Sunday, July 13, 2014

Gamer Rant: ROBOTECH Tactics & Academy

Some of you know that I'm a gamer and a fan of the series ROBOTECH.  There have been two Kickstarters in the last year regarding it.  One for a tactical miniatures game from Palladium Books, the other (ongoing) for a new animated series from Harmony Gold.

Holy Crap, the levels of hate, nonsense, and trolling on these are at 'Yahoo' message board levels, mostly from so-called 'fans' of the show/series.

I'll start w/ Academy.

Harmony Gold has a long history of aborted ROBOTECH (Sentinels, Shadow Chronicles, etc) projects and legal conflict over the Macross name, vehicle images etc and 'fans' make sure to dredge it up each and every chance they get on every medium they can find.  This KS is no different.  Starting w/ the first update, several folks pledged just so they could hate on Harmony Gold as often (and at length) as they could.  HG responded w/ their very own tier: Enemy Spy, just so people can bitch and whine to their hearts content.

Yeah, we get it.  You think HG sucks.  You want Macross expansions released in the US.  You think HG sucks.  Guess what?  I want to see Sentinels revived.  Ain't gonna happen.  I picked up the 'Shadow Chronicles' DVD.  Didn't like it. So you know what I did?  I didn't buy any more and sold the disc.  I'm hoping that 'Academy' is decent.  If it gets funded and I like it? Yay.  If not, I chalk it up as some money lost and sell it.  Bitching about it endlessly isn't going to change it.

IOW, don't like HG?  Don't support it.  THAT'S the way the difference is made.

Onto Tactics.

I'm not much of a minis gamer but really want these as shelf displays and might even play the game from time to time. I admit I funded at a fairly high level to sell off enough via second market to pay for the ones I got and to get them painted semi-professionally.  This game funded at about 20x what the original goal was and it was Palladium's first delving into the world of minis.  I think they got in a bit over their head.

 Now Palladium books has a long history of very much delayed projects, some indefinitely and KS projects are notoriously late.  Put these two together and the original shipping estimate of  December 2013 was....well..... naive, if not outright stupid.  Couple this w/ PB selling ROBOTECH Tactics Exclusives at GenCon last year and you're just asking for some pissed off customers.  The date didn't bother me (I'ld dealt w/ both Palladium and KS before on that and knew what to expect) but the exclusive mini thing cheesed me off. The levels of stupidity in response however, have surpassed Ludicrous Speed.

The levels of bitching by a select subgroup of fans is beyond nonsense. PB doesn't update as often as they like?  Bitching about how they're hiding things.  They update?  The update is 'crap', PB is 'lying', the models are 'garbage', ad nauseum. Seriously, whining because each mini doesn't come w/ enough pieces for every one to allow for half a dozen different poses. I'm not exaggerating on this. Models not put together at 'museum' quality hours after getting them unboxed so fans can see them. Splitting the shipping up into groups to get the main game pieces to backers sooner means the 2nd wave of expansions and extras will never arrive because all the money's been spent. It's seriously this stupid.  But it gets stupider.

Up comes PB's update that they're expecting to get in some containers of product right before GenCon.  They're going to start shipping to backers and continue during the convention while bringing about 100 sets there to demo and sell because there is no way they could bring enough to fulfill KS orders (never mind the logistics headache of keeping it all straight of who got what).  You'ld think Kevin Siembieda had announced he was selling their mothers and sisters into slavery by the reactions.  Threats of lawsuits, boycotts, demands for refunds, claims they're going to buy the retail sets at the Con and destroy them in front of the booth, all from a group of fanboys who are pissed they aren't getting their plastic army toys first (many of them to resell on the secondary market). Anyone who tries to disagree are labelled as 'White Knights', and 'SiemBieda fanboys sitting under his desk'.

So up comes the next update.  Kevin Siembieda puts up he'll leave it up to KS supporters whether PB will sell at GenCon but non-responses will be counted as compliance, iow a 'yes'.  Yeah, that's pretty sh!tty right there but it didn't matter.  The ones spewing out the hate have turned out to be in a small minority.  80%+ of respondents have been voting in the positive to allow sales of the 100 or so sets.  The 'No' votes, outnumbered 5-1, are continuing to troll the thread and refuse to respond to the FACT that they've been outvoted even w/o the d!ck wording of the counting.

To those few dozen people.... you're acting like a bunch of jack@sses.  I've looked at some of your profiles and I've seen little but hate towards everything.  Go ahead and talk to a lawyer about a 'class action lawsuit'.  You'll get laughed out of the office from any competent attorney.  Go ahead and demand Palladium bring 1000 games w/ them to the convention (no, I'm not exaggerating that one either). It just shows you know nothing about business or logistics.  Go ahead and say 'you'll never buy another Palladium product again. You're in the minority and odds are good you'll buy it if you like it anyway. Go ahead and sell off all your ROBOTECH KS stuff.  You were planning to sell most of it anyway. 


As for my creds, I cut my teeth on pre-'Red Box' D&D and Top Secret.  I watched Mazes & Monsters on TV and had my school ban D&D due to Patricia Pulling.  I picked up  ROBOTECH 1st ed (3rd Printing) RPG when I was about 12 and expanded into PFRPG (also 1st ed, 3rd printing w/ the controversial 'Sexual Deviancy' rules) both of which I still play.  I refuse to play 2nd ed. as I think it's crap, basically just Rifts Dimension Book: Palladium, and sold off the majority of the Rifts books since I didn't care for them.  I've been gaming for over 30 yrs along w/ near a decade of political activism.  I've seen this type of petulant childishness countless times from trolls much better than these.

IOW, screw off and let those of us who want to enjoy it do so.


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've been a Palladium fan-boy for decades. I still have my first edition Rifts book that I got for Christmas 1988. No longer play, but I'm now passing them on to my son's.