Darkest Dungeon: The Board Game – Shipping surcharge

[ced1106Participant 6224xp 0]

> I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of this is due to how their Chinese counterparts communicate.

Oh, yeah. That! Creators fool themselves into thinking they absolve themselves by saying what their overseas supplies say, but they’re only delaying trouble to when the poop hits the blades. Cthulhu Wars said how they had to have someone at the factory to make sure production was going right. At this point, we should only back CMON, the only creator who has offices in China! 🙁

> produce locally as much as possible.

Archon seems to get this right, but I understand Poland has a strong hobby market. USA and EU are too expensive, and shipping costs have hit non-overseas shipping, such as “last mile” shipping. That said, if you’re open to metal (and resin) KS, you will find local. My KS data points have metal working out out better than resin and plastic (had at least two resins and two plastics fail). And, of course, there’re .stl’s which don’t involve manufacturing or shipping.

[limburger 21672xp 0]

@ced1106 you still need a reliable service to store the digital content.
A google drive account won’t do.
And such hosting is not free if you want to do it right.
(sidenote : I really really hate how oneBookShelf has become the Steam equivalent for PDF-files within our hobby)

Besides distance the cultural barrier is not to be underestimated. Chinese think differently than us Dutch.
Heck … there’s many mini culture barriers inside the EU too.
// —

@pagan8th we set ourselves up for failure by not matching the stuff that was coming out of China.
The simple fact that it is too expensive to ship (empty) containers back to China so we don’t … is why we are in this situation.

The problem isn’t the wages.
The problem is that a lot of manufacturing is seriously inefficient.
If I told you that a lot of companies operate at only 5-10% of potential capacity …
The only ones managing 80% are doing so by cheating (or at least ‘fixing’ the kind of statistics they use so they can look good on paper)
Add to this the “just in time” concept by eliminating any local buffers/storage capacity and shit is going to hit the fan really quickly once something like a proper pandemic hits. We’re going to need decades to recover from this and we all know how bad us politicians are at doing anything that doesn’t pay off within their term of office.

[jamescutts 6907xp 1]

> USA and EU are too expensive

That’s a interesting point, I don’t think the difference is as bad as some people think. Though its not quite the same as kick-starters that pile on the shipping costs from china to the destination onto backers if you look at our hobby the vast majority are manufacturing in the USA, UK or EU already and Wargames Atlantic recently moved its production to the USA with no change in the end price to consumers and the benefit of control over production and the ability to airfreight items to their distribution depots in days while still being more affordable that current shipping rates from China.

When a shipping container changes from $2k to $20k and you still have the expense of overseas communication and a slow shipping method via sea, the potentially higher cost of more local production possibly doesn’t look so bad.

That said I’m not sure how its going to impact these sort of board game kickstarters, unless there’s local manufacturing companies that can contract for the work, and I dont think there is currently at least not enough to meet demand in the usual PVC we see these in.

[tuffyears 23171xp 0]

now their sayings it delayed 2 – 3 weeks because the shaded version isn’t ready , after perversely saying wave 1 was ready to be shipped , something smells rottern

[limburger 21672xp 1]

I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the sort of miscommunication that tends to happen with China …

You really need to have someone at that factory if you want to be absolutely certain things are going as you want them to.
I’ve seen far too many similar things happen across a variety of kickstarters with production in China.

The Cyberpunk Red skirmish game also had a similar thing happen when the plastic containers (that were such a big feature in the campaign) were declared “ready” (with a video as ‘proof’) still had issues that needed fixing …

That doesn’t absolve Mythic from miscommunication as they really really ought to verify the info they are given instead of blindly trusting it. It’s not their first rodeo as they say.

@jamescutts yeah … with the way shipping costs for containers are going the ‘extra’ cost in wages may as well be matched by shipping costs.
There are however also shortages in cardboard/paper as well according to some manufacturers/kickstarters.
Boardgame quality cardboard manufacturing is also a specialized process that not all printing companies have mastered.

 

[redscopeParticipant 2711xp 0]

Mythic Games are doing the correct thing by delaying the shipping until the product is ready. It is a minor issue in the scale of the overall context a few weeks does not matter.

What does matter is perhap this issue of trust. The communication at the end of August was everything was in the warehouse ready to ship we just need the money to ship it. You can call it miscommunication if you like but it was simply not the truth.

“Our factory informed us that the Touch of Darkness add-on product is not ready to ship yet and will require another few weeks to finish”

If the product is still in the factory not ready to ship then it clearly was not in the warehouse ready to ship in July when they told us it was. Clearly Mythic have jumped the gun and have been found out.

I sort of understand it might have almost been in the warehouse and they had expected it to be and did not want to go into the fine detail. We all do this in work “I have almost finished painting that model” etc etc.

