8 minutes ago, Amc879 said:

Can we take a minute to talk about the rebellion I hyperspace and how it DID NOT CHANGE?!?!?

I mean, when you're the worst faction and everyone else catches a nerf, do you complain?

43 minutes ago, LeMightyASP said:

I get that this was an attempt at diversity, but instead of limiting options inside of archetypes with tried and true paths , we just got half the archetypes snapped out of existence. This feels very sloppy to me, and very very non-consumer friendly

I would have always assume the point of HS was to roadblock routine listbuilding. The literal point was to create a new, temporary, if highly manipulated, meta.

52 minutes ago, IceManHG said:

I find Hyperspace is a great format to watch on channels like GSP. Seeing the lists people come up with is great and I learn alot during every event.

But flying in a HS event? I have such limited playing time that I prefer to fly in Extended events so I can use all of my ships.

The irony being that you can't fly them all at once and probably won't fly anything that hasn't been "organically curated" by the meta.

1 minute ago, Darth Meanie said:

I would have always assume the point of HS was to roadblock routine listbuilding. The literal point was to create a new, temporary, if highly manipulated, meta.

Maybe I didn't express myself very well. What i meant was, i think that good a change would be limiting options INSIDE of an archetype, so that people build that archetype differently (without Soontir) but still get to play the archetype THEY WANT.

On the other hand, what we got was a change that FORCED us to play an archetype if we can only play one faction, and very soon people will realize that choosing between generic x1s, v1s, interceptors or striker is not very interesting and comes mostly down to efficiency more than anything else.

It SEEMS that there is more diversity, but instead people will be optimizing the SAME playstyle, leading them to the SAME conclusions, which is not succesful in terms of diversity.

I originally felt like this applied mostly to empire, but thinking on it more i realized that if people want to take, say, an x-wing, they will mostly just take that best pilot. Choosing between pilots of different platforms was always a lot more interesting, because it is much easier to determine which pilot is better if their platforms are the same. Example: nobody is picking Jek Porkins over Garven Dreis, but if the choice was between Garven Dreis and Dutch Vander, there would be a lot more of "player agency" involved

<Muddles through the squad builder app setting up "lists" to check Hyperspace legality> Seriously getting tired of it reverting/randomizing something I've typed, moving a squad list that I had just placed into a slot nowhere near where I'd placed it, and not applying the effects of upgrades that have an effect on list building.

<Looks over what is available for hyperspace>

Erm... Aside from Rebels this looks like they tossed out most everything that was being hard leaned into by list builders. There is still a diverse mix of named and generic pilots across all factions. Just need to look at what is there before jumping into building for the format. Less 'I want to fly list [X] in Hyperspace' and more 'I want to fly a Hyperspace list, what options does it permit?'

38 minutes ago, LeMightyASP said:

It's not about balance, it's about not being forced into certain decisions. Last Hyperspace you atleast had the choice of going Duchess instead of the Extended Soontir, even if it didn't perform well. Now you just don't get a choice.

And i think it's fine for most factions, but it looks particularly egregious on the empire.

While my point also applies to balance, the decision making tree of list building was also not a guaranteed thing. Assumptions were made about how the rotations would go. Now we have a season where some of those assumptions kinda go out the window. I agree that Empire feels a bit...pigeon holed this time around and hopefully we won’t have something quite this egregious again, but we don’t know. That has always been my concern with the format.

56 minutes ago, Nyxen said:

I mean, when you're the worst faction and everyone else catches a nerf, do you complain?

I would have given that title to Republic, but now they have a ton of options with the 3 new ships.

1 hour ago, 5050Saint said:

Three new ships in the faction, and the best you got is "droid swarm, I guess"? Mate, this is the exact mentality that eschews creativity.

What were you working with on the Zam/Maul front? Surely lacking Maul doesn't write off the Firespray entirely. Perhaps we can expand from there and find a list that still has Zam.

