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 Hulksmash wrote:

 CptJake wrote:

 Piston Honda wrote:
I don't really expect to get a rule book for free at a loss for CMON. If anything at the cost of the rule book.

I understand the reasoning for wanting the book for free.

I guess this was part of the risk as KS backers. We were guaranteed what it came with.

So, out of curiosity, if you had gotten miscast or broken figures would you have been willing to pay for a replacement?

Are broken rules that much different?

If you buy a game in store and the models are fine but the rules just don't work or suck are the people you purchased it from going to take it back?

Yeah, I agree, there's a huge difference between a technical flaw (miscast, misprint, mispack) and a design flaw (rules issues, sculpt issues). A correct analogy would be, for instance, the "khador gap" of old: just about every one of the original Khador warjacks had a design flaw where the two body halves didn't meet up properly, so you'd need to file, bend, and/or fill the pieces until the gap went away. This wasn't a miscast, this was the original having a problem.

So, I ask you another analogous question: if you bought a model that, by design flaw, didn't fit perfectly, would you ask for a refund?

If I was lead to believe it would fit perfectly and the design flaw was hidden from me before the purchase, damn right I would ask for a refund.

These rules were supposed to have been playtested and ready to go. Not until after release was it admitted that they were not ready to go.

Curious to know if it would be possible to return a big mac at mcdonalds because it doesn't look like the picture.

On the picture it looks nice and juicy, tomatoes and lettuce full of color.

When you get it, it is gray in color, greasy and sloppy.

 Piston Honda wrote:
Curious to know if it would be possible to return a big mac at mcdonalds because it doesn't look like the picture.

On the picture it looks nice and juicy, tomatoes and lettuce full of color.

When you get it, it is gray in color, greasy and sloppy.

Would they take it back? Dunno. But if my food came out looking like that, yeah, I'd try to send it back.

Should they take it back? Of course... not just because they served crap, but because they have a reputation to safeguard.

There doesn't seem to be a question that this has had an impact on the reputation of McVey; just in this thread, a positive comment was,

silent25 wrote:
Will have to find the link, but Studio McVey already announced on their forums an updated rule book will be available for download as pdf.

As for quality, I think they learned their lesson from this KS and are going back to a quality first. Still I was not disappointed with this KS. Even with the warping, the figs were still better than a bunch of other board games I played with droppy weapons and faceless blobs.

When the campaign started their reputation was sky high. Now? You can rest assured that your stuff will be... better then horrible crap.

If I'm buying (£13/$23) a high end limited edition resin figure I expect it to be (near) perfect

If I'm paying much, much less (£0.70/$1) I don't expect it to be as good, even if the original sculpt was in resin, especially as the sculpt was designed with resin/metal in mind

It's just not going to happen (it would be great if it did, but nope, not going to happen)

Now with the new AoS figure I DO expect them to be better than the SW box stuff,

Studio McVey now knows what the PP style plastic does of sculpt reproduction.. should things be thicker/thinner, potential mould lines (get smarter about where you put them), put full assembly guides in the box (or a web link) etc

As to they SW rules, the perception is worse than the reality yes there are a few issues where it's nice to have Rob's input rad grenades) but most issues are minor, and won't bother most players. I'm hard pressed to think of any reletivly complex board game where the first run rules didn't have issues.

I wasn't expecting to see resin quality miniatures, however, I had guessed that quality would suffer greatly since they seemed to have gone the Bucket-o-Minis route, was hoping I was wrong.

I would say I am 50-50 on my predictions. The minis are better than many other companies out there, such as West Wind, many of the reaper minis, but not as good as say Infinity, Mercs, Ax Faction.

I wasn't expecting CMON/Mike to produce to the quality of said companies because of the method of manufacturing.

I would have been happy with 1/4 of the minis I received in exchange for minis with less mold lines and a bit crisper. And better quality components 1/8 to 3/16 boards with a boarder seal (like FFG's boards), stretch goals that gave us plastic tokens similar to GF9's tokens.

As personal pet-peeve, really wish we had stretch goals for original characters and troops rather than homages. Don't really care for them other than the firefly crew.

Overall I give the minis a C+ to a B-

I love SMV's resin minis, I really do- they're gorgeous and near-perfect casts... but they're also, like, $15-40 each. If you were expecting close to that with that price drop, I think it's safe to say that you were kidding yourself.

However (!), I think that most of this was the PITA mold lines, not the casts, which translated pretty well: I painted these two up resin vs. plastic,

and don't think that the quality, painted, is that noticeably worse. Call it, 80-90% which is great for around 6% of the cost...

