I am in the same boat. I totally respect having preferences (you like what you like and you are not wrong for it), but it's pretty impressive how much flack the bayverse designs get. Why are they "SO" bad? Because the movies don't have the most amazing scripts? Because they don't look like their original versions? How many other franchises have multiple takes on the same characters? People complain that movie Strascream looks nothing like his G1 self, but there are plenty of other transformers cartoons that portray Starscream (and other characters for that matter) much differently than the G1 cartoons did and yet they are highly praised.

When I saw the new designs, I dug them because it was a modern representation of the characters. I thought it was pretty neat that they took the time to be what I would call "realistic" with the transformations in the sense that you saw everything, from engine parts and wires to wheels and windshields, moving around and being repositioned to take the form of giant robots. Even if there were some mass shifting and scale issues, it looked believable or at least like a possibility because you could (for the most part) see it all happening with a level of detail that had never been seen before. It wasn't just vehicle morphing into humanoid beings. They looked like advanced aliens with advanced technology trying to blend in with a more primitive race.

As a result, we got some pretty cool and undeniably unique new character designs too.

 

Considering the overall mixed reviews on the two that have been released, what are the chances this set gets finished?

 

Couldn't have said it better myself, literally took the words out of my mouth.

I think the entire set would be released if they can, many of us that bought this is for the combined mode anyway so the hope (yes, hope, leap of faith) it'll at least not be a flopping mess in combined mode will get us to buy all of it. However with the recent crackdown on not just KO but 3P, I'd worry about that more tbh.

 

Thank you for explaining in perfect english my exact thought about Bayverse Design.... I never could habe explained it so precisely! So, at least die the First 3 movies....

 

Rememer guys, if you have still Problems with
loose screws, just glue them to the hole, or switch them out with your own screws.
These 2 things always work.
Can even make the Figure more stable.

I agree that Long Haul is the weakest of all. Really Really waiting for Overload, and especially for Rampage!

 

I still don’t have a replacement wheel for mine, so I can’t really recommend him. In the event you get one and something is wrong, I would not necessarily have a lot of confidence that the problem will be addressed. If QC is going to be a coin toss, they should at least provide decent CS in return.

 

I would say 99%. Just because some people here aren't 100% happy, that's no reason for them to bail on the set. As long as they sell, peoples minor critiques are irrelevant.

 

Chances for a Combiner Completion are....100%

I have much Experience with 3rd Party Combiners,
and I NEVER heard of a Company that Cancelled a Combiner right in the Middle, after releasing a few Members.

Because they KNOW, if they do this,
they could never Show their Faces again.
At least not under the current Company Name.

And if they would do something like that...I would go around and tell everyone what scammers they are, and that would indeed cut off a large Portion their Customers they are trying to get for the next "Project".

So you see...Companies have no other Option / Choice but to finish a Combiner OR losing a large Portion of Customers, thus resulting in a huge loss of Money.

 

The risk isn't in them not being able to show their faces again because of the ill will.

It's in the fact that they wouldn't be able to afford to manufacture the rest of the figures in the first place. If you're already $200,000 in the hole that isn't being recouped due to poor sales, your reaction isn't going to be "well, I just gotta suck it up and spend another $600,000 or else I can just kiss my pride away". (Although that's not actually how retail works. The initial $200,000 would have been covered by the initial retailer orders. But if your product just stinks up the place, they're not going to return and foot you rest of the $600,000 bill. Unless you're operating on a direct-to-consumer business model, in which case, you're fucked).

 

Any indication that DS are bombing financially or is this all just based on comments about transformations being hard work?
They need to bring out Rampage next if boosting buyer confidence and excitement is the plan. He looks like a definite win.

 

Rampage is the main “must have” out of this set. their revisions on the SS base are by far their strongest offering, it even has elbows!

The only issue would be if QC issues continue to be prevalent in the line; I’d particularly worry about the treads snapping into hundreds of pieces...

 

It's absolutely nonsense. Clearly people are buying these. I've pretty much moved past the Bay aesthetic, but I'm still buying these because I'm looking forward to the big highly-detailed monster combiner.

 

Has DS revealed the dimensions of this combiner? I am planning to get a new display cabinet that can accommodate this beast.

 

I think it's around 18" to the hump on the back (there's some chart where if it scaled to mpm properly it should be around 36 in tall... I wish it was 36" tall haha)

 

Finally got my Split today. So first impressions: The transformation sequence is the opposite of intuitive and the manual wasn't much help; I had to look up a youtube video to figure out how to position the arms and legs in various modes. The tabs don't all fit into their appropriate slots and any pressure at all causes parts of the figure to come undone. One of the tabs that holds the lower drum section in place on the rear wheels broke off (fortunately not an important one in the grand scheme of things). I had to use a rattail file to widen the slot on the underside of the cab section that tabs onto the back in robot mode just so that the tab would fit. The screws that hold the front wheels onto the legs work themselves loose and had to be re-tightened, the plastic screw cover on the crotch does indeed fall off easily, and I'm genuinely surprised that I haven't lost the hood ornament yet.

So overall, a decent figure and I'm looking forward to the others.

 

I'm guessing DS-03 Compresor will be released next, possibly by the end of this month. Just a guess though..

 

I'd wager Giant Axe is next as they've already gotten a few out to reviewers. We haven't seen any in-hand shots of Compresor yet, and don't even know what Landslip looks like painted.

Not that I wouldn't be stoked if Compresor was next.

 

Hopefully not. Giant Axe bot mode is atrocious and needs some serious work before releasing, so please Devil Saviour take your time and fix those arms and wheels and hide them better in vehicle mode. I don't care if he is last as long as it looks good enough to at least match Studio Series.

 

After more than a month of inactivity, DS replied to a comment asking about 02 yesterday:

I know this surely doesn't guarantee a release date this month, but at least they're active again so we might get new photos or updates for 02, 03, or 05 soon.

 

Re: Split, is there a way to secure the screws that hold the front wheels onto his legs? I don't want them falling off and due to the limited clearance between the screwhead and the wheel, I'm worried I'll damage the figure if I keep screwing them back in.