The most extrange change in the points update is snap shot going from 7 to 8 points. (It is not marked red btw)

What would be the logic behind this change? It is already a very lackluster situational talent that hardly sees any play and some considered it should have gone down instead.

Maybe it is just a typo....I hope

Agreed. I don't think a lot of 'hardcore' players understand how... not great it felt to be a 'casual' hyped to try out this super cool upgrade that does this totally new thing that may even allow for a control archetype to work finally, which was talked about during the livestreams for this new product filled with mostly reprints you already own and then it... just sucks so hard and you ended up paying 6 points to just roll endless double blanks or focus blanks.

It's packaged with the nantex, and that base chassis just went down *dramatically*. Snap Nantexes are now a lot better than they were before.

11 minutes ago, Ablazoned said:

It's packaged with the nantex, and that base chassis just went down *dramatically*. Snap Nantexes are now a lot better than they were before.

That is nice, but Snap wasn't being PLAYED seriously on Nantexes, forget about literally any other ship in the game. The logic of pre-emptively nerfing snap to ensure it will continue to be just as bad as it currently is on the Nantex (It has been used on the Nantex at most 3 times this year on any given pilot in tournaments, Snap Nantexes are just absolutely not a thing) kinda indicates this card was never intended to actually be usable.

That or it was a typo, or a holdover from an earlier draft. There are quite a few (probable) errors in the document and unhighlighted changes. Hopefully this is one of them, but the mere fact Snap didn't go down is questionable to me.

Snap definitely was a weird one to hit, unless they see something coming in the future that may synergize too well. But currently, Snap sees next to nil playtime. I understand it is like Juke where it get stronger the more copies you have in your list, but it isn't better than Juke, and shouldn't be priced that way.

17 minutes ago, DerRitter said:

Maybe it is just a typo....I hope

It hasn't been adjusted in the official Squad Builder yet, and still shows old prices. Some changes haven't made it in yet (Crack Shot and Passive Sensors are old prices), so who knows. I'd take a bit of a wait-and-see with this.

Just now, theBitterFig said:

I'd take a bit of a wait-and-see with this.

Yep, definitely had to slap myself and get a grip, and do an IRL blue manuver, as it were.

Still stinks to think that not only might it go up, but it isn't going down though.

I played a lot of snapshot in 1.0, Then it was cheaper, better and could be much more abused (crackshot, stress, juke) but it was never highly competitive or even broken by 1.0 standards (snap crack awing was the best).

In 2.0 snap shot is worst in every way, yet it is ,more expensive

25 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

Snap Nantexes are just absolutely not a thing)

41 point snap Nantexes are not a thing. At 36 points they might be fine. Extra arc coverage is nice.

Also, snap shot is sorta a weird hill to die on, unless I'm.missing a meme somewhere.

28 minutes ago, Ablazoned said:

41 point snap Nantexes are not a thing. At 36 points they might be fine. Extra arc coverage is nice.

That just doesn't make sense though. Snap shot doesn't hold its points cost in value, it has nothing to do with the Nantex being overpriced to use it.

If, hypothetically, a points drop made Snap Shot on a ship 'too good' it means that the ship would be even stronger naked. The logic just makes no sense, Snapshot is so bad that it isn't seeing play anywhere, and the Nantex is so bad it isn't seeing any play and dropped by almost 10 points. Pre-emptively increasing the cost of one of the worst upgrades in the game which will clearly not ever have tournament viability makes no sense as a 'reactionary nerf' to a combo, because it means you don't want the combo to EVER see play, which raises the question of why it was printed. And the only logical answer, if that is hypothetically true, is ugly (it got a bunch of gullible casuals to buy a reprint pack that probably has way higher profit margins than a ship because its all just cardboard).

28 minutes ago, Ablazoned said:

Also, snap shot is sorta a weird hill to die on, unless I'm.missing a meme somewhere.

I am glad someone asked this.

Snap Shot was heavily pushed with Hotshots and Aces as this exciting new upgrade all the designers were super into, which would allow so many traditionally not good ships to have a place, and which might create a new list archetype.

I am sure tourney players didn't care, they understood Snap Shot is unreliable and thus bad for tournaments. However a LOT of people bought Hotshots and Aces to get it, because not everyone is a hardcore tournament player. Some people like fun off meta stuff, or expressive lists, or are control minded players who like to set up things for their opponent to think about who felt unsatisfied by X-wing.

