Wait so I'm no longer involved if I only played at Gencon? WTF does that mean? And for what it's worth, this is my 3rd set designing I believe. I also tend to do pretty well at Gencon for "not being involved." You know like 8 times making the top 8 out of 8 tries. And if you were counting, I've only played in one Gencon in the last two years, last year I couldn't go because of money and my friends being temporarily jobless. I also can't do regionals any longer since one of the only days I can work is Sat, and I can't really take off more than I do for family events and vacations.

As for "being involved" there's lots of ways to be involved. I purposely stepped away from being a regular here on the forums as I write my dissertation. Doesn't mean I'm suddenly not reading things. I'm just posting less so I'm not as easily distracted by arguments over strength of pieces :).

As to the "right" way to do it, here's my take. We do not design the subsets separately, so we have currently 8 sets (working on 9 and 10). It didn't work when we tried it. They have to be designed together. 2nd having more than 1 new designer per set is a terrible idea as well. We also don't want to have the same person doing back to back sets as much as possible. As for your complaint that you'd never be chosen, well that's just stupid. It has nothing to do with vocal complaints. It simply has to do with you not submitting an application. No one cares about your complaints. If you can design well, we'd give you a shot.

And on the selection of Laura, I have to say, no offense to her husband, but she's probably a better designer. You should look at things she's made over the years. For several years Jason only played squads she made up :). We probably should have had her on first.

Mixing veterans and a newbie is the best method, because it provides continuity and keeps the designs fresh. Surprisingly enough, new designers no matter how creative or clever they think they are, aren't very good at it as a rule. It takes a good deal of managing their ideas and molding those into good usable ideas. I constantly remind people that we do not need to make up a new ability every darn time we want to slightly tweak some random thing. KISS is my design model. But most people have no idea what things will actually work and what will not. For example, quite often newish designers want to directly counter some random thing. It rarely works, but they don't get it until they are actually see the failure happen. There's reasons that silver bullets don't work, but most just don't get it. New designers also tend to ignore future design limitations. There's a lot more than just designing a good stat block to it.

But in the end, I'm just here to defend the concept against what I consider to be a couple of poorly conceived criticisms. I think we have a pretty good process going. You may disagree, and that's fine. You are welcome to get on board anytime you want and join the process. We can always use more help. Extremely Critical help is actually the best kind.

I really have never heard anyone else complain about the vehicles - I think the counters were aimed squarely at the Lancer. It's unusual for counters to occur so fast in any case, as the planning for Armed and Operational would have been well underway before Vehicles was released. The Lancer is way more abusive than any of the vehicles - it has crazy reach with Pawn of the Dark Side. I'd much prefer if the counters only worked on the Lancer - I really like the Vehicles. The only ones I think are really competitive are Durge, Luke/Leia, and Grievous - maybe Maul if you like want a delivery system for Maul Sith Infiltrator.

Have any of you considered that it's maybe your overwhelmingly convoluted bureaucracy that disenfranchises the community from the designing of V-Set, and takes what should be *community* effort to keep the game, into having only the hand-selected chosen?

Your argument that we don't want new designers is way off base.

We have had a new (or multiple new) designer(s) on EVERY set except set 8.

Set 1 (Dennis, Deri, Eric L)
Set 2 (Dennis, Bill, Eric Frost) -- 2 new designers
Set 3 (Bill, Deri, Daniel) -- 1 new designer
Set 4 (Dennis, Les, Jason, Weeks) -- 3 new designers
Set 5 (Trevor, Scott, Brad, Deri) -- 3 new designers
Set 6 (Weeks, Daniel, Les, Lou) -- 1 new designer
Set 7 (Tim, Jason, Brad, Deri) -- 1 new designer
Set 8 (Les, Trevor, Scott, Lou) -- none
Set 9 (Bill, Jason, Daniel, Jake K) -- 1 new designer
set 10 (Deri, Les, Laura, Tim) -- 1 new designer

Not the problem. the problem is that there was never anyway for the community to get onto the design team by playtesting like was promised. this looks like a whoswho of friends and playgroups.

