There was a post with the new starters and some info about the new set, but nothing about release date. Or even saying "February 2019". What's the release date supposed to be?

Far from any official announcement, I would say late February.

They didn't say nor would I expect them too. They have had such a hard time figuring out when a new set will actually hit shelves they have said nothing until right before the release date lately. With all the problems they have had with this game and the need for all the resent fire sales I am surprised they are even moving forward with this game.

1 hour ago, Mep said:

They didn't say nor would I expect them too. They have had such a hard time figuring out when a new set will actually hit shelves they have said nothing until right before the release date lately. With all the problems they have had with this game and the need for all the resent fire sales I am surprised they are even moving forward with this game.

Could you please elaborate more on this issue? thx

1 hour ago, vlasopes said:

Could you please elaborate more on this issue? thx

If you look at the evidence, you can clearly see that Fantasy Flight is discontinuing the Star Wars Destiny game, due its lack of popularity.

1. They recently put booster boxes of some of the older sets on sale. Since everyone knows that the only reason companies ever have sales is to dump unnecessary inventory of discontinued products, this is clearly a bad sign.

2. A few months ago, big retailers like Target and Amazon were selling the Two Player Game for as little as $5. Obviously, they must have gotten them extra cheap from FFG, who are trying to get rid of their inventory (see #1). It couldn't possibly have been because these huge retailers accidentally over-ordered, not realizing that this type of game has a niche audience and won't sell to a mainstream market in massive quantities like other things that say Star Wars on them.

3. Some of the posters here have reported that SWD doesn't have a thriving community in their local game stores. Obviously, this proves that the game doesn't have a thriving community in any other game stores, either, and nobody is playing or buying it.

Put it all together, and you can clearly see that Star Wars Destiny is doomed. This fake preview of the new Convergence set must be to lull us into not realizing it, so they can sell off their remaining inventory of their previously released SWD products.

</sarcasm>

Sorry, but I couldn't resist. All the Chicken Little predictions on these forums are getting old.

1 hour ago, Fromper said:

If you look at the evidence, you can clearly see that Fantasy Flight is discontinuing the Star Wars Destiny game, due its lack of popularity.

1. They recently put booster boxes of some of the older sets on sale. Since everyone knows that the only reason companies ever have sales is to dump unnecessary inventory of discontinued products, this is clearly a bad sign.

2. A few months ago, big retailers like Target and Amazon were selling the Two Player Game for as little as $5. Obviously, they must have gotten them extra cheap from FFG, who are trying to get rid of their inventory (see #1). It couldn't possibly have been because these huge retailers accidentally over-ordered, not realizing that this type of game has a niche audience and won't sell to a mainstream market in massive quantities like other things that say Star Wars on them.

3. Some of the posters here have reported that SWD doesn't have a thriving community in their local game stores. Obviously, this proves that the game doesn't have a thriving community in any other game stores, either, and nobody is playing or buying it.

Put it all together, and you can clearly see that Star Wars Destiny is doomed. This fake preview of the new Convergence set must be to lull us into not realizing it, so they can sell off their remaining inventory of their previously released SWD products.

</sarcasm>

Sorry, but I couldn't resist. All the Chicken Little predictions on these forums are getting old.

Okay love this! Still they know that rotation is coming and are getting plenty of positive feedback for it. The down side is that if the same 10 characters are in every set then old cards will never be worth much. Target always picks up popular games then discounts them. They are trying to crash Competition. I'm not sure where this game is going, but I've paid my ticket to ride so I'll be seeing where it goes. General Grievous should always be thematic. That being said, indirect damage and 9 health is about as far away from hitting that mark as possible. Don't even get me started on Pink Troopers!

