[UPDATE] Voting has concluded and the results are in! See which Season 1 changes were approved by the community . (TL;DR everything passed the 60% approval threshold, though some of the votes were closer than expected.)

Later this week the Steering Committee will be releasing the results of the Season 1 Feedback and Season 2 Suggestions sections of the voting survey.

[ORIGINAL POST]

The IACP Steering Committee is proud to announce that our Season 1 Voting survey is now available for the Skirmish community. We hope that you've enjoyed playing with the Season 1 changes; now is your chance to shape which of these changes are set as IACP Official.

Many of you participated filled our Playtesting survey. You can see summaries of all of your feedback on the front page of our website: http://ia-continuityproject.com

I don't have a google account, and so cannot vote

3 hours ago, aermet69 said:

I don't have a google account, and so cannot vote

It's free to create one. Is there something preventing you from doing so?

Completed. I said this three of four times in the survey buuuuuuuuuut.....

BOBA FETT FIX PLEASE!

😁

5 hours ago, cnemmick said:

It's free to create one. Is there something preventing you from doing so?

I don't want one.

Just one week left! If you haven't already, get your vote in.

Voting has concluded and the results are in! See which Season 1 changes were approved by the community . (TL;DR everything passed the 60% approval threshold, though some of the votes were closer than expected.)

Later this week the Steering Committee will be releasing the results of the Season 1 Feedback and Season 2 Suggestions sections of the voting survey.

I'll submit a survey, but IMO, Somos should work with the DT Squad Tactics. The once in a lifetime scenarios were you're getting off 6 attacks are going to be incredibly rare (you need the right card draw and incredibly lucky positioning). So much so that you should be rewarded for it.

I'd argue strongly against increasing his cost to 7, even with making adv comms built in. Based on current meta, you need that option to chain to make the list competitive.

Also, the six cost leader/DT combo provided its own list archetype (Blaise needs a little love, but he would fit nicely into that list type.). IMO it would be a shame to lose that.

The community has spoken. I still personally think many of these changes are bad. Why would anyone play anything but the characters listed, save for the obligatory inclusion of Gideon? This is going to lead to every other figure in the IA catalog having to be re-evaluated. Or not, because as I feared, it seems the project is setting up a meta that favors a certain set of characters and the rest be damned. I personally would have gone the other way, and fought back the power creep by increasing the cost of many of the newer characters, some of which were wildly undercost in comparison to even post Bespin figures. Ah well, I'm just one person.

3 minutes ago, Rikalonius said:

The community has spoken. I still personally think many of these changes are bad. Why would anyone play anything but the characters listed, save for the obligatory inclusion of Gideon? This is going to lead to every other figure in the IA catalog having to be re-evaluated. Or not, because as I feared, it seems the project is setting up a meta that favors a certain set of characters and the rest be damned.

Although I don't have much investment in what happens with IACP, I am very appreciative of what they're trying to do. This is only season 1, so one can conclude that more figures will be changed/recosted in the coming seasons.

I don't think the point system in IA is granular enough to cost everything perfectly, but it is an admirable endeavor and I will continue to hope the best for them, support where I can and vote when able.

8 minutes ago, Rikalonius said:

I personally would have gone the other way, and fought back the power creep by increasing the cost of many of the newer characters, some of which were wildly undercost in comparison to even post Bespin figures. Ah well, I'm just one person.

While I don't disagree with your sentiment, I prefer making older characters cheaper. It allows more groups to hit the board, which in turn allows for more choices and ultimately more interesting/diverse battles.

Look at it this way;

Do you want to make some figures less playable than they were before? Increase their costs.

Do you want to make some figures more playable than they were before? Reduce their costs...

I know which one I'd prefer

3 hours ago, Majushi said:

Look at it this way;

Do you want to make some figures less playable than they were before? Increase their costs.

Do you want to make some figures more playable than they were before? Reduce their costs...

