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 agnosto wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:

 GrimDork wrote:
Is anyone else excited/anxious to see the AW bundles still on the survey? I may have to devote any birthday funds to picking up a couple of those bundles...

bait and switch! those liars

Et tu Doug?

Just feelin' snarky!

Actually, it's Good News as I only got two of the four bundles initially and now I want the other two because, duh, Antenociti's Workshop stuff is ultra high quality, and was kicking myself for not getting them all.

@Vermonter I shall be preferentially indifferent all I please thankyouverymuch! And I'm a big softie... however, metal models are usually extra expensive and getting three of them, even casualties won't bug me at all

@CptJake I dunno. I did everything from memory aside from asking my question here and on the KS comments. I just remembered what I pledged and went with it. I'm pretty sure the AW stuff was on the last page which was called pledge boosters, or something, but I really just looked at pictures and put the appropriate numbers down. Kind of hopeful to see a summary email before they lock things down.
TLDR: I assume you had to pledge extra, but I already had and have no summary yet (wouldn't expect it this soon) to say for sure either way.

Oh, as for BtoB/AA and bugs. I believe when you pick that pledge level, the same or next page has a box to select which bug you want. I didn't do the one-click so I can't speak of that, but when I manually selected the apocalypse bundle I got two boxes to set up my second and third bugs. I expect that the one click would have a similar option on one of it's follow up pages.

 scarletsquig wrote:

- Men-at-arms situation of blind shipping 200 of the things to me without showing the sprues first, knowing that we'd probably think they were terrible = pretty much the worst thing the company has ever done. So, there's one thing we can agree on since we're both KoW backers.

For me, I don't mind if they screw up, as long as I'm not stuck with the screwup. I have 200 screwups in a drawer and don't want anymore!

So contact them and ask for a refund/exchange. I suggested that you do so several months ago, and your reply was that you'd rather keep them so you had a "stronger point" to them when they got to the WarPath plastics to make sure they're not (also) utter gak. Which didn't make sense then and still doesn't.

So contact them and return them. 200 pieces of gak is on them, and should not be on you. Who gives a feth if it costs them a bit of money to refund you? But if you're concerned about bringing Mantic financial hardship due to their poor and duplicitous decisions, get the refund as KS exchange credit or something. Just don't keep them for the sake of having a cross to hoist yourself on. Your points stand well enough without the loss of your money for garbage.

I'd think that making them refund you for 200 MAA makes a stronger case on their end then you being out of pocket for 200 MAA...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

NTRabbit wrote:

Actually, the secret is to realise that Dakka is a hobby site - where for 90% of the users, their first hobby is actually to moan and whine incessantly about everything that crosses their vision for little particular reason.
After that, some of them play wargames!
The other 10% actually play games and paint cool stuff first and foremost.

Why are you here then?

Hm, let's see. No internal P&M Blog. No external P&M blog. No posts in any Painting or Modelling parts of the forum. No Gallery votes. No images in your gallery.

...half your posts in N&R...

Oh, I see. Moaning and whining.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DaveC wrote:
Deadzone is due to ship end of June, Mars Attacks in August there will only be a few weeks between them - Battlezones cost the same either way.

EDIT in fact Deadzone is chepaer for scenery if you want 4 or more Battlezones as there is no extra discounts built into MA just $25 or $50 sets.

What are the extra scenery discounts via DeadZone? Navigating Mantic surveys is a nightmare.

 Azazelx wrote:

Why are you here then?

Hm, let's see. No internal P&M Blog. No external P&M blog. No posts in any Painting or Modelling parts of the forum. No Gallery votes. No images in your gallery.

...half your posts in N&R...

Oh, I see. Moaning and whining.

Never blogged in my liffe, unlikely to start. I really should upload some images of my terrible painting though. I haven't posted in painting and modelling because I've nothing to contribute there, I just read them. I'm here to read, mostly, though I post in a couple Mantic threads and the Robotech thread, and I actually made an account to join a Kill Team campaign a friend was running that has been indefinitely delayed. It's just hard to pick the good content out of the incessant moaning and whining that comes from most here, especially in kickstarter and rumour threads. You'd be shocked to discover that no minis company has ever made a good mini, had good customer service or written good rules or fluff in history, going by weight of numbers.

