Dear FFG,

Please give us a rotating format for this game. It keeps the meta fresh and interesting, it can minimise buy-in for new players and it can encourage more purchases from older players.

They basically do have a rotating format. Only instead of rotating out ships or cards you can use, they rotate the costs to rebalance things periodically, which helps shake up the meta, and encourages people to use (and buy) ships they might have passed up before.

The ability to change costs retroactively really does make rotating out whole ships unnecessary. Especially if they're getting to a point where they consider individual factions to be "complete".

Talk to your TOs, your FLGS, your league, your local group. Make it happen at your game nights. FFG doesn't need to do it. I believe in you!

25 minutes ago, Freeptop said:

They basically do have a rotating format. Only instead of rotating out ships or cards you can use, they rotate the costs to rebalance things periodically, which helps shake up the meta, and encourages people to use (and buy) ships they might have passed up before.

Changing point costs to balance ships is not the same as a rotating format - the two have different goals. Points balancing aims to level the playing field for the entire pool of ships, which is a good goal. Rotation, however, aims to do a few things:

1. Decrease the total size of the ship pool
2. Create a more focused meta-game
3. Open up design space for new ideas
4. Incentivize new purchases

Extended is fun, but each new pilot and upgrade card has to be weighed against the entire card pool, which limits the design space for new cards. Sure, you can raise the points on an old card to prevent it being played in a problematic combo, but then you kill off all the legitimate uses of that card (and some points-fortressing ace might decide it's worth using anyway).

27 minutes ago, Freeptop said:

The ability to change costs retroactively really does make rotating out whole ships unnecessary. Especially if they're getting to a point where they consider individual factions to be "complete".

In terms of making a fair and balanced game, this is true, but a rotating format has the power to achieve a lot more for the game (and for FFG), as per my points above.

16 minutes ago, thebrettski said:

Talk to your TOs, your FLGS, your league, your local group. Make it happen at your game nights. FFG doesn't need to do it. I believe in you!

This would be fun to run for a league, but I'm thinking more about the trajectory of the game as a whole, and particularly the impact that rotation could have on the design of new cards and ships.

And that is why they have 3 formats:

1) "Extended" is the (almost) encompassing deathmatch format where all (non-huge) ships and upgrades are available for play.

2) "Epic" is the scenario-based format where also huge-ships are allowed.

3) "Hyperspace" is the rotating format you are asking for. For now only ships and upgrades have been only rotated in, but the developers have stated FFG will start to rotate specific ships and upgrades out of the format to keep it fresh.

Interestingly, in 2020 main event in the System Open series are now Hyperspace-formats, while the Extended-format, which used to be the main event, now becomes the side-event.

1 hour ago, Sciencius said:

3) "Hyperspace" is the rotating format you are asking for. For now only ships and upgrades have been only rotated in, but the developers have stated FFG will start to rotate specific ships and upgrades out of the format to keep it fresh.

Interestingly, in 2020 main event in the System Open series are now Hyperspace-formats, while the Extended-format, which used to be the main event, now becomes the side-event.

On discord, the devs said the following:

Quote

For next year, all events in the path to Worlds (Store, Prime, Grand, etc.) will be played using the Extended format. System Opens will use the Hyperspace format. Regarding the reasons behind this and goals of the Hyperspace format, stay tuned—Alex Watkins has an article addressing this topic that is planned to go live in the first months of 2020.

Extended is very much the main event, with hyperspace as an alternate format for system opens. System opens have a history of running a weird or unusual format.

I know the devs spoke about rotating things out of hyperspace in the twitch AMA, but with all the chopping and changing of plans I think we'll have to wait for the Alex's 2020 article to know for sure if that's going to happen. Even if it does, I'm concerned that hyperspace has been relegated to a minor format just for system opens and casual leagues

Please don't as I would like to be in control of which ships I want to fly, not the flavour of the month ships. Optimal balance aross all ships should be the goal, then you can change it up however you want with your local game group or limit yourself in your list building using your own rules.

