DaveMage
Slumbering in Tsar
I'm thinking cheaper labor might have something to do with it....
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WotC changes how D&D mini's are going to be sold.
- Thread starter darjr
- Start date
I'm thinking cheaper labor might have something to do with it....
Ogrork the Mighty
Explorer
It's all about labour costs. You can pay someone in China a couple bucks (if that) a day vs. 10 times that amount in North America. Plus, painting minis is labour intensive so labour costs probably represent a higher than average cost.
When you're shipping tens of thousands of units at a time, the shipping costs are acceptable.
Bottom line? It's just not economical to make them in North America. Nor should North Americans want to be employed performing highly unskilled labour. Better to train up to be skilled labour at high(er) paying jobs.
Saving the DDM Skirmish Game
Guilds, donations, player tracking and rankings, tournament play including championships, it's all there.
Several of the people are themselves freelancers working on the restatting of the cards from Harbinger forward, so, they have at least a little bit of inside access.
Eventually, I can see WotC giving just enough permission for an official (not WotC official, but official nonetheless) guild to have rights to produce skirmish stats for the miniatures that will be released with the new packaging. Even Limited play may survive.
A tough bunch, those skirmishers.
Dave
I don't think it is. There's quite a bit of fight left in the DDM players. On Hordelings, Maxminis, and the WotC forums you'll find quite a robust discussion of how the skirmishers intend to reincarnate the game.
Guilds, donations, player tracking and rankings, tournament play including championships, it's all there.
Several of the people are themselves freelancers working on the restatting of the cards from Harbinger forward, so, they have at least a little bit of inside access.
Eventually, I can see WotC giving just enough permission for an official (not WotC official, but official nonetheless) guild to have rights to produce skirmish stats for the miniatures that will be released with the new packaging. Even Limited play may survive.
A tough bunch, those skirmishers.
Dave
Ogrork the Mighty
Explorer
This is interesting. Tell us more...
Henry
Autoexreginated
Just a minute of googling brought me this...
Shapeways: 3D Printing for the Masses, Contest at BlenderNation
Researchers have been playing with this for upwards of 10 or 12 years now, and cost and use have been prohibiting factors, but the idea that you can have a local manufacutring facility of only a couple thousand square feet or less, spread all across the world, producing specialty widgets that people pay good money to have shipped to them right now, like plastic machine parts or such, is a dream a lot of people have been pursuing. Ultimate dream: take a CAD computer, a printer, and a 50-gallon drum of "liquid-to-solid magic" plastic, and BAM! you've got a machine shop.
Fifth Element
Legend
Getting a bit close to politics here. Such discussions tend to get into politics even if they start out as economics.That's just disgusting!
Leatherhead
Possibly a Idiot.
Well this thread has gone places.
I will say that focusing on getting pc characters out there is a step in the right direction. In my experience, it really helps to draw people in when you can give them mini of their character that more or less resembles their character. However, 18 is kind of a small number to start out with considering all the different race class combinations. At the minimum, I still want to get at least 8 minis of each race in the phbs; A male and female mini of a heavy armor melee, light armor melee, caster, and ranged weapon user. I figure those can more or less cover every class I currently know about, but that number might go up if WotC starts to push a bunch of unarmored classes or one of the new power sources has a specific trait not covered in those generalizations.
I have a small collection of the more common humanoids (humans, elves, and dwarves) I can draw from. In a pinch, some elves work for eladrin and half-elves, a few humans could work for half-elves as well. So I am just missing a bunch of female characters, halflings, and the newer races at this point.
I will say that focusing on getting pc characters out there is a step in the right direction. In my experience, it really helps to draw people in when you can give them mini of their character that more or less resembles their character. However, 18 is kind of a small number to start out with considering all the different race class combinations. At the minimum, I still want to get at least 8 minis of each race in the phbs; A male and female mini of a heavy armor melee, light armor melee, caster, and ranged weapon user. I figure those can more or less cover every class I currently know about, but that number might go up if WotC starts to push a bunch of unarmored classes or one of the new power sources has a specific trait not covered in those generalizations.
