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 SexierThanYou13 wrote:


Fair enough, and i certainly wasn't denying that it hasn't been as successful as it could have been, I was just bringing up the point that judging a project's overall success due to the first couple of weeks of it's KS isn't a fair judgement. If you were to come after the KS and say then that it hadn't done well, (providing it actually didn't do well) then that would be a fair assumption. Yes, KS campaigns tend follow a certain curve, but there is always the chance that they wont, and that is all i am bringing up.

There really isn't. The best they can hope for, unless they pile tons and tons of additional miniatures into the box to make it "too good to pass up" you can expect the last day to look pretty similar to the first day. The real question will be whether or not the campaign starts to lose money and backers over the oh-too-long course of the campaign. 40 days is way too long, and there are certainly other KSes that will come during that time frame that will siphon some money from it.

On another note, the Epirian Contractors are actually starting to grow on me, i seem to be disliking them less and less as i see more of them. Is anyone else getting this, or is it just me?

It's probably just you. What's making them grow on you that makes them better than the first time you saw them?

 cincydooley wrote:

On another note, the Epirian Contractors are actually starting to grow on me, i seem to be disliking them less and less as i see more of them. Is anyone else getting this, or is it just me?

It's probably just you. What's making them grow on you that makes them better than the first time you saw them?

Dude, get over yourself. You don't like this game, we got that many pages ago. I know it's a shocker, but like any game (yes, even 40k!), your opinion of the models can improve after initial expectations.

 cincydooley wrote:
40 days is way too long, and there are certainly other KSes that will come during that time frame that will siphon some money from it.

Yeah, 20~30 Days is more the sweet spot. Also not pulling a GW and giving a bit more of a build up before launch would have been good IMO.

Yeah, I had a similar reaction to Logan Clause. Hated it on first sight, but came to quite liked it once I remembered to stop taking 40k models so seriously.

First impressions can quite often differ from later ones.

 insaniak wrote:
Yeah, I had a similar reaction to Logan Clause. Hated it on first sight, but came to quite liked it once I remembered to stop taking 40k models so seriously.

First impressions can quite often differ from later ones.

I haven't really had that turnaround with Logan Claus but I have had my fair share of "oh, that looks terrible" changing to "hey, that's not bad at all!"

 Cyporiean wrote:
Yeah, 20~30 Days is more the sweet spot. Also not pulling a GW and giving a bit more of a build up before launch would have been good IMO.

It's hard to argue with that. There was definitely too little of a build up time in my view, too. Especially given how much time they've had, having spent so long in designing it all.

 Accolade wrote:

Dude, get over yourself. You don't like this game, we got that many pages ago. I know it's a shocker, but like any game (yes, even 40k!), your opinion of the models can improve after initial expectations.

Which is why I asked.

Thanks for your input, however. It's certainly valued.

 cincydooley wrote:

 Accolade wrote:

Dude, get over yourself. You don't like this game, we got that many pages ago. I know it's a shocker, but like any game (yes, even 40k!), your opinion of the models can improve after initial expectations.

Which is why I asked.

Thanks for your input, however. It's certainly valued.

You didn't just ask. You said "it's probably just you" as if it was IMPOSSIBLE to change your mind about the project (God forbid someone change their mind about those thrice-damned Epicarians!). You could have said the second part and just left it at that, but for some reason you felt you needed to be snarky about his/her comment.

 Accolade wrote:
You could have said the second part and just left it at that, but for some reason you felt you needed to be snarky about his/her comment.

That was an option??

Well gak, I'll make sure I take advantage of it next time when cutting through the rah rah sycophancy. Thanks!

Whatever man, all I'm saying was there was no reason to be snarky about someone having a positive comment about this game. If you're just going to snarl back, then we're not going to get anywhere.

I had just about finished my reply to insaniak when I realized that becoming stuck-in on the setting is counterproductive. The simple fact is that I don't like the setting, I don't like the conceit and I don't like the aesthetic ("other then that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show?"). I appreciate that I am, therefore, not the target audience. So you can skip down below the spoiler for my attempts at a somewhat more productive input.



