i care because its substandard

it's not cheap

and quality control should have easily picked this up

2 minutes ago, FlashBackJack said:

i care because its substandard

it's not cheap

and quality control should have easily picked this up

It probably did. (Or maybe the prototype was fine and the file changed somehow in between prototype and production run)

But probably too late.

I 100% agree it shouldn't have happened.

I deny that it's worth the hassle complaining or chicken-littling about instead of playing the barely-meaningfully-changed game.

ok the spaceinvader you're right
yes it's a minor thing but bloody annoying
so next time they bugger something up rather than fixing it they change the rules to suit
pretty poor way to run a game to be honest

2 minutes ago, FlashBackJack said:

ok the spaceinvader you're right
yes it's a minor thing but bloody annoying
so next time they bugger something up rather than fixing it they change the rules to suit
pretty poor way to run a game to be honest

OK.

If it had made a big difference to gameplay (e.g. they'd lost the line AND the arc, or they'd done the die cut wrong so the base didn't fit together, or put the wrong moves on a dial, or something), I'd have a lot more time for the grumbles. But in the end, this is a very minor issue that has very limited effect on the gameplay of what will for 99.999% of people buying the thing, be a component that see almost no use.

If it had been a problem like that, I'd probably have backed them doing some sort of recall or replacement scheme - though i could see that potentially costing them enough to kill the game entirely.

I'd agree that it's not a brilliant way to run a game, but realistically, what alternative solution would you see being likely?

the cost to replace the token is not that much
a realistic solution ?
well, i'd workout how many they printed incorrectly
then reprint a correct one to match that number
place a simple notice explaining this and how to request a replacement to those who have bought or will buy the CROC

FFG do a fantastic job at customer service and i have dealt with them previously with no problems

it's the right thing to do after they take your money after all

37 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

It's a digital mockup, not the final component.

The final component doesn't have the line.

The way I see it (having made the mistake) they had two choices:

1: Acknowledge the mistake, announce that they intend to reprint the entire set, basically to replace a single component. Deal with mass replacement of the component, refund requests, possible recalls. Deal with the resulting complaints and extensive costs.

2: Fix the mistake with a minor errata that has almost no impact on gameplay and minimal cost to FFG.

Either way they made a mistake, either way it looks bad for them, but the second way causes a lot less problems and expense for them. I don't have the slightest problem with it. Even when I eventually get round to using my c-roc as anything other than a fancy shelf decoration, it's going to make almost no difference to how it plays in practice. And the vast majority of the value of the c-roc - the scyk pilots and standard-play components - all work fine whether or not the baseplate is wrongly printed.

It woudl have been better to not make the mistake in the first place, of course.

Tl;dr? It makes almost no difference. Why do you care?

Yeah, the mockup for the press release wasn't a real piece that had been manufactured.

Your reasoning for 1: is off, however. There is no need to produce the entire set just to get the cardboard piece reprinted. More likely, they would have to reprint the card "1/3" from the set* that contains the ship and a few other pieces. The worst case scenario is the die cutter is made for boards 1/3, 2/3, and 3/3 so they have to remake all three boards. The model and other plastic pieces would be from a completely different manufacturing process. They also know exactly how many were produced, so they know how many to reprint.

We agree though that the impact of the incorrect piece is minor, and that simply running off a FAQ is a the cheap-*** less costly in financial capital approach to take for FFG.

However, it is costing them consumer satisfaction capital with their customers, as there have been multiple threads already about this, so there is evidence of dissatisfaction with some of their customers. Not all, as you are a example of someone satisfied with the response. But others, myself being one, think that this is some bush league bull that they need to step up and correct if they want to ever act like they produce high-quality game pieces ever again*.

Tl;dr? 'Cause its a **** job and we expect better from FFG.

*I'm not sure how many cardboard cards there were in the set, or which contained the ship piece

*and don't get me started about the stand for the Ghost .

17 minutes ago, FlashBackJack said:

the cost to replace the token is not that much
a realistic solution ?
well, i'd workout how many they printed incorrectly
then reprint a correct one to match that number
place a simple notice explaining this and how to request a replacement to those who have bought or will buy the CROC

FFG do a fantastic job at customer service and i have dealt with them previously with no problems

it's the right thing to do after they take your money after all

I don't know what their sales figures are on this, so pinch of salt here, but even conservatively estimating they sold 10,000 units, they'd need to reprint 10k baseplates, ship them to their custserv centre, package them up, and ship them to customers all around the world. They'd have to spend employee time and money handling all the requests, collecting the data for addresses, packing and posting all the packages. Thinking a conservative average of say, 10 bucks per package including all the costs from source to customer (design time, printing costs, shipping costs, staff costs, postage and packing, cheaper in the US, much more expensive for all the non-US customers in terms of postage), you're talking about a conservative estimate of around 100,000 dollars over the course of 3 to 6 months just for the replacements, not to mention the cost of recalling and reprinting or repacking all the back stock that is now probably unsaleable. And it would probably just be landfilling and reprinting, because the labour to unpack, change, and repack would be insane.

