Hi Testers,

Here's this week's update , the eighth in our playtesting process. As you can see on the news post, we'll be slowing down on the frequency of weekly updates, to give you all more chances to test and evaluate all the changes that have been made.

Thanks again!

Yeah, I'm cool with the updates slowing down.

Frankly, I've been very pleasantly surprised at the number of updates we've gotten so far.

Kinda interesting at the talent changes. Good update on Linked, but was there also supposed to be a change to Autofire as well in this week's update?

First, I don't see how these changes require much time to play test.

Second, I'm glad you increased the price of activating the Link quality, and simultaneously baffled as to why you failed to make the same change to Auto-fire.

Finally, you really REALLY need to release new documents representing changes to the Talent and force trees so we can more easily make sense of what you've done.

Otherwise this seems like a pretty major 'nothing important' update.

-WJL

What Donovan said, seconded! Thanks for keeping these updates coming, guys. It's been great to see that our feedback has really made a difference, and thanks for being open to making so many changes.

You still haven't fixed the error regarding the Surveillance change to the Survivalist and not the Scout specialization.

Ratfink said:

Aye, this is kinda important for players wishing to play this type of character since they are missing one skill choice. Would someone from FFG mind making a quick reply on this forum just to let us know what the replacment skill is?

Pretty pretty please!!

LethalDose said:

I second this, it`s one of the major recurring grips when skimming through the forums.

I have no problem with concussion missiles and photon torpedos being very effective in combat. Adding Slow Firing rule for them makes sense. However, I do find the prices for the individual missiles and torpedos ridicously low. The price of a single concussion missile is about one percent of a lightsaber. Anyone willing to trade a lightsaber for 100 concussion missiles?

Okay, got a chance to really read through the changes.

I'm not overly thrilled with what some classes had to sacrifice to get defensive talents, with the biggest offenders being Assassin loosing Deadly Accuracy (which is a near-perfect talent for them), when frankly they could have removed Stalker (which they get twice already) and the Outlaw Tech loosing Inventor and Point Blank to gain Side Step and Defensive Stance. I can appreciate wanting to add some defensive ability to these specializations, but I seriously think they chose the wrong talents to replace.

Other talent tree changes that have left me cold are Scholar loosing Researcher in their first Row (again, a talent is near perfect for them), when they easily could have dropped the 2nd Row Researcher instead, and Fringer pretty much loosing Let's Ride, when the original set-up was fine, as it gave the Fringer some decent piloting chops. I think for my games, it's safe to say that I'll be ignoring the changes made to these two particular specializations, especially Fringer.

Aside from those, the rest of the talent tree updates are fine, with Slicer at least not being quite as screwy, though I think a connecter between Rows 1 and 2 at a lower column would have been better; perhaps at Column 3 instead of Column 4?

I guess I'm okay with the reduction to the some of the starship weapons, as turbolasers aren't quite as vicious now.

Donovan Morningfire said:

I really feel that starship combat will flow nicely now, especially thanks to the fact that linked was nerfed. Now all I can hope for is an Autofire nerf to help personal combat be less broken.

Some interesting choices in this weeks update. My gut reaction is that the concept of adding defensive talents is good, but the implementation seems a bit haphazard - like the wrong talents were replaced. The assassin's deadly accuracy is a great example.

I appreciate the hard work the dev team has been putting in, but I feel like we missed some of the "major gripes" in this week's update, such as the aforementioned autofire, the dice mechanics, scaling, droids… The list is out there somewhere, and I hope that we can start addressing the community's collective big issues in the next update.

I'm also not at all thrilled about waiting two weeks for another update; this one really wasn't substantial enough to hold me over for that long…

Not trying to be a negative nancy, but just want to give honest feedback.

Yeah, a bit of a "nothing" update really, and disheartening to see none of the big issues have been addressed yet. Linked was a nice start, so I'll hold out hope that the dev team is just putting more effort into the big issues, hence moving to a 2 weekly cycle…

I really feel that the career skills (and now talents) need to be re-thought a bit though… as DM points out, some of the changes are as baffling as the Doctor not getting Xenology…

As well as the missing Scout specialisation skill (which I always assumed was the Survivalist), there is still no mention of the additional type of specialisation (I forget what it was supposed to be called) for Force Sensitive Exile that Sam mentioned should have been in last weeks update…

gribble said:

This certainly is in this week's update. Chapter VIII: The Force under Becoming force sensitive (Pg 176) on page 10 of the update. Its not highlighted in red presumably because it was added last week.

