Rhialto the Marvelous
SOC-13
In turn, only sadists will find pleasure in pointing out that you were unable to address even a single one of Aramis' points.
Mongoose Traveller Pocket Edition
- Thread starter Allensh
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GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
And masochists are likely to point out that MGT has nothing to fear with regards to T5.
Obviously you haven't seen the T5 cd yet then. All the problems of MT and none of the good parts....
No, I've not seen T5... but if y'all want to get me a copy for Christmas, I sure wouln't object. I'm ambivalent about it over all; I'll clearly not use it in entirety, since I can't stand the task system (but, unlike MGT, it's easily replaced with 3d analogue of th DGP...), but I am curious about it. Just not curious enough to spend the money.
Don't fool yourself ECHO. Aramis is not the only person who feels this way. At this point, I'm only buying your products after the reviews come out. After Mercenary, I will never buy a product that has Bryan Steel on the author line.
People are getting fed up with this product quickly, because the game is un-fing playable with some of the errors it has. NO AMMO COSTS FOR HEAVY WEAPONS? FFS who playtested Mercenary??? Am I supposed to believe that the playtesters never used a heavy weapon? Or were there simply no playtesters?
That we are expected to endure Bryan Steele's illogical and asinine posts on mongoosepublishing.com/forums while ERRATA for the Mercenary has yet to be published is unforgivable. This author should be banging out errata for FREE if necessary, for if no other reason, to salvage something of his reputation. I'd throw a shoe at him, but I'm far too fond of my shoes to denigrate them so much.
Mongoose needs to get its crap together or they will lose more business.
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Another issue that has been harped on by people over on the mongoose boards (including myself) is the lack of EPSF use for the deckplans. By using other formats to import into the PDF the graphics for the deckplans, they are reduced to a fuzzy approx. 100 DPI.... this results in hard to read text on the plans, and on the larger craft, an inability to actually make out what is on the plans.
The chapter header issue on Merc is a 5-sec glance catch. (The running header for the chapters is overstruck on the first page of each chapter. Pages 2, 5, 9*, 15, 37, 42*, 62*, 71*, 80*, 91, 92*, 107; diferent header errors on: 12) This is inexcusable laziness and/or incompetence; in my graduate coursework, that many obvious errors would rate an "F" grade. Sorry, but I saw only ONE error of that kind in 26 manuscripts of T20, and 5 manuscripts of follow-on. And it was fixed before the next draft.
PDF may not be the primary market, but for me, it's the market I buy from.
Mongoose's inability to proof-read to a collegiate standard is why I absolutely will not buy any more dead-tree product from them.
The chapter header issue on Merc is a 5-sec glance catch. (The running header for the chapters is overstruck on the first page of each chapter. Pages 2, 5, 9*, 15, 37, 42*, 62*, 71*, 80*, 91, 92*, 107; diferent header errors on: 12) This is inexcusable laziness and/or incompetence; in my graduate coursework, that many obvious errors would rate an "F" grade. Sorry, but I saw only ONE error of that kind in 26 manuscripts of T20, and 5 manuscripts of follow-on. And it was fixed before the next draft.
PDF may not be the primary market, but for me, it's the market I buy from.
Mongoose's inability to proof-read to a collegiate standard is why I absolutely will not buy any more dead-tree product from them.
Au contraire. You're missing the point. This type of crap has been posted on this site all year round, and none of you have yet cottoned on to the fact that this game release has a) been hugely successful, and b) is going to be around for a long time to come yet. You're a bunch of dinosaurs, who's collossal snobbery and factionism has been holding the game back for years, and are now increasingly becoming marginalised as a tiny minority of dissenters, pretty much on this site alone. It's you people that have been the problem to overcome for Traveller's success, more than anything else for years and years, just from what I've picked up from my experience on this site over the last year or so - and you do now have a lot of people on other sites saying the same thing about you these days. You've got a reputation.
