Update on Battlefield Evo - The Full Scoop

[Helstrom]

Well, making heads roll would be appropriate if Mongoose were a larger company. At this point, however, it seems to run for a large part on the driving force of a handful of individuals. This means that giving the responsible party the boot would leave a very large hole to fill at a time the company is very vulnerable - this would just compound the problem. I'm confident that this fiasco (let's call it what it is) in itself already has people scrambling to ensure something like that never happens again.

What it comes down to now is sales. Are people going to buy this product at this price? I'm certainly not, but as I said before, we shouldn't mistake our own opinions for those of the target group at large. They might sell just fine.

If they do sell well, Mongoose is golden, of course. If they don't, as I personally think they won't, they need to clear that first batch out ASAP and get improved products on the shelves. One option would be to print out a few thousand "Introduction Sale!" stickers and cut the price of these first run boxes down by about half. I explained my thoughts on that already a few posts back.

If they do launch these boxes according to plan and then it turns out they don't sell, you're in a whole different world of pain. Repairing a product after a failed launch would take some major re-investment and probably end up being more expensive than the introduction sale option.

For Mongoose's sake, I hope these boxes sell just fine. I keep saying it, but I like the company, the rules seem great, and I wish the guys the best of luck in making back their investments in both money and time/effort. But until the quality improves, count me out.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

to quote Matthew, "These will be better than 90% of the painters out there can do." Apparently MGP doesn't think much of the skills of it's gamers. Either that, or they've just seriously underdelivered. Again. Either way, it turns out that yes, Scipio was in fact right...

Unless they've been lying to us all along, these figures are of a lower standard than Mongoose were promised by the company that are painting these minis. There's plenty of things here you can legitimately complain aboit without misrepresenting the timeline of events.

 

[Helstrom]

Unless they've been lying to us all along, these figures are of a lower standard than Mongoose were promised by the company that are painting these minis.

Be that as it may - Mongoose contracted them, Mongoose failed to maintain adequate quality assurance, Mongoose is stuck with the product and, crucially, Mongoose is going to sell them anyway.

Yes, Mongoose obviously got royally screwed. But what they're doing now is, if you will pardon the crude expression, letting the shit roll downhill - and we can only hope enough people will buy it so this batch clears out fast.

And if it does sell well there actually won't be a reason to up the quality in later runs - good for Mongoose, not for me

 

[PilGrim]

Actually, this is the other concern. If Wave 1 does sell, and I would not be surprised if it did, why not plough on?

We (wargamers) seem to assume we are the target market for this product, but is this the case? Maybe BFE is aimed at a different market, the CMG players for instance. They won't be put off by the alleged poor model quality and poor painting - they don't know any "better" (no insult intended)

CMGs show a disturbing disregard for customers, and seem to be driven by minimum production costs over any sort of product quality - if you wan't to see real quality issues look at Star Wars Miniatures and their Clone Troopers. It's not inconcievable that this is the target group, in which case the idea of packaged models with stats and rules included may work. We, that is the more mainstream wargaming fraternity will not make a difference or matter a damn.

 

[Rob_A]

No, thats just it, this is meant to be one of the leading Pre-painted miniature wargames aimed at wargamers. It isn't collectable at all.

 

[Helstrom]

When push comes to shove, though, it's not a matter of who a product is targeted at - it's a matter of who's buying it. I agree with Pilgrim that even if most of the mainstream wargamers may be put off by the quality of the miniatures, it's entirely possible that they'll strike home with the CMG crowd, regardless of who Mongoose intended to sell the product to.

"Uncollectable" is a nonsense buzzword, people collect bubblegum wraps for Christ's sake.

 

[Mr Evil]

ok il pitch in here

i was horrified

but then i realy whant to play the game

to play the game i need the minis, after all there jut chess peices !!!

mongoose hasnt let us down its the contracer that has not delivered as promised, and im sure thier end there exchanging a few chineese rude words and wipping the guy incharge of mustaches telling him how funny they look to mr evil in the uk, who now in his western ways wishes to come over and rape and devour his children like all westeners...

mongoose are britih and as british we are told to not pick on people smaller than us, so we cant realy call the chineese rude names as their all a bit shorter, and they out number us a tad.

the product is fine, its not great its, its fine, some will be better or worse that what we have seen in the pics im sure. evan the AT-43 box sets vary in quality of paint jobs.

what id like to se is what adrian can do as a repaint to show us guys what a pure painter can do with these minis, much like rkam did.

they are no worse than some forces of valor prepaints around the same price, but designed for gaming unlike the FOV minis.

one thing i dont like is the bases, i can see me repainting them, maybe they should have been left sand free.

to be honest what i spend on paints and glue in a month probably comes to the cost of these minis !

im still on the wall a bit, but when i consider them as playing peices, they do warm to me alot.

s many know im both critical and defensive of mongoose and can end up contradicting myself, but then im a complex person, i have a complex about my complex for goodness sake !!!!

what i would like to see from mongoose is a pic of one of the westerner fighters againsta starship trooper for scale referance. then if we see that they are closer to 25mm scale than 30mm i think people will see that the detail error isnt quite so bad and more understandable.

 

[erion]

Like it or not, Mongoose as a company is ultimately responsible for the quality of the products it sells.

Saying that it's the manufacturers fault the figures look like ass is nothing more than a lame excuse for a lack of quality control on Mongoose's part.

Given the quality problems expressed by customers since day one of the SST run, I was really hoping mongoose had learned its lesson by now. I am quite disappointed to find that is not the case.

