Forar

Didn't actually expect a ban (though I'll bet *someone* was tempted...), more pointing out that you guys have been receptive to reasonable critique in the past, and that's what I strive to provide. Well, until someone gets me kicked out of the beta with an ill timed rant. ;-)

To be clear, while I'm freely expressing my discontent in a variety of places, sending Mack hate mail is reprehensible. He's been one of the few regular contacts the community has had, and apparently put in incredibly long days to work on both M2E and TtB at times. Despite knowing little (if anything) in regards to some of the complaints leveled at the project, he still took the time to check in with the backers. That was appreciated. That was classy. Sending him "hate mail" is deplorable, and whomever has done so should be ashamed of themselves. That said, I specifically noted that nobody sensible wanted daily updates, or fluffy non-updates, but are you really telling us that out of a dozen+ different cogs, there's *nothing* to be said about any of them over the past 5 weeks? Not "X is on the boat!" or "Here's a pic of the Hannah prototype, sorry it took 8 months to send out!" or "Here's a glimpse at the GM screen/Character pad/fated deck"? That in 5 weeks there's been nothing to say, or that your comment of 'they're on the boat, not on our timeline' hasn't changed in a month? I find it surprising that for a project of this size and scope, supposedly so close to being done, so little is happening over a fairly long timeline. And before someone points out that a month isn't that long, it's 1/8th of the projects original time frame. Are we going to get up to 1/4 without news? 1/2?

Anaxiamander hit it perfectly. Delivery delays happen, and are frustrating. Silence is frustrating. Both at the same time can be particularly obnoxious. I've had campaigns that delayed by months, but they kept in touch and kept me informed, and it wasn't a big deal. Shadowrun Returns around half a year or more late, but they sent out massive updates monthly (at least one, sometimes more), and when they got close to delivery they started dropping bombs left and right. Didn't bat an eye. I've had campaigns that were pretty uncommunicative, but they delivered in a timely fashion, and it wasn't a big deal. Dwarven Forge also sent out roughly monthly updates, and while they were a little on the short'ish side, they'd include pictures of giant piles of tiles laying around, and delivered 2 weeks early (depending on ones perspective). Not a problem. Campaigns that are silent AND delayed, however, are where some serious frustration can build. Nobody has asked that they give us a daily breakdown or anything extreme. Most reasonable people (myself included) can recognize that there are sometimes issues beyond ones control on the manufacturing and delivery aspects. But this much silence, supposedly this close to delivery? Baffling. This project surely has dozens of moving parts, surely some of them are done and ready to show off while waiting for others!? The character pad! FM's screen? The minis may be "on a boat", but show off some of the test sprues they received or had pics sent of! Hannah! The Fate Decks! Supposedly the wicked dolls are done and sitting around? So start including a pic of a bunch of them sitting around in funny/creepy places in the office at the end of each update. Begin teasing about the other works that are supposed to tie in, assuming Mack or somebody else is at least starting to glance at the half dozen or so expansion books they talked about during the campaign. And as Anax mentioned, if there are delays and hold ups, those are chatter worthy too! Plenty of campaigns have had updates that talked about being unhappy with a sprue or mold, and needing to retool, or that they're held up in customs. Taking them at their word requires trust, and trust is in rather short supply at this point, but a little transparency goes a long way. As for @Dracomax: What good does complaining do? I think I've made a solid half dozen points as to things they could do to improve their communication. In my frustration I'm still acting in a constructive and respectful manner. If the topic is something you don't like talking about, why are you reading a thread about it? Is someone forcing you to read through every topic? Blink twice quickly if they're threatening to harm your family! If not, I don't see why it's any concern of yours what I or others choose to express, within the guidelines of the forums. If you're perfectly content with the status quo, that's great! I'm happy for you! Seriously! But I'm not, and telling me to let go and accept the status quo isn't helpful or productive advice. And if Wyrd wants me to shut my pie hole, they can ask me to stop directly, and/or ban me from the forums at their leisure. It's not an outcome I want, but this is their house, and as far as I've seen from my lack of warnings or bannings, I'm playing within the rules. Or walking on thin ice, that's entirely possible as well, but as a highly frustrated backer, I'm expressing myself clearly and in a place I know they look, since only Mack seems to read/participate in the TtB forums, and the KS comments get a Creator post maybe once every couple months, on average.

To be specific, "Summer" ends on September 23rd, according to a quick glance at Google. And you bring up an excellent point; Hannah has been kicking around since Gencon. How the hell have we not had an update showing her off? Considering the complete black hole that Gencon has been for Wyrd over the last 2 years that I've been watching (as in, people start leveling the "Gencon is coming!" excuse in July), I sincerely hope they don't cut it even vaguely close. 125 days to go. And seriously... even breaking out of April would be pretty sad. Doubly so without some kind of update. 5 weeks since the last update, 4 weeks since we were told it was 'on someone else's schedule'.

Yeah, with less than 1,500 copies 'in the wild' (not everyone will have downloaded it, some don't know, some hate pdfs, whatever) plus however many might have been shared/pirated by now, there probably just aren't that many groups looking to read over a couple hundred pages on a monitor. Hell, I'm still waiting for my physical copies. I'll browse hundreds of forum pages in a day, but if I'm settling down to read a book, I generally prefer to have it in hand.