It's be funny if it wasn't bloody annoying trying to read around the same few people talking about the same thing everyone else has gotten over or moved into a new phase of discussion on from the same few people in any given thread every day.

I always go out of my way to mention good service and product so reserve the right to mention the bad.
If you don't like that Mantic are receiving so much negative attention, perhaps you could get in touch and see if they can address the problems their end?
Two kickstarters delivered with the exact same issues. Yay Mantic.

And yet Dreamforge doesn't get these sorts of comments. How could that be? Surely it couldn't be because he's produced multiple high quality plastic kits for a fraction of what Mantic took in for their mediocre restic and worse Men at Arms?

 AlexHolker wrote:
And yet Dreamforge doesn't get these sorts of comments. How could that be? Surely it couldn't be because he's produced multiple high quality plastic kits for a fraction of what Mantic took in for their mediocre restic and worse Men at Arms?

Dreamforge is also what, 2 years behind schedule producing only 6 different kits? Everyone has their problems. Mantic has some communication and customer service issues, we all know it and should keep telling them, but from my Deadzone experience there's no problem at all with the quality of product. Didn't personally back any of their previous.

NTRabbit wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:
And yet Dreamforge doesn't get these sorts of comments. How could that be? Surely it couldn't be because he's produced multiple high quality plastic kits for a fraction of what Mantic took in for their mediocre restic and worse Men at Arms?

Dreamforge is also what, 2 years behind schedule producing only 6 different kits? Everyone has their problems. Mantic has some communication and customer service issues, we all know it and should keep telling them, but from my Deadzone experience there's no problem at all with the quality of product. Didn't personally back any of their previous.

Well, you'd be the expert then...

Dreamforge is a false comparison. He had far fewer backers, did a great deal of the funding on credit from WGF (and so likely has a little less control in exchange though with WGF's execution this probably isn't a concern), has experienced excessive delays (though they are "only" 8 months behind at the moment; May 2014 will be the 1 year point on Wave 3) which is counter-balanced by Mark's reasonably good communication and WGF's high quality. However, there are still no rules and no game. Those are coming, and I'm sure they'll be excellent, but Mantic will have released 2 game systems entirely in the same timeframe which have been fairly well received overall.

Also, for completeness even though it's drifting OT, DFG will be releasing far more than 6 kits. There are currently 14 kits for sale from The War Store (not counting 10 and 20 stormtroopers as different kits) with I believe more than a dozen due in Wave 3. A weapon arm may not be a complex kit compared to the upcoming APC, but it is still a kit.

However, it's worth noting that WGF accidentally left out three components from the Wave 2 shipment (15mm capacitor coolers, 15mm Excalibur, left arm armor on most of the arm kits). Just straight up "oops, those were supposed to be in the box" kind of mistake like many people want to see Mantic burned at the stake for committing. However, without the sounding chamber that Mantic allows to develop with their lackluster communication on issues (in contrast once it was reported Mark was fairly on the ball about letting people know about it) and with WGF producing consistent high-quality stuff versus the spotty consistent of Mantic's supplier, people are for the most part not upset.

Again, communication is the notable difference, as people kept informed are less likely to make up their own stories. However, personally I've still not heard anything about my replacement parts being shipped...should I go rant and wail and rend my garments in the DFG thread like some of the posters in this thread? Some would apparently argue I should and not give any more money to a company that "lied" about how long the project would take. Or, I could take the view that a lot of stuff doesn't go exactly as anyone would like and not worry about minor stuff like toy soldiers. *shrug*

I'm happy with my purchases from both companies, even though they both have their own set of warts. Trying to say one is categorically superior to the other though is just glossing over the fact that with any company you have to make your choice about whether the flaws the company WILL have are matters that you care about or not. If those are in your own personal "key areas," don't do business with them and move on.

