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I think another question you guys should be asking is why the owners of ND/Sodapop were paying themselves 100K+ a year plus bonuses while their company was tanking. I know people are wanting Paizo and their representatives to step up and admit some responsibility for backing ND in this endeavour but all things considered they were probably led astray and lied to as well just as much as us all by ND. It was my post that Erik was replying to and I chose to do my due diligence afterwards even when he spoke up saying that ND could be trusted. My research found that “No” ND could not be trusted.
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I take the update as a very positive thing.
Ninja Division seemingly fell into a deep hole and has a very hard time.
While we complain about some lost money, there are personal fates behind them having to send people home. They lost their jobs and income.
While that is probably the managements fault, it is not uncommon.
A lot of kickstarter companies see those problems, as do other game comapnies and companies overall.
They are still here though, they communicated something and seemingly they at least want to try.
I hope they can do it. Them saying they are under supervision is something i take as a good sign.
Most likely, the ninja division guys are artists. They are good at creating awesome games and minis, but they are bad at business, management and planning. Perhaps it is even Paizo who helps them out now, restructuring and making things better? Who knows.
Ninja Division made some awesome fun and quality games and along with Soda Pop it is actually a company whose products i really enjoy.
I even bought another game from them on sale lately and i have to see, the Ninja All Stars Minis are really cool.
Instead of being hateful and spiteful, be helpfull! It takes a lot of courage to come out and admitt failure, especially in a culture like we have now on the internet, where everyone believes they are entitled to everything, to call out and punish people and cross lines.
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I agree with Stephen and Silas. How can Paizo say with a straight face that they honestly expect us to believe anything the Ninja Division says at this point? Ninja Division has given us absolutely no reason to think they are anything but full of hot smoke (to say it without curse words).
Actions speak louder than words and Ninja Divisions actions have shown that they are incompetent and incapable of completing the projects they took our money for.
When Ninja Division say they are pursuing all avenues, that is a fancy way of saying they have nothing. If they have an actual example of even a single positive possibility for forward progress, they should state it, but I'm sure they can't because it doesn't exist.
I also find it rather insulting that the public appearance so far (to me at least) is that Paizo seems to be supporting Ninja Division more than Paizo's own fan base. By now they should have at least come out with a public apology for partnering with and encouraging us to support (despite warnings) such an unstable company. Telling us not to give up hope without providing a single reason why we should do so, is just as bad lip service as Ninja Division is providing.
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I also find it rather insulting that the public appearance so far (to me at least) is that Paizo seems to be supporting Ninja Division more than Paizo's own fan base.They're "supporting" Ninja Division since that's the way currently to get their fans their minis barring other avenues that are probably being discussed and considered and under NDA and legal arbitration.
By now they should have at least come out with a public apology for partnering with and encouraging us to support (despite warnings) such an unstable company.A company they are still trying to work with in order to get people their minis? Which I'm pretty sure is what people actually want? They might be considering an apology at some point when this is concluded but it most likely will not be anything like what you want since that could veer into defamation territory.
Telling us not to give up hope without providing a single reason why we should do so,Paizo is still communicating with us, and is still communicating with Ninja Division and Archon in order to secure the minis.
is just as bad lip service as Ninja Division is providing.So they should just lock this thread and drop it since it isn't satisfactory to your liking?
I agree with you. Never seen a company that cares so little about the IP they own.
You mean the same company that has allowed this thread to continue with constant communication with what they can pass along while at the same time still trying to get people the minis they pledged minis in hope for?
Customer Service & Community Manager
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I doubt Paizo cares....
I've seen this sentiment several times in this thread from a variety of levels of involvement with Starfinder and the miniatures and I wanted to let folks in this thread know, the people who make up Paizo absolutely care. We care that our community is frustrated, and feeling hurt, that people have been put off Starfinder or Paizo in general because of this. We empathize deeply with the community involved in this.
I'm not here to try to get people to stop feeling frustrated or upset or fed up over the kickstarter, or to ask people to stop posting how they feel. I'm also not here to give people assurances or provide resolutions for backers.
I'm continuing to update in the thread, so that however y'all feel about things, you know we are listening to feedback and internally this is not being ignored. That's all we can offer right now as far as commenting on the issue. We know people are looking for more answers, information, or details from people who are not me. We know that "No new information is available" isn't satisfactory for backers. But however much we want to say one thing or another or be able to provide folks with information and details, we are not able to (usually for legal reasons). If there's questions we aren't answering, usually it's because we can't, not because we don't care.