One of the points that insaniak makes in rebuttal to me is emblematic of a problem the campaign suffers from: lack of cohesiveness of message. I pointed out that 'apocalypse' was a term much bandied about on the kickstarter main page. He replied that the design team has intimated "that the plan is to evolve the setting over time". So, my first bullet point for the campaign;

-Who is this game/campaign intended to appeal to? I previously had pointed out that the term "Hard Sci-Fi" seems to have been completely expunged from the kickstarter main page. It's disappeared so thoroughly that I had to look back in this thread to make sure I hadn't imagined seeing it.

Why would a term like "Hard Sci-Fi" be prominently featured in the first iteration of the campaign page, then disappear? The game hasn't changed, nor has the background. My assumption is that either complaints were made about how the game didn't justify the term, or people asked what made it "Hard Sci-Fi", and no (or few) satisfactory answers were forthcoming. Why does the campaign main page make prominent reference to "slow apocalypse setting", but team members are, in various places, walking back the idea of this as an apocalyptic setting?

This causes confusion in the potential pledge, because it indicates to the observer that there is confusion in the team. Is this game intended to appeal to the Hard Sci-Fi crowd (who that would be I'm not sure)? If so, how so? Is it intended to appeal to the apocalypse gamer, a sort of fusion of the survival horror tone of settings like Mad Max/Walking Dead and Warhammer 40k, a sort of Zombiecide in space? If so, what impact if any does the looming apocalypse have inside the game? What makes it an "apocalypse" game, a "gritty science fiction universe of desperate survival"?

Which leads to the second bullet;

-What is the selling point of this game? This is a 28mm scale squad based skirmish war game. It has hard plastic figures, which is very much a rarity for a kickstarter property. On the other hand, the miniatures suffer from aesthetic design choices: no small number of people have pointed out that they feel "like they are out of the 90's".

On the other hand, you have a rules system designed by someone that has been working on tournament level rules for years and organizing tournaments for even longer (I think, correct me if that's wrong). But the rules on the KS main page merit no more then a single section, that has all of 3 sentences including a link to a PDF. What is the fundamental principle that underlies the rules? Is it balanced play for tournaments that is still fun? Is it a system that rewards mastery (ala WM?Horder), where someone that has mastered the game can unleash devastating combos? Is it a "simple to learn, difficult to master" rules set that limits tactical options in favor of speed and flexibility of play?

If you were to compare ME with a computer game, would it be more like Starcraft, where you need to micromanage many interdependent units (more similar to 40k), or more like a MOBA such as Heroes of the Storm or DOTA/LOL, where a single unit is paramont to strategy and importance (more akin to WM/Hordes)?

-What's with the... What explains some of the design decisions that just seem, well, inexplicable?

For example, knowing nothing but the name, I would presume at first guess that the "Cybel Network" was some sort of cybernetic link between individuals. I would be going off the general use (especially in sci-fi) of the prefix 'cyb-' to indicate a human-machine interface (cyborg, cybernetics, Cyberdyne Systems, Cybermen, etc) and network. Why use this term for a "gossamer web of dark energy threads stretching between every star"? Also, why use a word that is not obvious in pronunciation when it is such a common feature of the setting? For the record, I'm inclined to say it 'Sybel', pronouncing the 'cy-' as 'psi'.

Why "Zycanthus"? That sounds like the name of a neutral evil outsider from the 3rd edition Fiend Folio. You have a corporation that makes their money off of terraforming planets, and they are called... Epirian? The fanatical and secretive religious factions are... the Karists?

It's not that these names are bad, per se, but none of them readily convey information about the things they name. Just spitballing, but if the ramshackle militia of construction workers were, say, the Geodynamics Security Auxiluries, that may be a lame name, but it tells you something about that faction instantly. Similarly, if the faction obsessed with transcending the mortal plane by way of the Maelstrom were, say, the Ascension Jihad, or simply the Ascension, that would tell you something instantly (and note that the former name tells you something very different from the latter name).

