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KTG17 wrote:
OMG this is so funny.

Yep, these words sum it up nicely.
When bad things happen to good people, sometimes it seems to amuse others who should explore the merit of their amusement.
As was pointed out with the Facebook group, it is the effort to contribute something positive that is good with a forum like this.
The ongoing discussion is to support those who still want to continue with what they have from this project and to let the "creator" PB know that breach of contract is far from forgotten.
Anyway, Alpharius has dropped the MOD reminder so we really all should play nice.

My Robotech Destroids were on my list of things to build and paint for 2017. I will show my progress here:



I decided not to spend more time in 2017 on Robotech RPG Tactics than Palladium was.

Harsh! Even if you painted one mini for each update with something new in it in the year it would be a pretty small army.

Really at this point, for me its now a matter of watching how this ends (likely in pitchforks and flame)...

I threw out the RRT stuff I owned yesterday...

Without any flames and/or cameras?!?

Missed opportunity!

 Alpharius wrote:
Without any flames and/or cameras?!?

Missed opportunity!

The Leasing Office frowns on damaging the trash compactor.

I did not back this Kickstarter but I did back one where the creator is pulling from the Palladium playbook to explain a months long absence (illness, bad email) which is pretty amusing to see.

As far as the utility of this thread, I will say that I sometimes get tempted to buy some Unseen for BattleTech purposes but those of you here remind me of why the manufacturer should not be supported at this time.

Alpharius Walks wrote:
I did not back this Kickstarter but I did back one where the creator is pulling from the Palladium playbook to explain a months long absence (illness, bad email) which is pretty amusing to see.

As far as the utility of this thread, I will say that I sometimes get tempted to buy some Unseen for BattleTech purposes but those of you here remind me of why the manufacturer should not be supported at this time.

There's nothing stopping buying on the secondary market (Ebay etc).

You deny PB a sale, get what you want, and you put money in the pockets of someone who's been screwed.

It's a win for everybody. And by everybody, I mean everybody but Kevin.

There's nothing stopping buying on the secondary market (Ebay etc).

I'm not sure I'd go that far, the minis are still a pain to assemble and IMO not very good quality. Of course it beats Unseen prices and questionable authenticity (if you're using ebay or the like), but PB made some pretty bad minis.

 ScarletRose wrote:

There's nothing stopping buying on the secondary market (Ebay etc).

I'm not sure I'd go that far, the minis are still a pain to assemble and IMO not very good quality. Of course it beats Unseen prices and questionable authenticity (if you're using ebay or the like), but PB made some pretty bad minis.

Le sigh.

I was meaning from a moral/ethical position of not wanting to have Kevin benefit.

The mechanical reasons that you point out are valid, but he should have had fair warning on that by even the most cursory examination of the product.

Hey! Everyone have very safe and joyful Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Thanks and you (and everyone else) too!

Merijeek wrote:

 ScarletRose wrote:
So, not to get hopes up or anything, but isn't complete silence from the company over the line into "project failed" territory? I know Kickstarter probably won't do much since they got their cut, but this seems like pretty strong evidence that PB isn't doing anything to fulfill the KS.

The clowns running Shadows Of Brimstone (2nd worst Kickstarter I've dealt with) typically go two to three months between updates.

I don’t feel they can be tarred with the same brush as Palladium. Shadows of Brimstone delivered everything I believe despite likely spending a ton more cash than they raised.

Shadows of brimstone made the cardinal sin, too many stretch goals and too many minis for the cheap minecart cost. They had to do what kingdom death did, and release items to retail as they worked on production. This gave them cash flow so they wouldnt end up in bankruptcy. That's why the fist kickstarter took years.... but I got all three waves and everything from the first ks. One of the best bang for my buck kickstarters! Boxes and boxes of minis and a great game.

The new kickstarter was similar, but they were more cautious on pricing. Most kickstarters break even or lose money, but the point is to get production costs covered so they can continue to sell at retail later for a profit.