This whole 'I'm not going to buy X or Y' attitude is irrelevant right now. If you don't want to buy into it, then fine, good riddance to you. Nobody cares in the broader Traveller community - which is becoming increasingly sizeable. The gameline will move on well without you, and has done so already from all the evidence of sales figures, as well as the personal experience of seeing groups of gamers who had never even heard of the game before, enthusing over and playing the game for months now. If you're not actually buying the game then your entire complaint about 'Quality Control' is entirely bogus, and increasingly out of touch anyway. Having been buying the books myself, the 'criticisms' here are entirely blown out of proportion.
Merry Christmas.
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I just purchased 4 pdfs. One, well, upon first read, I feel robbed. Literally. That's Mongoose Mercenary.
The complaints about it were not just made here, but on Mongoose's own boards. Bryan Steel has used the oldest dodge in the gaming industry, to wit, "it's playable" to excuse the obvious lack of military knowlege.
Discounting the fanbase's complaints isn't good business practice, Echo. Every complaint I have about Mongoose products relates to production values on books I have purchased, and books I've bypassed because the errata load as evidenced on MGP's own BBS indicates a failure to proof and playtest.
It's not sour grapes over the new edition; it's sour grapes over the new edition being substandard work, at least on a technical pulications level. It fails to meet the standards of editing required by many US undergraduate colleges, ignoring for the moment, the difference in style manuals. When a 4-person, barely makeing a living at it company like BWHQ can produce products with almost no errata, what's Mongoose's excuse?
If Liz Danforth could do it with typewritten manuscripts and genuine typset masters, for T&T, back in 1979...
As for the "broader community"... Mongoose's boards show almost no evidence of a broader community. They show the same grogs that have been arguing traveller for the last decade... here, on the TML, and elsewhere... They also show lots of Nostalgia purchases, tho'. So did T20 at release. T4, ibid.
And the grogs who buy and review do have an impact on overall sales... Otherwise products like Burning Wheel, Orcworld, and SoTC wouldn't reach their audiences.
The complaints about it were not just made here, but on Mongoose's own boards. Bryan Steel has used the oldest dodge in the gaming industry, to wit, "it's playable" to excuse the obvious lack of military knowlege.
Discounting the fanbase's complaints isn't good business practice, Echo. Every complaint I have about Mongoose products relates to production values on books I have purchased, and books I've bypassed because the errata load as evidenced on MGP's own BBS indicates a failure to proof and playtest.
It's not sour grapes over the new edition; it's sour grapes over the new edition being substandard work, at least on a technical pulications level. It fails to meet the standards of editing required by many US undergraduate colleges, ignoring for the moment, the difference in style manuals. When a 4-person, barely makeing a living at it company like BWHQ can produce products with almost no errata, what's Mongoose's excuse?
If Liz Danforth could do it with typewritten manuscripts and genuine typset masters, for T&T, back in 1979...
As for the "broader community"... Mongoose's boards show almost no evidence of a broader community. They show the same grogs that have been arguing traveller for the last decade... here, on the TML, and elsewhere... They also show lots of Nostalgia purchases, tho'. So did T20 at release. T4, ibid.
And the grogs who buy and review do have an impact on overall sales... Otherwise products like Burning Wheel, Orcworld, and SoTC wouldn't reach their audiences.
Then you should take a look at the GURPS errata index, for example:
http://www.sjgames.com/errata/gurps/
GURPS is a mainstream product of a well-established RPG company, and
it is on the same price level as Mongoose Traveller, and quite a few of the
GURPS books had more (and more disturbing) editing problems than MGT.
Rhialto the Marvelous
SOC-13
...even as sado-masochists will clarify that a) duh; b) this has nothing whatever to do with the issue at hand.
Your entire business model is predicated on scaming people into buying a sub-standard product and then when they realize it is unplayable, telling them "good riddance to you."
That horse will carry you for a while, but eventually, your entire brand will suffer for it. I run games, and when I say I'm running Classic Traveller, my players buy Classic Traveller. I've already warned off people on Mongoose, encouraging them to buy the CT reprints.
