Let's make no bones about it: The entire concept of the miniatures line has been one long marketing joke since day one. The reasoning probably went something like this:
WizardsExec: People want minis to use with their D&D campaign. Sounds like a great product idea.
MarketingGuy: Maybe we should make the D&D miniatures into a collectible miniatures game.
WizardsExec: Wut? Wai?
MarketingGuy: Well, we make a tremendous amount of money on M:TG, right? If we make a D&D miniatures line into a throwaway collectible game out of the minis and release random packages of them, we'll make a lot more money.
WizardsExec: I see! That way, instead of people getting the miniatures that they want for their game, they'll continue to to buy up random miniatures until they get the ones they want!
MarketingGuy: Yup.
WizardsExec: Oh wait... what about the secondary market? Won't people just be able to go online and buy the miniatures that they want?
MarketingGuy: Nah. That's easy to fix. All you have to do is make the iconic monsters rares or uncommons. You know: Your mind flayers, skeletons, kobolds, orcs, stuff like that. Make the common ones the strange aberrant ones that nobody's ever heard of. Either that or make them random dudes that will probably never see gameplay. As long as we ensure that the iconic monsters trickle out as rares or uncommons, we can continue to sell miniatures that people don't want for years.
WizardsExec: That's brilliant!
MarketingGuy: I kno. ;)
Sound familiar to anyone? Now, it looks like the D&D guys might be having a bit of pull on the execs and marketing guys with the newest set. They're actually featuring iconic monsters on their preview, for one. Not that it actually means anything. Now they're selling us the minis we want, just randomly. I think that we all agree that Wizards is heading in the right direction with their miniatures line. The problem is that it's not enough. How many people here are honestly going to use a level 20 Rot Harbinger in their game? My guess is not that many.
Would it really be that unprofitable to sell encounters instead of randomized packages? I don't know - I'm not MarketingGuy. What's so wrong with, for example, selling a package of Skeletal creatures with everything you need to run an encounter? I'd gladly pay 15-20 bucks for a smattering of tiles, a little encounter insert and a pack of various undead. Zombie minions, ghouls and skeletons. Something every game needs packaged as a single encounter. Of course, you could still slightly randomize them with a rare boss monster, random encounter templates or a random set of tiles to go with it. The key here is to make sure it's USEFUL! Don't package a level 20 rare aberrant monster with your set of level 3-4 undead.
As a next step away from their current line, I would start selling my sets by tier. Make a small heroic set, a small paragon set and a small epic set. Gauge sales and adjust future lines accordingly. Will we ever get what we actually want in a miniatures box? That's up to us and Wizards to decide. Vote with your bucks!
Is anyone else fed up with buying randomized packages of Miniatures?
Do you know what I have sitting on my desk? An elder red dragon. And the only reason I have an elder red dragon is because the boxes were randomized. Otherwise, I'd have to pay a lot of money on the secondary market.
I also have an elder green dragon, which was a visible mini in the set. Some minis become "chase" minis, which everyone wants one. The only reason I was able to snag the elder green dragon was I saw one of them on the shelf. If I didn't grab it at that moment, I wouldn't have it.
I haven't seen the Elder Green Dragon on any shelves (and we're talking about 5 or 6 different stores here) since the day I picked mine up. Why? Everyone wanted one. What if I hadn't been to the store that day? I never would have seen one at all.
So the reason Wizards shouldn't sell us the minis we want is because they would sell too well?
You are right that the random CCG-like element sells well. You are right that this is why they are sold in this way.
However if this were a bad business decision, it wouldn't sell, and they'd end it. As it is, people are eating it up. Apparently people like buying this sort of thing.
So customers = happy. Producer = happy.
The only people unhappy are a few forum posters. Not being mean, mind you, but the only thing you can do is stop buying them. If people continue to give them money for minis in their current release format there is no reason for Wizards to change it.
If they released them as blisters, like in Warhammer, then you can gaurantee that A) Less will be bought, because the format allows them to pick exactly what they want, and B) you lose that 'Christmas' aspect that Webster is talking about. That does have a signifigant impact on sales, believe it or not. That is a magical feeling. It's almost addictive. (It's why I spent so much money on MTG and now DnD minis.)
In essence moving the minitures line to a buy what you see model would mean less money. As Wizards is a business, this is a bad move. And as consumers we shouldn't want Wizards to make less money or make bad business decisions, because it would mean less quality, cheaper product and service, or even a TSR-like destruction.
I simply don't like paying for a blister with figures that I'm never going to use. I should also point out that they probably killed the D&D Miniatures game for this exact reason - they weren't selling. People only wanted the figures for their game to begin with. When they found out that fully 80% of the figures (for which they'd paid good money) were essentially worthless for the purpose they had been buying them for then they stopped buying.
I'm not saying that Wizards should stop making random minis packs. However, I would personally buy more figures if they were more targeted. If I'm running a heroic tier game, what good is a level 20 Rot Harbinger going to do me? Why should I pay 15 dollars for a mini pack for my game when I know that there's a good probability that 1 mini out of the entire package is going to be useful?
I don't buy the minis because I have no use for 4-6 completely random minis from across 30 levels of play. And I certainly don't have the disposable income necessary to buy enough to make them useful. Really all I'm asking is for the minis to live up to the marketing - a playable encounter in every box.
That level 20 Rot Harbringer? That's the BBEG the players meet at level 1 and can't do squat about...
Now you've got a mini that can keep making an appearance again and again throughout your campaign. Now the players have an NPC they can really hate. And the best moments of your game will arrive when they finally take it down.
Sometimes you can get ideas for an adventure just because you pulled a mini you weren't expecting. I hadn't even thought of using a purple worm until I pulled one. Instantly, I started coming up with ideas. A fishing villiage was being terrorized by a purple worm...
The minis don't have to be active creatures either. I've used various dragons to represent statues of dragons. The look on the player's faces when you put the mini down is priceless. "There's a dragon in the room?!?!" "Nah, that's just a statue of a dragon."
DDM sold like chocolate covered diamonds for several years in the all-random format. The reason that line died was manyfold, including an overall drop in quality (when they moved to 3D digitcal design), rising price, general collapse in the causal miniature game market, and the fact that the majority of DDM were bought by D&D players for RPG use and, by that time, most people had jsut about all the minis they;d need for most uses.
The new "semi-random" format is an attempt at a compromise, to give people the option to have some idea of what they are getting but still keeping cost down by retaining a degree of randomness. The net effect is a rise in price, less value for money, less variety of figures, lower qualioty (IMO) and a general malaise in the line.
Like it or not, randomness was good for DDM.