15 minutes ago, rastoma said:

No, what they could say is when more starter sets will be shipping out. They know. A phone call to the manufacturer will tell them when and if production has started, when the boxes will be packed and shipped out. They know how long it takes for the boat to get here (though I would guess DHL or some other large shipping company is handling the logistics via air), but in either method, they know how long it takes. Then they can say with a week or two time frame when product will be back in stock if indeed the starter sets are going to be made again.

That is what would make people feel better.

But instead they delete threads being started complaining about the lack of communication.

If only it were as easy as you make it sound, or rather the shipping commercials make it sound.

I've worked in quality at manufacturing companies for 25+ years and there are almost always delays. One of the quality matrices that's always been tracked is on time delivery. I have never seen 100% for a year and rarely for a month. I'm sure the places I've worked at have more control over our suppliers than FFG does.

My company employs over 500 people, I don't know the exact number, and we have approximately a dozen people at various levels tracking product status for our customers. I'll deal with 2 or 3 of them every day checking status on orders in our queue.

The manufacture, delivery, and distribution of product is not even remotely close to the cake walk you describe.

FFG probably won't give even a loose time table until they are reasonably sure they can meet it, because as soon as they don't all the people complaining about no information will start complaining about late shipments.

6 minutes ago, Starbane said:

If only it were as easy as you make it sound, or rather the shipping commercials make it sound.

I've worked in quality at manufacturing companies for 25+ years and there are almost always delays. One of the quality matrices that's always been tracked is on time delivery. I have never seen 100% for a year and rarely for a month. I'm sure the places I've worked at have more control over our suppliers than FFG does.

My company employs over 500 people, I don't know the exact number, and we have approximately a dozen people at various levels tracking product status for our customers. I'll deal with 2 or 3 of them every day checking status on orders in our queue.

The manufacture, delivery, and distribution of product is not even remotely close to the cake walk you describe.

FFG probably won't give even a loose time table until they are reasonably sure they can meet it, because as soon as they don't all the people complaining about no information will start complaining about late shipments.

Perception is everything. If people see Wizards routinely putting product out on schedule, and in sufficient quantities, shouldn't it stand to reason that other CCG manufacturers can do the same? I mean, it's not like FFG is a small company, not by any stretch of the imagination; these shortages might be easily forgiven for a startup company.

That's how people are going to see it, anyway.

23 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

Perception is everything. If people see Wizards routinely putting product out on schedule, and in sufficient quantities, shouldn't it stand to reason that other CCG manufacturers can do the same? I mean, it's not like FFG is a small company, not by any stretch of the imagination; these shortages might be easily forgiven for a startup company.

That's how people are going to see it, anyway.

But it's easy for WOTC to stay on schedule when they only manufacture cards. FFG has two different moving parts here (dice and cards) likely produced in two separate factories.

1 hour ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

Perception is everything. If people see Wizards routinely putting product out on schedule, and in sufficient quantities, shouldn't it stand to reason that other CCG manufacturers can do the same? I mean, it's not like FFG is a small company, not by any stretch of the imagination; these shortages might be easily forgiven for a startup company.

That's how people are going to see it, anyway.

Maybe people who don't understand manufacturing and bringing a product to the consumers.

Define small company. How many dollars in sales constitutes a small company? How many employees does a company need to employ before it becomes medium sized?

There are many people who know nothing about the situation speaking as if they have knowledge only FFG employees currently have.

The public knows there is a product shortage, period, that's it. Nobody on these forums knows how much product was made and distributed. For all any of us know FFG may have wagered more of their money on Destiny than you or I would have.

How many preorders did FFG get for Destiny? How much as a percentage should FFG make in excess of their preorders? How much did they make? In your opinion how much money should FFG have spent on their initial production run?

It's easy to be an armchair CEO after the fact and it's easy to spend other people's money. The truth of the matter is none of us has the information required to understand how we got here. All we know is we're here and it's easy to say FFG should have done better when you don't have all the information.

Magic has been around for 20+ and has an established customer base. I would hope they have a handle on how much to produce by now. Not to mention it's much easier to produce cards than it is cards and dice.

I was there for the Magic shortages in the early days, were you? It was as bad if not worse than Destiny.

If perception is everything, people should open their minds and try to understand when their perceptions may be leading them astray. It will serve them well in the truly important parts of their lives.

Yeah, want more cards, but I understand reasons for not having access to more.

53 minutes ago, Starbane said:

Maybe people who don't understand manufacturing and bringing a product to the consumers.

Define small company. How many dollars in sale constitutes a small company? How many employees does a company need to employ before it becomes medium sized?

