As everyone knows, HeroClix is a collectible game. To be a successful collectible game, the makers (WizKids/NECA) have to properly balance the 2 components of "collectible" and "game". This is what I mean:

The product is collectible, so some pieces need to be harder to get while others are quite easy. This is crucial to the very core of anything collectible. Without rarity, the game would just be a boxed game ala Quarriors or the Hunger Games or Nazgul games. You could buy one product and have everything (until the next expansion comes out at least, but then it is just another single product). If you already own the product, you have zero reason to buy any more.

The product is a game, so in order to have the most force building capability, you must own every piece (and multiples of some). Owning every piece also allows you to reenact the most comic/movie battles. It simply allows you do the most with the pieces. As a game, it is nice to have every piece available; but as a collectible game, we are not entitled to that.

Lets look at both together now. If the game was just a game, you would be forced to buy every piece at once (at a hefty price with the sheer number of product that is currently available) unless you chose to go to the secondary market, at which point the good pieces would cost way more than the less sought after ones (I don't even want to know what the secondary market price for generics would be ). They could package them as team packs, but then we would never get any obscure characters (and even if they made team packs of obscure characters, they would not sell very well and WK/N would stop making them anyway).

I mentioned the hefty price tag, this is what I am thinking. If the standard set was 60 characters, we would be looking at ~$240 for the set. WK has a history of selling non-blind figures for ~$4 each (which seems fine in 6-8 figure sets, but just look at the backlash from Watchmen). They could make each set only 25 figures at a $100 price point, but that would just mean less time between product releases and fewer obscure characters to make room for the same 3-5 figures in each set.

The reason WK/N would have to charge so much is because they would sell less product. Let's face it, with a collectible game, you could own a full CUR set and still pick up a booster in hopes of pulling a SR or Chase. Heck, even adding in more generics into the C/U slots makes these investments less risky. You might even grab 2 boosters with the possibility of getting either a high end piece or adding to your generic army. It is also important to note that this model is currently working... very well. Just look at how hard it is to get product a month or two after release.

Now, let's look at one more piece in this logical argument. If it is best for the company to make a game collectible (because they sell more product) and if it is best for the customer to buy a collectible game (because it is ultimately cheaper for the average customer to buy only the product they want, and we are looking at $1 to $1.60 off each figure bought), then we have to understand this one important thing: WE ARE NOT ENTITLED TO HAVE EVERY PIECE HANDED TO US ON A SILVER PLATTER.

This is what I mean. If a game is collectible, then have extremely rare pieces makes it more collectible. Having pieces you chase after for years makes you stay in the game for years. Having convention exclusive figures encourages you to show up and support your game at these conventions. Having Super Rare and Chase figures encourages you to buy more product (perhaps at sealed events?) to support your local venue and the game as a whole. It gives us an opportunity to meet new people while we trade our extras for the pieces we missed out on. In fact, this website and community might not exist if Clix was just a boxed game. I highly doubt this game would even exist right now if it was released as a boxed game 10 years ago. In fact, I can safely say that it wouldn't.

In short, stop complaining about pieces being too hard to get. You wouldn't even have CUR pieces without them.

Can't speak for everybody, but my only gripe is that the convention love isn't spread much past the Midwest/West Coast.

But this is more justified as a complaint against the cons themselves. As someone mentioned yesterday, if your goal is solely to get the clix pieces, it is much cheaper to buy them on the secondary market than to pay for con tickets, hotel room, food, and transportation; let alone entering into all of the events needed to win them.

I was thinking about this tonight at work, specifically at how this puts some value back into people's collections.

I was also thinking about how a lot of people shut themselves out of any possibility of having a piece they want by telling themselves they can't have it. Instead of looking at Giant Man and saying "well I can't get one, I live in MN" I'm asking myself "How can I get one of these." I'm turning my problem into a challenge for me to solve.

Well thought out and reasoned, and in general I agree. The collectability is what lets us get Rag Doll, Cosmo and so forth made.
I am with Thrumble Funk, though, at least to a degree on the convention stuff. When WizKids had a presence at multiple conventions across the country and you had multiple opportunities to get to an attended or supported convention for the figures it wasn't so bad. Now with them only attending (I think) 2 conventions, both in the western part of the country, it's taking "exclusive" to a pretty extreme degree.

