12 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:Boom can change the title to "Could Limiting Upgrades Make X-Wing Fun" and I'll say Yes. As stated, the answer is No.
Generic Poll: Could Limiting Upgrades Per List & Ship Make X-Wing More Fun?
https://strawpoll.com/ex7zbh88
Alternative upgrade restriction set (more for a League, not necessarily the game at large) which I think works better:
What I like about it:
Maybe the best idea would be to give each pilot their own limit. For example, the fat ships that usually bring a bunch of upgrades get a maximum of 4-that reigns in their combo-wing a little bit, as I personally end up with around 5 upgrades on Han or Lando. Small ships that only have 1/2 upgrade slots can just bring that many, I doubt letting a Syck have a cannon and a talent will break anything. The real power would be limiting the aces in comparison to generics and mid-init uniques. Maybe, for example, Kylo can only equip 2 upgrades, but the generic Silencer can take 3. Wedge only gets 2 upgrades, but Porkins can take 3-You see where I'm going here. I think there's potential with this system, but as stated by Boom Owl I think it's a bit too restrictive.
Edit: Configurations either don't count towards the limit or are accounted for by increasing the limit by 1.
Edited by NpmartianI'll add another set of remarks:
Last year, before the first balancing of points, scum was dominant. Being somewhat contrary, I took 4 named x-wings to one of the first Systems Open. I had 2 upgrades in my list, beyond the s-foils. I'm not a particularly good or bad player and went 3-3.
My point is, taking a list which follows Boom's idea is already possible and those of us who fancy using lists like that can already do so.
Restricting all of x-wing to those requirements does not add to the game; it reduces the game - and it's unnecessary. You already have a reasonable number of competitive lists using minimal upgrades.
Bitter Fig's suggestion of making alternative quickbuilds is a far better thing to try.
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41 minutes ago, Gilarius said:My point is, taking a list which follows Boom's idea is already possible and those of us who fancy using lists like that can already do so.
Yeah, the sloane swarm has 1 upgrade - sloane. SickScyks have 4, 2 tractors and 2 ions. My SO primarily plays 6 strikers with 2 upgrades - 2 shields - because it's simple. The lists exist and can range from amazing to ok.
1 hour ago, theBitterFig said:This whole thread kind of reminds me of the "what if X-Wing but with far less dice variance" thread from the other day. I think folks were far too hard on @Wazat for even discussing the concepts, even if I'm not particularly interested in playing most of them.
X-Wing without dice variance, or X-Wing without upgrades, are potentially interesting games. They're also entirely separate games from the one we have now.
Yea, holy crap were people not interested in answering my questions. I'm happy with what I learned -- the current structure of X-Wing can't support less variance without a major overhaul. Most importantly, I understand why now, and that's the most valuable part. It's just that only one person ( @theBitterFig ) was willing to give me a genuine answer and walk me through the implications to understand it, unlike everyone else giving a terse, vague answer or worse, replying that I was wrong for asking, sometimes making it pretty personal. Your thread is getting serious answers and that's encouraging.
I don't like the game-wide restriction of upgrades, since that removes half the fun of the game away and reduces it to a few optimal lists, which is one reason why I already avoid tournaments. That's just boring. I definitely lean more casual, and building & trying new lists is a big reason I've stuck around. I can fly in tournaments and do decently well with practice, but I just get... so... bored... with seeing the same optimal lists all day, and playing the same optimal list all day, for 12+ hours. By the end of the tournament my eyes are bleeding from the violent, blunt shock of sameness.
Sadly, limiting upgrades in this way limits the design space and pushes people even harder toward a few optimal lists, and leaves casual players with much less variety to work with when building fun stuff.
As people above have said, this suggestion (in whatever form it would ultimately take) would work better as an optional format , not changing the core game and making everyone play that way. Just like Hyperspace vs extended, it shakes up the meta but is also elective . You can still play Extended and many people do.