There are many people who know nothing about the situation speaking as if they have knowledge only FFG employees currently have.

The public knows there is a product shortage, period, that's it. Nobody on these forums knows how much product was made and distributed. For all any of us know FFG may have wagered more of their money on Destiny than you or I would have.

How many preorders did FFG get for Destiny? How much as a percentage should FFG make in excess of their preorders? How much did they make? In your opinion how much money should FFG have spent on their initial production run?

It's easy to be an armchair CEO after the fact and it's easy to spend other people's money. The truth of the matter is none of us has the information required to understand how we got here. All we know is we're here and it's easy to say FFG should have done better when you don't have all the information.

Magic has been around for 20+ and has an established customer base. I would hope they have a handle on how much to produce by now. Not to mention it's much easier to produce cards than it is cards and dice.

I was there for the Magic shortages in the early days, were you? It was as bad if not worse than Destiny.

If perception is everything, people should open their minds and try to understand when their perceptions may be leading them astray. It will serve them well in the truly important parts of their lives.

It's always hard to combat the Dunning Kruger Effect, but great job posing the pertinent questions! Some people might even ask themselves these questions and then come to some sort of epiphany that they don't know as much as they thought.

20 minutes ago, Stranglebat said:

It's always hard to combat the Dunning Kruger Effect, but great job posing the pertinent questions! Some people might even ask themselves these questions and then come to some sort of epiphany that they don't know as much as they thought.

I don’t think that the Dunning Kruger Effect is relevant at all in this instance, and even if it were it still doesn’t matter, and the reason is this:

You can sell the best product in the world, but if you can't meet demand in a timely fashion eventually people get sick of waiting for it.

Players have been made aware of the manufacturing issues, FFG waved them out there for everyone to see, but to the modern consumer its just not good enough. Get your R&D sorted before you start building hype on a product then otherwise you get what happened here if some reports are to be believed where a portion of the first run was defective ending in a shortened initial release.

People that play CCGs have become highly expectant of readily available stock for their gaming satisfaction, Hasbro/Wizards has set the bar very high with a proficiency of hitting delivery targets like clockwork EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

This game has the Star wars IP so its going to have the staying power, I'm sure of it, but it shouldn’t be using that as a means to iron out the kinks during production whilst going to market too early.

It sounds harsh but for a CCG with a tight release schedule of 3 sets a year its just a shambles that there's a good chance that reprints of Awakenings could be 6 months out from being delivered.

My personal opinion is that the game is great and it will persist, but modern day gaming consumers have unreasonably short patience for these kinds of delays, but that’s the customer FFG want to sell to because they are the ones buy product, FFG just have to hope they don’t push too many away in the games infancy.

7 minutes ago, Mace Windu said:

I don’t think that the Dunning Kruger Effect is relevant at all in this instance, and even if it were it still doesn’t matter, and the reason is this:

You can sell the best product in the world, but if you can't meet demand in a timely fashion eventually people get sick of waiting for it.

Players have been made aware of the manufacturing issues, FFG waved them out there for everyone to see, but to the modern consumer its just not good enough. Get your R&D sorted before you start building hype on a product then otherwise you get what happened here if some reports are to be believed where a portion of the first run was defective ending in a shortened initial release.

People that play CCGs have become highly expectant of readily available stock for their gaming satisfaction, Hasbro/Wizards has set the bar very high with a proficiency of hitting delivery targets like clockwork EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

This game has the Star wars IP so its going to have the staying power, I'm sure of it, but it shouldn’t be using that as a means to iron out the kinks during production whilst going to market too early.

It sounds harsh but for a CCG with a tight release schedule of 3 sets a year its just a shambles that there's a good chance that reprints of Awakenings could be 6 months out from being delivered.

s great and it will persist, but modern day gaming consumers have unreasonably short patience for these kinds of delays, but that’s the customer FFG want to sell to because they are the ones buy product, FFG just have to hope they don’t push too many away in the games infancy.

Nothing you said here is wrong, I was more referring to the people working themselves into a frenzy about how it could have been done better... blah blah blah, which there are a fair few of.

I think these frustrations are mainly due to the fact they have made a really great game. Hopefully things get righted production wise before people lose that patience regardless of whose fault the shortage is. Everyone has the same goal, Consumers want to buy it and FFG wants to sell it to them.

4 hours ago, Mace Windu said:

I don’t think that the Dunning Kruger Effect is relevant at all in this instance, and even if it were it still doesn’t matter, and the reason is this:

You can sell the best product in the world, but if you can't meet demand in a timely fashion eventually people get sick of waiting for it.

