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It involves the royal family.

But I've said too much already!

I was born in 1980, Bob, but I didn't get involved with the robotech kickstarter at all. This may or may not have shattered your theory.

I don't think he actually has a real 'theory' at play here!

 Alpharius wrote:
That's not a very good trend there, concerning Ninja Division stuff.

I guess forewarned is forearmed though - just know that if ND is involved it means about an additional 6 months to the delivery date?

Dude, if Kickstarter is involved, expect a delay.

Forar tells the truth. Kickstarters delay so often, that supporters expect delays, or at least aren't surprised by them. Sometimes frustrated (especially since we want to treat Kickstarter like any other pre-order system). Even veteran companies see huge delays with their Kickstarter projects (Steve Jackson was the worst). Projects that deliver on time are in the minority.


Kickstarter kind of attracts that sort of thing. Normally, a company wouldn't properly announce the release date on a project until it was farther along, so the community as a whole wouldn't see how many delays there were. Companies calculate how long each part of each step will take, then give out a release date. If anything goes wrong during production (as much as needing an adjustment to a single mini) then the whole schedule gets thrown off. And since they're needing to rely on the schedule of other companies as well, it can easily throw it off by months (Reaper had to replace some sculpts with ones they already had to avoid one such delay).

And quality control slows down your whole process by quite a bit, because it often requires people to re-do work- and they haven't put that on their schedule.

Um yeah, I know.

And the more successful the KS campaign is, the longer the delay will be.

My point was, if ND is involved, it looks as if there will be an additional 6 months delay - on top of all that!

it's more like 'hmm, if ND is involved, which of the OTHER projects of theirs that I am backing will be delayed while they rush to work on this one? And then what other projects will they work on in the future that will cause the delay of this?"

Hence the 'tack on an additional 6 months' thing if ND is involved.

While I do concede that delays are common with Kickstarter, my points was more that they really shouldn't be as prevalent as they are, especially with bigger names in the industry. Part of project management is setting realistic timelines, and having contingency plans in place (along with some padding to said timeline) to account for at least minor issues that crop up.

Triply so for massively successful campaigns that rake in millions and vastly expand the scope of their project. Any campaign that says they plan on delivering on time for a million dollar+ campaign is flat out lying. I'd have much more faith in a campaign that asked for 50k, got 1m+, and straight up said "the delivery goal will very likely be pushed back at least one quarter to account for all this extra stuff". Major props if they do it while the campaign is still active.

Like, I get that there are vast differences between making a simple game/a couple of figures/etc and expecting that to take 6 months, versus having an explosion of backers/funding, doubling the size of the game, adding a dozen new figure options, etc, and realistically realizing that the original timeline can probably just be thrown out.

Some backers have taken to the stance that "oh, all campaigns are 3-6+ months late, if I get it by the end of the decade I'm happy, why are you stressing?" when I think that incredible patience, while occasionally laudable, might be doing more harm than good.

I'd rather a campaign tell me up front "this may take up to a year" and deliver in 9 months, than to promise 6 months and take 9. These are people and companies we (as a community) are trusting with hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, surely it shouldn't be too much to ask that they're honest with us about their timelines, rather than just telling us what they think we want to hear and sending a stream of "oops, so, another month to go, or three, hell maybe six... look, it'll be done when it's done."

And yeah, there are definitely some companies that are getting involved with a ton of projects that are or seem likely to have issues with delays. Maybe that's on their doorstep specifically (issues with getting work done in a timely fashion), maybe that's simply based on them being poor judges of likely timelines, or failing to build in sufficient contingency plans, etc.

Edit: I guess what I'm saying is that backers shouldn't be expected to guess whether or not that "omg explosion of funding" contingency time is already in place with the original assessment, or if the original timeline was for doing the bare bones and that even the first stretch goal should start adding days and weeks to the delivery target.

Sorry to be dragging this thread around on topics other than Megaman miniatures and whatnot, but watching the names in question have at least 3 projects on the go (and are at least tangentially involved in more), it's raising a lot of questions as to their ability to actually pull off quality work in a timely fashion.

100% agreed with your second ¶- that would instill a lot of confidence in communication and the company in general

If we want more realistic time estimates project creators could

1) pretty much say no stretch goals, this is all you're getting which is fine (I've backed projects that have done so) but there's no way these will turn into big number smashes

2) convince people that pledging for 1-2 years in advance is ok (project expected to be big tend to ask for 9 months, then slip 6 or more), which does not seem to be happening

(split shipping does give a bit more flexibility, but with the ever rising cost of postage both internal and international it's a very risky game for the project creator)

The most interesting approach I've seen is the rolling dispatch dates for the Bones II KS which at least tries to sort out the problem of the shipping phase of a big KS taking an age, but whether it actually works as designed when people who pledged for delivery waves 4-5 months after the first see people getting (and re-selling) stuff.