That's a vast cost for a company whose entire annual revenue (according to the best estimate I can find on a brief google) is only in the tens of millions.

Compared to maybe a few thousand max to issue an erratum and deal with the (justifiable but still IMO pointless) grumbles.

9 minutes ago, kris40k said:

Yeah, the mockup for the press release wasn't a real piece that had been manufactured.

Your reasoning for 1: is off, however. There is no need to produce the entire set just to get the cardboard piece reprinted. More likely, they would have to reprint the card "1/3" from the set* that contains the ship and a few other pieces. The worst case scenario is the die cutter is made for boards 1/3, 2/3, and 3/3 so they have to remake all three boards. The model and other plastic pieces would be from a completely different manufacturing process. They also know exactly how many were produced, so they know how many to reprint.

You're missing that they rwould have to do something about incorrect product on shelves; they'd have to recall and replace all the unsold stock with correct stock, in addition to dealing with the stock that had already reached customers. They couldn't easily make amends with that part, except maybe shipping corrected baseplates to all the stores and asking them to hand/ship them out with sales I guess, without recalling and replacing the entire SKU.

It's nowhere near as trivial as people are making out to deal with this in a different way than a simple erratum.

In terms of customer satisfaction cost, it would be a hit either way tbh. Compared to some of their bigger and more costly errors (the Jumpmaster, for instance) this is a drop in the bucket of customer satisfaction costs.

oh well i thought this was a forum to discuss these types of things

maybe they will Errata the name of the ship from C-ROC to the C-ROCK of $h1t ??

Just now, FlashBackJack said:

oh well i thought this was a forum to discuss these types of things

I'm not sure what you think I'm doing but I think it's this. Discussion doesn't have to equate to agreement.

Just now, FlashBackJack said:

maybe they will Errata the name of the ship from C-ROC to the C-ROCK of $h1t ??

nah prolly not

A recall is unnecessary, as this is not a safety issue. Mailing out replacement chits to customers on request would be much more affordable rather than the more drastic approach you are proposing. Similarly to how existing unchanged stock will require people to look up the FAQ to figure out why there is a missing blue line referenced in the booklet that comes with the model in the current case, FFG can add a "Contact FFG customer support at:...to request a replacement piece."

While it would have a financial cost, we're not talking about anything that would bankrupt the company. They already have a process for mailing out replacement pieces, they simply need to reprint the correct piece.

Just now, kris40k said:

A recall is unnecessary, as this is not a safety issue. Mailing out replacement chits to customers on request would be much more affordable rather than the more drastic approach you are proposing. Similarly to how existing unchanged stock will require people to look up the FAQ to figure out why there is a missing blue line referenced in the booklet that comes with the model in the current case, FFG can add a "Contact FFG customer support at:...to request a replacement piece."

Maybe. And if that's so, then I'm overestimating that aspect.

I suspect they'd run foul of various consumer protection laws, but I'm not expert enough in the area to know for sure.

Either way, the fix would still cost in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars, as opposed to maybe a couple of thousand, max, to issue the erratum.

Due to the FAQ, the bases with blue lines are now the incorrect product. Producing them would be a complete back-step on the part of FFG. The problem has been fixed already.

My son, won his first epic ship. No range 5 ruler inside really sucks. That is a very poor decision by FFG. I looking for 3rd party items now, but he tried to play with his friends and had no range 5 rules. Really bizarre if you ask me, because they gave you an extra black peg which normally goes into the range 5 ruler.

Thanks,

11 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Either way, the fix would still cost in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars, as opposed to maybe a couple of thousand, max, to issue the erratum.

No matter what, its going to cost FFG to recover their reputation from this.

It all depends on if they want to go on being known as a company that takes pride in their work and makes things right, or if they just want to skimp by and have everyone pointed at the C-ROC as a standard of their quality of work. Everyone knows the FAQ was pulled out of their *** to cover a mistake and its going to continue to be that way next year, and the year after. Every time some new player buys a C-ROC and comes here to ask about the blue line in the booklet*, people are going to get a giggle about FFG's shoddy QA and scramble to cover it up.

*until it gets reprinted and the originals sell out

1 hour ago, kris40k said:

Exactly, its the lazy approach.

I'm not saying it doesn't functionally work, but it is the shitier choice. It would show more pride in their work to correct the obvious mistake. The FAQ can handle people playing with the model until the replacement pieces are printed and shipped out to people.

The choice that standardizes play for everyone is rarely the wrong choice.

6 minutes ago, TasteTheRainbow said:

The choice that standardizes play for everyone is rarely the wrong choice.

Depends on how low the standard is.