Consider: one doesn't need to know anything about the Dune universe to know that the Butlerian Jihad wasn't characterized by people eating cotton candy.

I'm sure that each and every one of these questions has an answer: the real question is, how best to convey that information to the kickstarter browser. Secondarily, after that decision is made, how best can eyes be brought to bear on the campaign.

Finally, to end on an up note: in addition to the game being very polished for a kickstarter property, the intro video is very, very nice. The CGI, the art and the narrator especially, man, that is a great VO job there.

 SexierThanYou13 wrote:

On another note, the Epirian Contractors are actually starting to grow on me, i seem to be disliking them less and less as i see more of them. Is anyone else getting this, or is it just me?

I liked the Epirians from the get go with some reservations. The more I see them though the more I like them and the more those reservations are going away. So I don't think you're alone.

 Accolade wrote:
Whatever man, all I'm saying was there was no reason to be snarky about someone having a positive comment about this game. If you're just going to snarl back, then we're not going to get anywhere.

Many of us have tried to be constructively critical of the game and why we won't back it, with the hope that it'll be beneficial in the "next steps" phase of the game.

Nearly every time it's been shot down as "you're wrong" or with some other sycophantic commentary.

I have no doubt the rules will be solid to great, but rules don't sell miniatures games in 2015. Models do. And there are some real problems with these models that I fear exist because there was too much "yessing" during the design phase and not enough honest critique.

 cincydooley wrote:

 Accolade wrote:
Whatever man, all I'm saying was there was no reason to be snarky about someone having a positive comment about this game. If you're just going to snarl back, then we're not going to get anywhere.

Many of us have tried to be constructively critical of the game and why we won't back it, with the hope that it'll be beneficial in the "next steps" phase of the game.

Nearly every time it's been shot down as "you're wrong" or with some other sycophantic commentary.

I have no doubt the rules will be solid to great, but rules don't sell miniatures games in 2015. Models do. And there are some real problems with these models that I fear exist because there was too much "yessing" during the design phase and not enough honest critique.

Right, and I understand all of that. I will agree that there are many things I wish the game designers had done differently to really make this game immensely successful. But I don't understand how gaking on another person's comment about liking the models helps further your (probably legitimate) complaints against the game.

 cincydooley wrote:

Nearly every time it's been shot down as "you're wrong" or with some other sycophantic commentary.
.

Charming.

Have you considered that people offering opinions that differ from yours might be doing so because they actually disagree with you, rather than that they are just 'sycophants'?

You don't like the models. That's fine. Others do, and don't think the things you dislike about the models are actually a problem. That doesn't mean that your opinion is wrong... Just that some people disagree with it.

 Buzzsaw wrote:
I had just about finished my reply to insaniak when I realized that becoming stuck-in on the setting is counterproductive. The simple fact is that I don't like the setting, I don't like the conceit and I don't like the aesthetic ("other then that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show?"). I appreciate that I am, therefore, not the target audience. So you can skip down below the spoiler for my attempts at a somewhat more productive input.

Spoiler:

 insaniak wrote:

 Buzzsaw wrote:
-A major third-party threat as a source of conflict, rather then cooperation. There is a reason that overarching threats have been used to bring warring sides together in fiction, because that's what they do in real life. Whether it's the galaxy threatening Yuuzang Vong bringing the Imperial Remnant and the New Republic together in the Star Wars universe, Unicron bringing Optimus Prime and Megatron together, GI Joe and Cobra uniting to battle... uh, a fat man, Buffy and Spike fighting Angel, Master Chief and the Arbiter fighting... whoever that was, and so on.

This is, of course, a reference to real life. The proverb "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is ancient enough to be claimed by many cultures, and as for the ur example, well... 'nuff said.
<image snipped>

The thing is, all of those examples you've given are threats that can clearly be opposed. The Maelstrom isn't... it's a (presumably) force of nature, and the various factions all banding together, in this situation, just means fewer resources for everybody.

You actually highlight an element of the problem: normally (as in the examples I gave) a 3rd party threat in a setting is of the same genre. That is, Unicron is a giant robot in a universe of giant robots, the Yuuzang Vong are another military force in a universe of competing military forces, and so on.

