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Boris wrote:Captain Typo wrote:This would help bring the cost down, to help sustain it to a level of many V-sets being produced for a long time (Through good money times and bad money times). Seeing as how we have never had to ask for more than $50 for the printing of a set of cards, and usually asked for half that, I'm not sure which costs you would be referring to. Maybe you know something I don't. Well, it's not about the individual cost per person, it's about the total cost. We can ask for $35 per person and get the $3800 we need if 109 people donate. We get helped a lot by people who can donate more than the requested amount, but that's still a good bit of people. If we cut the cost down to say $3000, we can ask for $35 and only need 86 people. That's a pretty significant difference. The problem with cost that we'll eventually run into is that we just won't have enough people donating to support it, so it might be hard for us to get those 109 people to donate $35. Then we can either increase the requested donation, or lower the final cost so we only need 86 people. It's a reasonable solution to what could potentially be a problem in the future, even though we haven't really had to worry about it yet.
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Echo24 wrote:...... If we cut the cost down to say $3000, we can ask for $35 and only need 86 people. That's a pretty significant difference.
The problem with cost that we'll eventually run into is that we just won't have enough people donating to support it, so it might be hard for us to get those 109 people to donate $35. Then we can either increase the requested donation, or lower the final cost so we only need 86 people. It's a reasonable solution to what could potentially be a problem in the future, even though we haven't really had to worry about it yet. That is the cost I was referring to. Thank you Echo for clearing that up (that it is not a problem now, but an option for the future.) It would also be cheaper to do a reprint of much requested set (longing for V-set 1).
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So.
I was doing some thinking the other day (I tend to do that from time to time... but strangely not during SWM games...) and I thought about a possibility or option that could have some discussion within this Vset spacing issue.
What if: we had one 60-piece Vset a year which was released at Gencon, and during the year were three 10-card minisets released throughout the year (at three month intervals leading up to GenCon). That would look like this: a 10-character miniset in November, February, May and then the full set in August. The minisets would not be immediately printed, but would be available for download, but come time for the GenCon release, the sets would all be available then in hard-format.
This would mean 1 printing run of 90 cards a year (60 + 3 sets of 10, which is in multiples of 18) so only one funding drive and then most of the ditribution is covered by GenCon visitors. The minisets give the game a chance to be actively changing throughout the year, but asking people to print off 10 cards is not a huge ask, especially if they know they'll get them all in August. It's less of a drain on postage, less of a drain on designers! and still allows us to have things to change the game throughout the year, but still something to look forward too.
You could also have 1 60 card set and four mini-sets of 12 which would be 108 cards (multiple of 18) and release a miniset at GenCon too. Although I think concentrating on a fullset at Gencon is better in my oppinion.
Hmmm.
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Captain Typo wrote:Echo24 wrote:...... If we cut the cost down to say $3000, we can ask for $35 and only need 86 people. That's a pretty significant difference.
The problem with cost that we'll eventually run into is that we just won't have enough people donating to support it, so it might be hard for us to get those 109 people to donate $35. Then we can either increase the requested donation, or lower the final cost so we only need 86 people. It's a reasonable solution to what could potentially be a problem in the future, even though we haven't really had to worry about it yet. That is the cost I was referring to. I suspected this but wanted to make sure. Yes, you can reduce the total printing cost, but that also means fewer sets being printed and it's not a 1:1 ratio. What I mean is, and this is a hypothetical as I don't have anything to do with printing costs for these cards, you might get 500 sets for $2000 or 1000 sets for $3500. Couple that with your request for reprints of the first set which some people missed out on, and hopefully you see that reducing it by too much doesn't really reduce the cost as much as you would prefer.
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kezzamachine wrote:So.
I was doing some thinking the other day (I tend to do that from time to time... but strangely not during SWM games...) and I thought about a possibility or option that could have some discussion within this Vset spacing issue.
