Albertorius wrote:KTG17 wrote:I am surprised this is still being talked about. Not having time to go through 300 pages, what exactly has pissed everyone off? The lack of more product? Did people pay for things they haven't received?
We paid for the
KS stuff (to the average tune of $160-$320, before shipping) on may 21st, 2013, to get stuff (that was 98% done, according to them) by December 2013.
We got the core game stuff over about 6 months depending on where exactly did you live on the planet, starting October 2014 (about a year late for most people), and some time after it got sold to the general public on... Black Friday, I think? Anyways, it didn't get sold before just because the stuff didn't arrive on time for
Gen Con.
Now, the core game stuff, which was then called "Wave 1", it's composed of about... 30-40% of the sculpts that got Kickstarted, so there's a whoooole lot of stuff still owed, both as part of the core pledges and as add-ons.
Fast forward to nowadays, summer 2017. From around march 2015, we've been regularly fed on a strict
bs diet, with no end on sight. And we paid for all the stuff owed four years ago, so there is no chance in hell we'll be getting any kind of refund.
So yeah, bit salty.
Alby and others have covered most of the big issues. But don't forget all the other little shenannigans that caused issues of their own. Being late isn't the only issue. I've got a campaign delivering later this year that's almost as late, but I'm not close to as irate as I was with
RRT.
I'll probably miss some things, but here's a non-comprehensive list. Some dates may be off, but they should be close.
- May 2013, campaign concludes, and Kevin says on target for December, maybe earlier. Pledge manager runs, and this timetable is kept. Pledge manager runs from July 19th to September 8th (having been extended twice I think). Up to, and through to September 26th, they were still expecting a December release. The book hadn't been completed, the cards hadn't been done, no molds had been made. There was ZERO chance that December was a possibility. So while they were collecting money, everything was still on track. This wasn't as big an issue at the time, but in hindsight it was terrible.
- July 2013. The first GenCon-gate, during the Pledge Manager. Kevin decides he wants some convention exclusives for GenCon. So they did a run of Max Battloid and Miriya FPA. And you could get them at GenCon. And ONLY GenCon. Backers, many international, who had literally just pumped $1.44M into
RRT were excluded unless they were at the convention. The reasons this was an issue, is because firstly, it was the only Max branded miniature made available. Second, all Kickstarter Exclusives were considered Kickstarter/Convention Exclusives, but wasn't reciprocated (note, I'm not a fan of
KS Exclusive game content, but even I thought that was a crappy double standard). This has since become a non-issue, as Kevin graciously allowed backers to buy them, and now, they're completely non-exclusive, despite Kevin still using that phrase ("Robotech®
RPG Tactics™ Convention Exclusives – now available to anyone") in the latest PBWU.
- January 2014, we get the split wave announcement. At the time, most people were OK with this, but it established the first "kick the can". Wave 2 is promised later that year. Then later that year, nope, it'll be 2015. Then late in 2015, nope, 2016. Then late in 2016, nope, 2017. And Scott's big Update shows that the kicking of the can is imminent. Usually, there's a leak, I believe Adepticon 2016 (April?) someone got told 2016 wasn't possible, but it wasn't until much later that year the can got kicked. Simply put, after having done it with Wave 1, they KNOW how long it takes from when they have all the ducks in a row, how long it'll be. But they won't share how far along they are, and they wait until WELL past the deadline, rather than getting ahead of things.
- March 2014, we finally see the first breakdown of parts. And that's when things went right off the rails for a lot of people. It took me three days, but that's how long it took me to make the decison to request a refund on over $1500US. And I got a letter very similar to what sqir666 just posted. It wasn't multitasking, it was copypasting that caused Gene to be incorrectly addressed. Some people have had little issue with the number of parts. Some have. But nearly everyone agrees that the parts count is WAY above the norms for this kind of model. Especially for the base box miniatures. And because they were on such a tight schedule, redesigning was out of the question. But instead of saying that, we were told that they had to be done this way. I spent my early adulthood in die casting (aluminium mostly, some other soft metals). They absolutely did NOT have to be done this way. And technology has improved since then, Wyrd's use of "sliding core" technology allows them to do Witchling Stalkers as single piece models. Here's an
article dated almost a year before this announcement, showing the details achievable. Granted, backers were promised multipose, so multiple pieces were always on the table, but 10, not 30 should have been the maximum.
- July 2014, Kevin is looking at GenCon as his first big payday. There's multiple parts to this, and some didn't become a known issue until later. First, despite 15 months of saying "Backers First!", Kevin unilaterally decides GenCon doesn't count. After much outcry, he then proposes putting it to a vote. But instead of just putting his thumb on the scale, he stands on it. Instead of trusting that enough commentors would rally to his defense, he states at the outset that anyone who doesn't vote, will count for a yes. And this causes things to go crazy. Of course, when the votes are tallied, and he's won without that, he only uses those numbers (78% of backers that voted), Only about 30% of backers voted, according to one backer who was collating. So the ACTUAL number should have been a little over 93% if you include the 3500 absentees that didn't vote.