However, yes, I'd have appreciated fewer better quality minis, but that's mostly because I get bored painting a lot of similar models, not because I had particular issue with the minis.

Someone posted that McVey studio said that the game rule where unready for release. Where is the post/ information I would love to read it myself. Till then that's a tall order to say such things. On another note the figs look good they are not resin but for 1-10th the price they are great. The mold lines kind of suck but I've gamed for a while and I can clean figs. The rules are really interesting. However they are written by a small team. U Can tell that it was proof read by people that know the rules. The game is playable if you are a veteran gamer. They are however, far short of what MUST be out out for paying backers. Version 1.5 next week so lets see if they get it right. 1 major thing I truly don't get a out KS. So you put out a game and have people fund it. Then it ships and the rules are subpar?!?!? WTF!! Some 4 thousand people buy in. Vet some find a few hard core gamers have them sign nondisclosure statement and have them proof the game. Is that so hard? I've backed 4 games and all of them had rule issues that could have been 90-95% cleared with that simple and FREE step. So there you have it love the figs like the game. But that's JMO. Thoughts?

Would having extra playtesters have helped fix up some of the rules yes

but it would probably have had to add several months onto the process

pass over rules to tester, wait for results, refine rules, repeat until everybody's happy

without knowing how studio mcveys/cmons funding was worked we don't know if this deley was even possible

(for example there could have been loans coming due meaning they had to get money in when they did)

silent25 wrote:
As for quality, I think they learned their lesson from this KS and are going back to a quality first.

They said the Kickstarter was going to be quality first. "The contents and play materials of the game are of the highest quality" and all that.

Yeah. Not that I was in the market for their LE resin anyway, but I expected something from McVey to, you know, do what it said on the tin.

From: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coolminiornot/sedition-wars-battle-for-alabaster

From the mind of industry legend Mike McVey, and created by the finest artists, miniatures sculptors and game designers, the contents and play materials of the game are of the highest quality.. Sedition Wars : Battle for Alabaster represents the best that miniatures gaming has to offer!

Please read this carefully, notably: "...the contents and play materials of this game are of the HIGHEST quality.. Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster represents the BEST that miniatures gaming has to offer!"

You want to tell me that was what we got with Sedition Wars? I dare you.

Reminds me of another company touting how their miniatures were a revolution and had changed the face of miniature wargaming...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Reminds me of another company touting how their miniatures were a revolution and had changed the face of miniature wargaming...

Well he did work for them.....

 IdentifyZero wrote:
From: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coolminiornot/sedition-wars-battle-for-alabaster

From the mind of industry legend Mike McVey, and created by the finest artists, miniatures sculptors and game designers, the contents and play materials of the game are of the highest quality.. Sedition Wars : Battle for Alabaster represents the best that miniatures gaming has to offer!

Please read this carefully, notably: "...the contents and play materials of this game are of the HIGHEST quality.. Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster represents the BEST that miniatures gaming has to offer!"

You want to tell me that was what we got with Sedition Wars? I dare you.

YMMV, obviously, but I have no complaints whatsoever regarding my set. The tiles are all square and flat, the counters aligned as well as any other game I've bought, and the minis look great. Maybe they sent all the good stuff to this part of the world?

 JoshInJapan wrote:

 IdentifyZero wrote:
From: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coolminiornot/sedition-wars-battle-for-alabaster

From the mind of industry legend Mike McVey, and created by the finest artists, miniatures sculptors and game designers, the contents and play materials of the game are of the highest quality.. Sedition Wars : Battle for Alabaster represents the best that miniatures gaming has to offer!

Please read this carefully, notably: "...the contents and play materials of this game are of the HIGHEST quality.. Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster represents the BEST that miniatures gaming has to offer!"

You want to tell me that was what we got with Sedition Wars? I dare you.

YMMV, obviously, but I have no complaints whatsoever regarding my set. The tiles are all square and flat, the counters aligned as well as any other game I've bought, and the minis look great. Maybe they sent all the good stuff to this part of the world?

So you would call it the best miniatures on the market and of the highest quality?

If so, I have some companies I could show you. Well, namely, Studio McVeys own limited edition resin to start with!

silent25 wrote:
Well he did work for them.....

A billion years ago, sure.

They just didn't specify which miniatures. My resin Kara is awesome.

As for the normal game minis, they're honestly just fine. They're actually really good, even. I feel like I'm the only person that is not dissatisfied with my purchase and what I got for my money.

