by bakija
ras2124 wrote:
Please, don't even act like Iello has to do this to stay afloat. They are a major player in boardgames and churn out tons of products every year, not to mention have their products in real stores like Walmart and Target.
I'm not suggesting that them doing what you want is going to put them out of business. I'm suggesting that them doing what you want is probably not a cost effective option for a business that needs to go with the cost effective option.
Again, I suspect that you don't know the ins and outs of game manufacturing and production well enough to make claims like this. As noted, it may simply be a matter of production and distribution efficiency. You don't know.
A couple years back, I was making an incredibly similar argument in regards to a set of plastic tiny giant robot miniatures that came with the new (at the time) Battle Tech introductory box set--you got the intro boxed set for $50, and it came with 2 dozen plastic tiny, giant robot miniatures. I was someone who liked that sort of thing, but was a veteran player of the game and didn't want to shell out the $50 for what was, other than the miniatures, completely redundant. So I was all "Hey! Why not offer the set of miniatures separately from the box set? I don't wanna spend $50 for the new intro box. I just want the cool new tiny giant robot miniatures!"
In the end, the answer was simply that they had X sets of tiny giant robot miniatures, and every one that they sold that wasn't in an intro set box meant that was one less intro set box that they could sell (as the limit to the number of intro set boxes was, more than anything, the tiny, giant robot sets). As it was in their best interest to get as many intro set boxes into circulation as possible (as that meant potentially more people getting introduced to the game), they had no incentive to make the mini set available separately. Which, in the end, was completely understandable. Veteran players who really wanted those minis could still buy an intro box set. I ended up buying a box set, harvesting out the minis I wanted from the set, left some minis in the box, and then sold the remainder to a buddy of mine who was interested in the game but also didn't want to spend $50 on the box set. I got the 12 or so minis I wanted out of the deal; my buddy got most of the intro box set for, like, 25 bucks instead of 50. We both win.
Let's also not pretend that what I am asking for is not the norm.
What you are asking for is the thing you want and seem to think you deserve for your loyalty to a company. Without taking into account the reality that what you are asking for is probably less viable for the company than you want to consider.
I'm the last guy in the world to be all "Business needs to business!", but in this particular instance, you seem to be being blinded by "But I want!".
If it was completely trivial to do what you want them to do? Why wouldn't they do it? They have zero incentive not to do so, if what you want them to do is something that so many people want, and is as simple to have happen as you imagine. Heck--if it was simple for them to do, selling those two monsters for $15.00 is probably a significant profit margin for what would be in that package. And yet, they aren't doing that (or aren't yet; maybe they will in the future if the Cthulhu plan pans out for them successfully). If it was something that was both wanted and easy to do, they'd have no reason not to do so.
That they aren't doing so means one of two things:
A) They want to squeeze every last possible drop of money out of their loyal customers by suckering desperate gamer junkies into buying the 2nd Edition game, just to get those two specific monsters, that are completely unnecessary for game play, grafting them out of their 30 bucks, which literally *dozens* of people are clamoring to do.
B) It isn't really efficient or cost effective to do this. They probably produced X sets of 2nd Edition monster sets, and every time they pull out the pair of Cyber Kitty and Space Penguin for someone, that is one less actual game they can sell.
You really seem to want to imagine that it is "A". I'm willing to assume that it is probably actually some version of "B". As that generally what the answer is in situations like this.
Pretty much every company, even small ones on KS, try to provide upgrade kits between editions when possible. They do this because they have respect for their customers. Iello not doing this may not be purely out of greed or to shaft their customers, but it does show that they simply don't care.
What to you is "They simply don't care!" is probably, in reality "Well, it would be nice if we could do this, but it just isn't cost effective, and as the number of people who will actually be bothered by this is pretty small, it's something that we'll go with".