It's not about Zam. She's good and will almost certainly make her way into lists. I just recently got the Sith Infiltrator and was working on lists to use Darth Maul or Count Dooku in when I saw the Firespray spoilers. Zam has the same intitiative as Darth Maul, making them easier for a newb like me to control, and the fact that they both have (possible) extra attacks might have helped to counteract some of the problem of playing expensive pilots against swarms. I also figured it would be my opportunity to play a 2 or 3 ship list myself. So what I'm really annoyed with is losing the ability to play around with force points/powers and losing the ability to make a 2 or 3 ship list that might actually be decent.

1 hour ago, SabineKey said:

And that was always the danger with Hyperspace. A rotation system means there can be seasons where you don’t like the options available. That’s just the nature of the format. Maybe next season will be more to your liking, as this one might be more to another player’s liking.

The thing that really disappoints me about this "rotation system" though, is that I had seen it as a way for factions with fewer ships to "catch-up". By this I mean that, if the point was to change the meta, it seems better to me to bring some of the older content back in to hyperspace, rather than removing current content from the format. "Rotating" generally means some stuff out, some stuff in, but we got a whole heck of a lot more rotated out than rotated in.

18 minutes ago, Black_Rabbit_Inle said:

The thing that really disappoints me about this "rotation system" though, is that I had seen it as a way for factions with fewer ships to "catch-up". By this I mean that, if the point was to change the meta, it seems better to me to bring some of the older content back in to hyperspace, rather than removing current content from the format. "Rotating" generally means some stuff out, some stuff in, but we got a whole heck of a lot more rotated out than rotated in.

And I think that is part of the problem we see here. People had different expectations of what Hyperspace was suppose to do. While a prefer what you are suggesting, I figured something like this would happen sooner or later. And we might even see something like this happening again, but that depends on AMG now.

53 minutes ago, Black_Rabbit_Inle said:

It's not about Zam. She's good and will almost certainly make her way into lists. I just recently got the Sith Infiltrator and was working on lists to use Darth Maul or Count Dooku in when I saw the Firespray spoilers. Zam has the same intitiative as Darth Maul, making them easier for a newb like me to control, and the fact that they both have (possible) extra attacks might have helped to counteract some of the problem of playing expensive pilots against swarms. I also figured it would be my opportunity to play a 2 or 3 ship list myself. So what I'm really annoyed with is losing the ability to play around with force points/powers and losing the ability to make a 2 or 3 ship list that might actually be decent.

The thing that really disappoints me about this "rotation system" though, is that I had seen it as a way for factions with fewer ships to "catch-up". By this I mean that, if the point was to change the meta, it seems better to me to bring some of the older content back in to hyperspace, rather than removing current content from the format. "Rotating" generally means some stuff out, some stuff in, but we got a whole heck of a lot more rotated out than rotated in.

It's only logical we had more rotate out of Hyperspace this time then rotate into it. Last update they decided to only rotate stuff in and nothing out. As due to Covid hitting shortly after Januari update they didn't want to leave people without being able to play the lists they made for the first Hyperspace season. That off course means that if they want to return Hyperspace to the intended size per faction they would need to downscale the next update. Expect next update to be even on rotating in and out.

And the newer faction with less ships don't need to catch-up in Hyperspace as they have the same amount of options as all other factions already in the format.

Probably needs a disclaimer by now... I like generics. My favourite list type is ace + gang. It was like that 2 years ago for 5A where I played Lulo+4. And it still is like that for all the Poe+Rookie, Holo+3SJE, Sloane+Swarm, or Snap+3 lists I like to play more recently. I prefer 4+ ships personally. But facts don't care about my feelings.

6 hours ago, Chumbalaya said:

Facts don't care about your feelings. Even with the "busted" spamtex, generics were still largely not played. This is just ship racism.

By the way, using Galaxies a bit more now that it's apparently fine. I'm removing Spamtex here as Boomowl did because Spamtex inflate everything about generics. But I have Coruscant included, so slightly more lists.
Swiss = 1047 lists (1122 with spamtex). Top = 291, all those that went 4-2 (337 with Spamtex!). Cut = 147, all those that made cut (176 with Spamtex!). No clue what is up with your numbers including spamtex, I get only 934 lists for GSP1-5, and a 47-53 split. We know Coruscant had 188, and 188+934=1122. Mine is based on listfortress, that might make a difference. Could be that you/Boomowl had all the empty lists included, but that only explains 18 of them.