Everyone should be able to order a replacement piece at no cost.

1 minute ago, kris40k said:

Depends on how low the standard is.

Everyone should be able to order a replacement piece at no cost.

FFG has no reason to provide replacements, as the cardboard with the blue line for the CROC is now the incorrect piece. I agree with you on principle, that FFG messed up, but they fixed this in the best way possible for everyone.

1 minute ago, Innese said:

FFG has no reason to provide replacements, as the cardboard with the blue line for the CROC is now the incorrect piece. I agree with you on principle, that FFG messed up, but they fixed this in the best way possible for everyone.

While I appreciate we agree that there was a mistake, I fail to see your reasoning, or agree with, how this was the "best way possible."

The line has been crossed.

This error makes the C-ROC's aft significantly easier to hit, in my opinion. The absence of the blue line creates a pretty good amount of the board that can now target the aft while jousting the C-ROC, making its reinforce action less efficatious in such scenarios. Which might not be a bad thing, since scum is so overpowered right now. Regardless, this ship still makes a laughing stock of the GR-75 transport.

Just now, kris40k said:

While I appreciate we agree that there was a mistake, I fail to see your reasoning, or agree with, how this was the "best way possible."

According to the FAQ, the CROC is divided by its firing arc, not by a blue line. The FAQ takes precedent over the rules reference included with that CROC, which references a blue line. Therefor, any blue line that would be printed on a CROC base would be utterly useless as it serves no purpose. FFG printing up thousands of these new pieces to ship out is pointless as it no longer matters under the rules.

Even if FFG did roll back this ruling, and then decided to print up thousands of the new bases, what percentage of people are actually going to send-in for their replacement? The number of people that play Epic to begin with is a fraction of those that play standard; I've literally only seen 2 epic games since I started playing. The time that would be spent by FFG taking further steps to correct this already 'fixed' issue is time & money I'd rather see spent on preventing mistakes in future expansions, or used in the reprinting of old (Y-wing, K-wing, etc) expansions.

Oh dear, reviving this dead horse.

It's funny how many people are indifferent to the FAQ, and I attribute that to a lack of experience with Epic play and general apathy toward the format. I play Epic fairly often, even in tournament settings, so this fix irks me. It does affect gameplay, just slightly, but what annoys me more is the lack of acknowledgement of the issue. And most people seem OK with that. If this was a misprint on, say, a small base ship and FFG errata'd the ship to work diffeentry than intended instead of sending replacements, people would truly be up in arms. I guess my point is that while FFG's decision makes sense from a business perspective, it rubs me the wrong way that they're changing a mechanic in an officially supported format because of a screw up on their end, and can get away with it because so few people play the format.

Not that I am defending how FFG has chosen to address the blue line issue, but realistically, what choice did they really have? With the prevalence of online/mail order sales, this is not as easy as replacing bollocked up cluster mine tokens where one simply goes to the store from whence the tokens came and trade them out. The only thing I can think of is some sort of elaborate mail scheme which does not work well for international shipping, and would probably eclipse in cost anything they ever would have made from the ship sales itself.

Just a thought.

1 hour ago, FlashBackJack said:

ok the spaceinvader you're right
yes it's a minor thing but bloody annoying
so next time they bugger something up rather than fixing it they change the rules to suit
pretty poor way to run a game to be honest

^This.

1 hour ago, Mu0n729 said:

You can only complain if you play epic every month AND can provide irrefutable proof of imbalance because of the lack of that blue line on that particular ship, IMO.

I do play Epic every month, and now I have an extremely lame errata that changes play for JUST ONE SHIP. So, I think I can complain because I am in this game for these kinds of products not some lame wave-by-wave meta-shift.

1 hour ago, thespaceinvader said:

If it had made a big difference to gameplay (e.g. they'd lost the line AND the arc, or they'd done the die cut wrong so the base didn't fit together, or put the wrong moves on a dial, or something), I'd have a lot more time for the grumbles. But in the end, this is a very minor issue that has very limited effect on the gameplay of what will for 99.999% of people buying the thing, be a component that see almost no use .

If it had been a problem like that, I'd probably have backed them doing some sort of recall or replacement scheme - though i could see that potentially costing them enough to kill the game entirely.

I'd agree that it's not a brilliant way to run a game, but realistically, what alternative solution would you see being likely?

Fine, reprint CORRECT bases and ship them out to the 0.001% of us that give a ****. I can wait a few months for a GOOD product, vs. a lifetime of a lame errata.

Luke: "What a piece of junk."

Han: "I've run into a few errata myself, but she'll make 0.1 past lightspeed."

1 hour ago, Mu0n729 said:

You can only complain if you play epic every month AND can provide irrefutable proof of imbalance because of the lack of that blue line on that particular ship, IMO.

Oh, my sweet, dear child. These are the forums. We'll complain about anything.