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 AlexHolker wrote:
Will you be conducting a post-mortem again, Buzzsaw?

Has he done any post-mortems for Dreadball or Deadzone? I would love to see him tackle Reaper Bones 2 or Raging Heroes: TGG.

A few comments:

I have no idea why Mantic decided it was a good idea to collect from a survey, then two weeks later collect from a KS, then two weeks later collect from another survey.

If Mantic has shown us one thing from Deadzone, it's that they use the funds from the survey to throw on extra stuff. What that might entail here, who knows. Hopefully that money would go to alt pose design (about a thousand bucks front end to design a model).

I don't think Mantic planned for a competitor to have their notices sent a bit before theirs stealing some momentum, and two other systems kicking off their last few days. That has probably slowed things the last week more then any mistakes Mantic made.

I agree with others when that Mantic's timing on some of the add-ons was a bit off. Instead of Wednesday add-ons and then nothing Thursday and Friday and then add-ons Saturday, they could have helped momentum by releasing Tycho Thursday and Dredd Friday. Stalling causes further stalling. People eyeballing other projects are prone to bail when it's waffling. When you do things to help the total go up, people are more content, and since a few extra bodies stay around, it more promotes a couple extra watchers to sign up when they notice the project hitting stretches. Don't know how much it would have helped, but it would have better then what we have here.

I'm not certain why some got upset that the add-ons WITHOUT stretch goals weren't included on Frenzy. Those add-ons were only gonna help the total go up. Though, most of the people complaining in the KS comments said at other times that they were at levels other then Frenzy..........people gotta gripe about something. It's a vast improvement from Mantic posting a 25k stretch goal and then having it paid for add-on that people thought would be plastic but it turned out to be Metal (Helfather). I'm glad Mantic is a little more straight forward at least. Again, it's a little silly to think something that didn't have funds raised for it would automatically be included in your pledge. Better to have the opportunity to buy it then not have it there at all.

Frenzy was not a good idea, at least not how it was done. I feel Mantic would have done better to have as many legit stretches as possible (I'm pretty sure the stretch for four alt sculpts was far more then 4k.......). Frenzy should have been ensnared AFTER Season 5 was finished with none of this EB non-sense.

Honestly, the Penny Arcade model should have been done MUCH earlier, but none of us know the back story. Those guys could have just said something recently, or not given the final go ahead until today or something.

I think Mantic could have better in this time frame, but I feel this time frame could have been avoided all together.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:
Will you be conducting a post-mortem again, Buzzsaw?

Has he done any post-mortems for Dreadball or Deadzone? I would love to see him tackle Reaper Bones 2 or Raging Heroes: TGG.

As for TGG, you are in luck!

I made reference to Dreadball and Deadzone, but only in that I felt they represented campaigns that followed an established paradigm. What is interesting is how Dreadball and Deadzone don't look the way Mars Attacks and, now, DBX look;

Dreadball Xtreme


Mars Attacks


Compare to,
Deadzone


Dreadball


The most obvious pattern is a massive front-loading: I remarked that this was aberrant in TGG compared to the other campaigns I had looked at, but in TGG the curve was nowhere near as badly shifted as it is in Mantic's most recent campaigns.

Mantic, being more established, are gonna have a huge amount of activity that first day at this. It's hard to say what has damaged the end loss the most, but there are so many factors in play, I couldn't begin to tell you which has hurt them the most.

If you look in the comments section, there are some who are still acting like 200k is magically gonna show up, or Mantic is just gonna give everyone more free stuff. As evidence by Metal add-ons, I'm sure Mantic is tapped on their "excess" and more auto freebies are out.

I'd be surprised if thing even hits 600k at this point when I think it could have busted 1 mil easy if you changed a couple of the things I mentioned above.

Why is it always space ogres and never space trolls?

Need to sit down later and check the gap between Frenzy and Rampage + stuff I really want....but it's feeling like about $100 so I think that Frenzy will be dropping.

