It's always useful to bring up some thoughts, Teean. It's never negative. It's true that the first edition was excellent. There's another saying that says... it's impossible to please everyone... just to add to Tomas's point, there are many elements in the Evolved Edition that have been discussed on this forum over the past 4-5 years, and they've taken those comments into account. We need to take the time to digest things, and it will be clearer in a few weeks.
My original comment was going to be my only comment in this thread. I've already lain out in the original one my criticisms and given some pretty detailed analysis behind those reasons. Especially breaking down the probabilities and factors in the new Stress and Panic rolls. I didn't see a need to get into it again and my post was nothing more than to say that I appreciated them acknowledging our posts and giving them consideration.
But as you're replying to me on this and I feel you're taking a rather placating tone, I'll address what you say. It's certainly true that one cannot please everybody all of the time. That's actually one of my points I've made elsewhere which is that as I read through the beta a lot of it feels like it's being re-geared closer to a table top skirmish game over an RPG. A single example to illustrate being the re-written cover rules which are now explicitly a very simple attribute of a classification of zone. If the zone is Open, you cannot take cover. If the zone is cluttered, you may take Partial Cover as a Quick Action or Full Cover as a Full Action. The book says that cover should be considered omnidirectional under normal circumstances. This reads very much like some skirmish game with its classifications and sequences. Contrast it with the more RPG-ish approach in the core book where it's entirely normal for a PC to fire into the adjacent zone whilst tucked into a door way for partial cover. Or for me to have cargo crates they could dive behind. You might say the latter just defines the zone as "Cluttered" and I guess that's not a problem because they've also changed Cluttered to mean only whether or not one can take cover in. It no longer affects movement because now everyone moves a single zone during Stealth mode. It's all part of the same problem that things are getting turned from the nuances of an RPG to the flow-charts and classifications of a table-top Skirmish game or a boardgame. You say "can't please everybody" well yes - that's our point. The game flavour is being shifted in emphasis away from what a lot of us want. And you might and quite probably will try to engage with this specific example and show why a GM can still have someone take cover in a doorway (though by the rules now all zones that have a doorway become "Cluttered") but this is an
illustration of a wider shift. I could give others. The removal of Stunts feels very much like the kind of simplifying that is required for miniatures games for example.
Most of my criticisms if you look at them were mathematically founded. Such as the problems from the 2d6 bell curve introduced with Stress and Panic. And where I had to incorporate some assumptions, such as how the addition of being able to remove Stress by extra hits might mitigate the issue, I did so explicitly and tried to explain my reasoning. I don't know if you actually were looking at my feedback in the other thread when you chose to reply to me here telling me 'it will all become clear' but there's no sign that you did which is why I've chosen to respond in this way. If you felt I was off-base on one of my criticisms I'd welcome specific reasoning why so. But getting a response telling me 'can't please everybody' to me running some numbers and showing what I think is a serious issue with Stress Snowballing, well honestly it rubs me up the wrong way and if you think about it I'm sure you can see why. Where my criticisms are very subjective, I still backed them up with what I felt people's expectations were. It might be subjective that a queen should take more effort to kill than two drones, but I showed with the new Armour rules that's the case and I think it's reasonable for me to say most people don't want that.
I'm sure your response to me was well-intentioned but it came across as dismissive when you say we need time to 'digest the changes'. My responses are not off the cuff. I spent about two hours reading through the new Stress rules and running some numbers and then I posted a thread on the Reddit group with my analysis and asked for other people's thoughts. When I'd incorporated their responses as well as finding quite a lot of people in agreement, I followed the suggestion of a few people over there and rewrote my take in the feedback thread here in the hopes it would be useful. It's digested.
Now I feel that this has been a little negative in tone. And that's a shame because though you don't know this, I'm quite a fan of your maps and illustrations that you've made over the years. I really wasn't intending to post anything more than what I originally wrote which was to thank the developers for responding and to say that I thought the current edition was very well designed. But I put a lot of thought and analysis into my feedback in the other thread and I've responded negatively to implications that it's due to misunderstanding or lack of consideration. If there is something like that in it, the best response would be to say where my feedback (or anyone else's criticism - there are a lot of us) is flawed. That benefits everybody.
(different person quoted from Dallas above to be clear, as forum layout doesn't show the name)
PLEASE, DON'T LISTEN TO US!
Fans are often the greater enemies of the things we love. So, don't listen to us.
[...]
Be brave, we trust you.
You can only speak for yourself and it's a little rude to tell the developers to disregard the rest of us. They asked for our feedback so they get it. There are a lot of very valid and well-reasoned criticisms so if you see one that is mistaken feel free to point out why. But don't presume to speak for the community.
EDIT: This was posted while I was writing mine so adding my response here rather than double-post.
Thanks for those comments, from all of you. You all have good points. Yes, we certainly do listen to the feedback and yes we will make further changes based on it – stay tuned for that – but in the end, we also must follow our vision as game designers.
I fully respect following your vision. You are the people who wrote the original ruleset I think, no sudden replacement of developers, right? Well I have a lot of respect for the existing ruleset and it's very well designed for the specific genre of game it is intended for. I like it a lot. That buys a lot of trust on my part so I'll just re-iterate what was my original point so it doesn't get lost. Thank you for reading our criticisms and giving them consideration. If we're wrong and you know better, quite possible!
- then nobody will be happier than your players. But please do give some thought to this no matter how much internal playtesting has been done. I think there's a lot of validity to points I've read here (not only my own).
