JesseNight

I remember BL felt difficult at first, but there's plenty of Youtube videos clearly explaining and showing how to make the best use of it. Both for buyers and sellers. My main annoyance as a buyer isn't BL's fault and could happen on any platform... It's when sellers lure buyers with fair prices on very specific parts, then charge tenfold or even more on worthless common parts. I've seen some charge as much as $15 for a part that goes for 0.10 or even less. Sure it's smart business, praying on those who don't wanna invest the extra hours in checking their entire order, researching prices, and setting max prices on every single part in Wanted Lists. BL even marks items in stores these days if they're priced high above the average. Oh and don't get me going about very cheap stores that charge insane handling costs per lot. I praise BL for having functionality to deal with these things. Like setting max prices we want to spend on items, or blacklisting stores. It's not perfect, but I don't know of any other platform doing it better at this moment. In the end, it takes patience and effort to get good deals. Whether that's worth it, is for everyone to decide for themselves.

Good points @MAB. I agree on the first part, I only watch reviews that go over the highlights and quality of a set but not full building videos unless I'm not buying it and am interested in something specific. Also we live in very different times now. When we were kids, we were taught to enjoy the journey of building something. There was no competition. Sure maybe someone in the street or among your friends had the same set but still, we'd take our time building it. Now it's all very competitive. People just want results, don't care about the journey anymore bc it's a race to be the first showing it off on Youtube, and everybody dreams of getting enough clicks to make enough money to live off our hobby, or gain enough popularity to catch LEGO's attention to get stuff early and for free. I wonder how many (of younger generations) still truly enjoy the building experience itself. Without distractions or watching videos on the side lol.

Yeah that is true, that's one reason why I usually specifically search for small reviews from hobbyists rather than the big channels. The main reason being that I trust those reviews more to be 100% unbiased (no offense).

I don't think there's any set out there without reviews in existence. If a potential buyer is impatient and wants it on day 1, it's on them. If they want to know if the set is good before making an informed purchase, a little bit of patience is all it takes. Let's not even mention how much money it can save as well.

I wonder if that's true. Many competitors are specialized in very few themes. LEGO has many printed parts over all their themes, from all sorts of control panel slopes and tiles to various logos or simple grills. Some are so common, it's easy to forget about them. Without exact numbers it's hard to judge.

@BananaBoy1703 Assuming you mean the black "thing" underneath the gray pin with bush, probably a misprint. It isn't there in the digital version: If you meant the action being displayed here, that's a pretty normal one.

The Ackermann mod people use on these models is quite a simple mod. Adding more obvious functional stuff like HOG controls or height adjustment can get more complex depending on the available space to add more linkages throughout the model. I'm not sure why they've given up on at least HOG steering (with removable wheel like many MOCs do). I think in the end it comes down a lot what choices are made between functionality and accuracy to the real car. These shifters behind the steering wheel are hard to reach but somewhat realistic towards representing functional paddle shifters. Some brands opted for more easily accessible shift buttons for greater playability, at the expense of realism. In the end it's usually the MOCs that give us the best of both worlds

@Fabulous Fox It's quite subtle, yes. Obviously tire wear isn't a factor we'd worry about, so I think it's just added as a technical feature... because we can

Could be partially glued, skipping the moving parts. I remember that being the case with sets I saw in my childhood at a toy store owned by people we knew. Doors would open, trains would drive, but entire structural sections were glued together. I'm finding it hard to believe people can just play around with sets while being able to steal small parts of it that might go unnoticed at first glance. In LEGO stores here they are stored behind glass, we can't even touch them. I'm a big fan of removable HOG that we often see on MOCs, like you just stick in the wheel with axle whenever wanting to use it and remove it while the model is sitting on a shelf. Why? Ackermann has nothing to do with the limits of your steering, only with the inner wheel steering sharper than the outer wheel to make all wheels roll around the same center point, causing smoother turning and reducing tire wear: [Edit] And yes, LEGO models are a bit limited when it comes to the space available for wheel turning, unless they'd reduce the wheel size which obviously would make the model look less good (and less realistic).

Are they actually built by store employees? I remember decades ago they were delivered glued together, to prevent stores from selling a demo model (which was forbidden) and to prevent parts coming off (or people taking them). I'd be surprised if that has changed over the years. I've seen plenty reviewers put such disclaimers actually, saying clearly if a cheaper set is not premium quality, but good value for the money. So far (almost?) every supercar of the last decade had mods like Ackermann steering, HOG steering, HOG shifting, improved gearbox, improved feats like spoiler control available for free (search for "Pimp my ..." mods by jb70 on Rebrickable, or the mod topics here. Many MOCs have shown that height adjustable suspension is also very doable. Personally I really hate there's no HOG steering anymore, that used to be a standard feat in the old times on every Technic model where the regular steering wheel was hard to reach. It's accurate though for these models and that's what they went for I do agree it'd be nice to see that on a future car.

I don't mind flaws with new experimental designs (like ghost mode maybe opening the doors only 95%), but I do mind flaws that were proven by either LEGO itself in the past or by competitors to be completely unnecessary... because they either haven't learned from past mistakes or refuse to listen to feedback (like color vomit and inconsistencies, parts quality). Can't blame people to expect premium quality for a premium price, right? Also I see a lot of different opinions about how well ghost mode works so it may come down to our own building, much like how smoothly gearboxes work.

Probably true. That can also be why ghost mode didn't work as smoothly, not everybody handles these models carefully. LEGO's price is a lot higher than competitors, seems only fair that our expectations are too.

Yeah this isn't gonna replace our daily job We can't forget that the people buying the instructions still need to get parts too. I've seen cases where the cost goes up far beyond even LEGO's own premium models, that's where it'll become too crazy for me.

The problem with that (as a buyer) is that unless you know a seller or they have a reputation, there's no way of telling whether or not that kinda effort was actually put into the instructions. There are some who just run it through the instruction builder and without even opening it put it up for sale, some even for premium prices. So taking care as a buyer is a must, and as a new seller it's probably best to start small to build reputation first.

The doors can still be opened with their own levers left and right, and that seems to work better. I was starting to like the model more and more... but seeing it in full light now, the color vomit from various pins and axles is even worse than I thought. On a black model that's just the worst. Bright colors draw attention away from dark colors, it's a proven scientific fact. @R0Sch So there's even color inconsistency in the blacks? That's a real shame. I don't mind if it's just a pin or an axle, but all panels should definitely look the same on such a model.