The problem with Faction Starters is that some will sell better than others, as the contents of each will be hard to make each faction box with equal appeal.

Some factions will sell better than others, like BR and DF, and others will not sell as well, like HL and SW(these represent the more popular/unpopular factions in my area at least). Plus now that there are 10(?) factions in the game, that would mean 10 different products. While not a bad idea, it is probably not viable for WK to do so.

Think of other WK games that are packaged like this(Crimson Skies, Shadowrun, Creepy Freals(sort of), and then think if this would be a good idea or not.

Ok some of these will be a game repsonse to what I think can really drive this game without retirement; other things will be answers to what I think are common problems and misconspetions brought up in game play that make retirement see at first as a positive.

1) Innovation.....the development of anything new would cause
me to buy boosters aka new set a new peice .....

A) For a Liao player getting a catapult would drive him to buy the next set. New mechs or different varients of mechs like a new Ryoken II or Vultrue uniques would drive me to buy. Infact new cool units in general would be nice. R&D must be lagging the eh. Personally I'd love to see an Anastasia Kerensky Ryoken II ....drool.

B) New SEs or the appearance of an SE more would prompt intrest.

C) a new faction..LIAO >>>JADE FALCON....

2) A stable game where the rules change rather then the ability to use my figs......aka GW has stopped destroying armies why doesn't WK not make this mistake that GW had already demostrated and corrected infront of their eyes.

3)Prize Support....aka the chance to compete for something ...and well cool prizes for all factions make people intrested in all kinds of ways(fluff, useability, sculpt, collectability...)

4) Retirement will not make the game more fair....can you really say Mason Dunne is unfair compaired to the massive amounts of charge mechs and the FREAKING Bounty Hunter. The new sets have far more cheese and have allowed far more of what is considered cheese (Tank drop .....allowed the DF schmit which did have drawbacks to have none via transport fling, DEATH FROM ABOVE LITTERAL CHOPPER HEAVY FORCES, Arnis and the charge monkeys.) All of the aformentioned were innovations from the latter sets.

5) Older players having better units....well some do....and some dont. Remember as vets they have paid more over a longer period of time so they will initially have a better stable to choose from. However, the strengths found in the newer sets greatly off set this and I've found a challenge in newer players smacking me with arrow 4s and the like when I simply dont like arty that much. I still win because of my experience not because of my peices.

6) Remembering the game is collectable it is what you pull....people who whine about Arnis and Arrow 4s either haven't pulled one so they cant directly counter it . It is sadly what you pull but, that is what we all chose to get into so if you dont have these units try and find things to counter them.

7) THE GOLDEN RULE OF THE BALLANCED ARMY. I cant understand the why people would ever wish to field the massed arty army or a fully infiltrated force or even an Arnis/ charge horde. The ballaced for will be able to parry and thus thwart such efforts. A decent well ballanced mech, elements like command, infantry support, Vtols, arty, and vehicles will allow "bend like a reed" (lol a DUNE quote)

A)Mechs like Targes, DF/SH Ullers, and for me a ROTS player Yuri Mashnovska and Mason Dunne( with new charge rule), and for newer units DECELIN DEVALIS are all great choices which give you loads of support and actually make it so you mech is not your only weapon.

B)My current force has 1Mech, 3 VTOLS, 5 Infantry, 1Vehicle(a transport), Arty(SW mortars) So when I play I have everything the game has to offer at my disposial and frankly this fexibility allowed me to beat an army with(STEFANI ELI, SS ARROW 4, AND SH ASIER AA, SS BALAC, 2 ORDINANCE TRANNIES, and a infantry screen of powered armor. Grant it ...a close match it was by my flexiblity and manuver warfare stuck it too him in the end.

It should be known that Daishi808s force of 3 SH ullers and an infantry screne of ATVs was utterly scary and due to the ullers fast move of 9(with infiltrate SE) and a shooting range of 14inches they were equally well balanced. And for those who may say well how did he get all the ullers........one he pulls alot of DFA an option all new players have to get the good choppers and he TRADED with me for the others ANOTHER OPTION I HAVE STATED is availible to the new guys.

8)TREATMENT OF THE NEW PLAYER. It is true the new guy will not have the best of the best units from the sets at first nor will he have the LEs(not that they are all that good). How should we help them overcome their problems.

A) TEACH THEM...sure a new guy will be beaten by a vet 9 times out of 10 the diffence is the nature of the veteran play. One of the most important things is that the veterans and the Battle Masters make an effort to teach these new guys tactics and the propper use of units and to tell them what units they should look into purchasing or keeping from their boxes. This act of kindness alone can turn a green newbie and forge him into veteran(plus he will help you teach the next guy)
EXAMPLE:
A good example is well our FENRIS hehehe; Daishi808 and I taught him the value of the I.C.E mech back in Dark Age play....he latched on t0 the BR construction mech mod and was turned from a SW newbie to the BR and LIAO loving nut case that he his today FEARED BY ALL NEW PLAYERS lol. NOW HE IS BETTER THAN I AM ANDHE IS A FREAKING BATTLE MASTER; HOW IRONIC. His little brother is better than he is though hehehe.