I rather like theBitterFig's suggestion of expanding on the quickbuilds. I like that idea because it can give each pilot the correct loadout to make them balanced and fun, so some pilots aren't screwed by the arbitrary upgrade limit when they really need multiple upgrades to matter (while other pilots need nothing).
Here's my expansion on the idea: Small Builds. Anyone who's looked at the Hyena pilots has noticed their upgrades are all over the place; Bombardment Drone is very different from DBS-32C which is different from Baktoid Prototype. I love that idea. So here's an idea for a game format: why not have a quickbuild-like format (Small Builds) where every pilot only has a few upgrades (and sometimes the same pilot appears a couple times with a totally different slot list). Each pilot has only a few loose upgrade slots you can fill or leave empty with the list points you have left in your fleet, and maybe the occasional upgrade bolted to them that you get no matter what.
Now every pilot for a ship in this format can have a different upgrade list from the ship's other pilots (very Hyena-like). You get a smaller choice of slots, but one very unique to that pilot. Perhaps YT Han gets 2 crew slots, while Chewie gets a gunner and a sensor slot. The Outer Rim Smuggler gets 2 illicits. This is, mind you, a lot of work and I wouldn't want to be the one to do all that designing, testing, balancing, etc, but it personalizes every pilot and limits the upgrades everyone can have in that format.
There are lots of complaints and challenges with a format like this, even beyond just the workload of setting it up and balancing it. E.g. not being able to fly specific favorite builds of a pilot (same as with quickbuilds). But as a side format, it definitely has its charms.
Card Draft
Another suggestion you may enjoy: One of the fun tournaments I took part in was a pilot draft. Each player in random order got to pick one limited pilot that only they could use (if I got Luke Skywalker in the T-65, no one else could fly Luke in a T-65). When everyone had picked one pilot, we started again and each player got to pick another pilot, and so on until every pilot was distributed. Players were gradually building out the teams they could build for the multi-round tournament (which would be played over a month). Points were awarded not just for wins, but also for using the pilots you picked (or as many of them as you could), even the bottom-of-the-barrel ones that were picked last (this was back in 1st edition when we had Graz the Hunter and Fel's Wrath to dread drafting). (players could borrow ships etc they needed to fly their drafted pilots, and fly as many generics as needed to fill out the list; this is back in 1E when generics were generally not good). The winning points were somewhat balanced with the using points, so the using points mattered a lot for your final score: you wanted to use all your pilots and try to win with them.
Among the pilots I picked were Nera Dantels, Biggs Darklighter, and Jan Ors resulting in one of my favorite 1E fleets. I kinda had them in mind when I started my draft with Nera, surprising everyone (they were all fighting over top meta, so they loved my off-meta gusto). I got quite a response when I took Biggs away, ruining many peoples' plans.
Since a player would lose just flying the same top-meta fleet every match (they wouldn't get points for flying their other pilots, and winning points weren't enough to keep up with that), the format emphasized finding creative ways to put your drafted pilots together.
2E has about 280 or so unique pilots (according to a quick search on the wiki, and some of those are unreleased pilots), so you could manage it if your league had enough players. With 20 people, each player would draft around 13 or 14 pilots depending on the actual count.
If you wanted to do the same for upgrades, it would take a longer time to divvy them out (there's about 350 of those since we're not sticking to just the unique/limited ones). I'd do it as a card draft to speed it up and also reduce options for gaming their lists. Make a large deck out one copy of every non-title non-configuration upgrade and (painfully) shuffle it. (doing this in Vassal or TTS might be way faster?) Deal 20 cards to each player, and they pick 3 and pass the rest to the left. Set a time limit: I'd say they have 60 seconds to choose. Pick 3 again and pass again, repeating until all the cards have been passed (the final 2 cards you're passed you just get). Deal 20 cards again. Continue until you've given every player around 60-80 upgrade cards (so 3-4 drafts), and then the undistributed cards are left out of the game, potentially leaving it a mystery who got what and what never made it into the game.
