1 hour ago, HoodieDM said:

You guys are all wrong. The problem is never with the game(s) themselves (in most cases all the games are good). It's FFG itself. They only care about creating games, getting you to buy a bunch of cores, and then they move on to the next "big thing". It's all FFG does. They suck at any type of OPG and support. Period. If they did any of that, then their games would be better, but for some reason, FFG struggles with this concept. They don't look at games of having more than a 2 year shelf life. That's it. They will continue to widdle down on Destiny Resources and prolong releases. Maybe in 5 years they'll kill it off for another better NEW game that they'll try to sell us on. Heck, it might not even be 5 years as quick as FFG moves on this stuff half of the time...

~D

I have been part of this community for over ten years, I have been involved with most of the collectible games both miniature, card and board games in some fashion or another. I would be interested for you to point out even one game in the last decade where this is even remotely true. The shortest lived game that lost support is Star Wars LCG which lasted 6 years, most do between 7-10 and in the cases where they are cut off it's because they are replaced by either a new edition or an alternative entry into the market. For example Star Wars LCG was largely replaced by Star Wars Destiny, Game of Thrones was replaced by 2nd edition, Call of Cthulhu was largely replaced by Arkham Horror.

Some games obviously loose official tournament support but this happens because of a lack of interest of the community not a lack of interest by FFG. Destiny tournaments for example are really boring affairs, the game is too shallow for competitive play. I know people will argue that point, but it really is true, it just doesn't have the depth to sustain a competitive environment, its a light, simple dice/card game and should be aimed at casual play.

13 hours ago, BigKahuna said:

Some games obviously loose official tournament support but this happens because of a lack of interest of the community not a lack of interest by FFG. Destiny tournaments for example are really boring affairs, the game is too shallow for competitive play. I know people will argue that point, but it really is true, it just doesn't have the depth to sustain a competitive environment, its a light, simple dice/card game and should be aimed at casual play.

I can't agree or disagree about Destiny tournaments being boring because haven't been to any.

I do disagree with you about what makes for a competitive game. A game doesn't have to have a lot of depth to be competitive, they have tournaments for, rock, paper, scissors, lol... I think a game just has to be fun, balanced, and you already have a winner just with that.

All the people who play in Destiny tournaments, myself included, obviously disagree with you about them being boring.

19 hours ago, Fromper said:

All the people who play in Destiny tournaments, myself included, obviously disagree with you about them being boring.

This. I didn't even reply at first because of that.

As an LGS owner, it appears to me that FFG doesn't quite understand the commitment required to produce a collectable card game.

Also, the game is relatively light. I agree with the sentiment that it probably would have been better as an LCG. I just don't see how they can expect to keep churning out expansions at the rate they've suggested while keeping the game fresh and interesting. Many players I've heard from feel they've alreadly lost the momentum.

Some asides:

The aggressive release schedule of FFG products and expansions in general is also overwhelming. Not only to me as an LGS owner, being constantly assaulted with "the next new thing" coming out, but even customers who are primarily into a single game are getting exhausted by how much they have to keep up with. More than one has commented to me that some days their hobby feels like work.

Prices continue to rise as well. Unfortunately the MSRP doesn't necessarily rise with it, squeezing retailers all the more. And although Asmodee North America's recent minimum advertised price policies (MAPs) are very helpful to preserve brand value and help protect retailers from online discounters, MAPs also prevent retailers from unloading slow-moving product. This shifts the risk off of the publisher (and a bit off the distributor as well) and onto the retailer.

A little bit of risk is understandable, but in the hobby game trade roughly half of new games are essentially dead upon release. So what with too much stuff coming out, quickly falling public interest, and MAP policies, preordering new products has become a major risk for retailers.

Hopefully they will notice the massive drop-off in preorders as retailers start to get wise to this scheme, and ANA will change their strategy. I still have nearly all of my stock from the last Destiny release. Despite a lot of excitement in my community in the first year, the past nine months have seen abysmal sales. Trusting my gut, I recently took the risk of not ordering any of the most recent expansion, and although it's only been out for two days not a single person has asked about it. And despite trying to demo Keyforge at my store interest has been very weak on that as well. I might only have a couple token copies on the shelf come release time.