I missed the Deadzone kick starter so I'm going in for some zombies and 1 or 2 of the MVPs I want to get into/convert for deadzone.

It's a shame the cool looking yndij is only a part of the free agents pack or I would have picked him up to convert as a yndij sergeant.

 AlexHolker wrote:
The Furon Arena is a good idea for a new gametype, since beasts offer more interesting counter-play than "stand there and die of heat exhaustion"

Yeah, just this Friday as I was playing Deadzone one Mawbeast ate 3 Enforcers and it immediately made me wish for beasts in DBX.

Joyboozer wrote:
Why is it always space ogres and never space trolls?

Why should it be either? Why not make something that isn't a top-heavy, ugly bastard?

Well, there's a $575k goal now and we need another $20k to hit it.

I figure it'll just about get to $600k or close to it, but there can't be a whole lot left in store for this one.

No alt sculpts for all those season 5 and 6 Frenzy teams unfortunately, probably 4 different sculpts in total per team though since when it comes to tooling, that's the only number that goes neatly into 8 and 16. Not sure if they'll ship with prones yet.

Aren't marauder hulks in the hobgoblin team basically space trolls?

Another problem Mantic is fighting is all their experienced backers KNOW there are multiple pledge manager opportunities coming

(bad enough if they were a company known for transferring concepts to minis consistently well, catastrophic where there are real problems)

so no need to back big now, wait till you've seen at least some of the art stuff in the flesh

Yeah, I think that is some of the problem. However, you have to weigh up if you don't 'back big' now, you can end up with less models - or model variation, than later.

 JoeRugby wrote:
I missed the Deadzone kick starter so I'm going in for some zombies and 1 or 2 of the MVPs I want to get into/convert for deadzone.

I would assume that the DZ zombies will be being sold at retail a fair while before your pledge is shipped to you, and possibly at a cheaper price too. The MVP's usually work out cheaper as well.

@Buzzsaw, thanks for the graphs/stats it does seem like Dreadball, like Mars Attacks, has a very natural "ceiling" total of 600/700k. The front loading also takes out a lot of the perceived "fun" of backing your average Kickstarter.

Per the comments the alt Poses should be the next stretch goal I'm guessing $600k they really need to get them locked in and $600k might be cutting it fine.

I still think the main "design-flaw" is the lack of appeal for "oldschool" DreadBall fans.

Xtreme is nice and all, but if you don't want "two DreadBall games", you're stuck with pick-and-choose teams and Season 4+ books from the optional add-ons at, essentially, the same price you can get them from places like Wayland Games this winter (after seeing the miniatures) anyhow (give or take a quid).

Not to mention that I would've greatly appreciated a revised or 2nd Edition of the DreadBall rules anyhow. They are good rules for a first Edition, but there are lots of holes and flaws in there, and adding 12 new teams in a 6 months fast-track isn't gonna improve the overall game-experience.

I hope they aren't killing the golden-egg-laying goose that is DreadBall. It's a game with great potential, but I worry they are killing it for the quick buck of lotsa-teams and a "second priority approach" behind the new hotness of Xtreme.

I hope I am wrong.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:

 JoeRugby wrote:
I missed the Deadzone kick starter so I'm going in for some zombies and 1 or 2 of the MVPs I want to get into/convert for deadzone.

I would assume that the DZ zombies will be being sold at retail a fair while before your pledge is shipped to you, and possibly at a cheaper price too. The MVP's usually work out cheaper as well.

I've gone in for a small pledge to get me in on the pledge manager. Can play a bit more of the waiting game.

Well theres 257 backers @ $1me included. Lack of funds plus im not sure about the material has held me back.

I'm really hoping there will be more sculpts before the pledge manager closes

 AlexHolker wrote:

Joyboozer wrote:
Why is it always space ogres and never space trolls?

Why should it be either? Why not make something that isn't a top-heavy, ugly bastard?

