aussiecossie said:

Yes, ofcourse. Personally i don't think the victory condition is THAT big of a change, i see it more of a fine-tuning. Then again i'm not a game designer (yet! hehe). I don't really have high hopes that ffg will scrap something they already put time and work in so far in the process (it's star wars and will sell anyway) and i don't know if they actually pay attention to the forums. I don't think i ever seen a staff member post here.

I don't blame them though, there's a lot of unnesscesary hate thrown around here,

But 'm having a good vibe about the disscussion, hopefully it will bring some positive change! 

I'd like to think they have a passive presence on the forums, watching out for opinions etc, but then it seems to me it'd be a full-time job for one person to watch each game's forum! 

Something that caught my attention at the beginning of the Team Covenant video is that Corey calls it "an early demo" - not really convinced it's that early as they aren't leaving themselves much time to get it out by Winter 2012 otherwise, but at the same time, they demoed it at GenCon, and apparently at Celebration VI, so I suppose it makes good business sense to do this and then keep an eye on their own message boards for opinions on things they can fine-tune, etc. 

I imagine some things can still be changed, specifically the objective cards, to be more interactive - it'd only involve a quick change of the text after all. I know it doesn't usually mean anything, but the Upcoming page still has the LCG in development and not at the printer, so I think it's possible they're still working at things right now…

About the conditions for a Win, I have personally no problem with the difference between Light Side and Dark Side win conditions, and the slight asymmetry it provides (nothing like NetRunned though). Thematically, having the Dark Side win by default (because their influence is spreading with immense means across the galaxy) whereas for a win, the Light Side must strike a decisive blow at the heart of the Empire or defeat its main schemes to stop the DS and the Empire, feels right. Episode IV is all about the LS having to fight in an hopeless situation, only to "win" because of an audacious run against the Death Star. Episode VI plays rougly the same (with 2 parallels undertaking that should have no hope of success if it were not heroic undertaking: Luke in confrontation of Vader and the Emperor; The Rebel Alliance trying to destroy DS2). Hence, thematically, the DS victory counter is not bad.

Gamewise, I hope that it would work so that it 's not a too great incentive for the Dark Side to remain on a defensive stance. I agree that I am not certain about the fact that winning the Force Balance gives DS a 1 tick bonus for their timer, is a geat incentive to win this Balance, and just keep the rest of the cards in defense, waiting for 6 turns to pass… I trust the designers to avoid this issue, as we all would like the DS to be also compelled to work out their own plans and assaults (clearly, in Episode V, the DS drive their own plans).

However, I liked reading this thread because one of my first suggestions for design development was to have not only Objectives that count as targets for the enemy and resources (and assets) for your own side, but also (some, not all) Objectives that on can fulfill. In a previous post, I even proposed that a simple mechanisme would be to let a player make an attemps against one of its objectives, with the other side trying to thwart that. The ideas published above are good ideas!

Anyway, having yet to see definite previews of the game, I will let the designers and playtesters do their jobs…

hyperion_pb said:

I think the winning conditions can still be asymmetrical as long as the mechanic is indeed symmetrical. Especially since everything else is the same. i Mean netrunner is as asymmetrical as can be and i would never want to change that game but the Star Wars LCG demo is a symmetrical pvp with a victory condition mechanic that somehow is assymetrical.

You could easily change the DS counter for a Death Star objective. It can still work smiliar, that 13 tokens/13 rounds in, your Death Star is activated/built and you win the game. What the big difference is you dont have to have the death star objective. You could make other "empire prescense to great -> DS wins" objectives. You can make thematic wins for the Light side, for the rebels, for bounty hunters, for smugglers etc (in future expansions). So instead of a DS counter (that symbolize the dominating empire) you could have alot of different objectives that symbolizeses the same thing!

And from a buisness perspective this is great. I can come up with a hundred different expansions with a lot of theme and none of them will need the DS counter.

 Am I missing something?  The win condition keeps drawing comparisons to Netrunner as asymmetrical, but from what I understand of Netrunner both the corp and runner have the same win condition with asymmetrical game play.  Star Wars seems to have asymmetrical win conditions with game play about the same for both sides.