Players have been made aware of the manufacturing issues, FFG waved them out there for everyone to see, but to the modern consumer its just not good enough. Get your R&D sorted before you start building hype on a product then otherwise you get what happened here if some reports are to be believed where a portion of the first run was defective ending in a shortened initial release.

People that play CCGs have become highly expectant of readily available stock for their gaming satisfaction, Hasbro/Wizards has set the bar very high with a proficiency of hitting delivery targets like clockwork EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

This game has the Star wars IP so its going to have the staying power, I'm sure of it, but it shouldn’t be using that as a means to iron out the kinks during production whilst going to market too early.

It sounds harsh but for a CCG with a tight release schedule of 3 sets a year its just a shambles that there's a good chance that reprints of Awakenings could be 6 months out from being delivered.

My personal opinion is that the game is great and it will persist, but modern day gaming consumers have unreasonably short patience for these kinds of delays, but that’s the customer FFG want to sell to because they are the ones buy product, FFG just have to hope they don’t push too many away in the games infancy.

This is the first set of Destiny. FFG didn't have the number of years of history WotC has on magic to try and predict the amount of product they needed to order for Awakenings.

WotC is doing an excellent job at this point, but they still aren't perfect. Do you remember the fat pack shortage of Return to Zendikar in 2015 that caused some retailers to have to refund money on preorders they couldn't fill? Nonetheless it would serve FFG well if they can get as good as WotC at releasing product.

I believe FFG will work things out eventually. X-wing had a shaky start over the first few sets and things seem to be going pretty good now as far as new releases go. I don't even have to preorder anymore. I can just walk in to my local shop and buy what I want off the shelf on release day.

In regards to the product shortage causing FFG to lose some customers, I'm sure it will happen and that's too bad for FFG and those that didn't have the patience to wait. However, this game seems to be doing well enough that it will be able to replace the customers it's losing. Remember, there are future customers out there that still don't know Destiny even exists as you and I are conversing on these forums about product availability. Star Wars is a huge property and Destiny is really good game.

1 hour ago, Starbane said:

This is the first set of Destiny. FFG didn't have the number of years of history WotC has on magic to try and predict the amount of product they needed to order for Awakenings.

FFG might not quite have WotC's year count, but they're not exactly the new kids on the block. Their first CCG was released about 15 years ago. Since they've done what, a dozen or so different games in this mold? How many Star Wars games? How many games that pushed the limits of manufacturing (to their credit, mind you, but somehow it still seems to surprise them every...single...time...).

The idea that FFG was somehow incapable of predicting the demand for Destiny is just ludicrous. They've been at this long enough that it's perfectly reasonable to expect them to hit production targets. Maybe nobody has a clue, but that's not relevant - we as consumers are perfectly entitled to expect them to do their jobs well whether we could do them or not.

10 hours ago, rastoma said:

There's no way to know this for sure. It's only a guess and very unlikely. Maybe a few hundred at best. I doubt there were tens of thousands even made. From what people have seen in stores there were only a few boxes per store received. Online purchases sold out but they claimed they only received a few thousand. There wasn't enough even made for people to be 'sitting on' tens of thousands of boxes. If there was Ebay would be FLOODED with these tens of thousands of boxes.

Easily that many in private hands. There are lots of people who do this sort of thing. Example, Imperial Assault Boba Fett. It's been out of stock for months. FFG just made more and that hit stores last week. MM and CSI are already sold out. It's a $8-9 product that is being flipped for $25-40. Once a few people decide this is their product to buyout and flip, they go after it pretty hard. He isn't even all that usable in scrimish to boot. Yet, that is exactly what is happening.

There was one guy complaining about MM not sending him 26 boxes of this stuff after he already got a hold of 50 or so boxes. I'm sure plenty of store owners/employees bought a few for themselves and put them aside on the off chance 5, 10, 20 years from now they'll increase in value 5, 10 or even 20 fold. I am not sure if anyone was able to get a few hundred boxes, but that is typical of the amounts some of these hoarders buy. Either way, there are probably a few thousand people sitting on a half a dozen or so boxes each hoping FFG will say there won't be a second printing. When FFG does announce a second printing, you'll see some panic and a bunch of boxes will hit ebay. Still, it isn't a bad investment to set on them for several years until they fully go out of print.

There is a reason a few people are very anxious to know about the reprinting and rotations and such. It tells them exactly when to unload for maximum profit.

There is a youtube channel called Alpha Investments that gives some insight into how some of these people operate. While I loath the practice (I am not paying $30 for freaking boba fett), the guy is actually rather entertaining.

