Darastin said:

the captain's wheel... all you need is a single power enhancement on a black power die. If you're rolling 5 black power dice (and with fatigue on a non-melee hero, you can always roll up to 5 black), it's pretty unlikely that you'll fail.

I think the whole issue is fixed by moving the left rock 1 space to the left. Then it's only 1/3 chance of tpk if the party fails all countermeasures.

Yes, using the captain's wheel isn't that difficult, but it can still fail. And according to Murphy's Law, it will

Moving the right rock would also be OK if the location is actually intended to be somewhat more dangerous. That would require at least two power enhancements and actually make a difference between only black and silver or gold dice. At least it would allow an action that prevents Death By Current if it succeeds.

Just my two €-cents;
Darastin

My remark was meant not as a criticism to FFG but a warning to players!

What happened was I was putting the firsr island map and we search for 20-25 minutes for the cave entrance (I have all the boxes and entensions in French and English so I thought I misled the piece...)

Do not forget the Swim error also which I already mentionned and of course on the map it is not shields but wheels.

Man that is IT! I am done with this company. They are no longer what they were. They are a darn greed fest. I don't even know if I should help you guys out. I can make a whirlpool tile or what ever you need this time with my photoshop skills, but what is the freaking point? I fixed the Choas in the Old World misprint and FFG left it at that instead of fixing it with a simple printout replacement themselves. I wrote articles for them because I loved the game I was writing for. They only saw me as a marketing booster. I gave people hope that this company cared about them and were grateful for putting food at their tables. I was wrong. I got a letter telling me to stop and that they no longer needed my help because of their increase in bandwidth. I don't care anymore if the truth is out about this company. It is no longer about me. It is about you guys deciding if FFG should have any excuse for treating you this way.

Did anyone ever say sorry for the mistakes found in almost all of their games? NOPE.

Only time FFG has ever apologized was with the Lord of the Rings Collectors in order to keep the customers that purchased it feeling like they care about them not getting it on time. The real reason was because NEXUS apologized and so FFG had too also in order to still look good and keep the preorders. Look at what they did to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying. They made no preemptive attempts to let the loyal fans of that dieing product know they had plans to change it or replace it. No one even knew it was doing poorly in sales. The fans saw the PDFs as a good thing and thought that the books were selling well enough for FFG to allow them to be sold for less as PDFs. They just kind of killed that game over night and closed the 2nd edition forum down. I can point out examples of this ill treatement with each of their games. FOr Descent it would be the Quest Compendium needed actual map replacements for the game to be playable.

Serious, why do you guys put up with this? Do you really need over 30 board games to play? Can you even find time to play that many? I was such a fool. I bought over 50 fantasy flight games. I don't even know why anymore. I mean I only play the 5 on my top 5 list. How was FFG able to survive on Diskwars sales alone and yet now they need to pump license after license?

The sad thing is, I really wish to know why FFG has done this. Why FFG tells the employees to stay away from the forums. To stay focused on the work they have. That same focus that is helping to ensure error free games. They will never answer, because most of their customers do not even visit this site. You guys are the loyal fans. The ones that help to fix errors that come at a price in 2nd and 3rd printing. The loyal fans that are able to ignore the countless errors in hopes that FFG will actually thank you someday.

Back when I dreamed of working for this company I talked to Anthony DuLac, a former employee of FFG. He warned me how FFG treats everyone and told me why he left. I could not believe him, there is no way this company could be as bad as he said. All that started to change when FFG's new site went up and they removed the personal rants and raves section that acted as a blog for the devs and employees. Then one day I got the email asking me to help them with articles. I was so darn excited. I did articles for free out of my spare time. I even wrote to Anthony telling him how wrong he was. I was played a fool. I thought the articles I was writing meant something to FFG I thought they would allow more fans like those in the Arkham Horror forums to submit articles for the FFG home page. Turns out they were just using me to boost sales for the WoW adventure game, so that they could milk the character packs as the license with Blizzard ran out. I never got a thanks and most of my emails never got answered. I would just have to hurry home everyday and chech to see if one of my articles was posted. The only two answered emails I ever got were one about my last article not giving me credit and the one in reply to my question about playtesting Runewars. The last one was a response that ignored my question about Runewars playtesting and just told me how they did not want fan support for their products anymore, including my articles.

I have held back releasing this truth about FFG for 4 months now. I cannot sit back and let you guys believe things will get better. I recommend that you write personal letters to FFG asking these same questions and showing the same concerns you share in the forums. I however, have chosen to no longer buy most of FFG's products. I will not be ordering them or pushing them at my store anymore. The only exception is Eric Lang's chaos game and card game. Eric is a spectacular person and rising to be the next Klaus Teuber in my opinion. It is a shame he has to work with a company that doesn't share the same amount of care in their products as he does for his.