I know which one I'd prefer

not entirely, let's say you increase the cost of Kanan, sure he'd less playable than before but at the mean time it would make other figures more playable simply because Kanan now isn't as played often as before. I stand by my point in which that I felt a better option is to decrease the power curve (nerf the queen pieces) than increase it (buff the underwhelming figures). However the key flaw in my argument is the time limit in tournaments: I've noticed a skirmish game usually runs to round 4 or 5 and takes 1.5h - 2h in a casual setting (at home or FLGS), because we play until someone reaches 40 VP or one of our armies is completely destroyed. That kind of time allocation won't be happening in FFG-sanctioned tournament events where the winner is frequently determined by round ~3. I've wrote it more here so just my 2c

I sure might be running Stormtroopers or Trandoshans or Hired Guns or Bantha if I know that none of the high-damage attackers will be in play

I want pieces to cost what they are worth on the battlefield. Lowering some of these 'queen' pieces, as people have said, further eliminates the need for troopers. I don't see how lowering troopers AND lowering all these high damage pieces that are already under-cost is going to make troopers more playable. It just seems this is designed, and I believe there are posts that explicitly state this, that there is a particular meta the group wants. And that's fine, if that's what everyone wants. I'm just an advocate for appropriate cost figures and then let the meta play out.

You may notice that most of the "Queen Pieces" aren't being touched. (IG, Han, Chewie and Vader all having official fixes already)

It's all the older pieces that aren't competitive that are being brought in line with the others. They're not exactly "High Damage" pieces either...

"Appropriate Figure Costs" is all well and good, so long people can agree on what "Appropriate" is. And that's the crux of what is being attempted.

So, instead of saying "lowering the costs" isn't the right move, try to be very specific about which figures shouldn't be lowered and why.

On ‎7‎/‎16‎/‎2019 at 1:42 PM, ricope said:

not entirely, let's say you increase the cost of Kanan, sure he'd less playable than before but at the mean time it would make other figures more playable simply because Kanan now isn't as played often as before.

That's a flawed argument, because most of the pieces they're fixing wouldn't be played regardless of Kanan's cost. It's a systemic issue with latter pieces being "too cheap" or older pieces being "too expensive".

To keep more figure variety, the IACP have decided to lower costs of older figures instead of raising costs of newer figures. Because it promotes more variety.

By raising costs you would be more limited in spending your 40 point budget. By lowering costs, you may now have five or six options to fill a points range that previously may only have had one or two.

Yes, this impacts the costs of swarm units like troopers, but it's actually fixing many more figures than it's impacting.

54 minutes ago, Majushi said:

That's a flawed argument, because most of the pieces they're fixing wouldn't be played regardless of Kanan's cost. It's a systemic issue with latter pieces being "too cheap" or older pieces being "too expensive".

To keep more figure variety, the IACP have decided to lower costs of older figures instead of raising costs of newer figures. Because it promotes more variety.

By raising costs you would be more limited in spending your 40 point budget. By lowering costs, you may now have five or six options to fill a points range that previously may only have had one or two.

Yes, this impacts the costs of swarm units like troopers, but it's actually fixing many more figures than it's impacting.

Let's toss aside the argument of so-and-so should cost how much for a moment. A figure's cost should be a reflection of its performance on the battlefield

and what best determines the performance of a specific unit? I generally look at 3 main points weighted in this order: avg damage output, max damage output, min damage output. Notice I'm not overly concerned about health: a unit with 10 HP costing 15 pt is still fair game if most hostile figures can only do (expected, on average) 1 damage/attack to it

in order words, "how many attack can a figure reasonably expect to take before it dies"? for the meta these days the answer seems to be, for the most part, 1 , perhaps 2. This is due to most figures are able to reliably do 5-6 damage/attack, more if you stack command cards. This seems to the direction IACP is going: the power curve seems to hover somewhere between Wave 8 - Wave 9

lowering cost of older figures is just a red herring and does not address the root problem: the unit has to be cheap so that it can do something useful before it dies

