Your response is much appreciated. As I mentioned in my post, I believe clear communication is essential so that players can make informed decisions about the use of resources. It will also remove the appearance of unequal responses from customer service. To that end, I hope you will provide a clear answer to the following question:
Under what circumstances does customer service offer to provide the voyage exclusive crew for no charge and under what circumstances does customer service offer the voyage exclude crew for 1500 dilithium?
Thank you for your time providing clarity to this matter.
@Shan
"That does not diminish the fact that it is an inconvenience and provides a negative gameplay experience."
Thank you for responding. It is greatly appreciated, and yes, you are correct; encountering this bug is frustrating and does provide for a negative gameplay experience. And until the bug is fixed your "gold standard" for mitigating that frustration is customer service / customer care. Consistent, equitable, customer care. And your measuring stick for success in mitigating that frustration is the customers experience. (Not the developers intentions.) "We judge others by their actions while judging ourselves by our intentions." Stephen Covey.
This bug is not the customers fault. It may not be the developers fault, but it IS the developers responsibility. The customer should not suffer or sacrifice ... ever ... for this glitch. Even if it means that some bad actors occasionally slip through the cracks. That just serves as more incentive to fix it. This is basic customer care 101.
Captain Rosewater posed an excellent question that could go a long way with helping many STT customers understand the process for handling this issue moving forward. I genuinely hope you will take the time to answer:
"Under what circumstances does customer service offer to provide the voyage exclusive crew for no charge and under what circumstances does customer service offer the voyage exclude crew for 1500 dilithium?"
Thank you in advance for taking the time to consider all these points of view that provides the developers insight into how the customer is interpreting all of this.
A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
There is no new policy regarding Voyage tickets, this has been in place for quite some time.
This is not done to "monetize" the issue, it is an attempt to provide a solution for a specific scenario, while preventing abuse in making PS requests a gateway for obtaining Voyage exclusive crew.
Encountering the bug while trying to collect Voyage exclusive crew is frustrating, it does not happen each time, and there is the option to try again. That does not diminish the fact that it is an inconvenience and provides a negative gameplay experience.
I do not have an update regarding a potential fix, I will continue to bring it up.
The 3 part crew are really bad, all of them. From my pov people might abuse this bug back and forth if they had the nerves to do so. I will rather wait for this soonish(TM) moment when this bug will be fixed to obtain the two crew I do not have and immediately freeze them to never be seen again.
This 1500 dil solution sounds like fixing a scratch with a full body cast.
Wir, die Mirror Tribbles [MiT] haben freie Plätze zu vergeben. Kein Zwang und kein Stress, dafür aber Spaß, Discord und eine nette, hilfsbereite Gemeinschaft, incl. voll ausgebauter Starbase und täglich 700 ISM.
There is no new policy regarding Voyage tickets, this has been in place for quite some time.
This is not done to "monetize" the issue, it is an attempt to provide a solution for a specific scenario, while preventing abuse in making PS requests a gateway for obtaining Voyage exclusive crew.
Encountering the bug while trying to collect Voyage exclusive crew is frustrating, it does not happen each time, and there is the option to try again. That does not diminish the fact that it is an inconvenience and provides a negative gameplay experience.
I do not have an update regarding a potential fix, I will continue to bring it up.
Shan this issue can only be abused because TP has not solved it. A person's voyage getting stuck is not under that person's control. The only way this could be abused if one could purposely get their voyage stuck. (Though now I know that people can just claim they had crew which they did not have, so this is most likely the abuse you are talking about)
All rewards collected on the voyage when it got stuck should be given to the player. All dil. and voyage tokens spent to extend voyage should be reimbursed or the voyage exclusive crew they were trying for but did not get yet should be given to them.
If there is no way of knowing what rewards a player had, then some set rewards for a voyage of that length should be given. Usually we players no something on the voyage we had usually crew. But this does have the possibility of abuse if we have no screenshots, or if the voyage failed, because of hitting that abandoned button when we think we are refueling. But this should be on your end determining how many requests with no screenshots you should allow before saying no screenshots we cannot reward that crew.
