This is everything I hate about the FFG hype

By Amanal, in Star Wars: Destiny

I wan't to go down to my store and buy the game, right now my impulse is to want this.

In 3 months time, I just don't know.

Am I alone in using the next 3 months to "Talk myself out of buying something I would otherwise buy?"

I feel the same way, I can not wait to have this in hand and try this. I most likely will be preordering this and because each pack is different......ill probably still buy some while I'm waiting to receive my order. I always usually do. Until then I am absorbing all the information I can get and need more lol. Don't worry though we will get though this. GenCon is right around the corner and soon we will have more information.

It wouldn't hurt to remember all the many ccgs that have died over the years, including the star wars one. I think for every mtg, pokemon and yugioh that are still going strong after a decade or two there are dozens of ccgs that have died and aren't even worth the paper they're printed on.

But hey if there's a strong local scene for this game 6 months from now I'll give it a try. Even if I feel like odds are pretty strong this won't last more than a few years.

Ahh, I remember the first great CCG boom. So many weird things were made.

It wouldn't hurt to remember all the many ccgs that have died over the years, including the star wars one. I think for every mtg, pokemon and yugioh that are still going strong after a decade or two there are dozens of ccgs that have died and aren't even worth the paper they're printed on.

But hey if there's a strong local scene for this game 6 months from now I'll give it a try. Even if I feel like odds are pretty strong this won't last more than a few years.

Edited by JediGeekGirl

Just to be clear, the Decipher Star Wars ccg didn't die off, it was strong armed out of a license by Wotc. It sold more than Pokemon most of the time. Plenty of other sorry Star Wars ccgs did die off, though. One of them being the turd Wotc made. :)

Collectible games are just disappointing because they will eventually end. I have board games from all over that I can always pull off the shelf and get a game in. Those collectible games are pretty much unplayable once they have been canceled. I've, sadly, played and bought about five collectible games, most of them canceled before their time. Few "just died." I want to love new games like this, but the fact they are collectible makes it hurt.

It wouldn't hurt to remember all the many ccgs that have died over the years, including the star wars one. I think for every mtg, pokemon and yugioh that are still going strong after a decade or two there are dozens of ccgs that have died and aren't even worth the paper they're printed on.
But hey if there's a strong local scene for this game 6 months from now I'll give it a try. Even if I feel like odds are pretty strong this won't last more than a few years.

Just to be clear, the Decipher Star Wars ccg didn't die off, it was strong armed out of a license by Wotc. It sold more than Pokemon most of the time. Plenty of other sorry Star Wars ccgs did die off, though. One of them being the turd Wotc made. :)

Collectible games are just disappointing because they will eventually end. I have board games from all over that I can always pull off the shelf and get a game in. Those collectible games are pretty much unplayable once they have been canceled. I've, sadly, played and bought about five collectible games, most of them canceled before their time. Few "just died." I want to love new games like this, but the fact they are collectible makes it hurt.

It wouldn't hurt to remember all the many ccgs that have died over the years, including the star wars one. I think for every mtg, pokemon and yugioh that are still going strong after a decade or two there are dozens of ccgs that have died and aren't even worth the paper they're printed on.

But hey if there's a strong local scene for this game 6 months from now I'll give it a try. Even if I feel like odds are pretty strong this won't last more than a few years.

The same could be said about LCG's...but it's worse with collectible card games because they are almost always much more of a money sink that LCG/ECGs.

Collectible games are just disappointing because they will eventually end. I have board games from all over that I can always pull off the shelf and get a game in.

I think this is more to do with our approach to playing games:

Collectable games have a different mind set to board games, when they cease production they move from our play list and into the attic or rubbish bin or whatever. It isn't that have just as suddenly become unplayable, as much as our desire to continue past that point has diminished.

Board games on the other hand seem to sit on a shelf and get that now and again play through. You also tend to play a game that suits your groups desires, the time to play and number of players. Because of this you keep the games at hand to play when you have 1 friend over for a 1v1, you have 5 people and feel like a co-op game, or 4X game or cards.

Miniatures games for me tend to last until I lose interest in playing them. I enjoy painting and modeling, but at some point the game just stops being fun because I have played it too much, all be it over a fair number of years.

At this point in time it looks like Asmodee/FFG are now releasing world wide at about the same time. So November may be November for me or it could just as easily be January, but so many times have I read about a game here and then just lost interest between now and availability. My excitement for the game just burns down and whimpers away. The type of game really doesn't have anything to do here for me. If FFG could learn the art of announcing a game closer to release I probably would try more of their games than I should. :D

You know you can just pull the discontinued collectible games off the shelf just as you do the board games.

For sure, my point is that we tend to look at the various categories of game ever so slightly differently, once a collectable game is discontinued we tend to put that game in the never to be played again basket.

I think to the reverse is also true(ish) in that while a collectable game is around you play it more than you would a board game.

Don't get me wrong here, I play games I enjoy regardless. This being collectable will have no sway on me. If it is fun and I can get some opponents I'll be happy to drop cards and roll dice.