4 hours ago, vlasopes said:

Could you please elaborate more on this issue? thx

They have had numerous and well documented production problems. This lead to over production and falling interest since release. This has caused many retailers to sale their stock below wholesale. It is very unlikely FFG is making money off this game and retailers are certainly losing money. For profit companies rarely keep producing products that lose money. That is just reality. People can call it chicken little but the facts are what they are. The one thing we don't know about is the licensing agreement tied to the SW IP. They may be fine with losing money on this game if that means they can keep producing other star wars games.

38 minutes ago, Mep said:

They have had numerous and well documented production problems. This lead to over production and falling interest since release. This has caused many retailers to sale their stock below wholesale. It is very unlikely FFG is making money off this game and retailers are certainly losing money. For profit companies rarely keep producing products that lose money. That is just reality. People can call it chicken little but the facts are what they are. The one thing we don't know about is the licensing agreement tied to the SW IP. They may be fine with losing money on this game if that means they can keep producing other star wars games.

As far as I know, the only problem with the game diminishing is the constant fear that it might be. The facts you mentioned are production problems and falling interest from those problems. First of all, production problems are going to be a general FFG problem, and therefore likely to happen with any number of their games, and not specifically a Destiny problem. For instance, I am having trouble finding a Keyforge starter set. Switching from Destiny doesn’t fix the problem. You could claim that switching to games not created by FFG would be a fix, but I generally don’t play games for the manufacturer, but for the game, so that line of reasoning would be moot.

The second problem, that production issues cause a decline in interest, is generally an old problem, 18-24 months old. It was hard to find enough Awakenings, and SoR seemed scarce initially. But since then the only place there has been a real chance for people to leave because of production issues is the lull between Legacies and WotF, and that wasn’t awful, and I don’t know anyone who has quit playing for that reason.

All the rest of your reasons for the game dying is speculation. It may be true, but it is just as likely that it isn’t. Perhaps FFG is continuing to make the game because it’s making them plenty of money. They are, after all, in the money making business. And if something were not doing well, I would imagine we would be seeing less and not more. But here I am speculating. And that’s all anyone is doing, speculating. But it seems to be a hobby to speculate about how Destiny is dying, when there are plenty of people out there simply enjoying a rather well designed game. All that speculation really does is become the self fulfilling prophecy of making people more timid about buying in, and suddenly it becomes less viable. If you don’t like it, don’t buy in, that’s fine. If you enjoy other games more, play those! There’s an amazing plethora of fun games, and Destiny doesn’t have to be yours. But what I ask is that if it isn’t, you don’t make it out to be worse than it is. It’s doing fine, and I am excited to see what this new set holds.

That being said, and back to the original post, FFG, while good at game design, is not as good at customer service and community building. A little more clarity so that players could have expectations would be great. A little more emphasis on the FLGS would be awesome. But that’s not how they run things. We just find out a week or two before release that the set is coming out, and we have to deal. It’s unfortunate, but it’s one of the flaws we have to put up with to enjoy the game. And quite honestly, Destiny is enough fun that I’ll keep coming back, even in spite of FFG’s flaws of naysayers decrying it’s longevity.

@PeoplesChampion I fully get the criticism leading to a self fulling prophecy and why people speak out against criticism. I will say this, if things are going great, you rarely get that much doom and gloom. Magic has had its detractors over the years and its up and downs but fixes to those downs has come from WOTC not the critics shutting up. The self fulling prophecy is really just bs. Trouble happens, people complain, the trouble isn't responded to, the game dies. That is how it goes. The game started really good and production problems did great harm to its launch. This is well documented. The more recent complaints I have heard is that the game just isn't that good. I personally really like the game and haven't seen how it it is bad but that is a valid consideration.

I do believe the failure this game is experiencing does come from FFG knowing how to design a game but not manage a game. They don't communicate well nor do they do much in community building. You can put that self fulling prophecy/haters conspiracy to rest why this game is dying. It has everything to do with the lack of game support on FFGs part. I do believe the game is good enough but people saying the game just isn't that good probably has more to do them just getting bored with the game. I know the store owner that used to host Destiny where I am at gave the reason the game died to a complete lack of support for the game on FFG's part. People simply got bored with the game and went back to magic. FFG has to compete and they aren't even trying. Sticking the head into the sand and saying everything is great won't change what is actually happening to this game.