Perhaps someone's getting proton torpedoes, even if they didn't draft any munitions carriers (to deny other lists that card?). Did someone end up with Luke Skywalker (Gunner) and they only have a Y-Wing to put it on? Some other lucky person has Gonk, and should rush to put that in a list. As before, you get points not just for winning, but also for using your limited cards. Perhaps 5 points for a win, 3 points per drafted pilot you used at least once, and 1 point per drafted upgrade you used at least once. (that's just spitballing - needs revising to pick good values).
Again, it's not a perfect format, and I'd never replace core x-wing with it. But it's a very fun league event that encourages creativity and working with limited options.
So there are some ideas that may be in line with what you're aiming for. I hope that helps!
36 minutes ago, Wazat said:Card Draft
Points were awarded not just for wins, but also for using the pilots you picked (or as many of them as you could), even the bottom-of-the-barrel ones that were picked last (this was back in 1st edition when we had Graz the Hunter and Fel's Wrath to dread drafting).
First of all, I really think this card draft idea is cool. But more importantly. . .
Fun, casual, wonky formats like Wazat's card draft play are exactly why this game does not need to be as tight as a NASA launch protocol. Cards that are mediocre and/or forgettable are not dead weight on the game; they are an opportunity to have fun in a casual/goofy setting. I would even advocate that FFG work towards creating content like this, so that folks have the raw materials to come up with off-center ideas to make the game fun.
Because, non-ironically, we all DO love the gameplay. Which means that if some of the gamepieces are less than stellar, most folks can still have a great night of X-Wing using them.
Just now, Darth Meanie said:First of all, I really think this card draft idea is cool. But more importantly. . .
Fun, casual, wonky formats like Wazat's card draft play are exactly why this game does not need to be as tight as a NASA launch protocol. Cards that are mediocre and/or forgettable are not dead weight on the game; they are an opportunity to have fun in a casual/goofy setting. I would even advocate that FFG work towards creating content like this, so that folks have the raw materials to come up with off-center ideas to make the game fun.
Because, non-ironically, we all DO love the gameplay. Which means that if some of the gamepieces are less than stellar, most folks can still have a great night of X-Wing using them.
Exactly. I specialize in trying to get some fun use out of pilots or strategies the top players would justifiably spit on. Wullffwarro War Crimes and Ruth Stayed Home are two of my favorite lists to take to a tournament as a weird off-meta spoiler, and both incorporate pilots and strategies that don't belong on the tournament tables (I've tried to make them tournament- viable , but they still struggle because they're what they're intended to be -- off-meta and interesting). I have even more interesting lists that are only viable in casual play and only ever will be. Once you and your opponent agree to back off the top meta and explore a layer or two down, the design space opens up wide and you can successfully play all kinds of delightfully fun and interesting stuff.
Top-meta tournament play will always be a narrow experience that plays to the competitive players' interest, and that's fine as long as there's still space for more casual players. When you and your opponents aim for casual and experimental, X-Wing is in its element. That's where the best fun is for a player like me.
I am actually in the complete opposite camp. I would rather try and stop spam lists with no upgrades than restrict upgrades. Minimum 5pts worth of upgrades. This would help FFG price ships better as well, as going below a certain threshold like dropping a 26pt ship to 25pts, or for example a 40pt cartel executioners opens 5 Kimogilas. With the 5pt upgrade minimum, they can be priced at 40pts for generics without the 5 in a list worry.
If anything, more upgrades make the game more fun and the ship becomes more and more customized to your personal preference. Everyone has a jumpmaster, but only you have a jumpmaster with Qi-Ra, trickshot, bossk gunner, electronic baffle, and contraband cybernetics.
No on both questions as I think they both break too many ships to be viable. You would have to redesign ordinance carriers, crew carriers, and the like to make them actually viable options.