Going forward, I'm going to be less and less likely to preorder anything. It's just become too much of a risk.

I'm hoping this is just a little rough adjustment period, due to both the recent Asmodee takeover and the relatively high IP turnover recently (what with a higher than usual number of product lines ending and new ones beginning). So I'm hopeful things will start to stabilize soon. But I'm going to wait and see rather than just trust in the future, I'm afraid.

3 hours ago, JohnGarrison1870 said:

As an LGS owner, it appears to me that FFG doesn't quite understand the commitment required to produce a collectable card game.

Also, the game is relatively light. I agree with the sentiment that it probably would have been better as an LCG. I just don't see how they can expect to keep churning out expansions at the rate they've suggested while keeping the game fresh and interesting. Many players I've heard from feel they've alreadly lost the momentum.

Some asides:

The aggressive release schedule of FFG products and expansions in general is also overwhelming. Not only to me as an LGS owner, being constantly assaulted with "the next new thing" coming out, but even customers who are primarily into a single game are getting exhausted by how much they have to keep up with. More than one has commented to me that some days their hobby feels like work.

Prices continue to rise as well. Unfortunately the MSRP doesn't necessarily rise with it, squeezing retailers all the more. And although Asmodee North America's recent minimum advertised price policies (MAPs) are very helpful to preserve brand value and help protect retailers from online discounters, MAPs also prevent retailers from unloading slow-moving product. This shifts the risk off of the publisher (and a bit off the distributor as well) and onto the retailer.

A little bit of risk is understandable, but in the hobby game trade roughly half of new games are essentially dead upon release. So what with too much stuff coming out, quickly falling public interest, and MAP policies, preordering new products has become a major risk for retailers.

Hopefully they will notice the massive drop-off in preorders as retailers start to get wise to this scheme, and ANA will change their strategy. I still have nearly all of my stock from the last Destiny release. Despite a lot of excitement in my community in the first year, the past nine months have seen abysmal sales. Trusting my gut, I recently took the risk of not ordering any of the most recent expansion, and although it's only been out for two days not a single person has asked about it. And despite trying to demo Keyforge at my store interest has been very weak on that as well. I might only have a couple token copies on the shelf come release time.

Going forward, I'm going to be less and less likely to preorder anything. It's just become too much of a risk.

I'm hoping this is just a little rough adjustment period, due to both the recent Asmodee takeover and the relatively high IP turnover recently (what with a higher than usual number of product lines ending and new ones beginning). So I'm hopeful things will start to stabilize soon. But I'm going to wait and see rather than just trust in the future, I'm afraid.

This isn't really a big surprise to me and for what it's worth I concur with the aggression of the releases, it creates this weird environment as a consumer where it is often less of a question of interest and more a question of capacity when it comes to the collectable games. I mean, there are only so many play sessions per week/month, so if I'm playing Legion, Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, there is no room for whatever the new thing is unless I cut something. When your invested in something... you feel a kind of obligation to keep up, stay current, which sort of makes you reluctant to start something new.

I think what FFG fails to realize is that the target audience is not that diverse. The same people that play X-Wing, play Armada, that play Legion, that play Destiny that play Game of Thrones etc.. These are the same communities. You can't have 10 lines going and expect that they will all find an audience or have some measure of success, but this isn't because they are bad games, quite to the contrary, I would love to play them all, but there is only so much budget and time to play them all so it's kind of a pick and choose thing.

I think at the heart of the problem for FFG and in turn to the people that sell the game is this kind of saturation of the player base.