"Ogres" are more of a broad category, though. Call them by many other names, but they're the human-like 8-10' tall hulking brute. Oversized, stocky, strong humanoid. We see that and think "ogre" because we've got the GW-centric mindset for these races.



The general public's perception of "Ogre" is slightly different..


But there's nothing wrong with larger-(or-smaller)-than-human humanoid races. Most non-human alien, "pan-human" and "monster" races are basically human sized for no especially good reason, excepting that's what we're used to in games and media, from Star Trek to Star Wars to Lord of the Rings.

There were a lot of factors leading to this, some of them beyond Mantic's control, others a direct result of flawed strategy on their part. I wish they had taken the boom of the first day to front load some extra teams from the get-go, so people would see that right from the beginning they're already getting a bunch of teams for their Rampage pledge, and Frenzy is already a deal just 2 days in, so the sky's the limit and let's jump on this thing now!

Instead, they've had to drastically reshuffle and "give away" teams without stretch goals due in large part to that poor pacing, which in turn makes it look like the KS is on life support, which of course it now is. Yes, the too long stretch goals on the first day probably gave them some financiaI lee-way to "give away" teams later, but in terms of momentum and all-important backer perceptions of success, they would have been much better off having lower stretch goals in the beginning and hitting those teams then. I don't know if this KS could have broken a million, as Earth Dragon* states, but it definitely could have done much better than barely pushing 600 k. His point about running this campaign during two pledge managers for their other campaigns is a life lesson Mantic needs to learn. If they ever do that again, they are willfully shooting themselves in the foot. Realistically, that may mean doing fewer Kickstarter campaigns a year. Good idea, I think.

Finally, I understand from their actions that Mantic is up against the wall financially, or else they wouldn't be playing "maybe" with the most basic premises of what you'll get in Rampage and Frenzy right until the end (4 giants, alt sculpts.) Mantic often add near-misses on to the pledge manager after the campaign closes, as Earth Dragon states, but this late game "it's all up for grabs" approach makes me trust in that a lot less. And it's a constant reminder that they could have prioritized the fundamentals much earlier and gotten them out of the way, so that now only a few frills like MVPs, or even that 8th sponsor would be at stake. I think throwing Grak in as a stretch goal this late in the game instead of getting started on the alt sculpts was either overly optimistic or just rash on their part.

I'm mostly in this for Warpath universe miniatures for use in Deadzone and perhaps other games down the line. Dreadball Xtreme has failed to excite me as a game, and my interest has diminished as the campaign has ground to a halt. At this point, the only way I'm staying in at Rampage is if we hit the alt sculpts and giant before this thing closes today. If not, since I'm not into the game itself and would rather see more sculpts before investing, I actually don't lose much by pledging $1 and ordering a la carte. (More sculpts shown up front is another issue that has plagued this campaign a lot more than it did for either Deadzone or Mars Attacks.)

I'm sorry to say that I haven't enjoyed this campaign; it's been frustrating and depressing watching it bleed out and drag endlessly on, and I feel sorry for the guys at Mantic - who are good, talented people who made some mistakes this time - more than anything else.

*My apologies for initially using a different forum name for this user. In my mind I associated him with a user of another forum based on similar opinions and writing styles, which may or may not be accurate, but it was never my intention to "out" anyone publicly, just a sloppy, and very possibly inaccurate, Freudian slip from using too many forums myself.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Another problem Mantic is fighting is all their experienced backers KNOW there are multiple pledge manager opportunities coming

(bad enough if they were a company known for transferring concepts to minis consistently well, catastrophic where there are real problems)

so no need to back big now, wait till you've seen at least some of the art stuff in the flesh

I do believe Earth Dragon touched on a pretty major aspect as well:

Earth Dragon wrote:

I have no idea why Mantic decided it was a good idea to collect from a survey, then two weeks later collect from a KS, then two weeks later collect from another survey.

