As Requested by a Dev: A Thread about Devs' Actions/Inactions

In being blindsided by the same mistake they’ve made in the past (see Guild Guardians being released in Gold Chests), this company is setting a new precedent: if they ever mess up Mythic Release week, and you pull a different mythic from a chest than the one being released, they’ll take it away and generously give you less than 1/50 of a mythic in RNG…

…and when you tell them that what they’re doing is wrong, they’ll proceed to tell you that you do not understand how generous they are being. (see above quoted comments by a dev)

Adjust you expectation$ accordingly
:relaxed: :vulcan_salute:

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I don’t care how it happened, frankly.

People using keys pulled a mythic. They got lucky.

It’s not their fault that you gave them the wrong mythic.

By all means, take away the mythic that they shouldn’t have been able to get, but they should get a random mythic from the pool in it’s place. Not a couple of keys, and the chance to get lucky again.

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Remember Wardengate in LGoH? Déjà vu… :sweat_smile:

Even IF somebody up the ladder is looking into sorting this, their current silence and initial knee-jerk decision, paired with the way it was conveyed by a Dev that has historically conveyed messages in a similar tone, is something that will hopefully be set in stone in our memories (some of us, at least) in every future interaction with this company.
:pray::relaxed: :vulcan_salute:

So is any of this information checked by people in a higher ranking position at the company? Is the point here to just complain and have nothing done?

It appears to me that the level of professionalism displayed by the community managers here go completely unchecked and are apparently able to do and say whatever they want. The Dev team makes yet another mistake and the community is understandably outraged.

In the event of this mythic situation. A troop or set of troops were pulled that wasn’t supposed to be there. The solution? Take away a 0.11% (based off event keys) chance that was successfully rolled and give them two separate 1% chances to try again. Community is outraged again as to be expected from such a terribly insulting solution.

What does the community manager do? Say we are lucky to get what we did? Tell people that they don’t understand how the loot drops work completely out of context?

How about issuing a global apology for making yet another mistake and give the compensation these people deserve - another mythic roll. Seriously can you imagine how that feels for people? Do you not think about how this type of behavior makes you look? The excitement of winning a mythic roll just to get it taken away at no fault of theirs, then to have to gall to say this was a generous compensation? How disingenuous.

I wasn’t even affected by this and I am completely disgusted. I’m sure nothing will be done and they will continue carrying along as if they are right and we don’t know what we are talking about as usual.

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In regards to Kafka’s comments about the keys:

She is the 1 passing the information on, the messenger if you will.

The decision to give 2 VIP Keys, DID come from someone higher than her. How do I know?

Having a go at her because of something she has literally 0 control over, is like going into Walmart and abusing the staff cause head office said you have to wear a mask now. Its pointless and makes you look like an idiot.

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As stated above, the exacerbation of the situation caused by the poor decision comes from the way the message was delivered, which has numerous historical precedents… e.g. See a few comments above:

the same dismissive tone (customer doesn’t get it, customer is wrong…) was also used recently in a report by @Neritar
Manticore Protector not in the Glory chests 4 weeks after release

It is well documented throughout these forums: being a community manager requires modulating the message, and the lack thereof is what is being highlighted in the comment above.
:relaxed: :vulcan_salute:

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I’m sure she’s not the one making these decisions, but you’re right some people may think she is. My outrage, and I’m sure many others, like @AMT stated is how the messages are delivered. If someone is telling these community managers to behave this way then there really is no hope or reason to voice opinions here.

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Just a quick update on the wrong mythic being pulled situation…

I mentioned this on Stream, and said I’d reiterate on the forums. We sent out 2 VIP keys per incorrect pull. On top of this, the handful of players that did get the new mythic incorrectly will have a random mythic sent to them. We sent the 2 keys out ASAP, then waited until more people were online today to continue discussing the compensation. That means these players get the keys already mailed, and a new random mythic troop to replace the one that was removed.

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Thank you, sincerely. I can only speak for myself, but this completely resolves the issue in my mind, and in as fair a manner as possible.

