57 replies to this topic

[greyhaze]

I delayed on responding to this a little, but alas here I go:

As a new comer, I would have had no idea whom to PM. I would expect reaper to read their own boards. If they don't know what's going on in their own backyards about what people are asking for or are commenting on, then I guess it's their fault if they miss out. I appreciate your efforts, but it's hard to tell if you're a freelancer helping Reaper out or if you actually work directly for them - either way your reply is welcome interaction, although you're delivering bad news imho.

[fieldarchy]

I actually work for Reaper.

I am a caster, painter and now photographer for them.

If you ever have a questions, concern or problem you can contact me, ReaperBryan (supervisor), ReaperClark (owner), EdPugh (owner), Kit (IT Supervisor), All-Terrain Monkey (Code Monkey), Cutebutpsycho or Froggy the Great (these are our two mods on the boards).

Or you can contact our front office. All of our contact information can be found here:

http://www.reapermin...InfoandPolicies

[greyhaze]

I guess my point is... do you want to type that out for each newcomer? Or, just have reps check the boards more frequently?

[fieldarchy]

I will pass this recommendation on to Ed and the other powers that be.

We do appreciate your concern and input.

Meg

[Reaperbryan]

I would expect reaper to read their own boards. If they don't know what's going on in their own backyards about what people are asking for or are commenting on, then I guess it's their fault if they miss out.

We do read our boards, but do not have the time to reply to every thread or every post. Lack of reply is not the same as lack of awareness.

For example, I tend to reply to 4 or 5 threads a week. I spend the remainder of my time as our production manager, making sure that tens of thousands of miniatures are made each week and shipped properly. Given the hundreds of new posts a day, somebody expecting a personal reply by me might assume I'm out of the loop, but that's not really the case.

Likewise, Kit, Fielarchy, ReaperRon, and even Ed Pugh read our forums, and reply or comment as they have time. Sometimes, we even read the board, discuss internally, and then comment later, when we have thoroughly evaluated the situation. So yeah, that means sometimes a question will go unreplied to for a while. And, of course, each of us also has areas of expertise - Vaitalla, for example, rarely reads sections outside the Craft board, because the painting, sculpting, and converting portions of the business ocncern her job more directly than, for example, Warlord and CAV.

Even so, each of us here have other jobs - there is no employee that is paid to do naught but read our forums. Each of us must spend a portion of our work week balancing our production needs and our customer service needs. And while it appears odd, unresponsive, slow, and confusing from the outside, if there's a delay, I can assure you that absolutely everyone at Reaper is doing their dead level best to balance these needs, and get things done. There's a lot of behind-the-curtain behind some of the questions in this thread (including why pictures are slow in showing up), and transparency in our business decisions isn't always realistic.

Nevertheless, welcome to the boards GreyHaze, and always feel free to start a new thread for anything that you have concerns with. Our moderators can assist, point you in the right direction, or call in myself or somebody else if it's a problem above their pay grade, so to speak.

[greyhaze]

Ok, I get that everyone has their own task list and is very busy with other projects, we're not really asking for personal replies to random posts. This was a post about gallery pictures that had been submitted quite some time ago.

So, who's got LE under their belt or at least as part of their routine? Is it Fieldarchy? Her avatar says she's an artist and her links make her look like a freelancer. I think she needs some kind of moderator badge that says she's officially speaking for Reaper on LE or works for them like you do. From her post way back when, she says she passed on images to be posted and almost a month later they still haven't been. If you're aware of that, great. Maybe popping in to say "we're delayed" would've sufficed, but the question just dangled there. So either "you're aware" and ignoring jr665 or you forgot which I know can happen. Either way it's not looking good - so, I'm rattling some cages.

Feb 11th you said you'd whip someone into doing something, it's now Mar 8th. Between the 14th and 23rd jr665 waited patiently for the pics (as did I).