The problem of the Maelstrom, thematically, is that it is a disaster movie premise: the Poseidon Adventure, the Towering Inferno, Deep Impact. But the theme of the game is military conflict/adventure. This is what I mean by the player being a 'bystander': the threat of the Maelstrom will be investigated by men and women in lab coats, not flack jackets.

In a way, it's like having a disaster movie, say Deep Impact, but instead of following the scientists and astronauts on their way to the asteroid, the movie focuses on the riot control cops. You probably could make an interesting movie with that premise, but the problem becomes anchoring the viewer (psychologically) to why they should care about the action.

 insaniak wrote:

-The idea that the Maelstrom is needed for conflict: I've seen several people from the SAS team talk about how the Maelstrom "explains" conflict, and how they "needed" this to instigate and be the driver of conflict in the setting. Because, as we all know, in the absence of an apocalyptic threat, humanity is just too darned peaceful.

Ultimately, what the Maelstrom adds is chaos. And chaos is essential for a setting unless you're going to limit who each faction can fight against. Otherwise, you end up with games that don't make a lot of sense.

This is something that's always bugged me with most games. While there are all sorts of potential reasons for factions to be fighting other factions, a game setting also needs to account for those times when you have a single faction fighting itself. Why are these stormtroopers fighting those stormtroopers? Why are these Tau fighting those Tau? And so on.

40K goes some[i] way towards covering that, but there are any number of times where a match-up just winds up feeling [i]odd.

The Maelstrom provides a setting where, on the edge, everyone is ultimately out to save themselves. And so it's entirely conceivable for different Epirian branches to wind up at odds with each other.

Ehhh... to be frank, I find the idea that they need the Maelstrom to justify mirror matches... very weak. Is there an in-universe explanation in WM/Hordes for why not only are the same factions fighting each other, but exact copies of the same individuals? For that matter, presuming that in ME there will unique characters, the conceit of the Maelstrom doesn't touch on why mirror matches would be happening at all anyway.

This is an inherent problem in all competitive games (where the players chose things like fighters/factions/etc), one that I properly think can usually just be ignored. It's also worth pointing out that having the fluff control what happens in the game often pisses people off: witness the 'Save the Caskuda' campaign that resulted after CB scrapped a series of models. Or having Ko Dali switch factions in fluff and then having her original profile disallowed.

 insaniak wrote:

First, this is simply wrong, or to be more generous, unsupported: from the Kickstarter main page "The apocalypse is coming inexorably to every planet on the Edge." So... yeah, the word 'apocalypse' or 'apocalyptic' is used no less then 3 times. Literally the first bullet point on the main kickstarter page is "A 'slow apocalypse' sci-fi universe supported by years of writing and published novels."

Members of the design team have mentioned in the news thread that the plan is to evolve the setting over time, and it was covered right at the start that the origin and exact nature of the Maelstrom is something to potentially be explored later.

So the initial setting is as explained in the Kickstarter - the End is coming. But what actually happens later is very much up in the air.


As opposed to, say, 40K, where it's a reasonably safe bet that in another 20 years time we'll still be sitting right at the end of the 41st millenium, with nothing much changed other than a whole bunch of extra units being added in.

See below.

One of the points that insaniak makes in rebuttal to me is emblematic of a problem the campaign suffers from: lack of cohesiveness of message. I pointed out that 'apocalypse' was a term much bandied about on the kickstarter main page. He replied that the design team has intimated "that the plan is to evolve the setting over time". So, my first bullet point for the campaign;

-Who is this game/campaign intended to appeal to? I previously had pointed out that the term "Hard Sci-Fi" seems to have been completely expunged from the kickstarter main page. It's disappeared so thoroughly that I had to look back in this thread to make sure I hadn't imagined seeing it.

Why would a term like "Hard Sci-Fi" be prominently featured in the first iteration of the campaign page, then disappear? The game hasn't changed, nor has the background. My assumption is that either complaints were made about how the game didn't justify the term, or people asked what made it "Hard Sci-Fi", and no (or few) satisfactory answers were forthcoming. Why does the campaign main page make prominent reference to "slow apocalypse setting", but team members are, in various places, walking back the idea of this as an apocalyptic setting?

