I've been a big user of Metawing & Listjuggler. On balance, though, I think it's better for the health of the game of information flows less freely and I'm not too sad to see them go.

7 minutes ago, SOTL said:

I've been a big user of Metawing & Listjuggler. On balance, though, I think it's better for the health of the game of information flows less freely and I'm not too sad to see them go.

Yeah, I‘m wondering about that.

On one hand, we will probably not get to see the data used for point corrections. This could lead to the worst conspiracy and complaints threads yet. Having our own data collection could really help there.

On the other hand, nobody listened anyway. There are plenty of examples, from the ‚Dominance of jumpmasters‘ (which was PalpAces for a long timeframe) to the OP-ness of Harpoons (which was OP-ness of Nym and Miranda).

Personally I‘m very bummed. But you might be right.

First, thanks for all the hard work that has been put into these community resources.

The effects!

Not having this data will make it harder to identify broken combos, players will still come up with them but it will be much harder for other players to get to know about them. This does mean that they will be played by less players - which is good, but on the other hand if only a small number of players catch onto it they will ride that tide for longer as it will go largely unnoticed. It will only be when major events start to be dominated by such lists that FFG will raise an eyebrow and start thinking that it might be a problem. Also since players from other areas will not be aware of the broken combo's for a longer period of time they will not practice against it, which then adds to the power level at tournaments of such combo's.

While Metawing & Listjuggler did contribute to the spread of broken combo's, they also warned us about them so we could practice for them and it quickly raised awareness to FFG which could occasionally respond quickly to solve this.

As an example of this think back to January this year in Cardiff - I was there, 7 of the top 8 lists were the same list from a 132 player regional. Would this have been globally highlighted that week without listjuggler? Would FFG have reacted so quickly without that resource?

The loss of these resources will drastically reduce the data on which FFG can make point cost changes or any other balance changes that will be needed down the line. It is a loss to the community and the game as a whole to not have these resources in 2.0.

1 hour ago, SOTL said:

I've been a big user of Metawing & Listjuggler. On balance, though, I think it's better for the health of the game of information flows less freely and I'm not too sad to see them go.

I'd much rather have players be able to easily get an idea of what the competitive metagame looks like and make informed decisions as a result. I can't see how information flowing less freely improves things for anyone in the long term.

28 minutes ago, Jarval said:

I'd much rather have players be able to easily get an idea of what the competitive metagame looks like and make informed decisions as a result. I can't see how information flowing less freely improves things for anyone in the long term.

It will also put people that come from smaller metas but travel to the occasional big tournament at a big disadvantage IMO, as the local brain power and number of games just won't be there to catch on most power combos in time.

49 minutes ago, Jarval said:

I'd much rather have players be able to easily get an idea of what the competitive metagame looks like and make informed decisions as a result. I can't see how information flowing less freely improves things for anyone in the long term.

Because it prevents the development of a singular 'the competitive metagame', it becomes more about isolated islands and local metagames and local knowledge. It's more parochial, but it should help the overall longevity of the game.

Thanks for all your work, @sozin! Enjoy your freedom ?

In the meantime... I, for one, welcome our new 10,000 local metas. Every time you sit down in tournament or league against a new list, you’ll have to ask yourself: “is this meta, or just jank?”

18 minutes ago, SOTL said:

Because it prevents the development of a singular 'the competitive metagame', it becomes more about isolated islands and local metagames and local knowledge. It's more parochial, but it should help the overall longevity of the game.

Unless people just watch what wins bug tournaments and still gravitate toward that. Even without list juggler, it's hard to imagine System Open and Nationals top lists for example staying hidden.

Just now, LordBlades said:

Unless people just watch what wins bug tournaments and still gravitate toward that. Even without list juggler, it's hard to imagine System Open and Nationals top lists for example staying hidden.

It won't, but it'll be a lot slower to spread, and patchier when it does so.

1 hour ago, SOTL said:

Because it prevents the development of a singular 'the competitive metagame', it becomes more about isolated islands and local metagames and local knowledge. It's more parochial, but it should help the overall longevity of the game.