Expediting? They'll be on a boat, on someone else's timeline, and like a Wizard will arrive neither late nor early, but precisely when they intend to. :-P

Break neck speed? It's been in production for over 15 months, plus however many months of work were put into it before they even launched the campaign. It's a sizable project, of course, but it's not the moon landing. That said, the failing isn't innately with the Kickstarter system. Personally, I think a big part of it is creators (not just Wyrd, it's a common issue) being far, far too optimistic about their delivery target. Doubling or tripling the time necessary isn't uncommon. If we'd been told that the project would take a full year, they might not have gotten quite as many backers, but they'd also have more room to maneuver their scheduling, and we'd only be a few months past that, rather than pushing month 7 overdue. The lower funding/backer could would have also kept the stretch goals lower, and much as I appreciate the extra work that was added to the project, it is precisely that; extra work, so perhaps with a 1 year target and 10 or 20% less tossed on due to lower backerage numbers, perhaps things wouldn't have gotten nearly this far out. Or maybe it'd be just as bad. Or worse, due to not having extra funding cushions to throw at a few problems. It's hard to tell and I respect that hindsight is 20/20, but I really think the crowdfunding community needs to take creators to task. If they say "oh, it's set as an 8 month project but we expect to deliver in 7", red flags should be going off everywhere. Everyone claims that they'll communicate with backers regularly and keep them apprised of the development, but few actually do, so it really needs to be viewed as the non-statement platitude that it is. I'm disappointed we even have to be talking about this. Wyrd talked a good game during the campaign, they were super optimistic and enthusiastic and oh wow so much excitement!... so to have 'it's not on our timetable' be the response to a request for info as we enter month 7 past the schedule is not exactly heartening. I get that 'shooting from the hip, taking no guff' is 'a thing' around these parts, but surely I'm not the only one that sees getting blown off for asking a question (or answers in a very abrupt manner) might not engender patience and empathy. And if we're going to be really blunt, this is the second Wyrd Kickstarter that has proven to be very late. I didn't get in on it, but believe me, that little Caeser plushie that held up most of EBO garnered plenty of frustration with my friends that did. Maybe they should stop using Kickstarter if they can't set/meet realistic deadlines. But I'm sure the models being produce for Fall Schematic won't hold things up. >.>

The more weeks go by, I can. Three words: Unveiled at Gencon. It's been nearly 4 weeks since Nathan noted that they were waiting on other people's schedules, a week passed the Q1 'target' and 5 weeks since the last update. Surely it's crazy to think that it'll take another 4 months to wrap things up, and yet here we are without even an educated guess (because some people get crazy with estimates, well apparently some people get a bit wonky without them; checkmate!) Is it understandable to express a little frustration now, or should I wait for May? Y'know, just checking in.

Err, did I mention that they had a 5,000'ish book run last year in a month seemingly without trouble? Whomever they work with clearly seems to have attended to their needs in the past just fine, and seems to be a lot more local than needing 2 months in a container. Edit: and y'know what would be better than having to speculate this out? An update that tells us what is going on. But apparently that's asking too much. Edit: from another forum: "In the M2E news and Rumors thread, lalochezia (Justin) mentioned that he had a copy of the M2E rules on his desk since August 1st (he posted on August 7th and said he'd had it since the previous Thursday), and by a tweet from Justin's twitter, the M2E book seems to have been shipped off to the printers right around July 18th at the latest, which means that they had a turn around time of 2 to about 2.5 weeks (assuming the last bit of playtesting ended on July 14th or so)." Ergo, it definitely does not seem to take 2-3+ months to get a print run done, at least when things are going well. And if they're not going well... wow, that'd totally be worthy of an update.

That's not a bad idea, assuming the books arrive first (and given how quickly their printer turned around the M2E books, it wouldn't surprise me at all). Roughly 20% of the backers just got the books, and that'd clear out nearly 300 packages before the warehouse had to bother with the remaining 1,200 or so. I mean, I wouldn't be overjoyed if the minis ended up holding back my package an extra week or month, but I can see the benefits in at least starting to work on delivery as soon as possible. Though it'd be somewhat ironic if the Living Room backers (another 20% or so) got held up just because the Multi-Pose minis got attached to their tier in a stretch goal.

I never assumed that would remotely be the case. That doesn't make a lack of information any easier to embrace. It's been 3 weeks since Nathan told us 'it's at the printers and on a boat', and thus Q1 has come and gone. Hell, I thought "sure, 6 months extra seems like plenty of time, I have faith they'll make it". Cliche as it is, I'm not angry, I'm disappointed. And sure, as someone who hasn't bought a Wyrd product in a year (the Gaming Room tier was enough of a hit to my disposable income), let alone watched releases, I'm willing to recognize that things don't always make it out exactly when they're anticipated. And yet they still manage to actually change those delivery targets all the same (you said yourself, what was due in X month is now listed in Y). Which is more than can be said for this project right now. I mean, unless the Lone Marshal actually had a delivery target of "shrug, not on us" for a while there.