FFG seems very interested in launching new games and supporting them for at least a few months post launch while either ignoring their current games or just sunsetting and shutting them down out right. FFG's behavior is consistent and predictable which leads to a lot of actually good speculation. How many people think FFG will maintain their level of game support for Key Forge 6 months from now? There are excellent models out there for how to run a card game and maintain a community. FFG's model is to make a new game, do tons of work to sell that new game, then slowly let that game die as its embers burn out while they move on to the next great game.

On 12/7/2018 at 6:56 PM, Fromper said:

1. They recently put booster boxes of some of the older sets on sale. Since everyone knows that the only reason companies ever have sales is to dump unnecessary inventory of discontinued products, this is clearly a bad sign.

2. A few months ago, big retailers like Target and Amazon were selling the Two Player Game for as little as $5. Obviously, they must have gotten them extra cheap from FFG, who are trying to get rid of their inventory (see #1). It couldn't possibly have been because these huge retailers accidentally over-ordered, not realizing that this type of game has a niche audience and won't sell to a mainstream market in massive quantities like other things that say Star Wars on them.

3. Some of the posters here have reported that SWD doesn't have a thriving community in their local game stores. Obviously, this proves that the game doesn't have a thriving community in any other game stores, either, and nobody is playing or buying it.

Put it all together, and you can clearly see that Star Wars Destiny is doomed. This fake preview of the new Convergence set must be to lull us into not realizing it, so they can sell off their remaining inventory of their previously released SWD products.

Counterpoints:

1. Having a sale is one thing. Trying to unload things at less than half the wholesale price is something else. For comparison, what would you call it if FFG were to lower the price of the Rebellion board game from $90 to $25? I'm not quite sure what that would be, but it's so much more than "just a regular sale" that it's reasonable to raise an eyebrow. Especially since one of the sets (Legacies) isn't going to be rotating. (Actually, I do know what this is called: Screwing over the retailers. Probably one of the reasons shops are dropping Destiny.)

2. Target and Amazon have been selling niche gamer products for years. But at any rate, most of those fire sellers on Amazon were/are game stores, not Amazon itself. Game stores are overloaded with the starter set, because people aren't buying it. I think this is more an issue with the two-player starter set not being a good fit for the game though (and having a poor cover design) rather than a negative against the game though. Plus, FFG and distribion were extremely aggressive with the release, and convinced stores to order way too much.

3. It's not enough for Destiny to have many thriving, dedicated communities. That fan base also needs to be big enough to justify keeping the game going from a business perspective. The fan base may be large enough, but so many people are reporting the game being dead in their areas it makes one wonder.

4. Expansion products take a long time to develop and manufacture. For many of FFG's other card games at least, principal development and playtesting of expansions is completed about 9 months prior to release. I wouldn't be surprised if the lead time is longer for Destiny, due to the need to manufacture the dice. Point being, the appearance of Convergence isn't much proof of anything. They could have decided back in the summer to cancel the game, and they would still have to go forward with completing and shipping Convergence. In addition, they may very well be contractually obligated to continue the game in some capacity. While that could mean the game technically exists in some form, they could dramatically scale back the print runs, etc.

Despite all this, I don't think Destiny is going to die anytime soon. It's just the nature of FFG products to be over-hyped upon release, given an avalanche of expansions and events in the first two years, then to fade for a while before being either dropped or revised into a new edition after 5-7 years from original release.

I'm with @Mep on this. It's not the game itself. It's FFG. They work their "slaves" I mean, employees to death for crap pay. Their goals as a business are backwards. They probably have some stupid yearly targets with a mentality of only "new games = $$", so we have to create X # of games or else it was failure of a year and we're all gonna lose our jobs. Rather than, let's just create the most bad *** game (that can be customizable and have an expansive universe) ever and support the crap out of it. But they don't do that. They never meet deadlines. Their logistics and operations program is full of monkeys.

