1 hour ago, Rikalonius said:

But if a unit cost 3, then it should be equal to other units that cost 3. I know that is not easy to mathematically asses, but I think we can come close. As Bitterman, how much would it change to increase e.Weequay, rather than 'buff' so many units by reducing their cost?

In my opinion, I don't think figure prices have to be broke down so mathematically so you can have direct comparisons across factions, traits and roles in armies. For example, Gideon, a regular Death Trooper and R2-D2 all provide different roles in an army, have different stats and abilities, and have been designed at different points of the Skirmish game development. What I feel we can do is discern the general design principles of the most recent expansions and use them as guidelines: aiming for a appropriate Health-to-figure cost ratio, adding more when the figure is a Brawler and/or melee, reducing Health when the figure is a Spy, Hunter or direct support character, doing evaluations for calculating expected damage output compared to figure abilities based off existing Skirmish deployments released since Jabba's Realm.

And here's the thing: I'm not saying that your suggestion of mathematically balancing is wrong! I just disagree it is necessary for us to getting to our goal of making Skirmish fresh, fun & worth everybody's time. But I'm not the end-all, be-all decider of how the community should or should not evaluate figures. And the committee wants all the input it can get!

In fact, if you would like to do the groundwork to create a mathematical balancing system, I know we will add it to our pool of resources when evaluating current and future recostings, fixes and new content that the community produces. I don't think FFG is going to share what they have with us, sadly.

And just to add on, it is generally going to be easier to balance around figures people are used to and actually playing with than to try to balance around old stuff nobody has played in ages.

The general sentiment I've heard from players is that the stuff since Jabba's realm is the closest to being at a good cost/effectiveness ratio. That makes it a good choice for a baseline. You have to choose something as a baseline.

Nerfing all of the figures that might be a little too strong (ie. all the ones people like playing!) seems likely to cause even more problems. If you want to balance around eStorms, and are thinking about changing pirates, you need to also look at Vader, IG, Han, eJets, eRiots, eRangers, Gideon, 3p0, Hera, etc. I think a changelist involving all of those figures would be many times more controversial than touching a few things nobody has played in forever.

Luckily, we can quickly react to anything that needs changing and fix it up. I agree that it feels a few things have been somewhat arbitrarily left out, but we're already getting the feedback that there are too many changes so we have to draw the line somewhere.

2 hours ago, Rikalonius said:

I firmly believe some nerfs to a few cards, and a few "nerfs" to a couple of high-powered units, i.e. cost increases, is a whole bunch more efficient that choosing a certain set of units and reducing their cost, because that looks like those units are being groomed to be included, rather than having the units be mathematically balanced based on their value. Someone said earlier all units can't be top tier units. Of course not. But if a unit cost 3, then it should be equal to other units that cost 3. I know that is not easy to mathematically asses, but I think we can come close. As Bitterman, how much would it change to increase e.Weequay, rather than 'buff' so many units by reducing their cost?

The points increase for overpowered things rather than reducing the cost of underpowered ones also seems to be FFG'S design philosophy for X-Wing 2.0 which seems like the best analog for this season style points adjustment approach.

As this is basically an experiment of ways to balance the meta, I lean to trying something that would be the most straightforward change but providing a significant amount of data without being too onerous. So what about something as straightforward as banning Vader, and the Hunter trait for a season? That eliminates the most dominant pieces from the last couple of years of meta while not actually changing that many pieces and leaving the majority of post-Jabba content in place. See what new lists become dominant and you should have a good idea of what falls into the tiers below those pieces and an idea of where changes might be most effective.

On 4/7/2019 at 6:25 AM, Weatherwax2099 said:

I'm not sure I'd say GW is far and away better than FFG at teasing and announcing products if you look at things company wide.

the Warhammer community site averages 1-2 posts every day and they support far fewer game lines then FFG.

1 hour ago, TylerTT said:

the Warhammer community site averages 1-2 posts every day and they support far fewer game lines then FFG.

