Basically as the question...

Investing and desigining a game for straight into retail is a high risk prospect for any company, if this coming game fails, which it might not the prospect of ever seeing a 3rd edition of the much loved descent series in a more traditional format with app support (optional co-op/solo mode) likely dies with it, at least as a straight to retail prospect... However I watched a documentary on the desigining of twilight Imperium 4th edition and they did have many discussions about crowd funding it to produce the game they wanted to..

So I ask fellow fans how you would feel about this, personally I support lots of crowd funding campaigns and I've no issue with a large company like FFG doing so if it was the only way I would see a product on this line developed. Its much less risk for them and I fully believe the descent line has enough support to make a KS that was solidly founded as a traditional descent style game with a optional co-op mode that used a app (or if the did a standard AI system co-op format but that's less likely) would be a massive success, the biggest pushback would be from people saying what's a company as big as FFG doing on crowd funding and that could be explained via the FAQ pretty simply...

I'd only have a few reservations mainly around the platform they chose, if it wasn't Gamefound (once launched assuming its as popular as I expect it to be) or Kickstarter I think they would be shooting themselves in the foot and they'd need to recognise that international distribution needs to happen at once or as close to as possible...

Anyway - how do others think about this as a concept.

Maybe

Only if the game offers exactly what I'm searching for, yes, but highly unlikely, because I'm not patient enough for Crowfunding paying an item that will come years later if it ever , I'm not confident enough with this to give money and saw too much project that never finally existed, and because crowfunding is somehow a store killer, so, really unsure

1 minute ago, rugal said:

Maybe

Only if the game offers exactly what I'm searching for, yes, but highly unlikely, because I'm not patient enough for Crowfunding paying an item that will come years later if it ever , I'm not confident enough with this to give money and saw too much project that never finally existed, and because crowfunding is somehow a store killer, so, really unsure

some campaigns offer retailer deals and store support, so while I agree in principle that KS can be bad for FLAGs it doesn't have to be with a single project... As for waiting I get that, I think FFG could be relied upon to produce the game, it would be shocking if they couldn't but a wait is without a doubt inevitiable, but a wait verses never happening is kind of what I'm proposing really and very very likely the situation descent the series will find itself in if Legends fails.

If its exactly what youre looking for I guess that's a harder nail to hit, I know what I would want, and you know what you would want but is that the same thing I don't actually know but I imagine it contains much of the same ideas... Its worthy of thought anyway.

I would agree with @rugal ... if the game is precisely (or at least mostly) what I am looking for, then yes, I would participate in Crowdfunding. But this means that it DOES NOT use an app, it is 1 v many (Overlord), etc. Any derivation from this will result in me not participating.

BTW, AI for solo/coop does not necessarly need an app 😉 In fact I will consider it if no app is needed: it can be there to easy bookkiping, but you must be able to play without it. I am not interested in a 1 vs many version, but it doesn't bother me if it is there.

Just as an example, Blacklist Games just ended a KS project for a game (Dire Alliance: Horror) which is 1 vs 1 or coop whith many mechanics in common and without the need of an app. A similar concept can be explored for "Descent 3.0".

BTW, I don't think that Asmodee/FFG is anymore a "good games" producer: they lost too many important people for boardgames development and Legends of the Dark is a demonstration of this.

1 hour ago, tibia said:

BTW, AI for solo/coop does not necessarly need an app 😉 In fact I will consider it if no app is needed: it can be there to easy bookkiping, but you must be able to play without it. I am not interested in a 1 vs many version, but it doesn't bother me if it is there.

Just as an example, Blacklist Games just ended a KS project for a game (Dire Alliance: Horror) which is 1 vs 1 or coop whith many mechanics in common and without the need of an app. A similar concept can be explored for "Descent 3.0".

BTW, I don't think that Asmodee/FFG is anymore a "good games" producer: they lost too many important people for boardgames development and Legends of the Dark is a demonstration of this.

**** straight it doesn't require an APP, I have a half dozen co-op crawlers that don't use an app with variable AI, I think for a crawler you'd be pushed to beat Sword and Sorcery's AI, its fantastic so much monster movement and interchanging positions. You have simpler systems like gloomhaven (though that's not a game for me) and vairable list/flow based AIs like Middara (the better end of such interactions) or Shadows of brimstone (the less advanced end)_.. All of these games have there own ways and methods of controlling hidden information and covering exploration.. I'm down for no app far more than the reverse, I'm just basing my expectations on what we have seen previously. You could even create a hybrid that using something list based + a gloomhaven type activation, but have a boss battler AI for big monsters where its handled with AI cards and hit locations... So many many possibilities we don't need APPs at all.

I love 1 v many, its something I'd need to see as well for it to be an autoback, its what the market is missing right now.