There's been an uptick in posts over the last week, particularly with the update from Monday. I am trying to keep up with reading them, but if there are things that I can answer (or not answer) I am not going to be able to get to them until probably the end of this week, early next.
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The comments on the new Ninja Division update is pure gold.
People asking for the .stl files.... That would be glorious, but no way Paizo would let their IP into the wild... Would they?
Obvious no one is getting a refund.
Best comment so far is the guy saying they should go back and find the people who told everyone Ninja Division was shady and would take the money and run.... And thank them/apologize for not listening. lol... That was just gold.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/325468910/starfinder-masterclass-minia tures/posts/2420184
I was one of those. Forcibly refunded once the campaign closed, so that I couldn't comment anymore. Didn't troll, make libellous accusations or scream obscenities at people. Just kept warning people to research ND's past project progress, and their habit of vanishing when tough questions were asked.
Best response I got was the guy who petulantly whined, and I quote, "You're yucking my yum". I don't need apologies from the doubters and the optimists, but I do wish I could ask that person what their yum tastes like now.
It's definitely making an impact because my FLGS asked why I wasn't buying pathfinder/starfinder. They didn't seem suprised to hear why I've paused. Appears I'm not alone.
This was going to be my foray from 3.5 into pathfinder. As disappointing as this news is, I am not sure why I would take that step now. You vouched for this company, which was the only reason I invested any money in them.
Uh, this was for Starfinder miniatures, not Pathfinder. They’re different games.
Is it me or, looking at those charts, does ND need half the cost of the project again to finish the project?It’s like they made bad calculations each time they did a kickstarter.
At the amount they were charging per mini I don't see how they could have possibly missed by 40% of the kickstarter every single time because of "development cost"
What exactly is that development cost? It seems really vague, like they're double dipping on their "overhead".
______
As to the claims that the heads of ND were getting 100k a year, is there anything to back that idea?
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Heh. I just read the "breaking the radio silence" post they made. That's precious.
$457,539 collected of a $50,000 goal (not counting all the money from the "under the table" backers who did late pledge like I did), and they want to throw together a bar chart that shows collected amount and costs to date amount being almost the same (with costs being higher), and a much larger costs to deliver bar.
I understand that financing projects is much more complex than this, but their charts look rather slapped together to me (the ratios are almost exactly the same on the first 3 too), and I don't buy their excuses.
EDIT: To add: I want to say that I SWEAR I saw this exact message, word for word, pie and bar charts included somewhere else before from ND, only months ago. I can't find out where though (some sort of press release, maybe?) and it gives me a strange sense of deja vu to see it again, as well as no hope that we'll get our Kickstarters fulfilled. Paizo seems to get hope from this 'update', but it's the same hollow lip service they give us every 4+ months.
They claim that they sent out 22(or 28?)k minis, which people calculated to average 12 minis per backer. A very long chain of people claiming to be all in backers that didn't receive a single miniature seems to make those claimed numbers a bit... off.
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With ND's reputation and lack of bargaining power at the onset of the deal,
Paizo needed minis for the launch of their new game. Everyone else turned them down. ND had an enormous amount of bargaining power there.
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Heh. I just read the "breaking the radio silence" post they made. That's precious.
$457,539 collected of a $50,000 goal (not counting all the money from the "under the table" backers who did late pledge like I did), and they want to throw together a bar chart that shows collected amount and costs to date amount being almost the same (with costs being higher), and a much larger costs to deliver bar.
I understand that financing projects is much more complex than this, but their charts look rather slapped together to me (the ratios are almost exactly the same on the first 3 too), and I don't buy their excuses.
EDIT: To add: I want to say that I SWEAR I saw this exact message, word for word, pie and bar charts included somewhere else before from ND, only months ago. I can't find out where though (some sort of press release, maybe?) and it gives me a strange sense of deja vu to see it again, as well as no hope that we'll get our Kickstarters fulfilled. Paizo seems to get hope from this 'update', but it's the same hollow lip service they give us every 4+ months.
They claim that they sent out 22(or 28?)k minis, which people calculated to average 12 minis per backer. A very long chain of people claiming to be all in backers that didn't receive a single miniature seems to make those claimed numbers a bit... off.
I am one of those who got there 12 ( well 10 in my case) of there miniatures. I hope to someday get more just don't think that it is very likely from ND. I wish I had known of ND poor reputation before I started. I do think that Paizo wanted this to go off. I am sure that they wanted to receive income from ND too. I think the backers got a shaft from Paizo's assurances that we would receive our rewards.
With ND's reputation and lack of bargaining power at the onset of the deal,Paizo needed minis for the launch of their new game. Everyone else turned them down. ND had an enormous amount of bargaining power there.