Snap shot didn't have to be good for these players or meta, they aren't going to tournaments! However, Snap shot was worse than just kinda ok: It was actively bad. Even in a casual space trying to run Snap Shot made your list VERY bad, and because your constantly rolling misses, which would be fine if the upgrade was priced more as a 'haha try to gamble to get a few free hits' tier card rather than a 'This badboy does as much for your list as landing an APT on Vader' card, your constantly reminded of how bad it is.

Its just such a feels bad scenario that... kinda matters a lot if you play games because you like trying new things, or making something that is your own. And unlike some other things where it was more an issue of needing to port over old 1.0 stuff just to maintain edition parity, if they didn't want a Snapshot effect to be remotely usable, they could have just not printed it, so it feels extra callous, and feels like it confirms that the devs of X-wing legitimately do understand that people care that most upgrades and ships are bad when some people play list building games to experiment and make unique lists, but anything that isn't a super known quantity is kept aggressively outside of usability to ensure you can't actually 'list tech.'

It is basically a symbol of something deeply wrong with X-wing's design philosophy because it unlike some other more debatable 'meant to be bad cards' Snap Shot was priced from the word go to be clearly completely awful despite being invented as something new.

So I get that tournament players and people who are really into the meta, and who express light to non-existent faction/chasis loyalty sincerely don't care about Snap Shot, but put yourself into the mindset of someone who shelled out 20 bucks for a bunch of cardboard, to get maybe one or two upgrades in it they were excited to try, and then its all trash, because it seems like part of the goal of X-wing upgrades are to be trash unless they play into very classic Swarm or Aces archetypes. Its super fine if you don't care about Snap Shot or don't want it in tournaments, but it could go DOWN 1-2 points and still not see play in tournaments, its just very bad and its always... upsetting to see devs nerf a 'fun but bad' option that was never playable even at the 'kitchen table' level even more.

To be clear, it seems like they are exploring in other areas (3 point ion missiles may actually make control missile lists work, for example, THAT is a big deal in my opinion), so its probably not actually true they don't give a fig about 'non-standard lists.' But it was so tone deaf and baffling to not DECREASE the price of the upgrade, forget about maybe increasing it. It is a super common white whale for players who like weird offbeat options, which is a very common player archetype, and literally one that collectible games are designed to appeal to. X-wing is doing this weird thing where its producing content for those types of players, because those players tend to buy products with plans to combine them with other products, while also trying to ensure its not usable, which... causes no small amount of resentment.

It is prooooobably just a typo, and the weird stuff is more buffed by Boba, Droids, and Jedi being worse (As those 3 archetypes were oppressive to anything not hyper-optimized to beat em). But hopefully this gives context to why Snapshot is important: It is a jank/combo item that was in part used to sell a cardboard product that wouldn't have amazing value otherwise if you owned a conversion kit, and it seeeeeeeems like kinda a bait and switch.

44 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

That just doesn't make sense though. Snap shot doesn't hold its points cost in value, it has nothing to do with the Nantex being overpriced to use it.

Snap Shot on Nantexes specifically are quite good, because in addition to its activation phase effect, it also grants the Nantex an extra engagement phase arc.

In other words, I think it would be dumb for the base Nantex chassis to be overcosted to account for the fact that snap shot is synergistic on it. It's better for the base Nantex to be fair and the upgrade to be priced for its best platform, similar to the juke situation. Especially for an edge case upgrade like snap shot.

55 minutes ago, Ablazoned said:

In other words, I think it would be dumb for the base Nantex chassis to be overcosted to account for the fact that snap shot is synergistic on it. It's better for the base Nantex to be fair and the upgrade to be priced for its best platform, similar to the juke situation. Especially for an edge case upgrade like snap shot.

I think this is the Dev's stance as well.

This stance runs counter to good game design practices, you basically learn not to do this in any game design course because it biases your game to being boring generic options and shuts down creativity. No modern competitive game balances itself in this way, like when Ezreal was doing too good with blue build, they did remove some blue build items, but they actually mostly focused on nerfing Ezreal because they realized his fundemental kit made too many items 'broken' and if they balanced around Ez the game would just become nonsense. Same issue here. Snap is a card that could actively help a lot of bad ships, and if the Nantex is standing in the way, it should take the fall, not every other ship that would really love snapshot.