RRT on the other hand... worst fn ks since Heroquest 25th. Neither will deliver and a total theft of cash from backers. What was released was crap minis with a mediocre game system (crap army list building).

 455_PWR wrote:
Shadows of brimstone made the cardinal sin, too many stretch goals and too many minis for the cheap minecart cost. They had to do what kingdom death did, and release items to retail as they worked on production. This gave them cash flow so they wouldnt end up in bankruptcy. That's why the fist kickstarter took years.... but I got all three waves and everything from the first ks. One of the best bang for my buck kickstarters! Boxes and boxes of minis and a great game.

The new kickstarter was similar, but they were more cautious on pricing. Most kickstarters break even or lose money, but the point is to get production costs covered so they can continue to sell at retail later for a profit.

RRT on the other hand... worst fn ks since Heroquest 25th. Neither will deliver and a total theft of cash from backers. What was released was crap minis with a mediocre game system (crap army list building).

Yup. Some people like to compare the two, due to the crappy communication policy and the lateness, but to me they're apples and rocketships.

The end result for SoB W1 had some flaws in the lack of detail, but was otherwise awesome.
The end result for SoB W2 took a long time, but you could SEE evidence of it being completed.

Neither of those are applicable to RRT.

I know some people are irate, hell, I was irate at the planning of the W1Australia shipment. But too often people complain without understanding the issue at play in your opening para. When the issue of W2 delays, or the endless complaints about the "extortion" of W1.5, I even asked several times "What should FFP do?", given how overextended they were. Noone was able to give me a good answer beyond "Give me my stuff!". But doing that would have bankrupted the project well before completion.

Similarly, as has been reported by a few backers, those that wanted refunds on outstanding materials, got them. Sometimes there was a delay in getting the payment, and while I don't know what the offers were, I don't recall anyone coming back and saying that FFP's offer was unreasonable. So that was a plus. Whereas Kevin is on record answering BBB complaints as saying we've technically already got what we're owed, pledge vs MSRP, so tough noogies. And no refunds anyway because we're ***sooooo*** totally working on it.

I'm not saying SoB backers didn't have reason to complain (and some still do), but comparing the two is being hella generous to PB, and unfair to FFP. The game is fantastic, and I've spent a crapload of time playing it. Whereas I bailed on RRT as soon as it started going pear shaped, and despite getting a copy of the rules and a sprue of Battlepods from Forar, haven't regretted that decision in even the tiniest way.

Both campaigns certainly have their issues, their room for reasonable people to find things not to their liking or otherwise unacceptable.

This is an olive branch that I am extending with hopes I don't regret it.

However, for me the cornerstone is something that Morgan touched upon; is there 'an out'?

PB won't give us an out for RRT. They will hold our money and ire for years to come at this rate, no admitting to wrongdoing or falling short other than in the most obnoxious "our only flaw was that we cared too much" sort of way.

FFP has, as far as I've seen, been willing to give people refunds where requested. If an action is so egregious, if a delay is so long, if seeing Cynder on store shelves while waiting for wave 2 is that rage inducing, people could write them up and get that sorted out.

Or, as in both campaigns, they could find someone else willing to take their pledge on. I know that PB has been willing to make that happen in the past, though obviously anyone looking to buy wave 2 off someone else for more than a fraction of what it's 'worth' (pro-rated or whatever) needs to be separated from their financial independence for their own safety.

It isn't unreasonable to want the thing that was paid for, but I think a lot of the comparisons between the two are either dismissively charitable to PB or remarkably callous towards the realities in play for FFP.

But I'm also a big fanboy, hence bothering to type this up in the first place.

The reality is that a big (million+) KS can hit snags, and regardless of how one might feel about a given company, some of them waffle and navel gaze and we go years without more than token evidence of progress, and others tangibly produce new elements each year, every year.

People can be pissed about not getting something fast enough with SoB, or be very understandably frustrated at the glacial rate of shipping that has surpassed even my expectations.