On 11/8/2018 at 3:01 AM, BigKahuna said:

I have been part of this community for over ten years, I have been involved with most of the collectible games both miniature, card and board games in some fashion or another. I would be interested for you to point out even one game in the last decade where this is even remotely true. The shortest lived game that lost support is Star Wars LCG which lasted 6 years, most do between 7-10 and in the cases where they are cut off it's because they are replaced by either a new edition or an alternative entry into the market. For example Star Wars LCG was largely replaced by Star Wars Destiny, Game of Thrones was replaced by 2nd edition, Call of Cthulhu was largely replaced by Arkham Horror.

Easy. They over saturate the market picking off the same players. We all cant support a gazillion SW games.

Imperial Assault>Rebellion>Legion

SWLCG>Destiny

XWing>Armada

They push all of these games and after 1 year or so, the support goes down the drain. Then after another year they come up with another similar game, though different. Then 1 year after that, the games OP is on life support.

Plus their OPG is terribad on its own. It wad supposed to go to a 3rd party, but theyve been lame themselves. Communication continues to suck as well.

Like others posted below, they have no idea on commmitment.

~D

On 11/10/2018 at 2:19 AM, HoodieDM said:

 Easy. They over saturate the market picking off the same players. We all cant support a gazillion SW games.

Imperial Assault>Rebellion>Legion

SWLCG>Destiny

XWing>Armada

They push all of these games and after 1 year or so, the support goes down the drain. Then after another year they come up with another similar game, though different. Then 1 year after that, the games OP is on life support.

Plus their OPG is terribad on its own. It wad supposed to go to a 3rd party, but theyve been lame themselves. Communication continues to suck as well.

Like others posted below, they have no idea on commmitment.

~D

That's a pretty ridiculous statement especially given the games you have chosen.

Imperial Assault continues to get very regular updates every month like clockwork since its launch, they just put out two new skirmish maps in September and October, we got the Tyrants of Lothell expansion in September and a bunch of villian and allies packs. Imperial Assault is now 4 years old so your whole 1-2-3 years and your out theory does not apply to this game in any way shape or form.

Armada as well, I would point to this game if I wanted to explain to someone how you properly support a miniatures game. They have made major balances fixes this year, had an almost overwhelming amount of organized play events the entire year, to the point where you could basically play competitive Armada every weekend of the entire year. They released some amazing expansions this year not to mention the upcoming Executor. It's been a fantastic year for Armada fans. Grant it the release schedule for Armada is much slower but it has always been this way.

Naturally when a game is first released, especially miniature and card games that require a good amount of mini's initially to be released or in the case of cards, a good amount of card pool to get going, so naturally their is a blast at the beginning but FFG support is amazing by industry standards.

19 hours ago, JohnGarrison1870 said:

As an LGS owner

...

I still have nearly all of my stock from the last Destiny release. Despite a lot of excitement in my community in the first year, the past nine months have seen abysmal sales. Trusting my gut, I recently took the risk of not ordering any of the most recent expansion, and although it's only been out for two days not a single person has asked about it.

Have you been doing anything in your store to try and generate interest in Destiny?

At the store where I play this game, we have two tournaments every week (one constructed, one draft). Attendance has actually been down the past few weeks, as excitement waned while waiting for the new set to release, but we still had 4-6 people, and occasionally more. With the new set, we should get at least 10-14 every time until the holidays start to cut into people's free time from Thanksgiving to New Years.

They also have two release events this week for the new set. For the first, on the day the new set hit the store Thursday, everyone bought a box of boosters (the store gave a discount for pre-orders), and we had a tournament where we open our box and construct a deck using only cards from that box. We had 9 people for that. I went 2 out of 3 playing blue/yellow villain with Vader and Woody Harrelson. Tomorrow, they'll do a sealed deck event, where everyone gets 8 packs of Across the Galaxy and makes a deck with those and the Rivals set, using draft rules. I'd be amazed if we don't have at least 12 people for that.

There were supposed to be promos tied to the new release given away at tomorrow's event, but apparently, FFG didn't send any. That part's totally FFG's fault.

This game clearly isn't as big as MTG or anything, but it's got an active community in our area. The key seems to be just keeping people coming for weekly events. If you're not holding any, then it's not surprising that nobody wants to play the game. After all, what's the point in buying into a competitive game if you can't find people to play against?

