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 mdauben wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
They probably should have offered refunds when they made that decision, TBH.

I would not argue that at least some of the fault lies with them, but this really makes no sense. They dropped the two figures because when it came down to it, they did not have the money to include them in the pledge package. If they could afford to refund people for the cost of those deleted figures, they could have just manufactured them instead.

In the end, it seems a rather small issue to me but obviously others though it was a much bigger deal.

Well, as I said above, risk should be a two way street regarding KSs, and as I said above, too, KS terms state that "if the creator is unable to fulfill the project they should offer full refunds or refunds for the unfulfilled part". So, in following the principle of the thing, they should have offered to refund at the very least an amount proportional to the cut figures.

And it's not a case of "some of the fault lying with them"... it's a case of "had they changed currencies right away instead of a year after the fact (given that they knew they would be doing their payments in $USD), they would have had enough money for everything".

rght now though the HGB fans seem highly divided into two camps, the "Pod can do no wrong" camp and the "Pod will ef it up camp", with almost no one in the middle ground.

There are absolutely middle-grounders out there, they just don't talk a lot because that's how feedback works in business. ANY business. People that are content with things don't have a real reason to say so. You have a great experience with a company and you tell a friend or two. You have a bad one and you tell 6. That is a basic truth among businesses of any and every industry out there. I am the middle ground. I give zero feths about DP9 as a company. I refused to give them any money from about 2006 until last year, because I was tired of their constant promises to update Jovian Chronicles and only ever doing anything with HG, but now that they are producing JC/JW again I'm fairly content. I own literally dozens of JC models, mostly unassembled because their metal models are well detailed but dreadful to assemble and clean. When the plastic HG stuff came out, I gladly bought HG models for the first time ever because I gave zero feths about HG in metal, but the plastics are easy to assemble and paint up fairly well and can be used for all kinds of things (even their own game if you really wanted to). Now that Jovian Wars is out I've dropped even more money on mini-Exo Armors (that I already owned in 1/500 scale but refuse to assemble) for a game that I haven't played since 2004 (Lightning Strike). They finally have a product that I care about in production, so they finally got my money. That does not make me a fanboy.

They got that money at retail because I did not trust them to deliver on their kickstarters. But they DID deliver on their kickstarters (Jovian Wars delivered last year and is now on their webstore) despite having major issues with the first HG one. They get a pass from me and even a small bit of respect on the HG KS1 because they were open about the problems and still delivered on 95% of the stuff, even if it was late. Canada's entire economy tanked (which is apparently their fault for not forseeing) and they still worked to deliver almost everything, unlike so many other kickstarters that instead threw up their hands and delivered nothing. So yes, very much I am one of those that they got a bit of respect from for actually working through a hurdle instead of tossing in the towel. Creating stuff is hard, that's why most of us don't do it. That does not make me a fanboy, however.

In this case I don't want that something DP9 is making. I gave DP9 no money for Utopia because I don't like Utopia, not even a dollar for the updates. I AM glad that it went off because clearly SOMEBODY out there likes the stuff and I'm genuinely happy that there will be a thing out there for those people even if it's a thing I don't care about. Once DP9 does a thing I care about, I'll give them money. That's how it works. I may even actually play their game and not use the minis for other rules because *spoiler alert* you can use miniatures you like for games that they weren't designed to be used for.
______________________________________________________________

TL/DR:
DP9 is not my beloved gaming company. Heavy Gear is not my main game. Jovian Chronicles/Wars is not my main game. Maybe if any of those were my primary game or game producers then I would be as angry as some of the posters here in this thread, but as a casual onlooker and occasional player that mostly uses these figures for other games yet still follows the company's news, a person who HAS dealt with companies that ACTUALLY take your money and never deliver anything, these comments come across as unnecessarily ridiculous and unnecessarily mean. When somebody yells at DP9 for being "a liar and a thief" and outright accusing them of fraud with no proof, I find that poster ridiculous and annoying and awful. In the age of Trump's America, I have ZERO patience for loudmouthed man-child blowhards yelling hyperbole and lies about a couple of guys that are trying to actually produce something. If I were DP9 I would have called them worse things than trolls. This thread has been filled with posts that boil down to "I don't like that thing SO NOBODY CAN LIKE THAT THING! THAT THING MUST NOT EXIST!" and people who seem to be continually angry about a tiny company that isn't great but at least seems to be trying. That does not mean I'm a fanboy by any stretch of the imagination.