For sure, my point is that we tend to look at the various categories of game ever so slightly differently, once a collectable game is discontinued we tend to put that game in the never to be played again basket.

I think to the reverse is also true(ish) in that while a collectable game is around you play it more than you would a board game.

Don't get me wrong here, I play games I enjoy regardless. This being collectable will have no sway on me. If it is fun and I can get some opponents I'll be happy to drop cards and roll dice.

I wasn't disagreeing that people treat them differently. The other posters comments clearly highlights that. I was simply trying to showcase that the way the different game types are treated is pretty much in our heads.

If a discontinued collectible game can be utilized in the same manner as a board game, it doesn't follow to be happy with one and not with the other. At least in the ability to play them regard.

You know you can just pull the discontinued collectible games off the shelf just as you do the board games.

The problem is that boardgames, and especially multiplayer boardgames, simply have a higher replay value than a fixed collection of CCG cards. Most large boardgames last two, three, or even five or six times the time that a CCG match does (which for most games is what, 15-30 minutes once both players build lean decks and know what they are doing) and are more complex mechanically and so have many more decision points during a session and an infinetly larger amount of combinations of events that produce unique outcomes and strategic considerations. 2-player "versus" CCGs rely on having more sets and more cards released periodically in order to keep things fresh. If you don't get new sets, eventually you'll just figure out all the good cards, all the bad cards and all the feasible combinations and matchups. Since you only need 15-30 minutes for a match, you'll play more sessions than you would with a big box boardgame, so you'll "wear out" the appeal much quicker. To put it simply, you can only play so many games of MtG with the same red rush deck against your mate's blue control deck before it starts to feel like going through the motions. Despite what marketing tells you about the infinite number of deck combinations you can set up with, say, a 200 card set, we all know that's just smoke and mirrors - every collectible game in the history of ever has a handful of really good cards per set and the rest is just binder padding, and even out of that handful of cards, there are combinations that will be unfeasible because they don't work well together.

What I'd like to point out is that you can substitute all instances of "CCG" for "LCG" in the above rant and it stays the same. LCGs aren't the blessed second coming, they're just CCGs that are packaged differently, and thus suffer from the same problems - they have the same amount of binder padding and quickly die out if there's no new content and things become stale. This is why Conquest is struggling and there seems to be no one playing it anywhere. With a whopping seven different factions and then the fixed Leader cardset mechanic on top of that, each monthly pack has at most 2-3 cards per faction that isn't represented by the Leader in that pack. That's what, under 20 cards and a Leader per cycle for your faction, and if you're lucky, maybe a third of those will be able to be even considered alongside earlier cards and not go straight to the binder. This means that the gameplay and strategies evolve with just about the same speed that actual species evolution works. We're over two cycles in and the handful of people who are still playing are still doing so with mostly the same Core Set decks. Locally the guys who still play even admit that they mostly meet up for beer and laughs and tomfoolery, the game is just an excuse.

And then they went and actually added two more factions, one of which, from what I heard (I stopped playing halfway through the first cycle), is 100% binder padding.

Edited by Don_Silvarro

Ahh, I remember the first great CCG boom. So many weird things were made.

Remember hyperborian gates, wyvern and galactic empires? :D

It wouldn't hurt to remember all the many ccgs that have died over the years, including the star wars one. I think for every mtg, pokemon and yugioh that are still going strong after a decade or two there are dozens of ccgs that have died and aren't even worth the paper they're printed on.

But hey if there's a strong local scene for this game 6 months from now I'll give it a try. Even if I feel like odds are pretty strong this won't last more than a few years.

Also the first Collectable Dice Game: Dragon dice!

DragonDiceStarter.jpg

dragondicekickerpack.jpg

That also petered out after a few years. To bad really.

There are two topics in this thread, and I'll address both.

1) I, like some others, feel like this game would be an impulse-buy. Come November, well, I may be able to talk myself out of it by then. Hopefully. :P

2) Some say CCGs are dead when they are finished printing. I think if you've got a group that loves this game, this is less likely to happen. More often, though, people get bored and leave the group to play new games. Eventually you have nobody to play with, even if you want to play. When it gets to that point, there's something that is more important than anything else: balance. See, I can get some people to play my collectible games with me, but they're not invested in the system, don't know my collection, and don't want to build decks/squads. That puts the burden on me to design evenly-matched decks for pick-up style games. In many cases, I don't have a whole lot of cards to choose from, so my "balanced" decks end up being the original starter decks. Unfortunately, even those have problems. For Star Wars LCG, I used 2x core set and 2x Edge of Darkness expansion to design 6 starter decks that appear to be decently well-balanced and allow players to choose any of the 6 factions. The sad part about this method is that you lose all the variety and cool combos that make collectible games fun. Also, it's a lot of work to build balanced decks. This is why I feel CCGs are dead when they're discontinued. Like Don_Silvarro said, the game sort of gets "solved" for your particular collection(s).