Sadly FFG is chasing the crazy people have the next "new great thing". They know new products sell better than old ones. They kick their old beloved titles to the side, hoping the next new game does well enough.

In their defense, they are competing with everyone on Kickstarter, who always have the next new exciting game, and Kickstarter is basically a presell for the entire production run. Hard to complete with that.

Destiny "was" the next new thing a year ago. Now they don't even care to promote it. I am guessing they do one more cycle before calling it? They are really losing money on this game.

4 hours ago, Mep said:

Sadly FFG is chasing the crazy people have the next "new great thing". They know new products sell better than old ones. They kick their old beloved titles to the side, hoping the next new game does well enough.

In their defense, they are competing with everyone on Kickstarter, who always have the next new exciting game, and Kickstarter is basically a presell for the entire production run. Hard to complete with that.

Destiny "was" the next new thing a year ago. Now they don't even care to promote it. I am guessing they do one more cycle before calling it? They are really losing money on this game.

I gotta be honest with you I don't fully understand where FFG gets this reputation since at no point in the last decade have they ever treated a game this way. What are you even talking about, name a game that they have ever "called it" after a year, two, three? The shortest lived game in their line up was nearly 7 years old when it was shutdown, that's half the age of the whole company.

What your describing has never happened in the entire lifetime of FFG yet your acting like this is a common practice for them. Why? Give us an example.

On 11/10/2018 at 8:24 AM, Fromper said:

Have you been doing anything in your store to try and generate interest in Destiny?

Yup. Meetups, release parties, tournaments. Generally something twice a month. Attendance used to be respectable, averaging 9-12. Sales were...fine. But as you said, not everything has to be Magic.

I'm not sure why, but after the release of Legacies attendance started to drop. By the time Way of the Force was released, average attendance had become 4-5...and only 2 people showed up to the release event.

When I ask players why they cooled on Destiny, the most common reply (aside from "I've just been busy") is that they don't find the game engaging enough for them to want to play frequently. I'm not surprised. It takes a pretty special game to become someone's new hobby, which is basically what a CCG has to be to have staying power. There's no shame in a CCG fading. I don't think it'd be a "failure" if Destiny ended in the near future. Short lives seem to be the rule for collectable games, even good ones.

Your post seems to imply that for a game to succeed a game store needs to do all the heavy lifting. Supporting a game is one thing, but frankly if a game dies without having stores running constant events for it, it doesn't deserve stores running events for it. A game has to carry itself to some extent.

12 hours ago, BigKahuna said:

I gotta be honest with you I don't fully understand where FFG gets this reputation since at no point in the last decade have they ever treated a game this way. What are you even talking about, name a game that they have ever "called it" after a year, two, three? The shortest lived game in their line up was nearly 7 years old when it was shutdown, that's half the age of the whole company.

What your describing has never happened in the entire lifetime of FFG yet your acting like this is a common practice for them. Why? Give us an example.

Well first, we are no longer talking about FFG, we are now talking about Asmodee, who just had a big holiday clearance sell on Destiny. Those $30 starters are now $15. With the licensing fees and high production costs and LGS not even ordering the product anymore. What JohnGarrison describes is exactly what happened where I am at too. I don't see Asmodee keeping the game running. The rather resent trend is to shut games down or to simply stop making new content for them.

It seems like they are just throwing stuff at the walls now and seeing what sticks. What falls off they'll have to cut. It isn't sustainable.

5 hours ago, Mep said:

Well first, we are no longer talking about FFG, we are now talking about Asmodee, who just had a big holiday clearance sell on Destiny. Those $30 starters are now $15. With the licensing fees and high production costs and LGS not even ordering the product anymore. What JohnGarrison describes is exactly what happened where I am at too. I don't see Asmodee keeping the game running. The rather resent trend is to shut games down or to simply stop making new content for them.

