47 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Maybe I misread the direction you were heading. I thought you'd generally switched to "ships can take two now."

I guess I'd still be in favor of granting generics a bonus slot, since they're willing to fly generics.

Most ships could only take 1. A handful of ships like Gunboats, Vcx, Deci, Yv, etc could take 2 as a treat.

On 5/6/2020 at 12:54 PM, Boom Owl said:

Im gonna disengage now.

Hopefully I have elaborated enough for @Cpt ObVus liking.

You have explained it more fully, yes. And the more fully you explain it, the less I like it.

Your idea is threatening to aces like Vader, and I don’t like that, because I enjoy flying that style of ship. They cost massive amounts of points, they should be able to do amazing things.

Your idea would cause collateral damage to ships that naturally want lots of upgrades. Most of the builds that I have found to be lots of fun (and not necessarily good, mind you, just fun) tend to involve at least one ship with 3-5 upgrades, whether that’s a Scum Falcon with tricks to maximize the modest firepower, or an Assault Gunboat with two types of missiles, sensors, and a configuration. My usual opponent has recently become obsessed with the Resistance StarFortress, and he’s been having a blast stacking bombs and mines and Finn and Rose and Trajectory Simulators and and and all over it. None of these things are tournament bogeymen, from what I’ve seen. Why wreck them?

Your ideas lead to boring, mediocre homogenaiety. As others have said, if you want to knock some specific pilots down a peg, *target those pilots.* If Vader’s too strong for your liking, start a movement to increase his cost by 10 points (I wouldn’t support you, but at least then your remedy solves your perceived affliction). Just be aware that without the top tier, the second tier is going to look all the more oppressive. Get rid of Vader and Boba Fett, next you’ll feel like Luke and Guri are horrible.

I am a little too new to be an authority on all of the different archetypes the game offers, but I’ve played customizable card and fleet type games for about 25 years now, and generally speaking, slicing upgrade slots off of game pieces and doing things that curtail their abilities at the design level in as draconian a way as you’re suggesting makes the formerly powerful pieces boring, and inevitably takes a lot of good, otherwise balanced pieces and just makes them suck. And the things that already sucked just become unplayable. The few pieces who dodge your active nerfing, because they didn’t need upgrade help to be bonkers good anyway, become dominant, and then, not only do you just have a “meet the new boss, same the old boss” situation, players have even fewer options with which to combat the new dominant strategies.

Diversity is the key to a healthy metagame. I have not studied tons and tons of tournament lists, but I’ve also rarely heard anyone complain that “only Ace lists are viable,” “only Swarm can win,” or anything like that. It appears that there are lots of viable options to beat the world in this game. When you suggest literally shrinking the viable options to “fix” a couple of “problems,” I feel compelled to tell you it’s just not going to work. Don’t take it personally. I just really, really, really don’t like your idea.

Personally I enjoy list building constraints (whether that means limiting upgrades or requiring all upgrades must be filled).

However I view this more as a variant to try the league night after a big tournament (how I miss both of those) than a change to the major formats. Sure separatists swarms would go down a peg but FOCHO, howlrunner iden swarms, and Sloane swarms would fill it and people would have less tools to face them. It would also impact certain factions more than others so points would need to be adjusted.

1 hour ago, Cpt ObVus said:

I’ve also rarely heard anyone complain that “only Ace lists are viable,”

I’m afraid I don’t understand what your picture means.

KipPeople get frustrated with aces a lot (every couple months a topic will start with advice on to beat them) same with swarms.

Limiting the amount of upgrades means you have to find your efficiency elsewhere, so force users, more ships, and or pilot/ship abilities. As a one off this is great if your playgroup is in a rut. Tournament wise I'm not sold.

I would rather play against:

VT-49 Decimator - •Captain Oicunn - 74
•Captain Oicunn - Inspired Tactician (74)

TIE Advanced x1 - Storm Squadron Ace - 42
Storm Squadron Ace - (39)
Crack Shot (1)
Fire-Control System (2)

TIE Advanced x1 - Storm Squadron Ace - 42
Storm Squadron Ace - (39)
Crack Shot (1)
Fire-Control System (2)

TIE Advanced x1 - Storm Squadron Ace - 42
Storm Squadron Ace - (39)
Crack Shot (1)
Fire-Control System (2)

Total: 200/200

View in the X-Wing Squad Builder

Than

Naboo Royal N-1 Starfighter - •Ric Olié - 49
•Ric Olié - Bravo Leader (42)
R2 Astromech (7)

Delta-7 Aethersprite - •Obi-Wan Kenobi - 52
•Obi-Wan Kenobi - Guardian of the Republic (48)
Calibrated Laser Targeting (4)

Delta-7 Aethersprite - •Anakin Skywalker - 82
•Anakin Skywalker - Hero of the Republic (62)
Delta-7B (20)

Total: 183/200

View in the X-Wing Squad Builder

Because the first list needs to get target locks and is more predictable than the 2nd list even though it has more upgrades it is going to be an easier fight for most players.

