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 CaulynDarr wrote:

Did the Mercs guys run over your dog or something? It's not a good deal, so skip it. No harm in that.

Because I want this to succeed, so simple, my time is limited and I spend time only in things I genuinely care about, I met both at GenCon last year, great guys, I really want this to succeed for them and I want it to succeed in its own legs and not as a fancy pack to get miniatures for the MERCs v2.

As it is it is not doing well and I point out its flaws both now and the potential if it hits retail later as it is.

One should be worried that my concerns have shifted from the purely aesthetics of the first pages where I say that they could redo the MERC minis who are not the same standard as MYTH minis are since they go plastic, to the concerns about the basic form of the game and how it does seem stuck in stagnation.



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 yamato wrote:
I agree about the tone,..... I'm sure things are a bit hairy there with the uproar about the MYTH RB,... they seem to be scrambling to put together a solution in time for the wave 2 shipment,.......

If the MYTH shipment and response had been very good,... I think Recon would be blazing right now.

Their plate seems very full for a hand full of guys at the moment.

If only people had raised concerns about the timing and if it could benefit by going later.

Is there a thread here on Dakka talking about the Myth rulebook issue?

If not, can anyone sum up the problem with it? I saw an offhand comment in this thread saying it didn't look professionally edited. Are the rules bad or something?

No sympathy from me. They could have delayed this project.

You didn't get the pdf?

 Salacious Greed wrote:
Is there a thread here on Dakka talking about the Myth rulebook issue?

If not, can anyone sum up the problem with it? I saw an offhand comment in this thread saying it didn't look professionally edited. Are the rules bad or something?

There are just some things missing,... And they are working on a replacement and FAQ for wave 2 shipment.

I think they were just too close to their own baby,.... The rules work very well, but there are some ambiguities and omitted things,.... The online resources already do a great job at clearing those up.

A blind play test was needed,... Unfortunately, the RB was one of the first things that they had to finalize. I think they will have learned a lot from this.

 CptJake wrote:
No sympathy from me. They could have delayed this project.

While I understand it, it does not help the situation at hand.

An their defensive stance does not help bringing in hard but needed suggestions.

Alpharius wrote:And good luck getting answers from the creators.

They seem depressed, disengaged and somewhat aggressive nowadays...

yamato wrote:I agree about the tone,..... I'm sure things are a bit hairy there with the uproar about the MYTH RB,... they seem to be scrambling to put together a solution in time for the wave 2 shipment,.......

If the MYTH shipment and response had been very good,... I think Recon would be blazing right now.

Their plate seems very full for a hand full of guys at the moment.

As time goes on, the idea that they erred by launching this campaign just as they began shipping MYTH becomes more and more like settled wisdom. Just think about it, right now MERCS has to;
-Answer shipping questions for the hundreds of US backers that are waiting/receiving shipments (hopefully all done by now),
-Process missing part/broken part problems,
-Deal with complaints about the rule book,
-Work on re-writing said rule book,
-Negotiate printing of a completely new book to accompany not only second stage shipping, but deal with having to include the book with their retail release/print run.

All of that, on top of running a quarter-million plus Kickstarter Campaign!

 Salacious Greed wrote:
Is there a thread here on Dakka talking about the Myth rulebook issue?

If not, can anyone sum up the problem with it? I saw an offhand comment in this thread saying it didn't look professionally edited. Are the rules bad or something?

From my perspective, it's a matter of it being, well, basically impenetrable. It's high quality, well printed, but I sat down to read it and by the time I stood up, I had barely a better idea of how the game works then when I started.

 Buzzsaw wrote:


From my perspective, it's a matter of it being, well, basically impenetrable. It's high quality, well printed, but I sat down to read it and by the time I stood up, I had barely a better idea of how the game works then when I started.

Basically they tell you how to *do* everything, just not when or why to do everything.

You know how a hero phase works, just no idea when to start or end a hero phase.
You know how to attack, just not when to attack.
You know what a Quest is, but not when or how to use a quest.

If you are an avid RPGer who is used to free-formed RPG systems, it is more intuitive to take the mechanics provided and figure out how to cobble them into a game... If you are not familiar or experienced with that stuff, you literally have no idea how the game starts, how it ends or when to execute the mechanics. While you can figure it out, and there have been added instructions later which put the stuff in order, it is not in the rulebook.

