This right here is the problem. Nobody has to buy anything. They may want it really bad, but it is not required by FFG, which is the silent implication of the entire argument whether it's made by you or someone else.

When people talk about things they have to buy, they mean "Things I have to buy to enjoy playing the game." Could you buy one Core Set and never buy anything else? Sure, you could run right into a tournament with a 40-point list and have a field day. Do you HAVE to buy more? Nope. It's all optional, right? So you don't HAVE to buy more, but you're probably not going to enjoy the experience unless you do. I'm not sure if people don't get that, or just prefer pedantic insults.

Which is where the whole "Nobody HAS to" argument completely misses the point. Discussions like this are players saying "I want to play your game but these decisions are driving me away, please help me stay!!" Now maybe there's nothing that can be done to keep them. Maybe people do have unrealistic expectations. But pedantic replies like this or, exponentially worse, the active cheering and insulting of people who are trying to avoid leaving the game, are sadly disappointing.

Apologies if you feel insulted. I disagree that it's missing the point. I will respectfully submit that if enjoyment of the game is predicated upon possessing a handful of specific cards then there are going to be problems. For me, the TIE Advanced "fix" was just gravy on the Raider. I didn't even own a TIE Advanced yet. I enjoyed the game just fine. Still don't own a B-Wing, Defender, YT-2400, Phantom, Decimator, or any Scum. There are any number of cards in those packs that I would like to have and that might enhance my enjoyment of the game, but I just don't care for the ships they come in and I'm enjoying the game just fine. With dozens of ships and hundreds of pilots and upgrades, one or two cards should not be an issue. If the game is no fun at all, or even painful, to play without that one card, there are options to getting it. You can buy the pack it comes in or check ebay. I bought Rebel Aces for the A-wing and traded away the B-Wing along with the two crew cards. Got what I wanted and someone else got what he wanted.

I will admit, I generally scoff at netlists, flavors of the month, some of the more serious "meta" discussions and people who elevate competitive (tournament) play as some holy grail or the only way to play the game, so such vehemence when rebelling against this sales model for a relatively cheap luxury good seems like a storm in a teacup. FFG has developed their sales model to maximize profits and customer satisfaction. The two will always be at odds with each other and there's no changing that. If they see sales starting to slow down and they can trace it back to the bundling of standard play fixes in epic ships, they'll change that. For now it seems to be working, and whether it's good or bad for the consumer is entirely subjective based on the individual consumer. I saw the X1 fix as a bonus to the Raider. Others saw the Raider as a tax for the X1 fix. As long as the first group is larger than the second, the sales model will remain the same. Once enough of the second group vote with their wallets leaving epic ships on the shelf, it might change. Complaining on the forums while continuing to buy the ships isn't sending the message you (plural) want (though it's always nice to find other like-minded people who agree with you).

On a final note, while it's never a good thing for someone to quit the game, it will happen. Turnover is a part of business and expected. When it gets out of hand the company needs to adapt or fail. FFG is still on the growth part of the charts. I'm sure we all hope people stay, but if this business model really is a problem for anyone and they feel strongly enough to leave about it, we should all be respectful of that decision and reason, provided the person leaving is honest in that it is their decision and reason, and not FFG forcing them to quit (I've seen people try to avoid blame like that before).

Edit: Holy unmentionables that was long. Sorry!

Warmachine? Maybe...

40k and Age of bull? Well if you think FFG's policy is bad, i really don't know what to tell you about GW's

I have been a long term 40k and Fantasy player and i knew a large community of players.

NOW i am an ex-player and i know only other ex-players really.

GW milks the last money out of its few remaining customers before it either radically improves its policy again or the CEO's retire with a big bank account and let the company go down in flames... That's my theory!

I'm not saying that GW is good - I dislike them as much as anyone, and refuse to touch any of their products.