One of the people in my gaming club went off on a bitter ramble about something to do with poor customer service/information from the Malifaux people about a really badly delayed or something rulebook the other day.

Fantasy Flight Games have their own issues with massive stock problems and communication about when their models will actually be released. Their Imperial Aces set was supposed to be out before Christmas, now there's some suggestion it will be April? Maybe. Depending on country. You hope.



The Infinity people do seem to have things mostly right as far as I can see, but even then,I think there's some annoyance that, considering the price of their minis (£27 for 4 models, last I saw), that the latest 'Scots Guard' set has 2 identical bodies out of the 4 models. Feel free to correct me on this, though.

Even with Warmahordes, apparently their restic models are much in the same state as mantics, fortunately they're a small part of the range... I think (yeah, I'm struggling now).

Not to let anyone off the hook, because things should be improving at all the time. Especially since it's something potentially easy to fix, in the case of customer support. However, it's starting to seem to me that customers just have to get used to the growing pains of these companies and, for whatever reason, they take long than we'd expect or hope for.

Of course, if you want great customer service from a mature company, there's always GW. Enjoy your £70 a fantasy unit and 40k pay-to-win playmodel though.

NTRabbit wrote:
It's just hard to pick the good content out of the incessant moaning and whining that comes from most here, especially in kickstarter and rumour threads. You'd be shocked to discover that no minis company has ever made a good mini, had good customer service or written good rules or fluff in history, going by weight of numbers.

It's be funny if it wasn't bloody annoying trying to read around the same few people talking about the same thing everyone else has gotten over or moved into a new phase of discussion on from the same few people in any given thread every day.

Na, the vast majority of people here give both criticism and credit where it's due. And while it's smashing that you've really enjoyed your DeadZone experience, it's clearly not been the same for the rest of us. I'm certainly one who's given Mantic credit where its due, but have had all kinds of issues with every Kickstarter I've backed of theirs (that's all of them to date). Trying to pretend that they are non-issues is disingenious and not useful for anyone, not least Mantic themselves. You see - the vast majority of us, including those of us who are critical - if not all of us want them to succeed, but they keep scoring own goals against themselves, and their customer service quality is all over the shop at best. My current outstanding issue is with Loka, which I was told would be resolved in 2-3 weeks. Except I was told that 2 months ago.

Using "We're SO busy right now! It's because we're 1)____________ for 2)____________!"

1)
Preparing
Running
Finishing up
Preparing to ship
Shipping
Completing Shipping

2)
Our Next Kickstarter
Our Latest Kickstarter
Our Previous Kickstarter
The final Pledge Manager from two kickstarters ago
Christmas


Really does start to wear thin after awhile.

I'm sure their CS will get better soon, though. With 2 surveys out, and another KS about to be launched, it'll be time for James to suddenly become interested in Dakka and customer service again.

 Azazelx wrote:
So contact them and return them. 200 pieces of gak is on them, and should not be on you. Who gives a feth if it costs them a bit of money to refund you? But if you're concerned about bringing Mantic financial hardship due to their poor and duplicitous decisions, get the refund as KS exchange credit or something. Just don't keep them for the sake of having a cross to hoist yourself on. Your points stand well enough without the loss of your money for garbage.

Can make my own decisions, thanks.. I also explained a few pages ago what I'll actually be doing with them/ my other reasons for keeping them, which you've completely ignored. If I had zero utility for any of the parts received and they were expensive, I'd have got a refund, as it was they're dirt cheap and the bitz will go nicely on the new perrys. I'm not going off on a hard plastic martyrdom effort, just making a reasonably logical decision.

As far as feedback goes, I think going to the open day and talking to the staff about them in person had more of an impact.

 Krinsath wrote:
Dreamforge is a false comparison.

However, it's worth noting that WGF accidentally left out three components from the Wave 2 shipment (15mm capacitor coolers, 15mm Excalibur, left arm armor on most of the arm kits). Just straight up "oops, those were supposed to be in the box" kind of mistake like many people want to see Mantic burned at the stake for committing. However, without the sounding chamber that Mantic allows to develop with their lackluster communication on issues (in contrast once it was reported Mark was fairly on the ball about letting people know about it) and with WGF producing consistent high-quality stuff versus the spotty consistent of Mantic's supplier, people are for the most part not upset.