Why do you need FFG to sanction this? If you want to host tourneys with alternative formats, no one is stopping you. Sure, Worlds will remain Extended, but the vast majority of players will never get to attend anyway. They play locally, either at home, at a friend's house, at a club or at an FLGS. If FFG does sanction a rotating format, it may very well be so unpopular locally that the scene will simply ignore it anyway, which is basically what's happened with Hyperspace over here already.

19 hours ago, Okapi said:

Why do you need FFG to sanction this?

21 hours ago, Dwing said:

Optimal balance aross all ships should be the goal

See my previous post: I want to see what they can do with an open design space, and how they can focus and change the meta by rotating things out. Optimal balance is good, but not as interesting to me as rotation: without rotation, x-wing will eventually get bloated, even if the ships are well balanced against each other. In the extended format, each new release has a relatively smaller impact on the game than the releases before it, because it is competing against a larger group of existing ships.

For example, look at the scum faction: it has so many ships filling similar roles that it's almost impossible to balance them against one another. Assuming the upcoming razorcrest is a medium-base ship, how will it meaningfully differentiate itself from the scurrg, G1-A, and kimogila?

19 hours ago, Okapi said:

Sure, Worlds will remain Extended, but the vast majority of players will never get to attend anyway

The format of the official events heavily influences the format that players use at their local store. With all events (except system opens) being extended now, I expect extended to be far and away the main focus of players at all levels of competition.

Finally, rotation means fewer purchases for new players. Instead of needing to buy every ship in their faction they only need to buy a core set and the currently-legal ship pool. This is particularly pertinent because old ships frequently go out of print (and many strong ships are still not available outside of a conversion kit).

6 hours ago, gadwag said:

See my previous post: I want to see what they can do with an open design space, and how they can focus and change the meta by rotating things out. Optimal balance is good, but not as interesting to me as rotation: without rotation, x-wing will eventually get bloated, even if the ships are well balanced against each other. In the extended format, each new release has a relatively smaller impact on the game than the releases before it, because it is competing against a larger group of existing ships.

For example, look at the scum faction: it has so many ships filling similar roles that it's almost impossible to balance them against one another. Assuming the upcoming razorcrest is a medium-base ship, how will it meaningfully differentiate itself from the scurrg, G1-A, and kimogila?

The format of the official events heavily influences the format that players use at their local store. With all events (except system opens) being extended now, I expect extended to be far and away the main focus of players at all levels of competition.

Finally, rotation means fewer purchases for new players. Instead of needing to buy every ship in their faction they only need to buy a core set and the currently-legal ship pool. This is particularly pertinent because old ships frequently go out of print (and many strong ships are still not available outside of a conversion kit).

I understand your points but I would still prefere game balance. For me its not so bad that some ships are similar. then you can buy the ships you like and not have to play the Misthunter over the Razorcrest for example. If the ships are balanced then new players should pretty much be able to buy the ships they like instead of need to compete.

7 hours ago, gadwag said:

Finally, rotation means fewer purchases for new players. Instead of needing to buy every ship in their faction they only need to buy a core set and the currently-legal ship pool. This is particularly pertinent because old ships frequently go out of print (and many strong ships are still not available outside of a conversion kit).

Why does a new player has to buy every ship in a faction? It is enough with a few ships right now, because the meta right now allows a wide diversity.

In your rotation wish, a new player could very well end up forced to buy more ships, as the ships (s)he likes and just bought are rotated out the week after.

14 hours ago, gadwag said:

The format of the official events heavily influences the format that players use at their local store. With all events (except system opens) being extended now, I expect extended to be far and away the main focus of players at all levels of competition.

To a certain extent. I'm a tournament organiser, and here people moaned and groaned (and a lot declined to show up at all) when local FFG sanctioned tourneys were Hyperspace. On the flipside I haven't heard of a single local player demand that format, or even express a preference for it.

On 12/6/2019 at 8:38 PM, Dwing said:

I understand your points but I would still prefere game balance. For me its not so bad that some ships are similar. then you can buy the ships you like and not have to play the Misthunter over the Razorcrest for example. If the ships are balanced then new players should pretty much be able to buy the ships they like instead of need to compete.

Part of my point is that perfect balance between similar ships is not possible - one will always be slightly better. That said, the kimogila and g1-a are close enough right now that you can probably choose one on preference and not lose out too badly.