Insert the 'pick any two' argument here.

I don't think it has to be exclusively one or the other...and based on the sales strategy (blind boosters as well as know-what-you-get products) neither does WK.

Only speaking for myself, I was satisfied to purchase the Watchmen set for the MSRP. I'm a fan of the material and I wanted the figures in my collection. I'm enough of a comic fan to say that I'd probably do the exact same thing if past booster sets had been packaged the same way.

Some of the figures that WK continually makes SRs or Chases are peculiar. Just a couple of examples:

1) If a player is a fan of Apocalypse and his Horsemen from the 1980s through the 1990s, aside from colossal figures, Caliban and couple of AoA figures and some olde-tyme REV...every figure is either a convention exclusive or an SR.

2) If a player is a fan of Fawcett comics (Captain Marvel and his Family), aside from a BST and a pair of REV, every character has been a chase, an old unique or an SR. A handful of the related 'villains' are slightly more common: Sivana, Osiris, Isis, original REV Black Adam.

I think 'complaining' about the difficulty to obtain certain game pieces is one of the more legitimate complaints of the game. The game's strongest/broadest appeal is to comic fans...and if such fans cannot actually play with characters from their beloved comics, why shoudl we discount their complaints?

I can live without chases. (Although I really wanted Capwolf and the Frodo and Sam duo.) My big gripe is con exclusives. I really don't have the money to get to the various places (like the afore mentioned west coast) and ticket prices are pricey. Ajd after the con is over, the figures sell for about a hundred smackers a piece. So these guys are virtually impossible for me to get my paws on. Dragon*Con is in Atlanta, thus, it is a location I can afford to go to. But Wizkids doesn't want to go. And if they did, I believe it would ruin the tournaments they have been having there. My point is: I would like a better chance of snagging a con exclusive, but I simply can't.

AmDrag

Wrong.

Many people are collecting stamps, or lego, or barbies, or other things. And those do not have "rarities" per se. At least not artificial ones created by a random distribution in boosters. There are rarer pieces because they were available for limited time (like are our heroclix expansions) and have a limited print run, but that is all.

Heroclix don't NEED to have rarities to be collectible. The only reason it has those artificial rarities, and blind purchase, is to mimic the economic model of some other self-aclaimed "collectibles". That means it's just to make MORE MONEY on us.

I believe EACH piece is sold at least at the price it cost to be made (even the commons) + a profitable margin. Selling more figures (the ones we don't need) and making us chase rarer figures just makes us spend money for a waste of plastic and increase WK/Neca margin. I don't think the game wouldn't exist if there were no such mecanism and, for example, all figures were just randomly inserted with a full case containing a guaranteed full set. I just think the price would be slightly higher for a piece in order for WK/Neca to get a reasonable margin. I also think there would be less plastic wasted, space saved in our houses, and +60% of the community satisfied about this model (referring to recent polls) - I would pay and play a game that is as rich and interesting as heroclix, based on comic book characters, and not collectible at all. For me, it's a GAME first.

Read that : I won't. Ever. Stop. Complaining about it.

Because, being a "collectible" the way you think is mandatory for the game to be in order to be profitable IS the only FLAW of the game.
And it's a HUGE HUGE HUGE HUGE HUGE flaw.
Even the little problems we still can have with some of the rules are minors compared to this "collectible" PAIN.

And also because you can't tell me what i should do.

I fail to see WHY a geeky game like heroclix should transform into something like a collection that SHOULD have some monetary value on the secondary market to be enjoyable.
The simple fact of PLAYING the game and OWNING the pieces of our beloved super hero should be the part that is enjoyable to most of us. The monetary value (and all the people seeking to get THAT specifically) : i don't understand.

Now i can live without having all the pieces (i don't have them all, i don't want them all anyway)
I just don't want to spend $60+ on a piece just to have my favorite character in a playable version OR to have some figure that is necessary to be competitive in tournament. All pieces should be reachable to everyone in the simplier way possible.

