by bakija
ras2124 wrote:
If you are not arguing that Iello is doing what is best for the customer,I am sorry for the misunderstanding. There has been a lot of white knighting in this thread, but it seems we are in agreement that Iello is mostly just doing what is best for them.
I'm not making any claims that I know what Iello's intentions are. They are a business, and in the end, they need to do what they can do to stay afloat. You certainly seem to be attributing motives to them when you have no actual way of knowing their motives (i.e. you seem to indicate that they are not releasing those two characters as individual content just to stick it to the consumer and make a buck). I also don't actually know their motives, but I suspect that the reality is much more practical than you want to suggest (i.e. the ins and outs of game production and efficiency). As the gain from specifically *not* offering that material separately and hoping that more people will just re-buy the base game, just to get those two characters is probably pretty minimal.
However I think it is important to consider our different perspectives here. My argument is specifically regarding the position of 1st edition owners, and it seems that there are multiple 2nd edition owners like yourself and the previous poster, who think they know best how I should feel on the situation.
Well, you can feel however you want. I'm just suggesting that it is a little silly to be this bent out of shape over this, and that you might want to modulate your feelings with some perspective.
Yes. It would be nice to have All The Stuff. If I could pick up Kraken and Cyber Bunny for, like, 10 bucks, I'd certainly do so. 'Cause, much like you, I like having The Things. But, certainly for this game, 'cause of the way it plays, I don't *need* those components to play the game successfully. Even in so much as I need anything in regards to hobby games. Not having those two characters does not make the game not work. It does not put anyone playing the game at a disadvantage. The game is not one (like, say, a CCG) where *not* having a particular component is going to make you fight up hill against an opponent who has that particular component. All I'm losing by *not* having Cyber Bunny and Kraken is the good feeling of having All The Stuff. And the minor inconvenience of not having matching monsters to go with two small stacks of Power Up cards.
You, not having Cyber Kitty and Space Penguin? More or less the same. Would it be nice to have them? Sure. It would. But you aren't actually losing any functionality to the game by not having them.
I have played this game probably well over 100 times and have a owned it since the initial release. I have all the original expansions, not because I am a completionist, but because I like playing with them. In fact, I have always avoided content that can't be easily mixed in, such as promo characters with no powers, because I have no use for them. So for Iello to come out with a new edition and make the relatively small amount of new content prohibitably expensive to aquire for seemingly no reason, make me feel like they have no respect for the people that have been with this game since the beginning, who played it with literally dozens of new players, and who made it the best seller it is today.
I understand that you feel that way. But the reality is probably a lot closer to "This is the most efficient way to do this that makes doing what we are doing cost effective, and the loss to most people, even the most loyal, is pretty minimal" than them doing anything out of lack of respect or to squeeze extra money out of people. 'Cause, again, the actual extra money to be made like this? Pretty minimal, relative to just selling the base game in large numbers to people.
So while it may just seem like a couple of monsters to you, to me it is Iello making virtually no effort at all to show a little respect and gratitude to long time customers.
Sure. But they also need to exist. As a business. And it is very likely that issues of production/supply chain/distribution won out in this particular instance. And in the small number of situations where someone *really* wanted those two extra characters? They can figure something out.
Heck. I just checked. You can get 2nd Edition for, like, $30 on the internet. I'm sure that there is someone you know in the world who would be totally happy to get the whole 2nd Edition game, minus 2 of those characters, for 20 bucks. Or a person (niece of nephew?) who would love that game, even minus those two characters, as a gift that you were going to get a gift for anyway. The solution to your dilemma is an easy one.