Why do people quit because of the conversion set cost?

By 235711, in X-Wing

54 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Why would you spend hundreds of dollars to stop playing the best form of XWM? :rolleyes:

But if you don't spend, the game is dead. There will never be a 1.0 version of a Resistance A-Wing, etc.

Buying into 2e doesn’t stop me playing 1e... it means I can play more versions of X-Wing. Happy times!

18 minutes ago, Bulwyf said:

Just like your advice to me to focus on one faction after I said in the post you quoted that 90% of my games are against my wife? That's a bit unreal to suggest focusing on one faction when there's two people involved as a valid option.

First, I read "play together" as "together" (IE going to game night together) and not "against". Second, that was one of several options I mentioned, and no it's probably not reasonable to expect something that is made to upgrade one player's collection to cover two players. I mean most people will be buying multiples (same faction or different) in some form on their own. What would your alternative for FFG be to upgrading your entire collection? How much should it cost? How could they do it differently but still reasonably? If you're playing mostly against your wife and you like the previous edition, why upgrade at all for those games?

Edited by AlexW
49 minutes ago, falveryn said:

I will not quit, and while I'm looking forward to many of the good changes, a lot of bad changes leave a bad taste in my mouth:

1) I will no longer be able to play competitively with everything I have, rather I will have to only play with one faction until a year or so until I can afford the others.

How much of what you have do you use competitively NOW? I know I have a ton of ships that rarely get used, if ever. Can't remember the last time I flew an a-wing for instance. Or a b-wing, or an e-wing, or...

I'm actually looking forward to haveing lots of new, exciting options to use for all the ships. And a single conversion kit easily gets me plenty to try out any and every ship for a faction.

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2) While I won't quit, the kits could have been cheaper (halve the content), have better distribution (include more x-wings instead of a-wings, include more tie fighters and defenders instead of inquisitors and aggressors/strikers). I would also have loved a conversion kit for the core (no ships), or that old cores weren't outdated.

5) Halving the kits and giving more popular ships an extra slot is a good start. I am against having individual kits, it would be very expensive and hard for logistics. For the required stuff, as I said before, just a conversion kit for the core.

They could have cut the kits in half, but that doesn't solve much. Might have been half the cost. *Most* of the people complaining about the kits are complaining that they don't contain ENOUGH conversions, not that they have too many. So you'd just need twice as many as you do now.

As for distribution,t hey did about the fairest thing they could IMO. You get roughly half of a full list worth of spammed generics of every ship, with a minimum of 2 of each ship. Sure, you could include more x-wings and less a-wings. Then the 5 a-wing players ***** about not having enough a-wings. (And a-wings seem to be quite popular, as well as also being highly iconic). For every player that wants more of one ship, you'll have another player that wants less of that one and more of a different one. And you have 2 other sources of x-wings outside the conversion kit anyway (core and renegades). A non-ship core option would have been nice, I'll agree. I don't mind the x-wing model (gogo articulated wings), but the last thing I need is 2 more TIE fighters. Pretty sure I have at least 15 already... An option with just the pilots/dials/damage deck/etc would be nice.

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6) They can also learn from their mistakes and from their biased playtesters/devs: for some reason they have always made the galactic empire very bad or given them broken stuff that is quickly nerfed. I hope that all factions are equally viable and that all ships are also viable. I also would like them to support 1.0 until the end of the year at least to give time for players to update. Parallel support for both formats, for just a few months, costs little and can increase the number of converts.

Sounded like tournament kits thorugh the rest of the year will contain stuff for both 1.0 and 2.0, and I believe there's sytem openings happening post 2.0 release that'll still use 1.0, though I"m not certain about that...

16 minutes ago, Bulwyf said:

Just like your advice to me to focus on one faction after I said in the post you quoted that 90% of my games are against my wife? That's a bit unreal to suggest focusing on one faction when there's two people involved as a valid option.

So you pick 2 factions instead of all 3. It's not unreasonable for multiple players to need more stuff than a single player...

Well, I won’t be quitting. It looks as a collector with 36 squads prebuilt on display with their cards, upgrades, and upgrades dials it will cost me $350-500 or so to convert. That will I guess be my Christmas present to myself.

