State of Ashes Address
Infighting, poor supply, delayed releases, omg the house is on fire!
People are passionate about Ashes.
Like, really, really passionate. We love that! That passion tends to come in two types: The Prosecutor and The Defender.
The Prosecutors
They want justice. They want Ashes to be healthy and active and want to point out the things that stand in the way of that. We are on the prosecutors’ side. We want Ashes to be healthy and active too! Prosecutors help us by being vocal with their disappointments so that we are certain we know what they are and can work to address them.
The Defenders
They want solidarity. They want the prosecutors to see the whole picture. To see how much Plaid Hat cares and how we are doing our best to overcome the obstacles in the way of making Ashes the best it can be. We are on the defenders’ side too. We are human after all. We want to be seen for our hard work and want people to understand how helpless we feel when something isn’t going right and we don’t have the means to fix it as quickly as we’d like. Defenders help us by making us feel appreciated and understood.
We all want to sincerely thank all of Ashes passionate players. We too are passionate about the game and love sharing in that with you. As creators of a game you love, we have a favor to ask and we hope you will grant it.
For you vocal defenders in the various places that Ashes is being discussed. We need you to understand that your attempts to create solidarity can cause the prosecutors to feel unheard and ganged up on. Part of creating a healthy Ashes is making as many people as possible feel welcome in Ashes communities both online and in the meat space.
For you vocal prosecutors. You are right. Things have not been up to an acceptable standard. There are 4 issues that need addressed: Poor supply of Ashes expansions to stores, expansions and OP Kits not releasing at the planned and communicated intervals, cleaning up competitive play rules, larger scale implementation of organized play.
Poor Supply
The reason for poor supply of Ashes is because the game continues to surpass F2Z’s buyer’s expectations for what expansions to a product should sell. We have stayed in communication to try and adjust as quickly as possible when orders exceed expectations, including going into reprint before the first printing of expansions have even finished printing, but unfortunately in print run and ocean shipping times follow up printings, still feel agonizingly slow. Now that we have a couple of expansion waves under our belts, it will be much easier to make a case for ordering larger first printings of Ashes expansions so that the supply adequately meets the demand. Additionally, we have been unhappy with the fulfillment company we have used in the EU for the latest Ashes shipments. We will seek to have our management hire a different EU fulfillment team in the future.
Delayed Expansions
As many of you probably know F2Z is in discussions to sell their company to Asmodee. Because of these discussions we have chosen to delay the release of the upcoming expansions and op kit. We feel it is in the best interest of the game that we wait until those negotiations close before sending a brand new set of expansions and op kit to print.
Competitive Rules
We currently have Isaac and a whole team working on the competitive play rule set and FAQ top to bottom. They are tightening everything up, getting rid of the overcomplicated or unintuitive elements and working on a presentation that will be easy to digest.
Organized Play Expansion
Asmodee is part of a bigger investment group, so it is really problematic for me to say much of anything about future plans while F2Z and Asmodee are still in negotiation. We have plans and we will announce them as soon as we are legally able to.
In Summary: All Ashes fans are great, we want to do the best by them, we have plans and have been working in the background toward various improvements and we hope that the Ashes community can continue to be one of the most passionate game communities out there while also being one of the most welcoming game communities out there.
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Posted by Colby Dauch |
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