Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4577365" data-attributes="member: 2067">Let's recap.Later...Please don't accuse me of doing something I never did. Never once did I say WotC thinks that they are creating a collector's mindset or even mean to imply it.I'm pointing out that they are using a marketing device that has a potential backfire, nothing more.We want supplements, extra options, new feats, powers, and spells...4e gives us a never-ending Core, minis with powers attached to them, and a GSL designed to make you pay for a WotC-exclusive database. One does not necessarily follow from the others. 3e gave us 3 core books, a well-received system of minis, and a wide open OGL and, by all accounts, did very well. Wizards is creating a greater demand by tapping into the completist's mindset. They, quite rationally, want 4e to do even better!I mean, that's the point. That's smart business even. Creating greater demand for products that don't seem to be selling very well means they might sell better, and thus everyone makes more money! But it does have a potential breaking point. By trying desperately to create greater demand, you can, in fact, flip the switch and create much less demand. If I've gotta catch 'em all, I'll just play something less demanding.4e is quite obviously trying to drive up demand by increasing the perceived value of these books (calling them "core") and the minis (powers!) and the DDI (the only place you can get a full index of monsters!). It's a good move, but, for some consumers (perhaps many?) it can easily go too far. Once you know that it's impossible for you to complete your collection, you stop collecting all together. If I can never have all the pokemans, why would I even bother leaving Professor Oak's place with my Squirtle? Why pay $70 for an incomplete game that I'll never be able to complete? That's not a universal thought, but I'd argue that it's stronger than normal amongst gamers (who all own shelves of things they own for pure collecting joy that they never really use). It's a risky move. It can backfire if pushed too far. It's not even clear that 4e has pushed enough people too far, but it is, by direct anecdote, pushing some people too far. There were only ever 3 core books, and, it was implied, you would not NEED to own one supplement to use another. Everything would reference the core, and only the core. You could skip three years' worth of rules and buy a single book in year 4 and with that book and the 3 core books, you would have a complete game. Everything was optional.4e is trying to remove the "optional" idea in order to drive up sales.It's not a bad idea, but it can backfire (and it has in a few cases). d20srd.com DID make WotC money. The SRD that they gave away for free DID make WotC money. In a very indirect fashion, but it DID make WotC money.They want to make more, which is a pretty good idea, but in order to do that, they took away something, and gave us nothing. Now we're paying for something we used to get for free. That's a pitfall of this. The appearance is of someone giving us a ball to play with and then, once we've been having fun for a while, taking the ball back, showing us an EVEN BETTER ball, and saying "Give me a dollar if you want to rent it."Sure. But it also appeals to the completists because they can get everything without having to buy the books and the minis and the assorted accessories. Right. "More Core" just means that there should be more of those people and they will have to buy more things to be "complete," and hopefully before the edition ends. Some people viewed their collection as compelte at 3 books. 4e hates that idea.Nothing is wrong with WotC wanting to make people want minis more.But it can backfire when people who buy every splatbook learn that they won't have a complete collection without the minis, too, but can't afford that, and so stop buying minis, and even stop buying splatbooks, because if they're going to have to suffer with being incompolete, they don't need them, either. Hahahaha, I don't think the Coasties would support that view. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />You might be surprised about how far psychological addiction might go in explaining "Cat Piss Men," man.</blockquote>

Verification