Hello there, everyone!

As some of you may know, I'm a big fan of statistics and analysis; I've shown up in random threads and dumped numbers on people, letting them know of likely outcomes regarding release dates, trends, and so forth.

The response has been fairly good - it appears more people than just me enjoy rummaging through numbers and finding patterns and meaning, so I thought that instead of having everything spread out in disparate threads, I'd open up a new thread explicitly for it!

Any questions that you have about the statistical trends of the release schedules, feel free to ask, and I'll do my best to answer! And if there are any interesting patterns that you've noticed in the data you track, stop on by and let us know!

Numbers are fun!

~Phee~

CURRENT BOOK PREDICTIONS:

PRODUCT CODES:

I'm not just replying to this topic so I can find it again later, but seriously, your predictions tend to be spot on. Glad to know I'm likely to get a copy of Forged in Battle out of GenCon! (Not that I'm going, unfortunately, but a friend promised to grab me one.)

That Soldier splat book is going to be very popular. Hoping the traits don't represent power creep vs. EotE's Hired Gun classes.

I'm not just replying to this topic so I can find it again later, but seriously, your predictions tend to be spot on. Glad to know I'm likely to get a copy of Forged in Battle out of GenCon! (Not that I'm going, unfortunately, but a friend promised to grab me one.)

Of course, being this close to release its hard to get it wrong if you know what to look for. And since there haven't been many "boating accidents" recently, I'm considering it a high-probably prediction.

Endless Vigil, on the other hand, is still very very rough. It'll probably jump closer by a lot once we go to the printer and I can start to see the lay of the land.

Holy hell. That Endless Vigil book's focus is AMAZING. Urban Jedi is what I have been DREAMING about since starting FFG's Star Wars.

WHY ARE YOU NOT AT THE DOCKS YET, BOAT

So do you have any dates at the top of a bell curve that may represent the day the next product will be announced? August to November seems an awfully big gap between releases, is it possible we could get 2 more announcements for release before Christmas?

Love your work too, it's reassuring somehow.

Yes I do, actually!

There are a couple of things I've been looking at, and the data suggest our next Edge announcement should (finally!) be closing in.

First off, it's important to note that the longest a single line has gone without an announcement is 236 days, and this has happened twice: with Edge between Fly Casual and Mask of the Pirate Queen , and with Age between Strongholds of Resistance and Lead by Example . However, as of today (07/19/2016), Edge has gone 229 days without an announcement. Even if it goes over (which I'm expecting it will), I seriously doubt they want one of the lines to go without any new product announcements for more than two-thirds a year.

Now, this brings us to the next thing: what time of the month do announcements usually happen in? The answer is a resounding "First two weeks." The most common day of the month for new announcements is the 10th (4), followed by the 6th (3); but, with the exception of 2 Age books (seriously, Age, you ruin everything!), nothing has been announced past the 16th of the month, and even going past the 10th is very rare. Mondays are a common day for Edge announcements, as are Thursdays, but we still don't have an announcement on the first of a month.

So prediction is that we'll get a new Edge book announced on either Wednesday the 3rd or Thursday the 4th of August. Unless they buck the trends, which they could do . Thursday the 4th is the one I'm leaning towards, because it's also GenCon, so they could announce it at GenCon and get a two-fer.

Well that's great news, only 2 weeks to wait! Thank you again

Urban Jedi

John Travolta as a Jedi hanging out in a honky tonk bar?

Urban Jedi

John Travolta as a Jedi hanging out in a honky tonk bar?

Or Éomer w ith a lightsaber.

Yes I do, actually!

There are a couple of things I've been looking at, and the data suggest our next Edge announcement should (finally!) be closing in.

First off, it's important to note that the longest a single line has gone without an announcement is 236 days, and this has happened twice: with Edge between Fly Casual and Mask of the Pirate Queen , and with Age between Strongholds of Resistance and Lead by Example . However, as of today (07/19/2016), Edge has gone 229 days without an announcement. Even if it goes over (which I'm expecting it will), I seriously doubt they want one of the lines to go without any new product announcements for more than two-thirds a year.

Now, this brings us to the next thing: what time of the month do announcements usually happen in? The answer is a resounding "First two weeks." The most common day of the month for new announcements is the 10th (4), followed by the 6th (3); but, with the exception of 2 Age books (seriously, Age, you ruin everything!), nothing has been announced past the 16th of the month, and even going past the 10th is very rare. Mondays are a common day for Edge announcements, as are Thursdays, but we still don't have an announcement on the first of a month.

