Robotech® RPG Tactics™-License lost, the end is near!

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**Alpharius**

I live to serve!

**Mike1975**

LOL, well we already have a Community Organizer that brought us useless universal healthcare.....

**Forar**

Mike1975 wrote:
LOL, well we already have a Community Organizer that brought us useless universal healthcare.....

Seriously, dude, let's keep the politics out of this.

Edit: also you still haven't answered my question. Are you, Mike, stating a desire to see a class action lawsuit against PB for their failures in this campaign?

No dancing around the point with needles and fat bears, just all Braveheart style: "The Lord says don't change the subject and just answer the fething question."

:-D

**Mike1975**

I might be willing to join if someone started the ball rolling. I don't have time to do it myself. I already told Rick that a while back. I'm waiting to see what the "relaunch" entails before making a move one way or the other. I'm not holding my breath though.

**Ctaylor**

Thank you for the timeline, Forar.

I had forgotten all of the broken promises.

**winterdyne**

File your complaints with the FTC. That's probably the best thing for everyone to do. Then the FTC can take the appropriate action.

**evilsmurf**

Heres an update from june 7, 2012. While not related to robotech tactics it is an interesting read if only for how Kevin views the world;

By Kevin Siembieda
Something Unexpected
I have spent the last six weeks doing a lot of market research. It started at the Palladium Open House and intensified the last two weeks. My calls to Ultimate Insiders, Insider Benefactors and freelancers/friends contributed to it. The reason for the research was that a number of potential “new opportunities” have presented themselves to us, including doing miniatures for Robotech®, among other things. My thanks to the Benefactors, Insiders and others who have knowingly and unknowingly contributed to this vital research.

Surveying a few hundred Palladium customers revealed several important things.

1.Satisfaction is through the roof.
2.Most of you love the game rules.
3.Most of you are loving the new book releases.
4.Most of you want MORE. More for Rifts®. More for EVERYTHING. And the sooner the better.
5.Favorite recent release: Rifts® Lemuria.
6.Most anticipated upcoming release: Rifts® Northern Gun™ with Beyond the Supernatural™, Splicers® and Palladium Fantasy RPG® sourcebooks all clustered and fighting for the Number Two slot. I was surprised that these game lines had that much interest.
7.Favorite Palladium game line: Rifts®, with Heroes Unlimited™, Dead Reign™ and Palladium Fantasy RPG® fighting for second and third place and the rest of our world settings all coming in behind them.

When asked, what would you like to see Palladium do differently, change or improve?
A whopping 90% of you said, “Don’t change a thing. Keep doing what you are doing. Just, please, keep new product coming out at a steady pace.”

“We want more, and we want it now,” was a common, unsolicited sentiment. Along those lines, many expressed excitement for the promise of new material for Palladium Fantasy®, Splicers®, Beyond the Supernatural™, Nightbane®, Heroes Unlimited™ and Robotech®, pretty much in that order.

Of the remaining 10%, most wanted a few minor changes and tweaks, nothing major, and were very satisfied with Palladium and our products, overall.

Fun Facts Revealed
Of the customers/fans surveyed (90% of whom did not realize I was gathering information – I wanted their unbiased opinions), we learned what most of YOU probably already knew:

•86% are dying to see a darn movie made. If not a Rifts® movie, they’d like to see Nightbane®, Splicers®, Dead Reign™, Beyond the Supernatural™, Phase World®, Palladium Fantasy®, Mechanoids® or Heroes Unlimited™, pretty much in that order.
•78% want character generators for all Palladium games.
•75% want video games of any variety based on Rifts® or any Palladium game setting.
•75% are “excited” about the new Megaverse® Insider offer for the two Northern Gun™ books, and anxious for the new Insider offer to start. (FYI: It starts today!) Most said they were planning to make an Insider purchase for Northern Gun™ and would participate in future crowdfunding. 25% thought Palladium should do them more often. Only 2% thought it was too soon to do another already. (Four months after the first!?) But most also planned to make a purchase from the new crowdfunding offer for Northern Gun™ One and Two. 90% thought crowdfunding was a smart move. Note: The level of customer excitement and participation over the Megaverse® Insider offers (especially among those who made a purchase in the first offer) really surprised me. In fact, 30% thought we offered too much or an impressive value for what they paid; 68% thought it was perfect.
•98% were completely satisfied with the Lemuria Megaverse Insider offer. Note: I was so glad to hear it. I always want to release products and special offers that please as many people as possible.
•55% would like toys/action figures. Note: But not necessarily metal or plastic miniatures, which surprised me.
•42% would like to see more hardcover editions of Palladium game titles, including sourcebooks. Note: This surprised me as well.
•40% would like more novels based on Palladium game settings, especially for Rifts®.
•33% would like more comic books based on Palladium game settings.
•33% were “interested” in seeing an optional set of simplified rules, provided it kept the terms and feel of the current game system and they could use existing sourcebooks with it.
•24% want to see more PDFs, but most said they also wanted to see printed books along with them. Many of these people were also interested in seeing Palladium titles made available in other e-reader formats.
•20% want to see more miniatures and/or a miniature game for Rifts® or other Palladium settings. The number increases to 30% among Robotech® fans. Note: This comparatively low number surprised me, as several people have been pitching and hyping miniatures.
•7% did not play (for various reasons; no time, no players in the area, etc.), but enjoyed reading and collecting the books for the “story” and “ideas.”
•Fewer than 1% were dissatisfied with the Palladium game system. Most of those used Palladium world settings but the rules of another game or a combination of rules from two or more game publishers plus house rules. Despite this, all continued to enjoy and buy Palladium RPG titles to read for the “ideas” and “game setting.”