That's why for this game, I think I'll just keep it to starter sets if I do pick it up. I know that in a year or two that's all I'll play with anyway.

Collectible games definitely hit a point where they won't see a ton of play if the game goes out of print, but you are not unable to ever play it again. But I think more importantly that these types of games are still worthwhile in that any type of game like this will attract a much larger amount of players than any board game ever will. You're going to meet new friends, have an excuse to travel and compete in tournaments and on and on. Even when one game eventually ends, there will always be the next thing. Especially with something as popular as Star Wars.

As a ridiculous Star Wars fan, I've gone through this many times, and I've never regretted getting into any of the Star Wars games I've played after they've ended. I just thank the game for the memories and move on to the next Star Wars game.

As a ridiculous Star Wars fan, I've gone through this many times, and I've never regretted getting into any of the Star Wars games I've played after they've ended. I just thank the game for the memories and move on to the next Star Wars game.

The only game I regret playing heavily is Young Jedi.

Man it was fun when it came out but when I look back at it I cry. I much prefer the original art FFG uses over movie stills :)

The only game I regret playing heavily is Young Jedi.

Man it was fun when it came out but when I look back at it I cry. I much prefer the original art FFG uses over movie stills :)

Heh, I don't even regret Young Jedi. The games were so quick and intense. Tournaments for it were really cool. I think they possibly tried to push too many expansions out too quickly and my younger self couldn't really afford keeping up with it and the main Decipher CCG and other stuff all at once, but no regrets really. Actually, my only regret tied to Young Jedi is that I wish I hadn't sold my cards!

Edited by Mattr0polis

Collectible games definitely hit a point where they won't see a ton of play if the game goes out of print, but you are not unable to ever play it again. But I think more importantly that these types of games are still worthwhile in that any type of game like this will attract a much larger amount of players than any board game ever will. You're going to meet new friends, have an excuse to travel and compete in tournaments and on and on. Even when one game eventually ends, there will always be the next thing. Especially with something as popular as Star Wars.

As a ridiculous Star Wars fan, I've gone through this many times, and I've never regretted getting into any of the Star Wars games I've played after they've ended. I just thank the game for the memories and move on to the next Star Wars game.

These are good points, but I don't know that the collectible aspect is a direct consequence. The same could easily be said for X-Wing, which is a fixed-distribution model.

These are good points, but I don't know that the collectible aspect is a direct consequence. The same could easily be said for X-Wing, which is a fixed-distribution model.

Oh agreed. I'd say that even covers the SWLCG, which I love, but looks like may not live beyond another year or two, based on tournament attendance. I guess I was comparing games with continuous releases vs. stuff like board games.

These are good points, but I don't know that the collectible aspect is a direct consequence. The same could easily be said for X-Wing, which is a fixed-distribution model.

Oh agreed. I'd say that even covers the SWLCG, which I love, but looks like may not live beyond another year or two, based on tournament attendance. I guess I was comparing games with continuous releases vs. stuff like board games.

Yeah, sorry. I didn't realize this wasn't in the "why collectible is good" thread when I posted. -_-

The only game I regret playing heavily is Young Jedi.

Man it was fun when it came out but when I look back at it I cry. I much prefer the original art FFG uses over movie stills :)

Heh, I don't even regret Young Jedi. The games were so quick and intense. Tournaments for it were really cool. I think they possibly tried to push too many expansions out too quickly and my younger self couldn't really afford keeping up with it and the main Decipher CCG and other stuff all at once, but no regrets really. Actually, my only regret tied to Young Jedi is that I wish I hadn't sold my cards!

Never sell anything, that is my motto :D Although they have been collecting dust for years I still have my full collection of SWCCG, Young Jedi, Jedi Knights, and WotC SW. My only regrets are that I didn't buy more of Jedi Knights, which was actually a pretty fun game. The 3rd set was super hard to get as it wasn't printed heavily due to the license being moved to wotc

The only game I regret playing heavily is Young Jedi.

Man it was fun when it came out but when I look back at it I cry. I much prefer the original art FFG uses over movie stills :)

Heh, I don't even regret Young Jedi. The games were so quick and intense. Tournaments for it were really cool. I think they possibly tried to push too many expansions out too quickly and my younger self couldn't really afford keeping up with it and the main Decipher CCG and other stuff all at once, but no regrets really. Actually, my only regret tied to Young Jedi is that I wish I hadn't sold my cards!

Never sell anything, that is my motto :D Although they have been collecting dust for years I still have my full collection of SWCCG, Young Jedi, Jedi Knights, and WotC SW. My only regrets are that I didn't buy more of Jedi Knights, which was actually a pretty fun game. The 3rd set was super hard to get as it wasn't printed heavily due to the license being moved to wotc

Hey Darksbane, any plans to add a SWD section to cardgamedb??? :)

We need dicegamedb.com

Hey Darksbane, any plans to add a SWD section to cardgamedb??? :)

I can't say that I have any plans. ;)