I will agree that the Apocolypse stuff sucks, but that complaint is more justified as a selection complaint and not an existence complaint. The ones that bother me are the "I can't get every piece so I am dropping out of the game" complaints.

Also, $4 per piece is very reasonable. I remember when watchmen came out and I calculated how much the average CUR set was going for ($40 shortly after release for 48 figures) and the average SR was going for ($20 shortly after release) and averaging them out as evenly distributed (20 "CUR", 4 "SR" and a random ED) then that would cost right around $100 on the secondary market for 25 random evenly distributed figures. Also, the BN starter was around $28 which was $4 per figure, and people thought it a fair price. Yes, it had a map, but who ever used it?

I guess, I am not really tired of complaints (after all, this is one), but I am very tired of pointless complaints.

Please explain to me how actually producing more of some pieces than others creates "artificial" rarities. I am seriously asking this question because I have heard this argument before and can only respond with "I do not think that word means what you think it means".

Also, as someone who did a lot of research into trying to create a cool superhero product to offer to masses at a reasonable price (custom dice), I can garauntee that you have no idea what it costs to make a single heroclix figure.

Also, it is a FACT that they would sell more Superman pieces than Vibe pieces. So if WK makes the same number of Superman and Vibe pieces and offers them at non-blind boosters, they will run out of Superman and have tons of Vibes sitting on the shelf. People would complain that they can't find Superman and have no idea who Vibe is. Since WK relies on selling out in order to have enough for future sets, they cannot make enough on Superman sales alone unless they do 1 of 2 things: 1) never make individual figures they don't think will sell (probably a decent reason Vibe hasn't been made yet), or 2) jack the prices up to compensate.

Stamps have been around as long as the postal service has existed, and stamps serve an actual purpose of paying to send mail. Little girls will want Barbies no matter which one it is, and they are only collectible to those who want them to be. Clix at its very nature is collectible.

To me, we are now heading into the 'there is a difference but with no distinction' territory.

At the risk of branching into slightly different territory, I grok the collector ("must...have...them...all!") mentality for HeroClix, but only up to the point of expecting such a collector to actually want to have as many figures as possible in order to play out as many different comic-inspired battles as possible. This is my bias, and I recognize after 10 years in the game that it is a minority opinion.

I recognize the value and philosophy behind the blind boosters, and I support it...but my POV has long been that *I* would like to have the opportunity to purchase 'complete' sets directly from the primary market so that I can get to playing the game in my preferred method.

A peeve: It's long been frustrating to me (in 10-years of attending 'events' with prizes) that many folks play extremely cut-throat to 'win' a prize LE that they have no intention of ever playing. When I think back to some of the earliest LEs, I'm one of only two players I know that actually built multiple forces using figures like Ned Leeds, Ted Kord, Benjamin J. Grimm...and played those teams in actual HeroClix events. Of course, I played a lot more frequently in those days, but even with my reduced game exposure it still is not common to see 'prizes' end up on players' forces.

I don't have a problem with figures like the Horsemen being exclusives. What bothers me is that classic characters who desperately need a good playable version are ending up as exclusives. I am a Wonder Woman fan. I am a Martian Manhunter fan. Neither character has a lot of Modern versions and both are iconic members of the Justice League. If they made a Superman as a con exclusive, I wouldn't mind, even though I am a huge Superman fan. There are tons of good versions of Supes. Likewise, I wouldn't mind if they take some of my favorite obscure characters, like Xorn of the X-Men, and make them con exclusives. I'm a big fan of Xorn, but I don't need him to make any iconic teams.

Thankfully, it sounds like the 10th anniversary sets will include a lot of the iconic characters I want, particularly Wonder Woman. However, it is extremely frustrating to see them turn characters like Giant-Man, Dr. Fate, and Martian Manhunter in to Con exclusives this year.

Agreed, though I think newer LEs have remedied that somewhat. The newest crop of LEs is a great example of a set that SCREAMS to be played.

I get where you're coming from, but Wonder Woman at least has some DAMN solid versions.

True, although the best are cycling into Golden soon. We've had a couple decent Martian manhunters lately too, but the only Justice League version is cookie monster. It is a disappointment to me that this one is con exclusive.