Even if it never balanced out and the devs were just “paying out” … It’s an imaginary loss from the devs end and a very real loss if the player base decides they’ve had enough lying about troops being available when they weren’t.
They need to ask themselves just how often they want the players to be questioning if they can get anything right… because sooner or later the players will walk away.
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Alas, it turns out my RNG luck is just really that poor (no Undine or Ra this week!). Thanks to the team for going through the logs extra hard for us. I, for one, appreciate the effort to do right by the player base.
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No, they are not. They are taking every step possible to avoid giving compensation, by intentionally not informing customers they are still owed a chance to win the lottery jackpot they paid for. This isn’t about gifting 5 event keys to everybody, this is about properly recalling a seriously flawed product people were baited to buy.
This isn’t the same situation. It’s not some low relevance troop failing to show up in gold chests, it’s the main buyer incentive that went missing, without buyers being able to tell. Without Pharos Ra in chests, people WOULD NOT HAVE SPENT MONEY, some of them quite crazy amounts. They have all the data to identify those people, and yet they refuse to contact them, insisting they will only compensate those few who somehow realize they have been hoodwinked. That is seriously not okay.
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I wasn’t referring to the most recent example of the failures of Gold Chest, but i suppose that makes for a more convincing argument.
Apparently this current weeks issue of missing troops in the chests is an isolated incident and unlike any previous issues… as cyrup pmd in response to me.
I also opened a ticket to get reimbursed. Cheeky. As I did not use keys in the time frame, and they confirmed it… now it begs the question of WHY they cant just take ALL data from those first 4 hours and automatically reimburse those who DID spend… because we all know it would be the right thing to do.
The 5 keys was nothing. And yet what they SHOULD have done was included a note JUST LIKE TODAY’S GUILD WARS NOTICE that highlighted EXACTLY why they were handing out those 5 keys AND that if you had spent keys in the first 4 hours the you should contact support to get reimbursed. … you know… again the right thing. But clearly doing the right thing and making money and retaining customers aren’t always the same thing.
TL/DR
essentially if YOU didn’t catch us, were not going to come good for it. We don’t mind doing what amounts to stealing.
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Okay, Devil’s Advocate. Let’s suppose there’s a kid in my neighbourhood who likes to play Gems of War. Not excessively, his parents only allow limited computer time, he’s doing fairly well though. One of the most important troops he’s missing is Pharos Ra, which one of his luckier friends keeps bragging about. It’s an amazing game changer, given how fast that friend has managed to move ahead ever since obtaining it. Good thing there’s a special offer this week to spend pocket money on, right?
That kid won’t read this forum thread, won’t know to contact your support, won’t get that chance to pull Pharos Ra he thought he paid for. And you know exactly who that kid is, to which extent he got shortchanged and how to get in touch with him, the data is right there in your database. Convince me that you ARE doing the right thing FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS in the given situation and I’ll move on. I’ve definitely got better things to do than waste hours of my time going on a crusade against shady business practices. However, I believe in “fair”, and “thanks for the cash, perhaps we’ll keep a little less the next time we charge you incorrectly” just doesn’t qualify.
Please get your act straight and start working a real solution. This isn’t an “oops, we’ve accidently put red instead of green minors into the glory pack, feel free to ask for an exchange in case your prefer those”. You’ve messed up in a really exceptional way, which I would be very surprised to learn you are not perfectly aware of, now at least have the decency to clean up the fallout without feigning ignorance.
@Sirrian Also pinging Sirrian about this, on the remote chance he’s not yet entirely aware of the situation at hand. Luther would be ashamed.
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Here’s where I sit, tensions look kind of high.
I’m not OK that this happened. That’s a different topic.
But the compensation structure is reasonable. If you file a support ticket, you get the keys you spent back, and you get to keep the troops you got. That’s more than square, and we’ve still got time to cash in event keys for a Pharos-Ra. I got 5 event keys and I didn’t even “lose” anything, so even I’m more than square.
I understand your point re: “What about people who don’t watch the forums?” But let’s face it: those people are already getting a raw deal in so many ways. If you aren’t part of the forums in at least the context of observing, you’re not a very active part of the community. I think it’s fair to say people who aren’t watching the forums at least casually aren’t in the bucket “passionate players”.