The only really unfortunate part is I just got in a year ago and have been diligently working to finish my squads permanently because I play a lot of other games and didn’t want to go back except for minor tweaks. In order to make b-wing aces viable and the G1-A, punisher etc. I gave certain Squadrons more points than others using the work of people who made calculation etc. I even had some custom cards made like gyroscopic targeting and s-foils.

So while it is a bunch of wasted work and looks like I likely bought a lot of upgrades I didn’t need on the secondary (I own 14 or so Autothrusters) and sold off all the extra upgrades that were useless that with points tweaks etc will come into fashion, I still think this was great for the game. Looking at ALL those upgrades to keep track of to make certain ships viable was NOT going to make it easy to teach my daughter the game in a year. It was also going to cause us a lot of time keeping track of all the upgrades and plenty of mistakes would be made by both side. Forgetting your own upgrades and certainly forgetting your opponents. The nice part of a static list was we would eventually memorize the stuff, but it would take a few years. I am assuming the new version will lighten the load so to speak in this regard. An x-wing won’t need 4 upgrades to be viable and other pilots that were overcosted will be playable. It will be nice to see Boba Fett again in some metas. Seems like this should blow the meta wide open which will bring plenty of players back into the fold....far more added than subtracted from all the concern at the moment be some.

Edited by 1977Valarian
1 hour ago, GreenDragoon said:

Maybe. But there is a very very loud minority who really did not understand the kits, and who tries to decry 2.0 for many others.

I‘m not arguing to change your mind. I don‘t care about you. Internet arguments are most of the time for bystanders on the fence, and this one is not different.

This, to me, is everything wrong with the internet. “I’m not here to actually discuss with you. My purpose is to throw up a lot of noise to convince bystanders that anyone who disagrees with me isn’t worth listening to. If that means saying things that are half true or entirely false (such as “I currently can’t play with B wings or Hawk 290s”) then that’s okay because the ends (convincing people 2.0 is great) are all I care about.

Sadly, you are on the losing end because people tend to remember negative messages much more than positive ones. Which is one reason why the internet always seems to be so full of people complaining.

On a more substantive note, it seems like most everyone is talking past each other. On one side are people who are basically supportive of X-Wing needing a refresh. Because they view the update as inherently necessary, they are mostly arguing that the volume of materials in the conversion kits are appropriate for the price and that the price is reasonable in the overall context of miniatures gaming. That may be true - but it requires you to accept as a given that the refresh is required and that it can’t be accomplished without new bases, cards, ship stands, maneuver dials, templates, damage decks etc.

On the other side are people who are dubious or outright convinced that the refresh wasn’t necessary. They are arguing that the cost is too high - not because you don’t get enough materials for your money, but because they fundamentally see the money as being wasted because they don’t see the need for 2.0.

My point in all this being that endless discussion about the value of a conversion kit with 2 x wings or 3 Xwings in it misses the point. And so does the weird tangent here where suddenly players are being bizarrely criticized for wanting to fly multiple ship copies as if that was extravagant - Luke was Red 5 people. Red 1-4 were Xwings too. It’s simply not that weird to want to field a squadron of the same ship. Meanwhile everyone is acting like flying two YT-2400s is somehow more “X-Wing” than wanting to fly 4 X-wings.” But I digress.

The only discussion worth having is whether or not 2.0 is worth it to you. So far, I’m seeing very little that makes me feel I will enjoy 2.0 more than 1.0. The gameplay doesn’t seem simpler or faster, list building doesn’t seem streamlined, I don’t believe that 2.0 will change the meta to anything more interesting for me. I just see the hassle of being asked to set aside my old cards, cool colored bases, aftermarket maneuver templates etc. for new cardboard and plastic that I don’t really want. Telling me that it really is a TON of cardboard and plastic doesn’t make me want to spend the money more.

I try to be a positive person. I WANT to love X-Wing 2.0. I want to buy more swag and I want to play more games. But I can’t see anything (yet) that makes me think 2.0 is good value.

Edited by BigBadAndy
1 hour ago, Bulwyf said:

Five factions now means 5 faction kits at $50.00 a pop. $250.00 plus new core set is $300.00 USD without tax. You need more than one kit? That's another $50.00 for each faction.

