15 hours ago, Kiwi Rat said:

Well it would cut away parts of the investment you are not interested in and only focus on the parts that you want the most, which you would invest in anyway.

The voucher could also include a sqd pack and/or a second small ship, and the rules could have a starter game option for 200pts fleet. "Call it Patrol fleet battle"

Im just suggesting, that if marketed right, in a package bundle deal, the basic minimum starter set, can be bought together with exactly the ships/sqds of your choice, rather than "Here is 3 ships your are not interested. But you have to buy them before you buy that ISD you are more interested in"

If you had the choice of a TV package of ten channels you cant choose which are and a TV package of five channels of your own choice. Which would you pick, if the average cost per channel is the same?

Don't get me wrong, I understand what you are going for entirely, but you are looking at it from your perspective. The perspective of a person that knows what the game is about.

The OPs original question is about the price point being to high for entry into the game, and how he believed that may be a barrier keeping some players from trying it out. The various ideas presented are all interesting. And if you knew what you know now, they would be a great way to save maybe $20-$30 (out of our $500+ collections). These ideas MIGHT benefit someone that has been convinced to buy into the game via playing with a friend and has experience with the game and knowledge of how it's played and what you need.

But what I'm trying to get across is that if you are trying to attract entirely new people, convince people to drop the money up front without trying the game and knowing a lot about it (something that happened with X-wing), I don't think any of these methods would help in any way.

The concept is that the impulse buyer is detoured by the price. It's too high to impulse buy. But for $100 you actually have a game that two people can play. You can try it out at home against yourself to learn the rules and see how the game works. You can try it with a sibling, friend, parent, spouse, or child and see if you want to invest more. The various lower price point options suggested save money, but give you nothing to play. A $60-$65 faction box doesn't give you enough to play the game. The $30-$40 accessory box doesn't give you anything really. What you run the risk of then is an impulse buyer purchasing these, finding out that he has to drop another couple hundred before he can even try the game, and just taking it back, or dumping it on Ebay like all the X-wing starters, or clogging the forum with complaints about how it's a ripoff ("I spent $65 only to find out I have half a game and need to spend another $65, WTF?").

To the initiated, the people that already learned the game with friends, or have been following the info online and know all about the game already, the $100 starter box isn't an issue. They already know the price and the contents. They already understand how expensive everything is going to be, and how the core is a drop in the bucket anyways. These are the people that would likely benefit from the suggested ideas, but they are already buying in. You didn't attract new people.

11 hours ago, CDAT said:

I was talking more about this part.

I can understand not getting everything for a game especially before you play it much. But it is just weird to me thinking that I am only go to buy a bit of this or that game and only hold on to it for a short time. Now maybe that was not what they were saying but that is how it looked to me and I just find that weird. How ever it might just be me that is weird, last time I played 40K was 3rd edition, but I still have all my stuff.

I used to think like that, that everyone would be buying the game to keep it, but I've seen enough "I'm selling out of 'game X' to buy into 'game Y'" to make me realise that not everyone thinks like me. It seems that some people view their wargaming purchases like an investment portfolio, to cash out and buy in to other games when they tire of their current hotness.

The answer is yes and I envy those who can say no.

Well I havn't meet my 1st wife yet, so Armada hardly makes a dent in my monthly or yearly budget

The model train hobby does

In response to your last post @kmanweiss it seems that you are viewing the implementation of the split faction starter as a binary function; FFG either continues making the current core set or it ceases making core set and releases faction starters. I don't see any reason why FFG couldn't do a trial run of faction specific starters to see if they sell and determine what effect, if any, that they have on overall Armada sales.

In addition you are approaching this topic assuming that new players operate in a vacuum where there are no current players to ask about the game, no game store owners to ask about the game, and no internet to look up articles on the game. You've mentioned impulse buyers and I understand the power that tapping that market can have, however I'm not sure any deeply involved miniatures game is an impulse buy. I think it is safe to say that when a gamer is eyeing a new system they ask some questions or do some sort of research to find out how much money and how many items they'll need to get to have a viable force. If someone is going to impulse buy a $30 essentials set or a $65 faction starter and drop out so what? That impulse buyer still helped Armada grow with their purchase and maybe the community doesn't want that player to hang around anyhow.

I'm not sure what your experience has been but mine is of X-Wing or random people viewing the game, being interested, and flat out saying, "Well, it looks cool but it costs too much". That doesn't happen in X-Wing because a $40 purchase doesn't sting most wallets too bad and they know they can spend $15 on some different ships and borrow from the community while they build up. The gulf between $40 and $100 is a large one for most people, between $40 and $65....not so much. The chance of me convincing someone playing a popular Star Wars franchise to spend over double the start up on a new one is a **** steep climb, why not try to make that slope a lot easier to get up?

1 hour ago, Kiwi Rat said:

Well I havn't meet my 1st wife yet, so Armada hardly makes a dent in my monthly or yearly budget

The model train hobby does

Soon...........

I've maintained this for a while, whenever the topic has come up during X-wing games (one of the game tables has an Armada core looming directly over it); Armada has a much higher buy-in than X-wing, but it's relative upkeep is considerably cheaper. Similarly, what I call the chase price - the time and cost of catching up with either game in terms of releases - is orders of magnitude shorter and cheaper.

Basically, the initial cost of Armada is a gatekeeper against impulse buys, but for those who make a deliberate purchase, the price thereafter is relatively solid. An ISD and Gladiator or Quasar will set you up with a workable starter Imperial fleet with the core. An MC80 and an MC30 will similarly do the same for a Rebel fleet. Both of those could hit a table and provide both a fun and challenging game to most.

Meanwhile, X-wing technically just requires a single core, but realistically it's one of each type. After that, the cost of getting something workable for the table for each, or even a single faction, is fairly comparable. It's technically worse if you try to chase down those necessary upgrades for a particular ship.

In short, yes. This is not an impulse buy product so there is a high barrier of entry to the game. For a new player, they're spending $100 MSRP for what doesn't even get close to a full game. But there are things to consider:

1. This is designed more like a war game. War games usually cost a lot more to get in to.

2. The upkeep cost is relatively low. Until we start getting into edition problems or something, this game has a low upkeep cost. A new player can easily buy 1 of each box set over time (probably favoring one faction over the other initially) and have playable fleets. People don't need 3 of each ship. I was looking at my binder yesterday and noticed there was only a handful of upgrades I was lacking the quantity I really wanted (Flight Controller, for instance).

3. There isn't a good way to fix it. Privateer Press and Games Workshop have been putting out "Army Boxes" that fulfill the standard game size or close to it but these are very expensive still. This doesn't fix the barrier to entry if FFG puts out a $150 box set for the imperial only player.

I think the problem is that the business model for Armada leans toward less purchases, but at a higher price per ship and X-wing hooks you with buying multiples of each ship if you want to be sure that old ship you love can still compete in the current meta.

I like Armada. It's a great game and I'm happy to show people the game. I do recommend the best way to play now is purchase a box set with a friend, split the contents and enjoy playing one faction with all the limitations that might entail.