This is a really interesting and insightful post. I'm not saying that we can make it happen now, since this kind of decision would've needed to happen 6 years ago when WotC let go of the reins. However, it does point out the fact that a significant decision was made, which has shaped the game's development ever since. That decision was to "fix" WotC's mess, but not by adjusting the mess at it the core of its structure, but rather, by working with existing structure (mess and all) to balance it that way.

We basically had two paths open to us (along with a middle-of-the-road path), and they basically revolved around this question: "Moving forward, how will we work with what WotC gave us?":

1. Change anything from WotC.
It sounds like this is your suggestion, kkj...is that correct? Change the rules and pieces that WotC gave us so that the game worked better. In essence, this means making a new (or at least largely new) game entirely. This would've likely involved things like fixing the ruling on how attacks with Lightsabers work when made by characters without Melee Attack, and things like that. It also would've involved either the re-costing of garbage WotC pieces (the Twilek Scoundrel might be useful at 4pts, but certainly not 7) or else perhaps a complete re-statting of those pieces. Perhaps even a complete costing overhaul of the entire collection? No creation of new characters.

2. Change nothing from WotC.
Every single stat card and rule from the WotC remains as it was when WotC left it. In essence, this means continuing with the same game that WotC gave us, but working to balance it and shape it more effectively than they ever did. It means designing new pieces which balance out the existing factions and hopefully create more options as we go forward. This is all done by the creation of new characters.

1.5. Make minor alterations to WotC's game so that more of it is balanced and/or enjoyable.
The reason this wasn't an actual full option was because both options would actually be aiming at this goal. Option #1 would do this via re-costing and direct errata to WotC's game rules and pieces. Option #2 would do this via designing new pieces which helped to make obsolete pieces more interesting and worthwhile.


Obviously, "we" as a community chose to go with Option #2, to change nothing from WotC and to work with what they gave us in an attempt to prolong the game and give it new life. [It is only now, after 6 years, that we've barely started to adjust some of the WotC stuff; for example, making an errata to no longer allow Rapport to drop a character's Cost below 3.] The "we" who made this decision were a group of the community's most active and invested leaders at the time (not including me myself, btw). They were the ones who were paying to host websites, putting time into ongoing development, and even looking into the possibility of making new minis (it ended up being too costly), and more. I wasn't a leader in the community at the time, but I do remember being excited when I heard that we would continue to get new characters for the game.

Could they have chosen differently? Certainly! I've often wondered what would've happened if they'd decided to do Option #1 instead of #2, but that's all water under the bridge at this point. Would the game still be alive and thriving if we'd done that? Maybe. I know that I myself would have probably left a while ago, but that's because I'm a competitive-minded player and don't have much interest in casual gaming. With nothing new to add to the competitive meta, I'm not sure how long the competitive game would've remained fresh. Under Option #1, even hypothetically assuming that everything was re-costed and fixed just right, we still would've inevitably reached the point where the game reached a static meta, where the best squads and tactics were established and virtually no new competitive options were available. Maybe there would've been 15-20 top squads rather than the 3-4 that WotC left us with, but the point is that the game would've inevitably reached the end of its life, with no new content. And at that point, we would've had to either...

1) let SWM die as a competitive game (which inevitably happens with a stale meta) and move on to other games, with only the casual game remaining,
...or...
2) start in with V-Set development, and likely still end up in a place that looks a lot like where we are today. Would it be a better place? Maybe, but I honestly doubt it.

My point in making this whole post (and spending too much time doing it, actually! lol) is simply to say that you raise a good point and that your suggestion may have been a viable option back in 2010, but that for a number of different reasons the community went in a different direction at the time, a direction which has strongly shaped things afterward.

Admittedly, this decision was made with competitive play at the forefront of consideration. The V-Sets have ALWAYS been designed with competitive play as the primary consideration. Perhaps that is where some of the community's push-back against the V-Sets has come from, because not all players are competitively-minded. Some prefer casual play, and some are "semi-competitive"--that is, they want to play competitively, but not with certain squads or tactics that they (rather subjectively) don't like. (It has been discussed ad nauseum that everyone has their own personal NPEs.) But from the start, the V-Sets were designed with the competitive meta in mind. If a piece looked broken in casual play but was quite handily addressed by the competitive meta, then it wasn't broken. Besides, any non-competitive or semi-competitive groups could easily make house-rules for anything that they didn't like. The only arena in which you had to take account of the V-Sets was in competitive play.

