Lots of good changes and more importantly, some needed clarification. Definitely like the spread barrel change, and I'm curious to see the change to Nemesis-level Adversaries in action. My feelings toward the Auto-fire change can best be summed up as "relief" :)

Thank you much, design team!

Agreed. I particularly like the more subtle changes to the melee weapons (increasing the pierce on a vibroknife is a great solution that doesn't result in more base damage, but does a good job of reducing the frustration factor against more heavily armored opponents) and autofire (reducing the difficulty of walking fire while also increasing the [adv] cost, and making it able to hit any target in range - not just engaged with the initial target).

Look forward to putting them into play (sessions on hold for a couple of weeks as one player wanted to try out the new Marvel RPG, which has a lot of similarities to EotE and I'm thinking of yoinking the initiative system from)!

 Heh, I just ran that new Marvel rpg. It met with mixed reviews in my group. Would love to hear your thought on it. Shoot me a PM if you like, maybe we can compare notes.

So I wonder how many complaint posts we can expect to see from folks whose own personal gripes/issues with the rules didn't get addressed at all in the updates?

Overall, I like the updates made, and have no problem with Walking Fire as a separate entry hitting the dustbin.

I will try to contain myself in relation to that…

I do miss a few things, but I expect these to be addressed for the final release, sometimes next year, or perhaps in the last update - but I'm not expecting it, because it's pointless to expect my issues to take precedent, even if I feel that they're the most important issues and obstacles there are in this game's development. Meh…

Jegergryte said:

I also have a short list of changes that I'm hoping to see in the final version. The reality, however, is that many beta testers are not going to be 100% satisfied with the final version. It would be unrealistic to think otherwise. This is where house rules can help to bridge the gap between the game that EotE is, and the game that you want it to be.

And of course, once the game book is published, it's not really final then either. We'll doubtless get errata for it. Fine by me, I'd much prefer they continue to listen to feedback and update the game. It would be far worse to ship it and never address any of the issues that mass play reveals.

No, this is just another step on a long journey.

Definitely happy with this week's round of changes… No complaints at all.

Still a lot of opportunities for optimization on the table, so I'm sad that beta is over.  But it's been a good run and I look forward to the final release!  Speaking of which, does anyone know when it's going to hit the shelves yet?

No clue, but hoping its release coincides with Star Wars Celebration Europe II … if not before of course.

 My money is on Q1 2013. Assuming, yanno, the world is still here :-)

 So speaking of house rules, you guys that have been in the beta from the start, it'll be great if you created a thread to discuss house rules based on what has not been updated/changed in the beta that you would like to see.

Cheers

Ceodryn

Ceodryn said:

To be honest, there's actually very little now that autofire and melee weapons have been addressed, apart from some general consistency tidy-up, e.g.: matching wording for things that mean the same thing, a look at "increasing" (i.e.: adding a difficulty die) vs "upgrading" (i.e.: converting a difficulty die to a challenge die) difficulty, consistent color/category of vehicle vs personal criticals (and other vehicle vs personal scale differences that are due to lack of consistency rather than intentional differences).

Looking at the list of biggest issues I put together a while back, based on LDs initial list:

• The dice math is probably the biggest one, the simplest "fix" I've seen, while not perfect, is that triumphs counts as 2 or 3 successes (and despair as 2 or 3 failures). I'll be using that at least until the final book comes out to balance the bias in the rules towards upgrading over adding boost/setback dice (which isn't actually a greater advantage when you look at the math) and also hopefully skew the successes vs advantages probability back in favor of successes.
• Droids being underpowered I don't personally see as a big issue, but I like the idea of allowing them to be uber specialists by letting them increase one class skill to three ranks at character creation, so I'll probably introduce that as a house rule, more for flavour than to adjust the power level.
• Skill/characteristic breakdown is a smaller issue, which I wouldn't have an actual house rule about but I would allow players to substitute characteristics for skills if it makes sense narratively.
• The vehicle/starship scale breakdown again is relatively minor, and I'll probably handle by just making sure I'm careful about personal and vehicle scale appearing in the same combat, and tweaking specific vehicle stats if necessary, rather than an actual house rule.

So really, that's a pretty small list, and not bad for a game that covers so much. Really the only thing that still concerns me is the dice math, although I guess that is fairly fundamental to the game…

Ok, that's a pretty small list indeed. I guess the devs did a very good job to meet the beta testers desires.

So, what about changes that have been made that are ok, but that beta testers feel what was previously was better? In that way, we could always house rule to the old way.

I am not trying to redesign the core book, but just get an idea of what rules//changes may need to be taken with a grain of salt by experienced GMs in their games.

Cheers

Ceodryn