-WJL

Exalted5 said:

LethalDose said:

Thanks. Missed it because it wasn't red and I assumed it's be under the specialisations section… silly me.

Regarding Autofire and the lack of change in this week's update, Cyril brought up an interesting point over on the d20 Radio Forums.

What if the change to Linked (2 Advantage per extra hit) is a test bed to see if the same update would work for Autofire? If so, the devs may simply want to see if that works, and if so will proceed to update Autofire with that change in the next update.

As for the spacing out of updates… it could very well be that from the devs' perspective, there may not be that much more that needs updating. Also, maybe it's less "more time to test this week's updates," but "more time to test all the various updates in general." After all, it'll likely take more than a week to do more than just eyeball the cost changes to specializations and skills from the prior update.

*soap box time, so feel free to skip*
Dice math is a ship that has largely sailed, as the orders for the Beginner's Box dice sets have in all likelyhood been sent and production begun. The most they can probably do is tweak it a bit, but again it could simply be that unlike a few of the more vocal posters here, FFG simply doesn't see it as an issue; again, paradigm shift away from what 40+ years of tabletop gaming has reinforced, with more of an emphasis on "group dynamics" than "solitary spotlight" when it comes to the results of one's roll.

Frankly there are aspects of the game and updates that I'm not all that thrilled about (the low defautl starting credits, which almost requires a PC to take additional Obligation, the costs of some of the Upgrades for Force Powers and the revision of the Sense power tree in the Week 2 Update in regards to the Duration talent), but at the end of the day, it's FFG's call as to what needs to get fixed and what is working exactly as intended when the game was written. If we don't like what they're doing, we as the consumers have the rather easy option to simply not buy the final product when it comes out, and instead pursue other venues for our Star Wars gaming pleasure, of which there are many.
*steps off the soap box*

Hi everyone,

I'd like to address a couple points you've brought up. First, you're all correct that it's not the Survivalist that gains Medicine for the lost of Surveillance, but the Scout. Sorry about that!

Second, the changes to Linked were made because we felt reasonably confident in how the quality now works. However, we want to continue to evaluate Autofire before making any changes, if any changes are to be made. Currently Autofire has some significant penalties (with +1 difficulty for using autofire, and +1 difficulty for attempting to hit multiple targets), and we want to ensure that any changes we make balance autofire with other abilities appropriately, but also maintain the feel of firing a weapon on full auto. One thing to keep in mind, though. Autofire is supposed to be good , and we don't want to limit it or complicate it to the point where it becomes a hindrance or an otherwise worthless investment.

The comparison between the cost of concussion missiles and lightsabers is not a concern for us, because lightsabers are also incredibly rare; one of the rarest items in the game. Concussion missiles and proton torpedoes are one-use weapons; so their cost has to be balanced so that players are willing to use them.

As far as the specialization trees go, we likely will not be able to release a complete set of revised trees. Some of the changes have specific reasons behind them that we cannot explain at this stage. However, the overriding goal was to ensure that each career had some access to defensive talents in at least one of its specializations. To do so, something was always going to have to come out. I'm guessing there may be some disagreement amongst testers as to which talents were more important to a specialization tree than others, and we'll be sure to take your feedback on this into account.

Thanks again, everyone, and keep up the good work!

Thanks for hopping in to clarify these points. I'll try to work Auto-fire into my future test sessions a bit more, so I can give detailed feedback with examples to aid your evaluation.

I'm not sure if you can address this or not, Sam, but are the dice pretty much locked in and final at this point in time? Will we be able to buy dice packs when the Beginner Box comes out, or will that more likely coincide with the release of the hardcover rulebook?

Again, thank you for continuing to provide more information and insight into the design process. It's been fun to be a part of this beta and to collaborate and offer thoughts and opinions on the game while it's in development.