I agree, Paizo tried to make the best of a bad situation and it backfired on them.
But I do have to wonder if Paizo would have partnered with ND and not taken extra precautions, such as paying in installments as work was done, instead of handing them all the cash at once if it had been Paizo's money at risk instead of backers money.
With ND's reputation and lack of bargaining power at the onset of the deal,Paizo needed minis for the launch of their new game. Everyone else turned them down. ND had an enormous amount of bargaining power there.I agree, Paizo tried to make the best of a bad situation and it backfired on them.
But I do have to wonder if Paizo would have partnered with ND and not taken extra precautions, such as paying in installments as work was done, instead of handing them all the cash at once if it had been Paizo's money at risk instead of backers money.
That's probably why Paizo has the prepainted minis that was part of the agreement. Extra precaution than what KS allows its backers.
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Long time lurker, first time poster. I came into this kickstarter via the late pledge in Gameontabletop and so cannot respond on the kickstarter page itself, but have posted on Gameontabletop. I saw all the warnings, went all in (including the dragon and shela the paladin) because Paizo was backing it.
I've seen people asking how many miniatures have people gotten, since the average is implied at 12 miniatures. I actually received 25 total, with most being repeats (first group in July and then a second in October). Therefore, you can probably deduce that many others, randomly, got more than 12 miniatures. I'm in the US and a late pledge and got more than most who were right there via the kickstarter way earlier than me and some were all-in pledges. I can't explain how they chose who got what, it makes no sense to me, but clearly they only sent out miniatures to US backers.
Also, many who have gotten miniatures, being angry, have been a bit too critical of the miniatures in my opinion. Many forget these are resin and not plastic, therefore they are brittle and can easily break. In what ND sent me, I received miniatures of the iconic minis that Paizo has been selling along with new ones that were exclusive to the kickstarter. The new ones are equal in quality of detail to those iconic ones on sale before the kickstarter went live. They are very good in my opinion. However, being resin, some did arrive with weapons or staves broken. Others, once on a base showed to be bent and had to be heated to bend them back to stand straight. A small group, six total, came shiny and/or sticky; these may not be usable. The only truly piece of rubbish ND has sent me are the bases. First the slotted type and then flat discs that if you glued three together would equal the thickness of a standard base.
Based on everything I've read, I count myself very lucky to have received what I have gotten and also feel bad for the vast majority who have gotten nothing. Based on the quality of what I've gotten, I truly hope that Paizo and ND can find a way to send out the miniatures to everyone; their quality lives up to what was promised in my opinion. For some it may be cathartic to trash the quality of the miniatures they got since it appears no more will come, but I hope the rest do come based on what I've seen so far. Don't get me wrong, I'm really angry about all this, but not giving up hope yet. Many will say, "sure that's easy for you to say, since you got something." That's probably true, hard for me to say how I'd be if I'd have gotten nothing.
Clearly ND screwed up, leaning toward the criminal in how funds were allocated in my opinion. Their pie chart for this kickstarter is not accurate, since they did not include the amount made via the late pledge, which bumped their total over $600K.
Hope the information above is of help in deducing who got what and the quality of what has been delivered. Also, please don't think I'm trying to defend Ninja Division. I'm not, just providing information on what I have gotten. If someone here wants to post this in the Kickstarter, I'm okay with that, since my response is actually responding to questions first posted there.
It's a convenient story but literally an hour of diligence would've uncovered a litany of red flags and identified just how desperate and untrustworthy ND were. There's also a disconnect in that ND outsourced production to a different company, arguably one that had an even worse KS track record at the time but nonetheless a sign that the project was beyond ND's capacity. Also if its a business critical project, why would you not put safeguards in. It seems like Paizo was fine with taking a risk on the KS side as long as they could get the prepainted minis for retail on time.With ND's reputation and lack of bargaining power at the onset of the deal,Paizo needed minis for the launch of their new game. Everyone else turned them down. ND had an enormous amount of bargaining power there.
They probably used as much safeguards as they could, they had no control over the KS since ND was the one running it.
As for "convenient story", it was take a risk for minis, or have absolutely no minis for their new game.
Is 0 greater than, less than, or equal to, -1?
It's a convenient story but literally an hour of diligence would've uncovered a litany of red flags and identified just how desperate and untrustworthy ND were. There's also a disconnect in that ND outsourced production to a different company, arguably one that had an even worse KS track record at the time but nonetheless a sign that the project was beyond ND's capacity. Also if its a business critical project, why would you not put safeguards in. It seems like Paizo was fine with taking a risk on the KS side as long as they could get the prepainted minis for retail on time.With ND's reputation and lack of bargaining power at the onset of the deal,Paizo needed minis for the launch of their new game. Everyone else turned them down. ND had an enormous amount of bargaining power there.They probably used as much safeguards as they could, they had no control over the KS since ND was the one running it.