But at the same time, they create a contradiction in your argument. If everything with X-wing is fine because it's selling so well, then the same should hold for GW, shouldn't it? 40K does still top the charts. And if GW can be milking its customers before going down in flames despite holding the top sales spot, then it seems that there's at least some potential for FFG to be doing the same despite X-wing holding in #2?

And for how long will GW be able to maintain this? Apparently they are losing customers by the droves, but there are still some that literally buy everything they bring out and maintain a relatively high sales number.

And in my book, FFG is not milking its customers (at least not yet) just because they refuse to bring out card packs. I would love it too, but hey i can understand that they need to also make money. At least they are not increasing prices every few months. I know there has been this Internet sales discussion going on, but hey they are not increasing prices, just limiting discounts... That's miles away from GW policy!

Do you really feel like FFG does not care about their customer anymore? Because i don't have that impression. They are trying to improve the game very hard, and they listen to their community (as we see in their balancing attempts).

I don't have the feeling with FFG (unlike with GW) that an evil Empire is trying to drain my wallet ever harder for minimum effort. In fact this hobby is not cheap, but for me the products are totally worth it because the game gets more and more awesome at the moment.

I don't have the feeling with FFG (unlike with GW) that an evil Empire is trying to drain my wallet ever harder for minimum effort.

I actually kind of do. When they moved away from CCGs to the LCG, they adopted a bundling model for a lot of their products. It's honestly pretty pervasive throughout most of their games. X-wing and Armada we're obviously discussing, but it's in plenty of others too. I got a friend into the LOTR LCG - I have the full collection, and we use my scenarios. He can't buy his own cards without half of every pack being useless to him. I also play the Star Wars RPG, which split to three "different" games, each with its own book, each with about 80% of the same content. Pretty much every card game they do includes factions whether it needs it or not, and releases are always spread out so every faction gets a little bit in each pack. They moved away from random, tried bundling, and discovered they LIKED it. I'd actually argue that in a lot of ways, bundling is worse for the player than random because it pretty much demolishes the secondary market. It certainly avoids the massive, high-dollar singles that you see in some games, but it also makes it very hard to get copies of mid-range cards that might act as fillers. That pushes people to buy directly. It's all pretty clever, but I've run into too much of it to consider them the least bit consumer-friendly.

I don't think FFG is as bad as GW, but I also think that comes down a lot to personal preference. Someone upthread mentioned that Game of Thrones made a lot of people made with the second edition invalidating everything, it's a fair bet those people feel almost as betrayed as WHFB players. Plenty of people are obviously unhappy with the price hikes they're facing. I've been on plenty of forums where your opinion on GW would get you flamed just as bad as what started this thread.

I'll add that FFG's customer support is astonishingly good. They're honestly rather deeply schizophrenic. Really harsh development and marketing models are matched with pretty great customer service when people have problems. It's weird.

On the other hand, the secondary market attracts those who I wouldn't like to have in the game. I do understand that trading helps lower the cost of the game. I'm just glad I never have to deal with random stuff again.

On the other hand, the secondary market attracts those who I wouldn't like to have in the game. I do understand that trading helps lower the cost of the game. I'm just glad I never have to deal with random stuff again.

I'm certainly not saying I'd prefer random - I have completely and utterly sworn off random packaging. I just think FFG has discovered a model which manages to make players buy almost as much (if not more) unnecessary stuff, and managed to convince the players that they've done them a huge favor for it.

No matter how bad bundling may be it's infinitely better than the CCG model.

The LCGs are fixed packs, and if you get into them at the start they're very affordable. They give every player the full set of cards. They get much pricier to enter as they mature, which is why FFG's brought rotation in.

The anti-consumer bundling in X-Wing and Armada is an artifact of the nature of the game itself: ships have slots with upgrade cards.

To explain, let's cast our minds back to Wave 1.

FFG's business model for X-Wing is to sell ships. You buy a ship, you get the model, the stand, the token, the dial and some upgrade cards for it. If you've got the other ships you can mix and match the upgrade cards between them. Phrased like this, it sounds harmless, and in Wave 1 upgrade cards weren't an issue.

