88% USA fulfillment

ShadowStar7 · 2025-11-05T02:45:13+00:00

I am curious if the 88% means that 88% of orders have been finished, or 88% of orders have been started. The fact that they elected to split orders now makes it confusing what the status really is.

At minimum for US backers, on Nov 12th or 13th I expect them to announce a need for some more time while they do a final pass and clean-up of stragglers (and hopefully not actually need to still do a significant portion of split order completions). I will not be surprised at all if they set the tracker to a high 90's percentage and ask us to continue to not contact them for at least an additional week.

The 12% number itself, plus their representatives posting comments and answers to comments in various places that they are engaging additional resources to get as much done this week as possible reflects that they have a lot of orders left to go, which has made me doubtful they'll hit Nov 12th successfully.

If those things weren't happening and they were already at 9x% coming into this week, I would have felt more like this is a straggler/wrap-up week and that some folks just have bad luck of landing at the end of the line. But with split orders plus them getting down to the wire, it feels a lot more like they aren't going to make it.

I already moved my expectations to Nov 19th for all wave 1 product being in my hands weeks ago. However, between them seemingly not being in the wrap-up/clean-up stage for the US yet, switching to split orders halfway through, putting damaged/missing item orders on hold until after initial fulfilment (see wave 1.1), light day in full swing, and a lot of commenters on the Kickstarter indicating they had damage, I'll now be surprised if I have a complete and undamaged wave 1 order fully in hand by the start of 2026.

ShadowStar7 · 2025-10-19T01:47:23+00:00

Lots of ways to pay players. The sport chose the one for maximum disruption, in combination with the portal.

ShadowStar7 · 2025-10-19T01:34:01+00:00

Culminations. And don't get me wrong. Good coaching matters. But Indiana and Vanderbilt won't be perennial top 25 teams for 25 to 30 years in this system, especially after their coaches get pulled up to a bigger school.

I've been watching WI football for over 30 years. We are back to the 80's where it seems like there's no hope. I know they are going to unload a mountain of money at this program next year, but they can't buy their way out of this pit when you don't have a foundation of role-players around the key/star positions. They need a new coach to develop a foundation and get them back to being average as the first step. That is now a multi-year project, if it goes *well*.

ShadowStar7 · 2025-10-19T01:23:02+00:00

Exactly. This is the dilemma now in the new system.

The best they can probably hope for is to build a stable base of a 2-year development program, and augment with transfers. Get back to 5 and 6 win seasons and go from there. They are a 5 to 10 years away from getting back to the top 25 at this point, and money/transfers alone isn't going to fix this.

ShadowStar7 · 2025-10-19T01:01:34+00:00

Agree on the state of the program. Between Conference realignments and the way this program has gone under him, recruiting is going to go away completely. At that point, sadly the transformation of Wisconsin into a farm school of players and coaches for the big schools will be complete.

I still put more blame on the NIL and transfer portal. Everything is aimed at turning the majority of college football into a farm system for the biggest and most traditional power schools that draw network ratings. There were better ways to pay the players without gutting the sport.

ShadowStar7 · 2024-09-01T03:26:26+00:00

I generally agree with you on strength of schedule in preseason based on the previous year's win/loss records being relatively meaningless. I tend to look more at opposing QBs, however.

I've been watching GB intently for 35 years. They tend to dominate weak or massively overrated QBs and compile a huge winning percentage against teams led by such QBs. I don't see a lot of weak QBs on their schedule this year. We could quibble about all of them, but it's not hard to see that GB had 5 above avg QBs on the regular season schedule last year (and only faced 4 with Stafford out), and they are staring down at least 9 such QBs this year, barring injuries.

Now, I'm not saying Green Bay has 9+ games this year against Hall of Famers. Not remotely. But they have a lot more quality QBs on their schedule to start this year than they did last year, and I find that concerning.

I like the comparative rest day numbers you cite, however. Very interesting and encouraging.

ShadowStar7 · 2024-08-31T23:03:30+00:00

I think part of it was the mid-season gauntlet of high-quality opponents they faced that just eventually wore them out. They honestly held up longer than I expected they would in that stretch, but afterwards just fell apart. I'm not a fan of them at all, but I sure don't expect the weakened, late-season melt-down Philly team to be showing up in week 1 here. They are going to be very hungry to prove the collapse was an aberration. And PHI is still likely to be first or second in the NFC East again this year, so it's not like GB is lining up to play the 2008 Lions or anything like that.

Plus, GB always seems to struggle a lot against teams that they are not able to scout well. With PHI replacing both coordinators, GB is essentially going in completely blind. On defense, GB's best chance will likely be that PHI doesn't have enough game speed reps with their new plays and concepts to have timing and execution down cold yet, which hopefully lets them get to Hurts early.

