211–220 of 387 posts
Layoffs during periods of strong performance really raise an eyebrow to me. You should have to prove some economic need to make those kind of layoffs similarly how you have to prove economic need for work visas.
I really miss 2016 MtG. I remember when full art lands and full art promos were RARE and with money for no reason other than their collectability. I really liked when cards were rare because of the fact that they were good and uncommon and maybe because they were the same as the regular card but foil, not because they were arbitrarily a different type of shiny, or like when that one card from Kamigawa had a different…
My theory is that all cards will eventually be under $10, because cards like Mana Crypt are opportunities for WoTC to make money via reprints. I’ve only been playing/buying since March, but I’ve seen so many cards dropping dramatically in price, much more often than seeing a card shoot up in price. Reprints help drive sales and justify the higher prices for booster packs. Cutting staff implies that, perhaps, they ant…
I don’t think it’s possible to determine if a decision like this is a good one without working at the company. News articles like this are useless.
I found out they fired a community manager... and I had no idea who that person was without a bunch of googling, which tells you a bit about how effective that spending was for wotc.
Not to say that I think wotc corporate is at all infallible, they are clearly not very good at doing anything besides designing the cards themselves, and even then, they have largely inherited a very good game rather than really doing anything amazing.
Wotc could really use a shake up that raises the standards of what they produce to the level of eg riot games, but that's unlikely to happen any time soon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The combat system is pretty piss-poor, too - to the point where many people have released their own, better, rulesets for combat to address these problems.
Spelljammer combat? You have any links to that my wife is running a Spelljammer campaign right now and those might be useful to her. Over all yes the whole thing came across as very weak and half hearted but of course it's freaking Spelljamming so it still sold very well despite being a weak product.
(It's pay what you want, so you can pay zero if you want to try it out.)
This was written by a DM friend of mine who also runs an excellent podcast, if y'all are into that :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s only two camps, investors and gamers. I think that anyone who wants to “have cards that have relative value” are investors, whether they realize it or not. Its one thing to collect because you like something inherent about the cards themselves (I recall a recent Reddit post where the user was trying to collect every single Magic card that depicted an owl in any way). But if your concern is about the monetary…
> There’s only two camps, investors and gamers. It's not that black and white. I used to play the game in the mid nineties. The most expensive card I bought back then I paid the equivalent of 5 EUR (the Euro didn't even exist yet) because I needed it for a deck but that card came out before I started playing. I'm not an investor in MtG cards. But my collection went up in value. Nothing crazy (I don't have any of the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I’d like to see some legislation that significantly penalizes companies engaging in layoffs. They should be a last resort, not a well-worn tool. Be careful, such legislation might reduce layoffs, but might make other aspects of the labor market worse. For instance, in some European countries where layoffs are hard to pull off, companies are very adverse to hiring anyone, lest they hire a dud that they have to keep o…
It's not like it's easy to get a decently paying job to begin with in the States. Making the interview process less frequent or more annoying falls of deaf ears when it can already be 5-7 interview stages and 2-3 months before you actually get to offer stages. >Or they only hire them for fixed term contracts, so that if the economic winds change they're not stuck with a long term liability. Games industry in a nutshe…
What's your argument? That because it's hard to find jobs now, it can't possibly be worse? It certainly can. See US unemployment rate[1] vs spain[2]'s.
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate
[2] https://tradingeconomics.com/spain/unemployment-rate
>Sounds like you can only go up, since the industry would only do contract gigs if they can get away with it.
Not hiring and/or moving to another country is also an option, as shown above.
>- in general, encourage more apprenticeships if you want to train unproven talent (and not leave it to a contractor). Don't know why these died down if companies are going to turn aroind and complain that new grads don't have the skills.
Because you train up the employee, and then they bolt after they finished training and get enough experience, which means all the resource you poured into training goes up in smoke.
This is the same Hasbro that tried to retroactively close off the D&D Open Game License (and thus the third party ecosystem). It was a massive betrayal that caused a ton of pushback: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/jan/12/dungeons-and-d... They also sell so many overpriced kits with not much going on in them (just a few pieces of paper, not enough dice, sub par instructions ). Or really expensive character toy…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was 4 really worse than 5? Everyone I've heard speak on it is pretty hesitant to say 5 is better, and that a lot of of great design choices (martial classes not being completely outclassed, less frustrating saving throws, rule clarity, better handling of numbers on enemies, better rest mechanics, etc.) were thrown out in 5 because 4 caught so much shit for being "not 3.5".
> Was 4 really worse than 5? They're just very different. 4 is as much a tactics game as an RPG.
All D&D versions seem pretty great. I've played the 2.5e CRPGs (fun!), classic Pathfinder (basically 3.5+ - also fun!), 4e RPG, miniatures game, boardgames (all definitely fun!), and lots of 5e (also very fun!) The classic rulebooks are baroque, fascinating, and immensely charming. The settings (Forgotten Realms etc.) are brilliant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It may be "free money" as you frame it. But a cash stream that provides n dollars per year forever can be valued in today's dollars, assuming a discount rate of d, at n / (1-d). So it's reasonable to prefer cash now to revenue forever, at that exchange rate, depending on your corporate interests. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/present-value-annuity.a...
This strikes me as a shortsighted, risky, and frankly unsustainable attitude for a company. It's no surprise they're struggling.
For assets line like IP you have to factor in how risky the returns are, how much investment you'd have to make to see them (e.g. making a movie), and overall strategy (do we want to be in that line of business).
All this to say - if you have IP that pays 10 million a year, you can value future returns on that IP in today's dollars. If someone offers you more than that to buy it, you should take the deal; you come out ahead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
OMG they rereleased spelljammer? Brb, gotta go buy some DND books. Which is to say, I am clearly part of the problem here.
Oh man it was super-disappointing and the end of my willingness to buy WoTC 5E. You'd be better off with the originals from DriveThru.