If you're selling the ships, how else can you distribute the cards? If you put every possible card in every pack which requires a lot more costly printing and for the consumer means a lot more redundant copies (how many focus tokens do we all have now? Furthermore, the card content for future waves would be ridiculous, and earlier wave purchases would have reduced value for not having the earlier cards. Short of removing the ship customisation mechanic entirely there isn't another way to distribute the cards if you're just selling ships.

What's made things go sour is the way the game is patched (balancing underpower with very highly synergistic cards) and high synergy in of itself. The very fact that upgrade cards are interchangeable means popular builds are likely to draw on multiple expansions. If you look at any one wave the new cards are usually packaged with the ship that best uses them in that wave (Wave 6 is probably worst for this), but cross-wave the spread of upgrades across expansions gets more severe.

And again this isn't deliberate: to release Autothrusters in Wave 6 it had to go in one of the ships. If they were going for maximum gouge they'd have put one copy in the Aggressor, instead they put two in the Viper. FFG does take some steps to mitigate the impact: ships increasingly include redundant copies of powerful cards or fix cards.

The obvious solution is to only use the cards from the ships you have, but in a tournament environment everyone's netdecking like crazy and blaming their builds instead of their skills. They're not always wrong too: no asymmetric game is perfectly balanced. Even chess inherently advantages one side, even if so slightly that nobody has worked out which one.

Every card must come with a ship is a immovable fact of the business model, and buying ships for upgrades is an inevitable result of this.

The upgrade card system isn't anti-consumer by design, it's anti-consumer in practice, and it's not an effect FFG can do anything about without changing the upgrade card mechanic (much too late) or the business model. There are ways they can scale back its impact (redundant copies which they do, only requiring one copy of each card in tournaments which they don't do) but they can't avoid the way upgrade cards are physically packaged and still have a ship-based expansions business model.

What we can't deny is that it does cause extra sales, and FFG is owned by an investment group and generally their approach to animal welfare is to milk their cows dry, leave them to die in the sun and sell their dried remains as dog food. FFG isn't going to change a highly successful business model to reduce their sales with card packs. While I doubt the artefacts the model creates are by design I doubt FFG is upset in any way about the extra sales they generate: the huge ships embrace the anti-consumer bundling and Armada follows the same model as X-Wing. Even when they add redundant copies it's only to reduce the absurdity of buying ships for cards. While requiring a StarViper for every Autothruster is such an absurd situation that only Joe Boss would buy them ( ) players are happy to begrudingly buy one or two to kit out their interceptors.

While I doubt the business model was designed as an anti-consumer cash grab, I also doubt FFG has any issue at all with selling one or two ships to each factional player that they'd otherwise not have bought.

Just as a counterpoint, there's nothing the least bit unrealistic about a selling models and cards separately. It's exactly what Wyrd does with Malifaux. Models are sold with the card for that model, and their upgrades are sold in a single large pack. Yes, there's still some bundling there, but it's one $15 box of cards for the all three books currently out. Big, big difference, and a game that's still actively growing.

Didn't say it was unrealistic, I said if they're selling ship based expansions only their current distribution method for upgrade cards is their only real option.

That's actually a very indepth and neutral way of looking at it Blue Five. I am of the opinion that FFG are not actively gouging, but they are attempting to make money, they need to keep on selling ships and every expansion needs to have it's 'thing' that can sell it.

It is rather cynical...but let us be honest, people purchased a raider just for the TIE Advance upgrade cards, which in turn caused sales and the potential of exposing the customer to the epic play mode, which in turn could lead to more sales.

It is by no means a perfect system, lets be fair, nothing will ever be perfect, every system has it's fault on either side of the fence. A company needs to make money from its products so it can keep making new products, it can't simply break even as it needs to fund people within the organization and there are a lot of people the money needs to trickle to.

