Presented without comment. Something our local/regional group has been discussing at length, curious to hear what others think.

I don’t think it is. I see plenty of people showing up to open play. I know this is anecdotal but I’m not sure who would have any meaningful information that isn’t.

The game itself is in a pretty good place. The changes from 1.0 to 2.0 are all really good choices. I think the possible problem is in the content. If you were a veteran of 1.0, and you’re not buying prequel factions, there’s really nothing for you to pick up. Whether or not your excitement for a game is predicated on new content is your choice.

Every group I've been a part of/am a part of is growing. New players are joining on an at-least monthly basis, and the much friendlier play structure and (generally) healthier meta of 2.0 means that they're coming out to play at stores and tournaments, not just on their kitchen tables.

I think it does depend on area - some may be falling off, while others may be growing. But, I would say that it is growth, rather than loss, that X-Wing is experiencing right now. Especially with the prequel factions providing new options and luring in players who had held off.

Wouldn't say it's on the decline, but there are grumbles here and there and the next 2 waves need to be done well. Especially with the app still upsetting people

I don't think it's on any sort of decline. I'm seeing new players and X-Wing night at my FLGS has a healthy crowd.

I do think the meta has gotten stale again, which is turning some people off. List building for tournaments has been solved, so that isn't very interesting right now. I'm less enthusiastic than I was a few months ago, but that is because I'm ready for a shake up in the meta and I haven't found much success in list building outside of what is already proven.

There are far fewer players in my area than there were. I think for us, after the initial Conversion Kits release, but with no new content unless you're prequel or sequel factions, people just decided they wanted to spend their money elsewhere. There's a group of us that still play regularly, but I think stagnation is hitting us a little bit. Of course, it doesn't help that there's only one game store in the city that carries 2.0 product, that I know of, and it's the enfranchised players that buy the new stuff. The orders for us are also smaller, so fewer people get a chance to buy things, as well.

My local group has gone from 3 regulars plus 5 occasionals to 10-12 regulars plus another 10 ish occasionals.

About half of us have won dice now, which feels really good, and we have made t-shirts.

That's pretty healthy. There are events held in the neighbourhood every other week, sometimes more often. A lot of new players, most of whom are keen on the prequel factions has helped. A few oldtimers have given up though.

Your face is on the decline

(Prequel factions and their wonky new mechanics both breathe life into the game and tap into a wide, soon to be re-vitalized mine of recognizable ships and characters

Decline is highly unlikely.

Local group been growing slightly)

My anecdote: of the two groups that I played with most consistently in 1.0 the more casual one is fairly steady still with an even trade of new players replacing dropouts, the other group is much more competitive oriented and has had a notable increase in overall attendance.

It's on the rise in our area. We just came back from a major, player organized tournament that brought 67 players together, so that was fun

I agree with the others. Even the older 1e stuff, still sells in stores, so its alive and well.

on the rise in our groups

1 minute ago, LTuser said:

I agree with the others. Even the older 1e stuff, still sells in stores, so its alive and well.

I haven’t seen my LGS really move any 1.0 content they’re stuck with, but I’m glad it is happening somewhere.

We have 2.0 stuff moving through there somewhat regularly, based on how I look and see what’s there every time I show up.

Bay Area's a weird case. All of this (except the last) is only "AFAIK," but I think it's fairly accurate.

North Bay seems all but dead.

East Bay is healthy (but that's a large area).

San Francisco is pretty good. The main (only?) store is GameScape SF, but they seem to draw a pretty good weekly crowd.

South Bay is excellent. Lots of good stores, lots of highly competitive players. At this point, they're for sure the "Try-Hard Contingent" of the Bay Area.

The Peninsula (where I live, and play most often) nearly died, but seems to be staging a comeback. One store had a small contingent, but then began charging for table space, and I believe that killed play there. But my closest store (Anime Imports) is starting to build up a small crowd again, and I'm hopeful. We've got a HS store-kit tourney this coming Sunday, and I'm curious to see what the turnout is.

---

As a completely unrelated aside (you were warned), some of you -- okay, a very few of you -- may have noticed that I didn't advertise the drop of the 20th episode of Wide World of Wargaming (X-Wing). This is because, although it is up, we had severe audio difficulties. Vince did his best to reconstruct and edit missing and garbled tracks -- my own audio simply lost two minutes, with no indication of how or why; Drew's was far worse -- but it's pretty incoherent, with long gaps, and (quite often) people answering questions before they are even posed by the other hosts. Anyway, it's out there for the completist(s) among you.

