agreed. I ordered a NK65 Milkshake for one of my daughters and building another NK65 Frost for my youngest with GMK Peachblossom. They better be cute. =D
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Every 40% is cute IMO
also GMK Peachblossom is one of my favorite sets second only to… 
Handarbeit
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that set is a masterpiece
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I want it so much but I don’t want to spend $500 on it even more.
I guess that would be my pet peeve.
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My latest pet peeve - Mod colored spacebars! No, just no. Spacebars should colored with the alphas or an accent color distinct from the mods.
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Oops. I didn’t know that was irreverent 
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And not pay 90 EUR for Olivia++ spacebars on mm?
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low-contrast legends on keycaps. i might as well buy epbt blanks if people keep pushing out barely-legible keysets. idk if there’s visually impaired mech keeb enthusiasts, but some of these keysets would def not pass accessibility/visual standards with regards to contrast
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-
Meme keycaps sets
C’mon, you’re clogging up manufacturers production lines. -
This one might be controversial - most keycap designers are in fact not that.
Looks like everyone and their mother is throwing together some random colorways and “look, I “designed” a new keycaps set” -
Obsessing over weight designs
Do you flip over your keyboard daily, enjoying intricate weight design? -
Keyboards with badges, logos, signatures etc on the top of the case.
Why would I pay for that? Nothing is that special.
If you want your product to stand out, maybe do a really nice case design instead… -
Knobs.
Just why?
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I an behind basically everything you wrote.
On the keycap side right now I am literally into buying only one GMK set - Civilizations.
Since I’m in this hobby, there have been a few truly original keycap sets which are not recycling same principles over different color wave without any further added value. Civilizations is not even in that group because it’s as plain as possible set; but it matches really well few of mine white boards with brass plates.
I am likely missing some keycap sets which were truly unique and original, but these are the ones I can think of since I’m in this hobby: Wraith (mainly KAM), Cool Kids, Dots, slightly more toned down but despite having inspiration still original 2048, Milkshake (many of you will notice the pattern but tbh @biip is one of the if not single most original keycap designer). Trend of “IDE” keycap sets like Monokai was also refreshing take. Matt3o did a great job establishing completely new double shot hight profile keycap type (MT3 ABS), and that is not any less of achievement because of Dorp’s production quality issues.
There are few exceptional colorways like Olivia (good example here of “why the heck” is existence of Cafe which looks like more masculine Olivia basically) and Civilizations, and in my personal opinion sets which did the best they could with limited tooling options of GMK (like Noire, which I didn’t buy only because I don’t like dark ABS sets due to shine, can’t wait for it in the possible next take where it might come with light variant).
Looking at the incoming section on mechgroupbuys.com most of the keycaps are “meh”. Notable exceptions are Gateway which is doing something original with duotone symbols, and Matcha Mocha which I personally don’t like at all but is doing kinda brave thing with colors there. Like, this is a personal opinion, but most of the keycaps today don’t warrant for the whole group buy FOMO and long delivery times.
This hobby will grow out of infancy when (and if) countless recolored swtiches and keycap colorway variations which would take someone with knowledge and talent in design take less than 2 weeks to design stop being a big group buy deals and become simply new in-stock items for a while; and when group buys will be reserved for something really special.
4 Likes
I share your opinions for the most part, and I realize that pet peeves aren’t really able to be contested or scrutinized, but I like to play Devil’s advocate. We need to be careful when we question the legitimacy of a set and their designer. Even if a set creator seems to be a fly by night operation, we must remember that the community’s prolific designers all started somewhere, and those colorways could have seemed random at the time. If there is a market for meme sets, then they should have a fair shake at production. In fact many people who would buy a meme set or one considered too flashy may think that the myriad muted or grayscale sets are boring, uninspired, and are clogging up the production line for the more unique and exciting sets. We can’t be the arbiters of good design, and it’s dangerous to put a gatekeeping strategy in place as we might find ourselves on the outside these days. The market will level out after this initial influx of patronage that we’ve seen in the past year or so, and I’m confident that the most talented designs and designers will float to the top regardless of how big the ocean gets.
All that being said, I too hate that a GMK set now takes 12 to 18 months to deliver, that set IC’s (and GB’s for that matter) are now a dime a dozen, and I worry about what the massive increase in volume is doing to the quality of the products we’ve come to trust. If manufactures can get through these growing pains while maintaining their traditional quality, then we may end up with a very diverse and lively market – a little something for everyone.
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I’m in the weird boat that is both “I don’t like meme sets” (please keep doing them, though, I just don’t want them) and “Do we really need to run another neutral set” which I guess just means I’m old and gay (fair, got me)
I think we’re reaching the point where either the community needs to work with GMK to increase their production capabilities or we need to take them off the shortlist of preferred manus (a frustrating and difficult prospect, in that when GMK does good work they do exceedingly good work and I think most of us can recognize that regardless of whether their keycaps are our favorite profile/material). The hobby’s demand has grown way beyond what their existing production line seems to be able to handle alongside the rest of their business.
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I think @fatalruin addressed why this isn’t really a functional philosophy for the community
I too hope that GMK will one day be in stock, but I’m not sure how realistic this is, I’m no Uniqey rep but I think we’ve provided a pretty good business model to them, they assume 0% up front risk, and presell 100% of their production to vendors. Unless SP decided to invest the Hundreds of thousands of dollars it would cost to make molds that are less DCS and more cherry profile, and then also produce a number of standard colorways.
Then you get to the issue of who gets to design those sets? Do you still run interest checks? How do you calculate what perecentage of people who respond to the interest check will actually buy the set when it goes live in 9-12 months? Would the company charge designers to work with them? or only work with desginers who’ve run successful groupbuys? Would this increase the price?
My point is, I also hate the groupbuy system, I’ve been in the community for almost 2 years now and I still haven’t joined a single one, but given the financial incentives for keeping things the same, I think they aren’t going anywhere
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GMK keycaps are in stock with few vendors, who typically decided to hold one or few “proprietary” keycaps in stock with them as a special offering.
CandyKeys has German WoB, Dorp has ANSI WoB and Samurai, Originative has Penumbra. Some of these might be out of stock at the moment, but are typically in-stock offerings of these vendors. Why we don’t have more “in stock” offering from vendors is mostly because none of these vendors are big enough to buy off from GMK singlehandedly year-worth of keycaps stock and hold it in the warehouse until it sells. Oblotzky and likely some other vendors offset that well for some popular sets by buying more extras but it still comes down to money and logistics they have available. If there was big vendors in this hobby which would be able to buy sets to have them in-stock, GMK would also up their game and produce them (with obvious issue that it can’t happen overnight).
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Fair points, and I just saw that r/mk passed 800,000 recently, perhaps in 2022 we will see a Novelkeys entry edition kitted with a GMK set
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Not sure how unusual of a pet peeve it is in the keyboard hobby, but for me its costar stabilizers. Man I hate those things. Theyre unbelievably rattly and are a pain to install when swapping keycaps.
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Yup they’re the worst
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Way to get us back on thread topic! (Still love the lively convos in here tho)
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Until I get around to looking into good USB-C cables, the dearth thereof is my biggest/unusual pet peeve. (Here, ‘good’ refers to cable quality, looks, and keyboard compatibility).
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All is under control until you have to mount friggin’ ISO Enter on the costar stabs.
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