I have a small collection of the more common humanoids (humans, elves, and dwarves) I can draw from. In a pinch, some elves work for eladrin and half-elves, a few humans could work for half-elves as well. So I am just missing a bunch of female characters, halflings, and the newer races at this point.
darjr
I crit!
3D color printing.
Wikipedia's article has more info.
I've heard that there is a store in Akibara that will do 3D printing on demand. Large and crude, good for nothing other than a novelty, not to mention D&D mini's. But it's another start.
Color 3D printing is a factor in some of the technologies.
I think the demand for this will rise and make, first industrial, then at home, affordable 3D color printing technologies good enough for D&D mini's, inevitable.
Wikipedia's article has more info.
I've heard that there is a store in Akibara that will do 3D printing on demand. Large and crude, good for nothing other than a novelty, not to mention D&D mini's. But it's another start.
Color 3D printing is a factor in some of the technologies.
I think the demand for this will rise and make, first industrial, then at home, affordable 3D color printing technologies good enough for D&D mini's, inevitable.
Lonely Tylenol
First Post
I like everything about this except the price. I know why it's increasing, but we'll see if they can retain me as a customer. The key factor is, I think, whether the minis are useful enough to warrant purchasing. I.e. no weird ones that never see play.
I've never played the Minis game, never used Minis and don't even play 4th Edition, but this change does appeal to me. While the power cards and dungeon delve stats would be useless, a big mass of monsters are nice. I just hope they box them by monster type, so we get a box of orcs, a box of goblins, a box of generic human thugs etc.
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LightPhoenix
First Post
Wow, I didn't think I'd have anything to contribute to this thread!
While I don't work with polymers directly, several people in my (academic) department do, and we actually have a pretty famous polymer guy on staff. One of the things that is being looked into is 3D printing, and I've had opportunity to talk with a lot of researchers on the topic.
3D Printing is pretty easy to buy into - the positioning systems are relatively inexpensive, even for high-"resolution" ones. Honestly, I don't think you'd need quite the same resolution on a mini as you would for some of the aspects they're being utilized for.
The biggest hurdle for 3D printing would be the sheer numbers of inputs you would have. I'm thinking it would probably be easier to do one nozzle per color. Computers can handle multiple inputs pretty easily, but the increased number of inputs becomes a bear to manage; especially on the supply line. Most stuff I've heard about or read only uses a couple of inputs.
On the other hand, is this really economically feasible? My gut instinct is to say not particularly. It's much faster to injection mold miniatures in a base color, and have them painted by hand factory-style. 3D-printing is pretty slow, relative to injection molding. You can't (that I know of) simply paint with 3D-printing; the process requires it to be built up in layers.
I think 3D-printing, for the time being, would just raise prices.
While I don't work with polymers directly, several people in my (academic) department do, and we actually have a pretty famous polymer guy on staff. One of the things that is being looked into is 3D printing, and I've had opportunity to talk with a lot of researchers on the topic.
3D Printing is pretty easy to buy into - the positioning systems are relatively inexpensive, even for high-"resolution" ones. Honestly, I don't think you'd need quite the same resolution on a mini as you would for some of the aspects they're being utilized for.
The biggest hurdle for 3D printing would be the sheer numbers of inputs you would have. I'm thinking it would probably be easier to do one nozzle per color. Computers can handle multiple inputs pretty easily, but the increased number of inputs becomes a bear to manage; especially on the supply line. Most stuff I've heard about or read only uses a couple of inputs.
On the other hand, is this really economically feasible? My gut instinct is to say not particularly. It's much faster to injection mold miniatures in a base color, and have them painted by hand factory-style. 3D-printing is pretty slow, relative to injection molding. You can't (that I know of) simply paint with 3D-printing; the process requires it to be built up in layers.
I think 3D-printing, for the time being, would just raise prices.
darjr
I crit!