There's a massive difference between what gets played on Wednesday nights at my FLGS, and what people play at Nationals or a System Open. Those local metagames/knowledge already exist in anything but the most hardcore competitive local gaming groups, but it's still fantastically useful to know what common archetypes were at Regionals in the run up to a big event. I genuinely don't see how List Juggler no longer existing will help the longevity of the game, particularly with FFG now having the tools to rebalance things in a much more granular and proactive way if needed.

1 minute ago, Jarval said:

There's a massive difference between what gets played on Wednesday nights at my FLGS, and what people play at Nationals or a System Open. 

That's nice, but it's not the experience everywhere.

2 minutes ago, SOTL said:

That's nice, but it's not the experience everywhere.

But equally, I don't think that everyone is playing hyper-competitive lists everywhere either. Those who want to research and play top tier lists will still do so, the loss of List Juggler will just make it harder to track what the trends in the game as a whole at a competitive level are like.

46 minutes ago, Jarval said:

But equally, I don't think that everyone is playing hyper-competitive lists everywhere either. Those who want to research and play top tier lists will still do so, the loss of List Juggler will just make it harder to track what the trends in the game as a whole at a competitive level are like.

Indeed. There will be plenty of places - including, I would not be surprised to see, this forum - where one will easily be able to find the cut-making lists of any fairly major tournament. But being able to 'slice and dice' them to see recurrences of specific pilot, or combinations of ships, or the same combination on different pilots of the same chassis, really needs a smart, easily updatable database.

This is sad news - it's too bad FFG couldn't/wouldn't make this work. I used Listjuggler in a somewhat backwards way - I'd build a list I thought would be fun and then checked to see how popular it was. The saddest part of this loss is that it was a passion project for Sozin. Passion should be rewarded with praise, not apathy.

Sozin, thank you for your work and drive. It's much appreciated.

Thanks everyone, I should have turned this off much sooner, so much luv! ;-P

The discussion above between SOTL and GreenDragoon is really interesting -- I've long wondered if one of the costs of extreme transparency was group-think. There is something cool about having 10,000 unique metas and seeing lists for the first time at the table ("Jank or meta??"!

On the contra-wise, I'd like to think that the data collection effort led to (albeit slow) change in the game's design via FAQ, and that, with 2.0's feature of dynamically point costs, the value of a big public dataset should presumably increase.

1 hour ago, Jarval said:

Those who want to research and play top tier lists will still do so, the loss of List Juggler will just make it harder to track what the trends in the game as a whole at a competitive level are like.

Like, um, that's great.

This is supposed to be an experiential game, not a math-based, data-base laden exercise in probabilities and weighed scores.

Less trends is more diversity. More diversity is less perfect lists. Less perfect lists is less broken combo exploitation.

Unless you are a WAAC player, it only makes the game better.

It's a freaking game. Nobody's changing the world by winning the championship.

4 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

On one hand, we will probably not get to see the data used for point corrections. This could lead to the worst conspiracy and complaints threads yet. Having our own data collection could really help there.

I, for one, will be speculating in the popular market commodities: Tin Foil and Black Helicopter Paint. I plan on making a fortune.

23 minutes ago, sozin said:

The discussion above between SOTL and GreenDragoon is really interesting -- I've long wondered if one of the costs of extreme transparency was group-think. There is something cool about having 10,000 unique metas and seeing lists for the first time at the table ("Jank or meta??"!

On the contra-wise, I'd like to think that the data collection effort led to (albeit slow) change in the game's design via FAQ, and that, with 2.0's feature of dynamically point costs, the value of a big public dataset should presumably increase.

Sadly, I think so.

I can't help but wonder if FFG is trying to pull all this data back behind the curtain on purpose for the health of the meta.

It's a hobby. It's supposed to be recreational. You (as a player) shouldn't be mathing it out before hand.

The point of fishing is to put your your pole in the water and kill some time. Not do a complete sonar scan of the lake and calculate the bite-per-minute and pounds-caught-per-worm-used statistics.