There is a balancing act of course, sometimes things are too good broadly and the specific piece needs to go down because it over-preforms in specific synergy cases but its not the base ship's fault, but 'The Nantex now can fire a forward arc all the time now' is, franky, really transparently not a powerful synergy worth nerfing the card for everyone else, and it is mystifying that this needs to be addressed.

The Nantex was just at a bad price (clearly), so maybe one might it wasn't being experimented with Snap shot because it was just bad and not being used in general... but that is transparently false because A: in the past year the Nantex was flown 60 times, but Snap Shot was only used 8 times on the Nantex, meaning that people were around 10 times more likely to experiment with the Nantex without snapshot than with Snapshot, and B: Other ships that have this exact same hypothetical synergy which are actually good also don't use Snap shot, you don't see it on RZ-2s for example, despite the synergy with it offering a forward arc when the turrets were facing the rear being explicitly part of the card's design: The RZ-2 was used in 300 squads in the last year but Snap Shot was only used in 2, and Snap shot's forward arc does way more for the RZ-2 than the Nantex because it is far more likely to not want to pay the cost to change arc.

Both these together strongly indicate that the Nantex doesn't really get anything special out of a 2 dice forward arc at only range 2 that it can't mod in any way. Which makes sense, that attack misses almost all the time, it isn't actually worth anything, which is why no ships use it for this synergy. It just doesn't make any sense to assume the Nantex wants this, it has active anti-synergy with the chasis to boot because its an arc dodging knife fighter ship that is able to actively rotate its turret every turn to maintain arc anyway, and thus is never better off with snap in front rather than just rotating the turret as a free tractored action to get a 2 dice 2 range attack it CAN mod, not needing an extra fire arc because you have a ghost 180 arc any turn your willing to trade 1 green for a free reposition is basically the signature feature of the ship! The idea that it would be 'so dangerous with snapshot at its new points total' is like taking a torpedo on the VCX: The ship is literally the worst one in the game to assume will synergize with this benefit, which is why this 'synergy' never sees experimentation.

It doesn't make sense to the point where despite the devs clearly balancing for specific synergy (despite it generally not being good design because it raises the question of why you even offered the option to anyone else in the first place), it is super unlikely this is the reason snap went up, if snap was intended to go up at all. It just so transparently wouldn't see play on the Nantex at its pre-existing points cost.

Basically what @dezzmont said.

50 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

I think this is the Dev's stance as well.

This stance runs counter to good game design practices, you basically learn not to do this in any game design course because it biases your game to being boring generic options and shuts down creativity. No modern competitive game balances itself in this way, like when Ezreal was doing too good with blue build, they did remove some blue build items, but they actually mostly focused on nerfing Ezreal because they realized his fundemental kit made too many items 'broken' and if they balanced around Ez the game would just become nonsense. Same issue here. Snap is a card that could actively help a lot of bad ships, and if the Nantex is standing in the way, it should take the fall, not every other ship that would really love snapshot.

There is a balancing act of course, sometimes things are too good broadly and the specific piece needs to go down because it over-preforms in specific synergy cases but its not the base ship's fault, but 'The Nantex now can fire a forward arc all the time now' is, franky, really transparently not a powerful synergy worth nerfing the card for everyone else, and it is mystifying that this needs to be addressed.

The Nantex was just at a bad price (clearly), so maybe one might it wasn't being experimented with Snap shot because it was just bad and not being used in general... but that is transparently false because A: in the past year the Nantex was flown 60 times, but Snap Shot was only used 8 times on the Nantex, meaning that people were around 10 times more likely to experiment with the Nantex without snapshot than with Snapshot, and B: Other ships that have this exact same hypothetical synergy which are actually good also don't use Snap shot, you don't see it on RZ-2s for example, despite the synergy with it offering a forward arc when the turrets were facing the rear being explicitly part of the card's design: The RZ-2 was used in 300 squads in the last year but Snap Shot was only used in 2, and Snap shot's forward arc does way more for the RZ-2 than the Nantex because it is far more likely to not want to pay the cost to change arc.