Careful. Never know how long they'll be on a boat. >.>

Well, we were 'on track for delivery' back in July. But apparently the figures weren't. This wasn't something that crept up on anyone. Assuming the launch of the project wasn't the first point that any work was being done, we're approaching a year and a half here. And as I said, reasonable people would understand "pirates have taken the ship, we pray for the safe return of the crew" or "US customs has found a little chalk on one deck, expect it to clear sometime in 2016". "It's on a boat, *shrug*" isn't exactly the same level of confidence and enthusiasm I'm familiar with from Wyrd. They manage (with admittedly varying degrees of success) to get piles of figures to Gencon each year, to unleash a new wave to retail each month, surely 3 figures (2 MPM and Hannah) plus some possible reprints (or are they just leftovers) isn't exactly taxing in comparison? But hey, I'm an outsider. Yes this is conjecture and speculation but it's also tinged with polite requests for information, because I admit I don't know. I've striven to be patient, but the last update that really touched on delivery was January 4th. It's been 3.5 months since I was told to keep watching for final progress info or to provide feedback. On February 27th (over 3 weeks ago) we were told; We have yet to see anything remotely resembling a "comprehensive update". So here we are with 11 days left in Q1. As I said, apologies if patience it beginning to wear a little thin. I've tried to keep people informed in the comments section with occasional visits for over 15 months. I suppose I've finally found the point where a few cracks begin to develop in my outlook as well. Feeling like there was a bit of light at the end of the tunnel helped. New beta waves, the occasional nod here and there, but can you see how the current change of tone is a little jarring?

Hey! Leave me out of this. :-/

"Tank/DPS LF Healer: The Card Game"

There's something profoundly funny in feeling confident enough to project a delivery date 8 months out, but not mere days or weeks out. Reasonable people will accept delays that are beyond control. Catering to the lowest common denominator punishes everyone for the failings of a few. Wyrd manages to project up to 3 months out what their available models will be for Malifaux, according to their own site (sometimes) and a variety of distributors. Surely they've got this "estimate time from boat to stores" thing down now. But I digress. You're right, they'll tell us when they tell us. Pardon a little impatience as we, in theory, are down to the last 2 weeks of the current delivery target without an update.

The Chessex ones that came in a clear plastic tube and (at least used to have) a small velvet pouch? ? Because that's what I used too!

The miniatures are still on a boat? That I did not expect. Though I guess putting off the production run until the books were actually done makes more sense than them eating up warehouse space for the last 6-14 months. Do we have a rough timeline for these last two pieces? (ie: is the boat 90% through its journey or did it just leave port, are the last books due to print in a few hours, or did the run just fire up, etc) Obviously delays can happen, but given that these are things that can take weeks or even months (in the case of shipping across an ocean, rough weather, delays at customs, etc, etc, etc) it'd be awesome to have an idea where in that process we might be sitting.

Even if it's too late for the first edition, it's not like Wyrd is only printing one bulk order and won't ever do another (well, I certainly hope the books sell better than that), so such information should totally be useful, if just to keep in mind for the 2nd printing. Rather than, say, something like Palladium Books, where material is copy/pasted between various books and typos/spelling/grammar errors persist across revision after revision and literally years or decades.

The current tentative time frame for the backers to receive their books/figures is "Late Q1". Given that this time frame ends in 19 days, it seems likely we'll see another delay announced shortly. The War Store often has new Wyrd products listed before we see an official notification, and while they're not 100% accurate, they do have products listed up until April without a mention of TtB (which could simply be a case of their distributor not having the info yet, or a May time frame and they haven't updated the page, or something else). The pdfs going out to the backers is a good sign, but a big question mark remains on this campaign for the physical delivery.

It'd definitely be nice to be brought up to speed sometime soon. In theory the backers are supposed to start receiving packages in not much more than 6 weeks. The TtB mini-page here notes that the book is in final editing and layout to be printed, but nothing is said about a timeline for that.

Right on the nose. Edit: hell, I referenced Wyrd's exemplary Gencon Exclusive policies a few times. I swear, I've never had to argue so hard about wanting to give a company money and be told that I was being whiny and entitled. For offering to give them money for a product.

Eh? Oh. I wasn't referring to TtB. Those comments are tame compared to some.

Hrm... something just occurred to me. So, out of curiosity... any chance the facility doing the M2E printing might also be doing the Through the Breach printing?

Yeah, 45 days isn't terrible. So many hit 3, 6, 12+ month delays, and many won't say a thing about it for weeks or even months at a time. Hell, one project I've backed is looking at something approaching a 6 month delay and get snarky whenever anyone asks about it (not to mention the backers, who are a mixed bag of tolerant, outraged, and down right sniveling sycophants). Kickstarter can be... a very strange community. I'll admit that the update did trigger a bit of a gag reflex though. So many campaigns are using "we don't want to rush it so you get the best things ever!!!!" as their go to delay excuse that it's becoming a joke. Not that this is the case here, it's just getting obnoxious in general, to a degree that even when it's true it's hard to avoid a little eye rolling.