The problem with this is that if people think there are more overpowered pieces in the Vsets compared to What wizards cooked up they are crazy. I honestly believe that if there were no star wars minis and the Vset designers were the first and only people to make them we would all be a lot better off with a balanced game, and we are getting dang close as it is thanks to set 3.

Yeah, you're right about that. The BGG thread had a lot of points I completely disagreed with - complaints about Vset pieces that are comparable in power/function to WotC pieces, but in a new faction. When it came to Bastila, though, my only response was exactly what billiv said - if she makes it un-fun, don't use her. That is a solution, but it also could make someone say, "Forget it - too complicated - throw the Vsets out entirely." I, for one, hope that the Vsets are useful to everyone, though.

I'll remain quiet about that particular thread. Let me just say, I know who most of those posters are, and I know some of the issues posted. They are entirely context specific and should not be universalized in any way. For example, one I will explain because he's posted it on Gamers before, is from Ugavine. He and Dreadtech (who loves the V-sets and has helped us PT) play in the following way.

They roll for squad size, 100-1000.
They roll for faction.
Now they roll for V-set legal or illegal.
They do not play DCI rules, they play strict rulebook kill em all. Immediate reserve pieces piss the hell out of them and literally break their larger point games.

As for the others, using them as proof of an argument will get you no where. We do have our haters out there. And that's fine. But I really don't care what they say. I care what you all who are actually playing say, which is why I'm commenting here and not there.

And again, it took 3 sets to get close to that point. That's my point, I don't think many people would've been that patient, considering just where the Vong and OR were, and to a lesser extent, the Mandos.

And I agree, Force Abilities as a subset of Force Powers is a very interesting dynamic to the game that is ripe for some fun design.

You win. Congratulations. Now please calm down.

If your problem with Bastila is that she's too strong and breaks the game somehow, frankly you're just wrong. I wish I could have a signature here on Bloomilk, because on Gamers the first quote in my signature is "If a piece isn't broken at the highest level of competition, it isn't broken". Bastila has proven to not be broken at the highest level of competition; she's quite good, but can be beaten. Ian lost at least 1 game at Gencon with her, and was very, very close to losing in multiple others. The proof really is in the pudding here.

I understand that most people aren't saying she's broken, I just wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page for the moment.

I really don't think competitive games can be designed in a way such that none are consider too strong by anyone. The BGG thread was brought up earlier; if you read that thread, you would see that some people were actually complaining that Darth Vader, Agent of Evil broke the game and was way too good. That was literally in the first post of the thread. We simply CANNOT account for opinions like this, because they are really pretty off the wall. There will always be someone who believes that X piece is broken, where X is literally anything. What we have to do when designing is make sure that the game isn't actually broken at the highest level. If it's not broken there, it's still a valid game. Someone might be completely unable to win a game against Vader Agent of Evil, and that might totally turn them off the game. That's a real shame, but there's nothing we could do about that. In ANY game, it is not the responsibility of the designer to ensure that all players can be competitive. That's just not possible. Some people will be better than others. A designer can only make sure that the BEST players can't break the game; beneath the best players, skill levels vary so wildly that there is no way to account for it. It's just an unrealistic expectation. Designers simply cannot be required to think "Well this piece doesn't break the game, but what would people who are only half as good as the best players think about this? What about people that are 3/4 as good? 1/4 as good? What about people who just picked up the game?". It's just too much.

I play a TON of Dominion. It's a brilliant game that's both very strategically deep and very easy to pick up and learn, and it's different pretty much every single time you play it. If you're new at Dominion, though, you might find that using the strategy of just only ever buying money and VP cards wins most games. This is called "Big Money", and the strategy that all other Dominion strategies are compared to. It's the Dominion gatekeeper. Lots of people play Dominion, figure out Big Money, and then quit playing the game because they think nothing can beat it and it's basically a solved game. That's really a shame, because they're totally wrong. Big Money is actually very rarely the optimal strategy in Dominion, it's just the easy one that people usually learn first.

Pretty much all games have this. It's exceedingly difficult to make a game that doesn't have certain strategies that seem to be the best. Sometimes they are; that usually indicates a weak game, because it's a solved game. You know what to do every game, just that one best strategy. In SWM, that would be like if Rebels were absolutely, bar none the best, and there was one best squad, and everybody played that because it would be foolish to play anything else. Usually, though, that strategy that seems to be the best really isn't, you just haven't figured out its weakness. The game is in fact not a solved game, it just has a gatekeeper. Some people won't figure out how to beat it and quit. Better players will figure it out and get past that bottleneck and find lots of other strategies that are also valid.

This is just part of game design, and SWM is no exception. Yes, it will drive away some casual players. Yes, that's a shame. Unfortunately, we can't do much about that.



