On 4/15/2017 at 10:13 AM, TehHandsomeDan said:I'll admit that I didn't read EVERY post line for line (there are THREE PAGES of "wouldn't it be cool if?" comments after all, it's like a very long very bad Chris Farley sketch.)
That said, I did skim a lot of it, and it seems that for all the drooling and hypothesizing going on here, there's a lot of reality people haven't given any thought to. I hate to step on people's dreams -wait, that's a lie. It's kind of fun to point out this sort of thing. So here we go:
The idea of an Endor box is being largely floated on the idea that FFG has already given us rebel rangers were intended as a precursor to that of sorts... But when has that EVER been their way of doing things? That's right, never. FFG does a box followed by supporting/associated packs. Always. Honestly, if anything the release of rebel rangers who look very much like something from the scenes on Endor in RotJ are logically indicative that FFG probably considered and developed some of an Endor expansion... And then scrapped it. The rebel rangers, while strongly heralding RotJ can be used in just about any other locale just as effectively for purposes of the game world (unpainted miniatures even lend themselves to a looser concept of their clothing, the idea that perhaps those garments are much thicker different material if you're deploying them somewhere like Hoth). The same can be said with Rebels, since we've gotten a number of blister pack characters already it would seem to indicate that FFG might have been working on something there, but subsequently scrapped it and released some of the figures independently to recoup development costs.
I personally saw Rogue One as a huge wasted opportunity for FFG. The film is more deeply engrained in the ground level action of Imperial Assault than any other Star Wars film I can think of. It really would be a perfect campaign setup. Judging by the turnaround times for things to be manufactured and shipped here, I'm starting to suspect that FFG might not have the manufacturing capabilities to get something produced and shipped stateside in less than 18-24 months... Which might also explain why it took SO LONG for us to get most of the Force Awakens related X-wing content that was released long after the film. Timeliness is not their strength, it's a big detriment for them.
The whole "app" thing is a bit of a quagmire. They've said through official channels that an Imperial Assault app, something akin to the Road to Legend app, was in the works. But that's a vague statement. There's also the issue of legality. FFG has had to work around and even with Hasbro on a few occasions to get things released. Imperial Assault is a "miniatures game" for example, not a "board game". Never mind the fact that that the core box is a self contained campaign with everything you technically need, like many other board games, lol. The dice app was launched with legal info that included Hasbro and EA logos, perhaps that has changed now, I haven't looked at their dice app in a while. The point is that there's a lot of licensing interaction in the form of Hasbro and Electronic Arts wanting to be paid because they own the license for Star Wars boardgames and for Star Wars video games (avalanche produced Star Wars content for Disney Infinity as a directly owned subsidiary of Disney, which would explain why they didn't have to worry about the license issue.)
If FFG releases a companion app, they'll have to pay a licensing fee to at least one of these two companies. We know that it's a pretty serious deal because it's had something to do with why FFG can't sell their current Star Wars role playing books as PDFs. This would indicate that either the amount of money EA wants for the 'electronic entertainment' portion of the Star Wars license is so big that it isn't worth doing for FFG, or that EA simply isn't willing to negotiate on this at all for some reason. Either way, it puts a pretty big damper on the hopes of an Imperial Assault app we've all been hoping to see for a while now.
But, I think it's possible FFG may learn something else from Descent's later successes: consumers are perfectly happy buying campaign-content-only expansions. Smaller, cheaper expansions that can be run as print on demand like the three co-op campaigns, or the hardcover "Heirs of Blood" campaign book. FFG clearly didn't expect these products to sell as well as they did, but customers are clearly hungry for more adventures with these products. If the company can produce this sort of thing at a lower risk/cost that way... Why wouldn't they? I recall an interview, I want to say about a year ago, where an FFG representative was asked if they had any such plans for Imperial Assault, and he confirmed that products were indeed in the works, but he couldn't give more detailed specifics at that stage. I think that with the tense legal lines they have to tread for this license, campaign books and print on demand card-based content may be the way to go for FFG, in order to keep fans interested between clearly slowed development cycles (a statement that appears to be true of similar product lines like Descent and Mansions of Madness, which are clearly not putting out content at a rate like they used to, despite then still selling quite well at retailers).
So... Maybe a book soon? I'd love to see a campaign/scenario book that used the core box, and maybe additional campaign books that use the core box and a particular expansion throughout each book. I'd love a campaign that used tiles and such from multiple expansions, but it would preclude customers who didn't have all that content, so it might be a less enticing concept for FFG to produce.
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