11 hours ago, ScottieATF said:

If you plan to release 3 sets a year, which means every 4 months, and your product is made overseas then your next set is always going to be designed and ready to go to the printer as soon as the previous set comes close to release. It takes 2 nearly months just to ship stuff over here, let alone lead time, and physical manufacturing. How else do you think that works?

How does FFG benefit from selling less product in this situation? There are sunk cost associated with developing a new product. Money spent developing the concept, testing out iterations of the mechanics, mock ups for the product, etc. All those costs exist whether you make 1000 or 10,000 units. The more units you make the more you spread those cost around making each individual unit cheaper and your profit margin higher.

This isn't a high end sports car. Exclusivity is not a selling point to this type of product proliferation is.

It's not as if this isn't a common theme with FFG. They are a risk adverse company when it comes to new products, that's it. You don't need to come up with some conspiracy theory that requires you to throw out irrational assertions to explain why they didn't create enough product to meet demand.

When you want a product to succeed you have to go big or go home, esp when it's the first release of a game. During the beginning days of a game product availability is important. This is the time that people need to recruit an healthy playerbase to spread the game to the future players. How the hell can you recruit players if there is no product to sale them? It is very important to get product in players hands as soon as they demoed the game and decide they want to play, if you do not they will slowly lose interest and try the many other games that have there product in stock.

what they are showing to the customer is they did not have enough faith in there product to produce enough to meet demand, they did not even get close. Why should the players believe in the product if the producers of the game don't believe in it themselves. There actions so far is cowardly at best, they don't want to stick there feet in the water to scared to get there feet wet

1 hour ago, Buhallin said:

FFG might not quite have WotC's year count, but they're not exactly the new kids on the block. Their first CCG was released about 15 years ago. Since they've done what, a dozen or so different games in this mold? How many Star Wars games? How many games that pushed the limits of manufacturing (to their credit, mind you, but somehow it still seems to surprise them every...single...time...).

The idea that FFG was somehow incapable of predicting the demand for Destiny is just ludicrous. They've been at this long enough that it's perfectly reasonable to expect them to hit production targets. Maybe nobody has a clue, but that's not relevant - we as consumers are perfectly entitled to expect them to do their jobs well whether we could do them or not.

Although I've quoted you, all my uses bellow of you and your are meant as generic pronouns and not directed at you personally.

Do you know for certain they didn't hit their production targets? Do you know for certain that preorders weren't low and their production numbers perfectly reasonable based on preorders only to have demand go through the roof after it was too late to increase their orders?

We know they didn't make enough. Can you tell me how much they should have made? Do you think at launch the demand for the Star Wars LCG was the same as the demand for X-wing, which was the same as the demand for Armada and Imperial Assault? How did the demand for Destiny at launch compare to the demand for Star Wars: Empire vs Rebellion?

Did FFG have enough capital to cover their initial Destiny order or did they have to borrow money to finance it?

What portion of FFG's working budget is dedicated to Destiny? They do support a number of product lines after all. Do FFG's suppliers put a cap on their orders or are they willing to manufacture whatever FFG orders without limit based on FFG's stellar credit?

So many questions pertinent to bringing a product to market and so few answers.

One final question. Given your knowledge of FFG financials can you say for certain that they did not do the best that their resources available at the time would allow?

Absence of proof isn't proof of absence. FFG should know better, and we expect better. Simple as that. Why the apologetic outlook?

24 minutes ago, Starbane said:

One final question. Given your knowledge of FFG financials can you say for certain that they did not do the best that their resources available at the time would allow?

Can you say they did? Do you work for FFG? You don't know any more than the rest of us.

I won't presume to say I understand you, don't know you from adam, but I get your defense of FFG you really like them and see the glass half full. You seem to be absolutely opposed to the possibility they did fail though. You don't know they didn't anymore than us doomsayers know they did.

We all are in a wait and see mode, some of us see hope some of us see failure but none of us know what really happened and FFG likely doesn't want us knowing or they would que us in on more of their plans not why they stuck to the original plan.

At the end of the day my friend it is what it is. Pretty much all and the last that I personally will say on it. Best wishes to all but after reading this and other forums I just don't care anymore. The game, imo, isn't good enough to draw some of the battle lines that have been drawn.

56 minutes ago, LordFajubi said:

Can you say they did? Do you work for FFG? You don't know any more than the rest of us.

I won't presume to say I understand you, don't know you from adam, but I get your defense of FFG you really like them and see the glass half full. You seem to be absolutely opposed to the possibility they did fail though. You don't know they didn't anymore than us doomsayers know they did.

We all are in a wait and see mode, some of us see hope some of us see failure but none of us know what really happened and FFG likely doesn't want us knowing or they would que us in on more of their plans not why they stuck to the original plan.