I will still continue to post articles and fix anything you guys want me to fix but from now on my materials and articles will be posted on another personal site.

I don't need anyone flaming me. I am not the focus here. In fact I am actually hoping this post catches Mr. Peterson's attention in hopes that he gets FFG to go back to the company they were and remove all of the barriers the devs have between the players. Look at Days of Wonder for example. They actually published fan made material for Smallworld. Chris and his brother, the creators of Dungeon Twister, are on board game geek answering questions and sharing ideas with the fans of the game. Repos takes the time to make sure each of their games has 4 copies of the rules each in German, English, French, and Spanish. FFG has no excuse in my opinion. If a french surfer can take the time to talk to english players on board game geek and let them know he cares about their opinions, I am sure FFG could too on their official site.

I cannot believe it has come to this for me. As an unofficial FFG superfan consider this my rant. I have done enough raves as you can see just by looking around the site.

I always wondered if FFG has forgotten their roots and went for a more corporate cardboard way of dealing with the fans and the many who have gotten the company to where it is. I guess this is a classic "remember where you came from". I enjoy their products but I have found this rather non stop churning of product to have caused what was once a company to be known for quality to not be the case as there are more mistakes. The Quest Compendium is the worst (which I refuse to buy) and the errata pdf is no better.

It almost seems like FFG is going through the motions and the passion has been put to the side and only brought out when they need to really push a product whether they believe in it or not. Given that they are in bed with GW now it would seem they are adopting the same company practices that GW is known to employ. One could dare say that Wizards/Hasbro is looking to be a more consumer/fan friendly corporation.

I would like to take the time and thank you for your contributions and it is too bad that FFG has taken this route. If they are not careful their alienating themselves from the fans and listening to their feedback and acknowledging at least a little bit could end up costing them in the long run. Even GW has been humbled in the past for their misplaced confidence that the fans will continuely buy blindly.

@darkkami

You weren't betrayed by a friend, you were betrayed by a marketing plan.

Thundercles said:

AHAHHAHAHAHHAH!

Do other people feel and react like darkkami ?

Have to say I agree with his assesment of what's happened to WFRP with the 3rd edition.

I feely similarly to darkkami with regard to FFG's poor rules, lack of support and horrible playtesting and balancing. I've been gaming for almost 30 years, played 1,000 of board games, and have never experienced this level of poor rulebooks, play testing, and problem support. I've never been to a companies forums where the customers are almost completely ignored. Sure, we get a quick comment from a support staff every few weeks, but this isn't how you address problems. The worst part is that the problem we find with their games should have been discovered and addressed in playtesting, something they obviously do not do enough of.

My biggest complaint with this company is their rulebooks. They need to read other companies rulebooks to see what it takes to create rulebooks that aren't ambiguous and unorganized. First, they should look at D&D 4e. Terms are defined and used consistantly throughout their rules, and their organization is both consistent and well thought out.

I love FFG's products (great ideas and great bits), but their poor rules and non-existant customer feedback are making it very difficult for me to purchase their products. I've already skipped over MANY of their products because of their history.

I must have really bad luck with board games, then. I have played hundreds of different board games, and Fantasy Flight's rules seem in line with most games i have played recently. Games have gotten a lot more complex, and it seems games from most companies have lots of inconsistencies in their rules. The games keep getting more and more complex, and the rules get more complicated as that happens. I see lot of errors in games from Fantasy Flight, AEG, Avalon Hill (Hasboro), Steve Jackson Games, Wizards of The Coast, and many more.

All of the games have one thing in common, lots of cards/abilities that can be used in millions of permutations. It is pretty easy to write the rules for a game like Scrabble (which actually had errors in several of the editions), but it is a lot harder to write rules for a game with so much situational variation.

It comes down to cost and what you want. Would you be willing to pay an extra $20.00 for a game that was play tested for extra 6 months and had an additional proof reader for the rules? Someone has to pay for all of the extra labor that would go into the game, and who else would do it except for the customer. The game publisher is trying to find a balance between cost of product and features in the product. Do they make mistakes sometime? Definitely. Do they often deliver games that are enjoyable, regardless of mistakes? Yes.

I think it is very helpful to give feedback on problems with the games. Sometimes you will get a fix, other times the fix will go into a future game. It also comes down to cost. Some mistakes can be fixed easily. if a .pdf will solve a problem, they are often created by a lot of companies, including Fantasy Flight. Sometimes even an expensive change is made, like replacing the figures from Middle Earth Quest (and I have read multiple posted apology letters about the pieces).