Well yea, I just don't think it's in the flying car realm, and thanks for that.
I'm not sure the price is that big a deal or me. Sure I wish they were cheaper, but I think I'd want higher quality for my buck at this point. And something more focused for my use, the rpg.
SavageRobby
First Post
Well, this is the nail in the coffin for me, not that I was all that far away anyways. The paint job quality has steadily retarded the last two years (Oh joy - new promises of increased QC? Been there, done that.), the recent selection has been questionable, the prices keep going up as the quality goes down, and I despise the folks running the (dis)organized play. The last set was the first one I didn't collect at least two full sets of (no full sets, in fact), and I don't think I could name a single mini in the upcoming set, and haven't looked for any spoilers for it.
So, what are we getting now? Higher cost per mini for ... what exactly? Most folks could already get any mini easily enough from secondary sources. Increased quality? Well, I'll believe that when I see it (having seen similar previous claims).
RIP, DDM. It was a ton of fun, and a great ride ... for a little while.
So, what are we getting now? Higher cost per mini for ... what exactly? Most folks could already get any mini easily enough from secondary sources. Increased quality? Well, I'll believe that when I see it (having seen similar previous claims).
RIP, DDM. It was a ton of fun, and a great ride ... for a little while.
CharlesRyan
Adventurer
A lot of people are unhappy about the price increase, but I wonder if they're really paying attention to what things cost these days.
I generally use prepainted plastic minis (mostly D&D minis), but I paint metal minis as needed for specific PCs, NPCs, and monsters for which I want something special or can't get what I need from DDM.
This year I took a shopping list of half a dozen or so items to Gen Con. Most decent-quality, unpainted metal minis cost me at least $5 each; some were $10 or even more. Unpainted. Single minis.
Prices go up. Nothing costs the same as it did five or ten years ago. These new DDM prices may be more per mini (I suspect they're actually a better deal for most of us, on the basis of how much we're paying per mini that we actually want, but that's a separate issue), but they're still a pretty good deal in the grand scheme of minis pricing.
I generally use prepainted plastic minis (mostly D&D minis), but I paint metal minis as needed for specific PCs, NPCs, and monsters for which I want something special or can't get what I need from DDM.
This year I took a shopping list of half a dozen or so items to Gen Con. Most decent-quality, unpainted metal minis cost me at least $5 each; some were $10 or even more. Unpainted. Single minis.
Prices go up. Nothing costs the same as it did five or ten years ago. These new DDM prices may be more per mini (I suspect they're actually a better deal for most of us, on the basis of how much we're paying per mini that we actually want, but that's a separate issue), but they're still a pretty good deal in the grand scheme of minis pricing.
Nebulous
Legend
I buy just from the secondary market after being disappointed several times by the random case approach (i do not need four fiendish huge spiders). I'm wondering if the higher price but significantly fewer minis per set will mean that i end up paying about the same thing when buying in bulk?
mac1504
Explorer
Agreed. The cost of the lead free alloys that are used by most metal-mini manufacturing companies has been steadily going up in the last few years. It's obviously a concern when companies like Reaper are going back to lead-based pewters (P-65 line), which will lower their costs but there's the obvious health concerns with doing that.
El Mahdi
Muad'Dib of the Anauroch
Maybe they are paying attention to the prices of everything else and coming to the conclusion that it is stupid and greedy for all parties, and not just WotC in regards to minis, but gas prices, nilk prices, etc while rich people just got 700 billion dollars in order to keep their businesses alive and these people keep making millions per year while the average American cannot afford to live. So having something to give a little bit of enjoyment in a
'ed up economy jump in price to be unattainable and the the consumer be blamed for not buying it as the reason for changes and price increases by companies that don't realize how bad off the majority of Americans are is like spitting in someone's face.But it is ok for those people making 6 digit salaries to complain their new gas guzzling sports car substitue for genitalia size costs half a yearly salary, while most people can't even afford gas to drive to work in a much more economical form of transportation.