It seems like they are just throwing stuff at the walls now and seeing what sticks. What falls off they'll have to cut. It isn't sustainable.

I hope they keep going with it had a blast at a draft tourney today and I keep seeing new ways to play that I have enjoyed a lot.

7 hours ago, Mep said:

Well first, we are no longer talking about FFG, we are now talking about Asmodee, who just had a big holiday clearance sell on Destiny. Those $30 starters are now $15. With the licensing fees and high production costs and LGS not even ordering the product anymore. What JohnGarrison describes is exactly what happened where I am at too. I don't see Asmodee keeping the game running. The rather resent trend is to shut games down or to simply stop making new content for them.

It seems like they are just throwing stuff at the walls now and seeing what sticks. What falls off they'll have to cut. It isn't sustainable.

Ok I get the prediction here, but is there any examples you can sight, from Asmodee or FFG in which they have actually done this? Lots of very successful and popular games where on sale during the holiday season, this really is not that unusual and though I do get that Destiny is from appearances not doing as well as it should, I still don't see where the prediction people are making is based on historical evidence. What is being described here, the prediction is that they will throw games out at the first sign of trouble, yet there is no precedence in either the old owners or the new that this something that happens or will happen. There current reputation is one of support of their games in the long term and while certainly some complain about slowing of support in older games, to me this has always been a rather silly complaint, all games go through cycles of bursting on the seen and then gradually getting a reduced amount of content over time. This is just how it works in the industry for all games period. The fact is however that FFG and Asmodee both have a slow, steady and methodical process of supporting their games in the long term. This is the reputation on which predictions should be made. The simply do not have the reputation of abandoning games.

That's all I'm saying, I want to be clear I'm not saying I disagree with you that there may be a problem going forward, but If this happens, if games start getting abandoned by Asmodee it will be the first time that happens because it has never happened before.

Why on earth would they be reprinting the Black Starter Boxes for a game they were planning to abandon?

They aren't planning to abandon Destiny. If anything we are seeing them ramping up not down as rotation approaches.

If I would like to see anything change it would be to either slow down the release cadence or if they are keeping it this frequent do something like cut the number of unique cards in each release in half (with the corresponding changes in size of boxes et al). This is because I feel the card pool is too big.

18 hours ago, tunewalker said:

I hope they keep going with it had a blast at a draft tourney today and I keep seeing new ways to play that I have enjoyed a lot.

Destiny is a fun game. I am sad it has died out where I live. Their resent behavior has been to shut down old games and start up new ones. This game replaced the star wars LCG, Rune wars knocked out descent. Many are surprised imperial assault is still limping along though I think they are banking on the app support for that one. There is just a lot in flux right now, especially with digital integration.

6 hours ago, Amanal said:

Why on earth would they be reprinting the Black Starter Boxes for a game they were planning to abandon?

I suspect they're reprinting them because starter boxes drive sales, and they have a lot of warehouse pallets full of expansions they need to convince people to buy.

The fact that they're reprinting them actually makes me think it's even mroe likely they're going to slow down the output (if not end it entirely). Why reprint old starters when a new cycle is supposedly going to start in 3 months? Wouldn't it be better to announce the new starters that are coming?

On the other hand, perhaps they are reprinting them precisely because a new cycle is about to start. I don't recall exactly, but I bet they reprinted them when the white box cycle began. So all of this is just conjecture.

6 hours ago, Joelist said:

They aren't planning to abandon Destiny. If anything we are seeing them ramping up not down as rotation approaches.

If I would like to see anything change it would be to either slow down the release cadence or if they are keeping it this frequent do something like cut the number of unique cards in each release in half (with the corresponding changes in size of boxes et al). This is because I feel the card pool is too big.

Well, I see them ramping up the adverts, sales, and press releases.

But I don't see them saying anything about the next cycle, which in theory should be 3-4 months away. Of course that could be because they don't want to take the thunder away from the most recent release. But if we don't hear anything about block 3 within the next month I'd be extremely worried.