 Kalamadea wrote:

______________________________________________________________

TL/DR:
DP9 is not my beloved gaming company. Heavy Gear is not my main game. Jovian Chronicles/Wars is not my main game. Maybe if any of those were my primary game or game producers then I would be as angry as some of the posters here in this thread, but as a casual onlooker and occasional player that mostly uses these figures for other games yet still follows the company's news, a person who HAS dealt with companies that ACTUALLY take your money and never deliver anything, these comments come across as unnecessarily ridiculous and unnecessarily mean. When somebody yells at DP9 for being "a liar and a thief" and outright accusing them of fraud with no proof, I find that poster ridiculous and annoying and awful. In the age of Trump's America, I have ZERO patience for loudmouthed man-child blowhards yelling hyperbole and lies about a couple of guys that are trying to actually produce something. If I were DP9 I would have called them worse things than trolls. This thread has been filled with posts that boil down to "I don't like that thing SO NOBODY CAN LIKE THAT THING! THAT THING MUST NOT EXIST!" and people who seem to be continually angry about a tiny company that isn't great but at least seems to be trying. That does not mean I'm a fanboy by any stretch of the imagination.

I feel you're badly misrepresenting a lot of people here. Like, most of the people here.

That's a possibility, this is text-only format with no audio clues to clarify intent after all, maybe I'm reading meanings people don't intend, or they think they're writing well meaning constructive criticism that instead comes across as trolling. I had a creative writing teacher back in school that told us about a story he had tried to get published. He had written the mother to be a very loving, caring, endearing character and then his editor's comment was "man, what a heartless !". Text is funny like that.

So the fault could totally be my own when it seemed how pleased people were that it didn't look like it would fund. Then again, "You're a liar and a thief", "I actually have ethics, unlike yourself" and "DP9s incessant marketing of a thing nobody wants" sure reads pretty clear.

 Kalamadea wrote:
So the fault could totally be my own when it seemed how pleased people were that it didn't look like it would fund. Then again, "You're a liar and a thief", "I actually have ethics, unlike yourself" and "DP9s incessant marketing of a thing nobody wants" sure reads pretty clear.

On that I agree, but all those three quotes are from a single poster, are they not?

I, for one, am no fan of the Pod, based on what they actually did. Claims of "no proof" are a crock, given that it's public record how the Pod screwed the Backers to cover for their mistakes.

So....can I get a TL;DR on this whole thing?

So....can I get a TL;DR on this whole thing?

The first Heavy Gear Kickstarter DP9 ran reached a bunch of stretch goals, then when it came time to actually get the plastic minis into production they came up short due to currency conversion (the KS was in Canadian dollars). In order to produce the core and majority of the stretch goals they cut 2 of the stretch goal minis.

They announced it as an update, backers were aware of it and those who pledged extra for more copies of the missing minis got credit or the option to get metal versions (albeit not at nearly as good a deal as the plastic would have been).

This is apparently the worst betrayal in the entire world and "proves" this and that about DP9.

 ScarletRose wrote:
This is apparently the worst betrayal in the entire world and "proves" this and that about DP9.

Oh, yes, that's what we've been saying... nevermind what we've actually been saying.

Albertorius wrote:They probably should have offered refunds when they made that decision, TBH. Particularly because it was a crisis of their own making, provoked due to the fact that they did not change currencies right away even though they knew they were going to be working in USD all the time. The decision of not honoring certain Stretch Goals was clearly a breach of contract, going by KS's own terms (whatever it says in their own project, the KS TOS disagree with them).

That said, at least they were open about it, and offered an alternative, of sorts, so there's that.

Albertorius wrote:
Yeah, as I said I don't find it particularly problematic. But as I also said, they probably should have offered a refund too, mainly because the problem they had was completely avoidable and all their fault.

Albertorius wrote:Once again, though, I don't think what the Pod did in this specific case was really all that bad. They just should have offered refunds in addition to what they did.

Oh, yes, that's what we've been saying... nevermind what we've actually been saying.

I'm sorry I guess I should have said "one person has declared this the worst betrayal ever".

Honestly the rest has been pretty a good discussion IMO.

 ScarletRose wrote:

Oh, yes, that's what we've been saying... nevermind what we've actually been saying.

I'm sorry I guess I should have said "one person has declared this the worst betrayal ever".

Honestly the rest has been pretty a good discussion IMO.