I am aware but I'm still not sure there's a substantial difference on content for less popular lines, especially if you consider that GW's two major games are not intended for a player to buy all the content released for that game. Now granted this is second hand as I haven't bought into 40k or Sigmar but my understanding (from reading up on it every year or two when I start to consider buying in) is that getting all you need to make a competitive army with some options for changeups in a single faction is either comparable to or more than buying nearly everything in any one of the Star Wars lines.

That isn't intended as a value judgment, just that those seem like two proper points of comparison. If there isn't any new content for your army's faction available then your personal meta at least can be as stale as a game like Imperial Assault not getting any content. So then do the less popular army factions in 40K get content updates more or less often than FFG games like Imperial Assault and Armada? My sense is that it probably is more frequent but not to a big degree. And of course the Warhammer games are big enough with decades of content that even without anything new, you can still probably add options to your army (if they haven't been eaten by the 'nids to differentiate game lines).

That is an angle I had not considered. I do occasionally see angst from GW player's about armies that have not been updated for a while. I think 40K and Fantasy can mix factions much more in the latest editions effectively increasing the relevance of releases to their player base but I'm not 100% on that.

I personally only follow GW for Warhammer underworlds (shadespire) and some of their side games.

As a rebel only legion player i'm still excited to read about imperial releases. and I'm hyped for clone wars though I doubt I will actually buy any of those factions.

one thing I really appreciate about GW communication is they will let us know a little bit about the long term plans for a line. For example they recently announced that all the Age of Sigmar factions that haven't gotten a new book in the last year will be getting an updated book this year. that commits them to very little specific information but lets me know what's up. for shade spire they will tease a whole season of releases and give us information about specific releases as they are much closer to releasing.

FFG lacks in sharing this long term outline information.

9 hours ago, DTDanix said:

And just to add on, it is generally going to be easier to balance around figures people are used to and actually playing with than to try to balance around old stuff nobody has played in ages.

The general sentiment I've heard from players is that the stuff since Jabba's realm is the closest to being at a good cost/effectiveness ratio. That makes it a good choice for a baseline. You have to choose something as a baseline.

Nerfing all of the figures that might be a little too strong (ie. all the ones people like playing!) seems likely to cause even more problems. If you want to balance around eStorms, and are thinking about changing pirates, you need to also look at Vader, IG, Han, eJets, eRiots, eRangers, Gideon, 3p0, Hera, etc. I think a changelist involving all of those figures would be many times more controversial than touching a few things nobody has played in forever.

Luckily, we can quickly react to anything that needs changing and fix it up. I agree that it feels a few things have been somewhat arbitrarily left out, but we're already getting the feedback that there are too many changes so we have to draw the line somewhere.

One of the problems is that you're ignoring many of the design principles that have been established by FFG.

Right from its inception, r/eSTs, r/eRTs, and when they were introduced r/eWings, have all been in line with one another (for better or for worse) and you've changed just one of those six units. Since the beginning of the game, 2 points/model has been the hard minimum, and you've changed eSTs in such a way that a whole bunch of units (including but not limited to rSTs) would have to be less than that to have a hope in **** of having value - and when presented with this, the response was "oh, we're not doing those others now". Maybe not (though that's an arbitrary line to draw), but by lowering points you're shutting down your own options for the future: most figure groups, all but the very strongest, now need to have a points range between 2 and 2.3(!) points per model. OtL was changed to have a timing resolution that has never existed before and has needed a blog post to explain, with an initial wording that was different to the wording FFG usually uses in similar situations. Diala's fix card (why Diala? Why only Diala?) initially used non-FFG-standard wording for when she becomes Focused* in Battle Meditation, and despite it being explained that Force Throw was intended to be equivalent to Force Push, initially used different wording for that ability too so it meant she could push herself, and still means she can push Large figures. Did no-one on the steering committee compare to what had been written under the existing FFG terminology and make sure it matched...? There are good reasons for why FFG (very carefully) use the words they use*; even they still make mistakes occasionally - especially "a figure" vs. "another figure", TBF - but any attempt to write new abilities or changes should start with the FFG vocabulary except where there is a good reason to intentionally do something different. (BTW, no-one on the steering committee noticed that Diala's card is branded "IA Continuation Project" rather than "Continuity", either. Doesn't affect the game, but suggestive of a lack of attention to detail). At every stage, FFG's established guidelines and common design language have been set aside.