Episode 21 should be dropping soon, and the audio is good, and it's a good show. Teaser: At the end of it, we pose the question: naked Oscar Isaacs or naked Timothy Olyphant? And, FWIW, AFAIK none of us is even gay.

I would say No, as my local group is only expanding. However, the points changes need to come more often because I find myself just... not caring at all for hyperspace at the moment. The game feels incredibly stale after the time where hyperspace format is figured out, but the adjustments haven't come yet. It's kind of a weird feeling to describe, because I enjoy the game, but I find myself just not wanting to play hyperspace at all anymore for some reason.

51 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

As a completely unrelated aside (you were warned), some of you -- okay, a very few of you -- may have noticed that I didn't advertise the drop of the 20th episode of Wide World of Wargaming (X-Wing). This is because, although it is up, we had severe audio difficulties. Vince did his best to reconstruct and edit missing and garbled tracks -- my own audio simply lost two minutes, with no indication of how or why; Drew's was far worse -- but it's pretty incoherent, with long gaps, and (quite often) people answering questions before they are even posed by the other hosts. Anyway, it's out there for the completist(s) among you.

haha, I wondered what happened. Still soldiered through it

My group is going both ways. The night I attend on Wednesdays averages 10-12 people. A slow night is 6, a busy night can take over the whole cafe at around 18-20. That being said, there are players who made the transition from 1.0 to 2.0 who have either dropped the game entirely, stopped playing competitively, or have significantly reduced the amount of time they have put into the game. There have been many factors, and we have discussed them at length internally, and what I would call the "core" community are still solid friends who are in communication daily even if there is no x-wing talk and we enjoy playing other board games with each other often.

But for every transition fader, there are one or two new players that pop up. I'll admit, I'm dropping from competitive play myself, but I still really enjoy the non-meta game.

I'm personally taking a few months off but the local group I normally play with had picked up quite a few people.

2 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Presented without comment. Something our local/regional group has been discussing at length, curious to hear what others think.

The System Open in Seattle (Redmond actually) had something like 120 players show up. I don't know about overall, but here in the Pac NW, it's booming.

Ever since 2.0 was announced and came out this topic has come around a few times.

In my area there have been people who stopped playing and we have had a influx of new players to. For Rebel and Imperial players there has been no new content since the Conversion kits. First Order is kinda in the same boat as well. As such players for them I know in my area aren't as enthusiastic with no new ships coming out.

I mean, it isn't that new content is coming out for the ot factions

New faction-specific content isn't coming out, but if passive sensors/diamond boron/fuses etc don't radically alter the playstyle of multiple established ships then I'll play Soontir Fel

P.s: all the above mentioned upgrades can go on Deathrain hinthint

+more expensive expansions

+No more multi-faction arm-twisting to get certain cards (unless you have no patience).

+waiting to get a new ship for your faction about every three months, or six if your faction got jipped on one wave.

_____

People are gonna either be fair weather fans now in 2.0 (showing up for tournaments with their special faction creations or net-lists...

OR

They are multi-faction competitive travelers who play all the time to get better.

I don't feel like I see too much in between right now. People are either all-in and keeping up with the meta, or they are stagnant and waiting around for their faction to get an awesome net list or new ship.

Local club has gone from about 6/7 players before 2.0 to around 10/12 regular players since.

I feel that the OP events being slightly less well attended in certain places compared to last year comes from maybe A) a big section of competitive players not jumping to 2.0 as they can't use the same combos and B) how weirdly and seemingly randomly named the first lot of OP events have been. People are still like "wait, so what event is that?"

I'm still averaging 4/5 games a week. I feel bad that I've not made it to any OP events outside of a local monthly, as I usually got to a lot. But they've all, so far, fallen on dates I couldn't do or when I was skint.

8 minutes ago, InterceptorMad said:

I feel that the OP events being slightly less well attended in certain places compared to last year comes from maybe A) a big section of competitive players not jumping to 2.0 as they can't use the same combos and B) how weirdly and seemingly randomly named the first lot of OP events have been. People are still like "wait, so what event is that?"

Yes. Frankly, OP has been a disaster. The lack of simple, self-contained, clearly labelled kits for a single store tournament has really hurt our scene. And yeah, as you said, the "Hyperspace Trials/System Opens/Nationals/Hyperspace (not trials)" mess is pretty ridiculous. Simple is better for almost all players.

X-Wing seems to be doing fine. It always sort of goes through fluctuations based on people's work schedules and school or whatever but in general everyone who left due to the 2.0 switch has already left a while ago and communities are growing back.