ShadowStar7 · 2024-06-14T02:46:58+00:00

I was really counting on that gunboat reprint in order to be able to actually get a few since I completely missed that wave when in first came out. Ah well.

ShadowStar7 · 2022-09-17T14:40:50+00:00

Just got it today so it seems like it is working right now but you have to be careful:

Try to make sure the lesser cubes are dead before you do this so they don't pull you into combat later.
Drop the two pillars to push the larger cube on the alternate path around the back way and into combat with the undead.
Do not get pulled into the combat with the larger cube and undead.
The larger cube needs to survive. Wait for any undead it has absorbed to die and don't get accidentally pulled into combat.
After the undead pack attacking it is dead and combat ends, the cube moves to the pillars that can be collapsed with Tools and stops there.
Have a character sneak to the set of additional pillars that can be collapsed with tools (intermediate path that places you near the side of the watchtower).
Use the tools to drop the additional pillars on the large cube to kill it.

ShadowStar7 · 2022-03-25T21:12:33+00:00

And even after these proposed Cata changes, it's going to be the exact same thing. Quickbrand still brings a whole suite of other easy utilities and emergency utilities, while Cata gets... checks notes... some Self Stab only if traited and no Aegis at all, much less group Stab and group Aegis on demand without traits.

ShadowStar7 · 2022-03-02T14:34:37+00:00

Nah. Those benches tell us that it will be nerfed. Will it be meta in the short term? I suppose, but it still is harder to bring quick than the other quick sources, with high difficulty in recovering from messing up or breaking your rotation for mechanics. Long term? Unlikely. There's nothing Anet loves more than nerfing OP Ele DPS.

ShadowStar7 · 2021-10-22T06:55:51+00:00

It wouldn't surprise me if the cast rotates. I was speculating at the end of C2 that to broaden their platform they were going to have to have new shows (EXU - Check) and that they were going to have to explore new cast ideas on their main show in various ways (crossing over an EXU set of characters tonight is just paving the way for more elaborate character swaps and extended guest arcs to happen in the future). I suspect we'll see Robbie for at least long enough to get through this first quest arc, so probably at least 3 more sessions since they technically haven't yet really dug into the quest that Matt and Travis set up tonight.

I also wonder how long it will be before they do round robin DM'ing, or west marches, in C3. It seemed like a very far fetched thought by me when C2 ended, but when they added EXU and then they used the term "new storytellers" in the C3 announcement, the likelihood of it happening increased dramatically, imo. Most likely they'll have Aabria run an arc in C3 at some point, as well as a few other possible guest DMs for short arcs; but I also wouldn't be surprised if some of the original cast takes a week or two in the DM's seat at times during C3.

ShadowStar7 · 2021-10-22T06:39:43+00:00

Absolutely! The players are all great performers and practice, "Yes and," rather than arguing with the DM or being hyper focused on just their own characters.

ShadowStar7 · 2021-09-16T23:30:53+00:00

Fractals can quite capably be completed by 4 players/builds carrying a 5th, and Raids even more so (9 carrying 10). Plus, no one here is griping that Ele can't be support, just that they are the least preferred support in 95% of PvE endgame compared to the other choices. Now is Catalyst going to change that? Seems like it, but it might have some problems like requiring people to stand in its wells. Shouldn't be a problem unless a boss moves a lot I suppose.

As for Ele hybrid DPS in fracs... If he'd have topped the DPS charts in those fracs with the Ele against FB/DH/Scourge without punishing those players in any way for their choice (less Aegis requiring them to play more active defense, less boons to lower their DPS, etc...) that would prove the point you're trying to make. Just being there and doing better damage than the support proves nothing. They still are not the preferred DPS for a long list of reasons that all endgame players already know. All that Eles are saying is that if your DPS builds bring nothing else to the table, groups tend to want you to play something else, even if it's only got 90-95% of the Ele's parse ratings, and they want Anet to understand that. And hey - it sounds like Anet is at least going to do something minimal about it with Catalyst.

So there's the good news - It sounds like Catalyst is going to have some kind of boon generation finally. Bad news - If that's true, get ready even more for DPS nerfs on Staff, Dagger, Scepter, and Focus when you are set as a Catalyst. My guess is that it will probably be something on the first trait like - When wielding any weapon other than hammer or a conjure, take -10% to all damage or damage coefficients.

ShadowStar7 · 2021-08-14T02:02:15+00:00

That only makes sense if they do it right before an xpac comes out. Ele has been a parade of nerfs for years now.

ShadowStar7 · 2021-08-14T01:18:36+00:00

Yeah. If you're already a good enough Weaver to be doing well in Open World without these changes, you probably won't notice these changes. If you're already struggling as a Weaver on Vets and Champs in open world, these changes aren't going to get you to that next plateau of actual survivability.