On 12/6/2019 at 9:22 PM, Managarmr said:

Why does a new player has to buy every ship in a faction? It is enough with a few ships right now, because the meta right now allows a wide diversity.

In your rotation wish, a new player could very well end up forced to buy more ships, as the ships (s)he likes and just bought are rotated out the week after.

If a new player wants to play competitively, they need to buy all the ships in a faction.

EDIT: just realised I forgot to type this part out, so here it is properly:

If a new player wants to play competitively, they need to buy all (or almost all) the ships in a faction. No matter how balanced the meta is, they will always be at a disadvantage against someone who has all the ships and upgrades at their disposal.

The scenario of buying a ship only to have it rotate the next week would be unfortunate, but I suspect it would be very unlikely. If the new player intends to play in the rotation format, or speaks to anyone playing the rotation format, they will already know about the rotation timeline and avoid this mistake. If they don't know about the rotation format, they are only going to play casually for the time being, and the rotation won't bother them.

Besides, the extended format isn't immune to this sort of effect either. A new player now might purchase a pile of vultures and then find them getting nerfed in january. A nerf is less bad than a rotation in some ways, but for competitive play there isn't much difference between the two.

END EDIT

On 12/7/2019 at 4:28 AM, Okapi said:

To a certain extent. I'm a tournament organiser, and here people moaned and groaned (and a lot declined to show up at all) when local FFG sanctioned tourneys were Hyperspace. On the flipside I haven't heard of a single local player demand that format, or even express a preference for it.

A fair point. Many players (including most of you here, by the look of things) prefer extended over hyperspace. Part of the purpose of this thread is for me to defend the benefits of a proper rotating format over plain extended, because, like you say, many players currently prefer extended. It doesn't help that FFG have done a fairly mediocre job with hyperspace thus far - they haven't tied it to newly released ships (so it's no benefit to new players), they haven't curated the ship list to be particularly interesting, and they haven't announced clear plans for where the format is going or whether it will rotate at all.

I do firmly believe that the benefits of rotation vs extended will become clearer as the ship and upgrade pool grows. Right now, extended is not too bad (except for scum, who feel quite bloated to me), but as the game progresses the issues I've outlined with extended are only going to worsen

I know rotation sounds like it will cost more money in the long run, but for new players this is not the case.

To play extended, you need to buy every existing ship for the faction, or close to it. No matter how you slice it, that means buying a conversion kit and a bunch of 1.0 ships, which either costs a lot of money or effort finding a deal (or both). You then need to buy every new ship released for the faction. Large initial investment + steady ongoing investment.

To play a rotation format, you would need to buy all the currently legal ships, which would be in print and on the shelves. You might opt to not buy the ships that are due to rotate out on the next rotation. You then need to buy every new ship released for the faction. Moderate initial investment + steady ongoing investment = less than playing extended. More importantly, you would be able to walk into a store and buy all the ships you need to get playing competitively there and then - no need to go and trawl facebook for old collections. This is a big part of why I like the prequel factions so much - they make it dead easy to get into the game.

11 hours ago, gadwag said:

If a new player wants to play competitively, they need to buy all the ships in a faction.

No they don't.

This seems to be the basis for your entire argument, and yet I still don't believe you've justified it. The closest you've come is

11 hours ago, gadwag said:

No matter how balanced the meta is, they will always be at a disadvantage against someone who has all the ships and upgrades at their disposal.

To which I say, says who?

Let's look at some of the top lists from Worlds, shall we.

#1 Whisper, Vader, Grand Inquisitor.Can't currently be played without a 1e model and conversion kit, as the TIE Phantom hasn't been re-released. But most of the components don't require the whole Empire faction. You simply need a Core Set (as with most lists) for Afterburners, TIE Advanced x1 for Vader, TIE Advanced v1 for Grand Quiz, VT-49 Decimator for Fifth Brother (although you can't yet put it on Whisper) and two copies of either the Hyena or the N-1, both from outside the faction anyway, for Passive Sensors. Or you wait until Hotshots and Aces, as you'd have to do with any Empire list that wants those upgrades. What you don't need: TIE/ln expansion, TIE Striker expansion, TIE Reaper expansion, upcoming TIE Interceptor expansion. So you require less than half the currently released Imperial content to have an evidently competitive list.

