1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

The devs have more to do than stare at the meta and revise PDFs.

I want new content, not quarterly reports on the state of the game.

Also, I'm going to bet most people play once or twice a month. Having thing shuffle every 3 months is going to make the game feel like an unstable moving target.

Around here, most players play once or twice per week, some even do 3 or even 4 times a week when in tourney season, with vassal and such. And we usually play for 2 or 3 games each time.
For those, of course the game can become ''Solved'' really quickly. That's why I think they want update more often, so they have something to test and math out during that time. (I still think 6 months updates are the best. Too often might then jump the gun too quickly on certain change and then need them to be brought back, and of course it hurts players who don't play as often.)

I'm curious if what's needed isn't a sort of hybrid arrangement. Change the points in January and then somewhere around February or March fix any glaring mistakes that popped up as a result of the January rebalance. Maybe nothing changes if no obvious boogity-men appear. Then leave things alone until July. Another major rebalance in July with another minor correction (if needed) in August or September.

Having a built in "Ope, let's get that little guy back to where he was." mechanism would allow the developers to be a bit more aggressive in points rebalances knowing that any error they make isn't going to be hanging over their heads for 6 months. Not suggesting they start changing points willy-nilly but mistakes are going to happen.

Anyway, I suggest this:

• January- points rebalance (major point overhaul)
• February/March- point corrections (as needed basis)
• July- points rebalance (major point overhaul)
• August/September- point corrections (as needed basis)

2 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

With more frequent changes, you get to the place where very few changes are ever needed much sooner.

Well, that's only true if you never add new content.

And if there is no new content, the game is dead, and no one will need a points update.

I mean, small point changes are almost the antithesis of this thread; if the game is "solved" and then the points barely change, the game is still "solved."

What the game needs to make things exciting is a full wave of all new content for all factions at once.

45 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Well, that's only true if you never add new content.

And if there is no new content, the game is dead, and no one will need a points update.

That's why I said "very few changes" and not "no changes." Assuming the basic power level doesn't go up or down, then the right cost of Proton Torpedoes isn't really going to change unless some insane new synergy that's widely available comes out. From a design perspective, those should be kept pretty rare in general, and even in those cases it's more likely the new upgrade that needs to change than the established one (as is the case for Passive Sensors).

45 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

I mean, small point changes are almost the antithesis of this thread; if the game is "solved" and then the points barely change, the game is still "solved."

Au Contraire, what we're seeing right now is far from "solved." There's more diversity in the meta than ever before in either edition. Sure, there are some things that are more powerful, and that's why we still need some changes, but not nearly as many changes as we needed in January, for example. The correction cycle is convergent: the changes that are necessary to make reduce every iteration until you hit an equilibrium of occasional changes by extremely fine amounts, generally in response to new content.

Absent new content, ideal balance is theoretically possible inasmuch as the optimal point value per card can be solved (through iteration). Solved in the sense that list-building cannot be solved because essentially every card is equally viable in the competitive scene. In that sense, the game being "solved" from the standpoint of the developers is a very good thing because it means it can't be "solved" by the players.

45 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

What the game needs to make things exciting is a full wave of all new content for all factions at once.

I completely agree. But that doesn't mean that all existing points need to change. If they are internally consistent and balanced (which of course they aren't yet but they can be), the only costs that will need iteration are the new costs.

I guess it's a matter of whether you want a static, diverse game with a near-perfectly balanced meta, or a dynamic, nuclear game with a meta that does solve, but changes every season. I prefer the former, many prefer the latter, apparently including the devs. To reach the equilibrium of the former, point adjustments would probably have to be around 3-4 times per year – roughly as frequent as new releases. The existing things will become more balanced (allowing benchmarking of new items to be easier), and the things from the last wave can be corrected by small amounts at a time. Nothing would generally have to change by more than a point or two (other than things like 7B, Ensnare, or Supernatural Reflexes). Or we could have the current cycle of variously over-nerfing and over-buffing (sometimes the wrong items in a combo, or all items when it isn't necessary), and new content that keeps changing the game, and every time a new adjustment comes out it's extremely clear what kinds of builds will win more often than others.

In the end it's a matter of preference: Do you want the balance to be perfected, or do you want the balance to be changed up? Both have supporters and there are good reasons for both. However, I think the former is more sustainable in the very-long term, and this is why: The game will be retired at some indefinite point in the future. This is kind of sad to think about, but it's inevitable. Whenever that happens, would we like to be stuck with whatever the flavor of the last season was for all eternity, or would we prefer to have a very, very balanced game to give to our grandchildren? The "living" aspect of living games is what makes them fun, but sometimes that means that when they die, they actually become dead. It doesn't have to be that way though.