It is a perfect example where the people writing and testing know too much about the rules and are aware of things which are left unsaid. You can't sell a game which takes transfer of 'how to play' like many RPG systems through a learned dark art the way being a Dungeon Master is.

Figures and game materials are top quality. If they re-do the rulebook it may be good. I think the cards don't need reprints, but the card reference probably needs fixing.

 Salacious Greed wrote:
Is there a thread here on Dakka talking about the Myth rulebook issue?

If not, can anyone sum up the problem with it? I saw an offhand comment in this thread saying it didn't look professionally edited. Are the rules bad or something?

Partly, I think it is a lot of unfortunate terminology. Like having Actions and Reaction and Action-Reactions and Reactions (Combat), where you get 1 action and unlimited reactions, but no Action-Reaction unless specified and no Reaction (Combat), which don't happen in the Action phase, etc.. . .Also Actions and Action-Reactions my trigger X (e.g. Treasure) but not Reactions or Reactions (Combat), again with exceptions of course, etc., etc., It get's silly quickly.


Partly, it's clearly a rulebook written by people who "know" the game. Like somebody who played Monopoly for 20 years writing a rule book for monopoly, but kinda forgetting half the things that are "too obvious" for him to mention. Etc...

So yeah, I think it would've benefited from an "editor", not in the sense of spelling or grammar, but in the sense of somebody how knows how to structure and present complex rules in a rulebook. And from what I read, they are basically writing a new rulebook for the retail-release. Could just be a rumour though.

 yamato wrote:

A blind play test was needed,... Unfortunately, the RB was one of the first things that they had to finalize. I think they will have learned a lot from this.

Unfortunately, look at this campaign, there's more to be learned...

I think this is a revised version? I wish they'd put version numbers somewhere, but perhaps I only missed it.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/96651142/Myth_Rulebook_lores.pdf

Thanks for that link Z!

We should probably move some of this MYTH talk over to the MYTH thread though:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/516351.page

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
You didn't get the pdf?

I didn't pledge for Myth. Any Fantasy stuff has to be a little watered down, like Arcadia Quest, to sit the kids down at the table and have the game hold their attention.

I am really interested in Recon for that reason, as the sci-fi armor and guns will have them dragging me to the table to play this for an hour or two. That's why I really hope this takes off.


I wish they would be receptive to being asked to go look at Flying Frog Prod's Shadows of Brimstone KS and game, as they really demonstrated how to run their KS. Where the $200 pledge level here has the ridiculous dice game, the SoB KS equivalent pledge level pretty much doubled the miniatures you got before any SGs or addons. So, with similarly priced basic boardgame boxes, you got 32 minis per box, for a total of 65 with KS excl. We're only getting 41 in Recon, and have to use card tokens to represent enemies in a miniatures board game. These guys need to shake off the funk and get back to this KS.

 yamato wrote:
I agree about the tone,..... I'm sure things are a bit hairy there with the uproar about the MYTH RB,... they seem to be scrambling to put together a solution in time for the wave 2 shipment,.......
If the MYTH shipment and response had been very good,... I think Recon would be blazing right now.
Their plate seems very full for a hand full of guys at the moment.

Well, as I've said a few times now. Finish (a) before beginning (b). But then, I'm obviously a fething idiot who knows nothing, right?

 Salacious Greed wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
You didn't get the pdf?

I didn't pledge for Myth. Any Fantasy stuff has to be a little watered down, like Arcadia Quest, to sit the kids down at the table and have the game hold their attention.

I am really interested in Recon for that reason, as the sci-fi armor and guns will have them dragging me to the table to play this for an hour or two. That's why I really hope this takes off.


I wish they would be receptive to being asked to go look at Flying Frog Prod's Shadows of Brimstone KS and game, as they really demonstrated how to run their KS. Where the $200 pledge level here has the ridiculous dice game, the SoB KS equivalent pledge level pretty much doubled the miniatures you got before any SGs or addons. So, with similarly priced basic boardgame boxes, you got 32 minis per box, for a total of 65 with KS excl. We're only getting 41 in Recon, and have to use card tokens to represent enemies in a miniatures board game. These guys need to shake off the funk and get back to this KS.

The dice game they still haven't showed gameplay video of.....