#2 Wedge, Braylen, Blount, Jake, Bandit. Again, can't quite be played yet as the Z-95 hasn't had a Rebel release, and the A-Wing isn't out yet. However, all you'd need to pick up is a Blount card and a Bandit card, so assuming you can find them, all you need to buy is the ship expansions themselves. Jamming Beam comes with the B-Wing and two of the four Crack Shots come with the Z-95s. There are no other upgrades. What you don't need: Millennium Falcon, Y-Wing, Ghost, Saw's Renegades. Again, half of the released Rebels content is not required for this list.

#3 4x Black Sun Assassin. Also can't be played yet, as the Star Viper isn't out. However, all it needs is 4 copies of the Star Viper and 4 copies of the Z-95 for Crack Shot. Not something a new player is likely to do, but again you can get a competitive Scum list by essentially only buying one type of ship. What you don't need: All of the other Scum releases.

#4 Seevor, Torkil, 3x Cartel Marauder. Again, none of these ships are out except Seevor. But again, it's a very upgrade light list. What you don't need: Any currently released Scum ship except the Mining Guild TIE

#5 Zari, Tallie, Greer and 2x Blue Squadron Recruits. At last, a list you can actually play without a conversion kit. You need 5 RZ-2 A-Wings to get enough copies of Heroic, but again this is a limitation common to a lot of lists. You also need 5 TIE/fos to get enough Advanced Optics. But that's another required out of faction purchase (remember when FFG said you wouldn't need to do that in 2e?) that doesn't affect whether you need to buy a whole faction to be competitive. What you don't need: Resistance Transport. Given that Resistance only has 3 ships released in the first place, that's not so bad.

#7 Fenn and Boba. Great example of an easy competitive list available to new players. Fearless comes with the Fang you need for Fenn. Hull Upgrade in the Core Set, Slave 1 and Prox Mines in the Firespray you need for Boba. Crack Shot from a Z-95. Maul from an outside faction Ghost purchase. What you don't need: Punishing One, Scyk, Hound's Tooth, Mining Guild TIE, Lando's Falcon. So again, you can easily make a competitive list without requiring the majority of the faction.

#8 Sear Swarm. A very common competitive list. All you need is 3 copies of Servants of Strife ("all") and a standalone Vulture Droid. What you don't need: Sith Infiltrator, Hyena, Geonosian Fighter. Again, it's not exactly a cheap buy in but you don't need the whole faction to be competitive.

I think that's probably enough examples.

And most new players probably aren't going to come in needing Worlds level of competitiveness. You can make a really solid Rebel list with just the Core Set and two T-65s. You can make the Imperial 5x5 list with just the Core Set, TIE Striker, TIE/ln and TIE Advanced x1. Swap the Striker for another TIE/ln and you've got Vader + Howl, Iden, Academy miniswam.

Get good with a competitive list and you can stay good with it.

You don't need to keep changing what you fly..... Unless what you fly suddenly isn't allowed.

So again, why do you think that any new player needs to buy every single expansion to stay competitive in Extended?

It would be nice if they had events for Epic Battles. As in....they really promote them and local stores / TO's embrace them (actually run them).

12 hours ago, GuacCousteau said:

Let's look at some of the top lists from Worlds, shall we.

You raise a fair point: beginner players can certainly build a strong list without buying into an entire faction. You have made several good examples of this (such as sear swarm), although I'd like to add one caveat: a good deal of the lists you've posted require a conversion kit and 1.0 purchases. I do not think this is beginner friendly, especially the part where players have to buy 1.0 ships.

12 hours ago, GuacCousteau said:

Get good with a competitive list and you can stay good with it.

You don't need to keep changing what you fly..... Unless what you fly suddenly isn't allowed.

This is the main point of disagreement between us, I think. I don't think that sticking with a single list is a viable competitive approach in the long term. The meta constantly shifts - look how it's changed in the last 6 months, with droid swarms becoming more and more prevalent. Earlier this year, I made a strong scum anti-ace list and did quite well with it, but the list struggles against droid swarms and has been getting weaker as swarms grow in popularity. Furthermore, points changes can and will change the strength of lists - I guarantee that the sear swarm will not be anywhere near as powerful in January as it is now.