Other times, though, it is not feasible to make a fix. Printing a new card or tile and shipping it to every game owner would cost several dollars per customer. That doesn't seem like a working business model. You could very quickly have a situation where a game isn't making any money, and all that means is we might not see another game in that line, or people get laid off and we see even fewer games and fixes.

On the other hand, Fantasy Flight has found some ways to balance things out. They have given replacement cards to fix some problems in expansions and reprints of games. They do publish a fair amount of faqs and errata. There are times I would like more, but I don't get the constant cries that they do not listen to their customers. I have bought a lot of games, and I have gotten more useful information back from Fantasy Flight than a lot of other companies.

So forgive the personal critique... but Darkami, you are making it harder for dialog to occur between Fantasy Flight and their customers. Bringing problems about rules is help for everyone, but continually posting personal attacks against the company and demanding an apology for every mistake that gets made makes it harder for dialog to occur. You clearly have a personal problem with some people at Fantasy Flight. Please keep that between you and them. If you want a thread where you complain about it, great... start a single thread. But chiming in with you personal complaints about how you feel you were mistreated (asking you to stop writing articles about them, not accepting your ideas for new games, etc.) in threads each time someone finds a problem with a product makes it less likely we will get a quick response. If I was CEO of a company, and someone was carrying out a personal campaign against my company, I would advise all my employees to not respond to him... for legal reasons and to prevent getting dragged down into the mud.

Apologies for the long winded response. I like the games, I wish there were fewer errors, but I have had fun with every Fantasy Flight product I have bought. I personally would like more games like the ones I enjoy. I want fixes to the problems, so I would like to keep seeing those... but I want fixes and clarifications, not vendettas.

I've always expected companies to want to make money. To do otherwise is foolish. FFG, lik every other successful company on the planet, has to weigh its bottom line against quality and make the choice that allows for maximum growth and survivability. Anyone expecting anything near perfection is fooling themselves about how the world works. Quality always hovers right around the "what people will pay for" line, and FFG is no different. Given their popularity, they seem to be doing better than others in that regard.

FFG's rules are about on par with the rest of the gaming industry (which means they could definitely be better but could also be a lot worse). The quality of most of their games seems to be pretty high as far as production values and playability goes, though we've seen some really bad ones as well (some Lord of the Rings game we only played once really blew). Their customer support outside of rules issues is outstanding.

About the only thing that upsets me about FFG is that they have a rules question link on their website but you can't get an answer by using it.

Twilight said:

Maybe Darkami has a personal gruge with FFG. Like his articles. And to be frank I understand. I "work " for free with the french counterpart of FFG. And you would not believe the hours I put in (after normal work) to check errors, translate, help, etc... (at their request by the way) And I have to admit one time there was a clash and I got really angry. But they noticed it, excused themselves and now it is better.

I am willing to help for free (no salary)à but I expect consideration for it.

z22 said:

I think I found about 3 contradictory passages/probable errors in a cursory readthrough of the combat chapter in 4e (for example, there are two contradictory definitions for cover). I've heard about many other apparent mistakes from people who have read the rules more thoroughly (for example, you count as your own enemy). I don't think I'd hold them up as an example to emulate.

Big Remy said:

the whirpool of SoB is 3*3 and not 4*4.

Darkkami needs to learn that business is business. Sharing his "sad" tale of a personal vendetta not only hurts the image of the company but also the image of the players. I have to agree with Darkkami on most of what he says, but slandering the company is not the way to go about correcting the issue.

Darkkami should have followed the Michael Bay approach and just apologized for his statement and continued to support Fantasy Flight Games. Michael Bay did this when Fox wash slandering his name. I do not think it matters as I am pretty sure Darkkami will not be returning. He made that pretty clear. I think he truly believed he was fighting for the fans. Acting as the only person FFG may listen to because he has recognition in the forums.

Hopefully FFG has learned not to freelance articles now. You give a mouse a cookie....as they say. I think that his post did get the mods attention and with the possiblity of hurting sales with his post they should pull it.

I think that if you have a personal problem at anytime with a company, the best way to handle that problem is either direct contact with a company rep or a hand written letter, not on the companies own site. Too bad Darkkami couldn't follow his own advice.

I hope that his post does cause both players and the company to talk more about the problems both parties are having.

The topic has shifted...we should get back on track here.

What someone should REALLY do, is compile a list of all the errors or things needing to be clarified and submit them to FFG so we can hopefully get a new FAQ.

Jonny WS said:

This thread has more or less become that, and I sent a list based on that to someone at FFG. I included other items from other threads to the best of my ability. If we get a response, we can always add more. I tried to stress that some of the things, like problems with the Lts, make the game very hard to play.