So, to me, it also pushes the game too far in one direction. I understand not wanting combos and wanting to curtail them. But I see this answer as a bit like cutting off a hand to remove a splinter.
xwing, because of its basic mechanics, makes for a much better movement game than a card game
lots of people like card games, don't seem to realize this, and instead of playing any of the great many card games that exist want xwing to be a bad card game rather than a good movement game
6 minutes ago, svelok said:xwing, because of its basic mechanics, makes for a much better movement game than a card game
lots of people like card games, don't seem to realize this, and instead of playing any of the great many card games that exist want xwing to be a bad card game rather than a good movement game
I have to disagree that X-Wing being a good maneuver game means it can’t be a card game. In fact, I would argue that the game is both a maneuver game and a card game. Has been since the core set. Both aspects should matter. If the upgrades make maneuvering a nonissue, then something needs to be adjusted. If all that matters is where you move and your choices of how to kit out your squad do nothing, then something needs to be adjusted. And I fear that putting these kind of heavy restrictions on the card aspect of the game is going too far in order to rectify the imbalance some see in the current state of the game.
It also kills the concept of the Kihraxz as a ship packed with many mods and illicits (not that they are flown as thus now, but that is more due to not really having stuff worthwhile or discounted currently). You could only have one modded.
Lists with more than one bombing ship are dead as well.
Punishes also janky Scum lists ( e.g. the various R5TK ideas).
1 hour ago, svelok said:xwing, because of its basic mechanics, makes for a much better movement game than a card game
lots of people like card games, don't seem to realize this, and instead of playing any of the great many card games that exist want xwing to be a bad card game rather than a good movement game
Uh.
Just because the rules are displayed on cards does not make XWM a card game.
All of the cards simply describe how my ship moves and interacts with the other moving pieces.
In fact, XWM is so little of a card game that I never use any cards to play.
I just need to know the rules about how to move my ship and what its interactions are. In fact, we could publish those in a difficult-to-reference-during-play book if it could help to make you feel more like you were playing a movement game.
Edited by Darth MeanieRestrictions and different formats are fun and super necessary for the continuation of fun. So in that sense, yes.
But that's not the sense you're looking for. Nuts and bolts simplicity, enforced forever, gets serious, over competitive and fully repetitive. Super yawn. Hellsno.
I care not for competitive vs casual. I take the latter attitude to the former and have a ball. This is the way.
P.S. I like movement games. Card games are weird and abstract. I realise X Wing is a movement game. This is why I like it.
Edited by Cuz054 hours ago, wurms said:I am actually in the complete opposite camp. I would rather try and stop spam lists with no upgrades than restrict upgrades. Minimum 5pts worth of upgrades. This would help FFG price ships better as well, as going below a certain threshold like dropping a 26pt ship to 25pts, or for example a 40pt cartel executioners opens 5 Kimogilas. With the 5pt upgrade minimum, they can be priced at 40pts for generics without the 5 in a list worry.
If anything, more upgrades make the game more fun and the ship becomes more and more customized to your personal preference. Everyone has a jumpmaster, but only you have a jumpmaster with Qi-Ra, trickshot, bossk gunner, electronic baffle, and contraband cybernetics.
This is a neat idea!
Shuffling the design around a bit: The ships are priced 5 points more expensive, have a 5-point "budget" meaning your first 5 points of upgrades are free. It'd be the same result but nobody would mistakenly put out the ships at the lower cost without the upgrades. It also feels good to get things for "free".
And when swarms are warranted (e.g. TIE Fighters), those ships could have a lower "free upgrades" buffer (e.g. 1 or 2 points) to dial in how many can fit in a list. If each ship can be given a different Upgrade Budget, that lets the devs tinker with the costs and spam-ability of ships.
IMO stopping the spam lists is a worthwhile goal, as that opens up the design space for those ships a lot!
3 hours ago, svelok said:xwing, because of its basic mechanics, makes for a much better movement game than a card game
lots of people like card games, don't seem to realize this, and instead of playing any of the great many card games that exist want xwing to be a bad card game rather than a good movement game
I wish to strongly disagree...