If they were to move to a model where you sell upgrades separate from the ships and ship cards you would alienate a potential playerbase who suddenly now have to buy two products, at potentially more expense to fly one ship. Yes it is then cheaper to buy multiple upgrades, but it effects the sales of other products. FFG start seeing something of a loss in X-Wing and could potential abandon the game. People would not buy multiple E-Wings or Shuttles if they could just get advanced sensors on its own, which means people then don't play with the shuttle or E-Wing.

There really is no win in any situation. If you are unhappy about it, then voice your displeasure, but I don't see anything changing.

Also as someone who also plays the RPG side of things, I actually like how they have separated into three different lines. I'd rather them concentrate on a particular aspect of Star Wars, rather than bundle it all together and **** it up royally like WOTC did.

Also as someone who also plays the RPG side of things, I actually like how they have separated into three different lines. I'd rather them concentrate on a particular aspect of Star Wars, rather than bundle it all together and **** it up royally like WOTC did.

yeah the 40k games wouldnt work as one big game. dark heresy and rogue trader and black crusade etc are very different even if they operate on very similar mechanics. if you tried to make it one big book it would be an even worse "bundling" problem than what the guy who is mad about missile monkeys in this thread says it is now. id have to spend like 200 dollars on a 2000 page set of books to play a game where i am a hive world jenkem dealer forcefully enlisted in the inquisition, because GW demanded there be exacting perfect space marine rules etc. and theres a whole bunch of rules for being soldiers that would never be used and all that.

I would love to see Card Booster Packs sold separately.

Most of us would... Which is perhaps the strongest argument why it won't happen any time soon. Any time a company does something the customers really, really love... There's a decent chance they aren't charging enough for it.We would all love to be able to buy a cardpack for upgrade cards rather than buying a ship. But unless there's some way for the pack to make up for the lost revenue then it seems like a bad business decision.I mean the only reason I could see anyone buying a cardpack is because doing so is a cheaper way of getting the cards then buying the ships that the cards come with.

Sadly this ^^

Though you could always just view the ship expansions as card packs then sell off the ship/cardboard via trademe / ebay etc

Just do be honest and list what is no longer included....

On the other hand, the secondary market attracts those who I wouldn't like to have in the game. I do understand that trading helps lower the cost of the game. I'm just glad I never have to deal with random stuff again.

I'm certainly not saying I'd prefer random - I have completely and utterly sworn off random packaging. I just think FFG has discovered a model which manages to make players buy almost as much (if not more) unnecessary stuff, and managed to convince the players that they've done them a huge favor for it.

I guess it also depends on how much you view it as collecting. Most of what I plan to buy is based on the models, rather than the game stuff. I look at X-wing miniatures as just as fine an thing to collect as other things, game be darned.

I understand that if people do not have that view. I am the kind of buyer FFG wants. (why must 2 more Imperial Aces packs tempt me!!!!!!)

To be fair, including a mandatory fix for the TIE Advanced in a $100 epic ship that most people don't want and won't use

There's a whole lot of subjective statements about what other people want in there... Because to be fair... You know jack about what what most people want and will use.

But he did make a fair point.

Look at the rebel transport pack it comes with an alt painted X-wing, some nice new pilots and astro-mechs and a few other standard play cards. Nice new stuff but nothing to"zomg this makes ship # worthy of using again"

I just just think that a new card that will effectively make a ship playable should be coming in an aces pack.

Leave the epic + small ship packs for the content not the 'fixes'

I wanted the Epic ships even before I was sure of how often I would be able to play them. They are pretty models to display, which is a good chunk of the reason I buy what I buy.

I totally agree. I cannot wait until I can finally free up some room to have the raider chasing down my corvette and transports.

Will look so bad ass oh yes OH YES

People who complain about random packs and CCGs clearly don't understand the point. Random packs are arguably better than the LCG model. You know why? Because it makes everyone happy.

