After much consideration I will be stopping any monetary support that I had planned. I will also be boycotting ad warps. I feel this “bug” was less game changing than the honor dump of a couple years ago. At the time of the honor dump most people spent it quickly in the hopes it would be harder to take back. The devs response was “we messed up, happy holidays”. Seems there could have been a similar response this time. It takes 18 days to get enough quantum to craft a 5*. Seems less game changing to have more polestars that are of limited use than it was to get 200k worth of honor.
If you are so inclined I would invite you to consider an ad warp boycott also.
They have further plans with this feature and it sounds like the constellations and ISM would have created a huge imbalance with these implementations yet to come.
We do not see the full picture here.
But just shrugging and saying "sorry to everyone who got nothing, and the rest: enjoy your stuff" would have been an aweful move, even if there was nothing more to come to this feature. Imo much worse than what they actually did.
I agree. There is no way they could have solved this to everyone's satisfaction once it had happened.
But I also think that most of the players who pulled extra packs would have been ok with those being removed from their account and would have ultimately accepted the possibility of losing a little of their previously obtained stuff because of it. Especially if WRG/TP had still sent out the message they sent out now to make up for the mistake.
The issue was the ban and the wording in the statement. Considering that the playerbase has been used for years to bugs, exploits and accidental drops that never get fixed or rolled back and that this is a game that heavily relies on the players' willingness to gamble on a small chance to get something better than expected, there was no way they wouldn't tap on a "buy again" button. The company should know this.
That being said, if there really was a problem with the accounts once they tried to remove the items, they had no other choice than to suspend them and fix it manually. Why they described it as a ban, I don't know. Maybe they were in a hurry to make a quick decision.
It's also possible that this is TP's policy and they just had to enforce it.
If there was a huge problem, they should have said it from the start and promised to compensate those affected another way once the accounts were fixed, but none of that was done. There was no explanation other than “players hit this button we put into the game more than once, so those players are locked out of their accounts for three days as punishment for exploiting something that in technical terms is not even an exploit since we put it there to begin with”. WRG/TP decimated players’ trusts, pushed big spenders away, and caused anyone staying to close their wallets for good. If there was a big problem, they would not have had to have Shan post an empty apology. I honestly think the whole “it screwed up accounts” in that post was a half-arsed cover for their own major mistake because they do not want to admit they screwed up royally.
I agree that it wasn't handled well at all.
But consider these things:
1) They had to decide very quickly, in a situation where they were probably all in home office and could only talk to each other remotely.
2) They most likely had to wait for TP's input or even had to do exactly what TP requested. And TP probably has a very low understanding and even interest for this game and its player community.
3) It's perfectly possible that they had to manually check what people had done with the constellations and how it affected the new feature and their accounts. Or that some accounts were impacted by their first attempt at fixing the issue. DB/TP/WRG has a history of not telling us the whole truth immediately.
4) Given the immediate and very strong reaction from the community, they would have probably acted faster if they could. I don't think they spent 24 hours twiddling their thumbs.
As I said, I agree that this was a messup and badly handled, but some of the reactions here seem to go in the direction of doing as much damage as possible to the game, the company and its employees as a retaliation. I don't like that either.
Banning someone for three days for doing something that might or might not have been an intentional exploitation of a very visible bug, that WRG should have noticed before it went live, is not an appropriate reaction.
But hoping for people to lose their jobs over this, leaving thousands of negative reviews within 24 hours to keep new players from joining, asking for refunds for payments that are weeks, months or years old and giving advice on how to do even more damage is not a proportionate reaction either.
I have two people in my fleet who were banned and at least one of them was still disappointed and unsure whether he would keep playing when the ban was lifted. But I find myself defending the company for an action that I believe was wrong, because I very much want to keep playing this game and I feel like a lot of people right now are actively working on damaging WRG so much that it will not recover from it. I don't find that appropriate either as a response to what was ultimately an unpredictable action with no precedent, that consisted in bad wording and a 3-day ban.