But a direct contrast is no contest, at least in my eyes.

And I mean, big, successful, crowd drawing campaigns can have gakky communications. It's not exactly a reason to crucify them. I love what Dwarven Forge does each year and we're often lucky (post campaign) to get an update more frequently than quarterly (I really don't think that's a lot of hyperbole, I'm pretty sure it's less than monthly for most of their campaigns) and they still bring in 1-2m+ per KS. It's not unreasonable to be annoyed by infrequent communications, but neither are infrequent updates a surefire sign of failure or lacking quality. Hell, Wayne and co spent most of 2013 dropping fairly regularly weekly updates and there are no mistakes to be made about how that gakshow ended up (thousands of pages of posts that we have on the topic).

It's not impossible to both hope that a campaign has set reasonable goals and timelines, but also recognize that sometimes things go sideways. FFP's second campaign has moved from a March delivery target to "Summer 2018", so it slid a quarter or two. Which isn't ideal. But I'd rather hear it, in advance, like an adult, than get silence and more navel gazing until it becomes impossible for them to meet a goal, like we used to get with RRT in 2013 ("Oh, we'll totally delivery in Q1 of 2014!" "Ooops, did I say that? I meant we need to go to 2 waves, one of which will be early 2014, the other will be later in 2014, no worries guys!")

Anyways, this is getting rambly and I need to get back to my salted caramel Baileys (it's delicious, guys), I mostly just swung by to say hi and wish you all a merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/friendly fistbump, stay warm, stay safe, and I'm sure we'll have plenty to mock in the next week or two once the expected PB newsletter drops to declare how no, really, THIS YEAR they're totally going to release a book a week or some other crazy gak.

 Forar wrote:
Or, as in both campaigns, they could find someone else willing to take their pledge on. I know that PB has been willing to make that happen in the past, though obviously anyone looking to buy wave 2 off someone else for more than a fraction of what it's 'worth' (pro-rated or whatever) needs to be separated from their financial independence for their own safety.

Obviously the latter, at least at this point, would require serious mental evaluation, but I did want to point out that while PB did say they were willing to make it happen, in traditional Palladium Books fashion, they made it as hard, and as anachronistic as humanely possible, in the most Luddite way imaginable.

I started the process of asking for a refund on March 18, 2014. This was four days after we saw the Spartan, and the same day as we got the "It had to be made this way" Update.
After about 2 months (May 22nd), I finally found a backer willing to buy out one of my pledges (they eventually bought the second as well, for which I'm eternally grateful) for secondary market speculation.
And here's where it gets hinky.

Palladium's process for this exchange, was for the other backer to snail mail a PERSONAL CHEQUE to Palladium's offices, where Palladium would then cash it into their own accounts, and then write a business cheque to me, and again, send it be snail mail, updating the orders at that point.

Despite the other backer doing so mid-June (and both of us thinking this was INSANE), and waiting and waiting and waiting, PB never acknowledged receipt of (or cashed, to be fair), that cheque. We eventually went "Feth it" in August, and the other backer was willing to put some faith in me being more honorable than Palladium, so we did it via PayPal (the second Pledge in September). As they were a domestic backer, and I was an international backer, and we were unclear on whether the two lots of $50 for shipping would be refunded or allowed to be used for store credit, I gave them a discount on that (half), and ate all relevant PayPal fees (which ate up the other half, that's why I'm out ~$100, and all the happy for it). We both told PB, and PB changed the shipping addresses. As they received the packages, it appears to be the one frikkin' thing Palladium did right in the entire post-campaign.

I did feel guilty about a year later, when it became obvious Wave 2 was possibly non-existent, but was assured they'd made their money back already on resales so anything else would be gravy, but they weren't personally out any funds. So I was pleased to hear that.

EDIT: Just to reclarify, we reached an agreement in late May, and it took until the end of August (then the end of September for Pledge 2) to complete what should have been an immediate transaction, because PB wanted to do it in the slowest and most stupid way possible. And it was only by going around PB we were able to do it at all.