Looking at pure number of generics (what your picture does) is absolutely irrelevant. Including Coruscant but no Spamtex, that split is a massive 43/57 already, almost half the ships used were generics. But as I said, that's also irrelevant. Important are the points spent as @Tlfj200 likes to explain, and cheaper generics of course skew the number towards them. So let's look at points spent instead.

• Swiss (all) 1047 lists total
  • o/w 478 had ships with generic pilots
  • o/w 320 spent >100 points on these ships
    • 478/1047 is 46%, and 320/1047 is 31% as baselines
• Top (4-2 finish) 291 lists total
  • o/w 144 had ships with generic pilots
  • o/w 105 spent >100 points on these ships
    • 144/291 is 49%, and 105/291 is 36%
• Cut (actually in cut) 147 lists total
  • o/w 78 had ships with generic pilots
  • o/w 52 spent >100 points on these ships
    • 78/147 is a small increase to 53%, and 52/147 is 35%

Of the lists that did well, i.e. that went 4-2 and that accordingly are percieved to win by the participants, 36% had spent over 100 points on generics. Chances are that every participant played 2 games during the event against lists that were mainly generics! That is massive. For comparison, Zizi was everywhere and made almost 10%. BobaFett is below 8%. That means, if mainly generic lists are percieved as a group then it is clear that players walk away remembering those. Of course those not actually playing at the moment might have a different experience.
Lists with many generics also did better: 36% of the lists with 100+ points on generics went 4-2, and only 26% of the other lists. That's a 10point spike. Or easier, you'll do almost 1.5times as well with mainly generic lists compared to spending fewer points on generics.

Not only are there more and more generics, they also do better. Both together is always reason for the watchlist, whether it's a pilot, a ship, a list, or as here a group of lists.

9 hours ago, Amc879 said:

Can we take a minute to talk about the rebellion I hyperspace and how it DID NOT CHANGE?!?!?

I would love to.

This new HS seems to be an attempt to really play with the assumptions of what is good in a faction. Imp aces are a very dominant Imp list due to pretty much every imp ace being the 'platonic' ace. Individual aces in other factions may be really strong, but Imp aces sorta defines aces. So what is Empire like now without aces? We will see.

The reason its so interesting that rebels didn't change is because rebels are like an unflavored pudding like mush of nothing really as a faction. They don't HAVE good lists. Their best HS list over the entire year was 5X, and it was a pretty cruddy one that stopped getting experimented with pretty quickly, because 'X wings are good jousters' isn't... true. Being good at jousting depends mostly on points efficiency for lethality, and X-wings aren't that at all without lots of ways to amp up the power of their 3 reds or good I-killing potential, which they didn't have access too once pretty much every meta named rebel pilot got nerfed.

So if this HS era is about creating a new enviroment to explore, this is sorta an admission that rebels never could really explore what they had already. They were effectively already shut out of HS (seriously, look at HS from the July update to now for their list archetypes. Its REAL bad, the rebel lists in the top 50 have 15 plays between them) and thus the idea that any rebel option made sense as the 'thing to force rebels to experiment by getting rid of' is incoherent, ALL rebel lists are already untested and experimental, or are just not good. It is as new a world for rebels to explore now as Empire or CIS or whatever, because rebels were super oppressed by every meta option.

I am not sure it will make a huge difference, it feels like the core identity of rebel is just 'off,' but we will see.

@GreenDragoon could you go back through the data and show the other side of it? Currently you've described evening from the generic perspective. What is it like of we just look at it from the Ace perspective? Like, would I be incorrect in reading your breakdown of Top 4-2 as having 147 all ace lists? Because if 144(had a generic or more) Vs 147(all ace) was the field... Well really no one should be complaining over that margin. Lol 😂

Is there an easy number you could pop out of the data that says his many lists had at least a single ace in them?