I agree completely with your last paragraph though. It's a fun game, but the release schedule is overwhelming for something that is not destined to be as deep or gangbusters as Magic/Pokemon/Yugioh.

My hope is that they scale back their expectations for what Destiny can become, and accept its fate as a more casual game with a more modest release schedule.

31 minutes ago, JohnGarrison1870 said:

But I don't see them saying anything about the next cycle, which in theory should be 3-4 months away. Of course that could be because they don't want to take the thunder away from the most recent release. But if we don't hear anything about block 3 within the next month I'd be extremely worried.

The new set hasn't even been out a week, and we gave them a hard time about making an announcement about a new set last time because it was so close to the release. With three sets a year we are 4 months away so maybe late December early January seems reasonable for the next set to be hyped up a little.

It's hard to believe they are reprinting starters that will be out of rotation, if all goes to current plan. It is more likely some error on the upcoming page, which is full of them.

I find most of this discussion here to be at odds with the information we actually have. Its almost like everyone is trying to spin any news into bad news to make a point. What evidence does anyone have that would suggest a ramping down or plans to abandon the game`? I see the predictions, but no basis for making them.

3 hours ago, BigKahuna said:

What evidence does anyone have that would suggest a ramping down or plans to abandon the game`? I see the predictions, but no basis for making them.

Or at least, no basis you're comfortable acknowledging. The potential for bias in conclusions goes both ways.

Perhaps you would not accept anything other than an official announcement as valid evidence. But it's reasonable to speculate given the info we have.

Clearance selling product that is only 6 months old (Legacies) is a weird move. The sale also includes the first set though, so it could simply be that they overstocked the first set (to compensate for the release shortage) and also overstocked the first set of the second cycle to prevent a repeat shortage fiasco. So the sale could be an entirely innocent attempt to move excess stock. Or maybe not.

Also it's odd that t hey're reprinting old starters (c onfirmed to me by an FFG sales rep; it's not a listing error) , despite them supposedly rotating out in a few months. A reprint is not a casual endeavor and I struggle to see how it makes sense unless they're doing it to help sell overstocked first cycle stuff. But perhaps it's an innocent restocking order and a relatively small reprint. Or maybe not.

They're also pushing draft format recently, in an attempt to move that produce and more boosters to go with it. Apparently the warehouses have far too many copies of that sitting around.

the 2-player starter set can frequently be seen on fire clearance on Amazon for $9.99. That's nearly half what the distributor is trying to sell it to stores for. This tells me many stores have way too much of it and it's simply not selling.

There's also my personal experience (for what it's worth) and the visits I've made to every shop in a 150 mile radius, where piles of Destiny product sits gathering dust, events for it have been abandoned by the player base, and the store owners universally tell me "it's a good game, but FFG really oversold it and hosed us on this one".

Given how the warehouses are overstocked (despite how FFG products generally run out frequently), and all the above points, I think it's reasonable to be concerned for the future of the game. Perhaps it won't end, but it would take years of steady growth to reach the anticipated heights of yesteryear.

I'll admit I'm biased against the game though. I'd prefer to hear it's closing down. I'm sick of hearing so many people ooh and ah over it but rarely ever buying it, so many people requesting events for it but then never attending, etc. The experience in my little corner of the world may not apply universally though.

21 hours ago, JohnGarrison1870 said:

Or at least, no basis you're comfortable acknowledging. The potential for bias in conclusions goes both ways.

Perhaps you would not accept anything other than an official announcement as valid evidence. But it's reasonable to speculate given the info we have.

Not at all, I can be convinced even if it's not clear proof, but from what I have seen there isn't even an attempt being made here, more of a presumption that FFG and Asmodee have some sort of reputation for this sort 1-2-3 and toss it approach when the reality is that they have never even once done this. This was a legitimate question, aka, what is the logic or evidence being used to make the prediction because its not based on the history of FFG and Asmodee.