I also wonder how Reaper would handle delays if the miss a target. Do they just carry on shipping in order or do they do like airlines with cancel flights, the missed backers just getting slotted in where they can without affecting the genral rn of shipping

I really liked the idea of how Reaper handled the Bones II system.

I sincerely hope that if there are delays, that they keep whomever is delayed at the front of the pack, in the order of their tiers. If it gets shoved back 3 months for whatever reason, I'd be pretty unhappy if my Wave II got shipped after Wave 5 was done because that's where they could slot me in conveniently.

And I agree about splitting shipping being another option. Shadows of Brimstone went with that; they plan to show up at Gencon with the base game, so as far as I understand it, the current plan is to finish the two base boxes and whatever stretch goals they can by August and fire that all off, then wrap up the remaining stretch goals and add ons, and then ship them out in a second round of boxes.

Pricey, but it does give them some flexibility to how they deliver to backers, and will hopefully minimize the risk that one stupid thing gets held up or messed up and delays the entire project by weeks or whatever.

Plus I like to play the base game first, with expansions being added on later, so I'm generally cool with getting more stuff later in the year. Hopefully, say, by the end of 2014, rather than 18 months later, but that'll remain to be seen for a long time to come.

Witness the (somewhat underwhelming) power of Nostalgia :

Have they posted a game play video yet? That is what I am most interested in seeing.

I'd love to see some gameplay video. All together, I'm more interested in the minis than the board game anyway...

Honestly, what I'd like to see is Megaman for Super Dungeon Explore. But I definitely don't want to have to get in on this game in order to do that.


Alpharius- You know, I feel like huge finishing numbers on the very big kickstarters has really kept us from thinking of these numbers as large. Just because Bone II can gather millions of dollars doesn't make a quarter million into an underwhelming number.

On top of that, they have twelve days to go- which is quite a bit of time. I would expect this kickstarter to end in the Zombicide range (about Seven Hundred Thousand). When Zombicide did that, we were all super impressed (remember back then?). Mind, those same numbers were "disappointing" to people who wanted to watch Wrath of Kings fail (it didn't fail, it did pretty great).

Most importantly, they haven't hit the end rush just yet. Most of the miniatures board game kickstarters that I've followed make half their money in the last three days (there are exceptions, but the end rush is usually larger than the beginning rush).

Of course, I remember when Bone I was going, and some people were all kinds of unimpressed with the early numbers.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:

I also wonder how Reaper would handle delays if the miss a target. Do they just carry on shipping in order or do they do like airlines with cancel flights, the missed backers just getting slotted in where they can without affecting the general run of shipping

Yeah, we're all curious to see how they handle it. I bet that they try to keep them in the order they came in, but I would also bet that there are delays in some minis and not others (like there were the first time) and so some people will have to wait no matter where they were in line.

I'm still impressed where this one is, but I do feel there's a missed opportunity here in terms of at what pledge level the stretch goals kick in, the high buy in price, and the odd add-ons/freebies/expansions structure.

I'll always be impressed with any Kickstarter that gets $100K+, no matter how much higher it goes.

They posted the game play video, I think this one will be a pass for me.

Visceral_Mass wrote:
They posted the game play video, I think this one will be a pass for me.

Same, I got in as an early backer hoping stretch goals would add lots more minis, but have had concerns about the game itself from the start. The game play video only served to reinforce those worries and I'll be pulling out for sure now. It seems very clunky, random and just simply not fun. To me nothing about the game play video looked like something I would enjoy playing.

Thrawn200 wrote:

Visceral_Mass wrote:
They posted the game play video, I think this one will be a pass for me.

Same, I got in as an early backer hoping stretch goals would add lots more minis, but have had concerns about the game itself from the start. The game play video only served to reinforce those worries and I'll be pulling out for sure now. It seems very clunky, random and just simply not fun. To me nothing about the game play video looked like something I would enjoy playing.

I've been reading through the kickstarter comments and I think there are several solid ideas being tossed around that would greatly help the game become a more cohesive Mega Man experience. At this point, I'd rather they "pull the plug" and go back to the drawing board and pursue some of those ideas before just tacking them on to their current game. I know I'd definitely give the game another shot if they put more time and effort into making the rules "feel" more like the video game.