I'm not sure if this helps, but I hope it does.

If you or someone else wants to go back and start on Option #1 (ie, your suggestion, if I understood you correctly), then more power to you! Find a cool name for it, do whatever work is necessary to come up with an effective costing system, figure out what "messes" from WotC's game are the most important to fix, and then go to town! I'd be interested how the "Fixed-WotC" game would be! But until then, the V-Sets are what we've got. And the Legends sets too, but I don't have much knowledge of how that works.

+1

Something something "why are you perpetuating this 'us vs. them' mentality."

I do think this was the way to go. I remember seeing posts on recosting on the Wizards boards, and people generally came to the conclusion that the recosted bland pieces would end up as meat shields - although even then, they face competition in that role from 3 point 20 defense Mouse Droids. The pieces that can do useful things like Levitation, Tempo Control, Galloping Attack, Swap etc are still going to be the strongest unless they're really hate-costed out of the meta.

In hindsight, I think the biggest mistake in this period was that some people from the big European playgroups weren't included in the design and testing process. It would have been great to have their input, and it might have helped avoid some complexity creep.

I do think that you're hung up on a design and play-testing process which has improved markedly since you were involved.

While the design team initially consisted of people from the inner circle of competitive GenCon players, it now includes people like FlyingArrow who weren't in that circle at the time, as well as Kezzamachine from New Zealand.

As a playtester in the last three sets, and the upcoming ones, the communication between design team and playtesters has been fine, and in those sets we haven't released anything that I've been uncomfortable with.

Even this isn't exactly true.
Dennis (who designed on sets 1,2,4) never really considered himself a top tier player and was always more about the casual and scenario play (he created and ran a Hoth battle for many years even before the ATAT came out using the X-1 Viper Droid as ATATs and he also created the Dynamic Duo format).

When you create sets of pieces that casual players find broken and you pair that with consistent NPE at regionals and tournaments, how can you be surprised that attendance is dropping? I did one regional in Wisconsin and all it took was Timmer B dropping 20 mouse droids on the map for me to realize that this was not the kind of play I wanted to pay to experience. I hardly doubt I am alone in that process. However, if the Vset is indeed meant for tournament play, don't be surprised that the number of tournament players would decrease over time for a dead game that does not allow people to integrate easily. There is literally zero incentive for a new or casual player to come to a tournament just to get wiped mercilessly by people who bend the rules as much as possible because "they want to win." That is not a whole lot of people's idea of fun. Food for thought.

The long-term future of SWM as I see it is to boardgame-ify it. That's long-term as in after Vsets are done. Whether that's in 5 sets, 15 sets, or 50 sets. At that point, I plan to make pre-set squads and put them on the shelf. Then treat the game as if the squads were unchangeable. The pre-set squads would largely be from tier 1 but with certain changes to mitigate auto-wins and auto-losses, and to remove NPEs.

The real challenge at that point would be to partition my collection into squads in such a way that I can make the squads without needing a particular Unique in multiple squads.

Flying is probably cheaper than driving solo 12 hours. If you get a group from home then it's a different story. Chicago could probably save you about 3 hours each way if you come here and then we carpool. All depends on the car situation at that point.


Joe - you have no excuse. ;)

Can you be more specific? Which NPEs? Which pieces? Designers try to address NPEs and the balance team has addressed certain pieces.

From a New Zealand point of view, our National tournament (generally averaging 16-18 players) has had the following finalists in the last four years:
Swap squads: Thrawn swap won in 2013 and 2015, and came second in 2012.
Swarms: Naboo Pilots won in 2012, Daala won and came second in 2014, and a Vong swarm came second in 2013.
Melee squads: a melee squad came second in 2015, although it didn't use any of the pieces that you're complaining about - it was a New Republic squad and relied on the Mouse dump to keep up with the high activation squads in the field.

As you can see, in our New Zealand group, melee squads based around uniques have historically struggled to hold their own, and the last tournament I took part in was a melee only tournament so these pieces had a chance to shine. If I was suggesting four pieces to ban, my list would be completely different. I do have a little sympathy towards Boba, and if I was costing him from scratch, I'd put him at least 55, but I don't think it's worth changing.

As I understand it, a lot of what the community as a whole has been asking for has been for lower activation, hero based squads to do well, and some of the changes from last year seem to be helping with that.