So prediction is that we'll get a new Edge book announced on either Wednesday the 3rd or Thursday the 4th of August. Unless they buck the trends, which they could do . Thursday the 4th is the one I'm leaning towards, because it's also GenCon, so they could announce it at GenCon and get a two-fer.

I am guessing sector book. Maybe Bounty hunter. But I think the Arkanis Sector would be likely. It gives us Geonosis and Tatooine. Which would give you sand people, Jawas, and Geonosians as Species. And a bunch of planets. I could see both bounty hunter and Sector book being announced at Gencon.

Yes I do, actually!

There are a couple of things I've been looking at, and the data suggest our next Edge announcement should (finally!) be closing in.

First off, it's important to note that the longest a single line has gone without an announcement is 236 days, and this has happened twice: with Edge between Fly Casual and Mask of the Pirate Queen , and with Age between Strongholds of Resistance and Lead by Example . However, as of today (07/19/2016), Edge has gone 229 days without an announcement. Even if it goes over (which I'm expecting it will), I seriously doubt they want one of the lines to go without any new product announcements for more than two-thirds a year.

Now, this brings us to the next thing: what time of the month do announcements usually happen in? The answer is a resounding "First two weeks." The most common day of the month for new announcements is the 10th (4), followed by the 6th (3); but, with the exception of 2 Age books (seriously, Age, you ruin everything!), nothing has been announced past the 16th of the month, and even going past the 10th is very rare. Mondays are a common day for Edge announcements, as are Thursdays, but we still don't have an announcement on the first of a month.

So prediction is that we'll get a new Edge book announced on either Wednesday the 3rd or Thursday the 4th of August. Unless they buck the trends, which they could do . Thursday the 4th is the one I'm leaning towards, because it's also GenCon, so they could announce it at GenCon and get a two-fer.

I am guessing sector book. Maybe Bounty hunter. But I think the Arkanis Sector would be likely. It gives us Geonosis and Tatooine. Which would give you sand people, Jawas, and Geonosians as Species. And a bunch of planets. I could see both bounty hunter and Sector book being announced at Gencon.

I was actually going to ask: Absol, do you have any data supporting the likelihood of one kind of book over another being announced? Not sure if your models are predictive based on that kind of information, but I'd like to know if we have a bounty hunter book coming in the near future, or an adventure, or a sector book.

If I was to guess (and this would be a guess , albeit maybe an educated one) given how FFG may want to maintain interest, we'll see either a sector book or an adventure book, then whichever one wasn't chosen first, and then the bounty hunter book. I'll cry if that's the case, though.

I was actually going to ask: Absol, do you have any data supporting the likelihood of one kind of book over another being announced? Not sure if your models are predictive based on that kind of information, but I'd like to know if we have a bounty hunter book coming in the near future, or an adventure, or a sector book.

If I was to guess (and this would be a guess , albeit maybe an educated one) given how FFG may want to maintain interest, we'll see either a sector book or an adventure book, then whichever one wasn't chosen first, and then the bounty hunter book. I'll cry if that's the case, though.

Sort of, it's line-specific. In the beginning when there was only Edge, there was a definite pattern to the releases: Adventure > Career > Region > Career. After Age came out it started keeping to the pattern itself, until it broke it with two Career releases in a row ( Stay on Target and Desperate Allies ). But then Age is a universal outlier (seriously, every single major outlier is from Age...). When Force came out, it was a good team player and stuck to the pattern.

So, I was content to believe that Edge and Force would keep to the pattern and that Age would just do it's weird Age thing. But then Endless Vigil went and got itself announced when we should have gotten a new adventure, breaking the pattern for Force books. And now...I'm having a harder time convincing myself that the pattern will keep for Edge. It's so close to being complete: all we need is a new Region book and then the Bounty Hunter book and we're good! But I'm not as certain as I was that they won't just jump straight to the BH book to get it out.

IF they decide to keep to the pattern, we'll get another Region book and then the Bounty Hunter book everyone's been clamoring for. If they break the pattern...who knows? We're way overdue on Adventures for all three lines, with the possible exception of Edge, but...

EDIT: To be honest, there are a couple of ways at looking at the book-type data that I haven't done yet, so there might be some secrets hiding in there I could worm out. But that type of sort would require a major re-work of my existing spreadsheets and I feel it's a very low probability that there will be anything interesting or noteworthy there, so I haven't done it yet. If they break the Edge pattern too, then I'll reconsider, but we've probably got a couple of weeks before we'll know.

