Quote from: Rithuan;1120330HI 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.

Unfortunately I don't have a quote. It was on their forums about 10 years go. As to your point. Yes, the bad dice tent to produce fewer failures than the good dice produce successes (except the Blue die which I mentioned was an anomaly*]. But the bad dice also generate about as much Threat as the good dice produce Advantage (some are better, some are worse but, overall, not by much). This makes a success with threat the most common result but ONLY if the number of dice being rolled are evenly split between good and bad dice.

The problem start to occur when the number of one type of dice outnumbers the other which happens when a player starts rolling 5 dice or, more commonly, in starfighter battles.


*If you swapped two Advantage results for two Success results on the Blue die, it would fix a lot of the issues.

Quote from: Shasarak;1120337It 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.

From talking with staff and players way back. Part of the problem was of course the Collectible aspect. Or more aptly, the problem of random buy, rarity, and DICE. Collectible minis games would face this as well.

The problem was over time you end up with potentially ALOT of commons. And unlike card games. Dice, especially the larger DS dice. Take up space. Potentially alot of space. Which can make transporting a set potentially harder too the more you get.

I only got partially into the game and ended up with a small bin of dice before trading some off. I met other players with LARGE bins of dice and thats when a player will start to realize theres a problem and increasingly likely to opt out.

But this is why theres usually a burnout in CxGs. Eventually a customer realizes what a money sink its become or is becoming and unlike most other games and RPGs. Tons of commons tend to be useless.

I ran into this when I was partners with BDP for Dragon Storm. I eventually got a complete collection of all the cards for both sets. But in the process ended up with alot of extras. Most of which I still have after other non-CCG related problems cause others to opt out.

FFG does not have that problem. So far none of their games are collectible. So they do not have that problem to deal with and their LCG system works very well.

Quote from: Omega;1120415FFG does not have that problem. So far none of their games are collectible. So they do not have that problem to deal with and their LCG system works very well.

FFG does have their own collectible dice game with boosters and everything called Star Wars Destiny. They recently cancelled it.
https://geekculture.co/star-wars-destiny-dice-game-canceled-by-fantasy-flight-games/

Back in 2000, there was a collectible game called Star Trek Red Alert. It was a token flipping over game (there were several back then if you believe it). The game failed and I had a handful of boxes of it. However, I was on their forums post-fail and Last Unicorn dumped a bunch of complete sets (a giant brick of cardboard) for like $20 each. I bought that an it ended up being a great game that I played a ton of despite me not being that big of a Trek fan. I wonder if SW Destiny would have survived had it been sold in a non-collectible format.

Quote from: Omega;1120415FFG does not have that problem. So far none of their games are collectible. So they do not have that problem to deal with and their LCG system works very well.

From my very limited experience with the FFG L5R CCG, although the set itself is not randomised, if you want a playset of a particular card then you would need to buy multiple packs which would lead to the accumulation of the aforementioned common cards.  And, of course, they release more and more sets leading to more and more cards.

However I kicked my CCG habit years ago so no personal experience on how much a fixed card set "solved" the accumulation problem anymore more or less then just throwing out the stuff that you dont use.

Quote from: Shasarak;1120425However I kicked my CCG habit years ago

Me too. I realized it drew upon addictive tendencies and stood away. Now I discourage this sort of behavior everywhere.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1120419FFG does have their own collectible dice game with boosters and everything called Star Wars Destiny. They recently cancelled it.
https://geekculture.co/star-wars-destiny-dice-game-canceled-by-fantasy-flight-games/

FFG made that? Did not know that. Thanks.

Quote from: Shasarak;1120425From my very limited experience with the FFG L5R CCG, although the set itself is not randomised, if you want a playset of a particular card then you would need to buy multiple packs which would lead to the accumulation of the aforementioned common cards.

And, of course, they release more and more sets leading to more and more cards.