8 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

@GreenDragoon could you go back through the data and show the other side of it? Currently you've described evening from the generic perspective. What is it like of we just look at it from the Ace perspective? Like, would I be incorrect in reading your breakdown of Top 4-2 as having 147 all ace lists? Because if 144(had a generic or more) Vs 147(all ace) was the field... Well really no one should be complaining over that margin. Lol 😂

Yeah I was thinking, why is it wrong for those numbers for generic centric or predominant lists to be this way? Why is it that likely playing against those generic centric lists 2/6 games of swiss is too much? I don't understand the problem here...

4 minutes ago, RStan said:

Yeah I was thinking, why is it wrong for those numbers for generic centric or predominant lists to be this way? Why is it that likely playing against those generic centric lists 2/6 games of swiss is too much? I don't understand the problem here...

Because uniques does not mean aces, for one.
There are way more unique pilots than generics. Uniques can't be spammed.

Generic heavy lists are more homogenous than unique heavy lists in that they tend to spam the same pilot and are hard to remove, either because they have high total hp or are 3 agility ships. I don't have individual game data, but would be interesting to know if they lost before time more or less often.

More relevant though is that this group increases from swiss to 4-2 or cut. Which means the others decrease.

@GreenDragoon hol up, waitaminit, are you saying you have three divisions to the data? Includes generics or not is really all you've indicated, now we're throwing in unique but not Ace? What even is the criteria for that? Some of us here are considering named/unique pilots to be Aces regardless.

Besides that, So in any way shape or form, could you not produce some data as to whether the above post I made was at least indicative of let's say then instead all named/unique pilots in the list?

16 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

hol up, waitaminit, are you saying you have three divisions to the data? Includes generics or not is really all you've indicated, now we're throwing in unique but not Ace? What even is the criteria for that? Some of us here are considering named/unique pilots to be Aces regardless.

Criteria for unique? You mean besides the dot, besides being not a generic?

There is no official ace. Give me a definition everyone agrees on and I can give you the numbers for that very artificial group. Until then I take groups everyone has to agree on, because it's directly written on the card...

18 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

Besides that, So in any way shape or form, could you not produce some data as to whether the above post I made was at least indicative of let's say then instead all named/unique pilots in the list?

The only tricky one is lists with at least one of "...", the other numbers are already in there. If 36% spent 100+ points on generics then 63-odd% spent the majority not on generics. So as you can see, the much more different group of uniques is getting worse from swiss to the other two.
For swiss, 949 lists had at least one unique pilot. But as explained before, there are way more unique pilots and that metric is pointless. Unlike the one for generics.

I’m fairly new to this X-Wing business, but I take my gaming pretty seriously. In less than a year, I have very intentionally collected everything I can, and played all seven factions (some with great success, some with frustration... but it’s a small kitchen-table meta, so whatcha gonna do?).

I like all the factions. I wanna play with all the toys, all the time, and I want balance to be good enough that they’re all pretty viable (or at least, all the factions have enough viable options that the faction itself is interesting, even if some of the pieces aren’t great).

As such, I have zero interest in Hyperspace. No dog in this race. I went out of my way to find ALL THE SHIPS, and I want to play them all. But my question, for those who are unhappy with the current HS environment, is this: Are you single-faction players? If you are, I would think HS a pretty risky format for you. As a curated thing, it’s sometimes just not gonna be great for your preferred style or faction, just as many MTG Standard environments suck if you like to play Red Burn decks or Black Control decks or whatever; sometimes your favorite thing has to get knocked down a peg so something else can have its day in the sun.

Every time a new Standard comes about in MTG, I want Mono-Blue decks to be great. It seldom happens, but I always try. When it fails, I build something else. If you really wanted Imperial Aces (for example) to be great in this HS format, I dunno... move on? Try Aces from another faction? Maybe they’ll be back next rotation. Isn’t that what this is about?

@GreenDragoon I like your approach. I wish others would view the data with as much care. (I agree with you on the flimsy definition of ace) (And I also agree with the detractors here that more info on the other lists is needed) I really enjoy you mentioning looking at seeing if the percentages increase as the competition level rises.

I tried to show even these basic things to another group and got all sorts of Sith. And by Sith I don't mean Sith.

