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 Zweischneid wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
It really is!

I was mildly somewhat interested in this at the start, but there just hasn't been 'enough' (be it 'stuff', interest from the company, etc.) to get me to go from "casual fan contemplating a purchase" to "willing to spend $125+".

Again, maybe they were just after the hardcore Wyrdos and that's it?

But I don't think that the pledge levels themselves are the problem.

Average pledge per backer on this is barely half of what it is for Kingdom Death, DreadBall, Relic Knights, etc.. .

They just went about it in a psychologically bad way, asking people to buy in at the high price at once (and as fast as possible), instead of "hooking" them with a "easy to just pledge" level that's comfortably in the "impulse buy" zone and then gradually persuading backers to spend more.

That's called the Foot-in-the-door Technique. Very effective.

If you can convince me that your base $60 pledge level is worth the money, I'll gladly pay you more for extra add-ons and not feel guilty about it.

Wyrd has not convinced me that the base-level purchase was worth it, and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure about much of the details of this RPG even through all those webcasts. The fact that they'll produce the game regardless of kickstarter and that they're holding planned content for future release leaves a sour taste.

Kingdom Death got their foot-in-my-door with the Black Friday rates, and kept it with the core game stretch rewards. I gladly gave them more money for the expansions after being promised a discount from MSRP.

Wyrd got their foot-in-my-door with the Miss Terious early reward, but failed to keep it there.

It's been an interesting roller coaster from the start, but as noted before, I too am baffled at some of their choices. They have 2 tiers that aren't actually advertised (the $5 forum access and $500 "secret tier"). The latter I don't care about, but I think having the former would at least attract some interest, and they can use every bit of help at this point.

I joined at the $82 tier for Miss T early on, moved up to $158 when they released the stretch goals that showed me I could get both the models and the deck, and have gone up to $269 for the time being in the hopes of getting a Santana (I am aware it's looking unlikely, but *someone* has to pledge that tier for there to even be a chance of it happening).

At this point I'm leaning towards going back down to the $158 level. Even if I sell the extra set of books to my buddy for $60, that's still $50 on a second deck (guess I could sell that too) and the stuffed doll that I'm not all that attached to in the first place. I like rare swag as much as the next gamer, but having one out of 350'ish of these things doesn't really blow my hair back either.

I remain somewhat optimistic in that there is still a week and a half to turn things around, but I'm not counting on it happening.

The funny thing is, the changes that could make this explode are so simple and obvious (at least to me);

For the $125 Dining room pledge
-Add a second sprue so there is no more "random gender" non-sense,
-Add Miss T,
-Add Santana.

There, the Dining Room ($125) pledge level would then be;
-2 Male and 2 Female Multi-Pose mini kits,
-Hanna, Chief Freikorps Archivist,
-Miss T, and
-Santana.
-Player's Guide,
-FM Guide

I think it's not entirely unfair to say I have been... critical, of this campaign. But I would be very sorely tempted to buy in at $125 for that loadout. But even then, let's be completely fair here, that (which is waaaaaaay better then what they are likely to offer), is still not as good a value as a lot of other campaigns.

Given their use of limited edition figures, I get the feeling it's unlikely they'd 'devalue' them (secondary market or simply in becoming vastly more common) by putting 1000-1500+ into the market by adding them to the 125 tiers.

Even adding Miss T could be an issue, when accounting for the early backers, that'd be another 2000+, and while popping out more plastic figures once the expensive parts are attended to is comparatively cheap, it's possible they don't have quite so many on hand, and want to avoid doing another run if possible, such as the obvious desire to get rid of existing Hanging Tree stock. Hell, I'll bet they just want to reclaim shelf space from them at this point.

Personally, I'm with you on adding a second sprue of the MPM to the middle and top tier, and think Santana should be added to the top tier. Maybe include a random MPM to the $60 tier as well? Or the deck? Something to beef it up a little without going overboard.

Don't get me wrong; if they did that to the middle tier (and above, obviously) I'd be happy as a clam, but looking over how they've run the KS so far, I think it's more likely that I'll end up on a date with *insert incredibly attractive celebrity here* than that'll happen.

You are correct, Buzzsaw. I wonder how this will shake out at the end when people reasses the value of their pledges. I'm pretty sure I'll stay in at the $125 level just because it will cost me more to get the figures separately on eBay. I don't know how many others will.