3 hours ago, SabineKey said:I have to disagree that X-Wing being a good maneuver game means it can’t be a card game. In fact, I would argue that the game is both a maneuver game and a card game. Has been since the core set. Both aspects should matter. If the upgrades make maneuvering a nonissue, then something needs to be adjusted. If all that matters is where you move and your choices of how to kit out your squad do nothing, then something needs to be adjusted. And I fear that putting these kind of heavy restrictions on the card aspect of the game is going too far in order to rectify the imbalance some see in the current state of the game.
This. X-Wing can, and should, be both a positioning game and abilities game; it's a tabletop wargame after all. Another game can be entirely a positioning game with little or no customization, but reducing x-wing down to just that aspect is denies the full nature and purpose of the game.
IMO X-Wing works so well because it does both the tactical movement planning and the list design/customization so well, and they were never mutually exclusive. They're meant to work in tandem, and largely do so successfully; when they don't, it's a matter of balancing some specific ability or ship. I got into x-wing for how the combos and listbuilding affect the positioning game, and I continue to love this about the game.
If someone wants to remove listbuilding from the equation they can always netlist the top-meta fleets and only practice for and play tournaments: no listbuilding required and relatively little variation to encounter. Just practice what's meta and proven, and the game becomes strongly focused on perfecting the positioning game within a very limited design space. Or play a custom format with friends where few or no upgrades are allowed, as we've discussed above. But I disagree that the game would be better with a giant chunk so many of us love chopped away.
And finally, calling x-wing a "card game" is disingenuous. It has none of the gameplay of a card game, and works entirely without cards. We're not drawing cards and upgrading our ships during the game; cards, like markers, are just convenience placeholders so we're not writing our lists out on paper.
The rules are displayed on cards but it's no different from Warhammer listing options in a book. Cards are a convenient way to represent the same thing on the table; flipping a card or flipping its tokens is just altering the state of the ability or character. It's a more elegant way to represent a list on the table than the pencil and notepad I used to take to Warhammer, no iPad required to manage the list.
Far from a card game, X-Wing is a tabletop game that distinguishes itself from a game like, say, Warhammer through its distinct planning & positioning mechanics, and I very much like its design. Someone who doesn't like x-wing's upgrades can always play a custom scenario like quickbuilds, no upgrades, etc with buddies. Even form a league around that; that could be a very fun deviation from the norm, while leaving the norm in place. But I reject the notion that x-wing is a "card game" and that the cards detract from the movement mechanic rather than enhance it.
5 hours ago, wurms said:I am actually in the complete opposite camp. I would rather try and stop spam lists with no upgrades than restrict upgrades. Minimum 5pts worth of upgrades. This would help FFG price ships better as well, as going below a certain threshold like dropping a 26pt ship to 25pts, or for example a 40pt cartel executioners opens 5 Kimogilas. With the 5pt upgrade minimum, they can be priced at 40pts for generics without the 5 in a list worry.
If anything, more upgrades make the game more fun and the ship becomes more and more customized to your personal preference. Everyone has a jumpmaster, but only you have a jumpmaster with Qi-Ra, trickshot, bossk gunner, electronic baffle, and contraband cybernetics.
Geared Up format special rules: All ships must fill all card slots, minimum 8 points, but you get 5 points worth of discount.
1 minute ago, Cerebrawl said:Geared Up format special rules: All ships must fill all card slots, minimum 8 points, but you get 5 points worth of discount.
Poor K-Wing and TIE Punisher, points pinatas for life.
I think if the primary format for the game is going to be Extended FFG would benefit from having more targeted ways to restrict our available upgrade options across the entire card pool. Would even help in Hyperspace for sure ( see Boba ).
Right now all they have is a Point Cost Ban Hammer or Banishment from Hyperspace. FFG should have formal additional ways to manipulate and heavily restrict accessibility to the full card deck.
Upgrade limits on individual pilots or ships would be a tool besides shared point costs across dozens of pilots.
Key for me though that it would only begin to really reshape list building if they were aggressive about the restrictions they put in place.