IdentifyZero you seem to not understand marketing. I mean have no understanding about anything about it at all. You want to hold a company to that. Wow. You must really love GW, FOW, PP, Mongoose, ect they all make up all kinds of clams about there stuff. I can't understand people crying about a turn of phrase. When was the last time any company in the world Marketed there product as "ok" or "good"? Its all the best that was ever created or thought of. LOL

 Absolutionis wrote:
They just didn't specify which miniatures. My resin Kara is awesome.

As for the normal game minis, they're honestly just fine. They're actually really good, even. I feel like I'm the only person that is not dissatisfied with my purchase and what I got for my money.

Such effusions of praise, no doubt they will find themselves on the boxes going forward "Studio McVey Miniatures, they're just fine!"

In fairness, it's probably best to think of Sedition Wars as a real test case for a lot of things that would characterize kickstarter campaigns for... what, about the next year? As it actually moves from people's fantasy to reality, it does seem to be injecting reality into campaigns. Witness the brutal response that Gates of Antares received when it failed to give evidence of the miniatures that would be part of it, or THON, or others...

 Absolutionis wrote:
They just didn't specify which miniatures. My resin Kara is awesome.

As for the normal game minis, they're honestly just fine. They're actually really good, even. I feel like I'm the only person that is not dissatisfied with my purchase and what I got for my money.

I'm in the same boat. Absolutely satisfied with what I got and totally baffled at the virulence of the negativity. I think the minis themselves are actually very, very good quality (especially considering the price) and the game is quite enjoyable as is.

I mean, the Kickstarter campaign meant that everyone who funded was getting involved in the "sausage-making" part of the process (i.e. you might like the end result, but no one wants to actually see how it's done) and it seems like people have been demanding from Studio McVey what they'd demand from, say, GW... totally disregarding the fact that this is the very first time SM has gone through the process of large scale miniature production and GW has decades of experience. In addition, SM's rise wasn't slow and steady like more established companies that grew through the 80's and 90's, but was a virtual explosion... and happened in the information age when everyone expects to know everything about everything right NOW. Complaining as much as some have just strikes me as displaying a lack of perspective about the whole situation.

Having said that, there are some real issues (predictably, IMO) and SM hasn't done a terribly good job of addressing them transparently (which is their prerogative, and fixing things like that is something consumers like us are usually not aware nor part of). I think the negative nature of the internet (and gaming forums in particular) has fueled the backlash and the further we get from the Kickstarter campaign, the more and more positive people's perspectives will be.

griffen127 wrote:
IdentifyZero you seem to not understand marketing. I mean have no understanding about anything about it at all. You want to hold a company to that. Wow. You must really love GW, FOW, PP, Mongoose, ect they all make up all kinds of clams about there stuff. I can't understand people crying about a turn of phrase. When was the last time any company in the world Marketed there product as "ok" or "good"? Its all the best that was ever created or thought of. LOL

Nice attempt at baiting Fresh-Faced New User.

 Gomez wrote:

 Absolutionis wrote:
They just didn't specify which miniatures. My resin Kara is awesome.

As for the normal game minis, they're honestly just fine. They're actually really good, even. I feel like I'm the only person that is not dissatisfied with my purchase and what I got for my money.

I'm in the same boat. Absolutely satisfied with what I got and totally baffled at the virulence of the negativity. I think the minis themselves are actually very, very good quality (especially considering the price) and the game is quite enjoyable as is.

I mean, the Kickstarter campaign meant that everyone who funded was getting involved in the "sausage-making" part of the process (i.e. you might like the end result, but no one wants to actually see how it's done) and it seems like people have been demanding from Studio McVey what they'd demand from, say, GW... totally disregarding the fact that this is the very first time SM has gone through the process of large scale miniature production and GW has decades of experience. In addition, SM's rise wasn't slow and steady like more established companies that grew through the 80's and 90's, but was a virtual explosion... and happened in the information age when everyone expects to know everything about everything right NOW. Complaining as much as some have just strikes me as displaying a lack of perspective about the whole situation.

Having said that, there are some real issues (predictably, IMO) and SM hasn't done a terribly good job of addressing them transparently (which is their prerogative, and fixing things like that is something consumers like us are usually not aware nor part of). I think the negative nature of the internet (and gaming forums in particular) has fueled the backlash and the further we get from the Kickstarter campaign, the more and more positive people's perspectives will be.

