So why did Dropfleet Commander and Dropzone Commander just disappear……

[somegeezer 18431xp 1]

3pm Tuesday and no news since Friday. It’s hard to argue there’s no room on these pages.

[jamescutts 6923xp 2]

I have wondered if we should have some community area either on the forums and/or discord to feed in things to the BoW team that might otherwise get missed. Gerry does an amazing job of trying to keep on top of the weird and wonderful while Ben soundly has everything G’Wulla release covered but there’s only so much they must be able to keep track of and perhaps we could feed things into them?

I will admit (and this is by no means having a dig just an observation) I’m sometimes a bit perplexed by the articles at times, we’ll see a lengthy article on say the latest Warhammer Space Marine Lieutenant including in depth discussion on what types of nerf guns they are armed with yet a an amazing set of historical miniatures gets half the sized article and very little discussion on them.

That’s somewhat an extreme case but I think a articles authors interests and excitement does come across, and some certainly suffer depending on that. I wonder if the sources of news are similarly affected getting back to the topic, perhaps the teams interest in DFC and DZC have faded so less emphasis is put on them, after all there are only so many articles the team can manage and we have a huge amount of news across the hobby.

• This reply was modified 6 months, 3 weeks ago by  jamescutts.

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 1]

@limburger why on earth would I inform the OTT team of a piece of news by TTCombat?  First, that presupposes that OTT don’t get those notifications and I don’t think that’s true – I’m pretty sure Ben is well aware of what’s happening.  Secondly, it assumes that I keep my eye out in OTT for news about DZC or DFC and I don’t – it was only this thread that made me think about it and how I couldn’t recall seeing any articles about the game for a while.  And lastly, it also assumes that I know what OTT should be publishing articles about and what they shouldn’t, and I don’t.

[limburger 21698xp 0]

@onlyonepinman I merely assumed that you were more aware of the dropzone related things, because you mentioned a facebook group. I’m not into facebook so don’t know if there is any indicator of community size/activity to be gleaned from those groups.

It’s tricky for us to know what kind of news items are in the teams’ pipeline and what things aren’t, which could result in us overfilling their pipeline.

News sites often have an option to send links/articles to the teams, which they can then use as yet another source of things to post.

@jamescutts interesting idea. I think the project system could serve that purpose too (if it weren’t so damned slow at times).
There must be interesting statistics to be had based on activity that could help the indie teams. I’d say the ‘indie of the week’ does help highlight some of the more esoteric and small companies out there. Maybe a similar themed repeating news item could help keep momentum going for other systems as well ?

One issue is that we don’t know the workload of the team. What looks like a ‘slow news week’ to us could very well be them being busy with all sorts of (future) plans, which reduce their capacity to write and post interesting news articles.

btw: I kind of like how we’re seeing more generic non-news articles on the site like the recent one about Starwars.

It is fascinating how some systems manage to keep going with very little ‘news’ while others appear to be ‘dead’ when they don’t post regular updates. Maybe it is related to the momentum within the respective communities ?

And companies like TT Combat have their own reasons for focusing a bit more energy on certain ip’s in their portfolio.

Maybe Dropfleet games sell themselves at a ‘good enough’ pace?
Or maybe Carnevale needs a bit of extra help ?
Or it could be a matter of focus by TT Combat themselves.

I’d always argue that if we are passionate about a specific system then we should be doing something positive instead of complaining. (granted … a lot of that ‘doing’ does require a project system and forum with a bit more hamster power 😉 )

[maldroth 14xp 0]

I like the idea of a “Tips hotline” (make it Unsolved Mysteries style) where we could feed some news items to the team but I also worry about how much workload they already have collating the tabletop game hobby in addition to videos and other content being made. Also at least the bots that self promote wouldn’t feel as out of place there. 😛

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 0]

I follow a lot of wargaming and miniatures related pages, even if I don’t play the games.  But I wouldn’t ever think to report what I see on Facebook to OTT.  Or anyone else really. I’m sure OTT have their reasons for not posting articles about stuff

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 1]

Another Tease from TTCombat in the DZC universe, this looks like Strike Team Commander will be on show at UKGE

 

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/WSwHEiCTAJSL7hGh/

[limburger 21698xp 0]

reasons most likely being : time & resources …

Business daddy may also have some things to say as to what gets covered (maybe not direct … but easy access to certain games as sold by the company is going to send a message. of course it helps that the games are good too)

I’m sure you’d get a nobel prize if you manage to solve this problem as it is something every hobby/news site has to struggle with 😉

//

Strike team commander … coming to kickstarter.
It will be interesting to see what the game can bring to the tabletop.
IIRC there were a few tips / rules in the Dropfleet rulebook about integrating dropzone into a campaign.
Taking it down to the skirmish level could be interesting.

[somegeezer 18431xp 0]

TTCombat’s Friday email has some teasers and it looks like there’s a 28/32mm PHR walker in there. I have one of those from the Hawk Wargames days and I ought to paint mine up while it’s still rare. Late Spring Clean incoming.

[guillotine 16039xp 0]

Is it really that games companies do not send basic press releases to common news sites?

[limburger 21698xp 0]

Is OTT ‘big’ enough for companies to bother with sending news items to them ? (as fans of OTT we like to think they are … but then maybe they aren’t always ‘important’ enough for some? I doubt TT Combat thinks so)

Why can’t companies be happy with the amount of customers they have ?
Not every company can support infinite growth of its customer base …

heck … the sudden influx of new customers is kind of what killed Hawk wargames to begin with.

Maybe the new game set in the Dropfleet/Dropzone universe is the very reason why TT Combat is currently not putting a lot of effort into promoting the setting at the moment. They simply may not have the resources available to promote the games or they may not have the production capacity to handle the influx of new orders such promotion might bring.

Not every company is GW
They may not be losing customers as fast as GW does, so they don’t need to gain new ones in order to maintain balance.

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 0]

Not sure anyone us suggesting TTCombat are complaining or upset with the amount (or lack) of publicity.  I think someone just idly asked why we don’t really see any DZC/DFC content in OTT anymore

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 0]

If there is a reason at all, the only reason that makes any sense is that the articles simply don’t get any hits.  I doubt that it’s got anything to do with OTT not being informed nor do I think it’s anything to do with the parent company (Wayland Games) deciding not to cover TTCombat.  OTT cover both Carnevale and Rumbleslam so the lack of publicity is specific to the Dropzone games, not TTCombat in general

[lonkelo 3195xp 0]

Somewhat related, since it’s also from TTCombat, is that last weekend I was surprised to find that the Kickstarter for Half-tilt had completely passed me by earlier this year, even though I was keeping a lookout for it. I’m not on social media really, so it may just be my own fault, but I found it somewhat surprising that the launch was not covered on OTT, whereas the original announcement that there would be one coming was.

Ah well, I may have been just in time with the late pledge!

[sundancer 42957xp 0]

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it on the uHH stream as well. Was very tempted to get it but… money XD

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