Buzzsaw, I mostly agree with your point about adding miss terious (I think that the early backer thing was a mistake) and adding the other gender sprue (they already made it; little cost to them for a lot of gain to the backer), but agree with forar that, while I'd like them to do the santana thing, I think that their long term image would benefit from a higher exclusivity, there, though think that they should have just added it to the 225 level flat out (will get to that in a minute).

Guessing at MSRPs
-2 Male and 2 Female Multi-Pose mini kits (at least $15 each, likely $20 each, could easily be more... $80 total)
-Hanna, Chief Freikorps Archivist (looking at past limited edition minis, I'd expect no less than $30 for a medium or large base)
-Miss T ($25ish)
-Player's Guide + FM Guide ($30 minimum)
-plastic deck (11.5

...meaning you're getting around $175 worth of stuff for $125 (having gotten in early, still a value of $155ish, w/o whatever the adventure would cost). It's unfortunately considerably less worth it without the miss terious early bonus, and comes in around MSRP

Having thought about this, I've been leaning towards upgrading my $60 pledge to $125, as it's roughly doubling what I get, and I know myself, so realize that I'd want those items when they came out, anyways. I feel like this is really the best spot for the kickstarter.



What I wish they could do was add only two upgrades: 1: softcover to hardcover; 2: additional sprues of characters. I think that would add a big chunk of interested buyers for people interested in some stuff but not all, as the other pledge levels cover the other options well


Unfortunately, what I think is the honest truth is that, while they said they wanted a modest kickstarter, they were expecting theirs to explode, making the higher levels much more desirable over time, and, since they were (for some reason I still don't wholly comprehend) opposed to upgrades, they needed a high starting point, which scared off a number of backers.

If you look at their stretch goals, you'll notice a lot of blank space there

and I think that it wasn't a formatting error, but the expectation that they'd see things expanding consistently. There is around enough space for 12 more completed stretch goals where, even if a few were two lines, meant they were probably prepared for another $500k of activity.

1/4 of the time is still enough to tell everyone "Look, things didn't go the way we were expecting them, here's how we're changing things for the end." It wouldn't likely make their campaign run wild, but might be the push they need to revitalize it...

Forar wrote:
Given their use of limited edition figures, I get the feeling it's unlikely they'd 'devalue' them (secondary market or simply in becoming vastly more common) by putting 1000-1500+ into the market by adding them to the 125 tiers.

I don't get this attitude. Do they seriously think that it's more important for Wyrd miniatures to be known as the OCD neckbeard-baiting company rather than the company with a successful, goodwill producing Kickstarter? If there was ever a company who's bread and butter was extremely limited editions, I would expect that company to be Kingdom Death. Let's take a look at their Kickstarter and see how much they are sabotaging their campaign in order to maintain their exclusivity...
Uh oh, Wyrd. Looks like you fell for the trap.

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
Buzzsaw, I mostly agree with your point about adding miss terious (I think that the early backer thing was a mistake) and adding the other gender sprue (they already made it; little cost to them for a lot of gain to the backer), but agree with forar that, while I'd like them to do the santana thing, I think that their long term image would benefit from a higher exclusivity, there, though think that they should have just added it to the 225 level flat out (will get to that in a minute).

Guessing at MSRPs
-2 Male and 2 Female Multi-Pose mini kits (at least $15 each, likely $20 each, could easily be more... $80 total)
-Hanna, Chief Freikorps Archivist (looking at past limited edition minis, I'd expect no less than $30 for a medium or large base)
-Miss T ($25ish)
-Player's Guide + FM Guide ($30 minimum)
-plastic deck (11.5

...meaning you're getting around $175 worth of stuff for $125 (having gotten in early, still a value of $155ish, w/o whatever the adventure would cost). It's unfortunately considerably less worth it without the miss terious early bonus, and comes in around MSRP

You've accidentally included 4 MPM kits (they have generously only included 3, with the gender random...), which unfortunately drops the value to $155, which for a pledge today further drops to $130. For a $125 pledge. Almost a year ahead of time.

Now, of course, how to value the kits is open to debate, although if we are to compare to other campaigns, there seems to be little to really recommend Wyrd here. KD offers many of their superlative (based on early shots) kits at 20 models for $50 add-on. DFG offered 20 man units for $39 (with a bewildering amount of bits).