B) BE GIVING! If you have pulled a lot of uniques and units you dont use or want....... give them to someone who needs them. A new player will need things you may well consider basic. Ive seen a new guys eyes light up upon recieving a Joel Nuegyn HL Zeus...again something alot of us probably have had more than one of why keep them!

FRANKLY THIS LAST ONE IS A SPIRIT IN ALL THE GOOD PLAYERS AT THE HAWAII VENUES SO I HOPE THERE IS A LITTLE ALOHA UP THERE ON THE MAINLAND TOO. Warflails loyalist newbie give away program is a great example here on the forums
(no we are not giving away loyalist newbies.....we need them as cannon fodder against the Jade Falcons.....hey we gots to get them to use up there good roles somehow hehehe)

I hope this helped anybody understand the reasoning behind why this game doesn't need a retirement to continue being level and great.....and maybe it will help inspire a better spirit of play in others.

What could be done instead of set retirement?

I'm not 100% sure.

In my opinion something needed to be done to the organized play system to keep things going. What I would have done was changed organized play into two separate yet linked systems…..one the normal tournament play that we have today, the other a "casual" play , league style organized play (similar to the MtG Arena format).

Basically, I would have made the league play into the weekly event and reduce the tournament format to once a month, with special tournaments every other month (about 18 yearly tournaments).

League play would be a very friendly, casual style of play the structure would be set-up something along the lines of storyline events on even weeks, BM choice on odd weeks. The key is players can come and play as little as one match or 3 to 4 depending on how length of time the BM sets aside for the weekly events.

Players who participate would accumulate points based on either number of matches played or number of times in attendance. There would have to be a maximum number of points allow per week to keep players from jumping from venue to venue to accumulate points. Points would be kept for register players on the website once the BM enters in match results. Points could then be "spent" by players to get LE figures through an on-line redemption program. This would take some adjustments to the website and software WK has, but the potential benefit could should offset that cost. Alternatively, WK could set-up and e-Bay style auction (a fantasy football site called Fanball uses a system like this) where players bid with points accumulated on various LE figures, WK merchandise, etc…..

The benefit of this system over the current is that it still allows the "swag" to flow, but it flows to all players, regardless of skill level. One of the common complaints I've seen is that "the LEs always go to the same people". This allows for everyone who enjoys the game to have an equal chance to get "stuff". Depending on the point levels need to redeem, WK may even find this system more cost effective.

The tournament schedule would be a once a month event, with expanded prize support (maybe a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd with fellowship?). Every other month there would special tournament…Marquees, major storyline events, etc…. would fall under this category. Maybe points could also be earned for these events for redemptions.

I think changes like this would make organized play far more attractive to new players, while continuing to satisfy the current player basis.

With the possible exception of 1 or 2 posts (possible, mind you), no one has posted on-topic here.

The basic question was 'how can WK increase sales'? Set retirement is one solution. Many here don't like it, though. So, the question is how would you, as a business entity, have dealt with the need to make a profit (for the shareholders/owners)? To pay your costs? To pay your employees? To stay alive?

Keep in mind that power-creep is not what any of us want (although that would have the same effect as retirement).

Consider the fact that very many of us already have most all of the really prime units currently produced. What would motivate someone with all the good units out right now to buy more product? Certainly not units that do the same things their current units can.

Whether or not increased sales are needed is not the question - they've been losing $$$ for some time and will not survive if they continue to.

So, what's your answer?

Cmd.Sterling, your whole post apparently did not conform to the basics of this thread.

In fact, every one of your points are things that have already been dismissed, you know, power creep, new factions/SECs, and the like BECAUSE EVENTUALLY THEY WILL RUN OUT OF IDEAS/FACTIONS, and all you are doing is delaying the inevitable.

@Stone Mason

There isn't a good answer yet because for all the complaining, noone has a better idea than the one we are presented with currently

Just my opinions of course....

But new stuff should be what makes the consumer want to buy more toys.... New factions altogether, and perhaps they could be ones that are/were actually popular from the old BT universe? Rather than retiring and forcing obsolescence onto the existing pieces by fiat, perhaps adjusting the rules slightly to allow the Factions to be folded in and absorbed by their "parent" houses/whatever... IE: HL and ROTS are the same, SS and the new House Davion are the same... By same, I mean formations, etc... Alienating a sizable core of your consumer base doesn't seem like the best possible course of action, but then I'm an Engineer, not a salesman, so what do I know...

