What we need is a Madcat on the box. Not some pink nightmare world with the unknown Catapult or Battlemaster. Not some replacement mech that is a design most BT players haven't used yet. Love it or hate it, the Madcat is, and has been the icon of Battletech since the mid 90s. Virtual world, the CCG, the mechwarrior games, MWDA IIRC, and the first BT rules book I ever laid eyes upon.
What we also need is a Madcat in the box. But we also need his friends in there. Basically what the goal should be is to link the Battletech intro box to the current pc game, Mechwarrior online. No, I am not suggesting that bug for the MWO versions. What I am saying is that the mechs that have been found in that game for the I.S. and the Clans need to be in the box.
Imagine you are someone that plays online games, you have no idea what Battletech is, but you know some people that play paper and dice RPGs or tabletop games. Basically anything other then Battletech. You eventually find yourself in a game store, or a book store that actually carries games and you pass by a box that has the same mechs on the cover that you have been playing with in MWO. Sure, they aren't 100% the same, but they are recognizable and perhaps it might get the person to say "hey, what the hell?! they ripped MWO off!", chances are you are going to pick up the box and check the back to see what is going on. Now if you do that and you see on the back a mention to the Mechwarrior games being inspired by the game in this box, chances are you are going to take an interest.
You wouldn't even need to go home to start looking for information online. You don't even need to ask someone that works at the shop, or even your friends to see whats going on. You break out your phone and either do a search, use a QR code, or enter the address to a webpage that tells you about what is in the box. it tells you about the game, it tells you a bit about the mechwarrior series of games and fiction. It shows you the books, the minis, everything in a matter of a few minutes. As much as I hate to say this, most people don't want to spend time reading. I hate saying that even more about someone that may end up playing BT since we have rules books how big?
If we have a few easily accessed videos that tell a potential player what the game is, a bit of the story line, a bit of the product line, and the ways to play, that would do far more then any changes that could be made to the contents of the box. The box itself could do a whole lot more then it currently does to sell people on the game, if it is connected to the website. There really is no reason not to have videos for people to watch in order to learn about the game.
Aside from that, moving the game to 3050 would likely sell a bit better just because it brings the Madcat into play, and allows people to actually play the madcat. A friend and I were talking about the box set on Saturday after a game, and we basically sounded like people saying, "back in my day we marched 20 miles to school in the snow". When we started it was my rules book, a map pack that I bought, and everyone had to make their own little paper counters and write up their own mechs on their own hand made record sheets. Now the box set is an instant collection, rules that are watered down to prime you for the main set of rules. If we were able to start the game using 3050 tech, I think there are others out there that could do the same. I feel that a shift to 3050 for the boxed set isn't something that will hurt newbies that much, but can do a lot for drawing them in.
Quickstart rules for AS along with the cards isn't a bad idea, as others have mentioned already. I can't get myself to pull the trigger to buy AS myself since I am trying to catch up in other areas. Having a quickstart booklet in the boxed set that I bought last year would really have gone a way towards pushing me to buy a copy of AS already. I would put this change as secondary, though.