 

[Paladin]

to quote Matthew, "These will be better than 90% of the painters out there can do." Apparently MGP doesn't think much of the skills of it's gamers. Either that, or they've just seriously underdelivered. Again. Either way, it turns out that yes, Scipio was in fact right...

Why do you guy keep harping on this? If the production company had delivered at even 90% of the prototype quality it would have been at that level. They've already said the production company is screwing them and misled them on quality.

To me the only valid point to complain, is complain about what point they knew the truth and how they are handling the resolution.

 

[Paladin]

Unless they've been lying to us all along, these figures are of a lower standard than Mongoose were promised by the company that are painting these minis.

Be that as it may - Mongoose contracted them, Mongoose failed to maintain adequate quality assurance, Mongoose is stuck with the product and, crucially, Mongoose is going to sell them anyway.

Do you know what they did for quality assurance?

 

[Helstrom]

Do you know what they did for quality assurance?

Obviously, not enough.

 

[Mr Evil]

technicly they are painted better than 90% of the painters out their, as absolutly shed loads of 7-8 year olds paint minis realy badly. so technicly there still on target lol.

there def better than my 7 year old daughter can do, and they look better than most gw mini owners who play with unpainted or badly undercoated minis so often.

so that argument is realy non existant.

mongooe should have found a better selection of the prepainted minis to form the unit for pics, but theye didnt ! most companies would have.

 

[Helstrom]

mongooe should have found a better selection of the prepainted minis to form the unit for pics, but theye didnt ! most companies would have.

So, wait, that's a good thing now? :shock:

If the minis turn out to look significantly better than in the pictures (which would only be possibly if the pictures are taken off a particularly bad lot - you can't blame massive smudging, googly eyes and sloppy ink washes on poor photography) then we'll all have a good laugh about the whole thing and rush to the stores with open wallets.

Although I must insist that, if such would be the case, the photographer responsible be given a very substantial wedgie

 

[Court Jester]

technicly they are painted better than 90% of the painters out their, as absolutly shed loads of 7-8 year olds paint minis realy badly. so technicly there still on target lol.

there def better than my 7 year old daughter can do, and they look better than most gw mini owners who play with unpainted or badly undercoated minis so often.

so that argument is realy non existant.

I don't blame you wanting to defend what is obviously a game you enjoy but this is quite a weak argument.

This whole thread is just kind of going in circles now.

:roll:

 

[Galatea]

Yes it does.
So why not stop beating each other and wait a few days until 4 or 5 Users posted Pics and we have a good chance to really say how they look like.

 

[Poko]

and you really think that the difference tween those pics and the official ones will be THAT big? c'mon, right now the minis are worse than my old GI-joe stuff, and that's 12 years old...
honestly, after this week i'm incled to say that the pre-paint revolution ended up as a dud, and it would be best to simply release the minis unpainted, or only undercoated(pre-constructed i can live with).

 

[MaxSteiner]

Thats the absolute worst thing, if Mongoose had offered these miniatures unpainted then they might have been able to claw back some of the more discriminating dissapointed hobbyist, instead though its all been tarred with the same brush.
... Although that said the sculpts look pretty awful too now.

... Incidently, we're getting VERY mixed messages about how these are produced now. Weren't we told that these were being done with a machine rather than wageslave labour at the start? (This was come to think of it the reason we were given why they couldnt be available unpainted wasn't it?)
As it stands these are looking very much as though they'd been done by someone who is neither motivated nor paid enough to put in the effort required to get these looking good. If they are done by a machine though, I think theres grounds for having it returned... (How do they do Spawn toys those have always looked good I thought!)

 

[AlgernonSidney]

They've already said the production company is screwing them and misled them on quality

But this doesn't really follow with Mongoose's behaviour after the figures came in.

The most disturbing thing about all of this is that the pictures were posted without much of a word about it.

As far as I can tell, here's what happened:

the figs came in. Someone AT Mongoose posted the pictures. Which means they saw the figures, put them in different positions, took pictures of them, modified the pictures (not saying editied but changed size to fit in with website requirements or whatever) then published them to the website.

In all of that no one at mongoose noticed that they looked like 30mm turds?

Seems strange.

If they were that upset about the drop in quality they would have put up a big message saying there are problems iwth the BFE figs when they came in and we are looking into what to do about it. True this would be a hard step to take but it seems like it would be more credible than posting the pics and, seemingly, hoping nobody notices.

 

[MaxSteiner]

They've already said the production company is screwing them and misled them on quality

But this doesn't really follow with Mongoose's behaviour after the figures came in.

The most disturbing thing about all of this is that the pictures were posted without much of a word about it.

As far as I can tell, here's what happened:

the figs came in. Someone AT Mongoose posted the pictures. Which means they saw the figures, put them in different positions, took pictures of them, modified the pictures (not saying editied but changed size to fit in with website requirements or whatever) then published them to the website.

In all of that no one at mongoose noticed that they looked like 30mm turds?

Seems strange.

If they were that upset about the drop in quality they would have put up a big message saying there are problems iwth the BFE figs when they came in and we are looking into what to do about it. True this would be a hard step to take but it seems like it would be more credible than posting the pics and, seemingly, hoping nobody notices.

Its even worse than that, there actually was an anouncement along the lines of what you were suggesting, but within 24 hours it was deleted and there was a complete turn around...

 

[AlgernonSidney]

yeah but the announcement came only after the complaints started to roll in I believe.

So timeline is like this:

pics posted
complaints start
complaints continue
announcement from mongoose about pulling figs
celebration from people, go get 'em mongoose, etc.
announcement from mongoose that they aren't that bad.