Again, communication is the notable difference, as people kept informed are less likely to make up their own stories. However, personally I've still not heard anything about my replacement parts being shipped...should I go rant and wail and rend my garments in the DFG thread like some of the posters in this thread? Some would apparently argue I should and not give any more money to a company that "lied" about how long the project would take. Or, I could take the view that a lot of stuff doesn't go exactly as anyone would like and not worry about minor stuff like toy soldiers.

Didn't they ask people to contact them to let them know if they wanted the missing parts sent out right away or to wait and send them with Wave 3? Not sure. I'm in Australia and they just sent them to me regardless without me needing to contact them. Of course, you could just ask Mark by posting in the thread or PMing him and you'll get an answer within a couple of days - instead of playing email tag or sending in the form that I only found out today from this thread since it's not mentioned AT the form site - that will Spam-Bin any messages from us that contain URLs. Or needing to email, email, ring, email, email, and ring again to get missing parts sent out... I do like Mantic, but their customer service needs to step up. The people there seem to be genuinely nice, and they will sometimes go the extra mile, but they're also the least competent and slowest to fix issues of any company that I'm currently dealing with. The only reasons I still deal with them is because ofthe goodwill generated by them being nice people and the previously-good 1-1 service I was able to get from them last year via Stewart and the fact that I really do want them to succeed. It's just getting harder as time goes on.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 scarletsquig wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
So contact them and return them. 200 pieces of gak is on them, and should not be on you. Who gives a feth if it costs them a bit of money to refund you? But if you're concerned about bringing Mantic financial hardship due to their poor and duplicitous decisions, get the refund as KS exchange credit or something. Just don't keep them for the sake of having a cross to hoist yourself on. Your points stand well enough without the loss of your money for garbage.

Can make my own decisions, thanks.. I also explained a few pages ago what I'll actually be doing with them/ my other reasons for keeping them, which you've completely ignored. If I had zero utility for any of the parts received and they were expensive, I'd have got a refund, as it was they're dirt cheap and the bitz will go nicely on the new perrys. I'm not going off on a hard plastic martyrdom effort, just making a reasonably logical decision.

1) Posted before getting to your later post.

2) I replied to your post talking about how you don't want them. This bit is pretty emphatic:

 scarletsquig wrote:
I have 200 screwups in a drawer and don't want anymore!

3) 3) The other part, "feedback" was in reference to this next quote, posted by yourself some time ago. Here's the cross that I said your points stand well enough on their own without you needing to have 200 piece-of-gak figures for the points to be "legitimate". It's great that you live close enough to have access to talk to them directly, as they seem less interested or willing to take on feedback via email - I assume because internet. Hopefully they'll listen and learn.

 scarletsquig wrote:

Plus if I keep the MAA I get to legitimately complain about them in the KoW 2.0 KS comments section. I am going to be jammering away like nuts in that one, asking if they'll have command groups, asking if the command groups will be metal, asking if the sprues will have lego hands etc. etc. etc. and mentioning the men-at-arms every single time.

In the thread quoted from the Mantic subforum you said you'd convert them instead, and then, in the first section quoted above, you said you didn't want them anymore - so I assumed that you, you know, didn't want them anymore and again made the suggestion to return them. I'm actually on your side, but if you're going to be like that, I've got no problem quoting you contradicting yourself.

mispost

Well, I'm still going to be making the case for no lego hands and no unexpected material changes in the KoW 2.0 KS, at least now I don't need to worry about the quality of the sprues.

 scarletsquig wrote:
...at least now I don't need to worry about the quality of the sprues.

I think it's a bit early to say that. Wait until people have the space zombies in hand.