Is a single strong list enough for a player to play their first competitive games? Yes. Is a single list enough for a new player to play competitively for more than a few months? I'd say no. There are some players who stick with a single list for a long time, but I doubt those were the first lists those players purchased.

To be honest, as a new player I did indeed buy everything for my faction of choice (so far). Still waiting on Saw's Renegades to be released for 2.0, as well as one other ship. I also ended up getting every currently released for 2.0 Galactic Empire ship. But that was mostly due to other people getting me them. Even though I've been buying the 2.0 releases of Rebel Alliance ships exclusively, I still decided the Rebel conversion kit was worth buying for the upgrade cards.

1 hour ago, Faerie1979 said:

To be honest, as a new player I did indeed buy everything for my faction of choice (so far). Still waiting on Saw's Renegades to be released for 2.0, as well as one other ship. I also ended up getting every currently released for 2.0 Galactic Empire ship. But that was mostly due to other people getting me them. Even though I've been buying the 2.0 releases of Rebel Alliance ships exclusively, I still decided the Rebel conversion kit was worth buying for the upgrade cards.

Saw's Renegades won't be rereleased, at least not anytime soon. However, the 1.0 Saw's Renegades box includes 2.0 components (same with the TIE Reaper). They were part of the final wave of first edition which was also "Wave 0" of second edition.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2018/6/21/built-on-hope/

On 12/13/2019 at 3:32 AM, Faerie1979 said:

Still waiting on Saw's Renegades to be released for 2.0,

Not sure what you think you're waiting for, Saw's Renegades has been released since June 2018. It was the very first X-Wing 2.0 expansion to be released.

Yes, some of the 2.0 cards in that pack are misprinted, but I just bought a 2.0 Firespray off the store shelf last month that still had a Slave I card that said I have to take a stress to use it, so I don't see why a misprinted cards makes the pack any less legitimate than all of the other 2.0 content that also has misprints in them.

On 12/16/2019 at 2:57 PM, Tvboy said:

Not sure what you think you're waiting for, Saw's Renegades has been released since June 2018. It was the very first X-Wing 2.0 expansion to be released.

Yes, some of the 2.0 cards in that pack are misprinted, but I just bought a 2.0 Firespray off the store shelf last month that still had a Slave I card that said I have to take a stress to use it, so I don't see why a misprinted cards makes the pack any less legitimate than all of the other 2.0 content that also has misprints in them.

Let's see here... "Not available in local stores", have had some poor experiences buying 1st edition ships (the wings of the Tie Advanced that came with my raider broke off while stored), I'd like to encourage FFG to continue releasing older ships for 2.0 (especially the ones they discontinued), and I'd rather not have to throw out the 1.0 cards.

17 hours ago, Faerie1979 said:

Let's see here... "Not available in local stores", have had some poor experiences buying 1st edition ships (the wings of the Tie Advanced that came with my raider broke off while stored), I'd like to encourage FFG to continue releasing older ships for 2.0 (especially the ones they discontinued), and I'd rather not have to throw out the 1.0 cards.

It sucks when you can't find what you want on shelves, that's a real pain. It is unfortunate that Saw's renegades and the Reaper are rather difficult to purchase now and are not getting a reprint. On the plus side, none of those ships or pilots are amazingly good, so there's that I guess.

I understand why FFG didn't reprint them though, and it's not feasible for them (or for game stores) to keep the entire ship catalogue in print at once. That's a big part of the reason why I am advocating for a rotating format. It makes the supply chain and stocking part of things much more straightforward. Every 6 months, order a new wave of ships, and stores only need to keep the last however many waves (plus core sets) in stock. When a wave is soon to rotate, stores can stop ordering more in, and they can still sell surplus stock (perhaps at a discount) once it rotates, because the extended format still exists. That makes things easier for shops to stock, easier for players to purchase, easier for suppliers to order, and easier for FFG to release and ship.

As an aside, it also makes store-organized events much more straightforward. Instead of ordering store champs kits which may or may not be advertised or arrive in time, you order a release party kit (and maybe another promo kit) with each wave.