I'm in favor of lowering the above numbers down to "most figures are able to reliably do 3-4 damage/attack", again I'm only referring to most hostile figures on the battlefield. 13pt Hatred Vader does 7 damage/attack is fair game, but when you have 4 pt eRangers/5 pt eSentry and others who can consistently do 5+ damage/attack, figures such as Stormtroopers has to be made cheap because they're likely to just be one-shotted, hence my argument on nerfing the powerful rather than buffing the weak, and make the power curve hover somewhere between Wave 6 - Wave 7. I believe players would be more happy to take older figures like Leia or Farmboy Luke or Trandoshans or Heavy Stormtroopers or ISBs ( even if there aren't IACP fixes ) if they're expected to withstand ~3 shots instead of perhaps 1

On 7/15/2019 at 5:32 PM, Rikalonius said:

Why would anyone play anything but the characters listed, save for the obligatory inclusion of Gideon?

Because there's other really good figures? So far the lists I've made testing these changes out are usually half new/half old.

3 minutes ago, ricope said:

Stormtroopers has to be made cheap

I've brought this up before, but Stormtroopers should be cheap and disposable. That would actually provide a role for them and stay consistent with "lore".

16 hours ago, Jaric256 said:

I've brought this up before, but Stormtroopers should be cheap and disposable. That would actually provide a role for them and stay consistent with "lore".

I wasn't specifically referring to Stormtroopers. My point was that when an unit has a fairly high chance of being one-shotted, it has to be cheap so it can do something useful before it dies

so why not go the other way: make sure units can't be easily one-shotted so there's no need to make them awfully cheap? To do this first the damage curve must be brought down. Take Leia for an example: in the modern meta she might get wiped out in 1 shot, 2 if she's lucky. Elite ISBs are unplayable because there's a fairly high chance of being one-shotted. When you could have Captain Terro (13 HP) being one-shotted (by 6pt Onar) or Han Solo (12 HP) being one-shotted (by IG-88), those with lesser HP are just flat out unplayable unless they're costed at perhaps 1/2/3 pts. Hence I say the cost reduction is only a red herring and does not fix the root problem

2 hours ago, ricope said:

I wasn't specifically referring to Stormtroopers. My point was that when an unit has a fairly high chance of being one-shotted, it has to be cheap so it can do something useful before it dies

so why not go the other way: make sure units can't be easily one-shotted so there's no need to make them awfully cheap? To do this first the damage curve must be brought down. Take Leia for an example: in the modern meta she might get wiped out in 1 shot, 2 if she's lucky. Elite ISBs are unplayable because there's a fairly high chance of being one-shotted. When you could have Captain Terro (13 HP) being one-shotted (by 6pt Onar) or Han Solo (12 HP) being one-shotted (by IG-88), those with lesser HP are just flat out unplayable unless they're costed at perhaps 1/2/3 pts. Hence I say the cost reduction is only a red herring and does not fix the root problem

The damage curve got ridiculous. Not only did everyone and their brother have 3 damage dice, but everyone playable had +2 damage, or +2 pierce, and usually some kind of recovery. I watch the protests that power creep wasn't happening while the damage calculator went up and up.

19 hours ago, Majushi said:

That's a flawed argument, because most of the pieces they're fixing wouldn't be played regardless of Kanan's cost. It's a systemic issue with latter pieces being "too cheap" or older pieces being "too expensive".

To keep more figure variety, the IACP have decided to lower costs of older figures instead of raising costs of newer figures. Because it promotes more variety.

By raising costs you would be more limited in spending your 40 point budget. By lowering costs, you may now have five or six options to fill a points range that previously may only have had one or two.

Yes, this impacts the costs of swarm units like troopers, but it's actually fixing many more figures than it's impacting.