 Seawolf wrote:
Really at this point, for me its now a matter of watching how this ends (likely in pitchforks and flame)...

I threw out the RRT stuff I owned yesterday...

You should have tried ebay.. I got like $40 for my pledge.. better than nothing .. was a loss but I also made money reselling kingdom death and massive darkness so I guess I'm about even now

I also went through the fiasco of purchasing someones pledge. That process made zero sense.

I am not even sure I remember the backerkit information that it was hooked to.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and enjoyed the time with their family... and are looking forward to a New Year of gaming hijinks...

Comparing Kingdom Death and Shadows of Brimstone to Robotech RPG Tactics is not really a good comparison in my opinion. While All three have their issues in various forms, both Shadows of Brimstone and Kingdom Death have upheld their end of their kickstarter obligations and have sent product to their backers. While I understand that there was frustration, gnashing of teeth, and wailing o' plenty the fact of the matter is that their backers got what was promised to them. It may have been late, but product was received. Palladium has yet to do so with Robotech RRT (if they intend to do so at all) and continuing puffery that year 20XX is the Year of Robotech RPG tactics have shown little substance.

The fact that Palladium missed their update on the 12th is no real surprise to me and will continue to not surprise me if there is no update tonight. Palladium has made it clear to the backers of this kickstarter, you are either a true believer and will wait patiently for your just due from Kevin "I AM PALLADIUM" Siembieda, or you are an ungrateful hater and should be chastised for demanding anything more than what you received. How they continue to be in business with this attitude is beyond me.

So popcorn and your favorite beverage for tonights' no-show. Cheers!






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Necros wrote:

 Seawolf wrote:
Really at this point, for me its now a matter of watching how this ends (likely in pitchforks and flame)...

I threw out the RRT stuff I owned yesterday...

You should have tried ebay.. I got like $40 for my pledge.. better than nothing .. was a loss but I also made money reselling kingdom death and massive darkness so I guess I'm about even now

What I have seen on E-bay regarding RRT shows me that its not moving well enough to make the attempt. Besides, why torture fellow gamers?

I didn't sell my pledge just the stuff I received already.. I didn't want to go through the hassle of trying to track down a buyer if/when the new stuff shows up in 10 years. One guy asked if I would do that, and I said yeah just to be nice so someone would take it off my hands, and luckily someone outbid him So if I get anything else some day I'll just sell that separately.

So...did Kevin's sock puppet get tired of looking at the bottom of a bus?

Nope, he just posted. We got a new Malcontent faction character that oddly enough only pilots models that are already released and zero information about the kickstarter itself.

This is not an update....


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For the record... this "update" illustrates why I have no problems throwing this game into the trash.

 Swabby wrote:
Nope, he just posted. We got a new Malcontent faction character that oddly enough only pilots models that are already released and zero information about the kickstarter itself.

Really, though, only piloting models that have been released shows a...fantastic level of awareness by the chuds over at Palladium Books. It's almost like someone spent half a second thinking, "Now, how can I avoid instantly stepping on a rake?"

...And gives every mecha In his squad an extra attack. I don’t play, but that sounds fairly powerful, if not unbalanced (say, leading an Artillery Pod squad?).

Who playtested it and for how long?

All the playtesting, Katie.

The extra attack thing cracks me up. BTW I was wrong about what mechs he can pilot, he can pilot any of the malcontent ground options but prefers the models that have already been released.

 Swabby wrote:
The extra attack thing cracks me up. BTW I was wrong about what mechs he can pilot, he can pilot any of the malcontent ground options but prefers the models that have already been released.

“Prefers”? If they aren’t even going to limit the mecha (ex:. Officer’s pod/Eldaire, Tomahawk only) or give some special ability for choosing the mecha (ex.: +1 pilot in Officer’s pod or Tomahawk), why did they even bother to mention it? That’s worse than lazy, it’s stupid and misleading.