I gave a lot of thought to this, and think I might have hit upon an idea. With Myth, these guys were going out on a limb with a never before seen property, trying to drum up money to make the game. So they liberally sprinkled lots of cheap to make plastic figures in to draw the masses, and had a runaway success.

However, I think Recon is a subset of their baby, Mercs. The believe it is an established property, and expected the hordes to heed the call of plastic mercs. I really think they believe that they're a pretender to GWs throne, rubbing shoulders with Privateer Press in the gaming market, and so their feelings might be genuinely hurt, as they thought that the first two days were going to be the normal day for this KS.

I'm not putting them down, or anyone who thinks Mercs is a great game, merely stating that this loosely fits their current position and updates, even with the Myth RB debacle. It rings with the "Anyway, enjoy your two figures." from the last update. They don't need to throw hordes of cheap plastic figures at this one, as everyone was supposed to stampede to the drumbeat of plastic Mercs goodness.

What, everyone pays $65 for 5(6?) metal figures per faction right now? So why wouldn't the world want those exact same figures, minus a resculpt or two in plastic?

Please, detractors or supporters, weigh in, what does everyone think? And is there anything we can do to send them a plea to somehow make this more inviting?

I'm in absolute agreement with you Greed.

I went in expecting version 2 of Myth's campaign, and I don't know what I got instead.

Their comments about not having competition, how much they raised, how close they were to being on time... I think a bit of the success did get to their heads. Who can blame them though? The Myth campaign was a big deal, and there was a lot of serious demand for the game out there.
The game hit the right buttons for a lot of people, especially those of us who are looking for the next big dungeon crawler, or something to fill the void of HeroQuest or Warhammer Quest.....

I doubt I'm alone in thinking that Recon was going to be a crazy deal, with piles of various security forces, 3d scenery, large mechs or vehicles... the works. Just like Myth had done from the very get go.

Having a big pile of add ons from day one certainly didn't help. Neither did having bundles with items nobody was interested in (like dice games).

The Megacon guys were even complaining that very few people picked up the add ons. So what does that tell you? Put up tons of them from the get go?

This still has a lot of potential and I'd love to see it reach that.

Yeah,... It does have potential,.... But right now the sizzle is missing,....

I said before that add ons are cool when they show up in the last week,.... In week one and two,... They seem like they are nickel and diming,.... I understand that their analysis told them that the day one types are the ones to buy add ons,.... It's fostered perception that they are looking for pledges to be upped vs bringing on new blood.

I'm sure that is not their intent,.... They've been great in all of my dealings with them.... I really think they just need to get the word out and it would start rolling,..... If we were hitting a goal every day or two, not many people would care when one of the goals was not so great, because they would be rolling in.

There is a strange lack of big excitement,... I remember almost every stretch goal that they announced in MYTH being a jaw dropping combination of art and value.

Employees and such just look kind of meh,... I love them, but they don't have the excitement of a huge skeleton beast with blade arms,...... That stuff is just hella cool!

I get what you guys are saying. Im a backer and i feel they re confused, who is their primary audience? are they selling a board game to mercs players, a scifi game to mythbackers, or an.intro to the mercs world to brand new players?

Im the third type, and.i feel a bit frustrated at so little info? for the merc xpacs, they didnt even include a nice pic of the minis you get. Texico sounds cool,but no pics, no background blurb to sell me on them, no explanation for the 2 special employees. In other words a real lack of reason to spend + 25. I even went to their site but there were no pics nor fluff their either. As a newcomer to th mercs world i wanna know this stuff

Same with the drone add ons damn they look.cool, i wonder what they do in the game? no idea. the new employee stretch goals have same story, please tell me why these are cool and how they affect gameplay. Its not like fantasy i think where you can just say here have some minotaurs and its kinda cool alredy.

Sorry if.im venting abit, just kinda disappointed with the last update. Will stil back this if only for the crossover potential with infijity and battle systems terrain ks. I just want them to talk about the stuff they're selling to us.

Sorry for terrible spelling, this tablet is horrible

I'm kinda disappointed in this KS too. But then I'm a Myth backer and I'm also disappointed my international shipment got pushed back to godknowswhen -_- Which would probably happen if I backed this as well

It does seem like they aren't putting much effort into their updates. I mean, I'm coming off of a Mantic KS whose updates and pretty much walls of text. Then I get these ones and they're maybe a sentence or two.

