Here is our play data so far, 61 games after 2 weeks of play.
Some things to keep in mind
- While some cards have gotten a lot of reps (Trandoshans), there are still Season 4 cards that have less than 10 games recorded, and those stats should especially be taken with a grain of salt as their numbers could change significantly with even just a few more game results. Most of the season 4 cards have 10-19 games played, which is a decent start, but it’s not until a card gets to the 20 plays mark that each subsequent game result added results in a <5% change to that card’s win rate, so these results are still very preliminary and very volatile.
- Due to playtest league rules for the first 2 weeks, the vast majority of these games had at least 1 Season 4 card in both player’s lists.
- That means this is a bit of a warped meta where old strategies that didn’t get support from Season 4 (like Vader Jets or “Oops all Jedi”) are not appearing to challenge the newer strategies yet.
- Because of this, the metagame is extremely insular, and Season 4 cards are falling into a bell curve. The cards that are doing well are doing very well, and the cards doing poorly doing very poorly, with just a few cards in the middle. If this were a more natural play environment that wasn’t so heavily focused on Season 4 cards, the cards that are in the 70s and high 60s win percentage would come down as they played against a wider variety of stronger archetypes instead of just getting to prey on the weakest cards in Season 4. Right now we are more focused on helping the cards that are in the <40% win rate category, and I believe that as those cards improve, the cards at the top will start to lose to them more often and trend more towards the middle as well.
- These stats only tell part of the story. The other important parts are the actual game logs which allow us to go in a review how a figure is actually performing and being used in real gameplay, and then there is the comments from players about how each card feels and plays which we are paying close attention to on the Slack and in the player surveys, which help a broader perspective outside of our own opinions and perceptions. For example, Trandoshan Hunters are currently the most played season 4 card, but have a win % <50%, but we know from reading multiple people’s comments that there might be a problem with the Trandoshans being too good or creating NPEs for people. There are similar discussions about the E-Web and how it’s innate block and Recover 2 can combine with Extra Armor, Zillo Technique and Royal Guards in a way that isn’t necessarily overpowered, but could lead to a frustrating experience for the opponent, which may require a lateral shift rather than a nerf or buff. This sheet doesn’t tell the whole story about both balance and fun, but it does offer important clues and hints that are a part of solving the overall puzzle of balancing Season 4.
Link and Details
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13JZsH3mL1tC0JZGr6CPY0i3YuPtHCAmP8kgdu5GHohI/edit?usp=sharing
Tracker includes sheets for:
- Overall Summary (sorted by points cost)
- Includes stats for each card, stats for each card by faction, overall faction stats, activation counts
- Season 4 Cards Summary (by performance)
- Season 4 Cards Summary (by usage)
- *NEW Card Performance by Mission (hoping soon to add similar thing for card pairs in lists and card vs card matchups, haven’t been able to get those to work yet)
- Overall Summary (sorted by usage)
- Overall Rebels Summary (sorted by usage)
- Overall Empire Summary (sorted by usage)
- Overall Mercenary Summary (sorted by usage)
- Full lists and results for each game played, including players, final score and mission played, in the Playtest League and Casual Games tabs
I want to thank everyone for doing such a great job submitting game logs and reporting your experiences for Season 4. There was some apprehension about asking people to self-collect and self-monitor their games to this degree, and the community as a whole has blown away expectations on that front. We’re on track to have 50 season 4 games reported by the end of this weekend, after less than 2 weeks of play, supplemented by all of your comments and suggestions here and in the surveys. Please keep it up, it is a huge help to balancing the cards in the short amount of time of public playtesting we have.