Note that I'm not saying absolutely perfect balance would ever be possible – that is too much to hope for. It will never be true that every conceivably possible list that can be made would stand an exactly equal chance against any other list in the hands of competent opponents. Games that have synergies and the like will always favor some builds over others. Still, it is entirely possible that there exist more than one build for every pilot of every ship that stand a decent chance in the competitive scene, and that no pilot has a necessarily "stapled" pre-built loadout (while there may be a known optimized loadout, some variation is still competitively viable). Permanent elimination of the S- and D-Tiers actually does seem possible to me, and it's an ideal to strive for. There will always be A and B tiers, and there will also probably always be some Cs, but that doesn't mean we will ever need wave 1 cards changed by 3 points after next year.

On 12/4/2019 at 11:37 AM, feltipern1 said:

I'd agree. Also, given the prevalence of TA-175 over Kraken, I'd like to see Kraken go down to about 7 and TA go up to about 8 or 9. Kraken was the super-Relay when Separatists were released, but TA-175 has really become the go-to in most cases.

As an aside, I'd also like to see the other two decreased in cost, just to see what kind of lists shake out.

Um no on kraken going down. You do know that the best worlds sep list had kraken instead of ta175.... aka kraken finished top 16 in worlds....

5 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

Also, I'm going to bet most people play once or twice a month. Having thing shuffle every 3 months is going to make the game feel like an unstable moving target.

So I've got a regular Tuesday game at the FLGS.

• Travel for work.
• Snow storm.
• Forecast of a snow storm which never really happened.
• My brother in town for Thanksgiving.
• Snow storm.

I think I got two games in one weekend somewhere in there (I'll play about half of weekends, give or take), but it's been an awkwardly dry spell.

//

That said... I've started to wonder the timing windows.

Just looking at some of the top-meta stuff (Sear Swarm, for example, or TIE/v1s), maybe I'm wrong, but it seemed like it took a few months to catch on, even after the July points adjustment.

It's possible 4 months really isn't enough time for a meta to develop, the over-performing and under-performing ships to get spotted, and reasonable balance changes made.

//

Is there anyone out there who has a bit more of a sense when Sear Swarm really started to take over?

5 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

Is there anyone out there who has a bit more of a sense when Sear Swarm really started to take over?

It was not quite in full swing by the trial I attended in the KC area in July (2019).

Did my thing again.

I changed the algorithm a little this time so there aren't as many crazy flukes. Maybe this can hold you all over for a bit.

I'm planning on actually going through soon to do real human suggestions with commentary/reasoning, which is really the way this is meant to be used. Especially for the upgrades, which are almost impossible to judge by the success of the lists they're taken in because they compose such a small part of the overall success.

Feel free to check it out, and as always, take it with a grain of salt. It's basically just a state-of-the-meta report, more or less.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fZqj7rroGGcAPio285FJ7qOnluaUtixxs508FJq1pwQ/edit?usp=sharing

16 hours ago, brownj23 said:

Um no on kraken going down. You do know that the best worlds sep list had kraken instead of ta175.... aka kraken finished top 16 in worlds....

Nope. Didn't pay much attention to Worlds games or lists, other than the ones that made the top table. I followed the 4-Viper controversy on the forums for a while, but generally I don't have that much time to invest in analysis of what's been going on. I haven't heard much about Kraken, so I assumed it wasn't being well-used.

8 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Did my thing again.

I changed the algorithm a little this time so there aren't as many crazy flukes. Maybe this can hold you all over for a bit.

I'm planning on actually going through soon to do real human suggestions with commentary/reasoning, which is really the way this is meant to be used. Especially for the upgrades, which are almost impossible to judge by the success of the lists they're taken in because they compose such a small part of the overall success.

Feel free to check it out, and as always, take it with a grain of salt. It's basically just a state-of-the-meta report, more or less.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fZqj7rroGGcAPio285FJ7qOnluaUtixxs508FJq1pwQ/edit?usp=sharing

As always, great work. There are always things that I find amusing.

• Yadayada breakpoints.
• Yadayada Sear Swarm overcorrection. You've noted this limitation of your process before, that often lots of things in a top list will get nerfs, and realistically putting all of them in at once would be bad. However, thing which strikes me: TA-175 is only up 1 point. I'd have thought the tactical relay was a bigger part of things.
  • That's one thing this model seems like it does well: potentially finds things that might be less important than we'd think, since Trade Fed droids are everywhere, but TA-175 might not be.
• Yadayada "sometimes the lower init goes up, the higher init goes down" which is fine, but sometimes odd. Oddest cases: Vulture Droids (Trade Fed up 2, Separatist flat), and Kihraxz (both collapse on 39). I'll never not find these amusing.
• Surprisingly, Passive Sensors didn't get a bump up.
• Also surprising to me: Poe gets a +2 point increase. I'm not used to thinking of Poe as that popular, or that successful.
  • There's a fair number of T-70 increases, which also strike me. Granted, mostly it's Jess, Bastian, and Snap (the ones who have relatively easy access to more dice mods). Again, maybe these guys are just better than I figured.
• Not a surprise, but Vermiel holds without change, while other named Reapers drop. I know I've noticed this before Vermiel seems to be a kinda sleeper ship, probably stronger than he looks.