Actually? I expected the quality I expect from Studio McVey. I'd be happy to go take a photo right now and show you the roughly $1000 I've dropped on their products before Sedition Wars. I can guarantee, I was buying Studio McVey and Sedition Wars products before 3/4 of the posters on this board had any idea who they were aside from maybe seeing Mike's name alongside 'Eavy Metal at one point.

So no, I didn't buy this, (Yes, these were purchases, we all purchased these) under the pretenses of hoping for Games Workshop levels of quality. I bought this under the promise of the typical high quality product Studio McVey delivers. They promised us the very best available on the market. In many cases, I might agree when it comes to the resin limited editions they release but not this boardgame/miniatures game.

Unfortunately, the people who are extremely happy with Sedition Wars are in the minority. If you go check out the actual Sedition Wars topic, I gave the game a good review; it wasn't what they advertised to us though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For the record? I think the majority of the negativity with Studio McVey seems to be the fact that they gave us very little communication after the project was funded and Kickstarter ended.

Please don't blame CMON.

They waited till the last minute to advise us of delays and made no real communication attempts until they saw that people were going crazy with rage. Remember the forums debacle over on Studio McVey? The activity plummeted there after.

Studio McVey did indeed have a quick and I am sad to say, likely short rise due to failing to address very simple aspects of the business they have and the consumer base.

Battle for Alabaster is retailing for $60 everywhere and going on sale for $50 or less as we've already seen.

(How many people were happy to see a professional painter outsourced to paint Gnosis Armor Kara?) ^.^

Sedition Wars is selling around 72 to 75 dollars online, typical discount on large online discount stores.

the only time I saw it for 50 bucks on a standard retail outlet was MM's daily deal and ebay auctions from people who have already opened it and some cases gave them terrible paint jobs.

 Gomez wrote:
...
I mean, the Kickstarter campaign meant that everyone who funded was getting involved in the "sausage-making" part of the process (i.e. you might like the end result, but no one wants to actually see how it's done) and it seems like people have been demanding from Studio McVey what they'd demand from, say, GW... totally disregarding the fact that this is the very first time SM has gone through the process of large scale miniature production and GW has decades of experience. In addition, SM's rise wasn't slow and steady like more established companies that grew through the 80's and 90's, but was a virtual explosion... and happened in the information age when everyone expects to know everything about everything right NOW. Complaining as much as some have just strikes me as displaying a lack of perspective about the whole situation....

Not to beat up on you, but this is a strange attitude that people seem to adopt, not only here, but in video games especially these days: the notion that one ought to compare products not as the market is now, but as they once entered the market. This was a constant drumbeat about a year ago when people where saying Star Wars: the Old Republic wasn't up to snuff compared to the games on the market... but people insisted you ought to compare it to the Warcraft of 5 years ago. As if a new Car maker would be properly compared to a Model-T Ford!

Again though, what is most interesting about these things is the way subsequent companies have built on the example (sometimes cautionary example).

 IdentifyZero wrote:

Actually? I expected the quality I expect from Studio McVey. I'd be happy to go take a photo right now and show you the roughly $1000 I've dropped on their products before Sedition Wars. I can guarantee, I was buying Studio McVey and Sedition Wars products before 3/4 of the posters on this board had any idea who they were aside from maybe seeing Mike's name alongside 'Eavy Metal at one point.

So no, I didn't buy this, (Yes, these were purchases, we all purchased these) under the pretenses of hoping for Games Workshop levels of quality. I bought this under the promise of the typical high quality product Studio McVey delivers. They promised us the very best available on the market. In many cases, I might agree when it comes to the resin limited editions they release but not this boardgame/miniatures game.

Unfortunately, the people who are extremely happy with Sedition Wars are in the minority. If you go check out the actual Sedition Wars topic, I gave the game a good review; it wasn't what they advertised to us though.

I understand where you're coming from with this - you had experience with SM's pieces and expected the same with Sedition Wars. I think the problem is that very experience though. SM was pretty clear about what they were producing: a wide release game using a significantly different material than their resin. Is it fair to expect the exact same quality? And to hold them to their claims of "highest quality" etc. isn't fair, either. Every single company in the world talks about their product in the exact same way - why are you denigrating SM so much for it?

Also, it's a little disingenuous to say those who are happy with Sedition Wars are in the minority when those with even slightly negative attitudes toward a product tend to voice their displeasure much more and more vocally than those with positive attitudes toward it. I think the truism I heard was for every one person who complains about a product online there are ten people who are happy with that same product who just don't feel the same sense of urgency to convince others of their POV. I'm not completely happy with everything, and the general amount of negativity around the game should definitely be a high priority concern for SM, but that doesn't mean that those complainers are a representative sample.