It's not for me to say what your goals "should" or "should not" be. (I'm just some guy; you guys have two world champions, a national champion, and widely-known podcasters/bloggers on your team - that's a group with pedigree that has a chance of being listened to). But surely the obvious goal - at least for "season 1", and probably for seasons 2 and 3 as well while establishing community acceptance and trust - would have been to say, " if FFG were to continue active support for IA, what might they do? ". To phrase that slightly differently: aim to make changes such that if and when FFG do release a new FAQ, for this group's changes to be as close as possible to that FAQ. I can believe FFG would ban SC, in fact they surely must, so that's a good start. Maybe they'd even do something to avoid just returning to the Hunter meta there was before, that's actually not a terrible idea in principle; not sure exactly what FFG would do, but I can believe they'd do something. The rest of it? No chance. I can all-but guarantee the next official FAQ from FFG will not reduce eSTs to 7 points, nor introduce a skirmish fix for Diala. So the group's goal hasn't been continuity for IA, despite the name of the project; it's been... something else.

I'm trying to imagine going to my FLGS and asking them to put on a tournament using these rules. I wouldn't be able to present it as "a semi-official update that, don't worry, doesn't fundamentally change the game - here, look at this non-threatening single-page PDF listing the amendments as five bullet points". That's what I'd want to be able to say, but I couldn't. I'd have to say "it's a bunch of house rules made by some people who, to be fair, know the game really well, but have quite arbitrarily chosen a bunch of things (but not others) to make fairly extensive changes to - here, go to this website and read this 2000 word blog post, and tell everyone else who might want to enter the tournament that they need to do the same thing". Bluntly, I'm struggling to imagine my FLGS's response being positive. (And believe me, I've got nothing against house rules. I've spent hundreds of hours of my life creating software just so people can easily create their own cards for this game. Fill yer boots, that's what I say. But for acceptance outside of individual gaming groups of 1-5 people who are all on the same page, you have to start small).

Anyway. Deep breath. I've said my piece, and in fact have said far more than I really needed to, sorry. So I'll leave it there.

* - quite a long time later, I've quite suddenly realized why FFG says "Before you declare an attack, you become Focused" instead of "When...". It's because conditions (like Focus) are applied in the mission-rules timing step, before the attacker ability timing step. So "Before..." means you become Focused, then immediately apply that Focus. "When..." would mean you become Focused only after you're able to use it , so the Focus would apply to the next attack, not this one - you'd be attacking while being Focused, without getting the benefit of Focus, which would be confusing. Words matter , and FFG are very careful about the words they words they use for reasons like this. Any semi-official community-accepted effort to extend the game needs to be at least as careful, and use the established terminology whenever possible. Get @a1bert on board if you can, he's laser-sharp on stuff like this... I don't know if you've invited him to be part of the committee already (maybe he doesn't want to, or can't), but if you haven't invited him, please consider it.

40 minutes ago, Bitterman said:

One of the problems is that you're ignoring many of the design principles that have been established by FFG.