What all this tells us
This information tells us Palladium’s agenda to produce a lot of new, dynamic product is exactly what YOU – our customers – want. Everything else is secondary.

It also made something else very, very clear: a) That many of Palladium’s relentless critics are, not customers (i.e. they do not buy or play our games in the first place); b) some are outsiders who have never actually played our games and point out what they think they see as weaknesses and problems (i.e. comments like, “the game system is broken”); c) some have different tastes and prefer other styles of role-playing rules (resulting in comments like, “the world settings are great, but the rules suck,” or “I wish Palladium would change their rules to be more like Game X”); and d) some are dissatisfied with our product, me or the company. That’s okay. One of the things I love about role-playing games is that they are so flexible and can be altered to fit your personal inclinations and style of play. I learned long ago that you cannot please everyone, so I am delighted to see that not only are we satisfying the overwhelming majority of Palladium customers, but that most of you are delighted with the end product and wouldn’t change a thing.As a result of this market study, I will be focusing on giving YOU what you want: More product. More product for all our game lines, and as quickly as we can without sacrificing quality!

Seriously. Those were the four things I heard over and over again. And most of the time they were couched as suggestions or wishes, not complaints or criticisms. I thought it was all positive, useful and helpful.

All of this data and the start of the new Megaverse® Insider crowdsource funding is plenty to chew on for this week’s Update, so I’m not going to say much more.

Do you love the part about critics not being customers?

Those damn haters then have their say here; http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=131137

Im amazed that thread isnt deleted.

**Merijeek**

It's nice to see shills admitting they are such. And to know that Jorel is known for being...special all over the place.

**warboss**

That entry is what I referred to when I mentioned his infamous Open House poll and 1% of fans unhappy with the current status of Rifts that he conducted without actually asking people if they were unhappy.

**Forar**

Yeah, we've batted that 'newsletter' around a couple of times over the years.

I don't expect strict scientific rigor from 'guys who write RPGs', but man, the issues with that thing are legion.

**Stormonu**

I've put out two feelers for a class action lawsuit. Haven't heard anything back yet. I don't know if I'm being ignored or if the two firms I attempted to contact are still recovering from the holidays...

**Morgan Vening**

evilsmurf wrote:
When asked, what would you like to see Palladium do differently, change or improve?
A whopping 90% of you said, “Don’t change a thing. Keep doing what you are doing. Just, please, keep new product coming out at a steady pace.”

•Fewer than 1% were dissatisfied with the Palladium game system. Most of those used Palladium world settings but the rules of another game or a combination of rules from two or more game publishers plus house rules. Despite this, all continued to enjoy and buy Palladium RPG titles to read for the “ideas” and “game setting.”

My two favourite bits.

The first is funny from a reasonability perspective. So, 90% were happy with the "steady pace" which is 2-3 books a year, and not the 20+ books you promise will be done in a year? That fully 90% of your participants not just accepting of your failure to hit your targets (which is kind of understandable, maybe) but don't want you to IMPROVE on your hit to miss ratio? Yeah, I have a hard time believing that.

The second is funny from a math perspective. To have "fewer than 1%", and then use "most", sure, he could have polled 301 participants, had 3 people in this category, and two fit his "most" claim, and be technically correct (The best kind of correct!), it still comes across as statistical wankery, when he could have said "and only one of those didn't use the PB world settings...". Even at 901 polled, and it's 5-4 that fit the situation, it's still lame to use "most". If I asked three people and got two responses, I wouldn't say "most respondants said this.". Maybe it's just me, but unless there were at least 20-30 people in that <1% category (meaning he polled 2000-3000 people at a minimum), he could have just used raw numbers.

But as the last 30+ months have shown (to me, at least), Kevin has a tenuous relationship with numbers, facts, times, promises and reality. So, I'm in no way surprised by what he said. Just amused.