Both these together strongly indicate that the Nantex doesn't really get anything special out of a 2 dice forward arc at only range 2 that it can't mod in any way. Which makes sense, that attack misses almost all the time, it isn't actually worth anything, which is why no ships use it for this synergy. It just doesn't make any sense to assume the Nantex wants this, it has active anti-synergy with the chasis to boot because its an arc dodging knife fighter ship that is able to actively rotate its turret every turn to maintain arc anyway, and thus is never better off with snap in front rather than just rotating the turret as a free tractored action to get a 2 dice 2 range attack it CAN mod, not needing an extra fire arc because you have a ghost 180 arc any turn your willing to trade 1 green for a free reposition is basically the signature feature of the ship! The idea that it would be 'so dangerous with snapshot at its new points total' is like taking a torpedo on the VCX: The ship is literally the worst one in the game to assume will synergize with this benefit, which is why this 'synergy' never sees experimentation.

It doesn't make sense to the point where despite the devs clearly balancing for specific synergy (despite it generally not being good design because it raises the question of why you even offered the option to anyone else in the first place), it is super unlikely this is the reason snap went up, if snap was intended to go up at all. It just so transparently wouldn't see play on the Nantex at its pre-existing points cost.

I have never taken courses in good game design practices, but I'm pretty sure the game will survive without snap shot A-wings.

38 minutes ago, Ablazoned said:

I have never taken courses in good game design practices

I have, its less useful than you think because its more avoiding bad game design practices. It turns out there aren't hard fast rules to make a good game, but lots of ways to easily make a bad one.

38 minutes ago, Ablazoned said:

I'm pretty sure the game will survive without snap shot A-wings.

Sure. No one was saying the game is dead though, so that isn't really relevant. Game survived quad phantoms too, doesn't mean it was a good idea and doesn't mean it didn't cause unnecessary community angst and shrinkage.

This argument is falacious because it is true pretty much regardless of what unnecessary nerf you describe: Game would survive Boba being set to 150 points too. So why don't we put him there, if the only concern is if a change would kill the game or not, even if the rationale for doing such an extreme nerf doesn't exist?

23 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

Sure. No one was saying the game is dead though, so that isn't really relevant. Game survived quad phantoms too, doesn't mean it was a good idea and doesn't mean it didn't cause unnecessary community angst and shrinkage.

You are clearly very passionate about Snap Shot! To be honest, I threw it on some Nantex builds after points drops and didn't even notice it went up! Lol. But in the larger sense, I guess maybe FFG didn't want it spammed? I know alot of people think Snap Shot can be an NPE so it might suck if A-wings could take it for cheap!

Also, did you see that it's 12 points on HUGE ships? That's some neat future proofing!

25 minutes ago, Ablazoned said:

I know alot of people think Snap Shot can be an NPE so it might suck if A-wings could take it for cheap!

Yeah, and that is a super respectable argument for other NPE choices like Juke. I WANT juke to be good, but I get it sorta was an accident of 2.0, so it needing to be 'priced away' as NPE is fine.

Snapshot feels like it was designed to be this evocative control option from the start but they decided to have their cake of selling this super shiny control option, and eat it too by basically saying 'but its priced so you can't put it in the game.' If they were worried about spam, why not make it a 3 or 2 dot unique, like how Lone Wolf or Squad leader are singletons?

Ironically I think it is in some ways more of an NPE for the player, rolling twice as many misses as you normally would and seeing results you can't modify isn't super fun!

25 minutes ago, Ablazoned said:

Also, did you see that it's 12 points on HUGE ships? That's some neat future proofing!

It is good to see epic getting some love! I wonder what you COULD do with Huge ships and Snap Shot... Are there any good epic non-mod mods? I am not very familiar with epic despite having a lot of interest in it, due to a lack of support.

1 hour ago, dezzmont said:

It is good to see epic getting some love! I wonder what you COULD do with Huge ships and Snap Shot... Are there any good epic non-mod mods? I am not very familiar with epic despite having a lot of interest in it, due to a lack of support.

Epic is CRAZY fun. It's a bit combo-y, but wings feel really natural and thematic, and huge ships pack an appropriate wallop.

1 hour ago, Ablazoned said:

I know alot of people think Snap Shot can be an NPE so it might suck if A-wings could take it for cheap!

I am definitely biased on this topic, but this seems like a pretty dumb opinion that “a lot of people” hold. Decently priced Snapshot A-Wings could actually be expected to perform adequately. Would the NPE come from A-Wings actually being capable of doing damage for once?