17 minutes ago, reqent said:

KipPeople get frustrated with aces a lot (every couple months a topic will start with advice on to beat them) same with swarms.

Limiting the amount of upgrades means you have to find your efficiency elsewhere, so force users, more ships, and or pilot/ship abilities. As a one off this is great if your playgroup is in a rut. Tournament wise I'm not sold.

I would rather play against:

VT-49 Decimator - •Captain Oicunn - 74
•Captain Oicunn - Inspired Tactician (74)

TIE Advanced x1 - Storm Squadron Ace - 42
Storm Squadron Ace - (39)
Crack Shot (1)
Fire-Control System (2)

TIE Advanced x1 - Storm Squadron Ace - 42
Storm Squadron Ace - (39)
Crack Shot (1)
Fire-Control System (2)

TIE Advanced x1 - Storm Squadron Ace - 42
Storm Squadron Ace - (39)
Crack Shot (1)
Fire-Control System (2)

Total: 200/200

View in the X-Wing Squad Builder

Than

Naboo Royal N-1 Starfighter - •Ric Olié - 49
•Ric Olié - Bravo Leader (42)
R2 Astromech (7)

Delta-7 Aethersprite - •Obi-Wan Kenobi - 52
•Obi-Wan Kenobi - Guardian of the Republic (48)
Calibrated Laser Targeting (4)

Delta-7 Aethersprite - •Anakin Skywalker - 82
•Anakin Skywalker - Hero of the Republic (62)
Delta-7B (20)

Total: 183/200

View in the X-Wing Squad Builder

Because the first list needs to get target locks and is more predictable than the 2nd list even though it has more upgrades it is going to be an easier fight for most players.

Totally agree. Almost all i5 and i6 ships are comically undercosted. Regardless of upgrade availability thats true.

On 5/8/2020 at 2:25 PM, Cpt ObVus said:

I’m afraid I don’t understand what your picture means.

He's being condescending.

Ace lists are a point of complaint quite often, but they have an equal number of very loud defenders whose attitude sometimes can be summarized as nothing more than "git gud" and "stop playing crap lists that can't handle aces". To the first point, sure players stand to gain a lot by improving their skill (though there are nice ways of guiding a player to improvement, and cowardly rude ways).

To the second point, that usually means large swaths of interesting fleets are not viable because of ace lists, and pushes the meta toward homogeneity and dominant lists & counter-lists. Woo. But let's be clear: that's the way metas work . It's an ecosystem with some dominant predators at the top and their counters. If it's not aces then it's swarms, or beef, or salads... And crud, now I'm hungry.

But remove or nerf one baron and another takes its place; this needs to be done with great precision and awareness of how the game will shift in response. The meta ecosystem is very complex to tweak, and I strongly disagree with a blunt method like "ships are limited to x upgrades each" because all it does is shift that ecosystem around (usually in worse ways), not make it more even at the top. Ultimately a healthy meta is very broad at the top, while an unhealthy one (1E's meta) is a sharp spike where the dominant lists are so far beyond most anything else that there's simply nothing for them to do.

So again, targeted responses are useful. Broad-base rules changes are appropriate for a fun side format, when appropriate at all.

On 5/8/2020 at 5:31 PM, Wazat said:

...To the second point, that usually means large swaths of interesting fleets are not viable because of ace lists, and pushes the meta toward homogeneity and dominant lists & counter-lists. Woo. But let's be cledar: that's the way metas work . It's an ecosystem with some dominant predators at the top and their counters. If it's not aces then it's swarms, or beef, or salads... And crud, now I'm hungry.

But remove or nerf one baron and another takes its place; this needs to be done with great precision and awareness of how the game will shift in response. The meta ecosystem is very complex to tweak, and I strongly disagree with a blunt method like "ships are limited to x upgrades each" because all it does is shift that ecosystem around (usually in worse ways), not make it more even at the top. Ultimately a healthy meta is very broad at the top...

Couldn’t agree more.

On 5/8/2020 at 2:31 PM, Wazat said:

...To the second point, that usually means large swaths of interesting fleets are not viable because of ace lists, and pushes the meta toward homogeneity and dominant lists & counter-lists. Woo. But let's be clear: that's the way metas work . It's an ecosystem with some dominant predators at the top and their counters. If it's not aces then it's swarms, or beef, or salads... And crud, now I'm hungry...

This is, personally, one of the reasons why I despise "competitive" play of any stripe in games like this.

It's like sitting down to an amazing banquet full of incredible food, and then being told "By the way, 90% of these dishes are heavily laced with arsenic and will kill you if you eat them. Bon appetit!"