1: That isnt a problem of the game, its a problem created by the player. We've seen this time and again over on BGG where people flip out over a standalone card game because they decide the NEEEEEEED!!!!! X more cards and that the company making the game is FORCING!!!! them to buy a second box. No really. I got thoroughly sick of these antics a decade ago.

2: But you dont have to buy the expansions and far as I've seen most tend to be fairly small? That was the whole point of the LCG model. Little expansions released on a fairly quick and regular basis.

x: Though not sure what those big box expansions are for say Arkham Horror?

Quote from: Omega;11204421: That isnt a problem of the game, its a problem created by the player. We've seen this time and again over on BGG where people flip out over a standalone card game because they decide the NEEEEEEED!!!!! X more cards and that the company making the game is FORCING!!!! them to buy a second box. No really. I got thoroughly sick of these antics a decade ago.

2: But you dont have to buy the expansions and far as I've seen most tend to be fairly small? That was the whole point of the LCG model. Little expansions released on a fairly quick and regular basis.

x: Though not sure what those big box expansions are for say Arkham Horror?

All problems boil down to problems with the Player one way or another.  For example one of my friends actually made money trading CCGs while another had to get at least four of every card.  And thats playing the exact same game.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120435Me too. I realized it drew upon addictive tendencies and stood away. Now I discourage this sort of behavior everywhere.

I wish I could say the same but for me it turns out that small children and CCGs just dont mix well and my wife said that we had to keep the kids.

Quote from: Omega;1120442x: Though not sure what those big box expansions are for say Arkham Horror?

The Arkham Horror LCG sells their scenarios in sets called "cycles". Each cycles has six scenarios, two come in the big box expansion, which include new characters, and the other four come in individual packs. (there are also standalone scenarios as well).

My issues with this method is 1) they release the packs too quickly and it's difficult to keep up, and 2) they always have cards in their big box expansions that are useless because they refer to cards that are only sold in the follow on scenario packs and those cards are, themselves, useless unless you have the big box expansion. #1 means that I skip entire cycles when I fall behind and #2 is annoying but tolerable. I just pull those cards out of my library to keep people I'm playing with from unknowingly adding it to their deck.

Speaking of AH:LCG, the one thing that has surprised me the most about this game is that they never used the engine on any other theme or license. A narrative card game version of Star Wars or Fallout would have been an auto buy for me. I like the game but don't really care that much for their pseudo-Lovecraft setting.

Quote from: Omega;1120442x: Though not sure what those big box expansions are for say Arkham Horror?

For the AH LCG?  There are 2 types of big boxes.  

The first is what they consider a deluxe expansion.  It's the start of a new campaign series.  The box has an intro scenario, the 1st two scenario decks for that campaign and some new cards for the players to use to customize their own decks.

The other type, usually titled "Return to X" is an expansion they put out after a campaign has concluded.  So Return to the Path to Carcosa came out after The Path to Carcosa completed it's run.  The box has new cards to add to change up the whole series of the scenario, giving it some extra replay.  The box is also big enough to put all the previous expansions for that campaign in, so it becomes a handy storage box for all the cards you just collected.

Ahhh, so standard FFG tactics of chopping a product up into segments such that you need all the parts to make a whole. They used to have a bad rep for that.

Quote from: Omega;1120636Ahhh, so standard FFG tactics of chopping a product up into segments such that you need all the parts to make a whole. They used to have a bad rep for that.

Why the past tense? They still have a well-deserved bad rep for it.

My experience with their LCGs is zero so did not know that they were still using that approach. The board games I've seen or have from them have so far been bog standard stand-alone games that might get an expansion. But you dont need the expansion to get the full experience as it were. Arkham Horror and Betrayal at house on the Hill are the two I am most familliar with and both of those have expansions, yes. But they are not required to play the core game. The rest? Dont know?

Don't bring up Betrayal at House on the Hill.  The core is pretty good and I am a proud owner of that.  The expansion can burn in hell as it got Antia and I think Zoey Quinn to involve in that.  From what I heard the expansion is a woke fest.