Most of the older figures remain untouched and many new figures were costed down. Even with the fixes, are Han and Chewbacca even viable with the new costs? I agree some pieces needed a price reduction, and some units needed a price increase in order to mathematically balance their damage output. Frankly I liked it when Elite Stormtroopers were dangerous and something to be feared.

I think we can all agree the power creep is real.

I for one would very much like to see all figures brought into a similar line, and also agree that not everything becoming cheaper is the only way to go.

Obviously the overall scope of the IACP is to achieve this slowly, and one by one the figures will become more balanced.

Elite Troopers were the benchmark, but that mark has now changed.

It's pretty clear that dragging the new stuff down to the Elite Troopers level isn't going to be feasible, so the objective becomes dragging other things up to the new level (ish).

2 hours ago, Rikalonius said:

The damage curve got ridiculous. Not only did everyone and their brother have 3 damage dice, but everyone playable had +2 damage, or +2 pierce, and usually some kind of recovery. I watch the protests that power creep wasn't happening while the damage calculator went up and up.

1 hour ago, Majushi said:

Elite Troopers were the benchmark, but that mark has now changed.

It's pretty clear that dragging the new stuff down to the Elite Troopers level isn't going to be feasible, so the objective becomes dragging other things up to the new level (ish).

I don't see why eTroopers can't be the benchmark again. While I like what IACP is doing overall, I'd rather see all units nerfed than to see any unit buffed. While so far we've seen mass point reduction and a couple of command card errata, I would like to see more units rolling 2 die and fewer/weaker surge abilities.

2 hours ago, Majushi said:

Elite Troopers were the benchmark, but that mark has now changed.

The "benchmark" is decided by the company and playerbase, if FFG doesn't have any plans to release any further physical products on the horizon, it then falls to the player base, of course you could argue "but what is the appropriate benchmark then?" in which I say "most units should be doing perhaps ~3 damage/attack on average" instead of the commonly seen 5-6 damage/attack, with reasons already stated above

2 hours ago, Majushi said:

It's pretty clear that dragging the new stuff down to the Elite Troopers level isn't going to be feasible, so the objective becomes dragging other things up to the new level (ish).

how comes? imo it's a lot easier to nerf an unit than to buff it up, nerfing them means we only need to look at units from Wave 8 - 11 instead of the other way around (buffing units from Wave 1 - 7). The latter has a lot more units to go over, this would also handle the case where in the future if FFG decides to release a new power curve, we can just say "nope let's nerf those 5 Wave 12 units" instead of saying "welp, let's rework all of our 200 existing fixes"

*sigh*

Go on then.

Start suggesting what you would do to nerf waves 8-11.

Increase the cost to make them less attractive as a start. Followed by banning or tweaking of command cards, in the extreme cases followed by flat out banning certain cards (ex. Gideon's been around for as long as I can remember, SoS, Blaze of Glory, Take Initiative are known to be swingy)

Ensuring that only figures with cost starting perhaps 7-8 or above should have powerful 3-dice attack with great surge abilities . eStorm (3) being one-shotted by Jedi Luke (12) or AT-DP (9)? fair enough

rStorm (2) being one-shotted by eRanger (4) or rNexu (4) being one-shotted by eJet (4)? ummm no

notice that 3-dice attacks are fine provided that:

1. the unit costs enough to justify it (ex. Hatred Vader), or

2. the surge are relatively weak (ex. rHK droid, rEWebs, rProbe)

3. units with "virtual" dice such as eJet or Bossk or eRanger are considered 3-dice attacker as well

only then can we start discussing what's appropriate for queen pieces such as Hatred Vader or Rogue Solo. We already have a great post here:

imo the biggest bang-for-your-time would be start looking at all those Tier-1 units

Extra thoughts:

1. for some units, removing their reroll abilities immediately makes them a lot crappier (ex. eGamo, Rogue Han, Hatred Vader)

2. for others, removing their passive bonus also immediately brings down their power curve (ex. eRanger, eRiot, Spectres, Jedi Luke, Hondo)