Now, I haven't gotten my MA invoice yet, but I was expecting to have had it arrive by now, and it literally could arrive any time. I'm now expecting the promised previews for the DZ survey to end up like the KoW one where we didn't see the Elf/TK cavalry for no good reason before the final survey ended.

Yeah, this just wasn't a well-run campaign.

I got into Mantic with Deadzone and that one was brilliant, I thought. Mars Attacks was well thought out for the most part but had some trouble with front-loading because of the time-sensitive BotB pledge level and a lot of confusion because... well, there's no nice way to say this, but many backers apparently lacked the mental capacity to understand the credit system. DBX was just bad from the get go. Major front-loading, fake stretch goals, unnecessarily long stretch goals, the works.

But you know what? I'm still in, because I'm in it for the game and the models, not for how well the campaign was run. I think campaign quality is a dumb criteria to use when deciding what to buy.

A bigger problem than all of that is the lack of sculpted models on show.

Even Dreadball had 4 fully painted teams to show off, this time there's just two and a lot of concept art.

I really don't get it, I was looking at the DBX Brokkr sculpts (sculpted by Steve Saunders, same guy who did the DZ Rebs) in a cabinet nearly 4 months ago and they were lovely. Nowhere to be seen on the Kickstarter, though.

There about to beat the mars attacks final total but with 400ish less backers.

not sure I see this hitting 600k


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 scarletsquig wrote:
A bigger problem than all of that is the lack of sculpted models on show.

Even Dreadball had 4 fully painted teams to show off, this time there's just two and a lot of concept art.

I really don't get it, I was looking at the DBX Brokkr sculpts in a cabinet nearly 4 months ago.

That surprised me aswell, the Brokkrs looked pretty sweet im sure they could have painted them by now.

Also they were finished for dz aswell but I'm pretty sure they've not been shown off in an update?

 scarletsquig wrote:
A bigger problem than all of that is the lack of sculpted models on show.

Even Dreadball had 4 fully painted teams to show off, this time there's just two and a lot of concept art.

I really don't get it, I was looking at the DBX Brokkr sculpts (sculpted by Steve Saunders, same guy who did the DZ Rebs) in a cabinet nearly 4 months ago and they were lovely. Nowhere to be seen on the Kickstarter, though.

Agreed, that's the real issue, and what makes me not even consider this without sculpts. Mantic is not known for staying true to the concept art.

 Azazelx wrote:
But there's nothing wrong with larger-(or-smaller)-than-human humanoid races. Most non-human alien, "pan-human" and "monster" races are basically human sized for no especially good reason, excepting that's what we're used to in games and media, from Star Trek to Star Wars to Lord of the Rings.

Oh, I agree completely. I'm fully in favour of having more "big guys", I just want at least a few to be more stylish. Compare Mantic's ogres with Uber's tank-men, or GW's giant to Magic's Palisade Giant. Or for that matter, compare how GW treats their dragons to this. Being big isn't the same as being stupid, and being big isn't the same as being ugly.

Thought id ask in the comments ss about the brokkrs

A thought. Maybe those Brokkrs were sculpted with restic in mind and have to be redone now that Mantic is going with board game plastic...?

 lord_blackfang wrote:
A thought. Maybe those Brokkrs were sculpted with restic in mind and have to be redone now that Mantic is going with board game plastic...?

possible but the convict sculpts were there aswell and they look identical?

 scarletsquig wrote:
A bigger problem than all of that is the lack of sculpted models on show.

Even Dreadball had 4 fully painted teams to show off, this time there's just two and a lot of concept art.

I really don't get it, I was looking at the DBX Brokkr sculpts (sculpted by Steve Saunders, same guy who did the DZ Rebs) in a cabinet nearly 4 months ago and they were lovely. Nowhere to be seen on the Kickstarter, though.

I wonder if they've decided they won't work for single (ish) piece casting/factory assembly in 'loka' material, so there's going to have to be some (significant) redesign

that would explain why they've not been on show on the KS to avoid bait/switch accusations later