This gets to the core of the problem: at this point, a month into the campaign, we're here arguing about whether the pledges are even a discount. That's no good: the deals should be tempting, not puzzling, at this point.

Consider, for example, Kingdom Death's Dragon King Expansion. Assuming you buy nothing else (and so have to go $11 for the "Options Only" pledge), what do you get for $30 ($41)?
-Plastic Dragon King 8' tall,
-Dragon King Human Form (double size mini?),
-Kit to make 2 male, 2 female Dragon Armor Survivors,
-100+ cards,
-Handbook,
-Twilight Knight.

Now, my point is not to boost KD but to point out, this is a crazy good deal (and was so even before the human form was added). Also, look how the original announcement was made: "50% off MSRP of $60", no questions about what you are getting (which transfers through to subsequent add-ons) compared to retail price. And even if you don't care about the game, the value in models is there: a giant monster and 4 (5) 35mm scale humans for $30 ($41) is rather aggressive pricing. Of course, it ultimately comes down to personal opinion on the aesthetic of the models in question, if you don't like KD, it doesn't matter how good the deal is.

Contrasting that to what Wyrd is doing, is there any indication they even want people to think they are getting a good deal? They seem almost aggressive about how they want to go "a different way", and "not drown people in tee-shirts...".

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
If you look at their stretch goals, you'll notice a lot of blank space there

Spoiler:

and I think that it wasn't a formatting error, but the expectation that they'd see things expanding consistently. There is around enough space for 12 more completed stretch goals where, even if a few were two lines, meant they were probably prepared for another $500k of activity.

1/4 of the time is still enough to tell everyone "Look, things didn't go the way we were expecting them, here's how we're changing things for the end." It wouldn't likely make their campaign run wild, but might be the push they need to revitalize it...

While there is plenty of time for, well, basically anything to happen, there just doesn't seem to be any interest on the part of Wyrd to acknowledge concerns. Even when their own outline shows that the books are not even close to retail level, everything just seems to roll along...

Buzzsaw, I was going with your hypothetical model (with four), missing the santana, as explained, though I guess not clearly enough.

The value of the kits was mostly compared to Wyrd's more recent 3-packs in plastic, which these will definitely be more customizable than.

Regarding Kingdom Death, I agree completely that it's a better deal, and I do feel like you nailed it with your comment that Wyrd is not making it even sound like a good deal.

I'm confused by your last sentence, though... not sure what you're saying?

Does the price comparison take into account postage to those outside the USA?

No. Neither does it take into acccount the import costs so if you are in europe the price right now is looking to be above retail.

If your at the $225 level and don't want the doll then Magical is willing to buy it....

@Starweaver - Wyrd has a European distrobuter so it's not inconcevable they would use them for fuffilment.

@Souleater - I thought high shipping costs was something you guys were familiar with, it seems inline with other Kickstarters to me.

I'm not really sure how you could put a value on the multi part plastic models without seeing what their actually going to retail for. There are alot of parts in those box sets and their use even as bits for their other plastic minatures may make them a highly valued commodeity.

Alot of people bring up Kingdom Death to use as an example lately and while KD might be a fantastic project there are some pretty major differences between it and other large Game projects that kickstarter has produced. Namely, KD as a company has never delivered at a scale such as this. Simply put the number of backers that project has is starting to approach the number of orders he has shipped over the life of the company. I'm starting to have serious doubt about his ability to deliver.... With Through the Breach you've got two pretty significant things going for it. First it's Wyrd, their not going to ruin their name by not fuffling the rewards or fuffiling them with substandard stuff. Second, since this game was going to be made anyway that further reduces the chance that you won't actually get your reward. For me atleast this adds quite a bit of value.

I won't argue that this is the best run project, I think there are alot of things they should have done differently. At the same time I don't think its as serious of a problem as this thread is making it sound.

I am...but why pay them when I can simply wait until next year and buy at discount with most likely free postage?

The postage wasn't a factor for me - I was just wondering if it had been factored into the comparison.

 Souleater wrote:
I am...but why pay them when I can simply wait until next year and buy at discount with most likely free postage?

The postage wasn't a factor for me - I was just wondering if it had been factored into the comparison.

Because this way you get it earlier as well as possibly making it better.