The reason I say what I did above about reimbursement is because in the end us players usually will not have sent another voyage while this is being dealt with. There will at least be the loss of two 8 voyages on top of dealing with a stuck voyage that we intended to go farther. By reimbursing the tokens dil., we can make plans to send another long voyage right away. (Which makes up for not getting the long voyage) If instead we are given the voyage exclusive crew we were after, at least then we achieved are goal.
On top of this, There also might be a loss on daily achievement. But CS will give some honor and accolades to make up for it. But now there is also the chance that a fleet might lose out on ISM reward so now new problem could exist involving other members of that fleet.
But until this bug is resolved this is on TP to satisfy us players. And the abuse that can happen puts the pressure on TP to fix this problem. The voyage getting stuck is not under the players control. So the abuse that can happen only happens once a voyage is stuck.
Imagine if Star Trek Timelines made as much money as Pokemon Go. I wonder how much more incentive there would be to fix these bugs? 6 months is unacceptable for a bug that has been present over 2 years. There isn't really a justifiable excuse. Just sayin.
This literally happened to me this morning - I never extend voyages unless I have a reason to...this time by the 10 hour mark I had both champions part 1 & 2, as well as a higher duty part 1 and 2 - i was thrilled so decided to extend with my 20 tokens until I get at least 1 of the 3rd parts...or risk not getting either....but I wouldn't have extended if this specific scenario did not happen. It froze on the 18 hour mark. I sent in a ticket asking for the tokens back that I used to extend the voyage (it naturally ran approx 11 hours) from the 10 hour mark. I'll update to see what resolution takes place.
There are two issues at hand here: the voyage bug itself and the way TP/WRG is addressing customer service tickets about the bug.
On the first, I agree that the bug has taken a long time to resolve. However, I imagine these things can be complex and I have no doubt that the developers are doing the best they can to fix the issue. I don't believe that applying additional pressure will result in a speedier resolution.
On the second, I believe getting a prompt, equitable solution is much more reasonable. As The Quiggler argued, good customer service means the customer should never have to pay for the errors of a company. Despite the response from Shan above, it remains unclear to me why a customer should have to waste time and resources to try to get a voyage exclusive crew, be thwarted by the bug, then be told to pay dilithium to be able to reach their original goal. Perhaps there's a good reason. All we have heard is that it is to avoid bad actors from exploiting the bug. I would agree with The Quiggler that a few bad actors falling through the cracks should not be a good reason to violate a key tenet of good customer service. If there is more to it than what Shan has already said, we need to hear it -- otherwise it will continue to appear as though TP/WRG is asking players to pay out of pocket to compensate for the game not working as it should.
In the absence of a solution to the voyage bug, we need clear communication from TP/WRG regarding their customer service policy for this matter. I believe that this could and should happen in the near future so that players can make informed decisions and know that they are being offered equitable outcomes from customer service.
I saw an add for a particular item on a local hardware stores website. The item was normally $425.00, but the advertised sale price on their website was $349.00. At the bottom of the add it stated ... "Also available for purchase in store." So I went to the store to get the item on sale. When I got there they tried to charge me $425. When I showed them the advertisement, they stated that price was only for an online purchase. The underlying meaning was, it was also available for purchase in store BUT not at this price. Customer care got involved and agreed that the advertisement was misleading. THE STORE should have been more clear in their messaging. Therefore, they sold me the item at the $349 price.
In this case, Customer Care, cared for the customer. They didn't try defending a confusing and misleading add they created even though it was never intended to be used for an in-store purchase.
There is a clear parallel between this story and this thread.
@Shan this issue can only be abused because TP has not solved it. So the abuse that can happen only happens once a voyage is stuck.
Fix the bug and *poof* no more abuse.
In the interim, all efforts should be made to ensure that customer care has the appropriate tools to best care for the customer when this game bug crashes a voyage and negatively impacts their game experience.
And as Capt. Rosewater best said:
In the absence of a solution to the voyage bug, we need clear communication from TP/WRG regarding their customer service policy for this matter. I believe that this could and should happen in the near future so that players can make informed decisions and know that they are being offered equitable outcomes from customer service.
In the absence of clear communications you must be able to empathetically see how a player could interpret this as a way of monetizing a bug they have no control over. How might you have felt if that department store tried to sell you that item for $499.00 stating they were trying to avoid a circumstance where people may try to capitalize on their misleading ad?