Uncertainty and trial-and-error will create a better game experience.

I doubt stifling that information flow is something FFG are doing on purpose, but I think it's something they've got minimal appetite for going out of their way to support (which tbh is their approach to everything the community does). It's just not in their corporate mindset.

I think there will be a community member who steps up to fill the gap. Though the automatic list upload feed is going to be gone the community desire to see successful lists compiled in one place will mean somebody sets up a website that just does it the hard way. It'll have a lot less of the smaller tournaments bothering to enter results, but I expect Store/Regional/Nats etc would retain a pretty strong hit rate.

11 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Like, um, that's great.

This is supposed to be an experiential game, not a math-based, data-base laden exercise in probabilities and weighed scores.

Less trends is more diversity. More diversity is less perfect lists. Less perfect lists is less broken combo exploitation.

Unless you are a WAAC player, it only makes the game better.

It's a freaking game. Nobody's changing the world by winning the championship.

I feel there's a really marked divide between what sort of stuff you see flown at an FLGS night or local quarterly kit tournament to what gets flown at Regionals/Nationals/System Opens. Having a record of those trends at higher levels doesn't make them happen (competitive players will quite rapidly figure out what the most points efficient combinations are), but it does make it easier to spot what those trends are and go into a big event with a reasonable idea of what the high-level competitive metagame looks like.

I genuinely don't see how that's a problem, or why it should impact what people are flying outside of those big events. Pretending that at least a significant minority of people aren't going to be list building and playing to win at big events is missing the mark of what those players are looking for from that event.

And it's entirely possible that some of us weirdos enjoy looking at the stats around the game in the same way that you get them for sporting events. ?

22 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

It's a hobby. It's supposed to be recreational. You (as a player) shouldn't be mathing it out before hand.

The point of fishing is to put your your pole in the water and kill some time. Not do a complete sonar scan of the lake and calculate the bite-per-minute and pounds-caught-per-worm-used statistics.

Since it's a hobby you're supposed to do whatever makes it fun for you IMO. For some, mathing it out if fun.

Same for fishing. Most guys I know that are serious about fishing don't just show up with a simple pole and a length of string. They read up on fishing, learning where and when to catch certain fish and they also invest in a ton of specialized gear so they can fish better.

10 minutes ago, LordBlades said:

Since it's a hobby you're supposed to do whatever makes it fun for you IMO. For some, mathing it out if fun.

Well, you can still do that. You're just going to have to do it on your own.

20 minutes ago, Jarval said:

what the high-level competitive metagame looks like.

I genuinely don't see how that's a problem, or why it should impact what people are flying outside of those big events. Pretending that at least a significant minority of people aren't going to be list building and playing to win at big events is missing the mark of what those players are looking for from that event.?

The problem and the impact is that FFG spends all it's time fussing around with that tiny little bit of the game.

Meanwhile, Epic, Campaign, Narrative, and Objective-based play see no official attention at all.

Anything that slows down the identification, isolation, and over-use of perfect list-builds is for the best, IMHO.

wow, @sozin it's sad to hear, but I'm also happy that you've got so many new positive things going on in your life (including feeding that addiction!). As a newer player, I just want you know that your analysis and website have been massively helpful in squadbuilding and learning what "works" together and what doesn't. Thanks so much for all of your time, energy and passion that went into the project! Enjoy your freedom,sir!

59 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Like, um, that's great.

This is supposed to be an experiential game, not a math-based, data-base laden exercise in probabilities and weighed scores.

Less trends is more diversity. More diversity is less perfect lists. Less perfect lists is less broken combo exploitation.

Unless you are a WAAC player, it only makes the game better.

It's a freaking game. Nobody's changing the world by winning the championship.

So, if someone else enjoys the game in a way different then you, they're a WAAC?

Wow, for someone who tries to get more respect for how you play the game, your lack of respect for others is quite hypocritical.

Friends, may I please ask, not to devolve this thread into a ****-show? Darth's got some valid points, and I agree with the counterpoints too, would love to keep things constructive. I'm off to work for the day, good luck :-)