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This puts the Mythic issue at rest.

What happened must however not be forgotten by any of the parties.
:crossed_fingers: :relaxed: :vulcan_salute:

Some of the blame for this is now put back on the players, who (from what I’ve seen) are tripping over themselves to buy $10 battlepasses.

The company is to blame for the excessive psychological manipulation, but the players are the ones rewarding the behavior.

A new era of GoW is dawning with this action. Two monetization patches in a row, rewarded by a LOT of money from players, is sending the message that players are willing to overlook a lot of really bad behavior if the perceived value of a purchase is significant enough.

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I fully agree that the playerbase is allowing (and some apologist behaviours are even enabling it) this evolution: regrettably, new players will continue to inflow to keep the wind on this ship’s sails, who will never know what this game’s philosophy used to be which made it stand out from other ‘pay to reduce grind’ match-3 games.
:sweat_smile: :vulcan_salute:

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Thank you for doing the right thing. I hope you can understand and see the frustration from the community. The initial response lead us to believe that the two VIP keys were the only compensation, and that was being “generous”.

I also hope that this issue as well as others in the future can be handled and addressed more professionally. This “we’re right and you guys are always wrong” mentality is not how the community should be addressed from professionals, and is not how game development should always function.

There should always be a mutual understanding and effort to make sure that concerns from the community are not only being understood, but handled compassionately. Unfortunately you and your team doesn’t always get that level of respect from everyone, but as community managers and game Devs this should always be unwavered.

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I do remember Wardengate, and that was also the first thing I thought of when I read about the handling of this situation.

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Thank you for fixing the situation with campaign troops.

I agree, BUT… This issue shouldn’t need to be dragged THIS long. I can accept that, to some extent, communication and decision making among the team is handicaped due the pandemic and all.

Still I would honestly like to see the players keeping their new mythics and legendaries JUST LIKE it happened before with the new guardians pulled from gold chests.

The devs screw the players once, twice, thrice and so on and we are always playing the clows in this slapstick circus…

“Oh you didn’t cheated with gold keys to get the new guardians? Here is a :fu: for you! We will let everyone keep theirs.”

“Oh you pulled the new troops that weren’t supposed to be in the chests? Here is two vip keys and a :fu: for you!”

"Hey guys/girls/non-binary people, we will now properly address the issue and that has NOTHING TO DO with all the pressure and complaints. :slight_smile: "

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In our defense, I do think fixing the issue and coming to a reasonable conclusion within 24 hours is a decent time frame.

However, I do apologise to you all that I didn’t let you know prior to our decision that we were still discussing what we wanted to do. I did this because I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, and I wasn’t sure what form the compensation would take.

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It is better late than never. I think perhaps moving forward, there should either be more QA testing, or a standard backup plan for compensation.

It probably should be standard to either:

A) Give a random or even unowned troop (if possible) of the same rarity.

B) Give an equal amount of soulforge crafting materials.

It has to be understood the communication error of not only making it seem the 2 VIP keys were the only compensation, but generous was a snafu.

If QA can’t improve to catch these constant, reoccurring bugs and issues, then the customer support could use better bedside manner and timing.

“We had an error in the weekly reset where X was available to pull in chests and was not supposed to be available yet. As a result, we have removed it from the given player collections, gave out a small reward apology, and are working on a replacement for the mishap of the affected players. Please contact us if you were an affected player.”

Compared to:

One edit for saying that the missing mythic pull would be replaced properly goes a long way. As it was worded, the keys were the compensation or at least the only significant compensation.

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Okay, so… just reread both statements about a dozen times:

here and here

Now, I could sit here and write a literal essay picking these apart line by line to back up why the initial statement was reacted to as it was, but I think I’ll save everyone the trouble. There were multiple opportunities given to clarify or add to the initial statement (see the post immediately following the first one, for example, and the response to that one), which were just to dig in to the initial position and post information about troop drops.

