6 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

It's not unpopular, it's just incorrect. All increasing variance does is make it more possible to lose with good tactics and win with bad tactics and mistakes.

That’s not how bell curves work? You’ll lose sometimes with good tactics, but also sometimes you’ll win Even Harder.

Edit: winning harder is not inconsequential. If you eliminate a ship early, it has a compounded effect. If you do that with good positioning, it strongly reduces burden of execution in the mid and late game.

2 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

It's not unpopular, it's just incorrect. All increasing variance does is make it more possible to lose with good tactics and win with bad tactics and mistakes.

So does more passives??? Oh no, you caught me at r1, let me spend my 3 force to get away scot free. I had to boost barrel roll to get out of your arc, it’s a good thing my pilot ability says I’m actually skilled for doing this.

And honestly, those moments when your dice fail, as frustrating as they can be, are part of what makes the game interesting.

2 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

It's not unpopular, it's just incorrect. All increasing variance does is make it more possible to lose with good tactics and win with bad tactics and mistakes.

Except that not everything rides on a single roll. If your dice go badly, you can improvise and react. That's adding another skillset to the game - trying to have a Plan B in case Plan A fails. E.g. setting up a killbox is one thing, setting up a killbox that doesn't leave your ships overexposed if the enemy ace lives is harder.

Of course you can get games where your dice blank over and over and nothing works, but genuine cases of that are very rare.

9 minutes ago, PaulRuddSays said:

That’s not how bell curves work? You’ll lose sometimes with good tactics, but also sometimes you’ll win Even Harder.

If you have the better tactics, winning even harder doesn't help much (especially in a non-tournament situation).

With zero variance (assumign equal lists, which is a dubious assumption to be fair, though, with equal lists, the variance of a single die roll at the start of the game makes the single biggest difference to how likely you are to win...), there are two options: you outplay your opponent and win, or your opponent outplays you and you lose.

With any amount of variance there are four options: Outplay and win, outplay and lose, be outplayed and win, be outplayed and lose.

Two of those options reduce the impact of skill on the game.

6 minutes ago, Mattman7306 said:

So does more passives??? Oh no, you caught me at r1, let me spend my 3 force to get away scot free. I had to boost barrel roll to get out of your arc, it’s a good thing my pilot ability says I’m actually skilled for doing this.

And honestly, those moments when your dice fail, as frustrating as they can be, are part of what makes the game interesting.

This argument isn't about skill and risk mitigation, it's an argument about the game having options which reduce the impact of skill in it. ANd that's not incorrect, but variance makes that worse, not better. If you manage to catch Soontir at range 1 (with a block, say, or with a move that he thought he could boost roll out of but failed to), with target lock and focus, and you blank out, reroll, and blank out, variance has made nothing of your skill.

4 minutes ago, Dasharr said:

Except that not everything rides on a single roll. If your dice go badly, you can improvise and react. That's adding another skillset to the game - trying to have a Plan B in case Plan A fails. E.g. setting up a killbox is one thing, setting up a killbox that doesn't leave your ships overexposed if the enemy ace lives is harder.

Of course you can get games where your dice blank over and over and nothing works, but genuine cases of that are very rare.

Except not all rolls are equal. The single roll that lucks into killing one of your ships that statistically would have survived average rolls (or conversely, fails to kill one of theirs that average rolls would have killed) makes way more difference than any other roll. Losing your Soontir in the opening engagement at range 3 makes way more difference than losing him at the bottom of round 10 when you have a significant advantage in ship trades.

In short, making games dicier doesn't make them skillier, and I really don't understand the assertion that it does.

19 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

ANd  that's not incorrect, but variance makes that worse, not bett  er  .

I agree if the alternative is action based. Not really if the alternative to more variance is passive mods.

It's why I think rerolls in extreme events (natties, blanks) are good, eg heroic or l337

Just now, GreenDragoon said:

I agree if the alternative is action based. Not really if the alternative to more variance is passive mods.

It's why I think rerolls in extreme events (natties, blanks) are good, eg heroic or l337

I'm kind of on the fence on passive mods. They're really annoying when only one side gets them. They're fine when both sides do.

That imbalance is about to become painfully stark when Jedi lists start being everywhere.

16 hours ago, Koing907 said:

I liked 1.0 better than 2.0.

I am so glad 1.0 is dead, it was a dumpster fire of NPE of epic proportions.

Ion Turret + Vet Turret Gunner is waaaay too cheap...

Losing games makes X-Wing fun.

19 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

I agree if the alternative is action based. Not really if the alternative to more variance is passive mods.

It's why I think rerolls in extreme events (natties, blanks) are good, eg heroic or l337

Thinking about it, I'm mostly OK with passive mods as long as they're limited in some way - either by charges (Force, but I don't think Force has got it quite right, I'd prefer to see larger effects with non-regenerating charges, rather than small always-on effects to qualify for this), by requiring specific results (i.e. Heroic), or by positioning (i.e. Predator).