This causes confusion in the potential pledge, because it indicates to the observer that there is confusion in the team. Is this game intended to appeal to the Hard Sci-Fi crowd (who that would be I'm not sure)? If so, how so? Is it intended to appeal to the apocalypse gamer, a sort of fusion of the survival horror tone of settings like Mad Max/Walking Dead and Warhammer 40k, a sort of Zombiecide in space? If so, what impact if any does the looming apocalypse have inside the game? What makes it an "apocalypse" game, a "gritty science fiction universe of desperate survival"?

Which leads to the second bullet;

-What is the selling point of this game? This is a 28mm scale squad based skirmish war game. It has hard plastic figures, which is very much a rarity for a kickstarter property. On the other hand, the miniatures suffer from aesthetic design choices: no small number of people have pointed out that they feel "like they are out of the 90's".

On the other hand, you have a rules system designed by someone that has been working on tournament level rules for years and organizing tournaments for even longer (I think, correct me if that's wrong). But the rules on the KS main page merit no more then a single section, that has all of 3 sentences including a link to a PDF. What is the fundamental principle that underlies the rules? Is it balanced play for tournaments that is still fun? Is it a system that rewards mastery (ala WM?Horder), where someone that has mastered the game can unleash devastating combos? Is it a "simple to learn, difficult to master" rules set that limits tactical options in favor of speed and flexibility of play?

If you were to compare ME with a computer game, would it be more like Starcraft, where you need to micromanage many interdependent units (more similar to 40k), or more like a MOBA such as Heroes of the Storm or DOTA/LOL, where a single unit is paramont to strategy and importance (more akin to WM/Hordes)?

-What's with the... What explains some of the design decisions that just seem, well, inexplicable?

For example, knowing nothing but the name, I would presume at first guess that the "Cybel Network" was some sort of cybernetic link between individuals. I would be going off the general use (especially in sci-fi) of the prefix 'cyb-' to indicate a human-machine interface (cyborg, cybernetics, Cyberdyne Systems, Cybermen, etc) and network. Why use this term for a "gossamer web of dark energy threads stretching between every star"? Also, why use a word that is not obvious in pronunciation when it is such a common feature of the setting? For the record, I'm inclined to say it 'Sybel', pronouncing the 'cy-' as 'psi'.

Why "Zycanthus"? That sounds like the name of a neutral evil outsider from the 3rd edition Fiend Folio. You have a corporation that makes their money off of terraforming planets, and they are called... Epirian? The fanatical and secretive religious factions are... the Karists?

It's not that these names are bad, per se, but none of them readily convey information about the things they name. Just spitballing, but if the ramshackle militia of construction workers were, say, the Geodynamics Security Auxiluries, that may be a lame name, but it tells you something about that faction instantly. Similarly, if the faction obsessed with transcending the mortal plane by way of the Maelstrom were, say, the Ascension Jihad, or simply the Ascension, that would tell you something instantly (and note that the former name tells you something very different from the latter name).

Consider: one doesn't need to know anything about the Dune universe to know that the Butlerian Jihad wasn't characterized by people eating cotton candy.

I'm sure that each and every one of these questions has an answer: the real question is, how best to convey that information to the kickstarter browser. Secondarily, after that decision is made, how best can eyes be brought to bear on the campaign.

Finally, to end on an up note: in addition to the game being very polished for a kickstarter property, the intro video is very, very nice. The CGI, the art and the narrator especially, man, that is a great VO job there.

Thank you for your thoughts. In regards to the content on the Kickstarter page, there's no conspiracy - there's a word limit to how much you can fit on the page, and as we added updates and the terrain add-on we had to remove some of the earlier material. Nothing in our aims has changed and I'd be happy to reproduce and discuss those bullet points with you. Our intention was never to state that we were going to be hard science fiction in the sense that everything in our universe was based on current understanding of physics, only that we would do our best that when we did invent some new technology, alien race or galaxy-wide phenomenon, we would try to make those inventions internally consistent, so that the universe made sense. I have written equations to how the cybel network works, if you'd like some evidence of that rigour, but I'm not going to claim that a web of dark energy tunnels is in any way a 'hard' science fiction idea - it's something we needed in our universe to have FTL, and so we tried to make something that worked for our universe.