Some power house pilots probably need to see essentially 1 upgrade limits given their abilities. But thatd be up them to decide in a new PDF column called "Max Upgrades" or something.
Just an idea...not trying to take anyone's favorite toys away. Although technically I kinda am suggesting that FFG do exactly that.
I think it could help 2.0 from becoming over burdened as the upgrade card deck continues to grow.
Edited by Boom OwlOkay now that I've said it, a "Bash the Pinata" play mode where you compete to shoot down a single fully loaded ship for points sounds silly and fun.
13 minutes ago, Wazat said:Poor K-Wing and TIE Punisher, points pinatas for life.
Cutlass Squadron Pilot (36) -5
Trajectory Simulator (6)
Adv. Proton Torpedoes (6)
Barrage Rockets (8)
Skilled Bombardier (2)
Seismic Charges (3)
Proton Bombs (5)
Munitions Failsafe (1)
Ship total: 62 Half Points: 34 Threshold: 5
Miranda Doni (42) -5
Adv. Proton Torpedoes (6)
Barrage Rockets (8)
Skilled Bombardier (2)
Sabine Wren (3)
Seismic Charges (3)
Proton Bombs (5)
Advanced SLAM (3)
Ship total: 67 Half Points: 36 Threshold: 5
PS: Poor Scurrg. Poor IG2000. Poor Decimator. Poor YT-2400.
Edited by Cerebrawl
The problem may just be that X-Wing
isn't that fun
........
regardless of what's being flown
.
There were times in X-Wing's history when generic pilots filled the skies, and lots of players complained that it was no fun watching generics fly at and shoot each other. Eventually, FFG released better upgrades and Aces and Fat Ships became popular archetypes, then lots of players complained it was no fun watching aces dance around their opponents and that generics needed to be better. Repeat this cycle about four times over seven years.
The underlying constant is that people have complained about X-Wing's lack of fun for seven years. Maybe, at this point, it's time to stop hating the players (the types of ships that are flying around at any given point in the meta) and start hating the game. I mean, you can only expect grown-*** adults to fly toy spaceships around a 3x3 fishbowl doing almost exclusively 2-Turns/K-Turns and rolling red dice at green dice for so many years.
Second Edition was a chance to really revolutionize and revitalize the fundamental gameplay that defines X-Wing, and basically we got same-poodoo-different-day, but now with linked actions. Don't get me wrong, I think in general Second Edition made some very solid changes to the game... but they really didn't go very far in addressing the core repetitiveness and ill-defined objective of X-Wing dogfights.
You'd think at first this is good. Until you try it.
The bad thing about what we thought was good about Hyperspace balance (which was honestly a very cool balance) and audacious balance, was that pure jousting efficiency of certain generics simply becomes the easy-mode name of the game. Hence why the whole Ace + generics thing took the game by storm this season. That will decline as generics begin to diversify with upgrades.
So basically, as a person who's analyzed the meta and its reasons historically, this isn't a good idea. Also I've tried it. Done it with table time. You get bored. Sometimes you DO want to try fat Han or fat Rey or fat Chiraneau. And as long as they aren't broken combo breakers that make Xwing into MTG, its fine to allow them to exist (just not as the strongest options available) (Fat ships already have a bunch of just game mechanic things going for them, like the fact that they fire at 100% efficiency even at 1/13 health)
8 hours ago, Wazat said:Yea, holy crap were people not interested in answering my questions. I'm happy with what I learned -- the current structure of X-Wing can't support less variance without a major overhaul. Most importantly, I understand why now, and that's the most valuable part. It's just that only one person ( @theBitterFig ) was willing to give me a genuine answer and walk me through the implications to understand it, unlike everyone else giving a terse, vague answer or worse, replying that I was wrong for asking, sometimes making it pretty personal. Your thread is getting serious answers and that's encouraging.
That's cool.
its cool people are asking these questions. Its stuff that others have also learned from 1.0 experimentation. Luck is a very interesting and very very emotionally-ridden subject.