It’s well over a week now, and the game remains broken.
Why isn’t there any communication? This actually started out quite well, we are back to radio silence mode now that the fix apparently takes even longer than worst predictions. How about some updates? Or even some in-game information that explains to all those players asking on global why they are suddenly getting their face kicked in? Word has it that it’s currently Community Week, I suspect that means the community is supposed to talk to their own hands.
Why isn’t there any indication you are fixing this with highest priority? Send out a daily compensation mail that contains 10 vault keys, along with an apology you are incredibly sorry the game still remains unplayable after such a long time. Players that return each day at least don’t outright uninstall, and it’s not like those key would really matter much after the amount that got handed out unintentionally over the last weekend.
Why isn’t anything done about event reward tiers? The AI essentially gets two moves for every one the player does, locking players out of the rewards they purchased event energy for. Cutting reward thresholds in half for all events should have been done on the very first day, when you realized it would take at least a week to fix your game. This is a server side setting, it can be done within minutes.
Why isn’t there any replacement activity? Players without a high level account are getting steamrolled in just about any game mode. Run a Battlecrasher event that drops 50 writs. Run a vault event that spawns extra gnomes. Run anything that makes players want to farm Explore tier 1. That’s currently the only game mode viable for most of your players, give them some reason to endure a little longer.
Final words, if you even remotely consider sending out 50 gems as “compensation” after this is over, after players have wasted thousands of gems and dozens of hours on game modes that turned out too broken to win, better think again fast. The backlash would be a sight to behold, even not sending out any compensation at all would be a far wiser choice here.
There has been a ton of communication. I am disappointed by the bugs of 5.6, but communication has definitely improved. The last one being only two days ago during stream. They were hoping to fix it by Tuesday (yesterday) but no guarantee. It should be fixed soon then.
They aimed for Tuesday, it is now Wednesday, only one day… Tuesday was never the worst prediction date anyway, it was a goal.
They missed their communicated goal, it happens. They missed/forgot/couldn’t care less communicating any further information past that point, which shouldn’t ever happen when dealing with an issue of this magnitude.
So, are we talking 5.6.5 here, in about two months? Or possibly in half a year, to sync this with Switch releases? Is there anything at all that we players can tell fellow guild members to get them to hang on for another day instead of just quitting and leaving a scathing game rating? Anything other than “uh, yeah, they’ll probably fix it, whenever they get around to it”?
The Known Issues article is even only listing a minor aspect of the bug, double skull damage, it doesn’t mention any of the other ways it benefits the AI. Going by how they initially “fixed” the Lycathropy crash I wouldn’t be surprised if the first patch attempt doesn’t address those at all.
I feel the communication has been good. But that is me. As @Snooj said, the last one being only two days ago during a stream. Hopefully we see a fix soon. They did what they could about this issue.
While I agree that communication during 5.6 release (including the heads up about specific bugs being released) was at an unusually good level, it does reflect their professionalism when they recurrently use the streams (often an echo chamber with a few dozen participants) to communicate information/updates that are nowhere to be found in the official forums.
It’s the wrong place, the stream has at best a few hundred viewers, and there doesn’t even seem to be a recap here on the forum. From what I’ve seen on global 99% of players are not aware of what is going on, just that the game itself has become hell to play. And they are being quite vocal about it.
It amounts to zero communication, they might as well write it on a beer coaster and pin it on their office door. They have enough tools at their disposal to communicate properly.
I agree with others that communication shouldn’t happen in the stream. There needs to be one official place accessible for all. Make it the forums, or twitter, or wherever they want. Just have one.
Then, critical news should be in game too.
That said, I still don’t see much of a communication issue regarding the 5.6 fix. If this post was made next week after radio silence, then sure. Otherwise, claiming no communication when it isn’t even 24 hours after their goal (not even a guarantee) is a bit much imo. The only thing they could say is “Sorry we missed Tuesday which was always an estimate anyway. Fix is coming soon!!”
When I first saw @Jeto comment about Tuesday, I thought oh no, Jeto’s about to realize why Salty doesn’t post estimates.
Jeto has been rocking forum communications thus far: hopefully s/he will steer clear from the radio silence approach that has documentedly consistently negatively impacted the company’s image and their customers’ satisfaction.
There certainly is a communication issue here. We still don’t even know if the bug has been fixed, a WEEK after it was released. The last news was that they were “testing” the fix. App certification can take up to another 48 hours.
At this point they really should be providing daily updates for us for accountability sake. As I said in the official thread I feel like I’m putting in more time to this game than the devs are.
Disagree, the thing they should have said right away is “Sorry we missed Tuesday, our new plans are [estimation]”. It’s perfectly okay to miss an estimation, but you need to keep talking whenever it happens.
I hope she also realizes that the issues isn’t estimates, it’s how missed estimates get handled.
I do think that communication has been BETTER recently. That doesn’t make it GOOD, that doesn’t mean this bug should have made it to live in the first place, but it’s a step in the right direction, and I do think that should be noted. We can absolutely ask for things we’d like further improved, but, as stated by devs numerous times, hearing only negative feedback no matter what they do can be crushing and make them ignore feedback and stop relaying information (which happened a while back).
I would of course love to get an update about where the fix is at currently. I’m hoping it’s being verified by app stores and will be out today or tomorrow.
