Theres always gonna be problems with a game thats constantly evolving and changing along with its community. And i thought id just take a minute out of my day just say how much i appreciate the speed which the developers have corrected all the issues and the way the support team have handled the Kris Kringle Katastrophie. And i hope this enough of a counter to all the toxic comments that ive read. Credit where credit is due keep up the good work.
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Agreed. Kudos and thanks to all. The only thing (in my book) remaining is transparency. For me (and my guild mates), honestly this is much more important than the compensation.
Transparency on:
- what was the actual bug?
- how did it lead to thousands of account being banned incorrectly, although each ban should require at least 2 staff member to verify?
Still hopeful that we might also get these and start building a better future.
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From what ive gathered so far is that the bug was due to the automated banning system not being updated to allow treasure maps to collected at a higher rate, at worst it was a clerical oversight. But why we lost campaign tasks and tophies ect when gamers were reinstated/unbanned im not sure. Thats something no doubt there looking into and yes it would be nice to have a little more clarity.
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That was just a first guess that turned out to be false, even accounts that never obtained Krinkle got banned. Apparently the real cause is so embarrassing that it must never be talked about, like most broken things in Gems of War.
The cleanup crew did some impressive work, especially considering the timing involved.
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This still begs the questions of HOW this happened in the first place and WHY it wasn’t found in Beta testing before this troop went live.
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As much as I know the beta testers don’t get to see any new troops. It probably wouldn’t even have helped, the ban bot might actually have considered purchasing second tier Krinklemess offers (available after buying out the first tier) as hacking.
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I heard people say that they didnt have kris but that doesn’t necessarily make it so, the majority of people on this forum believe this a fact and the e mail i recieved from the devs stated it was due to kris anything beyond that is a guess, thats untill they state otherwise because i dont think they have any reason to lie .
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I agree, that the devs have responded very quickly during a time they were expecting to be on holidays.
HOWEVER, they have also repeatedly failed to respond to a string of crises and lesser issues by modifying their processes to prevent these things constantly recurring.
As something of a process expert, what I see from the observable outcomes is that Inf+2 probably don’t have a process expert. Nor a process for improving their processes!
Personally, that’s what makes it so incredibly frustrating.
If you make a mistake, admit it and learn from it. If you keep making the same mistake, change jobs.
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It’s not a guess, going by the official communication posted it can’t have been Kris. Kris was just a likely candidate, which resulted in this change on Christmas Eve:
However, bans still continued to happen for the next two days, until this information got posted:
The devs aren’t lying about anything, they are definitely dodging the question what actually got fixed though. It wasn’t anything client side, there hasn’t been any further update to the client files. Which, of course, makes a lot of community members very curious what actually caused them to get banned, and how to possibly avoid that when the ban bot goes crazy the next time.
There also hasn’t been any word yet when the spell will be reverted to grant two treasure maps again.
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Then that’s a failure of the testing system which any competent software creators should have in place.
(Although given the number of pieces of software that keep having to be patched because people are more interested in getting code out there than making sure it works properly and doesn’t have any bugs in the first place… 
)
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I wouldnt expect any patches till after the 3rd of january as theyve stated there on holiday till then.
Adding to @Fourdottwoone, I know people directly that did not have Kris and got banned so yes, it had nothing to do with Kris.
Before anyone ask, these people also don’t pvp or was farming Khaziel, so no chance to encounter Kris as enemy.
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Their article also claims that bans can happen at any time later than what someone was actually doing that led to a ban.
Maybe the bot has a 2 or 3 day delay so someone can actually check before it bans automatically.
Also just speculating.
I hope we will get some answers next week when everyone is back.
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Maybe there were several reasons for the bans, one being that they maybe have the bot report very “generously” and normally gets shut down by a human which clearly didn’t happen.
Did they play a lot in general?
Maybe the bug was that they forgot about their overreporting bot?
Well then I hope theres no sabotage involved ,because having both parts of the games that have been monetized aka the campaign pass and holiday event , going FUBAR did make think along those lines. But i guess itll all come out in the wash.
I know of three people under that condition. 2 plays like crazy, one I cannot remember but I don’t think so since she was traveling. So, again no common factor there.
Also, does this mean that anyone that is highly active should fear for their gameplay? I run the most active guild family in the game, so this is not helping with my fears and nightmares. 
I wouldn’t hope so because I’m also playing quite a bit.
Well, that was another theory I had but if it isn’t that either then I have absolutely no clue.
They managed to get a weird bug going with the GWs defense scores when they said they didn’t change anything about that. If that’s true it could still be related to Kris in some way - or to something completely different.
Unless they’ll tell us we’ll probably never know.
And THIS is the exact problem. THIS is what I have been asking for and am still asking for and I do think that there are other long-time members (many of having devoted so much time and money to the game) that are on the same ship. I appreciate and applaud the turnaround in acknowledging and fixing the bug, but for me, openness and honesty in communication are more important than anything else (e.g., compensation) at this point.
Take a look at what people are asking for compensation, other than the regular gems most: either new dragon bosses (potentially even asking for Diamantia) or vault event.
- Vault event => it will come now or later. I am in no rush to get another week. It would be nice, but would not change anything drastically.
- Diamantia => Disclaimer. I don’t have it yet. After getting 6 dragon bosses, I stopped paying for Dragonite and am waiting for enough perfect runs and Dragonite gnomes to get it in time. I am quite sure that I will get it, so it is a matter of time. Again, would be nice to have it today, but would not change anything drastically.
- Gems => even if this was a crazy amount (let’s say 10,000), I already get about 500-600 gems from tributes daily and more from events etc. I have a good gem stash and this won’t make a huge change for me either. And again, I will get this in time, too.
On the other hand:
- Transparency and assurance that I won’t get banned just because I am loving/playing the game excessively => This is priceless for me. Playing the game, constantly limiting myself (not attempting anything record-breaking) with the fear of getting the ban hammer is no fun.
That being said, I probably represent less than 1% of the players who put in more than 20% of the total gameplay time. So, I am quite certain that my play-style is not representative.
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We should get both transparency and compensation. Those things are not and should not be mutually exclusive.
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Oh agreed. I just want everyone to remember about transparency. That’s all.
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