Right from its inception, r/eSTs, r/eRTs, and when they were introduced r/eWings, have all been in line with one another (for better or for worse) and you've changed just one of those six units. Since the beginning of the game, 2 points/model has been the hard minimum, and you've changed eSTs in such a way that a whole bunch of units (including but not limited to rSTs) would have to be less than that to have a hope in **** of having value - and when presented with this, the response was "oh, we're not doing those others now". Maybe not (though that's an arbitrary line to draw), but by lowering points you're shutting down your own options for the future: most figure groups, all but the very strongest, now need to have a points range between 2 and 2.3(!) points per model. OtL was changed to have a timing resolution that has never existed before and has needed a blog post to explain, with an initial wording that was different to the wording FFG usually uses in similar situations. Diala's fix card (why Diala? Why only Diala?) initially used non-FFG-standard wording for when she becomes Focused in Battle Meditation, and despite it being explained that Force Throw was intended to be equivalent to Force Push, initially used different wording for that ability too so it meant she could push herself, and still means she can push Large figures. Did no-one on the steering committee compare to what had been written under the existing FFG terminology and make sure it matched...? There are good reasons for why FFG (very carefully) use the words they use, even they still make mistakes occasionally - especially "a figure" vs. "another figure", TBF - but any attempt to write new abilities or changes should start with the FFG vocabulary except where there is a good reason to intentionally do something different. (BTW, no-one on the steering committee noticed that Diala's card is branded "IA Continuation Project" rather than "Continuity", either. Doesn't affect the game, but suggestive of a lack of attention to detail). At every stage, FFG's established guidelines and common design language have been set aside.

It's not for me to say what your goals "should" or "should not" be. (I'm just some guy; you guys have two world champions, a national champion, and widely-known podcasters/bloggers on your team - that's a group with pedigree that has a chance of being listened to). But surely the obvious goal - at least for "season 1", and probably for seasons 2 and 3 as well while establishing community acceptance and trust - would have been to say, " if FFG were to continue active support for IA, what might they do? ". To phrase that slightly differently: aim to make changes such that if and when FFG do release a new FAQ, for this group's changes to be as close as possible to that FAQ. I can believe FFG would ban SC, in fact they surely must, so that's a good start. Maybe they'd even do something to avoid just returning to the Hunter meta there was before, that's actually not a terrible idea in principle; not sure exactly what FFG would do, but I can believe they'd do something. The rest of it? No chance. I can all-but guarantee the next official FAQ from FFG will not reduce eSTs to 7 points, nor introduce a skirmish fix for Diala. So the group's goal hasn't been continuity for IA, despite the name of the project; it's been... something else.

I'm trying to imagine going to my FLGS and asking them to put on a tournament using these rules. I wouldn't be able to present it as "a semi-official update that, don't worry, doesn't fundamentally change the game - here, look at this non-threatening single-page PDF listing the amendments as five bullet points". That's what I'd want to be able to say, but I couldn't. I'd have to say "it's a bunch of house rules made by some people who, to be fair, know the game really well, but have quite arbitrarily chosen a bunch of things (but not others) to make fairly extensive changes to - here, go to this website and read this 2000 word blog post, and tell everyone else who might want to enter the tournament that they need to do the same thing". Bluntly, I'm struggling to imagine my FLGS's response being positive. (And believe me, I've got nothing against house rules. I've spent hundreds of hours of my life creating software just so people can easily create their own cards. Fill yer boots, that's what I say. But for acceptance outside of individual gaming groups of 1-5 people who are all on the same page, you have to start small).

Anyway. Deep breath. I've said my piece, and in fact have said far more than I really needed to, sorry. So I'll leave it there.

A little too aggressive, but I get you. It's sad to say that the Continuity Project may have divided the player base more than any other event in the past. Two groups seem to have emerged: those for IACP and those against IACP. I feel like I'm sowing seeds of disharmony among the players by pointing this out, but once we realize how divided we are, we can finally make peace.

Don't pick a side, keep the peace. That's what Jedi are after all, keepers of the peace. But after millennia of a peaceful order, the Jedi began to decline. The council argued consistently but rarely ever made a decision on anything. Most everything that got done was accomplished through brash actions and badly thought out plans. Just like Darth Plagueis, the Jedi began to hold too tightly to their power. You may say you don't like it, but power is like sand: the harder you hold it, the faster it slips through your fingers. Even Yoda at times would avoid obtaining the councils approval to move on with something, especially during the Clone Wars. It seems fitting that Legion just announce their Clone Wars expansions, because begun the Clone War has.

1 hour ago, Bitterman said:

OtL was changed to have a timing resolution that has never existed before

On the Lam already has a timing that has not existed before (and no other ability has the same timing), it seems fairly similar to me. It's not to say that the wording could not be improved, or the timing changed.