I'm wondering if they are just going to steam ahead with the career books now? They did have a pattern of sorts, and something seems to have changed this last 6-12 months.

Either way, I think FFG should give Phee a job compiling statistics! (and pay OggDude for the Character Editor...)

As amazing as that would be, I have to wonder what statistics they would need compiled.

Right now I'm an outsider trying to guess what's going on inside their organization based on how they've acted before. But the people working there already know what's going on, they don't need me to run numbers to tell them that!

...They don't, right? If they do, don't tell me, because then I'll worry their organization is so disorganized that it might collapse before they finish all three lines. And I NEED my Mystic book, gorram-it!

Like Maelora I also think that FFG will only print career books until all 18 are done. I doubt we will get more adventure books as those we already have do get the job done with introducing the themes of each line.

Age of Rebellion theme is running from the Empire and doing hit-and-run military missions against the Empire.

Force And Destiny theme is searching for ancient Jedi lore.

The themes of Edge of the Empire is exploration and treasure hunting, criminal activity and hunting individuals for bounties.

A pattern i have noticed with the regional books is that they expand upon most of the planets in the black pages in the core rulebooks. If we get a third regional book for Edge of the Empire it probably will expand upon Tattooine and Ryloth and a dozen other hives of scum and villainy.

I'd welcome a general 'shadowports' book like 'Nexus of Power', only for EoE.

I'd prefer other things over Tattooine, simply because it's been done to death down the years.

I know it's borderline heresy, but I'd actually like FFG to do something new, a whole new sector with new factions, species, outlooks, etc. They already did the budgerigar-people and the Budgie Planet, so they must have some licence to make new stuff (I dunno, maybe that was pre-Disney?)

Considering how huge the Star Wars galaxy is, I'm always nonplussed why we keep coming back to the same places, the same names, the same tired tropes. I understand to a degree why the movies and shows are always so full of familiar elements; but an RPG is an ideal place to explore this stuff, to think outside the box a little.

I kinda miss the way the WEG version of the game really tried to open up new horizons. There's more to Star Wars than the Kardashians Skywalkers.

I'm thinking that the next Region book for Edge is very likely to be a "Shadowports" book, including classic planets like Tatooine and Ryloth (and maybe another certain desert planet? None of you will know which one I'm talking about ...). While like Marcy I'm in favor of something new that hasn't been done before, I actually think they've done a pretty good job of resisting jumping into the super-familiar right out of the gate.

Now, whether that Region book is next...I'm less certain than I was, but I still don't think that they'll just dump all the career books on us at once. I'm holding out hope that they haven't gone that bonkers yet!

I do have some data on this. A couple years ago I talked to Sam Stewart about it and he said that yes they were trying to keep a pattern. But then that got too hard to maintain....So I think they try but when there is a delay they just announce what is ready.

There could be influence from elsewhere in the company as to when products will be released too. A bit of "this is your release day, you can't release again until this other X-Wing product has come out" or some such.

Sales may influence things, too. From what I understand, historically RPG adventures sell less than sourcebooks & the like. Of course, I've no idea if that holds true for the SW RPG or not, though.

It might. Mask of the Pirate Queen has been out of stock for a while, yet it's still not queued up for reprint, according to the Upcoming page.

Meanwhile, both Special Modifications and Nexus of Power were queued up almost as soon as they sold out. Unfortunately, I have no real way to track the sales figures for each book to see if that supposition has any validity. Believe me, I've tried!

Sales figures for most products can be really hard to get because most companies regards these numbers as company secrets.Precise sales figures for RPG books are nearly impossible to get as they are sold in multiple venues like brick-and-mortar stores who get the books through distributors, small online shops and the big ones like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

I know that there are e few bloggers who have access to sales numbers for comics out there but for RPG books its all anecdotal. IGN.com do make lists of bestselling RPGs each year.

I'm thinking that the next Region book for Edge is very likely to be a "Shadowports" book, including classic planets like Tatooine and Ryloth (and maybe another certain desert planet? None of you will know which one I'm talking about ...). While like Marcy I'm in favor of something new that hasn't been done before, I actually think they've done a pretty good job of resisting jumping into the super-familiar right out of the gate.

Now, whether that Region book is next...I'm less certain than I was, but I still don't think that they'll just dump all the career books on us at once. I'm holding out hope that they haven't gone that bonkers yet!

This. I wants this.

I don't know if Jakku would make for a good shadowport. Takodana, on the other hand, would be perfect.

In other news, TFA Beginner Game is shipping.