One thing I'd like to see them do at the very least is show some pictures of what's coming in the expansion sets. Maybe tell us what sort of board expansion we'd be getting? I mean, I kind of hope at least one of them is a parking garage, or a power station, or something funky like that. Secondly, it'd be nice if they showed us what the figures included will be. Even if it's just art for the non-finalized guys.

One positive I will note, that CCC leader resculpt's scanner actually did receive detail. It's plainly visible in their faction update. So, yay?

 Salacious Greed wrote:
I gave a lot of thought to this, and think I might have hit upon an idea. With Myth, these guys were going out on a limb with a never before seen property, trying to drum up money to make the game. So they liberally sprinkled lots of cheap to make plastic figures in to draw the masses, and had a runaway success.

I'll add that it's pretty typical for a company to go "all out" for their first KS, then "pull back" for their second. "All out", of course, includes "not making a profit" and creators quickly learn that, yeah, that might not be a good idea the second time. In their second KS, Reaper definitely "pulled back" by charging "actual shipping", which didn't make international customers happy, but let Reaper actually make some money (or rather, let them have a margin of safety!) with the project. Back to MYTH, your first KS may be your last one, generic fantasy is much more popular than a particular science fiction setting, so perhaps that's why MERCS first KS was MYTH, not RECON.

Dwarven Forge is, I think, having similar "second KS" problems. Caverns aren't as popular as general dungeon tiles, and their being more expensive doesn't help. Additionally, DF, like other "second KS", may have also overestimated how much money would come in after the initial post-hype funding. Compare the funding of "first KS" Super Dungeon Explore vs. "second KS" Dwarven Forge and RECON. (SDE is a "first KS" because SPM is running the KS, not CMON.)

And the Inevitable happened


Actually its not that bad, -900$ when two of the MERCS level (1,5k$) backers quit, but it goes as it was foretold.



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If they do not get a wakeup call from that, I do not know what will happen with this project

Ainokea-No-More
Let me start by saying this is not a bash....I believe in MERCS.
However.........I am Sorry guys I am dropping my $1500 pledge as well.
I am writing to insure everyone I am NOT a campaign troll, and truly selected the $1500 pledge as one I intended to keep...
This decision to drop my pledge is partly based on not "feeling" this game as one my group will particularly enjoy. I wanted to love this game as much as I do MYTH but so far I do not....
And.....
I have to say after supporting Myth with over $400 pledge and trying to give them another $1500 (at least here) without them answering my several questions both here and on the Myth campaign is frustrating. Just FYI, One question is pertaining to my pledge here and one question from my myth campaign. Without these questions being answered I was unsure about my $1500 pledge and did not want to "deny" someone else interested in the $1500 pledge level there chance.
I may come back in for the "myth only" pledge and just jump back in for Myth round 2 here on KS when offered.
I wish all the backers here for RECON a huge success. I am sure my $1500 spot will be grabbed quickly... I more than likely will be back at the MYTH pledge level to support MERCS and this campaign........

yeah not sure. I do not want to spook anyone but it concerned me when I was about to drop another $1500+ (with add ons) without answers. I decided to drop early enough to give someone the chance to grab it now. I could have waited to see if MERCS answered my questions but then it would have left little to no time for someone to pick up my $1500 pledge.
I still believe in MERCS and thus back in for the Myth pledge level...

It rings what many of us have said and the shaken confidence in it, we want it to succeed, but do not believe it will at the direction it heads.

And as I write that the above comment is invalidated today's total has dropped to - 2,5k....

Their communication is non existent, people are left getting their assumptions alone.... This project needs a great reevaluation and why not a bit of humility and redrawing of stretch goals.

 Salacious Greed wrote:
I gave a lot of thought to this, and think I might have hit upon an idea. With Myth, these guys were going out on a limb with a never before seen property, trying to drum up money to make the game. So they liberally sprinkled lots of cheap to make plastic figures in to draw the masses, and had a runaway success.

However, I think Recon is a subset of their baby, Mercs. The believe it is an established property, and expected the hordes to heed the call of plastic mercs. I really think they believe that they're a pretender to GWs throne, rubbing shoulders with Privateer Press in the gaming market, and so their feelings might be genuinely hurt, as they thought that the first two days were going to be the normal day for this KS.