Game admin and players ... please share your insight and experiences.
A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
@Daedalus5 Thank you. Do you have an opinion about others getting the exclusive character without having to pay 1500 dil and/or on the bug itself?
This.
I think it really boils down to wrg believing that their customers are trying to scam them. It seems like it would be fairly simple to send out a global email with cs instructions for stuck voyages. Something like, take a screenshot, dont recall, create a ticket, cs will evaluate and resolve by doing “x”.
Its really absurd that wrg came up with a dilithium fee to “resolve” the issue. The whole point of running extending voyages is to get the exclusive crew for as close to free as possible. There are great examples above on how poorly the cs solutions address the issue.
As a 2 year player VIP 14 that is still trying to seek out new worlds, and boldly go where many people have had failures attempting the mighty voyage to recruit voyage exclusive crew.. Why would I bother?
I would love to send out a voyage that reaches the unknown, to be able to have the resources to finally send my vessel beyond the normal limits, in the spirit of the franchise we are all paying to play in- . But I won't until we have a resolution to this issue. I don't need the frustration in my life having to try to talk to your customer service about a problem that existed for years, in a game that is supposed to be enjoyable and help me relax.
By not fixing this bug you remove a huge amount of joy from your long term player base who have probably spent money to keep you in business, and it is one of the last tasks they need to tick off on the list of feeling like they are a loyal player.
As a 2 year player VIP 14 that is still trying to seek out new worlds, and boldly go where many people have had failures attempting the mighty voyage to recruit voyage exclusive crew.. Why would I bother?
I would love to send out a voyage that reaches the unknown, to be able to have the resources to finally send my vessel beyond the normal limits, in the spirit of the franchise we are all paying to play in- . But I won't until we have a resolution to this issue. I don't need the frustration in my life having to try to talk to your customer service about a problem that existed for years, in a game that is supposed to be enjoyable and help me relax.
By not fixing this bug you remove a huge amount of joy from your long term player base who have probably spent money to keep you in business, and it is one of the last tasks they need to tick off on the list of feeling like they are a loyal player.
I am the same way. I won’t extend a voyage more than once because mine always glitches out at 14 hours. There’s no point in trying it. I honestly don’t see the point of chasing that crew anyway. It takes at least two days to get all of them and they do absolutely nothing for my roster
@Daedalus5 Thank you. Do you have an opinion about others getting the exclusive character without having to pay 1500 dil and/or on the bug itself?
This.
I think it really boils down to wrg believing that their customers are trying to scam them. It seems like it would be fairly simple to send out a global email with cs instructions for stuck voyages. Something like, take a screenshot, dont recall, create a ticket, cs will evaluate and resolve by doing “x”.
Its really absurd that wrg came up with a dilithium fee to “resolve” the issue. The whole point of running extending voyages is to get the exclusive crew for as close to free as possible. There are great examples above on how poorly the cs solutions address the issue.
The problem is, where is it stuck? Does your voyage get stuck at 12-16 hours? If you were going for the exclusive crew then those tokens really matter, but CS can't just give you exclusive crew that would have another 40 hours to reach. Maybe you weren't going for exclusive crew, and even if you were, they can't just give you the crew for nothing without you getting through the rest of the voyage. But maybe you were 62 hours in? At that point you can assume the player was going for the exclusive crew and compensate accordingly. But where do you draw the line? Do you tell CS if a voyage is stuck before 50 hours do X, and after 50 hours do Y? The players with a stuck voyage at 48 hours will still complain about that offer.
And between the broken offer bug, double tap bugs, bots, and other instances, you need to recognize players will try and cheat the system. I've heard of players submitting CS tickets for finishing first in gauntlet and not getting gauntlet crew. Or players buying X packs, not getting any legendaries, so they submit a CS ticket asking for legendaries or their money back. The culture of players having anything and going to CS expecting to get what they want is so big in this game that I can understand needing CS controls to prevent the abuse that will surely happen.
@AviTrek
All of what you say may be true. But it only becomes relevant when the player is the one that can cause the glitch.
The only way this bug can be abused is if the player can somehow cause the crash to occur. Otherwise, well then maybe someone is just trying to take advantage. Again, it can only happen if the bug surfaces. Fix the bug and the problem goes away.