2 hours ago, Bitterman said:

* - quite a long time later, I've quite suddenly realized why FFG says "Before you declare an attack, you become Focused" instead of "When...". @a1bert

At least in all new abilities. There are a few abilities in the core that are not exactly clear due to becoming focused on declare. But the current interpretation of mission/core rules is now "with priority" instead of "first", so gaining focused from attacker ability still applies to the same attack. "Before declaring" is just making everything neat. (Changing the wording of focused from "When declaring" to "While attacking" would probably fix all interpretation issues of gaining focused on declare.)

I'm not a skirmish player, and I don't want to get into the design for various reasons, but do consult when needed.

2 hours ago, a1bert said:

On the Lam already has a timing that has not existed before (and no other ability has the same timing)

I think that if OtL has to get an official or unofficial change, that should go toward simplification of the game. This game requires 2 type of fixes: unit balancement and rule simplification. We should always work toward both. I don't like to ask between steps if someone is on-the-lamming. That can be step 3.5 or 0.5 doesn't matter. I would like the IAContinuity version of the card to be something like "Use during another figure's activation when an attack targeting you is declared, to interrupt to perform a move.". It's still a nerf (I understand people wants to nerf it, I don't discuss why), moreover it simplifies attack steps (no new special timing) and it's effect doesn't depend on the owner of the activation (because it requires a lot of effort to newbies to understand that when activation is your things are different). We're plenty of cards and arguable rules/exceptions/FAQs that only generates resistance against new people joining the game.

@Bitterman Diala was a late addition to the Season contents. The Committee initially wasn't going to provide a custom skirmish fix for existing deployments outside of the cost changes. However we ultimately decided to offer Diala as a figure where we felt a price change would not make her playable in a competitive setting. Thanks for letting us know of some of the wording problems on Diala's card. It wasn't our intent for her to Force Push large figures and was an oversight when putting together the card. I'll get the wording updated later today.

For Season 2, we're planning on having the 4 months of feedback from Season 1 to help guide us on what deployments should be prioritized. (The early leader, to no one's surprise, is Boba Fett. 😁 ) For deployments that need more than a recosting, we'll open up the design process for community feedback from the start.

Concerning your opinion that the Steering Committee should try to do what FFG would most likely do: I don't feel that is a realistic goal. As we've seen in the past, FFG's answer to changing competitive skirmish is printing new material. (There has been errata, but only to fix design errors.) The Skirmish Community doesn't have the resources to release the cards, figures and packaging needed for a proper FFG-like A/V Wave. When the Committee does develop new deployments with the community, gaining access to physical components outside of printing cards will be a concern. The Committee is choosing to wait on discussing that with the Community later.

Instead, we are trying to work with what we already have and try to be as succinct as possible. There's lots of used IA collections on eBay and unsold IA blisters and expansions at FLGS's. We feel it's less invasive to bring those older figures up to the modern meta & ruleset with improvements than bring the modern meta down to the older deployment groups. We feel there are some issues with the power of Hunter cards and OtL, which we're trying to address directly instead of trying to recalculate attack math and defense abilities across Hunter & Smuggler groups.

The Committee and I really appreciate that you've worked out a way to put in Season material into your list bulder. That really makes testing so much easier. I'll be updating the blog sometime this week to host the patch file you created.

13 minutes ago, cnemmick said:

@Bitterman Diala was a late addition to the Season contents. The Committee initially wasn't going to provide a custom skirmish fix for existing deployments outside of the cost changes. However we ultimately decided to offer Diala as a figure where we felt a price change would not make her playable in a competitive setting. Thanks for letting us know of some of the wording problems on Diala's card. It wasn't our intent for her to Force Push large figures and was an oversight when putting together the card. I'll get the wording updated later today.

For Season 2, we're planning on having the 4 months of feedback from Season 1 to help guide us on what deployments should be prioritized. (The early leader, to no one's surprise, is Boba Fett. 😁 ) For deployments that need more than a recosting, we'll open up the design process for community feedback from the start.

