I wish to clear up a misconception spread....
by user Mannstein's Revenge. This is in regards to ship kits, which I help Dragon with to a certain extent:
They do, I believe, test market them by giving several kits away to
some of their bigger fans, such as Tracy White. As he mentioned in
this thread (or was it the other one?) the instructions even be worse
if they didn't go through that exercise
I'm really not sure where to begin with this. Dragon does not "test market." They choose a product and start working on it. Presuming it doesn't get beat to market early enough (this happened with a planned Warspite kit that was killed early on by Academy's announcement, but the Z.39 was carried through because a lot of time and money had been invested by the time Trumpeter's Zerstorer had been announced) the CAD is finished and then a test shot is done.
Now, this may change somewhat in the future, as the CVL was only the second LARGE ship they had released recently and there were some features that needed to be tested and tweaked. It may be in the future that less test shots are done. As it was, I received two test shots, more or less, but spread out over a couple month's time.
These test shots were not completed kits. They had broken pieces where the size was too small to survive mold ejection and/or shipping. They were missing detail such as the deck planking in the first flight deck test shot as they were testing other features. They are shot at a lower pressure, with less refined molds and incomplete parts. They are done before the instructions, so they are shipped sans instructions or decals. Those we get PDFs of for proofing. Not everyone who gets copies for proofing has a copy of the test shot for comparison.
These are not given out to fans at all, in fact they really don't want them seen as it can cause a miss perception as to what the final product will be. This happened to Hasegawa with their CVE; similar shots were posted by Hannants that showed a lack of deck planks and only tie-downs.. forum posts were disappointed in the lack of detail they perceived. The actual kit had them (I've got one, it's a nice kit).
They are a tool and not a perk. They are used to quickly identify problems for fixing.
I did receive three extra kits for distribution to a couple of other individuals who had helped the process. AFTER the distributors had all received their shipments. So, there is no test marketing of kits; it's one production run, and those who do get a kit in thanks do so after everyone else has a chance. There is nothing "fan" related to who gets them.
I talked to Dragon about the instructions after the CVL-22 kit and as we started the CVL-23 and they are open to change. They do want to see examples of how we would change it though, and that I am working on. There are no guarantees they will implement all of the changes, but my hope is that by showing them a better way, they will find it acceptable and easy to implement. Dragon is not perfect. But they are willing to work with modelers to improve, and they genuinely do want to release the best product and make modelers want their kits as much for brand name as for subject.
Frankly, Mannstein is speaking about things he really doesn't know about and has not been involved in. Please take any of his statements about Dragon's motivations and methods with a couple grains of salt at least.