Shifting the issue to the customer is fraught with danger when the issue lies withing the programming. Until you get the programming fixed the customers efforts should not be called into question.
This is customer care 101.
A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
@AviTrek
All of what you say may be true. But it only becomes relevant when the player is the one that can cause the glitch.
The only way this bug can be abused is if the player can somehow cause the crash to occur. Otherwise, well then maybe someone is just trying to take advantage. Again, it can only happen if the bug surfaces. Fix the bug and the problem goes away.
Shifting the issue to the customer is fraught with danger when the issue lies withing the programming. Until you get the programming fixed the customers efforts should not be called into question.
This is customer care 101.
People on these forums frequently get this confused.
You are spot on though.
And to address @AviTrek ’s example of people buying packs, not getting legendaries and complaining about it, i mean thats an entirely different issue. Packs are a gamble and it says so in the information tab. Of course its ridiculous that people complain about that.
Voyages on the other hand, can be a guaranteed drop for exclusive crew with enough prep and tokens. I dont see anywhere in the voyage info that there is x% chance of the voyage freezing as a feature of each voyage.
@AviTrek I can see that reasonable people might agree that there's a relevant difference between a voyage crashing at the 12h mark and one at 60h. And we might even be able to agree that this difference should result in different responses from customer service as perhaps is the case already. In my case, the problem I'm attempting to bring to attention here is that we don't know. We don't know what triggers different responses from customer service. We don't know if it's the length of the voyage or not. I believe the specific reasons (e.g. the policy) for different customer service responses needs to be explained. Otherwise people are left unwilling to enjoy long voyages (like ScarColossus, myself and others) due to the uncertainty and may be left with the impression that responses from customer service are not equitable between players.
Let me share two experiences and ask the same questions for each:
#1. Recently I was able to randomly put together a really good voyage. I was confident that I could go at least 10 hours before I needed to start reviving and I had more than 2900 antimatter. That would give me about 2 hours and 20 minutes per run after I started reviving. I decided to take this one out on a long five-year mission to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where, at least I, haven't gone before. I made a spreadsheet of all 36 dilemmas as well as the response I wanted to give to each. I eliminated 33 of them; only 3 left. The only 3 I had not checked off were parts 1, 2 & 3 of 'A Higher Duty.' I ran out of antimatter with 7 minutes to the next dilemma. As luck would have it, I was about to be able to eliminate the next 2 dilemmas with one revival token. I knew exactly what order the dilemmas were coming; I knew exactly how far I was going to have to go; I knew exactly the response I was going to use for each one. Hello bug! My voyage crashed.
(1). Is it reasonable to assume I was going after an exclusive crew?
(2). How do you think customer service / customer care should have handled this issue?
#2. Many months ago while on a routine voyage I got parts 1 & 2 of 'Champion of the People.' So I decided to extend my voyage using dilithium and revival tokens to see if I could get part 3. At hour 17 (and some change) bring in the annoying little bug and my voyage crashed.
(1). Is it reasonable to assume I was going after an exclusive crew?
(2). How do you think customer service / customer care should have handled this issue?
If your answer fundamentally changed for each of these scenarios could you explain why you feel differently for the same glitch? (I do agree with some version of a sliding scale regarding rewards vs. length of voyage. There are constants that increase the longer the voyage, and then there are the variables.) And in keeping with the title of this thread, could you feel that a resolution involving 1500 dilithium affects the way you see the service provided?
A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
Let me share two experiences and ask the same questions for each:
#1. Recently I was able to randomly put together a really good voyage from the start. I was confident that I could go at least 10 hours before I needed to start reviving and I had more than 2900 antimatter. That would give me about 2 hours and 20 minutes per run after I started reviving. I decided to take this one out on a long five-year mission to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where, at least I, haven't gone before. I made a spreadsheet of all 36 dilemmas as well as the response I wanted to give to each. I eliminated 33 of them; only 3 left. The only 3 I had not checked off were parts 1, 2 & 3 of 'A Higher Duty.' I ran out of antimatter with 7 minutes to the next dilemma. As luck would have it, I was about to be able to eliminate the next 2 dilemmas with one revival token. I knew exactly what order the dilemmas were coming; I knew exactly how far I was going to have to go; I knew exactly the response I was going to use for each one. Hello bug! My voyage crashed.