Concerning your opinion that the Steering Committee should try to do what FFG would most likely do: I don't feel that is a realistic goal. As we've seen in the past, FFG's answer to changing competitive skirmish is printing new material. (There has been errata, but only to fix design errors.) The Skirmish Community doesn't have the resources to release the cards, figures and packaging needed for a proper FFG-like A/V Wave. When the Committee does develop new deployments with the community, gaining access to physical components outside of printing cards will be a concern. The Committee is choosing to wait on discussing that with the Community later.

Instead, we are trying to work with what we already have and try to be as succinct as possible. There's lots of used IA collections on eBay and unsold IA blisters and expansions at FLGS's. We feel it's less invasive to bring those older figures up to the modern meta & ruleset with improvements than bring the modern meta down to the older deployment groups. We feel there are some issues with the power of Hunter cards and OtL, which we're trying to address directly instead of trying to recalculate attack math and defense abilities across Hunter & Smuggler groups.

The Committee and I really appreciate that you've worked out a way to put in Season material into your list bulder. That really makes testing so much easier. I'll be updating the blog sometime this week to host the patch file you created.

Again, I'll watch to see what happens. I'm not against continuity changes, and I certainly appreciate the effort, but I don't agree, that, what are you doing is succinct. I think there are far less cards that could use a 1 or 2 point increase, rather than 20 units that need a decrease. And then there are a few CC changes, or course. I don't even think Boba needs a skirmish card upgrade. Yes, we want him to remain a Marquee characters, but nothing about him NEEDs to change, other than his current price point. If he were an 8 point figure, he'd show up more, just by that alone.

1 hour ago, cnemmick said:

@Bitterman Diala was a late addition to the Season contents. The Committee initially wasn't going to provide a custom skirmish fix for existing deployments outside of the cost changes. However we ultimately decided to offer Diala as a figure where we felt a price change would not make her playable in a competitive setting. Thanks for letting us know of some of the wording problems on Diala's card. It wasn't our intent for her to Force Push large figures and was an oversight when putting together the card. I'll get the wording updated later today.

For Season 2, we're planning on having the 4 months of feedback from Season 1 to help guide us on what deployments should be prioritized. (The early leader, to no one's surprise, is Boba Fett. 😁 ) For deployments that need more than a recosting, we'll open up the design process for community feedback from the start.

Concerning your opinion that the Steering Committee should try to do what FFG would most likely do: I don't feel that is a realistic goal. As we've seen in the past, FFG's answer to changing competitive skirmish is printing new material. (There has been errata, but only to fix design errors.) The Skirmish Community doesn't have the resources to release the cards, figures and packaging needed for a proper FFG-like A/V Wave. When the Committee does develop new deployments with the community, gaining access to physical components outside of printing cards will be a concern. The Committee is choosing to wait on discussing that with the Community later.

Instead, we are trying to work with what we already have and try to be as succinct as possible. There's lots of used IA collections on eBay and unsold IA blisters and expansions at FLGS's. We feel it's less invasive to bring those older figures up to the modern meta & ruleset with improvements than bring the modern meta down to the older deployment groups. We feel there are some issues with the power of Hunter cards and OtL, which we're trying to address directly instead of trying to recalculate attack math and defense abilities across Hunter & Smuggler groups.

The Committee and I really appreciate that you've worked out a way to put in Season material into your list bulder. That really makes testing so much easier. I'll be updating the blog sometime this week to host the patch file you created.

You guys really should consider inviting @GuillotineTE and @Bitterman to the Committee. I don't know if they have the time or availability, but, their voices could prove very powerful in checking overactive imaginations. (too ambitious/lack of focus)

But what do I know? I'm just a bum who enjoys writing Campaign backstories and making custom skirmish cards while i'm bored at work.

Either way i'm excited to see what you guys manage to put together.

One suggestion: Try to focus on making quality changes (The Original Trilogy), don't become overly ambitious (like a prequel), adding content for the sake of content, with little substance.

