RRT's biggest problem (Clickbait!)

[Morgan Vening]

For all the problems that the Kickstarter is having, the thing that is the biggest predictor of failure for a game, is player apathy.

Last Wednesday, Scott posted the long delayed Force Orgs. About 8 hours later (I was at work), I posted what the actual changes were. Minor cost bumps to Jotun (+10/+5) and YF-4 (+5/+0), and Command Options and VF-1R's being shifted to Upgrades rather than Support Cards. So, nothing groundbreaking, but something that should generate SOME interest. Were the bumps justified? Will the Command Options become more useful now that they're not taking a Support slot?

In any other game community I've been a part of, this would generate some discussion. Over on Wyrd, a change to the Metal Gamin generated a ton of discussion. I got into weekly if not daily arguments on the Tactical Command forums (GW's Epic) due to changes.

But among the four places where I'd expect to see some discussion (the Kickstarter, toxic as it may be, Dakka, BGG, and here), I've seen one person comment on the actual contents of the Force Orgs (rather than just it's existence). Me. Almost a week ago. And I don't even play.

I've seen dead games revived by vibrant communities (several GW games, and Jyhad/VTES). The lack of input from PB themselves is bad enough, but there doesn't appear to be any community in the public domain, let alone community leaders. That's not to say that there aren't small pockets of players, or even hidden away groups, and I can understand, given the emotions of the Kickstarter backers, that you'ld want heavy moderation, but if you make it that difficult to find, increasing the playerbase is going to be very hard. Additionally, if PB don't see any discussion, then it's hard to imagine why they'd consider doing anything more like this. And before someone screams "They should do Wave 2!", it's not a zero sum game. Doing stuff like this, doesn't take time away from doing stuff on Wave 2. Because they were never going to devote 100% of their time and energy to Wave 2.

I think it's the reason the GenCon tournaments were so limited. I think the TO did a capable job. But if there's no community, noone wants to play. I've never really been in the tournament scene (of most games), but I know one of the functions of tournaments in the modern era, at least the bigger ones, is being able to play against people who you know from the online community. Lack of community, lack of interest in playing multiple games against strangers.

TLDR: If PB won't step up, and the community won't step up, releasing Wave 2 will be irrelevant beyond absolving debt to backers. The game will be a niche (isolated) of a niche (Robotech) of a niche (mecha TTG) of a niche (tabletop wargaming).

[The Beast]

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IMO, Palladium brought the player apathy upon themselves with their own apathy toward the game and the backers of it. I belong to few FB groups for Palladium, and only one of them mentioned the update. I think maybe only five of the comments were about how terrible the cards are. The rest were on either the comments on the update and Dakka pages or how badly Palladium has handled the game and no one's getting their money back. Most of the comments on that page are beginning to mirror the Dakka page with everyone saying they're better off kit-bashing and 3D-printing their own pieces for the game, and ignoring anything Palladium does. I suspect it's only a matter of time before the comments start to take the vitriol that the Dakka comments have taken. But it's kind of like the song lyric goes "And endless breaking of faith can warrant acts of treason."

From what I read on the Dakka page, Palladium had a chance to turn things around about 1 to 1.5 years ago, but continued with the "We're working on it" and "We're waiting on quotes" lines without showing any evidence of what had been done to that point. That more than anything turned me off from getting any new PB products. Now though it's like I pointed out in the other thread some time ago; I don't think Palladium can do anything with the game that will be seen as good for the game except for selling it to another company to finish. And given the history of RTT and the likelihood of Harmony Gold losing the rights in a few years I highly doubt any company would want to walk into the excrement-storm that PB has built up.

So TL/DR, the player apathy is only a result of Palladium's own apathy. If I'm wrong about that, then by all means post a video looking me (and everyone else) in the eye and tell me that the amount of work toward this game Palladium has shown since the end of Wave 1 is proof Palladium cares about the game.

[Morgan Vening]

Oh, absolutely. One of my biggest gripes is the apparent lack of interest that PB have in the project, outside of the business (profit/debt) related aspect. It's clear from his statements that Kevin is passionate about his RPG's. There doesn't appear to be any of that from any of the PB crew regarding RRT.

My position though was that the game COULD survive that, if the playerbase took up the slack. But at least publicly, that's not happening. If it's only happening privately in isolated communities, that does the game no good. And as I said, in the week since posting, there has been zero discussion about how the changes (even as small as they are) in the new Force Orgs will affect playstyles. Did the YF and Jot's need a cost increase? Will the opening of a support slot make Command Options/1R Upgrades more useful? Or if they were already must-takes, will the freeing of that slot for something else, have an impact?

Which has the follow on that the market is going to be, at best, anemic. Which is then a problem for the concept of Wave 2. Because if PB can't get a significant return on wholesale/retail, just clearing the debt that they already owed, isn't "sexy". Don't get me wrong, the debt is still owed. But from a business perspective, it's hard to get enthusiastic or passionate about clearing debt, as opposed to doing something that'll generate significant interest. Kevin seemed really excited about the volume of sales of Atlanteans at GenCon.

TLDR: Doesn't matter who's fault it is, the situation for RRT is not good, and that's likely to be recursive. PB should step up, but if they don't, and the players don't, nothing else will matter.

[wilycoyote]

Another issue, perhaps, is that a lot of what was in that Force organisation was not relevant to RTT backers -who must form the core of any community - as a lot of units needed Wave models - okay the truly dedicated will proxy or use the paper standees.

My other gripe was it was so bland for something promised years before, supposedly being playtested ( by who?) for months, let us just say underwhelming. Again Palladium have not helped themselves for then asking for the backer community to help on what should have been the finished del. Mike Anold's stuff from a couple of years back looked professional and did male you take a look

On a positive at least it was finally published and if this even signalled a tiny shift from PB to supporting RTT would be most welcome, but............

[jaymz]

if the playerbase took up the slack. But at least publicly, that's not happening.

The player base did....well at least a few of us did. Then we had enough of PB doing ZERO while WE did the work. So most of those of us who gave a damn walked away from it.

[Spinachcat]

If PB won't step up, and the community won't step up, releasing Wave 2 will be irrelevant beyond absolving debt to backers.

This is an accurate statement of where we are.

Wave 2 would require tremendous effort by PB to complete, and doing so would only serve to provide minis to backers who may or may not become players and evangelists for a very sadly dead game.

Personally, its high time for PB to apologize, explain what went wrong, end the KS and move on to new projects. Mistakes happen, even big ones, but dragging around bleeding wounds for years helps no one.

[Alpha 11]

If PB won't step up, and the community won't step up, releasing Wave 2 will be irrelevant beyond absolving debt to backers.

This is an accurate statement of where we are.

Wave 2 would require tremendous effort by PB to complete, and doing so would only serve to provide minis to backers who may or may not become players and evangelists for a very sadly dead game.

Personally, its high time for PB to apologize, explain what went wrong, end the KS and move on to new projects. Mistakes happen, even big ones, but dragging around bleeding wounds for years helps no one.

I'll have to sadly say I agree with you.