Just to be clear, it wasn't that he wanted to sell at GenCon, it was that he completely rigged the system so he could. And as I said in a post a page or two back, it was always inevitable, hence the rigging. The declaration of intent was made on July 11th, the vote was started on the 13th, the vote concluded on the 21st. But on the 18th, three days before the vote was finished,
"It’s on a Boat!". Why this is important, is that this container appears to have contained nothing but Core Boxes and possibly some retail Expansions. They were very cagey about not saying it explicitly, but it's pretty clear they could not fulfill Battlecry's until Container 2. Why is this a problem? Because only ~200 backers went in for First Contact (Core Boxes only, for Wave 1). Meaning that the remaining 1300 Core boxes were only suited to retail sales.
- September 2014, this didn't cause a problem until later (and there was an earlier though harder to see picture, but the third photo on the
"Back from China" Update clearly shows that 17,502 core boxes were ordered. And only about ~6000 were needed for backer fulfillment. When it seemed clear that money for Wave 2 may be an issue, those extra 11,000 boxes seemed the obvious reason. Taking advantage of mass production to get a cheaper rate is one thing. Using backers money to purchase retail stock is another.
- November 2014, Palladium wrap up shipping to North American backers. And decide to ship to North American distributors before finishing international orders, because of Black Friday. This, despite as mentioned earlier, MANY statements that said "Backers first!". This caused...
- January 2015, while the
EU and AU orders were still yet to leave the country, Robotech Tactics was available in
EU and AU stores. Because unlike Palladium, distributors don't feth around. Palladium said this shouldn't have happened, but it was always going to happen. Note, at this point,
PB hadn't even organized shipping for AU backers. Pallets just sitting in the warehouse, "waiting for quotes". Final delivery doesn't start until mid March. So some backers waited more than three months beyond when they could get it in the store.
- March 2015, the first showing of actual development of Wave 2 since the wave split was announced, 14 months earlier, about 8 months after Wave 1 development finished, and about 6 months after Wave One manufacturing concluded. Despite a promise to the contrary ("More will be coming in the following days."), it was also the last. There has literally been no sign of developmental progress in 28 months. There were some 3D printed prototypes for the AValk and YF-4 last year, but these were done of the digital sculpts that have existed since around when the funding campaign had just wrapped.
- June 2015, after months of silence, a lot of noise in a big update about nothing. Instead of addressing Wave 2 properly, Kevin loses himself congratulating himself on how awesome he is, how other people let him down, and spruiking new content (Conventional Vehicles and Invid) and promising backers first! Neither of these two production lines ever saw the light of day, because takeup was low. And one reason takeup was so low is that unit/force information was promised, and never delivered, despite multiple promises. So people were expected to preorder units not knowing what they did, how many were needed to purchase, or if there were any restrictions that might have been important.
At the same time, Palladium decided that despite it having been discussed during the campaign, and having made a firm decision, they'd also re-open scale as a discussion point. It apparently didn't occur to them until two years after the campaign, and a year after they'd finished developing Wave 1, that the third generation in particular, might be too small at the scale originally chosen. So, despite wanting to put the Invid into production in less than six months (contemporaries of the cyclones that are the prime reason for the change), and that the Conventional forces would absolutely be 6mm, they throw up the very real possibility that they'll backtrack on consistent scale. For me, relative scale isn't a huge issue, but for some, it absolutely was. Thankfully, Palladium didn't put their thumb on the scale, again, but it was cause for consternation for some.
- July 2015. I'll let the second para speak for itself.
"As for Wave 2, I’m working on a big breakdown of where each and every component is in its development,
but that’s going to take some time. The short version is that some have been approved for tooling, some are still pending minor changes, and a couple are being reworked to reduce part counts while preserving detail. It’s going painfully slowly."
Yeah, that time is two years, three days, and counting.
And then, that started the "early year totally this year!" and "mid-late year we're working hard, we promise!". And not a lot in between. Until Scott posted, there had been 9 posts in 18 months. Two of those were in relation to the "incident", and three of the remaining 7 begin with
"I know it’s been a while without much info, and I’m sorry about that.",
"We apologize for the 3 months of MIA",
"Hey, guys. It’s Wayne. Sorry for the long silence.", as if apologies for being absent mean anything.
Basically the summation is,
PB promise Wave 2 and don't deliver.
PB promise progress of any kind and don't deliver.
PB promise information and don't deliver.
Communication is unimportant to
PB.
Bad reputation is unimportant to
PB.
There's no real consequence to
PB not finishing the Kickstarter or improving in any way.
PB do what they want for the most part, and backers are irrelevant.
Most backers appear to be owed at least half of their content by value, and at least a third of their content by volume (for some, especially those who got in heavy on Add-Ons).
Scott may be the latest in a long line of PR people put out to distract and take some of the flak. That list so far,
IIRC. Ninja John (John Cadice, Ninja Division), Jeff Burke, Wayne Smith, Chuck Walton and now Scott Gibbons.
So, will things change? We'll see this week. I wonder when (if?) the Update will drop.
to kill it), and the Robotech 
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-- 9k 
-- 6k 
-- 4k 
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