Anyway sorry if I failed to make the above clear, but that's very much my position as well, I was just tempering my expectations.

16 hours ago, crimsonsun said:

If its exactly what youre looking for I guess that's a harder nail to hit, I know what I would want, and you know what you would want but is that the same thing I don't actually know but I imagine it contains much of the same ideas... Its worthy of thought anyway.

Alas, I think that the game I like are not the game that would sell the best on our days ...

Not in a million years. If we like what we see, we buy their products- that's how game publishing works, right? "It's too risky" is not an excuse to pass development costs to the shoulders of the consumer on the front end, that's what a price tag is for. Game companies like ANA shouldn't need to rely on crowdfunding to support their projects-it's a model much better suited to independent developers who don't have infrastructure in place to deal with overhead. If companies like ANA need to resort to it, I take that as a sign their strategy is already failing.

15 hours ago, Zaltyre said:

If companies like ANA need to resort to it, I take that as a sign their strategy is already failing.

Or it is just the sign that they have no more designers able to design "good" games 😉

16 hours ago, Zaltyre said:

ANA

ANA ?

17 hours ago, Zaltyre said:

Not in a million years. If we like what we see, we buy their products- that's how game publishing works, right? "It's too risky" is not an excuse to pass development costs to the shoulders of the consumer on the front end, that's what a price tag is for. Game companies like ANA shouldn't need to rely on crowdfunding to support their projects-it's a model much better suited to independent developers who don't have infrastructure in place to deal with overhead. If companies like ANA need to resort to it, I take that as a sign their strategy is already failing.

But surely if legends fails and the development and printing costs don't pay off then there marketing strategy for the Descent line has failed, and it is likely dead in the water with the company unwilling to take that risk again in the future for the line.. Which is kinda the whole point of the question. Anyway your stance isn't surprising I fully understand it, I'd just prefer to see them crowd fund than kill the line but with the very mixed responses here, I'm not sure that would be a viable option for them.

1 hour ago, rugal said:

ANA ?

Asmodee North America, what FFG became after the merge with Asmodee in... 2017?

39 minutes ago, crimsonsun said:

But surely if legends fails and the development and printing costs don't pay off then there marketing strategy for the Descent line has failed, and it is likely dead in the water with the company unwilling to take that risk again in the future for the line.. Which is kinda the whole point of the question. Anyway your stance isn't surprising I fully understand it, I'd just prefer to see them crowd fund than kill the line but with the very mixed responses here, I'm not sure that would be a viable option for them.

If Legends fails and the development/printing costs don't pay off, that will be a signal they've lost touch with a gamer base and should adapt their marketing strategy accordingly. Except for the price of the content and a few aesthetic decisions, Legends seems very well aimed at the group which has been consuming RtL (which by my understanding has been a gigantic driver of sales for D2e in the last few years). If you watched these forums when RtL was debuting, all anyone talked about was converting existing campaigns to solo/app compatibility and searching for ways to make Descent solo playable in general. Legends (to me) appears to take those prayers and answer them, though now most of the vocal commentary seems to be "app required? No thanks!"

It's neither here nor there from my perspective, as RtL (while a nicely designed product) and Legends by extension, completely miss what I personally find engaging about Descent, the 1 vs. many dynamic.

I started playing Descent in 2nd ed. And it became true love to me; me and my group of friends loved the game and spent a lot of hours playing this (i still play it), and i bought everything for 2nd ed, plus extra content sometimes from community. I was expecting even more expansions or more activity by the company.

But here it comes, i spent a lot of money at this loved game, but then they release SW Imperial Assault and then they killed Descent, then i saw the only interest was money and i felt "abandoned". (As can be understandable). I would have been very interested on buying this SW too but they launched it very early and at the moment i dont feel any mood on buying it.

So my feeling is, if Descent 3 comes, i would not buy it because of something similar could happen, and actually, 2nd Ed. could still be extended/improved with updates or expansions. The new descent they released? I can just copy the ideas and make them for Descent 2 (homemade campaigns or something). Also, all material from D2 would not work for D3 so it would feel like a waste of money, so no thanks.

If I can import my full 2ed collection and they improve some of the mechanucs as they did with Imperial Assault, probably yes.

Anyway, I am not a big fan of the crowfunding project because too often they are exploited by hoarders and if you miss to back a project therefore is almost impossible to get a full collection of a given game.

So either you go all in, or you stay out and you miss the chance for good.

No.

No, FFG's made too many weird decisions for me to trust their products sight unseen anymore.

But whether we'd support them is the wrong question. Most of us will keep playing 2e, it's whether the next generation of gamers would be willing.

If FFG crowdsources a real 3rd edition: YES!

In order for it to be real it would need to have 1 vs Many or at least team vs team. I'd even be happy if it excluded completely solo ("cooperative") mode