difference between cheating (which is what loading your dice and using an aimbot are) and having a deeper understanding of the game than someone else (which is what MathWing attempts to do). I really have no idea how you can think the two are even slightly comparable. MathWing didn't make Jumpmaster's OP - they always were. The existence or otherwise of a mathematical model telling you what is and isn't good doesn't change the fact something is OP. Jumpmasters being broken beyond belief is what made them popular, not a system that can quantify just how broken they were.

You don't get to decide what the game is, either. For some it's shoving X-Wings and TIE Fighters at each other making pew-pew noises and rolling some funny-shaped dice. For others it's serious business and no mercy should be shown to a weaker opponent. Most fall somewhere in the middle but I would guess the majority of players would acknowledge that understanding the strengths and weaknesses of ships and lists is part of the game and having a better understanding of that makes you a better player. According to you that's akin to cheating.

Do you feel the same way about people who test lists to find the best one? Is somebody who practices over and over, refining their list until they believe it's as good as it can be doing something at odds with the game?

MJ's work, from what I've seen, is very in depth and insightful.

But I can't help but feel that not having formula's around for balance is a good thing. People will always eventually suss out a meta, but the more chance there is that people can go with what they like and make the most of that, the better.

You can probably tell I'm not one for maths and much prefer a gut feel.

If the details had been used at a design level and out of our sight it could have been extremely useful and saved a lot of time/energy/rage from a lot of people.

Hopefully you can go on to use it for something. Your own game? Another company? It might not be my bag, but it would be a shame for it to go to waste.

The game is better off without you.

32 minutes ago, SOTL said:

The game is better off without you.

Why?

While I enjoyed the concept of mathwing, I did not enjoy the devout and strict adherence some took to the posted results. When a 0.04% difference between ships based on only one criteria set of data in a vacuum is the difference between someone playing a ship or calling it garbage, they've taken things too far.

With less people parroting ships to be doa, the meta should be slightly more diverse overall, at least through a pre-release store champ season. Beyond that, tournament results will tune the meta until the next release.

But I remain hopeful that FFG will find methods to narrow in on equitable balance between ships on release, and with 2.0 allowing app based corrections there is less they can screw up to necessitate a re-release with fixes (allowing more new ship releases).

Also, with the veteran card only packs on the horizon, card only fix packs are that much closer to reality.

1 minute ago, ViscerothSWG said:

When  a 0.04% difference between ships based on only one criteria set of data in a vacuum is the difference between someone playing a ship or calling it garbage, they've taken things too far.

That sounds like a very strong straw man. I‘ve never seen this happen. Do you have an example?

2 minutes ago, ViscerothSWG said:

W  ith  less people parroting ships to be doa

How many people declaring ships as doa were using mathwing to do so?

1 hour ago, GreenDragoon said:

Why?

Mathwing was outdated, out of touch and misleading. That it still existed, and that people still referred to it as being anything other than a joke, was to the detriment of being able to have actual informed discussions about power level.

Just now, GreenDragoon said:

That sounds like a very strong straw man. I‘ve never seen this happen. Do you have an example?

How many people declaring ships as doa were using mathwing to do so?

The b-wing to X-Wing was a 0.04% difference. The b-wing was acceptable but the X-Wing was unplayable. It's a old thread, happy forum searching.

How many people? Can't give real numbers. Have seen many occasions where someone asks for help to flesh out their list and the advice turns into copy paste of the meta version to the exclusion of all else because nothing else is worth using. That's what I'm refering to, for the most part... Not a literal parrot.

That's pretty normal.

People don't want to be at a disadvantage using a weak list and they don't have the patience, methodology or (most usually) time to hammer out a list of their own. Especially when experimenting means buying more ships they might not use.

Therefore they copy the top build.

It's just how these things go.

2 hours ago, SOTL said:

The game is better off without you.

Dude...

12 minutes ago, ViscerothSWG said:

The  b-wing to X-Wing was a 0.04% difference. The b-wing was acceptable but the X-Wing was unplayable. It's a  old thread, happy forum searching.  

Fair enough, but that‘s years ago. I can‘t remember it in more recent years.

13 minutes ago, ViscerothSWG said:

How  many people? Can't give real numbers. Have    seen many occasions where someone asks for help to flesh out their list and the advice turns int  o copy paste of the meta version to the exclusion of all else because nothing else is w  orth using. That's what I'm refering to, for th   e  most part... Not a literal parrot.   

The reason I asked such a loaded question is this: do you expect this to change without the newest mathwing by @MajorJuggler ? The issue you mention is almost entirely unrelated to the jousting efficiency that MJ calculated, but very much related to the use of listjuggler and metawing - both have nothing to do with mathwing.