Beatnik86 said:

Yes both the runner and the corp win if they score 7 agendas. But the runner also wins if the corps rnd(deck) is depleted while the corp wins if the runner cant discard, hand with 0 cars (flatlined). So slightly asymmetrical victory conditions i guess!

Roman_Sandal said:

I fear that the doomsday clock is there to guarantee quick games so no new players get turned off by a stalemate game that goes on and on.  In which case it may be non-negotiable.

I agree, though, that if they want to keep it simple then destroying opponent objectives as the primary victory condition can work.  Personally, I think a point system would work better than a simple "destroy 3 objectives" condition.  If chapter packs are going to have 5-10 new objectives each month then I would think they would soon run out of interesting card effects without some sort of balancing mechanism.  I guess the hit points for each objective is a balancing mechanism, but I think also having different point totals would be useful.  Such a point system would also add to the theme.  Destroying the death star shouldn't be worth the same as stopping a weapons shipment or discovering a piece of sith lore. 

I like the idea that having the force on your side changes what the cards do.  Maybe each objective has two different effects, one for when the force is on your side and one for when the force is not.  Usually having the force on your side makes the power stronger (Draw 2 cards, instead of draw 1 card) but maybe there could be some thematic objectives where you might actually benefit from not having the force.  You could even do the same with the characters.  Characters with the Force keyword could have text that explains the bonus they get when the force is on their side. 

I personally like the idea of having to complete objectives with advancement tokens.  This seems very thematic to me as the original trilogy seemed to often be about various quests rather than head to head battles, but if they end up with a simple destroy your opponent's objectives to win the game condition then it could work. 

I'll also add that an objective based win condition might make multiplayer and even solo variants more likely. 

pomomojo said:

This element at least is already in the game, there being a number of effects which change based on whether the force is with you or not. There's been some suggestions (here or at BGG) to remove the Force Struggle to simplify the game, but not only does it generate harder decisions for units (attack vs defense vs force struggle), it generates nice thematic warmness when you can read out an event or an effect where, yes, the force is with me, so I get this bonus.

 I also believe if both sides are to have the same win conditions, either both sides should or shouldnt lose when their draw deck is gone. From my experience in games where you are unable to search for cards, drawing more cards is a must to get deck consistancy. Hopefully there will b cards/or edge battle winning text that allows both sides to search for cards. I hate it when you lose a game due to a bad shuffle. 

 I also believe if both sides are to have the same win conditions, either both sides should or shouldnt lose when their draw deck is gone. From my experience in games where you are unable to search for cards, drawing more cards is a must to get deck consistancy. Hopefully there will b cards/or edge battle winning text that allows both sides to search for cards. I hate it when you lose a game due to a bad shuffle. 

 @ roman_sandal: to answer ur question from last page; I'd be excited by objectives but would settle for simple.

I'll be interested to read the rule book when it's released

Unless the asymmetry of the game remains intact, they definitely could not implement the idea of having some objectives being advanceable while having others that are destructible. That would not work, because then if one side has all advanceable objectives while the other side has destructible objectives, then the side with the advanceable objectives automatically wins. There is nothing for the other side to do but stall the eventual advancement of three objectives.

If, however, they design all objectives with an advanceable part AND a destructible part, then it could work. Otherwise, the asymmetry would need to remain in place, and even then, only the light side could realistically have advanceable objectives. If the dark side were allowed any advanceable objectives, they could just play all those cards, and if the light side ever wound up with all destructible objectives, they're done.

I could definitely see the concept of objectives with both an advanceable and destructible part being more interesting and thematic, but I imagine that would also require even more tokens.

TheRealLeo said:

Why would one side only have advanceble objectives while the other have only destructible?

Why shouldn't  you be able to destroy/hinder advanceble objectives before they get completed?

Bolfa Fluffbelly said:

Either you missed what I was saying, or I misunderstood what people were suggesting.

My interpretation of the posts above was that people wanted objectives that could be advanced, not destroyed. In other words, when they come into play, only the owner could cause them to leave play by advancing them, while the opponent could do nothing but hinder their completion. I was just saying that would be bad for the reasons I mentioned above.

If that's not what was being suggested, then it wasn't quite clear.

 I also don't understand the prejudice against tokens. I used to play deciphers lord of the rings back in its hay day and it was token heavy. It was also an awesome game. Tokens does not necessarily = horrible gameplay.