 Azazelx wrote:

Didn't they ask people to contact them to let them know if they wanted the missing parts sent out right away or to wait and send them with Wave 3? Not sure. I'm in Australia and they just sent them to me regardless without me needing to contact them. Of course, you could just ask Mark by posting in the thread or PMing him and you'll get an answer within a couple of days - instead of playing email tag or sending in the form that I only found out today from this thread since it's not mentioned AT the form site - that will Spam-Bin any messages from us that contain URLs. Or needing to email, email, ring, email, email, and ring again to get missing parts sent out... I do like Mantic, but their customer service needs to step up. The people there seem to be genuinely nice, and they will sometimes go the extra mile, but they're also the least competent and slowest to fix issues of any company that I'm currently dealing with. The only reasons I still deal with them is because ofthe goodwill generated by them being nice people and the previously-good 1-1 service I was able to get from them last year via Stewart and the fact that I really do want them to succeed. It's just getting harder as time goes on.

I was contacted and went into the pledge manager to note I wanted some (not all). Haven't heard anything past that. If I was actually worried about getting my stuff, I'd PM him but I have faith in Mark (been a customer of DFG for a while now) and DeadZone kicked my queue so far back that they'll likely show up when they're needed even if they lost it and ship it with Wave 3.

I agree Mantic's communication is overtaxed to the point of being useless to the consumer. It's not that they're trying to ignore people; they simply do not have an efficient infrastructure. Enthusiasm can only carry you so far in building a house with a flipped over screwdriver to hammer nails instead of using the proper tools. What's more distressing to me is that it seems like they believe if they give it enough time to clear out they don't need to fix the problem...

 Krinsath wrote:
What's more distressing to me is that it seems like they believe if they give it enough time to clear out they don't need to fix the problem...

What I find more troubling is it does seem they're counting on allowing time to clear the back log, BUT starting a new KS project and running two KS surveys during that time.

It reminds me of the scene from the Jack Webb movie The DI where two guys are digging a hole while a third is filling it. (scene below)

As I've said before, they've pushed back the new Dwarf release by a month to give themselves time to catch up.

Were they using a professional-grade setup, I'd have more faith.

Using a cobbled-together homegrown system says they are wallpapering over the hole. It also should say to them that if they have to delay a product, they need to look to see if there's efficiencies they can realize (and it's my belief that there are many).

Another difference between Mantic and Mark is that Mark isn't running successive Kickstarters while people haven't gotten everything from the first one. He said from the very beginning he is not averse to doing a KS for other factions but won't do it until the current one is completely finished. It means we get DFG minis slower but we know we won't be lost in the shuffle as the company moves on to the next cash cow.

Really this is my biggest complaint with Mantic and what I feel is at the root of all their issues. They're dead-set on rushing forward as quickly as possible with as many projects as possible. The end result is spotty quality, terrible customer service and the resulting gripe posts from me. I pitty them because they obviously didn't have grandfathers stand over them telling them, "Finish what you start and do it right the first time." I've tried to live by things like that my whole life and it's served me well....that said, I'm not pulling down $1.2 million off of kickstarters either.

@ SS

I don't think a month is going to cut it if they're just now taking care of LOKA....

This thread is utter gak now, not worthy of being in N&R.

overtyrant wrote:
This thread is utter gak now, not worthy of being in N&R.

I agree. There's about one piece of news per ten pages. Isn't there already discussion threads for the pre-existing Kickstarters?

ah yes - Mars Attacks http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/551582.page
Loka http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/509610.page
Dreadball http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/472000.page

 judgedoug wrote:

overtyrant wrote:
This thread is utter gak now, not worthy of being in N&R.

I agree. There's about one piece of news per ten pages. Isn't there already discussion threads for the pre-existing Kickstarters?

ah yes - Mars Attacks http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/551582.page
Loka http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/509610.page
Dreadball http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/472000.page

Just want to point out that at least for the DreadBall thread you linked to, SS says:

Here's the thread with the bulk of the post-kickstarter discussion:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/502957.page

and then the mod says:

Locking as this is all over, see the link above for follow up posts.

which brings us to this thread...

So, perhaps posting here for dread ball issues may be okay?

I have to strongly disagree with overtyrant and judgedoug's requests for the thread to be deleted.