Wow. The thing is, and with no insults or disrespect intended, MERCS is a mostly-unknown "nothing" game that almost no-one has played if they've even heard of it - like most other games in the sci-fi and fantasy genres that, basically aren't something by GW or PP.

This one always had an uphill battle.

The boardgame has to stand on its own.

But to get to that 'irresistible' level, more content needs to be added - almost to the level of being a feeder for the Tabletop version.

They seem to somewhat understand this given the $200 pledge level, but still, even then, it is somewhat lacking.

Then, add in their odd attitude and aggressive tone in their sporadic and unenthusiastic updates and...

...you end up with a day with 'negative momentum'.

Curious to see where it goes from here...

ced1106 wrote:
I'll add that it's pretty typical for a company to go "all out" for their first KS, then "pull back" for their second. "All out", of course, includes "not making a profit" and creators quickly learn that, yeah, that might not be a good idea the second time. In their second KS, Reaper definitely "pulled back" by charging "actual shipping", which didn't make international customers happy, but let Reaper actually make some money (or rather, let them have a margin of safety!) with the project. Back to MYTH, your first KS may be your last one, generic fantasy is much more popular than a particular science fiction setting, so perhaps that's why MERCS first KS was MYTH, not RECON.

Dwarven Forge is, I think, having similar "second KS" problems. Caverns aren't as popular as general dungeon tiles, and their being more expensive doesn't help. Additionally, DF, like other "second KS", may have also overestimated how much money would come in after the initial post-hype funding. Compare the funding of "first KS" Super Dungeon Explore vs. "second KS" Dwarven Forge and RECON. (SDE is a "first KS" because SPM is running the KS, not CMON.)

I'll agree that 2nd KS-itis gives a company much better margin planning and an idea of how to fill a KS out. Dwarven Forge has said that the molds are going to be more expensive for the caverns, hence the higher price. And the current KS trend is to charge actual shipping, no more blanket shipping, free or otherwise anymore. This drastically hurts a lot of KS's now, as they are far far less attractive to overseas backers. I can't bring myself to back anything out of the UK, as most of the miniature KS's from there are both more expensive exchange rate wise from GBP to USD, and the per dollar value ratio per miniature is much higher than US KS's. Mantic harvests far more money by running their KS's in USD.

The other thing I wanted to say in reply to your quote, was that I don't feel that KS isn't a vehicle to provide a profit for a company. A lot of people both here at Dakka and in the KS comments feel that it is ok for a company to stock the till with cash, but KS is to "help make a product". Not line the creators pockets. The line I see the most is "the company should make money for their product!" Yes, that is true. But they should "make money" in the free market, where profit and expenses exist. KS is giving the creator/company free money to physically make their product, taking all the design costs out of it. So now a company only has to pay a fraction to print a complete, ready to ship to store game. I think this cuts the standard 25-35% of retail cost of a game down to 10-25% probably. I don't believe for an instant that any company will actually tell us, as when their product makes it retail, KS has basically doubled their profit. And that is where a lot of people take issue with some KS's, such as Ninja Pop and their current SDE KS. They're charging retail prices for everything, and not really adding that much for backers compared to other KS's, so the feeling that they're giving backers a deal isn't there for everyone.

So, the feel of this KS for Recon is that they're not giving any kind of deal, and just the basic 2 games aren't fleshed out. If I only get 1 of those boxes, I don't enough miniatures to completely play the game without using tokens in place of SecFor miniatures and workers.

It also feels like they're shoving the dice game on us in the $200 pledge, and then telling us its basically free. Well, swap some more miniatures in there at the $50 value. I just don't want that game, and it subtracts value in my eyes.

So, I hope they come back, throw a bunch of cheap plastic figures at this to get this KS back on track. Negative days tend to breed a defection, as backers seem to be pack animals. They need to take the bull by the horns, give the backers some reassurance.

Edited for the following:
Holy snacks. They just made a post. They traded out the bullet markers, which they SHOULD upgrade the game with, for some more miniatures. Miniatures are good, but we're no where near that SG. And they seem smug in this update. But I don't know why??

Is the FCC dressed in suits? Or is that figure a worker? I'm confused...

They really need to sack the guy that writes the backer updates...

They replaced the bullets with more office worker minis. That should make people happy.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1700755582/mercs-recon/posts/791213

Clearly the artist and sculptor have never thrown a bottle, let alone a molotov cocktail.

He's pitching it underhand.