Was listening to the most recent Scum & Villany podcast, when they were discussing the new Adaptability card that comes with the Mist Hunter, and I had a thought. They presumed that the player using the card chooses whether to increase or decrease pilot skill, either once at the beginning of the game, or the player chooses at the beginning of every round. But what if the new rule with dual cards is that the player gets to choose which side is up at the start of the game, but they get flipped at the end of every round? Adaptability would therefore be potentially both a benefit and a hindrance, depending on which side is up any given round. Any chance of this being the dual card rule?
the problem with this theory, is that that's not really "adaptability". That's "man I hope I don't get fucked."
I am still going with the guess that you will need to have BOTH cards in play, and they must be opposites. So one pilot has to have +1 adapt, and another pilot has to have -1 adapt. To me this makes the most sense, and (as FFG alluded to) COULD actually be pretty interesting in games with a wide range of PS.
Seriously, though, a lot — a lot — of FLGS owners and managers are incompetent at advertising, organizing and communicating in general. So you're not alone. But that doesn't make it right, and you have every reason to be frustrated and to bitch them out.
local hobby stores (and their online presences) are largely incompetent at social media and marketing. It's truly dumbfounding. It takes 2 minutes to send out a post using a tool that will simultaneously hit Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and a blog.. Then again I imagine much of it comes down to the owners/employees themselves not being very skilled socially. Most seem to be introverts to a large degree, likely making even social media daunting.
I ran a shop for a few years and going to the retailer conventions it was surprising how many owners had no idea how to expand their business. I mean maybe some/many were lazy... but at the very least you came away with the impression of "well ever since the 80s, customers would seek US out", but since the explosion of online... customers have virtually ZERO incentive to seek out local hobby shops.. and they (shops) literally have no clue what to do about it.
the single worst trend I am seeing now is stores prohibiting you from bringing in food and drink with the slogan "pay where you play". Hint: forcing me to buy 20oz sodas (or fucking bottled water!!!!!!!!!!) for $2 isn't going to grow your business.. it's going to piss me off which will ultimately shrink your business. I have an idea. How about running sales on a regular basis, and advertising them. Or one of a million other ways to actually make me WANT to come into the store.
Funny enough.. a local store actually had a good idea, and kind of balked on it.. They run a pre-order discount club where you pay to get online-like discounts on bundled pre-orders. "but why would I do that when I can just BUY online".. well, I look at it like amazon prime. I'll pay an annual fee if it means I can get the stuff the day it comes out.. that's fine, vs trying to hit a free shipping tier and then having it be like 5 days smartpost. where they balked, is that they were originally only going to post the deals IN STORE, which while not super customer convenient (compared to say posting online), at least gives people an incentive to stop in the store periodically. And they would also give them out over the phone if it was too much for you to stop in frequently.. alas they relented to pressure and are starting to post the deals online. kind of a damned if you do/damned if you don't sort of thing.. but it's the first time in like 15 years I've seen a local hobby shop have a GOOD idea when it came to expanding their business.