We can have a reasonable argument about whether the devs should keep square even with players who aren’t passionate, but I don’t think that’s a productive discussion. My opinion and your opinion about what constitutes the dev’s responsibilities aren’t relevant as anything but opinions. What matters is, ultimately, their publisher’s opinion. It is a company and our best interests are not in their heart, but also they aren’t obligated to make anything square.
One can point out that since the odds of getting any given troop from a chest are not published, the devs never promised Pharos-Ra was in a chest. Thus, they never broke a promise. Very convenient! If, on the other hand, every chest published its odds, everyone would’ve had a chance to see 0% chance of Pharos-Ra. We probably would’ve pointed out that was a mistake, but we’d probably also agree anyone who spent their keys on said 0% chance deserved no compensation.
The wording about how the game data isn’t the only thing affecting chest odds tells us something else. One or more of these is true:
- The devs aren’t 100% cognizant of the ultimate odds of any given chest due to complexity.
- Sometimes the odds can be 0% for reasons other than the game data’s value, and no one is aware when or how this happens.
How exciting!
Exactly what I stated without the story but the point is the same. They don’t care though to do the right thing.
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What a ridiculous thing to say. I had no idea that the entire player base spoke English and were NECESSITATED to use a games forums to be a “part of the community” or an invested member there of …
The devs know exactly who spent what and are weaseling out of coming good for those countless folks who spent keys and gems during that time. That’s shady to see the least.
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Oh man it’s almost like there were a lot of sentences in my post and I indicated disagreement was expected! I made no shortage of admissions what we’re seeing is shady here, but “compensating the people who ask for it” is the least shady thing going on.
It’s the NOT compensating those who DON’T ask for it, and claiming 5 keys for all is adequate
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You seem to vastly overestimate how many players are accessing the forum. I don’t know the numbers myself, I’d be surprised if it’s even close to 1% of all players. For what’s it worth, I’m in a Top 10 guild, and not even half our members are aware the forum exists, despite grinding out 1k trophies each week.
Their Facebook presence is receiving far more attention, and it’s keeping amazingly quiet about the support ticket based refund approach.
Agreed, we might as well try to have a reasonable argument whether the devs should only keep square with players known to own guns and live in their neighborhood.
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This is not a reasonable argument and personally it’s not a good idea to further convince me no one who supports guns deserves to have them.
That is correct, but irrelevant. It is universally true for any game that only a minority of players seek resources outside of the game itself, whether forums or Discords or social media presences. Then only a minority of that minority interact with those resources (posting, etc.). This means that the overwhelming majority of players are “not an active part of the community” because the extent of their connection to the game is playing the game. Therefore, any mistake in-game must be proactively corrected in-game, because the majority of people affected will never know about, use, care about, and/or see external resources.
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I really just feel that them not reimbursing everyone without a ticket is a terrible business practice. … what else might they have screwed up and because someone didn’t notice… They didn’t reimburse for… you need to have your customers trust you if you want your customers to stay.
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I understand that in an ideal world they would reimbursed everyone who was affected but it would take several hours to run through every player logs. It is a really tedious process, it is not as easy as People make it seem.
And… so easier to just let the remaining 99% who didn’t file tickets believe they’re using a competent service??
I don’t care if it takes all week. They clearly need to beef up the bugs department considering how rarely bugs get fixed and how many new ones are discovered daily… They don’t get off the hook just because it would “take some time”
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Yes. You are correct. Doing the right thing will be time-consuming and tedious. It may even be difficult and annoying, too. None of that changes it being the right thing to do.
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They could add an in-game message telling to submit a ticket if you did spend keys when the bug was present. That would be better I think, because when you submit a ticket they know your account info so it’s much easier to check stuff. But seriously looking at million of account logs at random whitout first knowing who was affected or not is ridiculous.
I have no idea how there things are structured but I think they can’t launch a query like: find every player who spent event keys during this particular hour span…
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They should do the message just like the one they currently have up for something else. AND be automatically searching and doing the refund.
The onus isn’t on the customer to ensure that the SELLER is doing the right thing… It’s not like we have shopping choices.