My wife and I play together for 90% of our games. We play all factions. We both need an additional kit for rebels and empire. That's 400.00 USD plus tax. Just to keep using the same ships we've already spent hundreds of dollars on. To replace, I might add, a system that my gaming circle has no problems with. With just the hope that the new system which artificially makes Force users better options versus non Force users is somehow a better game overall.

If people don't understand why that is a problem then I don't know what else to say.

I have no problems seeing this issue. I will have to spend a lot of money too. The one thing I don't understand, as stated in my first post, is that some people rather quit, then playing only with one conversion set and the new starter kit. And then take a look, buy things one at a time, trade some stuff and so on.

Maybe with 2.0 it isn't so important anymore to play with 8 Kihraxz on day one, because there is so much new to explore. And by the way: I don't want to imagine the effort to unbox all these conversion kits...

41 minutes ago, Bulwyf said:

Just like your advice to me to focus on one faction after I said in the post you quoted that 90% of my games are against my wife? That's a bit unreal to suggest focusing on one faction when there's two people involved as a valid option.

I guess they could all be mirror matches.

41 minutes ago, GFelix said:

FFG needs to realize they need to think about the casual player more since casual players you usually have the larger sets since they do not limit themselves to the 100 6 meta. If they lose the casual players I do not think tournament players will keep the game alive.

Exactly. I have 4 YT-1300s. And just about every other large ship. I have a dozen of several kinds of starfighters Does any meta player have 3 of anything large-base other than JumpMasters?

Financially, this is a big deal. And if I do finally go 2.0, it's because I got everything massively on sale.

Moreover, I will not make the mistake of buying 2.0 willy-nilly. My future investments are going to be a fraction of what they once were.

28 minutes ago, Sasajak said:

Buying into 2e doesn’t stop me playing 1e... it means I can play more versions of X-Wing. Happy times!

Or moving things backwards.

Maybe I get the Resistance A-Wing and use it's dial, but treat it otherwise like a 1.0 A-Wing.

23 minutes ago, 1977Valarian said:

So while it is a bunch of wasted work

Yeah, all that. If you go 2.0. . .

Strange Eons is useless.

Homebrew stuff is useless.

This has repercussions far beyond "buy a box of replacement cardboard" for those of us that do more than play to win acrylic tokens.

I bet this puts further pressure on Destiny. Let the cannibalization begin.

@235711: most people don’t go in small with their games ...all or nothing. It is the completionist way.

23 minutes ago, 235711 said:

I have no problems seeing this issue. I will have to spend a lot of money too. The one thing I don't understand, as stated in my first post, is that some people rather quit, then playing only with one conversion set and the new starter kit. And then take a look, buy things one at a time, trade some stuff and so on.

Maybe with 2.0 it isn't so important anymore to play with 8 Kihraxz on day one, because there is so much new to explore. And by the way: I don't want to imagine the effort to unbox all these conversion kits...

So, look at it the other way.

There are lots of people ecstatic that ships that have been gathering dust have new life. It's one of the main things.

Then you are saying is "what's the big deal if 4/5ths of your collection starts gathering dust."

For a year? Two?? Until your wallet catches up? Until FFG catches up (if you like Epic, play First Order/Resistance)???

Edited by Darth Meanie
53 minutes ago, VanderLegion said:

They could have cut the kits in half, but that doesn't solve much. Might have been half the cost.

Probably not though. Increased units and packaging means the cost probably increases for the same amount of product.

8 minutes ago, 1977Valarian said:

most people don’t go in small with their games ...all or nothing. It is the completionist way.

Yeah, that's me.

And speaking of all of nothing, that's one of the big issues for casuals, I suspect.

2.0 is a new game. You can't stick with 1.0 and cherry pick 2.0 for new bits. Convert, or die.

11 minutes ago, AlexW said:

Probably not though. Increased units and packaging means the cost probably increases for the same amount of product.

Case in point, as repeated all over the place, Star Trek Attack Wing. We could have seen $10 per individual ship conversion boxes, instead of more than 30 ships for $50 ($40 in at least one not-FFG online retailer).

Also, while it won’t help if you absolutely need 8 TIEs you can run 6 with the core and one kit, and you can run 4 X-wings with Core, 1 kit, and Saw’s Renegades which if you were an X-Wing fan were probably planning to buy. We also don’t yet know how much spamming ships is going to be a thing in standard or even epic play, or what their other conversion options are because the announcement is less than 3 days old.