You maybe happy with the sales numbers you see now, but you'll never know how many sales you lost because you can't cobble together writers who can proof read and playtest a product at a 10th grade level.
Happy Hanukkah
PS: If you want to see a re-licenced GDW title that is handled in a much better fashion: http://www.93gamesstudio.com/forum/
If you want your customers singing your praises over issues of errata, instead of beating you up about it, take a few notes from these guys.
http://www.93gamesstudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1258
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Rhialto the Marvelous
SOC-13
So wait a minute... is "Echo" a Mongoose employee?
Also, I'm not sure what dinasour and grognard are supposed to imply, but the first edition of Traveller I've ever played was T20. I went back and retroactively purchased the cannon for CT and MT (skipping GURPS, T4).
Keep spewing forth crap like Mercenary and Mongoose will also earn the repuation as a 'skipable' edition.
But hey, keep thinking about those short term sales numbers and getting a warm fuzzy.
Keep spewing forth crap like Mercenary and Mongoose will also earn the repuation as a 'skipable' edition.
But hey, keep thinking about those short term sales numbers and getting a warm fuzzy.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
You miss the point. With no real competition pressure, Mongoose doesn't improve.
OH Great, now I'm going to blow a significant amount of time figuring out the Cladistics of Traveller. Which will blow up into the evolution of game design......
No, Echo is not a Mongoose employee. Echo is just someone who recognises bullshit from a clique of naysayers when he sees it, particularly when those naysayers can only account for being called on the matter, by idiotically assuming that I must be being paid for my services. I just happen to be in an enviable position where I'm not going to be able to post anywhere much in the next couple of years, due to lifestyle changes, and couldn't really give a rats arse about what people think about my spelling out a few home truths now.
Nonsense. You weren't just attacking production values, you were calling into question the credibility of the entire Mongoose company. Example:
I've bought books and games from Wizards, White Wolf, SJGames and Chaosium over the last couple of years (and plenty of others, and for plenty of years before). They've ALL had errata in their products - no worse than Mongoose have, and in some cases worse. Moreover, if you actually think that Dragon Warriors was anything like an easily recognisable 'household name' for modern gamers, when it was notably unsuccessful on original release, and has been out of print for the last 20 years, then you are displaying as much as anybody needs to know about your own business acumen, right there.
And let's not forget what the complaint is in this instance about the pocket book too - that a sidebar table got nerfed in the reformatting, and one of the deckplans has gone wonky. Worth complaining about? Sure. Worth Mongoose doing something about? Sure. Worth denigrating the game as being 'unuseable', as evidence of an abject failure to proof-read, or of the broader company failing to have professional standards? Utter bullshit.
And as for the self-aggrandising statements about 'representing a fanbase' that Mongoose ought to be quaking in their boots about not upsetting, does anybody here realise just how small a fraction of a percentage of gamers actually get involved on forums like these? In the bigger picture it means nothing to the 'business model' of a company, whatever is being discussed here. Nobody cares, beyond those people who routinely get pissed off when trying to find some online discussion of the game that is halfway worthwhile. If people keep whining on as they have done all year on this site, then all that will happen is enthusiastic Traveller fans will stop coming here, and go somewhere else. Not a bad idea, actually...
Nonsense. You weren't just attacking production values, you were calling into question the credibility of the entire Mongoose company. Example:
All of which is utter bullshit, designed to disparage anything that Mongoose have ever done, and fit within the broader narrative of their supposed 'amateur' status that you like to keep pushing.
I've bought books and games from Wizards, White Wolf, SJGames and Chaosium over the last couple of years (and plenty of others, and for plenty of years before). They've ALL had errata in their products - no worse than Mongoose have, and in some cases worse. Moreover, if you actually think that Dragon Warriors was anything like an easily recognisable 'household name' for modern gamers, when it was notably unsuccessful on original release, and has been out of print for the last 20 years, then you are displaying as much as anybody needs to know about your own business acumen, right there.