Heh, fair enough ^^

 Albertorius wrote:
Well, as I said above, risk should be a two way street regarding KSs, and as I said above, too, KS terms state that "if the creator is unable to fulfill the project they should offer full refunds or refunds for the unfulfilled part". So, in following the principle of the thing, they should have offered to refund at the very least an amount proportional to the cut figures.

As I said though, the whole issue is they didn't have the money to make the figures. If they did refund the money, then they would not have had the money to make something else and the whole KS starts to collapse in a cascade of refunds and funding shortfalls. I'd rather get 98% of the promised miniatures than none of them.

And it's not a case of "some of the fault lying with them"... it's a case of "had they changed currencies right away instead of a year after the fact (given that they knew they would be doing their payments in $USD), they would have had enough money for everything".

Hindsight is always 20/20 as they say. Yeah, that would have avoided a lot of problems. Should they be held 100% liable for not foreseeing such a drastic drop in the value of the Canadian dollar, though? I don't know. Is that something that happens regularly, or was it a generally unexpected, one-off event?

After being involved in another KS where the creators knowingly defrauded the backers out of a lot more than two figures and have continued to lie and stall hoping we will just give up on recouping our money or ever seeing the missing figures, maybe I'm just a lot more willing to cut some slack for a creator that came out and said "Guys we goofed and we can't afford to make these two figure, but here is everything else".

Of course, my main interest in the whole KS was the CEF and Caprice figures, so I'm not as fussed by missing figures from the Northern or Southern lists. Maybe I'd feel different if a couple of CEF frames or Caprice walkers were missing?

 mdauben wrote:
As I said though, the whole issue is they didn't have the money to make the figures. If they did refund the money, then they would not have had the money to make something else and the whole KS starts to collapse in a cascade of refunds and funding shortfalls. I'd rather get 98% of the promised miniatures than none of them.

That assumes that the only option possible is a binary black and white "refund everything immediately" or "refund nothing ever" choice. It's not. They could have instead offered a phased rollout of refunds only for the portion not being produced and paid it out over time based on profits from the release of the plastics.

 mdauben wrote:

Of course, my main interest in the whole KS was the CEF and Caprice figures, so I'm not as fussed by missing figures from the Northern or Southern lists. Maybe I'd feel different if a couple of CEF frames or Caprice walkers were missing?

If anything should have been cut, it was the King Cobra, which was further down the unlock list than the Tiger/Sidewinder, and nobody fields enough King Cobras to need them in plastic. I figure the King was spared because the North got the Ferret, and cutting the Tiger and Sidewinder was equivalent for both sides. If necessary, cutting both the Ferret and the King Cobra might have been the better option, as it would have created an equivalence to North and South forces, rather than leaving the North with a cute but middling scout and the South with an overgunned sumo suit.

But I backed for a bunch of extra Tigers and Sidewinders, so I'm probably biased as well.

Yeah, honestly speaking, the King Cobra and the Ferret were much better candidates to stay in metal. But we're all biased here, because we're people.

Peace River and Nucoal went up today and almost funded already:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/heavygearblitz/heavy-gear-blitz-peace-river-and-nucoal-plastic-mi/comments

Congrats to Dp9. It's a reasonable goal at only two minis per faction to start. Probably deserves its own thread if dp9 won't update the first post regularly though assuming there is someone here willing to do it in their stead.

There we go, this is the one people actually wanted (as proven by the fact it's nearly funded already). I'm glad Utopia funded for the people that like those designs (I am not one), but this is the one I was waiting for. In for the $100CAD level, hopefully we'll hit some of those stretch goals and fill out the armies as I'm unlikely to buy much outside the plastics.

 Kalamadea wrote:
There we go, this is the one people actually wanted (as proven by the fact it's nearly funded already).

It's barely funded at $25kCAD, the one that failed was at around $30kCAD (but needed $50kCAD), the one that funded successfully was also just barely beyond the $30kCAD funding goal. It's currently around 200 loyal backers that fund these KS.

New thread for the new kickstarter (NuCoal and Peace River):

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/755802.page

Cergorach wrote:

 Kalamadea wrote:
There we go, this is the one people actually wanted (as proven by the fact it's nearly funded already).

It's barely funded at $25kCAD, the one that failed was at around $30kCAD (but needed $50kCAD), the one that funded successfully was also just barely beyond the $30kCAD funding goal. It's currently around 200 loyal backers that fund these KS.

It funded in just over 24 hours and both these factions are niche ones, compared to the North, South and CEF forces of before. Not too bad I reckon.