17 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Yeah, that's me.

And speaking of all of nothing, that's one of the big issues for casuals, I suspect.

2.0 is a new game. You can't stick with 1.0 and cherry pick 2.0 for new bits. Convert, or die.

Well, if you’re a completionist what is the issue? I mean, aren’t you just buying everything regardless of what is released? I mean, you bought 4 YTs ;)

Edited by AlexW

People who post "I will quit X-wing" on forums (and it happened way too many times in long history of X-wing) are like people standing on top of a building and screaming " i will jump". If they really want to jump they can do it quietly, what they really want is cheap attention. FFG, should add "please don't feed trolls" in the end of their announcement article.

9 minutes ago, AlexW said:

Well, if you’re a completionist what is the issue? I mean, aren’t you just buying everything regardless of what is released? I mean, you bought 4 YTs ;)

It means my 1.0 collection is complete.

2.0 is starting over, not continuing on. Hasta la vista, FFG.

Or, at least, that is the decision I need to make.

Edited by Darth Meanie
2 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

It means my 1.0 collection is complete.

2.0 is starting over, not continuing on. Hasta la vista, FFG.

Or, at least, that is the decision I need to make.

As a completionist I'm sad I'm going to have to finally buy a Punnisher and Kimo for 1.0 because.... I don't have them yet.

According to Polish leaks each conversion kit comes with 170 upgrade cards, 100 pilot cards, 4 medium bases, and “a ton of tokens”.

If you’re wondering about the $50 price point, that is a pretty enormous amount of material per box in my opinion at least.

1 hour ago, VanderLegion said:

How much of what you have do you use competitively NOW?

They could have cut the kits in half, but that doesn't solve much. Might have been half the cost. *Most* of the people complaining about the kits are complaining that they don't contain ENOUGH conversions, not that they have too many. So you'd just need twice as many as you do now.

As for distribution,t hey did about the fairest thing they could IMO. You get roughly half of a full list worth of spammed generics of every ship, with a minimum of 2 of each ship. Sure, you could include more x-wings and less a-wings. Then the 5 a-wing players ***** about not having enough a-wings. (And a-wings seem to be quite popular, as well as also being highly iconic). For every player that wants more of one ship, you'll have another player that wants less of that one and more of a different one. And you have 2 other sources of x-wings outside the conversion kit anyway (core and renegades). A non-ship core option would have been nice, I'll agree. I don't mind the x-wing model (gogo articulated wings), but the last thing I need is 2 more TIE fighters. Pretty sure I have at least 15 already... An option with just the pilots/dials/damage deck/etc would be nice.

Sounded like tournament kits thorugh the rest of the year will contain stuff for both 1.0 and 2.0, and I believe there's sytem openings happening post 2.0 release that'll still use 1.0, though I"m not certain about that...

So you pick 2 factions instead of all 3. It's not unreasonable for multiple players to need more stuff than a single player...

I use a different faction every tournament, which is why I complain. If I only used one faction then there would be no point in complaining.

Making the kits half its cost does help a lot. Budget players can purchase half a kit and play with 4 ties and 1 advanced, or 2 x-wings and 1 y-wing, etc. If you want more, you buy more. If you want exactly 1.5 kits, you have to buy 2. If kits were halved, you just buy 3. So it not only helps budget players, but also players with bigger collections that need fractions of a kit. It obviously is the same for players which need an exact number of kits.

Statistically and the way they designed their products it makes more sense to include more x-wings and more tie fighters. While there exists people with more a-wings or prototypes, they are not as much as the people owning excess x-wings and tie fighters.

Kit support is great, though it is finally up to each individual store to decide if they want to keep hosting 1.0 tournaments. An organized event to close up tidily 1.0 until the end of the year would be nice. With worlds hosting 2.0 it basically kills competitive 1.0. It would have been better to host both.

17 minutes ago, Wiredin said:

As a completionist I'm sad I'm going to have to finally buy a Punnisher and Kimo for 1.0 because.... I don't have them yet.

All I need is Wave XIV.

My bro, OTOH, is going to have to play a lot more catch up than that.

7 minutes ago, mdl0114 said:

According to Polish leaks each conversion kit comes with 170 upgrade cards, 100 pilot cards, 4 medium bases, and “a ton of tokens”.