And I probably can't even blame FFG on some of this, when you have Asmodee and Disney pulling you from twenty different directions each day, they probably have a gazillion stupid conference calls that are a waste of time, rather than actually doing what they should be doing. Sure again, they're great at making games, but you just have to put effort into maintaining it. FFG doesn't do that, nor will they ever. The game has so much lack luster anymore, the only thing that keeps it going, is knowing that in 3-4 months a new expansion is due out. If that doesn't happen, then the game goes silent locally until new stuff comes out.

That's probably the main problem with the game. There's 2-3 decks that are meta and the rest can't compete. You'll have some weird deck that might do well from time to time, but that's because it's usually piloted by a superb player (not your average joe BUYING the game) or they build it strictly to counter the meta and got lucky that 90% that showed up, were all playing that meta deck. MtG/WotC know how to create a game and keep it running. You just have to follow their blueprints and keep at it. Not just do it #1 time, make a bunch of money, and half *** it the rest of the way.

~D

Yes

On 1/3/2019 at 1:21 AM, HoodieDM said:

Their logistics and operations program is full of monkeys.

Donkey, Pedro is far more able to stuff up the delivery of goods than a room full of monkeys. With typewriters!!

Looks like Miniature Market updated their release date to April - June for Convergence boosters and starters just like the new draft kit. I'm hoping this doesn't mean no more first quarter release!

3 hours ago, player2898905 said:

Looks like Miniature Market updated their release date to April - June for Convergence boosters and starters just like the new draft kit. I'm hoping this doesn't mean no more first quarter release!

It just means they are managing expectations

6 hours ago, DarkFallenAngel said:

It just means they are managing expectations

I’ve had no expectations with FFG release dates for years now!

Miniature Market doesn't know anything. FFG has a live draft event with the new set scheduled for the 21st of this month. That isn't exactly a release date but FFG seems to think they will have enough product on hand to do a small draft on twitch. So the set could release tomorrow or not until June for all we know.

This says it all (captured Feb 18), nothing is "On the boat" yet meaning we're at the very least 1 month away if I am very optimistic.

I am not sure if that even means much. Past sets have been released before their status has been updated on their site. Also notice the last time it was updated was 12/11/19.

That part of the ffg website isn't very reliable tho

The Upcoming page is very accurate for some of their factories in China. It simply hasn't been reliable for Destiny. There is some kinda of communication or quality control break down that makes releases not possible to track for Destiny. It is entirely possible they are already warehousing some product in some locations waiting for the world wide release. Once the rest of the world catches up, they will release, whenever that is.

Asmodee was just recently bought out and one of the first things the new owners did was can the CEO. He was a great game designer but a poor manager. Hopefully in the future these logistical and communication problems will stop.

Big update: The people running the Galactic Qualifiers at Adepticon ( http://www.cvent.com/events/adepticon-2019/agenda-7822dab492fa4ed0bde10d960366d97c.aspx ) apparently have a definitive release date. Convergence packs will be used for sealed events there as early as March 28, but cards from Convergence will NOT be legal for the constructed events there. I'm not sure if that last part is mentioned on the web site, but it was stated in an email to players who are already signed up for the event.

Since FFG says that new products have to be available to the public 11 days before they're legal for tournament play, that means that we can narrow the release date down to some time between March 18 and 28.

All that can be derived from that is the product is not legal and therefore won't be out 11 days prior to the event. The seal event is clearly for promotional purposes of the new set and I doubt they care about their 11 day rule when they are promoting a product. They can just call it a special preview sealed event at Adepticon. Them being able to at least air mail a few boxes for the event is a good sign. Could even be possible the Adepticon supply is part of the actual release supply, so yeah, end of the month is still a possibility so is June.

Well they finally are saying March 28th.