OBT Forum

You can jump ahead to the last five minutes. It simply took a minute or two before I could get the slider to move, due to buffering. Let it play, then you can move it.

...Got it, thanks.  I thought I could just jump ahead with it in pause.


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Hmm.

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Big difference between Cent13's blog posts and your 'Anonymous' comment - I think I'll simply disagree with you on most of your conclusions, and not poop on your baby, either, eh?

That said, frankly, this thread isn't going anywhere useful.

The decline seems pretty simple to explain. It's an aging game line that hasn't worked as hard to keep pulling in the younger market, and a game line that suffers from a great deal of bloat. Sure, recent attempts have been made at delivering faster resolution mechanics (Quick Strike) and limited numbers of units used (Starterbooks and boxed sets). But those are only relatively recent. It also doesn't have the vertical integration that GW has at its disposal, along with very few other mediums being used to advertise the game (Dawn of War pulling in gamers, anyone?). So, I'm not sure why anyone would be surprised by the decline. The more interesting question is whether they can ratchet up interest again. The 3250 leap (or whatever it ends up being) would really be the ideal time to make a clean break and build the game (along with its setting) as something that can appeal to new fans, as well as keeping (some of) the existing fans. The reality is that in any significant change period, you're going to lose some of the existing fans. You can't avoid it, but you can work to lessen it. I would imagine CGL would do so, considering they have shown strong support for multiple eras.

Catalyst is shifting focus to the 3145 and 3250 eras and this is where I expect a change of focus. barring that 2013 is the Year of Shadowrun for CGL with tons of product coming (like it didn't get enough in 2011 or 2012). RPGs are bit more successful and the shadowrun fanbase is much deeper than BT's. However. a new 5th Edition ruleset is coming out, which could make it worse or better. I don't think much of the 4th Edition rules as I prefer the 2nd edition.

Battletech does support multiple eras simultaneously, we had a massive push through the Jihad Era, we had the year of the Star League (which was split between age of war and golden age SLDF)  we have XTROs from all over the place (age of war, succession wars, Clan Invasion and Jihad) and even visited the clan homeworlds.

Catalyst has done a pretty good job IMHO of supporting the various eras of the game.  when people gripe about that I find that it is because THEIR favorite era is not supported as much as they like.  if anything the push to a more comprehensive look at the Dark Age rather then the Republic Centric myopia Wiz Kids gave us is going to be a welcome relief.

I don't get to game at much of anything anymore, but I love reading the books and working on miniatures, so I'm a *fairly* regular purchaser.

As a fan of BattleTech I fall in this category. In fact, I have the sneaking suspicion there is a large segment that falls into this category, but without better data I can't be totally sure.

It also doesn't have the vertical integration that GW has at its disposal, along with very few other mediums being used to advertise the game (Dawn of War pulling in gamers, anyone?).

Having worked for GW Corporate and CGL, I can say with absolute certainty that both models have their strengths and weaknesses. However, CGL and GW are as close to one another only in the sense that they produce a tabletop miniature war game. After that, any attempt at a comparison is fruitless - both are just so radically different in structure, size and composition that it's like comparing a T-Rex to a Brontosaurus.
 

I know 3 stores in Colorado Springs, CO that stock Battletech stuff, one really quite heavily. I don't know how much of it is selling, though.

Even super successful game stores will have all sorts of product sitting on their shelves for months, maybe even years. A quick way to figure out if anything is selling is to check the store's calendar of events. If the store has an active agent or a steady BattleTech game group, chances are they push product. If their gaming calendar is completely empty and there isn't a steady BT game/group, chances are product isn't moving very fast.

Figuring out which store has product, but doesn't have a very active BT gaming group or agent is a major opportunity worth exploiting if you have the time...

...Perhaps Catalyst will support multiple Eras, at the same time.

Yes. We will. 

BattleTech: Rome

Again, that statement still doesn't really make sense to me. What has given you the indication that multi-era support is going to be dropped? I fully expect CGL will continue to support the 3rd Succession War, the 4th, the Clan Invasion, the Civil War era, and all of the rest. If you're speaking about parallel development of two separate but ongoing product lines with similar product numbers (a "new" and "old" battletech, as it were)...that would be a colossal mistake. It's splitting already rather limited production resources, it's splitting the fan base, and additionally, it is catering your entire product outlook and long-term plans to an incredibly overblown representation of a vocal minority reacting with Chicken Little syndrome. That's bad business all around. I'd put money on that being the final nail in the coffin.

I mean, we're still just getting TRO 3075 Record Sheets in a final format now. That book was released in 2008. We have a production bottleneck of five years for some aspects of the product line. (Yes, I'm fully aware that some of the important aspects for this bottleneck are far beyond CGL's control. It's not an indictment, just a statement of the reality this game line faces.) That's not good. Now we're talking about making that bottleneck cover effectively two game lines? Yikes.