Would you have backed the RRT Kickstarter w 1 year timeline?

[Seto Kaiba]

It seems to me that a very vocal minority-here and what I’ve observed from the Kickstarter comments page are disappointed, and are continually drinking their own Kool-Aid about it. Keep in mind, if 532 backers were disappointed and voicing that, it would still only represent 10% of the backers. [...]

Forar makes a good point about the actual traffic on the boards here representing an exceedingly small cross-section of the game's backers... though I would finesse it a bit on the grounds that, if this is adhering to the same pattern as many other Robotech releases, 90%+ of the backers probably don't care about the quality in the least because of one or more of the following reasons:

• They have no intention of actually playing the game.
• They only intend to use the minis for display purposes, due to a lack of RT models/collectibles for most mecha in the series.
• They only intend to use the game's rulebook as reference material.
• They want to use the miniatures for another game (BattleTech)
• They only bought it because they wanted to continue to support Robotech.

[Forar]

I highly disagree. Purely anecdotal, but in my experience the vast majority of the backers seem to be interested in playing the game. Two backers are making their own rules up to kill time, we hear generally good things about the demo experiences had at conventions, and the lack some solid rules info has been cited by many among the list of reasons.

There are definitely modelers looking to expand collections, battletech players seeking "unseen" mechs, rabid fans and others out there, but 10% players? Yeah, no, not when the average backer has 100-200+ figures coming to them, especially with as much repetition as we're getting.

[Seto Kaiba]

I highly disagree. Purely anecdotal, but in my experience the vast majority of the backers seem to be interested in playing the game.

's why I said that it would apply if this followed the pattern of many previous Robotech releases... most of the people who bought the RT RPG have never played it. One of the most popular reasons for buying the original version of the game was to use it as a sort of unofficial Robotech encyclopedia, and that does not seem to have changed with 2E. With that established trend, it wouldn't surprise me even slightly if a majority of the backers had little or no interest in actually playing the game.

If they ARE enthusiastic about playing it... well, that's all to the good. The more people who aren't just buying it to buy it or buying it for a different game entirely means improvement in the game's prospects.

[Seto Kaiba]

@Seto - in that case, the majority of the backers would be far under the average spent because they just needed a few minis to use as models, but I doubt we'd get that kind of info.

Never underestimate the Robotech fanbase's willingness to buy anything with the name on it just to continue kidding themselves that the franchise isn't dead.

Which would imply that the bulk of the money spent was from people who were intending to be dedicated/motivated promoters of the game itself...and a non-trivial minority of them are irked about being lied to.

I dunno, I doubt many of them live close enough together to actually play the game... which makes the point rather academic.

[Forar]

The Robotech Game Center shows some significant clustering in major metropolitan areas, even with just a couple percent of backers signed up.

I've got at least half a dozen backers in my area, but then again, I do live in the third largest city on the continent, so I recognize that won't apply to everyone.

[Forar]

Perhaps I'm being pedantic, but it's not how the figures are sculpted that has people frustrated, but how those figure sculpts are being chopped up for the sprues, and it's mostly aimed at the RDF for the time being (well, what we've seen, but the Zentraedi figures haven't seemed to garner nearly as much ire).

Also, the declarations of issues have been going on for literally months now. These shenanigans started back in early March. It may not be possible to make changes now, what with needing to plow ahead into production if they want to have even a remote hope of making their "June/July" delivery target (spoiler: June is right out), but 2 months ago? Perhaps it wasn't such an impossibility. I concur that it's unlikely/unrealistic to expect them to miss Gencon/July intentionally; with molds being cut, and presumably factory time lined up (the second such time at that), they're likely past the point of no return. The costs in delays and possible lost deposits or penalties or whatever probably lean things towards "go" regardless of what anyone says, barring an absolute show stopper being found.

And frankly, they have had untold opportunities to inform the backers better. Why are things such a crapshow now? Because we only just started actually seeing prototypes and test runs. Why doesn't anyone have faith in the rules? Because we're 1 year into the project and they won't show them off. We have a backer using his own experiences and an old copy of the playtest rules to create his own version and leaking it to backers piecemeal, and it's not inspiring confidence that it's the closest thing we have to how the game plays out, barring a nearly year old 'overview' and the Gencon rules sheet (literally, one page) for demos.

When issues keep arising, it shouldn't be surprising that people begin to assume the worst when there is a lack of transparency on other matters. The best thing to do to prevent imaginations running wild would be to be honest with the backers, to level with them. Hell, look at a project like Xia; that's been heavily delayed, has tons of backers and brought in plenty of cash for a 1 man project, and yet his openness and transparency seems to have kept things from becoming a roiling ball of 'negativity' as so many often lament.

Edit: I will end on the more positive note that Wayne deserves kudos for the last few updates. More info, some actual progress shots, improvement! But a few 'good' (not great, but good) updates don't repair the damage done by silence and (intentional or unintentional) misdirection we've had for the last year. Hopefully the next few updates will be real barnstormers; in theory, we should be at a point where a small novel sized update practically writes itself (production! More test sprues! Better ideas of timelines! etc).

[Jorel]

I think they need to open the door to communication and take the bad and the worse and try find some good to bring us all back together.

[Forar]

I disagree, I think it's entirely possible to have transparency without needing to 'throw anyone under the bus'. It's possible to discuss production delays without needing to point and laugh or throw stones, but to note that simply X issue existed, Y revisions were necessary to get the results wanted, and now Z exists, which is where they want it to be.

If need be I will continue to bang this drum, but the Xia 'team' (of one guy and whatever help he gets) has given very clear examples of issues that cropped up, needed attending to, got resolved, and showed off the resulting progress. The realities of such a project with so many figures, products, and general moving parts is that I have a hard time believing there's nothing to talk about. Maybe they want to keep the issues close to the vest, or avoid antagonizing HG in case they've had to downplay some of the matters that have ended up leaving us in the dark, but there simply can't be this much going on and nothing to talk about. They're mutually exclusive notions.

[Jorel]

I agree there is a middle ground between pointing fingers and assessing problems and dealing with them. I think Palladium is likely doing as much as they can of both. Trying to fix it where they can and telling the other team where the issues are and expecting them to fix it. I think their inexperience in this field may have led to them asking for more than they should have in terms of tiny details.

[Forar]

Believe me, my friends and I certainly have some regrets backing as strongly as we have. You seem to have dodged a bullet there.

Sure, we got a simply impressive discount off what the eventual retail sticker tags will be, but at the cost of giving up an... excessive amount of funding between the three of us.

In hindsight, we collectively wish we'd backed for maybe half as much as we did.

[Kryptt]

I regret ordering the extra vf-1D pack. I now see one was enough. That extra $30 could have been used for an extra YF-4 pack. Still only $475 isn't too bad. If I invested as much as Forar or BS on my own I'd be pissed right about now knowing how much plastic is coming my way in tiny parts! I didn't so no point in asking for a refund.