21 hours ago, JohnGarrison1870 said:

Clearance selling product that is only 6 months old (Legacies) is a weird move. The sale also includes the first set though, so it could simply be that they overstocked the first set (to compensate for the release shortage) and also overstocked the first set of the second cycle to prevent a repeat shortage fiasco. So the sale could be an entirely innocent attempt to move excess stock. Or maybe not.

I can understand why people might think this is a wierd move, but in the world of CCG's, this is actually quite normal, in fact, most CCG's have big sales most of the time. If you have been collecting CCG's you know it's normal that if you show just a bit of patience you can almost always get your cards at a major discount. More importantly though, FFG has had this sale every year for years for most of their games that are still very much active today. Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones for example have always been there, there still alive and healthy years after release. I do understand that in the US its kind of tradition to put things on sale that you can't sell, but in modern business you put things on sale to have a sale because it draws attention. That sort of ideology that a sale means we are having trouble selling it is kind of an old school view of how sales actually work. I don't disagree that this could be an indicator but in the case of a CCG I have my doubts about it.

22 hours ago, JohnGarrison1870 said:

Also it's odd that t hey're reprinting old starters (c onfirmed to me by an FFG sales rep; it's not a listing error) , despite them supposedly rotating out in a few months. A reprint is not a casual endeavor and I struggle to see how it makes sense unless they're doing it to help sell overstocked first cycle stuff. But perhaps it's an innocent restocking order and a relatively small reprint. Or maybe not.

I agree that this is an indicator of a problem, but not the one your describing. I think the issue here is that these are popular starter sets that sell well and they sell well because it's a package with a fixed card/dice list and that is easier to sell then random boosters. It's indicative of the problems of the CCG (random) model versus the LCG (fixed) model, simply put, people prefer it and hence it sells better.

It's kind of like the World of Warcraft phenomenon. So many MMORPG's try the subscription model and fail, yet World of Warcraft has been doing it successfully for years. Why? Who knows, but just because it works for one company doesn't mean it will ever work for everyone else, the market is strange that way. CCG's are the same. It works for Magic and Pokemon, but everyone else fails at it, yet people keep trying and of course they keep failing.

22 hours ago, JohnGarrison1870 said:

the 2-player starter set can frequently be seen on fire clearance on Amazon for $9.99. That's nearly half what the distributor is trying to sell it to stores for. This tells me many stores have way too much of it and it's simply not selling.

This makes sense to me. It's a misreading of the market. Its really quite simple. People who play card games, buy card games, people that don't play card games, don't buy card games. You can't try to cater a card game to "non-gamers" and I find it odd that people keep trying. As a card player I don't want to buy a starter box that I know is incomplete. This starter box while cheap provides you with 2 incomplete decks. I will take it for free, but I don't want to pay for it. If I'm going to buy a card game, I want a complete game.

So I'm not surprised to see this set having trouble selling at all.

22 hours ago, JohnGarrison1870 said:

There's also my personal experience (for what it's worth) and the visits I've made to every shop in a 150 mile radius, where piles of Destiny product sits gathering dust, events for it have been abandoned by the player base, and the store owners universally tell me "it's a good game, but FFG really oversold it and hosed us on this one".

Given how the warehouses are overstocked (despite how FFG products generally run out frequently), and all the above points, I think it's reasonable to be concerned for the future of the game. Perhaps it won't end, but it would take years of steady growth to reach the anticipated heights of yesteryear.

I'll admit I'm biased against the game though. I'd prefer to hear it's closing down. I'm sick of hearing so many people ooh and ah over it but rarely ever buying it, so many people requesting events for it but then never attending, etc. The experience in my little corner of the world may not apply universally though. 

To me, this is worth way more then any other kind of speculation. First hand accounts, if repeated by other people in the community is sort of a confirmation that there is a problem. To me, this is an indicator that the game has a problem and I agree that Destiny seems to collect dust on shelves in gamestores and we have seen quite a few examples throughout the Destiny community including this forum of people offering the same account.

If there are any indicators that I would consider warning signs, this sort of observation by the community is what would convince me.