legotownlinz

That's why I wrote Creator Expert and not Creator. If the departments had talked to each other, the could have agreed on one Creator Expert ship and the Pirate Bay. But they didn't plan it properly, ending up with disappointed fans of the fan design and two ships that compete with each other. It would not have been necessary to increase the number of sets to come up with a much better result. Besides that I doubt that Lego is limited by how many sets they can make. I would even say that they have to grow the number of sets in the AFOL market rather quickly if they don't want to loose market share to the Chinese competition, European companies that make AFOL sets using Chinese bricks (e.g. BlueBrixx) and Cobi.

From a business point of view, having two sets means more profit and would have made everybody happy. The Pirate Bay, moderately improved, as Ideas set and the ship as Creator Expert set. But then somebody had the smart idea to do a ship wreck that can be turned into a ship and this idea won over the much more reasonable approach to do two sets.

Agreed. It's appreciated that Lego listened to fans and gave us a classic pirates set. The Ideas team took the liberty to make a product that only remotely resembles the fan design to make this wish come true, at the price of disappointing all fans that supported the Pirate Bay because of the unique look & feel. What could that mean for future sets, for example the Medieval Blacksmith? Fans are calling for castle sets. Might Lego use the release of a medieval Ideas set to bring back the classic castle theme? Maybe with a yellow color scheme like in set 375 (Classic Yellow Castle)? The Medieval Blacksmith uses muted colors to create the atmosphere the fans were voting for. This should not be changed and should have not been changed for the Pirate Bay. Sometimes Lego does it right (Old Fishing Store), sometimes they do it just barely right (Treehouse) and sometimes its a disaster (Pirate Bay). What will be next?

I think the original idea had enough contrast despite it being mostly brown. I would even say that the contrast in the final set is too high with lots of black but also white and colorful parts. I'm really looking forward to see the set in the store. I suspect that it looks better in real life than on the image. On the image, all layers blend together to a messy mishmash, while stereopsis will allow to separately perceive and enjoy the layers of the real model. The images lack the depth that the model certainly has.

Unfortunately it is not the same. The original idea has some very clear parallel straight lines (the edges of the buildings) that guide the eyes. Although it shows a messy island, it nevertheless has a very tidy look. This tidiness is completely gone in the final set. That's a difference that matters for me besides the color scheme. Did you notice that Apocalypseburg also has several dominant lines and clearly separated sandgreen and grey areas that give a tidy composition, despite the scene being chaotic? The final pirate bay is lacking such a well-thought-out composition. Regarding colors, it would be ok if Lego had just brightened it up a bit as they did with the treehouse set. But they introduced a new color scheme with lots of yellow and some red that was not there in the original idea and imho makes a huge difference regarding the overall look. The azur water plates and the hugh tan sand pieces are a letdown, it is obvious they cut down the number of parts there to maximize the profit.

The water is not a highlight either. I got eye cancer even from looking at the images. I hoped for tiles like in Ninjago City or City Docks. At least no color scheme that could originate from a Friends set.

But the Tree House kept the original submission along general lines. There is still a huge tree and three cabins. The color changes were significant, also the details, but it was immediately recognizable as the tree house that was submitted to ideas. Don't understand me wrong, the Pirates of Barracuda Bay is an excellent set and I like it quite a bit. But it shouldn't have been released as an Ideas set. Can Bricky_Brick say that he designed this set? No, Milan Madge designed it and that's a shame. He kept virtually nothing of Bricky_Brick's design.

If that is true, three sentences of textual description would be sufficient. No need for an actual Lego build then. It must be frustrating for designers that spent so many time on their ideas, optimized it, submitted several updates, just to find out that Lego did something completely different. Imho, that's disrespectful. If they want to do somthing different, they should just reject the submission and release a product outside Ideas.

Nobody expected it to be identical to the submission. But I hoped that it keeps the spirit, but it doesn't. That where all the frustration comes from. If Pirates of Barracuda Bay had been released as ordinary set in the 2020 HY2 catalog, everybody would be excited. But as an Ideas set it is a failure.

Lego gave us an excellent pirate ship. But I still do not get what it has do to with the Ideas submission. Different idea, different style, different parts, different details. The similarity is 0%. Why are there so many rules for Ideas submission? You could submit anything, no matter how many parts, how many of the molds still exist, ... Nothing matters, because what you get is completely different to the original submission. This is certainly a great day for all the classic pirates fans. But it ruined Ideas. It makes no sense to study any Ideas submission in details any longer. You won't get what you voted for anyway. You like trains? Vote for any train, no matter how bad it is, what you get is different. You like cars? Vote for any car, not matter how crappy the submission is, you get something 'improved' anyway. Just support anything. Doesn't matter.

This set will appeal to different people than those who voted for the idea.

Another nice improvement would be moving some of the ship wrecks or parts of the buildings out of the 90° angle to get a more dynamic look.

Decorated rock pieces look better than a raised base plates and a brick-build foundation looks even better. My guess is that Lego gets rid of all the base plates, including the blue water plates and creates a non-rectangular brick-built base instead, like in the Tree House or or the Apocalypseburg set. Many studs on the blue base plates of the original design are unused. By reducing the size of the water area it might be possible that trans-blue 1x2 tiles for the water are used, like in Ninjago City.

BURPs?

I bet the base plate will be replaced by a brick-built foundation. Lego did not produce deep-drawn base plates for a long time.

Moulds wear out. If the parts do not meet the quality specifications anymore, the mould is destroyed to prevent that somebody else reuses it to produce low quality parts.

Could it be a Ninjago monorail? The Ninjago City Docks instruction included the following illustration:

Ordered it together with the bookshop, too.

At Smith Toys (former Toysrus) I saw piles of train sets, more sets than of most other themes. They wouldn't have so many train sets on stock if they don't sell well.

I agree that many trains on shelves don't make sense. But the number of sets would not change if the products are changed e.g. every two instead of four years. It's my understanding that new products sell better and Lego seems to believe that as well for all other themes except trains.

I wonder why it takes four years to release new City trains. Products of any other theme chance more frequently, why not trains?

Latest news can be founds at https://www.fxbricks.com/fxblog/ The double straight might be released in 2020, but it will take years to complete the entrie track system. Lego still sets the standards in the brick world and they decided to use plastic tracks. Which imho was a good decision when taking a look at the hugh number of third party tracks elements currently available from BrickTracks, TrxiBrix and 4DBrix. And all of them can be combined! You certainly don't want to miss these nice switches and crossings. It either takes months or years for these elements to be available from FXBricks or they won't be available at all. What's really needed is an automatic recharging system for pro users. It could be based on metal tracks that are used for the station tracks. Metal rail switches would not be required in such system. Power pickups and rechargable PoweredUp hubs are the parts that are really missing and should be the focus of FXBricks.

My guess: It is eight studs wide because the designer didn't care and nobody else at Lego is passionate enough about trains to stop him making a train that doesn't go well with all the other trains. It's just ignorance and indifference but certainly no evidence for future eight-wide trains.

This is an option for flat layouts only. It lacks two degrees of freedom.

Has anybody tried to shrink at least the cars to 6-7 wide?