At the end of the day my friend it is what it is. Pretty much all and the last that I personally will say on it. Best wishes to all but after reading this and other forums I just don't care anymore. The game, imo, isn't good enough to draw some of the battle lines that have been drawn.

I don't work for FFG and I don't know the answers to any of my questions. Which is more or less my point. None of us has the necessary information to know how we got to where we find ourselves today.

I have never worked for a game company. I have been a part of bringing a number of products from conception to the marketplace. I can tell you from personal experience more goes into it than what most people realize and the road is littered with with all sorts of things that can make you stumble or set you back.

I am definitely not posting from the desire to protect FFG. While I hope they succeed, I am not opposed to the idea that they failed or for calling them out for it when we know the whole story. What I am opposed to is people with insufficient knowledge of a situation to know what's going on speaking as if they have intimate knowledge of how Destiny was brought to the marketplace.

I acknowledge that when the dust settles we may find that FFG dropped the ball on this one. However, don't you think we would all be better served reserving judgement until we are able to make an informed decision, or I suppose we can make wild speculations on subjects of which we are ill informed because that always makes things better.

In the mean time, maybe you guys should choose an avatar.

7 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

In the mean time, maybe you guys should choose an avatar.

If it makes you happy.

You can't imagine my joy right now.

4 hours ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

Absence of proof isn't proof of absence. FFG should know better, and we expect better. Simple as that. Why the apologetic outlook?

5 hours ago, Buhallin said:

FFG might not quite have WotC's year count, but they're not exactly the new kids on the block. Their first CCG was released about 15 years ago. Since they've done what, a dozen or so different games in this mold? How many Star Wars games? How many games that pushed the limits of manufacturing (to their credit, mind you, but somehow it still seems to surprise them every...single...time...).

The idea that FFG was somehow incapable of predicting the demand for Destiny is just ludicrous. They've been at this long enough that it's perfectly reasonable to expect them to hit production targets. Maybe nobody has a clue, but that's not relevant - we as consumers are perfectly entitled to expect them to do their jobs well whether we could do them or not.

One thing I've heard from people that work at FFG is that they really did not expect this demand, and in fact were concerned, because some signals, including a lot of negative feedback about going into the collectible market initially, were pointing towards a more lukewarm interest. However, that changed shortly after the pre-release event they had at the FFG event center (and they even mentioned Team Covenant's positive press as a big reason during and after that), but by that time, the production run was set. At that point they did change the release from an all at once to incremental to hopefully make an effort to spread out the product a bit more.

How much money they could have put into the game isn't what is relevant. What is relevant is how much money they were willing to lose if the game bombed.

Also, this is card game, not a video game, not a movie. The whole, 'you only get to launch once' thing isn't relevant in physical games which can take years to build up a player base. So it is best to be conservative and disciplined during initial production.

As of five days ago, my usual store in Minnesota does not expect to get any booster packs before Spirit of the Rebellion is released. They cited manufacturing problems in China.

My friends and I were not trying to collect full decks, but we enjoyed the mystery of buying booster packs.

I hope there is another production run eventually.

The lack of supply is really annoying and quite frankly a bit insulting to the customers! I live in Sweden and bought the two starter decks around Christmas. Me and a friend have played around 15 games with these decks but now it is starting to get boring seeing the same cards over and over again! And on top of that, I see all these articles on FFG site, videos on Youtube etc showing cool and exciting cards that I have no way to get my hands on. I would throw money on any place that could sell me some Awakenings boosters! I feel cheated by FFG that sold me the starter decks but not the complete experience.

18 hours ago, Mep said:

How much money they could have put into the game isn't what is relevant. What is relevant is how much money they were willing to lose if the game bombed.

Also, this is card game, not a video game, not a movie. The whole, 'you only get to launch once' thing isn't relevant in physical games which can take years to build up a player base. So it is best to be conservative and disciplined during initial production.

I disagree. A game's launch can make or break it. The player base right now is limited by product availability. Some of those players will now never join that community. Are there enough people currently in...and willing to stay in...the community, combined with those that are willing to wait...enough to sustain the game through enough cycles to become self-sustaining? Only time will tell. But there certainly is a launch window for a game to catch on. And if FFG can't fix these supply issues quickly enough, this game won't last.

9 hours ago, Milovy said:

They cited manufacturing problems in China.

It's not actually "problems"in the sense that it's someone else's fault. FFG has been consistently expanding their manufacturing capabilities but their games have grown to the point where they don't have the manufacturing capabilities to keep up with the demand for all their games, at least at the rate they are releasing updates for them.