**Talizvar**

I am still trying to wrap my brain around Kevin listening to more than 20 people. When I met him at Anime North he did not impress as a listening type... but then again he could make time for praise. I am sorry, but when you tally numbers resulting in 42% (Life, the universe and everything!) he better have had the clipboard out: I suspect a false presentation of precision.

I was thinking about the degree of managerial involvement for the kickstarter.
Glory is the important thing to Kevin.
The scut-work leading up to release is dead to him.
That is why the last minute messing about is key: to lay claim to the release fame.
I think he may have had no clue even at December initial release date and being used to year long overruns, he may have clued in around the time of one of his walls of texts... most likely the throwing ND under the bus one if I was a betting man.

Well, time to keep poking the KS page, maybe we will rouse Kevin's ire with properly framed words.

**jaymz**

Talizvar wrote:
I am still trying to wrap my brain around Kevin listening to more than 20 people. When I met him at Anime North he did not impress as a listening type... but then again he could make time for praise. I am sorry, but when you tally numbers resulting in 42% (Life, the universe and everything!) he better have had the clipboard out: I suspect a false presentation of precision.

I was thinking about the degree of managerial involvement for the kickstarter.
Glory is the important thing to Kevin.
The scut-work leading up to release is dead to him.
That is why the last minute messing about is key: to lay claim to the release fame.
I think he may have had no clue even at December initial release date and being used to year long overruns, he may have clued in around the time of one of his walls of texts... most likely the throwing ND under the bus one if I was a betting man.

Well, time to keep poking the KS page, maybe we will rouse Kevin's ire with properly framed words.

Sounds like you met him the same weekend I did.....yeah he was all fine and chatty with what little praise I gave and hten suddenly had to bugger off somewhere once I started on the not so praising items...adn afterwards, while his enthusiasm is a bit infectious, I felt like I had just got chatted up by a smarmy used car salesman....

**evilsmurf**

Wow. Theres some major fighting going on over in the kickstarter forum.

**winterdyne**

Yup, folks are angry and in the absence of any information and progress there's a wee bit of taking it out on each other.

However, from that, it's likely that a few more complaints will find their way to the AG / FTC, so it's not all pointless.

**Mike1975**

evilsmurf wrote:
Wow. Theres some major fighting going on over in the kickstarter forum.

Believe it or not but I actually enjoy answering some of those posts.....they drip with Irony.....and sometimes real stupidity.

**darkminstrel**

Anyone in here gotten a confirmed response from an AG or the FTC?

**Cypher-xv**

Not yet as far as I know... Which isn't much, but I'd like to know myself.

**Asterios**

several people have gotten responses from the Michigan AG and various other state AGs but their over all stance is unless more file there is nothing they will do, as to the FTC I have heard of no one posting here as of yet getting a response.

**Krinsath**

From https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/ it seems like you'd only get an advisory message at best anyway.

Still, the more people who visit that URL and file a complaint the more likely there will be a more public response.

**Stormonu**

Wonder what the tipping scale is for the government to get moving? We'd have to be up to 100 complaints to hit about 2%.

If that many from one company came across my desk, I'd start getting curious what was going on.

**darkminstrel**

Got a response from the Oregon AG. They basically passed the buck to the MI AG. So my state doesn't give a whoop.

**Joyboozer**

darkminstrel wrote:
Got a response from the Oregon AG. They basically passed the buck to the MI AG. So my state doesn't give a whoop.

The important thing is you got to see your tax dollars in action!

**darkminstrel**

Pfft, this state is useless when it comes to the .gov. Unless you're a 20something college kid you can goan.

**Forar**

People have said that the MI AG was who to go to for a while, so while it sucks to have wasted some time there, it's probably not a bad idea to forward over whatever you sent to the Oregon AG to them.

If nothing else, seeing a couple dozen of these land on their desk (over time perhaps) might eventually catch someone's eye.

"Hey, Alexis, didn't we get mail about some plastic figures thing for a Palladium Books last week?"

**Stormonu**

Here's something really hillarious - the copy of the AvP boardgame I'd ordered through my FLGS finally came in. I'm both tapped out to buy it and their garbled KS is now apparently going to finish before this one does.

**evancich**

I got an appointment with the MD AG office (wrote a physical letter before that).

I was passed to some low level staffer that listened to what I had to say and told me they'd look into the T&Cs of the site but it was really the MI AG's problem...They basically care about fining a business in the state of MD that doesn't have the correct licenses, etc.

The staffer knew what KS is and had backed projects before.

Basically, I wasted a day in Baltimore

**Digclaw**

State AG's only care about crimes in their own State, for the most part, unless another State itself is committing the crime against their State.

That is basically the definition of their job.

Unless PB was specifically targeting citizens in their State, they will say let Michigan deal with it.

**Cypher-xv**

Well they did target everyone in the world for Thomas Roach's dream. So I would yes they did target people in other states and countries.