 Catyrpelius wrote:


With Through the Breach you've got two pretty significant things going for it. First it's Wyrd, their not going to ruin their name by not fuffling the rewards or fuffiling them with substandard stuff. Second, since this game was going to be made anyway that further reduces the chance that you won't actually get your reward. For me atleast this adds quite a bit of value.

Are you sure these things are going for it? As it seems to me, theIr Shyte attitude towards their customer has from this KS doesn't seem to be making their names any better....

The fact that it was "going to be made anyway" only serves to undermine the importance of the KS. As it stands, they don't even have the funding they "need" to put out a "complete" book!

Personally I'm a fan of the idea of just adding Santana to the 225 level. The way I see it, if they're willing to give out 500+ of them, obviously they are capable of giving out 350-400 of them. It seems sort of backwards right now; they want to entice people to that level with a target, but it's high/expensive enough that it looks like we'll fall short, and since most people are only backing once, there's only so much that can be done to change that (it's easier for people to add some cash to a backing than to get a whole new person to commit 225-270+). If they just added it outright, I suspect they could at least get within spitting distance of 500, if not surpass it anyway, with a lot less angst from the community over it.

It puts a lot of people in this hesitant state where even if they go to 225, they may be watching the campaign like a hawk in the last day, ready to drop to a lower tier (or back out entirely) if it seems we're not going to cross that threshold, which has a risk of snowballing; if enough people back out that Santana is in jeopardy, it only incentivizes more people leaving in turn.

Cautiously optimistic as I remain, I agree that there's a significant risk of further fall back. I haven't followed a lot of Kickstarters, but I'm curious if there's been one that was successful but saw significant regression from their peak funding point? Perhaps to the level of even regressing on stretch goals? Hopefully it isn't the case here, but with a week and a half left I do hope Wyrd pulls out the stops and does something to push the drive over the plateau it has been lingering at for weeks.

I've not seen major drop outs right at the end of a KS before (possibly because the new boost backers more than replace them)

but some have had significant numbers of very early backers (who jumped in to grab better value early pledges) backing out in the middle when the percived value eas not achived quickly

I saw it during the Relic Knights campaign, but those backers were replaced..... 'dicounted' slots reappearing just helped pull new folk in.

Here as 'replacement' backers don't get any discounted slots (Wyrd didn't do them), the also miss out the 'early backer' figure and PDF (& something else ? I've not kept on top of whether that program continued) it's a lot harder for them to jump in.

As has been said by others the really committed wyrd fans are in already, those that really wanted a Malifaux RPG are in, those that just want the 'limited' minis are in already

A significant part of late 'boost' backers jump into things for extra value which is why they wait to jump in on the last day which is not a strong position for this KS to be in,

the real question is how many of the existing backers hoped for extra value when the pledged at the start, and haven't been following the campaign (seems crazy to me but lost of folk back then only look in again when the 48hr email goes out). When they see where the prohect is will it be enough to hold them ?

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
the real question is how many of the existing backers hoped for extra value when the pledged at the start, and haven't been following the campaign (seems crazy to me but lost of folk back then only look in again when the 48hr email goes out). When they see where the project is will it be enough to hold them ?

I'm always looking for that extra value. Currently it sits at, "expected value for a 125 USD since they added the random gendered sprue and extra fate deck. I was sitting at 225 because that was the "best" way to get what I wanted out of the project. I'm certain there will be people that are going to be upset they won't get Miss Terious or a penny dreadful digital copy, but do those things really take what the Dining Room gamer has and make that not worth the 125?

Note: Can my British friends tell me if 166.12 GBP is a lot of money, or is that about average? Like is that something that you could spend without really thinking too much about it? because if it's the latter, I'm not quite sure what they're complaining about. I'd love to get the 225 level at 166 (that's at the 269 that is added in for shipping).

The early pledge rewards were just Miss T and the pdf, and let's not kid ourselves about the latter being hard to come by.

Not that I'm advocating piracy, just pointing out the reality of our time. Surely someone in the dakka community will have it available to pass along if a group is looking for a copy.

I suspect that even the large/super successful KS's have probably had significant drop offs, they're likely just hidden by the massive swell of new people making any who have to leave a drop in the bucket. Here, it's such a lengthy campaign (a month and a half may have been ill advised, and/or the timing around the holidays) and the post-initial rush has been so lukewarm that the losses are more noticable and aren't being outpaced very quickly.