I'm looking to LE as a PPM suppliment to DDM and I'm really not seeing much going on here, and that which is going on here is being ignored. I guess I'm making a push for you guys to be more responsive, but I don't know what's what or who's who at Reaper, I'm totally new.

Thank you for the personal greeting, you seem like a higher-up, which is nice to see you on here responding. You mentioned moderators, can the moderators bring issues like the above one with jr665's question to you and get a response within a few days or even 24hrs? I mean you must be able to get a few volunteer moderators for Reaper! This is a web/gallery issue, not a "my personal wishlist" type scenario. That seems at least marginally important.

2cents.

[fieldarchy]

Hey GH,

I am in charge of getting photos done. That is my current position. Whether it's photos for the bitz, which is my every day project right now, or doing the greens, whites, LE new release, etc. Beyond taking and editing photos, Kit is the one responsible for posting them and making them live on the website.

I did go back and re-shoot all of them today, again and Kit approved all of them as I left his office. Now it is in his hands. I did ask him to email me once they go live that way I can pass on info to you guys.

I can ask Kit to add a badge to my profile too.

I wear many hats here and most people in the miniature community know me, first and foremost, as a painter. I've been involved in painting for about 5 or 6 years. I've been working for Reaper since June or July (can't remember the exact date). So, that's the reasoning for the artist badge and why my signature has a bunch of freelance stuff. I am also a freelance artist and take commissions and paint almost full time as well. Sorry for any confusion it may have caused.

As for mods, we do have two mods, Froggy the Great and Cutebutpsycho. Otherwise, I think Ed and I are the ones on most frequently aside from mods. And I try to comment or read stuff as I'm waiting for photo related stuff to download or what have you.

Since we don't have a lot of people reading the boards all that frequently you can always PM someone in order to get a faster reply. Like I said that will always get our attention faster.

Meg

[Halberkill]

I too feel as Greyhaze does. Though I can also add that I, probably like he, am heavily jonesing for more pre-painted plastic goodness. Since WotC has ditched ppm, you are our only hope. Really, there is no other company out there right now that is producing ppm for fantasy, all the others have ceased and deceased. So we are waiting (not so very) patiently so that we can see new things we want to spend our monies on.

Thank you Reaper people.

[greyhaze]

I did go back and re-shoot all of them today, again and Kit approved all of them as I left his office. Now it is in his hands. I did ask him to email me once they go live that way I can pass on info to you guys.

Excellent. I'll keep visiting to check that out. :)

I can ask Kit to add a badge to my profile too.

Awesome! That looks/works marvelously.

I am also a freelance artist and take commissions and paint almost full time as well. Sorry for any confusion it may have caused.

Sorry about that, I did not mean for you to have to remove your links from your signature, infact I think it's good for flavour, I just had confusion on how you fit in - but with the reaper badge added, I now KNOW you're a rep. :)

With WotC no longer printing PPMs, you guys are going to get a lot of overflow of people that are looking for this stuff - and they're all going to be new to your site (like me), so glad if I helped out - sorry if I stressed ya'll out! ;)

[fieldarchy]

Well I just went ahead and removed my links only because most of my business comes from returning clients and also from CMoN. Not on here really.

Anyway . . . we will have an April release of LE figures as well. Bryan said that this is something we are trying to get in full swing, it just takes some time. It's not easy since this isn't an in house project and there's lots of management and stuff behind the scenes. But we are working on bolstering the LE line. Never fear.

and by in house I mean we don't actually make the plastic figures here in the factory.

[Reaperbryan]

Well I just went ahead and removed my links only because most of my business comes from returning clients and also from CMoN. Not on here really.

Anyway . . . we will have an April release of LE figures as well. Bryan said that this is something we are trying to get in full swing, it just takes some time. It's not easy since this isn't an in house project and there's lots of management and stuff behind the scenes. But we are working on bolstering the LE line. Never fear.

and by in house I mean we don't actually make the plastic figures here in the factory.