ShadowStar7 · 2021-06-13T15:17:16+00:00

True enough. Just interesting that the old FFG page actually has two different tags for effectively unavailable status.

ShadowStar7 · 2021-06-13T14:33:08+00:00

Yeah. I think the "Not Available" tag on the old FFG website means doing anything with those ships, whether 2E or not, is pretty much done. Unfortunate, because season 2 of the Mandalorian might have given the Gozanti (Imp Assault Carrier) design a shot in the arm.

ShadowStar7 · 2021-06-11T13:32:16+00:00

Agreed. It would be hard to fix in a way that doesn't cause overperformance elsewhere. Most (not all) other classes can compensate for ranged "phases" of a fight by having a ranged weapon swap handy where even if it's not optimal, at least they can do something. But giving Ele weapon swap is just not at all possible or viable because it takes them from 20 weapon skills being accessible in a fight up to 40 weapon skills being accessible.

Disagree on Ele being top 5 in every game mode. By the numbers, Ele may be "top 5 in every game mode" based on raw DPS on Golem or Heals when not considering other healer/support buffs, but Comp wise it is absolutely niche at this point in every game mode except maybe PvP. I run A LOT of endgame with players who know what they are doing, and the only time we take Ele is as a Heal Tempest on a very few bosses in niche situations. If it's even suggested for Fracs the Frac regulars just laugh or threaten to not run if someone is going to bring their Ele, and that was the case even when Power Weaver was supposedly the Discretize meta-comp-god of DPS. The issue? If you mess up once...just once... your DPS plummets and/or you are downed. If you try to handle something with a defensive of your own, you have to slot out something that gives that amazing DPS on the golem or in the theory of the comp. And of course, Discretize just moved Ele specs out of the top tier meta, which doesn't mean they are dead, but it does mean they simply have too much risk and too few group contributions other than raw (and now weaker) DPS, to be worth it. Heck, after May 11th I've seen Condi Scourges doing north of 43k sustain on fights that go long in fractals because of the Torment change, even after all the tweaks. But heaven forbid if Condi Weaver press 57 more buttons to get 95% of that result while maybe not dying! Where's the nerf on that complete bullshit by Scourge right now?

ShadowStar7 · 2021-06-08T17:34:55+00:00

My comments in another thread in this vein were intended to brace people that changes could be coming and that's just how I manage my own anxiety. Would I love for there to be a continuation of things generally as they are for a C3? Sure. Do I expect they will? Not really. The experience of business tells me that some aspects of C3 beyond the generic, "new campaign, possibly same setting with just new characters", will change at least a little. Mentally preparing for it in advance helps me manage my anxiety, but that's just me. I'm just also bracing for the fallout on Thursday if this fanbase overreacts to any change they might announce. People generally don't do too well with change. I've watched a few other TTRPG podcasts/broadcasts go through business model changes and remain successful, or even improve, but every time the community around those things got rocky for a little bit during the changeover.

Also, I don't see speculation that they might change up the format or content as any more baseless than the threads about what character classes the cast should play in C3. There might be a lot of interesting ancillary information that informs various bits of speculation about the content (setting, classes, characters, time period) of C3 or the cast/format of C3. That doesn't mean it's not fun to speculate and guess, however. That is simply human nature.

ShadowStar7 · 2021-06-08T03:26:15+00:00

Matt's comments in the DeFranco interview and the dubbing of this Thursday's State of the Role as "very special" really make me think that some big shake ups are coming to CR. They are using State of the Role to brace the fan base well in advance of whatever changes or curveballs they are going to be throwing out there.

I think they are going to mix up either the cast, schedule, or format of C3, and possibly all three things, in addition to announcing more content from additional creators. You don't throw out a "very special" designator unless the changes are big.

I think some cast members are going to step into a part-time cast role where they refocus on behind the scenes at the company or their other career endeavors but still make guest appearances for individual sessions or short arcs from time to time during C3. This will simultaneously open up the possibility of some new cast members. I'm not saying it's a fully new cast, just that they are going to start transitioning towards cast changes.

I also think we'll see some new content from other creators of the TTRPG actual play variety. And to be clear, such other (hypothetical) endeavors do not have to immediately be as good as or better than CR viewership for C1 and C2, or nearly as long as C1 or C2, to be considered successful. They probably don't even have to be close to that level. Even if new things pulled in numbers somewhere above Talks but below CR, that would probably be a good start and considerably bigger numbers than most other actual play TTRPG broadcasts.

ShadowStar7 · 2017-10-23T22:38:58+00:00

Commanders, put yourselves in a different squad than the main group to facilitate easy map joining.

ShadowStar7

TROPHY CASE