I think you're right that getting across a cohesive message as a new company and game is a difficult thing to do, especially when we've created something that has quite a lot of layers to it. Companies like GW have had years and millions of words of text to get across their universe. But I really feel like we can't win here - if we don't post as much stuff, people make assumptions from the small amount we release at the start, whereas if we release more detail and nuance to what we've created, suddenly the problem is that we don't have have consistency in our message. On the previous page you were complaining that our universe was all-apocalypse and how that wasn't of interest to you (which is fair enough) but when I explained that it was more than just the end of everything, and that there was a wider universe to explore of which the Edge was just one part, suddenly I'm walking back our previous statements? Can they not coexist? We provide a full breakdown of the ruleset, with an overview of the major mechanics, before the game is released, but because that text is too long to put on the main page we are not giving enough information about the core principles? And the naming criticisms feels particularly harsh - how many people knew what a Tau or a Panoceania or a Protectorate of Menoth was before they read more about those games? Also, the names are the Epirian Foundation and Karist Enclave - so they do contain a bit more information than you were stating in your post.

When we started creating Maelstrom's Edge, as wargaming fans, we spent a lot of time looking at forums, especially dakka, at what people were complaining about in terms of the games they were playing and the things they wanted to see. Among the things we felt people wanted most were alternative wargames that were bigger than a skirmish, but not so big you had to spend a ton of money just to get a force to play the game. People wanted a game with better balance and more tactical options at that scale, a universe that was less 'herohammer' with strong worldbuilding and fiction from the start, they liked the idea of multipart plastic rather than inferior materials like restic, and if it was a kickstarter they wanted it to be something that they wouldn't have wait three years before they received it.

Now this isn't going to be a list of what everyone wanted, and we certainly won't have hit on every single thing that people want in a game.We totally accept that we won't have got everything right for everybody, and doubtless there are places where we can improve in the future - and we hope that we can keep building on what we've done and taking advice from all of you to make Maelstrom's Edge better with every release. This is an open forum and you are certainly most welcome to say what you want, but I hope that the way we've tried to reply fairly to questions and criticisms and regularly add more content in our Kickstarter updates to show you more about what we've done could at least turn the conversation to something a little bit more constructive.

I don't know if it helps you at all, darrkespur, but one thing I think can be helpful is to try to keep in mind that almost all criticisms are voiced because the speaker is invested in and cares about the thing they are criticising. So when we are complaining about the tech level or the assless chaps or the square guns or the apocalypse or whatever, it's because we care about the game. <3

 insaniak wrote:
Have you considered that people offering opinions that differ from yours might be doing so because they actually disagree with you, rather than that they are just 'sycophants'?

Yes, but you seem to be disagreeing with every insinuation that the game isn't perfect. Even though the numbers would indicate that it isn't (which you also seem to disagree with). On a scale of probabilities, you being bias appears much more likely than you being right.

One thing I'd say is that looking at the present starter set, is that as I'm just as likely to use the ME figures in my own settings, the contents aren't exactly making me go WOW! I must have this!

I'm having much the same reaction to the Terminator Genisys starter sets, love the setting, like the figures and I'm just wondering where the rest of the stuff is to justify the pricing.

However this might hopefully change though the kickstarter.

I've so far not backed because I usually don't do kickstarters, hell I dislike pre-ordering.




The Hunters are what I'm waiting to see, like the drones they would be very useful to me in a mulititude of settings which increases the chances that I'm going to go with these instead of an existing product like the Mantic Strider.

 Smacks wrote:
Yes, but you seem to be disagreeing with every insinuation that the game isn't perfect.

Not every one, no. Just the ones I disagree with.

