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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 5824454" data-attributes="member: 3586">You've heard wrong. Quality has nothing to do with it.The reason I framed my Law as I did is because there are costs people don't think about for having a wide range of figures that randomization ameliorates. Just by virtue of being D&D figures, you want a large range of them. It's not like you can get away with just making orc figures. D&D designers have made a large stable of monsters for the D&D game since the very first version of the game; this is no different. When you try this with non-random figures, there are a *lot* of figures that don't sell that well; thus, the cost of the entire line goes up to make up for the ones that don't sell. By making them blind purchases, you sell wanted and unwanted figures alike. It's also great for the distributors and retailers, who don't have to deal with hundreds of SKUs.Of course, it all falls down if there aren't enough wanted figures in the packs. Towards the end of the DDM line, the people who had been buying for years no longer needed more versions of orcs, thus lowering the potential buying pool. Saturation is a major point with minis. It's very hard to compare to miniature lines made at different times; it's hard enough to compare to lines made at the same time. The basic unit pricing varies so much. Pathfinder minis are much, much, much more expensive than D&D minis... but it's 10 years later, they are probably of higher quality, they have much, much less savings from rare to common - as the quantity of each figure is pretty much the same - and the prices of everything in their production have risen incredibly. The cost of making plastic pre-painted minis today is far, far higher than it was when DDM started; more than the average inflation rate. D&D Minis became a much worse deal towards the end. Saturation was a big problem, but it was coupled with no longer being the great deal they originally were.The presumption in my Law is that the pieces are of the same quality. If D&D Minis had been done as a non-random set with the same range of minis, the costs of the figures would have been higher, because a lot more of them wouldn't have been sold. However, if only the popular minis were released in non-random fashion, they'd be cheaper because they'd all be sold too - and it's that model that Wizards are trying with their new line.The reason that the law isn't Quality, Non-Random or Cheap Prices is that the reason D&D Minis were random had nothing to do with the quality of the pieces, and everything to do with how to keep a very large range of minis at affordable prices.Cheers!</blockquote>

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