Quote from: Snowman0147;1120167No it is not.  My argument was that FFG put themselves in the position where it was not sustainable with crappy products and thus forced to lay off people.  The reason why the products are crappy is because and this had been stated by others THE COMPANY IGNORES ITS PLAY TESTERS.  Not to mention making games that are high entry, IP is owned by some one else, and require parts (cards, specialty dice, tokens, and etc.) that only FFG sells.  That is a disaster waiting to happen.

SHEER VOLUME OF PRODUCTS SOLD WAS NOT MY ARGUMENT.  I don't know how to make that any more loud and clear to you guys.  Hell this is why I say Pundit is successful because he made it so that it is almost impossible for him to fail.  The man thought ahead and remove as many things possible that could ruin him.  Kevin Crawsford is very successful in this regard as well and his kickstarter reputation is fantastic which shows how successful he is.

You don't know how more loud and clear you could make it, except NONE of those things were in your initial position which we all replied to?

Yeesh. You must be one of those guys who expects his significant other to read his mind all the time, because you suck at this communication thing. Just as a reminder, this is the last thing you said prior to this most recent post, "if they made good rpgs that people wanted to buy then there wouldn't be lay offs." Before that, you said "their games are crap because the market said so," which is also very consistent argument with the later one and also has none of this other stuff you're now pretending was your argument all along.

Neither argument you made earlier was about sustainability. Nothing about playtesters. Nothing about high entry games. Nothing about IP owned by others. Nothing about parts. You literally only talked about sheer volume of products sold, and now you're denying you were arguing that. Well that's nice, but you needed to actually communicate those other thoughts rather than expect us to read into a single sentence of "if they made good rpgs that people wanted to buy then there wouldn't be lay offs," all the rest of that.

Quote from: Mistwell;1120189You don't know how more loud and clear you could make it, except NONE of those things were in your initial position which we all replied to?

Quite right; we're not arguing with his later points--hell, I even helped to make one of them with him--but the initial idea why FFG's games are/were crap just wasn't supported.

Quote from: Omega;1120177Um... you havent bought many board games have you? News flash. 90% of all board games, even from the same company, tend to be different every game unless its an expansion for an existing game.  Rare are the ones that can be used for other play like RPGs and such. "Diorama" is never a factor. These are just pawns with glitz.

There's no reason to be snide with me. Of course I've bought my share of boardgames. But back then there were either far less pieces or relatively reusable pieces. Dice were often interchangeable, and pawns/counters were often more abstract than specific representational. So a Parcheesi piece or Sorry pawn were not so specific as to be unusable elsewhere. And those games that were elaborate often were chit-based and had spare blanks on the sprues.

Nowadays I have played many boardgames, but buy next to none. They are larger, take more space, more setup, and have often less play return -- especially outside of the game. (And don't get me started on the "[Boardgame] Legacy" crappy trend... :mad:) It seems more trend hype than playtested longevity. It looks like a boom-bust cycle from the outside.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1120207It looks like a boom-bust cycle from the outside.

I was at a boardgame design meetup in early January and the "boom-bust cycle" was a major discussion.

The consensus was the boom will continue, but agreed even a small recession will cause massive market upheaval. The biggest discussion was how Asmodee has gone from dominant to scary dominant. There was no consensus about what that's going to mean for the rest of the market or Kickstarter.

Quote from: Mistwell;1120189You don't know how more loud and clear you could make it, except NONE of those things were in your initial position which we all replied to?

Yeesh. You must be one of those guys who expects his significant other to read his mind all the time, because you suck at this communication thing. Just as a reminder, this is the last thing you said prior to this most recent post, "if they made good rpgs that people wanted to buy then there wouldn't be lay offs." Before that, you said "their games are crap because the market said so," which is also very consistent argument with the later one and also has none of this other stuff you're now pretending was your argument all along.

Neither argument you made earlier was about sustainability. Nothing about playtesters. Nothing about high entry games. Nothing about IP owned by others. Nothing about parts. You literally only talked about sheer volume of products sold, and now you're denying you were arguing that. Well that's nice, but you needed to actually communicate those other thoughts rather than expect us to read into a single sentence of "if they made good rpgs that people wanted to buy then there wouldn't be lay offs," all the rest of that.

You know your right.  The market said your game is shit wasn't a good way to explain it because it really didn't hammer the point home.  My bad.

Still my other points are actually in the right though.  How in the hell can you sustain a business if you keep buying licences to IPs that you don't own thus you don't control?  With Games Workshop burning FFG you would think that FFG would wise up to that, but they didn't.  Hell I bet they thought they can sell Star Wars for possibly a decade, but then Disney had to fuck it up with the sequel movies.  Which hey FFG your in good company cause Toys R Us got fucked over too.  Seriously they need to choke Bob Igor for that shit because he allowed it to happen.  Man should had fired Kathleen and fix Lucasfilms.  Man all those poor workers.  They did not deserve to lose their jobs.  

For that matter how can you expect to have a lot of customers to play a tabletop rpg with specialty dice that they can only get from you?  They did that with Warhammer Fantasy 3rd edition and it bombed.  It should had been a warning sign to them that they need to stop it with the junk they keep adding to their games because it is not sustainable.  The second edition of Warhammer Fantasy second edition continues to be the bread winner for Warhammer Fantasy during that time.  They tried to make drastic changes for Dark Heresy 2nd edition and it failed.  I only assume that Star Wars was so successful was simply because it was Star Wars.  I think they stop making books for LotFR and they only made the core system book.  Specialty dice is just a road map to failure.