46 minutes ago, Ablazoned said:

It's a bit combo-y

Oh baby keep saying all the right things. I am 100% into janky weird lists to the point it is an active determent!

12 minutes ago, Phelan Boots said:

Would the NPE come from A-Wings actually being capable of doing damage for once?

To be clear, Snap shot doesn't push damage vs most ships. Trust me, I did... extensive field tests.

It probably would be better as an effect that automatically rolls 1 damage and forces your opponent to evade that, rather than rolling at all. That both saves time (Now your opponent just has to roll their own dice, you don't need to roll at all) and makes the Snap do more than .5 damage average vs 2 unmodded defense dice, without letting it get more than that one poke in. It lowers the average damage, but your no longer getting that NPE of rolling blanks and it would remove the 'swarm time delay' danger.

That is what is so wonky about Snap Shot. It is treated like this dangerous way to suddenly force damage out of ships or control what your enemy does when in reality it does no damage most of the time. 60% of the time vs your average ship nothing happens. Even with the crack shot nerf, you now need to get someone in arc 7 times over the course of the game for it to push the same damage crack shot does. It is... just so bad?

Snap Shot can also trigger certain abilities (mostly Scum, I guess) like for Torani, Seevor, and Laetin. They're not tearing up the meta, but I get why Snap Shot isn't cheap.

46 minutes ago, Phelan Boots said:

Would the NPE come from A-Wings actually being capable of doing damage for once?

Quite possible, if people's reactions to Optical RZ-2s are anything to go by. 😄

1 hour ago, Des Darklighter said:

Snap Shot can also trigger certain abilities (mostly Scum, I guess) like for Torani, Seevor, and Laetin. They're not tearing up the meta, but I get why Snap Shot isn't cheap.

In that scenario you recognize that those characters are serving as a design limiter on multi-shot effects and decide if you want any multi-shot effect you make to be bad, or want Torani, Seevor, and Laetin to be bad without upgrades to boost their abilities.

Right now, its not a big deal, that basically limits snap shot. That is personally irritating (I highly doubt any 3 of those necessitate snap shot being where it was, let alone where it is now). But if they decide to explore the fertile ground of bonus unmodded attacks (Which seems potentially interesting) they gotta pivot to assuming the synergy with extra attacks is part of the ability's cost, and not the extra attack's cost. Same as how say... Torps don't cost more because of how much the synergy between Dutch helps torps, and instead Dutch is priced assuming your using him with torps.

i think maybe the 1 point increase it's because of black squadron aces

at 7 you coud fit 5 I3 Strikers all with snapshot

at 8 you can fit only 4 snapshots

maybe

1 hour ago, Manolox said:

i think maybe the 1 point increase it's because of black squadron aces

at 7 you coud fit 5 I3 Strikers all with snapshot

at 8 you can fit only 4 snapshots

maybe

Any rationale that is 'It is going up to offset a ship going down' doesn't make a lot of sense simply because the upgrade is not a value add on a ship 'neutral' to it. Any ship that could use snap shot would be better without it, unless the upgrade has unusual synergy with the ship. That is what it means to be overcosted: Any value you give is lower than the cost relative to other options that could be taken.

If 5 TIE Striker with Snap would be 'too good' why wouldn't 5 TIE striker with an upgrade strikers often actually take (Say... proton bombs and crack shot, or outmaneuver, both of which push more damage than Snap Shot) be significantly more powerful?

For Snapshot to beat each of your ships landing a single bomb hit and crackshot (so 35 points for 10 extra damage you wouldn't normally get), your ships collectively need to fire snap shot arcs off 20 times over the course of the game vs 2 dice defenders without any defensive mods. This is uh.... optimistic, to say the least. Even only half your ships landing 1 bomb and 1 crackshot leaves you at .5.

For it to beat outmaneuver vs the same target, you need to get 1 snapshot attack for every 2 outmanuver shots in, which again doesn't seem very realistic, but outmaneuver also scales significantly better vs modding and with modding, and once your defender is a 2 dice modder you need more than 1 snap shot attack to be fired for every outmaneuver attack to beat outmaneuver, which probably alone invalidates snapshot EVER making sense on a swarm at even its old price.

This is why I think that this was a typo. It just... doesn't make sense from a balance perspective.