The suggestion that this allows the powerful "mistake" pieces of the past to be retired from organized play is "odd" since the most powerful and broken pieces are the ones in the newest set... If there is a problem with the pieces, ban them specifically, FAQ them, whatever...

So, what my suggestion boils down to is to stop playing with the splinter factions, bring on the real armies, but allow the splinters to integrate into the real forces... Just my opinion of course, but I'm just thinking this would allow the existing customers to "buy more stuff" and keep it interesting and exciting enough for new players to pick it up...

Itrain: I don't know if there are any better solutions. I'll be the first to admit that this initially pissed me off when it was first announced. I even got warning points over it. I do think that there will be a decent amount of people that leave this game, but some of them were on the way out anyway. All of these negative threads do serve a purpose. I think many people are just letting off steam and will calm down and eventually play the game again and proceed with complaining about other things like charge and artillery, just like old times. What I am saying is I don't like retirement and I think it could be a positive or negative thing for Wizkids at this point, but I understand it.

Here is the problem with that:

Sooner or later, they will run out of Ideas, Factions, Houses, Combinations of the same, SECs, or whatever and we will be back in the same boat as now.

And after all the houses are used up, then what? Again, the same thing happens.

I honestly believe that this change will make MW able to survive long term.

I'm not sure if there is a good answer either. The ultra-competitive will still go to eBay or some other after-market arena to flesh out their armies with the best pieces of the newest sets. Leaving most of Wizkids sales to the less competitive types who are most against set retirement. We shall see how this shakes out in the end.

Hmmm......I originally started looking at this from a "try to keep the game viable" standpoint. But you're right, this is a more global issue....how to keep a company viable.

Look at other companies and see what they do. Not just gaming companies, but benchmark the product cycles of other consumer products. Cars, TVs, Computers, DVDs, Clothings, etc.....anything that people buy. What do they do to increase sales???

Well, in a lot of cases, they bring out new product (in many cases making the old product "obsolete").

So, if I was in charge I'd look at everything I produce. Anything that was performing below financial expectations I'd stop producing. Anything that was doing OK, I'd label as maintain and devote a small set amount of resources for support. Then I'd concentrate the majority of my resources on new product.

As far as the business that I'd label as maintain, unless there was some serious potential for growth, I'd eventually plan on cancelling it.

So, from that view point....If I were WizKids I'd annouce the cancellation any new products or support of MechWarrior: Dark Age about 6 months after the next expansion (or whatever time period my marketing people said sales usually start to drop after a new expansion is released). I'd then annouce a brand new game titled MechWarrior : <Insert catchy new title here> and devote all my resources to it. The new game would have totally different mechanics that the old game and not be compatible. Heck, depending on what the finacial data said about the old MW, maybe I would just come up with a totally different game entirely.

And therein lies the problem with anyone coming up with a better idea. If you're in charge of a business you make decisions on products based on the dollars and cents involved. Nobody but a WizKids employee is going to know what the bottom line is with MW. Does it make money right now? How much? How does that compare with other products? Are sales on a downward or upward slope? What does the sales curve look like for all of the various expansions? These are the kind of questions that the rest of us can only guess at and make assumptions....and you know what they say about assumptions :)

So what you are in essence saying is that in spite of all of the background materiel ("fluff"), the large number of mechs, etc. that exist in this storyline (saying nothing of new designs) that eventually they will simply run out of ideas? But "retiring" sets/pieces and replacing them with "equivalents", even copies is not a dead end road under the same assumptions you use to say they'll run out of ideas? Seems like you have already come to the conclusion you want... Yes, there will likely come a point when "everything's been done", but it seems likely to happen later if you expand the scope a lot and bring in the full range of BT stuff out there... :) Just my opinions as always, I'm not a WK employee, just a very interested bystander/participant....

If set retirement is such a grand idea, how come there were so few (if any) calls for it prior to WKs' announcement? It is just a quick-fix due to a lack of corporate creativity and vision. Now, before you flame me for not directly answering your call for alternatives, I will point out that it isn't my job to do that, but an attempt would have been made had we been ASKED, which of course WK did not do. They ask our opinion about other things, so why not ask regarding something so important unless they KNEW they would get the negative reaction they are pretending not to hear or see?

I think set retirement is a good idea...

To make it work however, WK needs to increase the # of supported events with LE's per month = the number of weekends in that month. This will keep people out there every week buying boosters and competing for "shineys". The majority of these events should be rated & ranked HtH and/or Sealed events. Forcing venues to support WK events when WK is already making them pay for LE's with increased product cost does not make venues happy.

I also think that Storyline events should be "unrestricted events" because they don't count for rating and rankings but that they should still affect the universe. They should also be faction pure events and be a monthly mini-faction wars over planets or something. Each player representing their faction in the event.