17 minutes ago, SOTL said:

Mathwing  was outdated, out of touch and misleading.

Metawing is misleading a huge amount of people, too. That doesn‘t mean that metawing is bad for the game (well actually someone might argue for that) and neither is mathwing.

The jousting efficiencies were just that - who is correct when deciding to joust?

these tools - like metawing - are often misused, but that‘s the problem of the user, not the creator and others who understand when and where these tools are valuable.

5 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

The jousting efficiencies were just that - who is correct when deciding to joust?

But that's kind of the point, because the answer is almost always 'nobody' as there was a better way of approaching the engagement than a blunt joust. Although I'm sure it was more appropriate at the point of inception Mathwing produced a mathematical answer to a question that nobody was asking any more. Pretty much the definition of good X-Wing play is the extent to which you're able to make Mathwing irrelevant.

Metawing has it's own issues but at least it's reporting the outcome from actual games that people actually played, rather than hypothetical outcomes from games that nobody was playing in the way they were being simulated.

3 minutes ago, SOTL said:

But  that's kind of the point, because the answer is almost always 'nobody' as there was a better way of approaching the engagement than a blunt joust. Although I'm sure it was more appropriate at the point of inception Mathwing produced a mathematical answer  to a question that nobody was asking any more. Pretty much the definition of good X-Wing play is the extent to which you'r  e able to make Mathwing irrelevant. 

Three similar points:

1. The fact that good X-Wing should make Mathwing irrelevant (I agree here) implies that the jousting still exists. And I‘d wager that a majority of players are not what you consider to be good, which makes Mathwing useful for them.

2. If many of the games in metawing are based on not-good players who infact do joust, then the dataset is also inherently flawed. If the assumption is true, then the metawing data is only true with jousts. Which makes Mathwing, again, useful.

3. This all hinges on the question of how many games see a joust. I‘d wager most games do, but the only data we have for that are battle reports, streamed games and vassal replays. Anecdotally they include a huge amount of jousts.

7 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Three similar points:

1. The fact that good X-Wing should make Mathwing irrelevant (I agree here) implies that the jousting still exists. And I‘d wager that a majority of players are not what you consider to be good, which makes Mathwing useful for them.

2. If many of the games in metawing are based on not-good players who infact do joust, then the dataset is also inherently flawed. If the assumption is true, then the metawing data is only true with jousts. Which makes Mathwing, again, useful.

3. This all hinges on the question of how many games see a joust. I‘d wager most games do, but the only data we have for that are battle reports, streamed games and vassal replays. Anecdotally they include a huge amount of jousts.

I don't disagree in principle but...

1. People were taking results that saw of what was winning at big events, where good players weren't jousting, and incorrectly inferring/expecting that it tied to a Mathwing result. The inverse of this, therefore, was that a good Mathwing result would carry through to the top tables. This wasn't Mathwing's fault, per se, but a fault of the people who didn't understand how limited Mathwing was in it's ability to inform top level play. It's not really been helped by MJ's insistence that he and Mathwing are the saviour that competitive X-Wing needs.

2. Metawing is weighted towards results from the top end of tournaments and most only report the squads that made Top-8 cuts, so it's weighted towards players who are less likely to have jousted. You clearly can't say that nobody in Metawing data did a dumb joust, but you can say that probably far fewer people jousted than the average (and certainly far fewer than the 100% that Mathwing jousts). Don't forget as well, that you may be classing a 'joust' you see in a battle report that was actually about range control or PS priority, which a single 'jousting value' from Mathwing can't replicate.

3. Agreed. Mathwing is relatively good at telling you who will win between two bad players who play badly.

3 hours ago, SDCC said:

But I can't help but feel that not having formula's around for balance is a good thing. People will always eventually suss out a meta, but the more chance there is that people can go with what they like and make the most of that, the better.

You can probably tell I'm not one for maths and much prefer a gut feel.

The mathematical fundaments behind the game are obscure to a majority of the player base.
What you are saying there is that it is better to keep those fundamentals obscure in the name of fun or variety.

That is as flawed as the Security through obscurity anti-principle in the world of cryptography.

That leads to those with the knowledge of those fundamentals to play at advantage against those without it.
At the beginning Expose was a super popular card. Many equipped it because it let you roll one more die!
Then someone explained how bad it was mathematically, and everyone stopped using it.
If that person (or some other) had not explained why those 4 points were such a waste, we would have had lots of people playing at a disadvantage for years against those with the knowledge that it was worthless.

It's like encouraging a hermetic game, where those who know win, and those who don't lose.