(1). Is it reasonable to assume I was going after an exclusive crew?
(2). How do you think customer service / customer care should have handled this issue?
#2. Many months ago while on a routine voyage I got parts 1 & 2 of 'Champion of the People.' So I decided to extend my voyage using dilithium and revival tokens to see if I could get part 3. At hour 17 (and some change) bring in the annoying little bug and my voyage crashed.
(1). Is it reasonable to assume I was going after an exclusive crew?
(2). How do you think customer service / customer care should have handled this issue?
If your answer fundamentally changed for each of these scenarios could you explain why you feel differently for the same glitch? (I do agree with some version of a sliding scale regarding rewards vs. length of voyage.) And in keeping with the title of this thread, could you feel that a resolution involving 1500 dilithium affects the way you see the service provided?
This 100% summarises the issue with differeing handling techniques from CS.
It currently feels like WRG is assuming that due to a few bad actors, all of the player community is bad & WRG is not at fault at all.
They forget, they have the faulty product / service (as mentioned by others - it is not a feature of the voyage mechanism that there is x% chnace that the voyage will crash)
There is no new policy regarding Voyage tickets, this has been in place for quite some time.
This is not done to "monetize" the issue, it is an attempt to provide a solution for a specific scenario, while preventing abuse in making PS requests a gateway for obtaining Voyage exclusive crew.
Encountering the bug while trying to collect Voyage exclusive crew is frustrating, it does not happen each time, and there is the option to try again. That does not diminish the fact that it is an inconvenience and provides a negative gameplay experience.
I do not have an update regarding a potential fix, I will continue to bring it up.
Unfortunately many of us save up our voyage revival tokens to do the long voyages. And CS refuses to give us back our voyage revival tokens when the voyage bug causes the voyage to get stuck. So it’s not always possible to just try again right away.
There is no new policy regarding Voyage tickets, this has been in place for quite some time.
This is not done to "monetize" the issue, it is an attempt to provide a solution for a specific scenario, while preventing abuse in making PS requests a gateway for obtaining Voyage exclusive crew.
Encountering the bug while trying to collect Voyage exclusive crew is frustrating, it does not happen each time, and there is the option to try again. That does not diminish the fact that it is an inconvenience and provides a negative gameplay experience.
I do not have an update regarding a potential fix, I will continue to bring it up.
Unfortunately many of us save up our voyage revival tokens to do the long voyages. And CS refuses to give us back our voyage revival tokens when the voyage bug causes the voyage to get stuck. So it’s not always possible to just try again right away.
Another example, it seems, of customer service treating players differently. Does the different treatment make sense based on different circumstances? Did different players have different evidence to present with their ticket? (E.g. screen shots etc ) Again, we don't know. I'd love to take a long voyage but what can I do to ensure a positive outcome in the event TP's bug pops up? Anything? Or am I at the whim of whichever customer service representative I get? What is the policy? How is TP addressing these tickets? To me, the evidence so far suggests they are not treating all players fairly. If that's not true, I'd love to hear TP's side of the story.
@Shan wrote: "This is not done to "monetize" the issue, it is an attempt to provide a solution for a specific scenario, while preventing abuse in making PS requests a gateway for obtaining Voyage exclusive crew."
Is it fair to say this is the foundational explanation we have on this topic?
If asking for 1500 dilithium is "an attempt to provide a solution to a specific scenario, while preventing abuse in making a gateway" is it fair to suggest the concern is 'bad actors?'
(While I disagree that this should be the concern lets stay with it for this post.)
* Does choosing to not spend 1500 dilithium make me a bad actor?
* Does choosing to spend 1500 dilithium make me a good actor?
* Can I be a bad actor who can afford to spend 1500 dilithium?
* If I am willing to spend 1500 dilithium do you care whether I am a good or bad actor?
* If you don't care, as long as I am willing to spend the 1500 dilithium, is that 'monetizing the issue?'
My point is that without good, clear concise information it is easy to arrive at these conclusions when we are left to fill in the blanks with the limited information we have. Admin needs to be leading-the-charge on providing information to this issue and aside from the one post mentioned above, (thank you Shan) they have been eerily silent.
