My personal suggestions for things I would like to see from Discraft.
1. Continuing to produce/promote former "flagship" models, even if on a limited edition basis. The X2, X-Clone, and MRV are three that strongly come to mind. I believe that these models still stand up well amongst everything available today and while demand might not be huge, I believe there's still a place for them in today's game as they are able to outperform many contemporary models at their designed purposes. Other than the Phoenix, the X-Clone is the only other disc that's held the distance record since it broke the 600' barrier that has been discontinued. I'm still a huge fan of the Xtra, but I can admit that there's little need for it. On the other side of things, I believe the MRV far out-performed the Torque (as well as the Shockwave and Aftershock) and there's still a lot of people that like small diameter mids (not to mention that the Z MRV is arguably the best sidearm midrange ever made).
2. Expand the Pro D line to include more intermediate friendly drivers. Initially I would have said to just expand Pro D to include newer drivers, but with the Force, Surge, Avenger, and Crush (and the now OOP Venom) most of the new tech drivers are too much disc for the average player looking at buying D plastic. The Avenger SS will probably help fill that gap, but it's a pretty big jump from say, the XL, Cyclone, or Avenger SS to the next more stable model. Going from 0 to stability to 1.5+ stability is a bit of a jump when I believe the "forgotten demographic" of players throwing 250-350' are best off throwing stuff that's closer to 1.
3. No more SS discs. The Avenger SS and Surge SS are new discs. The SS seemed to steal away that "new disc hype" that I believe would have been stronger if they had unique names. IMO, the Avenger SS is more unique of a disc than the proto Avengers (Predator bottom with Wildcat top?) and Flicks (Flash bottom with Crush top?) so why not give it a new name with some pizazz?
4. Expand the rating scale in order to give more product differentiation and a smoother "transition" between numbers. From my experiences, there's a greater stability jump from +1 to +1.5 than there is from +1.5 to +1.7. I have a feeling the ratings that are not on a 0.5 scale were probably determined by player feedback after the last rating scale shift was performed that condensed it from -3 to +5 to -1 to +2.5 (e.g. the X Avenger is slightly more overstable than a Z Flash, hence +1.5 to +1.6).
5. Keep the Wasp in production in D plastic (and Z plastic as well). I don't know why more people don't throw this disc.
6. Fewer understable midranges.
7. Find a way to get the Cyclone and Comet to mold in a shape that is closer to their original tournament pro shapes. The classic Cyclone shape just hasn't been around in a long time and it's one of my favorite discs of all time when it has that shape. It seems the newer plastics end up having too much bead definition and in X and D are too flat to glide well. In that former shape the Cyclone is one of the few drivers capable of exerting enough control over it to perform fairway surgery with it, but I haven't found that to be true of the current production models. The Comet in TP plastic (and the RR signature model) was probably the easiest to power disc on the planet. A tiny little flip (or newbie level power) would yield an incredibly long-gliding result in terms of input/output ratio. Unfortunately, the X, Z, and ESP models don't garner this same result.
8. Reduce/limit the amount of highly-priced fund-raising models. My view is that if people want it badly enough to pay $20-25 for it, it should be standard production. At the same time, if people want it badly enough to pay $20-25 for it, you'll sell lots of them at $12.95. More people buying them = greater market share = greater long-run profits. The Z/FLX Drones come to mind on this. The other big one that comes to mind is the 2nd First Run Buzzz. The "Buzzz Classic" in the original first run mold could be a top selling disc if it was standard production at standard pricing.
These are just some of my views, some of them being personal preference and others targeted towards the DG community as a whole.
Kudos on the Z Force, Z Surge SS, and newest blend of Z plastic (that leaves very little flashing on the bottom rim). I consider these all to be home runs.
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