As for "convenient story", it was take a risk for minis, or have absolutely no minis for their new game.
But for many people, including from what I understand everyone outside of the US they have absolutely no mini's for the game despite paying quite a bit of money for them.
Take a risk yes, but the entire burden of that risk should not have fallen on the backers shoulders.
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Really hope that Paizo has better news or at the minimum condemning Ninja Division before Paizo Con. You have a Con in a couple of months and this will definitely be the talk of the town. Will feel sorry for all your volunteers having to listen to people who got robbed.
I am one of the lucky that did get some space goblins and my Seelah space paladin.
May just paint them and bring them in to be a topic starter at the tables I play at for my minis.
I never did pick up the Starfinder books, wasn't going to get into it unless I had some models to go with it. Didn't pick up my first Paizo book, Rise of the Runelords Anniversary, until I'd already bought the Rise of the Runelords Case/Huges/Gigantic models and had most of the mini's needed to run the campaign.
This experience had the opportunity to bring alot more faithful subscribers to the new game you made. Beautiful game you made. But because you still seem to be standing side by side with Ninja Division proclaiming that they are doing 'the best they can' to deliver when they are in the hole?
Your fans are who you should be concerned about. Not even talking about making good on the miniatures. Every time we, sorry I, read Sara talk about the efforts of Ninja Division it stings.
Why? Because we told you so. We told you who you were getting into business with and Eric and others came into this thread to tell us how confident you were in Ninja Divisions ability to deliver.
We told you so.
And you are still telling us we are wrong when we are telling you that you should be distancing yourself from Ninja Division.
If you can work something out with Archon to deliver what they have? Even that is going to leave alot of people upset as they didn't even finish the entire project from what people are saying. Even if they shipped out every miniature in their warehouse that is already made? Some of your fans are going to be coming out with a loss.
And that should anger you alot more than it appears to be.
You should full stop, take the temperature of the room, and realize that you are going to be losing your customers over this.
Probably not me. Honestly I love your products and am looking forward to Pathfinder 2.0. I bought a hard copy and a soft copy of the beta, all of the extras and love what you guys have done with it.
But if this is the level of engagement and the commitment being made to your new product lines? It leaves me wondering about v2's future.
Again Paizo Con is coming. You guys should be looking out for your customers. Word of mouth is everything for a company that depends on this niche group. Same way Paizo snagged a discontent D&D generation? There may be a hungry company out there looking to fill a niche there too.
Even Zombicide is coming out with RPG rules.... I mean, anything is possible.
/rambling off
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Some people in this thread are calling for Paizo to distance themselves from Ninja Division while others are calling for them to be more involved with Ninja Division. It really is true that you cannot please all the people all the time. Hell even pleasing most people most of the time is a tough row to hoe. Paizo has my sympathies. There really are no winners in this situation.
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I never did pick up the Starfinder books, wasn't going to get into it unless I had some models to go with it.
and thus you see why Paizo went with ND in the first place.
I never did pick up the Starfinder books, wasn't going to get into it unless I had some models to go with it.and thus you see why Paizo went with ND in the first place.
Not really, feel free to elaborate.
I've spent thousands of dollars on Paizo Pathinder miniatures alone. Not even talking about digital and paper content.
When I play I do as much as I can in 3d and pawns are not my idea of a good time.
So.... how does wanting quality products delivered by a reputable company explain why Paizo went with Ninja Division?
Just wondering.
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"I never did pick up the Starfinder books, wasn't going to get into it unless I had some models to go with it."
I doubt you were the only one with this mindset, and Paizo was aware of that.
They needed minis for Starfinder's launch. WizKids turned them down. Reaper turned them down. Ninja Division didn't.
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"I never did pick up the Starfinder books, wasn't going to get into it unless I had some models to go with it."
I doubt you were the only one with this mindset, and Paizo was aware of that.
They needed minis for Starfinder's launch. WizKids turned them down. Reaper turned them down. Ninja Division didn't.
Context is everything, and yea I definitely see that side of the point.
Thank you for the follow up.
After I posted that I don't have anything Starfinder I picked up the humble bundle. So with full transparency I will be taking a look at that PDF this weekend.
Was hoping to use this years Paizocon to get into Starfinder as a player. This situation with Ninja Division has me gutted, but I may still sign up for Starfinder entry games to check it out.