Alsways-on strong effects are the worst kind of passives.

To serve the ego of the one holding it, only does the opinion exist.

In the words of George Takei... oh, myyyyy. Opened up a can of worms, you did.

Having only recently started reading these forums, though being a player for a while, I have three opinions that are guaranteed to be unpopular:

1) I have actually never had an issue with the Squad Builder app. It serves the purpose for which it's intended, and has done a pretty good job of enabling the game to proceed without the endless FAQs that completely changed a ship as originally printed or rewrote the text on overpowered cards.

2) I don't think that the balancing act FFG is trying to do with maintaining seven different factions at a relatively equal power level and keeping a majority of their players happy is going poorly; in fact, I think they're doing a good job considering the variables.

3) I don't think that X-Wing is worth complaining about as much as it is complained about.

Hmm...I have a lot of unpopular preferences but, the OP asked for opinions...

1. I don't think this forum is as fun and welcoming as it once was.

2. "Iconic" is an overused term around here: an iconic ship should not only be recognisable as "a Star Wars ship" even to people who aren't fans, but it should encapsulate something of the core essence of the franchise. Personally, I'd say only the X-wing, TIE fighter, Millenium Falcon and ISD are truly iconic.

2 minutes ago, Cuz05 said:

To serve the ego of the one holding it, only does the opinion exist. 

This, a million times. When players talk about the direction of the game it seems driven by whatever makes them seem like better players.

The prequels have the best soundtrack, especially EpIII

The prequel ship designs and space combat sequences are all great.

This thread should be renamed "actually popular opinion thread I'm posting in for reacts."

5 minutes ago, Micanthropyre said:

This thread should be renamed "actually popular opinion thread I'm posting in for reacts."

no u

23 minutes ago, apoapsis said:

This, a million times. When players talk about the direction of the game it seems driven by whatever makes them seem like better players.

Everybody has different preferences. There's a hypothetical version of X-Wing that appeals specifically to me, personally, but that doesn't mean that version would be as fun for you, or be more popular in general. Multiply that times a thousand and you basically get the forum.

Just now, Boom Owl said:

no u

I'm not immune to the react hunger, don't get so sweaty

8 hours ago, clockworkspider said:

Epic sounds great...as the occasional "Let's get together Saturday for something different" thing, but I think it's too logistically intensive to be the main "thing" in the community.

I would agree with this.

Quote

Except if you can get people who want to play missions, you can do a normal size mission game that takes up half the space and likely less than half the time.

"Normal sized" missions are very hard to do. You don't have enough elements in the game to have it feel all that different from a shoot-fest with a tiny goal. IMHO, in Epic, you can now design the mission and have actual in game choices and/or create slightly lop-sided battle that have a goal-based/turn-based limit.

Quote

we met up on Thursdays and only had about three hours of gaming.

I played a 300-point game in 3 hours last night.

Quote

Given a choice between two to three regular games or four-fifths of an Epic game, I'll take the former any day.

Either way, it's 3 hours of X-Wing. And I would prefer and unfinished game of Epic to 3 boring games of Standard, so I'll take the latter any day.

TL/DR: Just because you don't like Epic doesn't mean it's a bad game-mode, and I wish people would stop conflating the two.

Wedge's ability is bad, unless you are going against heavily modded defence dice

2 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

TL/DR: Just because you don't like Epic doesn't mean it's a bad game-mode, and I wish people would stop conflating the two.

This. 100%.

Not every game mode has to appeal to every player. And game modes you don’t like doesn’t make them irrelevant or bad.

There is nothing wrong with standard dogfight play.

There is nothing wrong with Epic.

There is nothing wrong with additional game modes that have been player driven.

In an ideal world, I’d like to see mission formats come out for xwing with ffg’s support - campaigns to play through, other mission element formats, etc. I also like having a balanced standard game to play. I enjoy it all.

It's the year of the Linux desktop, so get with the times and get some Manjaro or whatever!

Oh you mean X-Wing? Yeah I dunno, aces still are the easier to play ships compared to weak fodder ships? Haven't validated that in a while, but mechanically they are still heavily advantaged and the aren't all that expensive.

Okay here is a real one: 2.0 should have changed pilot skill so you can't fly last, shoot first. Higher skill ships should instead have the ability to pick one of two timings to act in both phases. This would also mean generics cost would need to be carefully rebalanced since low ini now would come with a large benefit at the cost of repositioning knowledge.

I miss Expertise on Defenders.

5 hours ago, Sunitsa said:

Hyperspace is a luck based shitshow.

ma whole LIFE has been a luck based shitshow...

But also, it's not THAT bad. A lot of things in x-wing are luck based (including that match-ups). However, there are still decisions to make and risks that you can/should take depending on how the game has been going. I fly generics a good bit and that's been my observation of things.

So, I agree with the luck part, but disagree with the rest.