When you already have an issue of Trust due to pass problems making even more just a few weeks later gets blown up. None of this is helping the company at all.

Quickly on costs with China I do work in outsourcing. Basically I can hire 10 people in China on the same rate as someone in the UK. even given all the communication issues that come with it still UK resources cannot compete. The same is the price of goods, like the bulk wood to turn into paper. We in the UK have to largely import most items even raw materials. We have import duty, VAT, just the laws we have around the process, heath and saftey comes at a cost. China is a bit like the wild west pretty much anything goes at a price which is why everything is so cheap.

The additional shipping costs are a tiny drop in a large ocean when it comes to overall process and costs.

[avernosKeymaster 33946xp 2]

Also you have to remember how the consumers bitch when something is perceived as too costly.

Fireforge’s last couple of kickstarters have scraped by, with people complaining about the cost and the amount of miniatures available for the price.

They exclusively manufacture in Europe, a lot has been done by Renedra in the past not sure if they still manufacture for them. But it comes down to cost, people want it for peanuts and then you are at the mercy of manufacturers who are far away and without an agent on the ground t0 control you have no idea what is going to happen.

And that’s if it all goes well.

[redscopeParticipant 2711xp 1]

I complained about fireforges pricing for the kickstarter because it does not make a lot of sense. It is not about it being peanuts but the risk vs reward. Wayland games sells the fireforge products with the 10% discount and you get free shipping for 40 pounds. The cheapest pack from the fireforge was costing you 90 euro’s plus 12 euros shipping. The discount off the retail price was just 8%.

So unless I am mistaken it was costing me more to take a risk to back the kickstarter than waiting 6 months for them to come out in retail and buy them from wayland games. The other issue people complain about was they locking certain unit types behind the unlock levels. A lot of people did not invest because they wanted the mounted troops and it was not certain they would reach that goal early on. Items like the warriors monks they did not unlock.

I am sure I was not the only one who looked at this wanted the models but felt it did not add up. If you are taking a risk to back a kickstarter and in effect loan them money for 6 months. You need to feel you are getting some reward to do so.

Sure you got a bigger 15% discount for getting 6 boxes at 165 euros but then your balancing that against a 15.50 shipping cost which wipes out that 5% extra discount. You are also investing a fair amount at that point.

Companies need to find a balance between it being worth a risk for the consumer to invest but not so that the company runs it at the loss.

[tankkommanderParticipant 6411xp 0]

It does seem more sensible to wait for retail that pay the KS premium.

[avernosKeymaster 33946xp 3]

the cost is the tooling, people didn’t want to pay it which is why they’ll not have several of those kits at retail for the foreseeable future.

you get what you pay for.

[jamescutts 6907xp 1]

Yeah, Fireforges Kickstarters are actually very good in terms of their expectations and setting realistic goal, they know how much the tooling will cost and that’s what your effectively paying for when you back then.

I don’t have any issues with the prices they set, your supporting them being able to get new product lines out there that they couldn’t afford other wise, there using kickstarter in the way it was intended, to get something going that wouldnt be possible due to funding otherwise. If you wait until retail and there’s ranges missing its because there wasn’t enough backers to pay for the tooling.

That said I didnt back the latest one, simply because I didn’t want 3 boxes at £90, I would have happily backed for a single box at £30-35, though then its probably not economical for them with the packing and processing to offer that.

EDIT: Probably should have backed at the support level for £30 and picked a box in the pledge manager afterwards ?

[limburger 21672xp 0]

Indeed pay peanuts … get monkeys.

You’re never paying for a product in kickstarters.
Yes … they are going to tell you that you get it ‘cheaper’ than retail, but that is a lie (and who pays RRP at retail anyway?).
They still need a healthy margin, because unlike retail they need to have a buffer to account for the inevitable failures and issues they will run into in the design/prototyping phase.

Stretchgoals need to be ‘hidden’ by very high levels, because that is what it will cost to make them if they weren’t factored into the initial target. I’d argue that anything less than a few hundred thousand as an initial target is going to be a lie or has hidden funding.

The Mycroft kickstarter made that crystal clear as the initial design prototype proved to be impractical in manufacturing.

Mini design has similar risks, but experienced designers tend to be aware of the issues …

[limburger 21672xp 0]

In an update for their Ragnarok Kickstarter they have said that there will be NO additional payment requests :
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/806316071/mythic-battles-ragnarok/posts/3593528

Before we dive deeper into this news, let’s start by confirming something important: we will not be asking backers to pay any further shipping fees for Mythic Battles pledges. What you’ve paid is what you’ll pay. You have nothing to worry about in this regard.

So … I guess Darkest Dungeon was just ‘unlucky’ or underfunded ?

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