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Was hoping to use this years Paizocon to get into Starfinder as a player. This situation with Ninja Division has me gutted, but I may still sign up for Starfinder entry games to check it out.
Definitely sign up for a game to check it out. I've been running a StarFinder game pretty much since the books came out and it is a great system to play with.
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Was hoping to use this years Paizocon to get into Starfinder as a player. This situation with Ninja Division has me gutted, but I may still sign up for Starfinder entry games to check it out.
I know this is venturing way off-topic, but I’ll echo DJEternalDarkness and strongly encourage you to give Starfinder a shot; I’ll be at PaizoCon myself this year, playing Starfinder almost exclusively.
I have minis for all of my Starfinder characters that are either repurposed minis from other games or are custom kit-bashed minis made from minis and toys I had lying around the house. I even have some inexpensive starship minis I was able to make for less than $1 each.The situation with Ninja Division is unfortunate and I empathize with the rage and frustration of disappointed backers, but, IMHO, the lack of an official Starfinder miniatures line shouldn’t keep anyone from trying the game at least once.
"I never did pick up the Starfinder books, wasn't going to get into it unless I had some models to go with it."
I doubt you were the only one with this mindset, and Paizo was aware of that.
They needed minis for Starfinder's launch. WizKids turned them down. Reaper turned them down. Ninja Division didn't.
Context is everything, and yea I definitely see that side of the point.
Thank you for the follow up.
After I posted that I don't have anything Starfinder I picked up the humble bundle. So with full transparency I will be taking a look at that PDF this weekend.
Was hoping to use this years Paizocon to get into Starfinder as a player. This situation with Ninja Division has me gutted, but I may still sign up for Starfinder entry games to check it out.
Np ^w^
And to echo the others, I'd definitely sign up if you're going and enjoy Con play, not just or the sake of playing Starfinder, but because Con games tend to be fun and memorable.
Starfinder is awesome and real fun.
There are plenty of other minis usable, i can especially recommend Corvus Belli INFINITY miniatures. They are metal and cost a bit more than plastic ones, but you will love the quality both in design and material. It's also a lot more fun to paint metal minis than plastic minis in my opinion.
You could even pick up some other Sopa Pop or ND minis and games, most of them are also really good. They just have a very bad hand at kickstarters and management it seems, but this might actually help get the Starfinder Kickstarter running again.
That doesn't mean i'm not sad or fed up about the situation here.
I suspect that Paizo really wanted both unpainted and prepainted minis from a single company for this line. Wizkids wasn't interested or just couldn't do it, Reaper probably had too much on their plate already to rush out prepaints (not their forte) in addition to the metal and plastic they normally make, and Ninja Division was blinded by desperation for any source of cash flow.
Ninja Division are experts at hyping up their abilities and making assurances they don't have the ability to honor. With few if any other options, and perhaps a little desperation as well, Paizo probably took what they could get. But to pick Ninja Division of all companies. Egad.
I dunno. Maybe prepaints weren't a factor. Maybe the sticking point was getting the figures into the market as quickly as possible. It could've been speed that made it impossible for WizKids and Reaper to add this to their product lines, or something completely different. But Ninja Division is NOT known for speed, working well as a licensee, smooth kickstarters or making prepaints.
To be completely honest, I'm surprised they produced and shipped anything at all. Some Starfinder backers and the Paizo shop already got more than SDE:L or Relic Knight backers are likely to ever get.
I only backed this for a buck so I could respectfully warn unsuspecting backers about all the red flags. Did what I could in spite of all the white knights who assured everybody it was going to be fine. Still, it actually did go better than I expected it would. Some people got something. Yay?
I think that at this point, the very least they could do is send the .stl files (all of them) to every backer, regardless of pledge level. The files already exist. It would cost them not a single cent to send them.Those are most likely in ND's ownership, so it would be a legal matter for Paizo to get them I'm guessing.
I would be happy if Paizo sent out the pre-paints they have, even though it is far from all the sculpts we are owed.
The issue with this is they would need to get a lot of information from ND, so I'm guessing another legal matter. Who ordered what? Who already got sent what?
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I keep seeing the response to anger over the selection being boiled down to Reaper and WizKids said no, so they had to go with ND. Actually, I would say no they didn't. If the first two options are out, going to known crooks isn't the logical third option. Its a really bad option however you cut it. Maybe option 3 should have been to hold off on miniatures until something came along that didn't endanger the money and good will of your fan base.
"No minis" was not an option.
*shrugs* And then there would be no Starfinder minis in existence at all.
And everyone having got their minis would have been infinitely better than no minis at all.