Hell, they did over 140k in 3 days at the start, and have only netted a gain of 1k in the last week.

And even as one who probably could be counted among the "die hards" who joined early and has admittedly risen through the tiers (even if based at least somewhat on optimism), I'll admit to bristling a little with the whole "our way or the highway" and "it's being made anyway, whatever" attitudes that have come across (paraphrased, obviously).

I'm not expecting to be rolling in rewards, but even in terms of giving us info and feedback we did receive, this whole thing has come across less than ideally.

166 GBP is not an insignificant amount of money.

The UK government expects somebody to be able to live for a week on £65 paying all bills inclusing electric, heating etc (except housing) based on what they give in unemployment

So £166 should pay for everything for 2 1/2 weeks or so

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
The UK government expects somebody to be able to live for a week on £65 paying all bills inclusing electric, heating etc (except housing) based on what they give in unemployment

So £166 should pay for everything for 2 1/2 weeks or so

Okay, that answers a good portion of the question, but I would have serious issue with someone spending their unemployment on books and plastic sculpted into the shape of a person. Our hobby revolves around disposable income (for the most part). So your average UK back of this is probably somewhere like me. Ya can afford it, but ya gotta put forth some money into savings for it?

I realize that the shipping is expensive. I probably wouldn't back it if I had to pay shipping like that (which has kept me out of several good overseas kickstarters due to similar shipping prices). I was just curious if it was that big of a hit to the wallet of an average UK person. I really feel sorry for America's Hat... Our Syrup blooded kindred to the north are paying the 269 and it's actually close to that price.

It is looking more and more like waiting for 'retail' will be the way to go, if even that.

And a mighty dapper chapeau we are at that.

Forar, you should have teamed up with some American Henchman, sent them your slightly more valuable coin plus like 6 bucks for shipping. I would have gladly done that for some of our Canadian friends

 kaiohx wrote:
Nevermind that the $30k goal was just an arbitrary number Mack pulled out of his head when this began. .

No kidding. At 30k apparently we'd have gotten a few photo copied pages stapled together with stick figure art. The page count in these 2 books is looking pretty weak for 60 bucks a year in advance.

 Alpharius wrote:
It is looking more and more like waiting for 'retail' will be the way to go, if even that.

Heh, more and more I'm thinking Polonius correctly described the course of action...

 Polonius wrote:
...
I don't feel like I'm really the target for this KS, and so I won't tell Wyrd how to run it. Just from my view, I'm getting used to getting an amazing return on my investment with kickstarter, especially when deliverty is so distant. I know they say to just wait to buy retail if I don't like the KS, but that misses the point of using a KS to drum up interest: I'm not gonna buy it retail! If anything, I'll grab a used copy a few years after the game implodes for pennies on the dollar, or trade for a copy on the Swap Shop.

One of the things I find saddest about the way Wyrd has gone about this is the way they seem to have pimped out Mr. Martin, having him do the updates as if insight into the design process could take the place of improving the deal. This isn't to say that design insight isn't nice, or to slight Martin, but compare to Numerera: design insight is something that comes along with the kickstarter process, it's not a replacement for value.

Besides, one reason that Martin's updates don't add much from a sales perspective is... they literally don't add anything. Having extensive design discussions regarding the magic system, or the character creation system, or what races will be available is having discussions about things that are presumed to be present in the finished product.

It's almost as if they are having him take up space with discussion so they don't have to have updates totally empty of content.

If they end up deciding to stick by their stretch goal chart, and people pull out of the game and thus they decide not to give everything they were expecting to at the beginning, I don't know if it will even be worth buying once it hits retail.

Don't want to buy an unfinished RPG system, or one that requires an add-on just to be able to play it correctly.

I don't think I have seen too many big companies shoot themselves so thoroughly in the foot on kickstarter like Wyrd has. It's baffling.

 Fenriswulf wrote:
If they end up deciding to stick by their stretch goal chart, and people pull out of the game and thus they decide not to give everything they were expecting to at the beginning, I don't know if it will even be worth buying once it hits retail.

Don't want to buy an unfinished RPG system, or one that requires an add-on just to be able to play it correctly.

I don't think I have seen too many big companies shoot themselves so thoroughly in the foot on kickstarter like Wyrd has. It's baffling.

Besides the creature compendium, what is not going to be included that will limit your ability to play this game?