With set rotation the major houses/clans should come into play make the current factions become sub-factions of those houses/clans for the purposes of unrestricted events. I also like that they will be able to add/change the SE's, faction abilities, as time goes on to keep the game fresh.

I also like the idea of faction pure STARTERS. This has worked VERY well for a few CCG's. If they made these cost $40 and included 1 random unique for the faction, 2 Mech, 5 Vehicle, and 12 Infantry I think this would go over VERY well to get people into the game... not being able to make a formation with a Starter and a Booster is VERY frustrating. Also, if WK continues to introduce new houses/factions to the game they will need to increase the size of the sets they produce. It looks as though they plan to release a new set every 8-9 months at present and I would be happy with a larger set size so long as each faction is equally supported in each set. I've got a longer period of time to find what I need in boosters so I don't mind a bigger set size. I'd cap expansions at 196 units (250 including LE's) and the base set at 300 with NO LE's (release older LE's as Uniques) released every 30 months.

I'm pretty much done with ideas... anyone else have any?

Yes, maybe 10 years from now, we may run out of ideas/factions. With 2 expansions per year, you could do one new faction and one new SE or unit type per year.

And don't forget new mechs. A few new sculps in each expansion will keep people buying. Does anybody have any data showing a drop in CA sales? Up until a week ago it was nigh on impossible to get CA boosters.

Keep organized play going an this game will continue down it merry way. They should have weekly events. More faction purity and more BM controlled options would keep things fresh.

Ten years should be more than enough time to roll out a MW 2.0 that woild be so good that nobody wants to go back to the dark age.

As for running out of ideas... I can see them running out of vehicle and infantry designs, but not Mechs. There were around 40-50 mech designs in each TRO on average, b/c some also contained vehicles and aerospace fighters... Star League, 3025-3050 (I'll count that as one due to the mainly upgrade nature of 3050), 3055, 3057, 3060, Project Phoenix... so that is 250 odd mechs, most of which Wizkids owns outright, excluding the Unseens.

If they shifted the game rules to make mechs more competive, dominant, choose your adjective, and then shifted the boosters to be a mech and randomly either a vehicle or a pair of infantry... at the same time, the number of mechs in a set would expand and the number of infantry and vehicles would shrink.

With the greater number of factions (see below) maybe shift to 5 mechs per sculpt, 2 green, 2 veteran and 1 elite.

This would be a change that most people would like in the rules, going by the number of pogwarrior, vtol warrior, mechs suck right now, etc threads...

It would lower the price of the boosters, which would in turn lower the price to the consumer, which might spur more sales.

Just an idea off the top of my head.

As for running out of factions... assuming that in the near future they replace the splinter factions with the "real" cbt factions, which I think is likely.

Liao
Jade Falcons
SS = Davion
DF = Kurita
SC= Nova Cats
SW = Wolves
HL and ROTS merge into a new Loyalist Faction
SH = Lyrans
Bannson's... merge with Liao? Not sure about this one...

Anyways, you get the idea. Even if all those were introduced/merged in the next base set, that still leaves:
Comstar,
WOB,
Hell's Horses (hope that didn't get censored, it is the official name, lol),
Sea Fox,
Wolves in Exile,
Marik,
Pirates/Periphery Faction,
Raven Alliance,
Ghost Bear Dominion

That is 9 off the top of my head that people would like to see... at one per expansion after the next base set, and two expansions a year, that still leaves us with enough for a full 4 years, plus the year in which Falcon's Prey and the next Base set come out...

IMHO, if they can't come up with more factions after 5 years of prep time, there isn't much hope for creativity in the game, retirement or not. Especially seeing the quality of creators/writers they have with Weisman, Stackepole and Coleman.

So I don't think the argument that they would run out of factions and units eventually is a truly valid argument.

Whether or not introducing more new factions and the older CBT factions, plus the shift to a more mech dominated game, is enough to generate more sales in sufficient numbers to keep the game viable... that is a better question, and one none of us can answer without seeing the financial figures on MW to date...

Note: While typing the last couple of paragraphs, I've already come up with more factions that I had earlier... a new faction led by Devlin stone, who returns like King Arthur in the time of the Inner Sphere's greatest need... introduce a homeworld clan like the Steel Vipers, or Coyotes. Clan Wolverine returns from wherever the hell they have been for last 300 years. A civil war in one of the great houses, and we get a splinter cell faction off House Davion, Kurita, etc (ie. the Ronin Wars for the Draconis Combine, a rebellion of the Skye March by Kelswa-Steiner, breaking the SH units free of the new Steiner faction after a few sets, etc...) A St. Ives Compact faction splits off the Liao main faction, etc... and my favorite idea, 3 to 4 years down the line, we get a new Star League or Federated Commonwealth rising from the ashes of the republic...