A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
I recently thought I had double posted myself. I saw two posts. But I just ignored it. I also forgot about it. Because none of my posts that I checked back on were double posted. I think it is a bug , but it hardly ever happens for me. The bug is you see a double posting but there really isn't a second one.
If the bug is that pervasive and/or persistent another possible solution could be to create a few more 'voyage exclusive' characters that could be added after the bug is fixed. This has the ability to free customer care from worrying about too many exclusive crews getting out and help with the perception of monetizing the issue.
A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
Comments
Your response is much appreciated. As I mentioned in my post, I believe clear communication is essential so that players can make informed decisions about the use of resources. It will also remove the appearance of unequal responses from customer service. To that end, I hope you will provide a clear answer to the following question:
Under what circumstances does customer service offer to provide the voyage exclusive crew for no charge and under what circumstances does customer service offer the voyage exclude crew for 1500 dilithium?
Thank you for your time providing clarity to this matter.
Thank you for responding. It is greatly appreciated, and yes, you are correct; encountering this bug is frustrating and does provide for a negative gameplay experience. And until the bug is fixed your "gold standard" for mitigating that frustration is customer service / customer care. Consistent, equitable, customer care. And your measuring stick for success in mitigating that frustration is the customers experience. (Not the developers intentions.) "We judge others by their actions while judging ourselves by our intentions." Stephen Covey.
This bug is not the customers fault. It may not be the developers fault, but it IS the developers responsibility. The customer should not suffer or sacrifice ... ever ... for this glitch. Even if it means that some bad actors occasionally slip through the cracks. That just serves as more incentive to fix it. This is basic customer care 101.
Captain Rosewater posed an excellent question that could go a long way with helping many STT customers understand the process for handling this issue moving forward. I genuinely hope you will take the time to answer:
Thank you in advance for taking the time to consider all these points of view that provides the developers insight into how the customer is interpreting all of this.
The 3 part crew are really bad, all of them. From my pov people might abuse this bug back and forth if they had the nerves to do so. I will rather wait for this soonish(TM) moment when this bug will be fixed to obtain the two crew I do not have and immediately freeze them to never be seen again.
This 1500 dil solution sounds like fixing a scratch with a full body cast.
Shan this issue can only be abused because TP has not solved it. A person's voyage getting stuck is not under that person's control. The only way this could be abused if one could purposely get their voyage stuck. (Though now I know that people can just claim they had crew which they did not have, so this is most likely the abuse you are talking about)
All rewards collected on the voyage when it got stuck should be given to the player. All dil. and voyage tokens spent to extend voyage should be reimbursed or the voyage exclusive crew they were trying for but did not get yet should be given to them.
If there is no way of knowing what rewards a player had, then some set rewards for a voyage of that length should be given. Usually we players no something on the voyage we had usually crew. But this does have the possibility of abuse if we have no screenshots, or if the voyage failed, because of hitting that abandoned button when we think we are refueling. But this should be on your end determining how many requests with no screenshots you should allow before saying no screenshots we cannot reward that crew.
The reason I say what I did above about reimbursement is because in the end us players usually will not have sent another voyage while this is being dealt with. There will at least be the loss of two 8 voyages on top of dealing with a stuck voyage that we intended to go farther. By reimbursing the tokens dil., we can make plans to send another long voyage right away. (Which makes up for not getting the long voyage) If instead we are given the voyage exclusive crew we were after, at least then we achieved are goal.
On top of this, There also might be a loss on daily achievement. But CS will give some honor and accolades to make up for it. But now there is also the chance that a fleet might lose out on ISM reward so now new problem could exist involving other members of that fleet.
But until this bug is resolved this is on TP to satisfy us players. And the abuse that can happen puts the pressure on TP to fix this problem. The voyage getting stuck is not under the players control. So the abuse that can happen only happens once a voyage is stuck.
On the first, I agree that the bug has taken a long time to resolve. However, I imagine these things can be complex and I have no doubt that the developers are doing the best they can to fix the issue. I don't believe that applying additional pressure will result in a speedier resolution.