And that usually includes a lot of stuff that would be incredibly fun to try, but isn't on the bleeding edge of mathematical optimization, and is therefore worthless.

1 hour ago, clockworkspider said:

This is, personally, one of the reasons why I despise "competitive" play of any stripe in games like this.

It's like sitting down to an amazing banquet full of incredible food, and then being told "By the way, 90% of these dishes are heavily laced with arsenic and will kill you if you eat them. Bon appetit!"

And that usually includes a lot of stuff that would be incredibly fun to try, but isn't on the bleeding edge of mathematical optimization, and is therefore worthless.

Yup casual play is where it's at. As long as you have an opponent who will agree to step down from the meta, you can have fantastic fun!

The issue with 'Kitchen Table' play is that its super subjective and you can come off as a bit of a jerk for complaining. It relates heavily as well to The Oberoni Fallacy in RPG design: if your game depends on players fixing the problems with it, it doesn't matter how good your design is once fixed, its a bad design. And, to be clear, while FFG makes great game designs (most of my favorite games are FFG games), they have a history of really constrained and oppressive metas. Netrunner and especially L5R (Which as a game requires every faction to at LEAST be viable) come to mind as games that really suffered from this reluctance to really aggressively deal with problem options. Netrunner, despite being a great game, had its local scene die in my area before the banlist got out. L5R literally didn't take off despite my local scene having a ton of L5R fans because the game agressively flipped the bird to anything that wasn't exploitative, including entire factions, which if you know anything about L5R and the appeal of the community (You essentially take on a faction as part of your identity as a player and fight for it both in games and as part of this narrative 'kayfabe,' so if a faction is not just non-meta, but non-viable, you don't play), and I think X-wing is circling a similar drain in some respects when it comes to its casual base.

I think the real thing about X-wing's meta is, right now, you tend to get crushed, because the difference between a good ship and a bad one is... so absurdly massive. You wanna see the love of a game fade from someone's eyes, watch a newbie flying rebel A-wings, or even something relatively decent like beef focused Rebel Synergy that makes their list worse than pure rebel beef to run all the squad leaders together, try to fight Bobba. What if you got into X-wing because you like Starwars and have a favorite ship that you love, but it turns out its garbage and you can't fly it with Luke, you gotta fly a weird version of it with pilots you don't know in a totally different faction. You think anyone who got into X-wing because they read the Dash comics and were like "Wow I can finally get a nice model of the YT-2400! And your telling me I can PLAY as Dash in this game?" is gunna stick about when he constantly gets dumpstered? Oh hey, some fresh player got the new card pack, and slapped this flashy cool power that lets them interact with their opponent in a new way onto their ship! Now lets watch them slump in their chair because despite looking cool and actually being an very interesting design Snap Shot is garbage on most ships and it is soul crushing to constantly roll 0-1 hits that get removed anyway, so the card isn't just 'not good' but actively makes you feel bad for playing it!

A casual player doesn't care that Snap Shot is priced the way it is because of Seevor or that Juke is where it is at because of TIE Phantoms, they just see all the cards they bought are bad and they are getting their butt kicked over and over again whenever they try to make anything of their own. They aren't going to really care that a top tier list can beat Bobba when played well. They are going to see the game doesn't really care if you want to have fun with something that speaks to you, and actively punishes you for trying it, and then bail.

It is the opposite of what a list-building game should do, and why I think SOME solution for inefficient options getting bumped up has to be found for the game to live: If people buy Hotshots and Aces for an upgrade that actively made them feel bad for using it, actively made them enjoy the game LESS, people aren't going to buy card-packs or the new aces packs. If someone proxies a card in a casual game, and they find that in fact their loony Ion Missile list just loses all their ships 200-0, they aren't going to buy a ship to get the ion missile. This isn't just 'oh the tournament scene is a big homogeneous.' This is the future of the game being in jeopardy because your average player cares way more about their string of games on their once a week or even once a month X-wing night not feeling like total blowouts because they tried to bring a list no one else brought than anything to do with a tournament scene and now they don't want to buy ANY cards or ships that aren't the top tier, or just any at all more likely.

You obviously need to also care about the tournament scene when designing (I think any change that, for example, makes you feel like as a good player with a optimized list that you were 'robbed' of a win is a bad fix), but you need to ensure the people actually going into the stores, keeping local scenes alive and jumping in new players are having a good time. And my first hand experience on that is... they are not. At all. My local scene with this latest points change (before the outbreak) went from around 12-14 active players to 6-7 with most nights now not having enough to have a prize pool anymore. Its mostly the ride or die tournament people who play at multiple stores multiple times a week and like 2-3 newbies who aren't regulars every night.

Double post, herf!

Aren't you just suggesting that we play Quick Build? You can already try to set up a tournament for that, if you want.