Especially don't become (the new series) where you start making units mary-sue characters with ridiculous power curves.

Does the Committee even recognize a tier list such as:

Is @theaficionado a part of your committee?^ (considering all the work he put in i'm sure he'd have a lot to provide meta and suggestion wise.

How do you determine a change is necessary per unit basis? Internal vote?

What even is your focus as a Committee? Bring units that are rarely used back to the table? Fixing the mistakes of FFG by making useless characters more effective?

( You should have started with Biv and Saksa - the injustice done to them is disgusting)

12 minutes ago, King_Balrog said:

Especially don't become (the new series) where you start making units mary-sue characters with ridiculous power curves.

When Wizards of the Coast ended Star Wars miniatures, the community went into full "keep it alive mode" Many of the mistakes I saw there is what I seek not to see happen here. Suddenly a group of hardcore players started putting out new sets using old figures that went completely overboard in giving units abilities. I never played it after that, except just playing Rebel Storm only with some friends. Suffice it to say they were made by the tournament goers for the tournament goers. The game had already become monotonous, and their fixes did little to change that. What started off as a very elegant system turned into a bloated mess where it took 10 minutes to resolve a single engagement.

1 hour ago, cnemmick said:

The Skirmish Community doesn't have the resources to release the cards, figures and packaging needed for a proper FFG-like A/V Wave. When the Committee does develop new deployments with the community, gaining access to physical components outside of printing cards will be a concern. The Committee is choosing to wait on discussing that with the Community later.

Instead, we are trying to work with what we already have and try to be as succinct as possible. There's lots of used IA collections on eBay and unsold IA blisters and expansions at FLGS's. We feel it's less invasive to bring those older figures up to the modern meta & ruleset with improvements than bring the modern meta down to the older deployment groups.

Have you considered Legion products as a potential source of figures? Easy enough to print deployment cards to go with them, I'd think.

37 minutes ago, King_Balrog said:

Does the Committee even recognize a tier list such as:

How do you determine a change is necessary per unit basis? Internal vote?

I was reading through this list and I became acutely aware of some of the power creep. Just look at 8 point Gaarkhan vs 7 point Ezra Bridger. When I look at the steering committee's recommendation, save a couple of older units like e. stormtroopers and e. Echo Base troopers, and e. Wookie Warriors, it is all about reducing the costs of characters who are, in my opinion, already too cheap. The comparison in your post about Gaarkhan compared him to the Royal Guard unit, now to be fair, that is 2 characters, so he has to be compared to one Royal Guard, but even given that, Gaarkhan should weigh in about possibly 7 given his two attacks and ability to focus with more regularity.

1 minute ago, bill_andel said:

Have you considered Legion products as a potential source of figures? Easy enough to print deployment cards to go with them, I'd think.

I'm currently in the process of buying Legion units just to replace my IA units on the board where possible. I haven't gotten around to painting them, and I haven't gotten them all yet. For me, and I know I'm probably in the minority, Legion doesn't have any units that aren't already in IA that I'd want.

8 minutes ago, bill_andel said:

Have you considered Legion products as a potential source of figures? Easy enough to print deployment cards to go with them, I'd think.

This is another option. Sadly new figures will probably grow to be the biggest stumbling block once FFG closes its doors on us.

8 minutes ago, Rikalonius said:

I was reading through this list and I became acutely aware of some of the power creep. Just look at 8 point Gaarkhan vs 7 point Ezra Bridger. When I look at the steering committee's recommendation, save a couple of older units like e. stormtroopers and e. Echo Base troopers, and e. Wookie Warriors, it is all about reducing the costs of characters who are, in my opinion, already too cheap. The comparison in your post about Gaarkhan compared him to the Royal Guard unit, now to be fair, that is 2 characters, so he has to be compared to one Royal Guard, but even given that, Gaarkhan should weigh in about possibly 7 given his two attacks and ability to focus with more regularity.

People keep saying that Ezra, Kannan, and Zeb aren't even that high of a tier without the use of Specter Cell.