Then there is the whole not listening to play testers which I forgot about.  So who ever brought it up with the Star Wars play test thank you.  I mean it is amazing how many red flags were waved at FFG, but they refuse to listen.

So here is my new argument.  FFG failed the tabletop rpg because who ever was head in that department was too stupid to run his job right.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1120258I think they stop making books for LotFR and they only made the core system book.  

Legend of the Five Rings currently has a beginner's box, the core book, a setting book, a court politics book, a Shadowlands book, 2 adventures and a GM's kit.  

There is a 3rd adventure and a ronin + lands beyond Rokugan book still due out early this year.

The adventures are pretty nice.  They have NPC tokens, double sided maps and act as mini-setting guides.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1119265Why the joy at their failure? Is this one of those "They played games the wrong way!" things?

Anything not done his way is wrong. This isn't news.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1120258You know your right.  The market said your game is shit wasn't a good way to explain it because it really didn't hammer the point home.  My bad.

Huh well this is rare on the net but always apreciated.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1120258Specialty dice is just a road map to failure...

Then there is the whole not listening to play testers which I forgot about.  So who ever brought it up with the Star Wars play test thank you.  I mean it is amazing how many red flags were waved at FFG, but they refuse to listen.

So here is my new argument.  FFG failed the tabletop rpg because who ever was head in that department was too stupid to run his job right.

...and thus, did TSR learn that us gamers and gamemasters had ZERO interest in Dragon Dice. I get it though. The designers wanted to include some new tools to work with the new game mechanics. Trouble is, the players and GMs want the rules to be the transparent part of the game, instead the rules intrude themselves and break the immersion. Plus, there is just that much more to learn, in order to play.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1120270...and thus, did TSR learn that us gamers and gamemasters had ZERO interest in Dragon Dice.

Actually Dragon Dice sold pretty well. It was the CCG, or in this case CDG, element that helped kill it along with TSR producing far more of it than the market could handle. The game is actually still chugging along after a new company acquired the game and the molds. They just recently started or finished another KS campaign.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1120258They did that with Warhammer Fantasy 3rd edition and it bombed.  It should had been a warning sign to them that they need to stop it with the junk they keep adding to their games because it is not sustainable.

I see FFG's SW RPGs as "learning the lessons" from WFRP 3e. They dropped all the tokens, cards, gameboards, etc All they were left with were the special dice.

I still think a custom dice game could work as long as the dice themselves actually speed up play. I found the dice mechanics in Imperial Assault to be far better than the ones from the RPG simply because they made combat faster and it was more logically designed. For example, in Imperial Assault, you have separate armor dice and dodge dice for defense that each had strengths and weaknesses. In the RPG, you had one die (Setback) to add for any sort of hindrance so all you could adjust was the number. And because of the way the die was laid out, it actually didn't work very well to stop a player from succeeding, as it only gave out 1 Fail per three dice rolled on average.

I also don't think that historic sales for these RPGs was what caused the department to be shut down. You had several factors:
1) the disappointing sales and reception of X-Wing 2e reducing their big cash cow.
2) several high profile board game failures (Arkham Horror 3e, Fallout, and Middle Earth Journeys) which received low reviews and excitement.
3) it doesn't appear that there is anything major in the pipeline for their RPG crew. The last major SW RPG release was 2015.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1120299I see FFG's SW RPGs as "learning the lessons" from WFRP 3e. They dropped all the tokens, cards, gameboards, etc All they were left with were the special dice.

I still think a custom dice game could work as long as the dice themselves actually speed up play. I found the dice mechanics in Imperial Assault to be far better than the ones from the RPG simply because they made combat faster and it was more logically designed. For example, in Imperial Assault, you have separate armor dice and dodge dice for defense that each had strengths and weaknesses. In the RPG, you had one die (Setback) to add for any sort of hindrance so all you could adjust was the number. And because of the way the die was laid out, it actually didn't work very well to stop a player from succeeding, as it only gave out 1 Fail per three dice rolled on average.

I also don't think that historic sales for these RPGs was what caused the department to be shut down. You had several factors:
1) the disappointing sales and reception of X-Wing 2e reducing their big cash cow.
2) several high profile board game failures (Arkham Horror 3e, Fallout, and Middle Earth Journeys) which received low reviews and excitement.
3) it doesn't appear that there is anything major in the pipeline for their RPG crew. The last major SW RPG release was 2015.

Many of the RPG players were very excited for the two Clone Wars supplements that came out early last year. Sure, it's not another Core Rulebook, but they've already sold three of those.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1120258You know your right.  The market said your game is shit wasn't a good way to explain it because it really didn't hammer the point home.  My bad.

Thank you for saying that. I appreciate that you are a man of principles. Which is rare on the Internet. So pat yourself on the back today.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1120025The designers stated that they never did any numerical analysis of their dice, they just make sure they "felt right". Which was obvious the first time someone actually did it.

Hi. Do you have a link for that statement? I remember reading in a blog that the skills/ability tend to create "success", and the difficulty tends to generate "threats", which I found an exciting way to set the tone of the game.

Anyway. I just wanted to say I love this game.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1120270...and thus, did TSR learn that us gamers and gamemasters had ZERO interest in Dragon Dice. I get it though. The designers wanted to include some new tools to work with the new game mechanics. Trouble is, the players and GMs want the rules to be the transparent part of the game, instead the rules intrude themselves and break the immersion. Plus, there is just that much more to learn, in order to play.

It was not so much that Dragon Dice were bad.  It was that buying a rush order of a million Dragon Dice air freighted to the US was bad.  Really really bad.