Quote from: hedgehobbit;1120025I can't speak to the 40K games, the their Star Wars game had a debilitating flaw built into it's die mechanic. Even though the die rolls could generate results in two axis (succeed/fail, and advantage/threat), the fact that both values scale with the number of dice roll and adding dice is the only way to increase difficulty, meant that two of those results (succeed with advantage / fail with threat) were significantly more common than the others. The result of this fact is that if a player isn't optimized for a particular skill, that character was far more likely to fail with added threat than do anything positive for the party. In other words, if you weren't optimized for combat, shooting at a bad guy would hurt the party more than help it. You ended up with a Star Wars game that actively discouraged players from taking risks. Quite the opposite from what someone would expected.

One example I posted to their forums years ago was that if 7 Y-Wings attacked a Star Destroyer, the Star Destroyer would only kill 6 of those Y-Wings before the firing of the turbolasers had generated enough Threat to completely cripple the Star Destroyer. All without a single Y-Wing taking a shot. (as a response they completely changed combat vs large ships in the Rebellion game). When I brought this up, I was giving the GM Advice that I simply ignore any die results that didn't fit the narrative.

The designers stated that they never did any numerical analysis of their dice, they just make sure they "felt right". Which was obvious the first time someone actually did it.


And the blue die is wrong.

So much about this is so absolutely wrong...

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1120025I can't speak to the 40K games, the their Star Wars game had a debilitating flaw built into it's die mechanic. Even though the die rolls could generate results in two axis (succeed/fail, and advantage/threat), the fact that both values scale with the number of dice roll and adding dice is the only way to increase difficulty, meant that two of those results (succeed with advantage / fail with threat) were significantly more common than the others. The result of this fact is that if a player isn't optimized for a particular skill, that character was far more likely to fail with added threat than do anything positive for the party. In other words, if you weren't optimized for combat, shooting at a bad guy would hurt the party more than help it. You ended up with a Star Wars game that actively discouraged players from taking risks. Quite the opposite from what someone would expected.

One example I posted to their forums years ago was that if 7 Y-Wings attacked a Star Destroyer, the Star Destroyer would only kill 6 of those Y-Wings before the firing of the turbolasers had generated enough Threat to completely cripple the Star Destroyer. All without a single Y-Wing taking a shot. (as a response they completely changed combat vs large ships in the Rebellion game). When I brought this up, I was giving the GM Advice that I simply ignore any die results that didn't fit the narrative.

The designers stated that they never did any numerical analysis of their dice, they just make sure they "felt right". Which was obvious the first time someone actually did it.


And the blue die is wrong.

Even if you had no ranks in a combat skill, you can still do combat shit. Upgrade with a FP, aim, etc. And you are more likely to get successes and advantage than the opposite. And I say this as someone who has played since the beta.

You're going to have to work me through this SD vs Y-Wing thing. There's to many variables you are leaving out.

Quote from: Mistwell;1120011Not what I said.

The claim was made by Snowman that products can be measured on a scale of not sucky to sucky based on how much they sell (markets determine if something sucks or does not). I said based on that standard, Pundit's books must suck. None of that has anything to do with layoffs.

Then your not getting what I am saying.  Pundit is actually doing well for himself while FFG is dying out due to their own arrogance.  Guess it isn't hard to create a pdf and pod versions of your RPG.  So why is FGG failing and had to lay off so many people?  Could it just be the games suck and cannot support the bloat that FFG made for itself?

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1120045And you are more likely to get successes and advantage than the opposite. And I say this as someone who has played since the beta.

The most common outcomes are success with threat or failure with advantage because of the way the symbols cancel. This was the designers' intent as it adds "drama" to have complications when you'e doing well and compensations when you're doing poorly. Not everyone will agree.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1120038Oh, they had playtesters (I was one of them) but they did tend to ignore any feedback that didn't fit with their narrative. It was really frustrating when bad spots in the rules would be pointed out and they would just say "that part is already set, what about X?" over and over. Once the foundation had been poorly laid they were OK with just piling more on.

Oh yes I can testify to that claim in Dark Heresy 2.0 testing.  The first Dark Heresy second edition beta was a completely different beast then the ones that got release to the general public.  It was divisive and there was factions made in the forum.  The side I joined was the one that wanted Dark Heresy with the upgrades, more fine tuning, and more tweaks to make the system better.  The other one wanted this horrible abomination of the game which a shit ton of the SJWs sided with this.  FFG wanted the abomination system and continued on to ignore my faction even though they pointed out all the flaws in the game.  Then came Gen Con and once FFG came back it was 180.  Suddenly my group got what it wanted for the most part.

Quote from: sureshot;1120010Unless I'm mistaken Pundit is the only empkoyee of his company. So what is he going to do if business is bad fire himself. So not exactly a fair comparison.

True, but I don't see the people who got laid off are the ones that make the decisions.  How is that fair?

Quote from: Snowman0147;1120053Then your not getting what I am saying.  Pundit is actually doing well for himself while FFG is dying out due to their own arrogance.  Guess it isn't hard to create a pdf and pod versions of your RPG.  So why is FGG failing and had to lay off so many people?  Could it just be the games suck and cannot support the bloat that FFG made for itself?

Is FFG dying out? Minis and board games and card games seem to be doing fine.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1120058Is FFG dying out? Minis and board games and card games seem to be doing fine.

In terms of tabletop RPGs it is.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1120065In terms of tabletop RPGs it is.

While I never had any love for their stuff, and it never caught my desire, your pleasure in seeing them fall seems personal. As for tabletop RPGs most fail eventually. They had a solid release run and had some presence on some bookstores. Thats more then 99.9999999999% of all tabletop RPGs.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1120065In terms of tabletop RPGs it is.

So they're cutting out their appendix or tonsils, hardly anything meaningful to the company as a whole.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120066While I never had any love for their stuff, and it never caught my desire, your pleasure in seeing them fall seems personal. As for tabletop RPGs most fail eventually. They had a solid release run and had some presence on some bookstores. Thats more then 99.9999999999% of all tabletop RPGs.

I don't like it when I see the people in the bottom get trashed which I stated that multiple times.  That said I don't feel sorry for the people on top who made those horrible decisions that got those people laid off.  So if your trying to shame me, then you had failed completely.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1120068So they're cutting out their appendix or tonsils, hardly anything meaningful to the company as a whole.

True, but if they made good rpgs that people wanted to buy then there wouldn't be lay offs.  Think on that.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1120070True, but if they made good rpgs that people wanted to buy then there wouldn't be lay offs.  Think on that.

This is petty and childish reasoning.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120071This is petty and childish reasoning.

Petty my ass.  I am being real and honest about the whole thing.  Your acting like I am the one that is laying off the workers when I am not and AGAIN I am not cheering on the people being laid off.  I honestly feel bad for them, but getting bitchy at me because I say the truth only proves how petty you really are.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1120073Petty my ass.  I am being real and honest about the whole thing.  Your acting like I am the one that is laying off the workers when I am not and AGAIN I am not cheering on the people being laid off.  I honestly feel bad for them, but getting bitchy at me because I say the truth only proves how petty you really are.

They could have underestimated the cost of the license plus the high-value production costs - thus putting themselves outside the realities of the current RPG market. This doesn't necessarily mean that their games were bad.