What if: we had one 60-piece Vset a year which was released at Gencon, and during the year were three 10-card minisets released throughout the year (at three month intervals leading up to GenCon). That would look like this: a 10-character miniset in November, February, May and then the full set in August. The minisets would not be immediately printed, but would be available for download, but come time for the GenCon release, the sets would all be available then in hard-format.
This would mean 1 printing run of 90 cards a year (60 + 3 sets of 10, which is in multiples of 18) so only one funding drive and then most of the ditribution is covered by GenCon visitors. The minisets give the game a chance to be actively changing throughout the year, but asking people to print off 10 cards is not a huge ask, especially if they know they'll get them all in August. It's less of a drain on postage, less of a drain on designers! and still allows us to have things to change the game throughout the year, but still something to look forward too.
You could also have 1 60 card set and four mini-sets of 12 which would be 108 cards (multiple of 18) and release a miniset at GenCon too. Although I think concentrating on a fullset at Gencon is better in my oppinion.
Hmmm. I'm keen to hear what y'all think of this idea. Any takers?
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kezzamachine wrote:
I'm keen to hear what y'all think of this idea. Any takers?
I think the 120+24 per year with 2 distributions is fine. I'd just go for more niche pieces than competitive pieces in the sets so the meta doesn't change as rapidly. Also, I'd argue to always go with the higher cost whenever there's any dispute between designers/playtesters/etc about what a figure's cost should be. It's worse for a piece to be undercosted and mess with the balance too much than for a piece to be overcosted and only used in fun squads. That's my suggestion to slow down the rate of change in the meta... not fewer pieces just more niche pieces. Along the same lines of what you said, though... I would like to see the mini-sets become legal before the larger sets do, if possible. (But then distribute physical cards for the mini-sets later, with the bigger release.) For example... if Jedi & Sith were already completed, spoil the whole 12 cards now (actually mid May would have been better). Make them legal for tournaments immediately. Then Scum & Villainy is released at GenCon. Obviously it's too late for that now, but for the next release the schedule would be... November 20: 12-card mini-set released (online only) February 20: 60-card Vset5 released (physical cards for the mini-set released together with Vset5) May 20: 12-card mini-set released (online only) August 20: 60-card Vset6 released (physical cards for the mini-set released together with Vset6) It would make a tighter deadline for the mini-sets, which may not be possible with playtesting needing to occur, but there's my idea.
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FlyingArrow wrote:kezzamachine wrote:
I'm keen to hear what y'all think of this idea. Any takers?
I think the 120+24 per year with 2 distributions is fine. I'd just go for more niche pieces than competitive pieces in the sets so the meta doesn't change as rapidly. Also, I'd argue to always go with the higher cost whenever there's any dispute between designers/playtesters/etc about what a figure's cost should be. It's worse for a piece to be undercosted and mess with the balance too much than for a piece to be overcosted and only used in fun squads. That's my suggestion to slow down the rate of change in the meta... not fewer pieces just more niche pieces. Along the same lines of what you said, though... I would like to see the mini-sets become legal before the larger sets do, if possible. (But then distribute physical cards for the mini-sets later, with the bigger release.) For example... if Jedi & Sith were already completed, spoil the whole 12 cards now (actually mid May would have been better). Make them legal for tournaments immediately. Then Scum & Villainy is released at GenCon. Obviously it's too late for that now, but for the next release the schedule would be... November 20: 12-card mini-set released (online only) February 20: 60-card Vset5 released (physical cards for the mini-set released together with Vset5) May 20: 12-card mini-set released (online only) August 20: 60-card Vset6 released (physical cards for the mini-set released together with Vset6) It would make a tighter deadline for the mini-sets, which may not be possible with playtesting needing to occur, but there's my idea. ^^ +1
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FlyingArrow wrote:
May 20: 12-card mini-set released (online only)
I don't like the idea of anything being released during the March-August window. It feels like the meta should stay the same during the Regionals and GenCon season, rather than change halfway through.
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