3 hours ago, SOTL said:

The game is better off without you.

1 minute ago, SOTL said:

I don't disagree in principle but...

1. People were taking results that saw of what was winning at big events, where good players weren't jousting, and incorrectly inferring/expecting that it tied to a Mathwing result. The inverse of this, therefore, was that a good Mathwing result would carry through to the top tables. This wasn't Mathwing's fault, per se, but a fault of the people who didn't understand how limited Mathwing was in it's ability to inform top level play. It's not really been helped by MJ's insistence that he and Mathwing are the saviour that competitive X-Wing needs.

2. Metawing is weighted towards results from the top end of tournaments and most only report the squads that made Top-8 cuts, so it's weighted towards players who are less likely to have jousted. You clearly can't say that nobody in Metawing data did a dumb joust, but you can say that probably far fewer people jousted than the average (and certainly far fewer than the 100% that Mathwing jousts). Don't forget as well, that you may be classing a 'joust' you see in a battle report that was actually about range control or PS priority, which a single 'jousting value' from Mathwing can't replicate.

3. Agreed. Mathwing is relatively good at telling you who will win between two bad players who play badly.

You sir, are correct.

What is this balancing actually worth to them though? I'm not sure the price tag of an adequate model produced through some skilled work is worth the return. Would it actually increase their sales? By how much? Does knowing they cut down on iteration time with a good starting point make you excited to go buy a Lando's Millennium Falcon? My guess is no. The vast majority of X-wing players are not really going to care, and the competitive ones are going to sort out better cost values by simply using the *full* model compared to a simulation.

So which one is it? Is FFG wrong? Are they undervaluing your contribution? Or is your service overpriced?

24 minutes ago, SOTL said:

I don't disagree in principle but... 

I see your points. There's nothing to add to 1 and 3 (except maybe 3, that this does make Mathwing valuable for a huge amount of people. Knowing when to avoid the joust could be another step to getting better).

As for point 2: we've discussed the shortcomings (and huge advantages!) of metawing before. The reason I brought it up was simply as an example for another tool where the constraints need to be understood. Another example could have been dice calculators which can inform your choice of action and token spending, or to gauge matchups to some degree. Calculators can tell you what damage you can expect. Mathwing can tell you whether the ideal jousting situation is worth it or not, which actions to take, and whether range boni change the result. Such jousting situations can occur during a game, too, and inform your decision. That's it. And for that it's awesome.

11 hours ago, LordBlades said:

Your analogies are flawed. How on Earth is understanding how a game works equal to cheating?

(1) Counting cards isn't cheating. Even if blackjack pit bosses would like you to believe it is. (2) Counting cards isn't done in poker, except in the most basic way in community-card games (e.g., I have 8 cards to hit my straight, and I've seen six cards of 52, so I'll hit my straight 17.4% of the time) or memorizing the cards that have been folded in stud games (i.e., two people folded door-card Queens, so I'm not going to get a third one for myself).

10 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

counting cards in poker is mathematically determining the probability. you are attempting to gain knowledge the other players lack in order to gain advantage.  

No. All players have the knowledge. Skilled players are simply deriving probabilities from the knowledge available to all the players. And, beyond that, skilled players are (1) comparing those probabilities constantly to the size of the pot, both currently and projected into the future, and (2) manipulating the pot size via skillful betting to increase their own pot equity. And, finally, the most skillful players are doing all of this while paying attention to what you're doing, and feeding that information back into the loop.

Anyway, just a bit of education from a degenerate gambler. Carry on.

3 hours ago, SOTL said:

The game is better off without you.

Haters gonna hate.

MathWing 2.0 is open to peer review. If you don't like the theory, then the scientific approach is poke holes at it, comparing the theory's predictions vs the empirically observed results. Or you can just take a rhetorical approach, say the whole MathWing thing is pointless, and tiptoe around making personal attacks everytime you jump into a related conversation.

The former approach is how the scientific community improves things and makes them better. The latter approach is barely worth the time of this response.

11 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

(1) Counting cards isn't cheating. Even if blackjack pit bosses would like you to believe it is. (2) Counting cards isn't done in poker, except in the most basic way in community-card games (e.g., I have 8 cards to hit my straight, and I've seen six cards of 52, so I'll hit my straight 17.4% of the time) or memorizing the cards that have been folded in stud games (i.e., two people folded door-card Queens, so I'm not going to get a third one for myself).

I was answering more to the weighted dice and aimbot parts, looks like I forgot to take the counting cards part out of the quote

@MajorJuggler right now:

On a related note, I've added the third-ever person to my ignore list.