I would like to add to this: We have taken some flak from our fans, and people coming to us from places like WotC, because we aren't producing the hundreds of models that other places have, or our releases aren't closer together, faster, etc.

We're deliberately being cautious. The plastic market seemed like the "future of miniatures", to the point where at several conventions, retailers told us they would never carry our product because "Lead is dead, Plastics are the future, and it's sad that you <children of an unmarried couple> don't already know that you're obsolete." Yes, I was told that. We soldiered forward, making pewter figures, and have now watched as several companies that invested a lot of time and money into "the future of miniatures" and have either stopped (like WotC) or gone out of business. Given that, we're glad that we chose a more cautious approach.

Yes, I understand that the slow release schedule is frustrating, that there is a demand for a lot of figures that we do not yet make. And as a Fellow RPGer, I wish that we had more, too. It's frustrating even as a manager here, knowing that this market exists and we might not be tapping its full potential. But it's a volatile market, and it is not without risk. My mortgage, for one, is more comfortable with us still being around, as opposed to what the other options the market has presented to us seem to be.

As a final note, and hopefully an attempt to assuage some of your concerns that we're not meeting customer needs, etc: Reaper is not some huge, faceless, multibillion dollar conglomerate owned by shareholders that consider it nothing more than a cash cow. We're a little factory in Denton, Texas run by a few dozen gamers, geeks, nerds, and artists that love the industry, the hobby, and the games. We're families of people that depend on Reaper's continued success for our livelihoods, so we have the highest possible vested interest in Reaper making wise choices, and although not all of our choices are the most popular, or the easiest to defend (try defending releasing 4 new models in PPM a year when the public wants 100), we stand by them.

[fieldarchy]

My mortgage, for one, is more comfortable with us still being around, as opposed to what the other options the market has presented to us seem to be.

I second this! My mortgage is happy I'm still pulling a paycheck!

[greyhaze]

I would like to add to this: We have taken some flak from our fans, and people coming to us from places like WotC, because we aren't producing the hundreds of models that other places have, or our releases aren't closer together, faster, etc.

Oh, I know, I hear it on the boards on plasticrypt each day. ;)

I'm more patient, and also more picky - and also a cheap@xx.

Being beside your booth at GenCon, it looked like you were a pretty fair sized company. ;)

[fieldarchy]

In terms of product line, yes we are a decent size company. You'd be surprised how small the warehouse actually is though. Bryan and I went through a head count yesterday and we figured we have a total of 25 people on pay roll. We are smaller than people expect. But we do the best we can to get stuff taken care of.

[Yarkle]

I think part of the frustration is this line has been promised for so long, yet not much has appeared. Kind of like the Hobbit movie. Yeah, its cool, yeah, everyone wants it, but it mysteriously never shows up.

Stuff that was "coming soon" in 2008 (IIRC..I think some of it was actually listed as may of 08) STILL isnt available. The war dog, the marilith, the AWESOME gnoll ranger sculpt. In fact, the (original) gnoll warrior sculpt impressed me so much, I had a character designed around it. Well, the character is now retired, after going through the sunless citadel, forge of fury, dungeon of the hark, cormyr:tearing of the weave, Shadowdale:scouring of the land, Anauroch:Empire of Shade, and the Lord of the iron Fortress, plus a good portion of Mysteries of the Moonsea. Character is retired at 21st level, after 3+ years of play, and still doesnt have the right mini I wanted to represent it.(So, I am the target audience..Id hope) The new gnoll (not as good, IMO, but id still love to have it,) was supposedly available january 2011, and its now march. Now it MIGHT be released in April.

I'm not holding my breath, otherwise by now, I'd be a skeletal swordsman, who is sold out in every online retailer!

The LE lines ad goes: "continuous release. These aren’t limited editions and they’re available anytime. It’s what you want when you want it!"

Well, I wanted the war dog, gnolls, kobolds and marilith long time ago. I want the skeletal swordsmen.