 IdentifyZero wrote:

For the record? I think the majority of the negativity with Studio McVey seems to be the fact that they gave us very little communication after the project was funded and Kickstarter ended.

Please don't blame CMON.

They waited till the last minute to advise us of delays and made no real communication attempts until they saw that people were going crazy with rage. Remember the forums debacle over on Studio McVey? The activity plummeted there after.

Studio McVey did indeed have a quick and I am sad to say, likely short rise due to failing to address very simple aspects of the business they have and the consumer base.

Battle for Alabaster is retailing for $60 everywhere and going on sale for $50 or less as we've already seen.

(How many people were happy to see a professional painter outsourced to paint Gnosis Armor Kara?) ^.^

I agree with most of what you're saying is upsetting people. But it goes directly back to the "sausage-making" analogy... Getting a product made and out the door is not always an easy process, and in a traditional situation none of us would expect to hear very much if anything about it. We would see the product on shelves and in catalogs and we'd think it pretty cool. KS definitely added an element of entitlement that IMO is problematic. Why should we as the consumer expect to know about every delay in production? Do we "deserve" to know all the nitty-gritty details? I don't think so, and I find it sort of egotistical to assume the company needs to cater to me through a part of the process I have no control or influence in, but clearly some (many?) don't see it the same way.

Finally, can you explain the problem with the painting of Gnosis Kara? I don't get what the issue is, but I'd like to know what others are thinking about it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Buzzsaw wrote:

Not to beat up on you, but this is a strange attitude that people seem to adopt, not only here, but in video games especially these days: the notion that one ought to compare products not as the market is now, but as they once entered the market. This was a constant drumbeat about a year ago when people where saying Star Wars: the Old Republic wasn't up to snuff compared to the games on the market... but people insisted you ought to compare it to the Warcraft of 5 years ago. As if a new Car maker would be properly compared to a Model-T Ford!

Again though, what is most interesting about these things is the way subsequent companies have built on the example (sometimes cautionary example).

I see it less comparing current products to old ones and more like comparing people with experience to people without it. It's why people generally accept certain types of mistakes from rookie athletes that they'd be furious about coming from veterans.

SM is the rookie in the mass-produced mini game, and if they make some mistakes because of that, I'll give them something of a pass. For their next venture - and for each progressive one after that - my expectations will be a little higher. Does that make more sense?

I was happy with the product. The quality of the figures were great, and certainly comparable to some of the resins I've bought from Studio McVey in the past. I'm eyeballing my Katya right now... had to do emergency surgery when I realized she was wearing a diaper. Getting back on track, my opinion on the quality of Sedition Wars figs would still stand whether there were miscasts or not (I had none).

I didn't play the game so no idea about the rules. But, I wasn't planning on playing it until years later with my kids when they're grown up anyways.

My only gripe is the plastic is a bit too tough. I dulls your blade rather fast.

 Gomez wrote:
...
I understand where you're coming from with this - you had experience with SM's pieces and expected the same with Sedition Wars. I think the problem is that very experience though. SM was pretty clear about what they were producing: a wide release game using a significantly different material than their resin. Is it fair to expect the exact same quality? And to hold them to their claims of "highest quality" etc. isn't fair, either. Every single company in the world talks about their product in the exact same way - why are you denigrating SM so much for it?

Also, it's a little disingenuous to say those who are happy with Sedition Wars are in the minority when those with even slightly negative attitudes toward a product tend to voice their displeasure much more and more vocally than those with positive attitudes toward it. I think the truism I heard was for every one person who complains about a product online there are ten people who are happy with that same product who just don't feel the same sense of urgency to convince others of their POV. I'm not completely happy with everything, and the general amount of negativity around the game should definitely be a high priority concern for SM, but that doesn't mean that those complainers are a representative sample. ...

First, the art of advertising is not nearly so clumsy as you imply: advertisements are couched in a number of equivocations or non-provable terms precisely to make direct comparisons difficult. The problem with SM is that they a) traded almost entirely on their reputation for models of a certain quality, b) made repeated and explicit assurances that the product in question would be of similarly high quality, and c) ultimately delivered something... good? Something certainly that can be agreed to be of a level with other board games of a high quality, but certainly not a product leaps and bounds above comparable games, consider Dreadball, for example.