I'm most certainly somewhat biased towards the game, because I like it and would like to see it succeed. However, trying to discuss why I disagree with certain opinions being presented is not intended to quash discussion, but simply to provide a differing viewpoint, or more information where a view seems to be based on a misapprehension.

Thanks for all the comments everyone! We love that people are engaging with the universe and giving us their honest opinions, so keep them coming. We are definitely listening, and constantly asking ourselves how we can better improve our message and better improve the entire product going forward. We're all in this for the long haul, and this launch is only the first step in creating a really compelling setting, a fast, tense, and thoughtful tabletop game, and a solid line-up of models.

I just wanted to jump in on a few points that have come up over the last few days.

Why would a term like "Hard Sci-Fi" be prominently featured in the first iteration of the campaign page, then disappear? The game hasn't changed, nor has the background. My assumption is that either complaints were made about how the game didn't justify the term, or people asked what made it "Hard Sci-Fi", and no (or few) satisfactory answers were forthcoming. Why does the campaign main page make prominent reference to "slow apocalypse setting", but team members are, in various places, walking back the idea of this as an apocalyptic setting?

As Tomas mentions above, there has been no deliberate decision to remove the term "Hard SF" from the description. KS has a hard limit on the permitted wordcount on the Campaign page, so as we've added more information about Add-Ons etc we've needed to pare down elsewhere. The term "Hard SF" just happened to be in the sections that got cut. We're still "Hard SF" in the sense that, given the scientific "discoveries" we've introduced (wormhole network, annihilating tidal wave of energy), everything should follow logically. That means things like--no jumping from one side of the galaxy to the other, few worlds that you can just turn up at and expect to be habitable straight away, interstellar space being vast and empty etc.

Many of us have tried to be constructively critical of the game and why we won't back it, with the hope that it'll be beneficial in the "next steps" phase of the game.

We're very appreciative of this feedback, and will be taking all the feedback into account for the next steps.

The thing I find most depressing about the setting is that it's like ten thousand years in the future and very little has changed.

Well, I think that depends where you're standing. We have FTL travel, space stations with network gates orbiting stars, contact with alien races, splintered groups of humanity who left on generation ships aeons ago and have evolved into unknown societies, massive terraforming industries, robotics, new forms of energy etc. All those things are profound changes to ourselves and how we would view ourselves. On the other hand, people are still people, with human nature essentially unchanged. They are born (most of them anyway!), have family dynamics, have loves and hates and passions and dreams. Yes, maybe we're all going to be living in little cubes with our brains hooked up to virtual reality and our bodies hooked up to drips, but that scenario doesn't lend itself to much drama, espcially of the tabletop wargaming variety where teams of individuals fight one another using projectile weapons. The other thing is that humanity is massively asymmetrically blessed when it comes to the fruits of our technological labours. We're 3000 years out from the beginning of civilization and yet in places on Earth some people are still scrabbling in the dirt to avoid starvation. Personally, I don't see this kind of inequality changing anytime soon. The future will be shiny, but it will also be squalid.

I won't go too much into the setting in this post, save to say that my limited exposure to it has engendered an intense dislike of it. It is one of the most nihilistic settings in contemporary sci-fi, certainly in my experience. It is literally nihilistic: even in 40k, while the Imperium of Man teeters on the brink, that apocalyptic fall won't be the destruction of the universe/galaxy. Countless Tau, Orks, Chaos Worshippers, assorted other Xenos, sentient Necron machine entities, etc, etc, will survive and, indeed, perhaps prosper. The ME universe, by contrast, is on a countdown to complete destruction.

Again, depends where you're standing. On Earth we have potentially catacylsmic changes coming in less than a century's time due to climate change, but I don't feel much nihilsm right now. Sure, the Pacific islanders really have this stuff on their radar and are feeling deeply scared, but most people are like "Meh, too far away to care about". The same is true of the Maelstrom's Edge universe. The vast majority won't see the Maelstrom in their lifetime due to the colossal distances involved, but for those on Edge worlds its a very real, very scary problem. The first boxset is all about one of these Edge-threatened worlds, Zycanthus, so naturally it's pretty fraught for many there, but further down the Arm it's definitely business-as-usual.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
I don't know if it helps you at all, darrkespur, but one thing I think can be helpful is to try to keep in mind that almost all criticisms are voiced because the speaker is invested in and cares about the thing they are criticising. So when we are complaining about the tech level or the assless chaps or the square guns or the apocalypse or whatever, it's because we care about the game. <3

Bingo! Have an exalt.