On the second, I believe getting a prompt, equitable solution is much more reasonable. As The Quiggler argued, good customer service means the customer should never have to pay for the errors of a company. Despite the response from Shan above, it remains unclear to me why a customer should have to waste time and resources to try to get a voyage exclusive crew, be thwarted by the bug, then be told to pay dilithium to be able to reach their original goal. Perhaps there's a good reason. All we have heard is that it is to avoid bad actors from exploiting the bug. I would agree with The Quiggler that a few bad actors falling through the cracks should not be a good reason to violate a key tenet of good customer service. If there is more to it than what Shan has already said, we need to hear it -- otherwise it will continue to appear as though TP/WRG is asking players to pay out of pocket to compensate for the game not working as it should.
In the absence of a solution to the voyage bug, we need clear communication from TP/WRG regarding their customer service policy for this matter. I believe that this could and should happen in the near future so that players can make informed decisions and know that they are being offered equitable outcomes from customer service.
In this case, Customer Care, cared for the customer. They didn't try defending a confusing and misleading add they created even though it was never intended to be used for an in-store purchase.
There is a clear parallel between this story and this thread.
As @WaldoMag states: Fix the bug and *poof* no more abuse.
In the interim, all efforts should be made to ensure that customer care has the appropriate tools to best care for the customer when this game bug crashes a voyage and negatively impacts their game experience.
And as Capt. Rosewater best said:
In the absence of clear communications you must be able to empathetically see how a player could interpret this as a way of monetizing a bug they have no control over. How might you have felt if that department store tried to sell you that item for $499.00 stating they were trying to avoid a circumstance where people may try to capitalize on their misleading ad?
Game admin and players ... please share your insight and experiences.
I hope you were able to get it resolved satisfactorily.
This.
I think it really boils down to wrg believing that their customers are trying to scam them. It seems like it would be fairly simple to send out a global email with cs instructions for stuck voyages. Something like, take a screenshot, dont recall, create a ticket, cs will evaluate and resolve by doing “x”.
Its really absurd that wrg came up with a dilithium fee to “resolve” the issue. The whole point of running extending voyages is to get the exclusive crew for as close to free as possible. There are great examples above on how poorly the cs solutions address the issue.
I would love to send out a voyage that reaches the unknown, to be able to have the resources to finally send my vessel beyond the normal limits, in the spirit of the franchise we are all paying to play in- . But I won't until we have a resolution to this issue. I don't need the frustration in my life having to try to talk to your customer service about a problem that existed for years, in a game that is supposed to be enjoyable and help me relax.
By not fixing this bug you remove a huge amount of joy from your long term player base who have probably spent money to keep you in business, and it is one of the last tasks they need to tick off on the list of feeling like they are a loyal player.
I am the same way. I won’t extend a voyage more than once because mine always glitches out at 14 hours. There’s no point in trying it. I honestly don’t see the point of chasing that crew anyway. It takes at least two days to get all of them and they do absolutely nothing for my roster
The problem is, where is it stuck? Does your voyage get stuck at 12-16 hours? If you were going for the exclusive crew then those tokens really matter, but CS can't just give you exclusive crew that would have another 40 hours to reach. Maybe you weren't going for exclusive crew, and even if you were, they can't just give you the crew for nothing without you getting through the rest of the voyage. But maybe you were 62 hours in? At that point you can assume the player was going for the exclusive crew and compensate accordingly. But where do you draw the line? Do you tell CS if a voyage is stuck before 50 hours do X, and after 50 hours do Y? The players with a stuck voyage at 48 hours will still complain about that offer.
And between the broken offer bug, double tap bugs, bots, and other instances, you need to recognize players will try and cheat the system. I've heard of players submitting CS tickets for finishing first in gauntlet and not getting gauntlet crew. Or players buying X packs, not getting any legendaries, so they submit a CS ticket asking for legendaries or their money back. The culture of players having anything and going to CS expecting to get what they want is so big in this game that I can understand needing CS controls to prevent the abuse that will surely happen.
All of what you say may be true. But it only becomes relevant when the player is the one that can cause the glitch.
The only way this bug can be abused is if the player can somehow cause the crash to occur. Otherwise, well then maybe someone is just trying to take advantage. Again, it can only happen if the bug surfaces. Fix the bug and the problem goes away.