Thats just how life goes my friend, people are way more willing to hire and bring someone onto the team if it's someone they know.
An employer is going to hire the guy who he's friends with and the guy who he can slap on the back over the unknown guy even if the unknown has a better resume. Thats just how life is and it's not necessarily bad.

I like the system they have been using so far of having mostly more experienced designers on the team and then 1 or 2 new guys. Too much new blood leaves us open to making the same mistakes thats already been made again.

I'm part of the custom characters here on bloomilk and while I really enjoy looking at what other people come out with. I sometimes shudder to think if this or that piece actually came out in a v-set. There are even pieces that I feel are done really well and are quite flavorful that I think would be bad for the game. So the only way to limit that is to have the more experienced majority keep those ideas in check.

Yes there has been some oops characters nobody can deny it. The thing is the V-set designers have tried to learn from their mistakes and limit those problems as much as possible.

I was one of the guys who submitted an app for V-set 10 designer and I thought I answered most of those questions well enough, but not surprisingly I wasn't in the top half.
I wasn't expecting to be seriously considered I said that going in, 1. I don't have competitive play experience 2. I only got back into the game last year and haven't been in the community for very long. 3. I don't personally know any of the designers and so on.

I only submitted it because I was personally encouraged to do so and even then I know I wasn't going to get the pick.

So it's not a problem for me. I'm fine helping out with play testing and trying to catch mistakes before they go through and helping pieces that I feel are getting the shaft to be slightly better.

Overall I think they made a good choice on the next designer.
Everything they said about Laura (urbanshmi) is correct.
Shes a big help in the forums and she creates and plays REALLY well with very unique squads she's designed. ( I think thats the big factor here)
She is a very concise thinker and a valuable addition to the group. I'm interested to see what she cooks up for us.

Congrats Laura!

Like I said it's who you know, not what you can do.
Think of this Star Wars True Story:
Harrison Ford had pretty much given up on being a movie star, he decided to go ahead and do carpentry. Just won't you know it he ends up doing the cabinets for this guy named George Lucas and they hit it off. Later on George Lucas was looking for someone to play in one of his movies and he remembered the carpenter and thought he would be perfect for the part! And since then how many movies has Harrison Ford been a part of that Lucas made?

You can do all the grunt work in an entry level job for years and never go anywhere and the reason if because your supervisor or manager or boss doesn't see your potential or don't really know you or like you enough.
I've been in the fast track before were I had a manager and his boss both really like me and wanted me to shot through the ranks, but when they moved on to bigger and better things my growth stopped. Because alot of other employees were jealous and enough of the other managers didn't like me enough to promote me to management (which is what my boss was working on right before he left)

People give authority to the people they get along with and it's a fact of life. (and really there isn't anything wrong with it)

BTW Darth Baine if you really want to design a piece there is a way anyone in the community can jump in and make 1, just win gencon

Hey Les, how many, crisp, new $20's can you get?

A question: does the design team take a few character submissions to look at?
Yes, I know that they could easily get wwwwaaaayyy too many, but it is just a thought.

Do they look through the customs section for pieces they are working on?

once again I never said anything about their credentials although thinking back on it, there are quite a few of those designers that should never design again, but I won't mention any specific names. I just think that if they are going to promise something then they should deliver. They are not politicians that have to lie to get votes and then never do what they promised. Just don't say you are going to do something and then never do it.

As far as promoting people that you get along with, that is not entirely true for this process. You are designing pieces for an entire community the last thing we need are two friends in there that won't disagree with their friend for the sake of their friendship, that is how overpowered pieces happen. the design team should be able to openly and honestly state their opinions about the other designers stat block, hard to do when it is your friend that you don't want to upset.


I agree about Laura. I think she will make a good designer, her ability to look at the complex nature of squad building makes her a natural for the design process.