Just looking at the previous page me, petre, DaveC and a few others are still using it to post actual N&R amidst all the other stuff.

Whatever else gets posted doesn't take away from that, and I will keep updating the title super-quick for the ease of browsing of anyone looking in the N&R section. Much easier to glance at the title then decide if you want to click on the exact page with the news on it rather than trawl the thread each time. I'm just following the pattern that the Infinity thread and other well-managed N&R threads on the forum take.

To keep this post on-topic, I'll mention that there's a discussion over on the mantic forums where it has been revealed that timescale is not the only issue preventing hard plastic ff/asterians.

There are also issues with the sculpts and they're not sure if they have the skill/experience required to be able to get the undercuts right without detail loss.

Apparently they'd need a level of complex split-part tooling on a par with some of GW's character models in terms of the sculpt splits and they're not sure if either their sculptor or manufacturer can get it right. And even if they do work something out the component count might be too high.

So, there's other issues that they need to work out besides just shipping on time before they can make it happen. At the moment the Plague zombies took 2 months to get right after the initial test tooling, so while they can produce quality sprues it is still very much a learning process and takes time.

EDIT: ^ As I've *already posted in this thread just the other week*

 scarletsquig wrote:
There are kickstarter threads to use, in the Mantic subforum, and some people do use them:

Mars Attacks - http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/551582.page
Deadzone - http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/516236.page
Dreadball - http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/472000.page
LOKA - http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/509610.page
Kings of War - http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/451718.page

Well, the Dreadball one is locked, but that was back when KS threads remained in N&R after the KS had ended rather than being moved off to a subforum. And back when this was just the Dreadball N&R thread and nothing else.

There are the threads to use in the appropriate forum and some people do use them. Others actively choose to completely ignore they exist, and prefer to complain here as they think that posting in a subforum constitutes "burying the issue where people can't see it". I'd like to suggest that people post there with non N&R things related to KS, but this would probably be interperated as "rabid fanboi wants to shut down the truth" rather than "I'd like to keep the N&R thread full of N&R discussion".

The Dreadball thread is locked, it's true. This was done back when Dakka's policy for Kickstarter threads was different, and they were locked rather than moved. Feel free to start a Dreadball Kickstarter discussion thread in the Mantic forums, though.

Should I then complain about the N&R stuff being posted in the other thread? It's a bit silly to say that "this thread is only for this and that thread is only for that." but if a Mod were to come in here and say that it's appropriate, I'd heed them. That said, there are several Mods that have posted concerns about Mantic's policies and actions in this thread as well so....

@SS,
Do we know anything about the walker that they posted in during the KS with the big gun and enclosed cockpit? I know some people were asking about it but I don't know if anything's been said yet or not. That's the one I wouldn't mind multiple of, not that the renders of the current one are terrible mind you.

I didn't want this thread deleted just move the constant complaining to mantic general as I constantly have to dredge through all that gak to get to somes news, quite frankly it's starting to put me off Dakka..

Try to affect the thread more positively then - adding in complaints about complaints isn't going to help much, whereas adding in on topic posts will.

@agnosto: There's some natural crossover between the two, since Kickstarter news is general Mantic news too.

However, I think once it gets to the point where people are having problems finding any news to discuss and are calling for the thread to be killed with fire... that's generally a sign that it's gone a bit too far offtopic. Of course discussion along this line is also offtopic. :p

No idea about the walker with gun and cockpit design, just as clueless as everyone else on that point. I like the new design, but an armoured cockpit would be nice.

The main thing that stands out as odd is that the plague cockpit has smashed glass, but the other two have no glass, so it seems like the plague carefully installed their own glass and then smashed it.

I think thats a big problem with Mantic is that they are always to busy for reasons yet charge onwards with the next kick starter anyway. Mars attacks is their most recent kick starter I think they should fix all the problems with the previous 3 before they move onto the next one.

having 2 Kickstarters worth of stuff to deliver or fix (mars attacks and whatever the next one is) is not so bad. Having 4 kick-starters to sort out and fix while gearing up for a 5th is way too much.