I remember back in the day when I was managing my university's phonathon I had to drill it into the callers that a person who is pissed off at the university is acually more likely to donate, because they care enough to be pissed off about something.

Better to have someone complain than not care at all.

 EarloftheNorth wrote:

Okay, this thing I want.

Nice to see a full larger pic of the hunter even if just concept art and not the model yet!

Well, there has been some pretty great concept art posted.

Personally, I think it is let down pretty badly by the finished product. I really want to like the models, but the aesthetic choices are still keeping me away.

Also, still haven't seen any artists or sculptors credited, and am curious why.

~Eric

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I have to admit I'm baffled by why this isn't doing better.

The designs aren't that great. And after another roundtable discussion with some of my gaming buddies, we again were baffled at some of the rules design decisions. Several of us really WANT to like it, but when both the rules and sculpts are just not good...
I hate to say it, but I think you and I and Azazelx will probably be picking up models from Miniature Market's Black Friday clearance sale.

 judgedoug wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I have to admit I'm baffled by why this isn't doing better.

The designs aren't that great. And after another roundtable discussion with some of my gaming buddies, we again were baffled at some of the rules design decisions. Several of us really WANT to like it, but when both the rules and sculpts are just not good...
I hate to say it, but I think you and I and Azazelx will probably be picking up models from Miniature Market's Black Friday clearance sale.

I think the designs range from decent to good. I can't comment on the rules though, haven't had a chance to look at them.

In my opinion, what the Kickstarter is lacking is all that sexiness of a lot of different model options. Other Kickstarters like Robotech or Kingdom Death or WWX had a continuous opportunity for new and exciting models with each stretch goal, so once a goal was opened, another awesome model popped up and people up'd their contributions/more opted in. I of course understand the consequences of this manner of moving pledges using renders rather than actual models (seeing a lot of these games *still* trying to meet their distributions), but it makes for a lot of excitement during the campaign.

With just the terrain sprue sitting at the $45k mark, there's just not a lot of excitement, especially when the Kickstarter has so long to go. Terrain is cool, but it's so often the models that really catch people's attentions. I genuinely think things will pick up as more of the universe is revealed and we begin to see more units and the other factions. So here's to hoping that they don't hold their cards to their chest for too long.

I think they started on the wrong foot, too. Leaving exciting minis like the hunter and the shadow guy off the front page just ensured more backers would never see them. I think an awful lot of backers are like Bart's teacher, and you only get one chance with Edna Krabapple.

 judgedoug wrote:

... we again were baffled at some of the rules design decisions. ...

I actually really liked what I saw in the rules preview. Out of curiosity, what turned you off from them?

The rules are far from finished, so any legitimate constructive criticism about them is more than welcome. In fact, once the KS ends we will be doing a beta test period where we'll be desperately looking for such feedback.

However, the rules intro PDF naturally left a lot of fine details out of the picture in order to keep things relatively brief. So if you're finding just those core details baffling its pretty unlikely that those would be able to be changed, as they are obviously core to the overall design of the game.

I'd hope that when people see the full spectrum of the game with the faction/unit rules in place, etc, that you'd like it even more, but I know that every person has their own opinions of what they're looking for in a game and what makes a game good and/or bad, and that's just the reality of the world. If it was possible to create a 'perfect' set of rules that everyone loved, naturally someone would have done it by now! I tried to write the game that I always wanted to play (within the heavy restrictions of having to deal with the realities of model production) and hope that enough people out there have had similar desires over the years. The playtesting we've done so far has been pretty positive, so I'm hopeful, but I do know that many people will absolutely hate it, and am also ready for that.