If you’re wondering about the $50 price point, that is a pretty enormous amount of material per box in my opinion at least.

And as I think about that $50, I will also be thinking about the literal steamer trunk of chits and cards that becomes kindling if I convert.

14 minutes ago, mdl0114 said:

According to Polish leaks each conversion kit comes with 170 upgrade cards, 100 pilot cards, 4 medium bases, and “a ton of tokens”.

If you’re wondering about the $50 price point, that is a pretty enormous amount of material per box in my opinion at least.

Any news in that leak regarding ship dials/Ship tokens aproximate numbers for each Conversion Kit?

15 minutes ago, falveryn said:

I use a different faction every tournament, which is why I complain. If I only used one faction then there would be no point in complaining.

So you need a conversion kit for each faction. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me that people that *have* to have everything will have to pay more than people that are willing to stick to (or start with) one faction.

15 minutes ago, falveryn said:

Making the kits half its cost does help a lot. Budget players can purchase half a kit and play with 4 ties and 1 advanced, or 2 x-wings and 1 y-wing, etc. If you want more, you buy more. If you want exactly 1.5 kits, you have to buy 2. If kits were halved, you just buy 3. So it not only helps budget players, but also players with bigger collections that need fractions of a kit. It obviously is the same for players which need an exact number of kits.

As pointed out earlier, if the kit had been half the size, it probably woul dhave been more than half the price. And a half-size kit (from what we're getting) probably would not have had 4 tie fighters. It MIGHT have had 2 x-wings still.

And if you don't want 2 full kits, you don't have to buy 2. You can also buy 1 and then get the rest of what you need fromt he secondary market if you don't need a lot.

7 minutes ago, Mpori said:

Any news in that leak regarding ship dials/Ship tokens aproximate numbers for each Conversion Kit?

Dial information is listed in the FAQ on the product page. Ship bases will depend on the number of pilots for each ship i imagine.

5 packs of sleeves required for the rebel and imp packs. thats 250 cards. So a 100/170 split of pilots to upgrades is a very rough number. I'd go over the "printed" FFG stat over the leak.

6 packs of sleeves for scum.. so that 100/170 split is more accurate there.

3 hours ago, Bulwyf said:

Five factions now means 5 faction kits at $50.00 a pop. $250.00 plus new core set is $300.00 USD without tax. You need more than one kit? That's another $50.00 for each faction.

My wife and I play together for 90% of our games. We play all factions. We both need an additional kit for rebels and empire. That's 400.00 USD plus tax. Just to keep using the same ships we've already spent hundreds of dollars on. To replace, I might add, a system that my gaming circle has no problems with. With just the hope that the new system which artificially makes Force users better options versus non Force users is somehow a better game overall.

If people don't understand why that is a problem then I don't know what else to say.

This was exactly my sentiment above. It's probably worse for folks who have kids and would be looking to spend roughly $600 or more for a 4 person family. X-Wing 2.0 seems geared towards the tournament folks who may play only 1 faction.

Sure we can still play with the 1.0 ships and rules, but I don't think new ships will come with 1.0 cards and cardboard, so if you want newer ships, you will have no choice but to upgrade. So for a lot of casual x-wing players who don't want to spend $300-600 for conversion kits, this announcement is the same as announcing that support for x-wing has ended.

33 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

And as I think about that $50, I will also be thinking about the literal steamer trunk of chits and cards that becomes kindling if I convert.

Welcome to every game with an edition change ever? If you don’t want to switch because you like the old edition and want to keep playing it exactly as it is that’s one thing. Nobody can tell you what to like and which to prefer, though you’ll be disappointed if you want official OP support for X-Wing 1e.

If the argument is that conversion kits are a rip off, 2e is a scam, FFG is out to get old players, or the other myriad of conversations about how $50 for the conversion is a personal insult of some kind it’s helpful to know what exactly the $50 is getting you. I’ve seen speculation that there won’t be enough medium bases, or only genetics are in there, or FFG has $5 worth of material in there, etc. Knowing what you’re getting is helpful for the second people, it won’t matter if you do want a 2e at all because you want 1e. In that case you’re in the same boat as fans of RPG and tabletop games across the decades who don’t like a new thing replacing their thing.