There are basically only two logical ways to reconcile both these statements. Lets not make this personal, since I’ve seen this situation crop up more than once with different actors in different parts, so to speak, so lets just say:

  1. The initial statement was made in error and was a misunderstanding on the part of the person that communicated it, with the actual “official stance” being different than what was communicated and the second statement was a clarification of such
  2. The initial statement was intended to be the official position and the second statement marked a change in position, while brushing it off as a misunderstanding, effectively throwing the person who made the first statement under the bus while deflecting some blame onto the readers of the statement for not understanding it.

(To be clear, this was not the case of us misunderstanding what was to happen and overreacting. There is very clear language to why it was interpreted the way it was.)

So, lets briefly go over why each of these is bad.

The first scenario is bad because the statement was communicated by dev while using “certain” language. Devs communicating information on the forums speak from, by default unless otherwise proven wrong (and the burden of proof is very high here) with absolute authority on a subject. There was nothing to contradict said authority in this situation. It is understandable to want to get a statement out there, but if a situation is uncertain to the dev communicating it, you need to use uncertain language. “I think”, “I believe”, “we are discussing it”, “I will check with the team” (but actually do and actually follow up) are good ones here. If you are speaking from a position of absolute authority with no way to contradict what you are saying and you also speak with absolute certainty, what you are communicating is going to be taken as fact and reacted to as such. If you are then later contradicted, this erodes player trust.

The second scenario is bad for a number of reasons. In this scenario, remember, it wasn’t the course of action that we were already on, it was damage control, which makes the second statement disingenuous. While landing on the “correct” solution is nice, as has been stated, this should have been the default. It also means to deflect blame on this “misunderstanding” by implying that we should have somehow taken the meaning that the stated compensation was not meant to be final from the initial statement which overtly stating “once the compensation finishes rolling out the matter will be considered closed” and “this is the final compensation for the issue”. The second statement also directly contradicts the first one by stating “We sent the 2 keys out ASAP, then waited until more people were online today to continue discussing the compensation” which is the opposite of “this is the final compensation for the issue”. Even though we landed where we were supposed to, it still feels like we are not getting told the truth. This erodes player trust.

Hindsight really is 20/20 here, but even if this followed the same progression with different things communicated we should have had:

  1. Troops are removed and compensation discussion begins internally. It is posted on the forums compensation is being discussed at the time this happens, no compensation is sent out yet since apparently you need a day to discuss what it should be and you don’t want to give anybody the wrong impression
  2. After discussion (and maybe feedback on the forums), and we land on the correct solution of just replacing the removed troops with random troops in the same rarity (the same thing that happened with similar errors in the past)
  3. Since this was a hot-button issue and an example of the same error being made countless times and the fact that it took a day to receive any compensation, send out the 2 VIP keys per incorrect pull to smooth things over.

(Had we somehow ended on 2 VIP keys per incorrect pull as the final compensation, we’d be back in the same situation we find ourselves in now, so this assumes the decision to do the right thing was not just outrage based but rather “needed time to discuss” per the second statement)

We’d have ended in the exact same place, same “cost” to you, with a much higher satisfaction ratio. Right now I still feel icky over the whole situation and likely will for a while, just like every other time something similar had happened, even though we got an objectively favorable outcome. It makes it feel not good to engage with positive discussions on the forums, to even slightly annoyed I am reminded of this whole debacle (and by proxy, all the past ones) when I get a notification. And I can’t be the only one here.

This article isn’t completely applicable here because of the nature of the service being provided, but it still provides some salient points to the matter at hand:

Please do better.

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This. Very much this.

For a company that is so focused on monetisation, it is amazing that they still do not realize how much money they are losing when staff, who may excel in certain duties but who do not necessarily have the required soft skills to interact with customers (as abundantly documented), are allowed to taint the company’s image through recurrent faux-pas.

Before the Dev Tracker tab mysteriously disappeared from my tabs yesterday, it showed that Sirrian hasn’t logged on in a couple of months, so some additional supervision may be advisable, moving forward.

:face_with_monocle: :crossed_fingers: :vulcan_salute:

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