Shifting the issue to the customer is fraught with danger when the issue lies withing the programming. Until you get the programming fixed the customers efforts should not be called into question.
People on these forums frequently get this confused.
You are spot on though.
And to address @AviTrek ’s example of people buying packs, not getting legendaries and complaining about it, i mean thats an entirely different issue. Packs are a gamble and it says so in the information tab. Of course its ridiculous that people complain about that.
Voyages on the other hand, can be a guaranteed drop for exclusive crew with enough prep and tokens. I dont see anywhere in the voyage info that there is x% chance of the voyage freezing as a feature of each voyage.
#1. Recently I was able to randomly put together a really good voyage. I was confident that I could go at least 10 hours before I needed to start reviving and I had more than 2900 antimatter. That would give me about 2 hours and 20 minutes per run after I started reviving. I decided to take this one out on a long five-year mission to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where, at least I, haven't gone before. I made a spreadsheet of all 36 dilemmas as well as the response I wanted to give to each. I eliminated 33 of them; only 3 left. The only 3 I had not checked off were parts 1, 2 & 3 of 'A Higher Duty.' I ran out of antimatter with 7 minutes to the next dilemma. As luck would have it, I was about to be able to eliminate the next 2 dilemmas with one revival token. I knew exactly what order the dilemmas were coming; I knew exactly how far I was going to have to go; I knew exactly the response I was going to use for each one. Hello bug! My voyage crashed.
(1). Is it reasonable to assume I was going after an exclusive crew?
(2). How do you think customer service / customer care should have handled this issue?
#2. Many months ago while on a routine voyage I got parts 1 & 2 of 'Champion of the People.' So I decided to extend my voyage using dilithium and revival tokens to see if I could get part 3. At hour 17 (and some change) bring in the annoying little bug and my voyage crashed.
(1). Is it reasonable to assume I was going after an exclusive crew?
(2). How do you think customer service / customer care should have handled this issue?
If your answer fundamentally changed for each of these scenarios could you explain why you feel differently for the same glitch? (I do agree with some version of a sliding scale regarding rewards vs. length of voyage. There are constants that increase the longer the voyage, and then there are the variables.) And in keeping with the title of this thread, could you feel that a resolution involving 1500 dilithium affects the way you see the service provided?
This 100% summarises the issue with differeing handling techniques from CS.
It currently feels like WRG is assuming that due to a few bad actors, all of the player community is bad & WRG is not at fault at all.
They forget, they have the faulty product / service (as mentioned by others - it is not a feature of the voyage mechanism that there is x% chnace that the voyage will crash)
Unfortunately many of us save up our voyage revival tokens to do the long voyages. And CS refuses to give us back our voyage revival tokens when the voyage bug causes the voyage to get stuck. So it’s not always possible to just try again right away.
Another example, it seems, of customer service treating players differently. Does the different treatment make sense based on different circumstances? Did different players have different evidence to present with their ticket? (E.g. screen shots etc ) Again, we don't know. I'd love to take a long voyage but what can I do to ensure a positive outcome in the event TP's bug pops up? Anything? Or am I at the whim of whichever customer service representative I get? What is the policy? How is TP addressing these tickets? To me, the evidence so far suggests they are not treating all players fairly. If that's not true, I'd love to hear TP's side of the story.
You understand correctly, and it still can.
If asking for 1500 dilithium is "an attempt to provide a solution to a specific scenario, while preventing abuse in making a gateway" is it fair to suggest the concern is 'bad actors?'
(While I disagree that this should be the concern lets stay with it for this post.)
* Does choosing to not spend 1500 dilithium make me a bad actor?
* Does choosing to spend 1500 dilithium make me a good actor?
* Can I be a bad actor who can afford to spend 1500 dilithium?
* If I am willing to spend 1500 dilithium do you care whether I am a good or bad actor?
* If you don't care, as long as I am willing to spend the 1500 dilithium, is that 'monetizing the issue?'
My point is that without good, clear concise information it is easy to arrive at these conclusions when we are left to fill in the blanks with the limited information we have. Admin needs to be leading-the-charge on providing information to this issue and aside from the one post mentioned above, (thank you Shan) they have been eerily silent.
Did you delete both of them?
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