Clutch9800 wrote:Let's be honest... BattleTech is sputtering because it's intentionally difficult to get into. It's overwhelming for even veteran gamers to get into with any seriousness. There's simply too much breadth.
Dixie,
Honestly, I could teach you to play BattleTech in an hour. I mean, after one hour you would know how to play the game, not it's intricacies, but you could play and win a game. Of course you could say the same thing about chess.
Clutch
I needed to clarify that statement. I actually do know how to play BattleTech. I've played several games. It's fun. I'd like to play it more. Getting my friends into the hobby (and getting myself deeper into the IP itself) however is extremely difficult.
Edit: What follows is a long rant, and I sadly wandered off of the original topic. Once you get into me talking about point B below, it wanders off. Ignore if you please, I wouldn't blame you.
What I meant was that A) There's no really good overview of the setting to put you on the same page as the rest of the fans (Even a 5 page overview of the timeline is going to be useless when people start referencing characters from novels for entire conversations) and B) it's an utter pain in the ass to get models, maps, and books all together without going on a scavenger hunt.
The problem with point A is that it it separates the old fans from the new fans into two distinct groups: The ones who have read the books and the ones who haven't. There's even that issue here in TGD whenever BattleTech is talked about. Instead of a unified timeline to provide a common ground, it acts as a barrier.
The problem with point B is the more immediate. I might not necessarily care about the BT community and continuity if I have a group of players that I can play with, though CGL loses out ultimately if I drop out of the community (which isn't the most n00b friendly from various accounts). However, as was mentioned, the boxed set is shit. I have it. I like all the plastic figs, and the 2 sheets of maps are okay to start with, and I don't even mind the rules ramp-up. All that works. But seriously, the fucking mechs they include span over 100 years. Even if I go by tonnage, I have no real way of substantially comparing the total "value" of one mech versus another (compared to the BPV system of Starfleet Battles, which while requiring fudging, could at least at a glance tell you if your frigate was totally outclassed by the other dude's frigate). The Starter box is a cross-slice of the entire IP. I get the rules, I get like the barest of the plot, but now what?
Can I buy more plastic figs? Not from CGL: Their entire online store is empty/out of stock for all but 2 mechs. Can I buy pewter figs? Well yes I can buy pewter, but not from CGL, and CGL barely discusses where you can get fucking game pieces FOR THEIR OWN GAME.
Now let's say I buy a pewter fig. Let's say I want to play with a MadCat, since that's one of the iconic mechs. Well I need a record sheet. But flipping through the Total Warfare book, there's no mech record sheet that I can find, and though they're talked about in the book, there's no reference to where I can actually fucking find them. And this is supposedly the only resource I need to actually play any tournament-sanctioned game. Maybe it's in there, but I never found it.
However, there's yet another 3rd party who makes a program that will generate your mech sheets. It's only 30 bucks. Though I don't think CGL guides you there either. Maybe I need another book? Which one? There's two more "core" books, one about building mechs, and the other about... I want to say experimental tech/rules, and then there's references to technical readouts, which might be a good place to pick up record sheets, I don't know, and if that is the case, which readout do I buy? You mean I have to fucking research that now too?
This is what I mean by "it's fucking hard to get into Battletech". I'm sure if I'm a longtime fan, or if I have someone guiding me, it's doable, but it is literally inevitable that I will hit a wall sooner or later that prevents me from playing this game if I'm on my own. I'm sure given time and effort I could get around such impediments, but gaming is supposed to be fun, and not a chore. I'm in my 30's, I've been gaming for 20 years or so now, and I have a full time job, a social life, I have to deal with family, and I generally don't have a huge amount of free time. If I have to go on a scavenger hunt to play a game, then I'm much better off buying something that was designed for a new player to get into from the beginning.
And the above paragraph is the core, root problem with Battletech. You *can't* open up new demographics because your game isn't designed to let new folks in without them being initiated. Battletech is like a fucking clubhouse. Unless someone is going to sponsor you, odds are you won't get into it.
I mean really, can you imagine a board game, like Arkham Horror say, where you bought the box, but you had to go to a different company to get half the cards, another company to get the other half, and the instructions reference character sheets but only 3 come with the game and there are no references where to get the rest? If Fantasy Flight Games actually released a product like that, it'd get laughed out of the industry. Battletech is surviving on it's own history, and the dedication of an aging group of fans.