Where does that leave poor Gaarkhan...

So I really haven't looked into the Community Project until now (because Skirmish), and I guess these are my thoughts-

- First of all, huge congrats to those involved. Seems like you're all very dedicated and talented, and I think the community is lucky to have such great creatives working with it.

- That being said, I'd frankly be embarrassed to be FFG and see the outsourcing of some of these necessary changes to a fan group. Like, much of what's happening seems to be something the community almost uniformly thinks is for the best- why wouldn't FFG want to make that official? I've been part of a lot of similar community movements with video games, but these movements tend to revolve more around Community development itself, not direct fixes to the game. Like, can you imagine if there was an massively broken gun in Battlefront, and instead of fixing or removing it, EA/Dice just encouraged fans to band together in groups that pledged to not use it? That would be absurd.

So I guess I'm super impressed with the movement itself, but the fact that it even needs to exist in the first place is disheartening.

22 hours ago, King_Balrog said:

This is another option. Sadly new figures will probably grow to be the biggest stumbling block once FFG closes its doors on us.

Yeah, I may have to invest in those now.

On 4/9/2019 at 8:03 PM, King_Balrog said:

You guys really should consider inviting @GuillotineTE and @Bitterman to the Committee. I don't know if they have the time or availability, but, their voices could prove very powerful in checking overactive imaginations. (too ambitious/lack of focus)

But what do I know? I'm just a bum who enjoys writing Campaign backstories and making custom skirmish cards while i'm bored at work.

Either way i'm excited to see what you guys manage to put together.

One suggestion: Try to focus on making quality changes (The Original Trilogy), don't become overly ambitious (like a prequel), adding content for the sake of content, with little substance.

Especially don't become (the new series) where you start making units mary-sue characters with ridiculous power curves.

Does the Committee even recognize a tier list such as:

Is @theaficionado a part of your committee?^ (considering all the work he put in i'm sure he'd have a lot to provide meta and suggestion wise.

How do you determine a change is necessary per unit basis? Internal vote?

What even is your focus as a Committee? Bring units that are rarely used back to the table? Fixing the mistakes of FFG by making useless characters more effective?

( You should have started with Biv and Saksa - the injustice done to them is disgusting)

You really should consider it, I'd find time. 😂

But seriously, I've been wanting an "official" tier for IA probably since I started playing.

On 4/9/2019 at 9:59 PM, subtrendy2 said:

So I really haven't looked into the Community Project until now (because Skirmish), and I guess these are my thoughts-

- First of all, huge congrats to those involved. Seems like you're all very dedicated and talented, and I think the community is lucky to have such great creatives working with it.

- That being said, I'd frankly be embarrassed to be FFG and see the outsourcing of some of these necessary changes to a fan group. Like, much of what's happening seems to be something the community almost uniformly thinks is for the best- why wouldn't FFG want to make that official? I've been part of a lot of similar community movements with video games, but these movements tend to revolve more around Community development itself, not direct fixes to the game. Like, can you imagine if there was an massively broken gun in Battlefront, and instead of fixing or removing it, EA/Dice just encouraged fans to band together in groups that pledged to not use it? That would be absurd.

So I guess I'm super impressed with the movement itself, but the fact that it even needs to exist in the first place is disheartening.

I would be embarrassed too, but look at Pokemon. Pokemon is one of the biggest RPGs in the world and you know what the biggest meta of that game is? The one created by Smogon University, an entirely fan made site with custom tournament rules and probably the healthiest meta in any expanding competitive game. Granted, Pokemon is a multi-billion dollar company and instead of the 50 or so deployments of IA, which also has affiliation restrictions, there are over 800 Pokemon. However, we need to realize that player-made metas are doable, just as long as they're done correctly.

When I think about IACP, I honestly look at Smogon for inspiration. How do they handle overpowered characters? They ban them in generic tournament play. What do they do with the most ridiculously overpowered character in the game that is basically undefeatable? They ban it in every tournament style except "Anything Goes" tournaments. I think we need to do something similar with IA. It shouldn't be that hard.