And let's not forget what the complaint is in this instance about the pocket book too - that a sidebar table got nerfed in the reformatting, and one of the deckplans has gone wonky. Worth complaining about? Sure. Worth Mongoose doing something about? Sure. Worth denigrating the game as being 'unuseable', as evidence of an abject failure to proof-read, or of the broader company failing to have professional standards? Utter bullshit.
And as for the self-aggrandising statements about 'representing a fanbase' that Mongoose ought to be quaking in their boots about not upsetting, does anybody here realise just how small a fraction of a percentage of gamers actually get involved on forums like these? In the bigger picture it means nothing to the 'business model' of a company, whatever is being discussed here. Nobody cares, beyond those people who routinely get pissed off when trying to find some online discussion of the game that is halfway worthwhile. If people keep whining on as they have done all year on this site, then all that will happen is enthusiastic Traveller fans will stop coming here, and go somewhere else. Not a bad idea, actually...
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Well, at least the forum does serve very well as a deterring example. One
can always encourage others to stay civil by telling them to take a look
at CotI's Mongoose Traveller forum and what has become of it.
Whether Echo is an employee or not is not really an issue
I believe everyone should be entitled to their opinoin just as everyone is entitled to turn off the radio or stop reading posts.
But I do believe that Echo is very much a playtester of Mongoose, and that he has inside tracks to what is going on at Mongoose due to playtesting and contections.
That being said, how many of you are playtesters for anygame company?
And if you are, wouldn't you be very dedicated and supportive of that company.
Mainly because you either like the company (most likely) or you really like the license/product (just as likely but normally second).
So, IMO, if you don't like what someone else posts, just stop reading them or at the least stop responding to them if you really got to read the thread.
On a personal side, I really like having pocket editions (reader digests if you will). It makes it handy to carry along for reading when I travel or want to work on something out of it and don't have the space for all the books (or a big book). And most people think I am reading a book, book not a game book. Kind of like that aspect too.
Dave Chase
I believe everyone should be entitled to their opinoin just as everyone is entitled to turn off the radio or stop reading posts.
But I do believe that Echo is very much a playtester of Mongoose, and that he has inside tracks to what is going on at Mongoose due to playtesting and contections.
That being said, how many of you are playtesters for anygame company?
And if you are, wouldn't you be very dedicated and supportive of that company.
Mainly because you either like the company (most likely) or you really like the license/product (just as likely but normally second).
So, IMO, if you don't like what someone else posts, just stop reading them or at the least stop responding to them if you really got to read the thread.
On a personal side, I really like having pocket editions (reader digests if you will). It makes it handy to carry along for reading when I travel or want to work on something out of it and don't have the space for all the books (or a big book). And most people think I am reading a book, book not a game book. Kind of like that aspect too.
Dave Chase
I've playtested RPG's for BTRC (CORPS Bestiary, EABA, EABA Stuff!), BI (WFRP2, uncredited due to calling Simon of BI on deleting posts about mechanical issues) QLI (T20, 2320, T20PH), some adventures for Deep7's Arrowflight. Plus very active and detailed feedback in the MGT playtest; some of which was taken (mostly T&C).
I've also playtested Babylon 5 Wars by AoG, and submitted playtest reports for a number of SFB items, including a proposed tactical ground combat game that still hasn't seen the light of day.
Plus my own stuff.
I'm not inherently hostile to Mongoose's Traveller. I'm upset about the QC issues that make dead tree a waste of money, and the PDF deckplans hard to impossible to use effectively.
I've also playtested Babylon 5 Wars by AoG, and submitted playtest reports for a number of SFB items, including a proposed tactical ground combat game that still hasn't seen the light of day.
Plus my own stuff.
I'm not inherently hostile to Mongoose's Traveller. I'm upset about the QC issues that make dead tree a waste of money, and the PDF deckplans hard to impossible to use effectively.
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