Of particular interest is the quality of subsequent board games such as Kingdom Death: Monster. Having seen the hit that SM took to their reputation (and being obsessively concerned with quality), Poots seems bound and determined to produce superlative game pieces.

Second, while the notion is common that complainers are more likely to speak up and are unrepresentative, it is by no means a truism, and in fact is quite possibly the very opposite of reality. From that, an excellent business maxim of Marshall Fields: "Those who buy, support me. Those who come to flatter, please me. Those who complain teach me how I may please others so they will buy. The only ones that hurt me are those who are displeased but do not complain. They refuse me permission to correct my errors and thus improve my service."

The greatest danger going forward for any KS campaign isn't necessarily from the numbers of complaints, but the number of people that consider the final product... uninspiring. Loving it or hating it is one thing, but at the end of the process going "meh"? That's a very big problem...

Maybe we should all withdraw our pledges...

 Gomez wrote:

 Buzzsaw wrote:

Not to beat up on you, but this is a strange attitude that people seem to adopt, not only here, but in video games especially these days: the notion that one ought to compare products not as the market is now, but as they once entered the market. This was a constant drumbeat about a year ago when people where saying Star Wars: the Old Republic wasn't up to snuff compared to the games on the market... but people insisted you ought to compare it to the Warcraft of 5 years ago. As if a new Car maker would be properly compared to a Model-T Ford!

Again though, what is most interesting about these things is the way subsequent companies have built on the example (sometimes cautionary example).

I see it less comparing current products to old ones and more like comparing people with experience to people without it. It's why people generally accept certain types of mistakes from rookie athletes that they'd be furious about coming from veterans.

SM is the rookie in the mass-produced mini game, and if they make some mistakes because of that, I'll give them something of a pass. For their next venture - and for each progressive one after that - my expectations will be a little higher. Does that make more sense?

The problem with this view is that it assumes an unreasonable level of familiarity with the product and its manufacturer on the part of the consumer. This is not to say there isn't a certain logic in what you say, but it is a peculiar and rather unusual way of shopping, you would agree? How many people that are buying at the retail point have any idea who or what SM is? Or C'MoN? How many consumers will do a search and be persuaded by complaints? No one can know. Products tend to stand or fall on their own, especially in a situation where the main following of the company is in a different area of commerce then the new product (Resin miniatures versus mass market board games, here).

Again, it's perfectly reasonable to give a company some latitude and forgive them their teething pains. But it is also important to realize that not everyone will be so forgiving.

 Buzzsaw wrote:


First, the art of advertising is not nearly so clumsy as you imply: advertisements are couched in a number of equivocations or non-provable terms precisely to make direct comparisons difficult. The problem with SM is that they a) traded almost entirely on their reputation for models of a certain quality, b) made repeated and explicit assurances that the product in question would be of similarly high quality, and c) ultimately delivered something... good? Something certainly that can be agreed to be of a level with other board games of a high quality, but certainly not a product leaps and bounds above comparable games, consider Dreadball, for example.

Of particular interest is the quality of subsequent board games such as Kingdom Death: Monster. Having seen the hit that SM took to their reputation (and being obsessively concerned with quality), Poots seems bound and determined to produce superlative game pieces.

Second, while the notion is common that complainers are more likely to speak up and are unrepresentative, it is by no means a truism, and in fact is quite possibly the very opposite of reality. From that, an excellent business maxim of Marshall Fields: "Those who buy, support me. Those who come to flatter, please me. Those who complain teach me how I may please others so they will buy. The only ones that hurt me are those who are displeased but do not complain. They refuse me permission to correct my errors and thus improve my service."

The greatest danger going forward for any KS campaign isn't necessarily from the numbers of complaints, but the number of people that consider the final product... uninspiring. Loving it or hating it is one thing, but at the end of the process going "meh"? That's a very big problem...

First, that article was interesting - thanks for linking it (though it does only look at the issue via different types of complainers, rather than complainers vs. non-complainers).

Second, I agree with you that SM was trading on their reputation and has now taken a hit to it. I guess all along I assumed there would be a (not-terribly-significant) dip in quality because of the difference in material, and I took their assurances of quality with that caveat in mind. And I got more or less what I expected (some sculpts a little lower in quality than I expected, and some a little better). Clearly, others didn't see it from the same perspective.

In the end I suppose I'm just a forgiving guy who is willing to look beyond a few missteps due to inexperience - so long as they fix them as they move forward. So I guess we'll see how long people like me are satisfied with SM's products.