Do you know who the primary consumers of randomized packs are? Either casual players who just want to crack packs, or drafters / limited players. People who want to draft are kind of left out in the cold when it comes to LCGs, and chase cards still cost $$. You want that amazingly good card that only comes with a $40 core set? I guess you're paying forty bucks. So, chase cards are still pricey, you can't draft, and there is no cheap lottery feel for people who just like to crack packs.

Now, look at the CCG model. People who just want cards can go out and buy them. Oh, you actually wanted a bad card for that LCG? Too bad, there is no secondary market and nobody is selling it. Guess you're still paying $40. Oh hey, I got this cute, fluffy card for my EDH deck for 50 cents! No pack hunting for me.

Also, I think FFG is just now figuring out how and why rotating formats is better for both the long term health of the game and their business. People want to praise LCGs because there is no planned obsolescence, but I think they're in for a big surprise.

Buy conservatively. I'm sure we are getting products that will solve card availability problems. They are unlikely to be card only products but they would be silly to not make a product that helps mitigate the cost of starting the game for new players.

Tcg model has its positives and negatives.

The biggest negative to the TCGs model is how few TCGs can be supported by the market at one time. Pretty much only 1-3 TCGs at any point are viable games with enough people playing and trading to make collecting easy and fun.

Compare that to how many LCGs can be supported by the market or even played by The same player.

The LCG model has a few solveable problems but overall I think they are doing a great job with it.

FFG puts out what, a $15 pack of cards each month for every LCG? Yeah, even a few of those is pocket change compared to what people spend on plastic toy space ships, but that's one lump sum. The net expenditure after a few months is probably quite similar, if we're assuming ~3 LCGs. New Magic sets only come out once every 3 months, and that's about as often as I bother to buy packs. Even then, that's only for the joy of cracking packs, not chasing cards. If all I wanted to do was get my Spike on I'd skip the packs entirely. Frankly, I'd rather devote myself to one good game than half a dozen bandaid ridden messes, but we can chalk that up to personal preference.

You know what else? My Magic collection will only increase in value over the years to come. Cards I collected just a handful of years ago have already grown upwards of 300%. Yeah, you're not going to see that happen in an LCG. Aren't they giving out C-3PO soon?

FFG puts out what, a $15 pack of cards each month for every LCG? Yeah, even a few of those is pocket change compared to what people spend on plastic toy space ships, but that's one lump sum. The net expenditure after a few months is probably quite similar, if we're assuming ~3 LCGs. New Magic sets only come out once every 3 months, and that's about as often as I bother to buy packs. Even then, that's only for the joy of cracking packs, not chasing cards. If all I wanted to do was get my Spike on I'd skip the packs entirely. Frankly, I'd rather devote myself to one good game than half a dozen bandaid ridden messes, but we can chalk that up to personal preference.

You know what else? My Magic collection will only increase in value over the years to come. Cards I collected just a handful of years ago have already grown upwards of 300%. Yeah, you're not going to see that happen in an LCG. Aren't they giving out C-3PO soon?

I held on to my magic card from when I started to play in the 90s and just about everything I had dropped in price, after 20 years.

Only thing I had really worth anything was some duel lands

All my shivens, royal assassin, Sarah angels, bad lands worth 1 dollar.

Back then 10-20

I've have nothing but despise that game.

It's the only game or a form of collectable where something 20 years old can actually lose value, unless you have alpha, beta cards.

Then cards that were common two years ago pair up with something good today and goes from 2 dollar to 95.

Your collection can have an decent value now but not down the road. If they decide to release something tomorrow a 200 dollar card can become 5 bucks over night

As a collector that just drives me nuts.

I'll stick to my vintage g1 transformer, star wars and other collectables

Some which only two years old have already gone up in price. Like the sdcc 2012 masterpiece soundwave which seems to have almost double in price.

If you want to talk about collectables, unless your rich and can buy alpha pack in magic, I know it's not a game worth collecting for hopes of price increase.

Star wars xwing is also about a gazillion times better, and from my experience xwing players have much better hygiene other mtg players

Really they should start selling cards and include a stick of deodorant

lel WHAT?!? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. For a moment there I thought you were telling me what my collection is worth, and comparing it to Shivan Dragon in the same breath...