5 hours ago, dezzmont said:

..

This new HS seems to be an attempt to really play with the assumptions of what is good in a faction. Imp aces are a very dominant Imp list due to pretty much every imp ace being the 'platonic' ace. Individual aces in other factions may be really strong, but Imp aces sorta defines aces. So what is Empire like now without aces? We will see.

The reason its so interesting that rebels didn't change is because rebels are like an unflavored pudding like mush of nothing really as a faction. They don't HAVE good lists. Their best HS list over the entire year was 5X, and it was a pretty cruddy one that stopped getting experimented with pretty quickly, because 'X wings are good jousters' isn't... true...

I would argue that FO Aces defines "Aces", and that's still workable. I think Imp Aces got removed because "Aces" is not meant to be Empire's bread and butter (as it is for FO). The reason rebels didn't get hit is because they weren't misbehaving. I think it has less to do with "does this seem good" and more to do with "Is this the way we want this faction to be played?".

For example, look at the Seps. Vulture and Hyena swarms have always been part of the meta, certainly some players see them as "good", but they didn't get hit because they're doing what seps are supposed to be doing. As soon as that playstyle starts to get overshadowed in the faction, whatever is overshadowing goes away. Can we really say that 2x Sith Infiltrator lists or Grievous and gang lists were better than droid swarms? I don't think so. Can we say that they overshadowed droid swarms in the droid swarm faction? Yes. So they got a time out. Now those lists are back (to varying degrees) and the list that was most recently over-shadowing the droid swarms got removed.

3 hours ago, RStan said:

Yeah I was thinking, why is it wrong for those numbers for generic centric or predominant lists to be this way? Why is it that likely playing against those generic centric lists 2/6 games of swiss is too much? I don't understand the problem here...

I don't get it either. Do people understand that not all factions are meant to be playing "Aces" all the time? Apart from "Aces" lists, there are also meant to be "Swarm" lists, but most lists should have some mixture of Uniques and Generics, probably skewing toward the generic side. So a 4, 5, or 6 ship list is likely to have a unique or 2 and be filled out with generics. I don't see that as problematic.

I would also point out that, just because a list might have spent most of it's points on generics, doesn't really mean the list is "Generic-centric" in the way that it's played. If a CIS list has a 72pt. General Grievous and 6 vultures (for 120 pts.) Grievous is still the key player.

Can we just try it and see if its fun!? Like actually play an event or two? My goodness.

3 minutes ago, dsul413 said:

Can we just try it and see if its fun!? Like actually play an event or two? My goodness.

No! My favorite ship/pilot is gone and I am mad. Thinking is hard and you can't make me do it if I don't wanna.

It's Thanksgiving and I for one am thankful for the Hyperspace format. Thanks FFG!

8 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

Because uniques does not mean aces, for one. **This part

This is the point of confusion. Many here don't see a difference between unique and Ace. Myself included. To be completely fair you haven't provided a definition for it either. In one post you only say that unique are not aces, but in the next you even add that there isn't a definition of ace...sooooo... If there's no definitions for ace, then why are you saying that uniques are not aces? See where I'm getting lost now?

So I'm thinking let's rewind, with the understanding that some had this definition that ace and unique are the same thing, let's backtrack and rephrase this:

9 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

Could you go back through the data and show the other side of it? Currently you've described everything from the generic perspective. What is it like of we just look at it from the Ace (read: unique) perspective? Like, would I be incorrect in reading your breakdown of Top 4-2 as having 147 all ace (read: all unique) lists? Because if 144(had a generic or more) Vs 147( all named ) was the field...

and as a bonus, Is there an easy number you could pop out of the data that says his many lists had at least a single ace , whatever it is that you consider to actually be an ace, in them?

That I think would get us back on the same page. Because that measure would show what this sub-discussion I think it's about: are there too many generics in the field or not? If there's a plentiful number of all ace(unique) lists out there in the field, then the answer is no there are not too many generics. How many different uniques there are or not doesn't factor into answering "are generics overused". There could be an equivalent number of cards in the two groups and the question wouldn't change.

The definition of an ace is not a story the Jedi would tell you...