Venthrac said:

Another question to add to your questions. Are the developers happy with the current state of the dice/ are the dice mechanics working as intended?

Venthrac is right: We really do appreciate that the devs, moderators, FFG for including us in the beta test portion of EotE development cycle. Taking feedback from the community is great, but can really be a double edged sword and a massive headache for the developers. It requires a lot of effort to separate the chaff from the wheat. It has to be hard for you guys to say no to or ignore vocal demands while maintaining the humility to needed to acknowledge that the product you've months to years of blood sweat and tears into still has room for improvement.

So, again, thank you FFG, Jay, devs, and mods. Also, we all hope ynnen/Jay's health improves; Best wishes.

-WJL

LethalDose said:

On a totally separate note, Autofire.

FFG_Sam Stewart said:

So, here. "Autofire is supposed to be good." Yeah, I think we get that. I think any character who has ever been on the receiving end of an autoshot got that memo.

Unfortunately, I think modifying auto-fire has appeared to be one of my 'pet issues', and that context, much of what I say fails to appear objective and I worry that readers [and devs] think I have some kind of vendetta against the mechanism. I can only try to assure that this is not the case and tell you that I honestly feel that autofire should be an interesting mechanic, does have a place in the game, and should be a good combat option. But it's simply too good in it's current form.

It is not my intention to see the mechanism nerfed into irrelevance. I simply hope to see it more balanced, and therefore easier to use as a GM , than it exists in it's current state.

A lot of the problems I have with AF's current rules are based on common sense: one advantage doubles the firepower applied to a single character and no other weapon quality (saved linked, which has been modified) comes anywhere near this level effectiveness. And then the quality can be activated multiple times, +1 hit/advantage, with no upper bound.

Increasing the difficulty of the shot is a good place to start, but it's insufficient to balance the mechanism. The added difficulty die removes, on average about 3/4s of an advantage per roll (6 threats over 8 sides), and similarly reduces successes by about 3/8 each roll. This penalty is minor, and really does very little leash the destructive force of AF under the current rules. It is also really very easy to offset the penalty by the addition of boost dice, which are in no shortage in the game. Increasing the number of dice being rolled does increase the variance of the results, which could be argued has an detrimental effect on the reliabilty of the roll, but these concerns are really quite minor. I can show the math if anyone is interested, but no one ever is.

I see the cost in efficacy of the increase in difficulty to fire at a single target about equivalent to the efficacy cost from the cap that exists on linked. The devs have stated above that linked needed an increase in price to be balanced. If that's true, I think an increase in price on AF is also very easilty justified.

In the current RAW, AF is very difficult to work with because of its massive damage output and cost disjoint with other qualities. It needs work.

I'm open to alternative perspectives that still acknowledge what I've posted above, but it is not my intent to get drawn into a debate about specifics that really don't change or mitigate the fundamental nature of problem.

-WJL

+1 on the thanks to the devs - don't think for a second we don't appreciate what you're doing here!

But also +1 on giving us some concrete feedback on the dice mechanics AND the state of the dice (ie already set and in production or still malleable).

As for AF: What if AF weapons are allowed to spend successes AND advantages to increase damage by one (1). This way when you get shot in the face by a heavy blaster rifle with 1 success and 3 advantage, you take 13 damage instead of 40. Still lethal, but not ridiculous? Either that or run it liked the update to linked (2 adv per extra shot).

Am I the only one who feels that Dodge should not be found both as a row 1 talent and a row 5 talent? It just feels wrong, that as a thief, like I have to pay 25 points for a talent that costs an assassin 5 points. Giving the thief dodge is fine, but giving up a row 5 for it? I feel that row 5 talents should be inherently more powerful than a row 1, and while certain trees work that way not all of them do.

3WhiteFox3 said:

Well, in the Assassin's defense, they're part of a more combat-orientated career and are a combat-orientated specialiation. Thief on the other hand is more about being sneaky rather than fighting, and Smuggler by itself isn't that much of a combat-orientated career.

Given that Assassin had to sacrifice Quick Draw (a really freaking useful talent) for Dodge, I do feel that Dodge is a bit underpriced here, as it should be at least a 10 XP talent.