I already mentioned that I don't like Bastila. I don't dislike her because she's too good, though, I dislike her because she's a negative play experience. It sucks to have created a strategy or paid points for a piece and to have it just plain not work. If you lose a game because you executed your strategy poorly, or it wasn't as good of a strategy as your opponent's, or because your opponent's strategy took advantage of your specfic weaknesses, that's ok. Losing a game because you just don't get to do your strategy and there's nothing (or not much) you can do about it is a lot less fun. It's like if there were a piece that activated all your pieces on its turn so you basically never got to even play unless you won init. It wouldn't matter if this piece was a 200 point Rebel Trooper with that SA tacked on, making it a pretty terrible piece (eventually you would win init enough to move one of your attackers up to kill it), it would be a really annoying and not fun piece to play against. Like I said in my earlier post, it's the bad kind of denial.

I'll make another Dominion analogy: there are two cards that I really hate in Dominion, Possession and Black Market. Possession lets you take a turn with your opponent's deck, Black Market lets you buy cards that you normally can't buy, but your options are random. I think both of these cards make the game much less fun to play. Getting hit with Possession is just such a negative play experience because you have to see your opponent take your hand, play your awesome cards, and HE benefits from it instead of you. You get punished for having a good deck because your opponent can do better with it. Black Market is unpleasant because it can allow your opponent to get the only copy of certain cards that you can't defend against and you can't get a copy yourself. If you both play the Black Market and it gives you the option to buy crappy stuff that you don't want but your opponent gets to buy a sweet attack card when there aren't any defensive cards in play, you just kind of get screwed by dumb luck. These cards make the game less fun in my opinion.

The kicker, though, is that those cards really aren't very good cards! Possession is way too expensive, and with Black Market you're just as likely to get screwed as you are to get good stuff. They aren't negative play experiences because they're good, they just aren't very fun to play against. I feel the exact same way about the Lancer and Bastila in SWM. They can definitely be beaten (they are good, though, but not unbeatable by any stretch), but even when I'm playing a squad that can beat them easily it's still a negative play experience. It's not fun. That's a problem. A piece doesn't have to be too good for it to create a negative play experience, not by a long shot. In fact it can be a crappy piece that just makes a game not fun. Power and fun aren't directly related.

My problem with Bastila has nothing to do with her power. She's good, but she's not too good, and she's good in a way that OR really needed. My problem with Bastila is she makes the game less fun, and I play the game to have fun.

The problem with designing a piece primarily for casual play is that the definition of casual play is too broad to pin down. Some people will play 100 points while others will play 500. Some will only play eras, others will only use theme squads or scenarios. Some will play kill them all, others will play with gambit. Some will play with a time limit, others won't. Some will throw certain rules out the window (One egregious example I can think of from the WotC boards was a player whose playgroup couldn't grasp the concept of targetting so they house ruled that anybody could shoot anybody they saw).

A designer can't realistically account for all those various permutations, so they instead design them for sanctioned play, where all the game rules and how it's played is static. WotC themselves did this with their sets, really starting with RotS. Otherwise, if the designers were to make the minis as inoffensive as possible, the game would become bland and uninteresting as no mini could really be allowed to distinguish itself for fear of offending some subset of players.

For a better understanding of the thought process designers use to try to keep things balanced, I direct you to the works of David Sirlin, a game designer who has written many things about competitive play, balance, and other aspects of game design:

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-1-definitions.html

First off, let me say way too many people are getting offended by this discussion. Let's go back to what this thread was supposed to be about. Respectful and civil criticism.

Second, Casual play may be fun and what keeps the game alive, but i agree entirely with Bill. In casual play, you may make house rules to fix Bastila to however you like. It's that simple.

Third, Bastila is beatable. Period. I can agree with the statements that it can make for a bad playing experience. But, I definitely disagree that it isn't satisfying to beat her. To beat a powerful piece like her is always satisfying.

While I don't necessarily disagree with anything you said individual, I do not agree with the overall theory.

Most pieces in the V-Sets are casual-friendly; as one would honestly expect from correctly costed pieces without massive power abilities that change the game. That's all it really takes to keep Casual play strong. Pieces which even get a "Why on earth would I chose to play with or against Bastila" from designers though, well...

And again, its not even that pieces like that are a complete no-no. Maybe such pieces are needed every so often for competition play, which is fine too. But if those pieces came with some type of indicator then at least they would not be the pieces which end up becoming the face of the V-Sets in so many peoples eyes. Put any possible power-pieces in the mini-sets. Or maybe put them as the last 5 pieces in a set, clearly out of faction order from the rest. Make them additional set pieces (like #61T in the set or something) - there are plenty of small things which can be done for the very few such pieces which will have a profound impact. Casual games wont instantly write off all the V-Sets because of the scattering of such pieces (as, sadly, some do) while advanced play gets its boost and V-Sets are no harder to design in the end.

One thing to always remember is that people who don't want to like something will always look for a reason to back themselves up. Randomly inserted game-changing power pieces are the huge neon sign for V-Set critics. If you can remove that easy target so effortlessly, why wouldn't you?

And all that said, Sithborg seems to be on a similar train of thought himself based off his page2 reply to my first post. That shows at least some designers are taking such things into consideration, even if some others apparently just don't want to hear it at all and instead wish to argue against the casual gamers thoughts.

OK, some of this is getting a bit too pointed. Keep the discussion objective, please.