If you're going to talk Magic with me, please don't cite worthless cards from 20 years ago. Those aren't what I'm talking about, at all. Never mind the fact that you don't even know what a Badlands is worth these days. One dollar? Your cards must be in absolutely terrible condition.

This whole discussion with Magic is going straight over my head, never had any experience with game or how it's sold.

I have on the other hand had plenty of experience with the GW model having played their games since the late 80s. I have read a lot of bold statements on the last two pages, comparing the evils of GW vs FFG. I got into X wing a couple of years ago and it was a refreshing change, one core set bought a few ships I liked and boom good to go.

Playing Devils advocate here.

If I was starting both hobbys, I would look at GW and say okay here is the current Rulebook, I have decided I like Eldar( big surprise) so buy the codex. After this initial outlay, I have all the information I need, I can pick and choose which models I need and any other Eldar player is in the same boat. After selling my kidney on the black market I can then start building a massive plastic army.

Okay now I am starting X wing, what's this? there are Two starter sets, er okay is one second edition, do they both have the same rules?( we know the answer to that, damage deck!) Right I fancy playing Imperials, so off I go and buy some bombers and interceptors( my favourite ships). I later find out of a helpful friend that I will need to buy a Rebel K wing??? Or Punisher( what the hell?) so I can make bombs and Torps more useful, then it would also be a good idea to buy a Starviper ship from the scum and villany faction??so I can have Autothrusters.

I beleive FFGs model is far cheaper to gain entry but at this point it seems more complicated then GWs for anyone starting out. As they add "patches and Fixes" with ships from various factions it starts to seem like more of an "Evil Business Plan"

Several posters have noted above that you end up with ships that you don't need, I recently emptied my man shed of unplayed ships and sold a Firespray, two Starvipers, Two sycks and the most wanted pack, I came to the realisation that I bought thses ships solely for the cards but never admitted that to myself at the time.

On a separate issue I think it's naive that FFG are not there to make money from us, of course they are, it may not be as cynically obvious as GW but some of their recent actions are blurring the lines. What's the answer I am not sure, release seperate card packs? Time for X wing 2? start putting random cards in their expansions?

As the hobby gets bigger and bigger and becomes more and more successful, these may well be issues that they will have to address.

I will finish with a funny story, a friend of mine wanted to get into X wing last year, he was a massive fan of Rebels and wanted to enter some competions with us. He had heard from us and the interweb that C3P0 was the go to card for any serious falcon player. He wanted the card so he asked me how to get it, so I told him..........several days later I received this message

" Remember when you told me I had to buy the Rebal Transport for C3P0, which I Did"

"Yes, Enjoy and you are welcome" I replied

" Thanks for that but it comes with the Tantive"

Oh Balls!

Geez, I HATE THE WORD RANDOM
and I hate it with PASSION when the sentence also icludes words "card" "expansion"

Eh... the CR-90 is currently the most unattractive package of any Huge Ship. 4 Unique crew - 2 of which are playable; 3 unique ship upgrades that are not restricted to this ship.... Maybe it could see a re-package in the future.

I've outgrown the whole random thing - nowadays if I want randomness I'd rather buy lottery.

Eh... the CR-90 is currently the most unattractive package of any Huge Ship. 4 Unique crew - 2 of which are playable; 3 unique ship upgrades that are not restricted to this ship.... Maybe it could see a re-package in the future.

Thank you finally, and that's where we can put the new ordnance fix.

Joking People

Eh... the CR-90 is currently the most unattractive package of any Huge Ship. 4 Unique crew - 2 of which are playable; 3 unique ship upgrades that are not restricted to this ship.... Maybe it could see a re-package in the future.

I've outgrown the whole random thing - nowadays if I want randomness I'd rather buy lottery.

Unattractive packages?

Tactician in Phantom.

Phantom.

Even dedicated empire players rarely bought 2!