I think 300 polestars is a bit of a stretch. Most of us we're banned for having five or so.
They then gave everyone not banned nineteen.
Go figure.
That's part of the whole issue. Most people who only pulled the pack 2-6 times apparently faced no consequences because of it. I'm one of them.
Why some were banned instead, I don't know and it's certainly not fair.
But I'm sure there were also players who tapped on buy again as often as they could in those 10 minutes (in part because on other platforms some admitted it). And that's probaby why it was a problem.
After much consideration I will be stopping any monetary support that I had planned. I will also be boycotting ad warps. I feel this “bug” was less game changing than the honor dump of a couple years ago. At the time of the honor dump most people spent it quickly in the hopes it would be harder to take back. The devs response was “we messed up, happy holidays”. Seems there could have been a similar response this time. It takes 18 days to get enough quantum to craft a 5*. Seems less game changing to have more polestars that are of limited use than it was to get 200k worth of honor.
If you are so inclined I would invite you to consider an ad warp boycott also.
They have further plans with this feature and it sounds like the constellations and ISM would have created a huge imbalance with these implementations yet to come.
We do not see the full picture here.
But just shrugging and saying "sorry to everyone who got nothing, and the rest: enjoy your stuff" would have been an aweful move, even if there was nothing more to come to this feature. Imo much worse than what they actually did.
I agree. There is no way they could have solved this to everyone's satisfaction once it had happened.
But I also think that most of the players who pulled extra packs would have been ok with those being removed from their account and would have ultimately accepted the possibility of losing a little of their previously obtained stuff because of it. Especially if WRG/TP had still sent out the message they sent out now to make up for the mistake.
The issue was the ban and the wording in the statement. Considering that the playerbase has been used for years to bugs, exploits and accidental drops that never get fixed or rolled back and that this is a game that heavily relies on the players' willingness to gamble on a small chance to get something better than expected, there was no way they wouldn't tap on a "buy again" button. The company should know this.
That being said, if there really was a problem with the accounts once they tried to remove the items, they had no other choice than to suspend them and fix it manually. Why they described it as a ban, I don't know. Maybe they were in a hurry to make a quick decision.
It's also possible that this is TP's policy and they just had to enforce it.
If there was a huge problem, they should have said it from the start and promised to compensate those affected another way once the accounts were fixed, but none of that was done. There was no explanation other than “players hit this button we put into the game more than once, so those players are locked out of their accounts for three days as punishment for exploiting something that in technical terms is not even an exploit since we put it there to begin with”. WRG/TP decimated players’ trusts, pushed big spenders away, and caused anyone staying to close their wallets for good. If there was a big problem, they would not have had to have Shan post an empty apology. I honestly think the whole “it screwed up accounts” in that post was a half-arsed cover for their own major mistake because they do not want to admit they screwed up royally.
I agree that it wasn't handled well at all.
But consider these things:
1) They had to decide very quickly, in a situation where they were probably all in home office and could only talk to each other remotely.
2) They most likely had to wait for TP's input or even had to do exactly what TP requested. And TP probably has a very low understanding and even interest for this game and its player community.
3) It's perfectly possible that they had to manually check what people had done with the constellations and how it affected the new feature and their accounts. Or that some accounts were impacted by their first attempt at fixing the issue. DB/TP/WRG has a history of not telling us the whole truth immediately.
4) Given the immediate and very strong reaction from the community, they would have probably acted faster if they could. I don't think they spent 24 hours twiddling their thumbs.
As I said, I agree that this was a messup and badly handled, but some of the reactions here seem to go in the direction of doing as much damage as possible to the game, the company and its employees as a retaliation. I don't like that either.
Banning someone for three days for doing something that might or might not have been an intentional exploitation of a very visible bug, that WRG should have noticed before it went live, is not an appropriate reaction.
But hoping for people to lose their jobs over this, leaving thousands of negative reviews within 24 hours to keep new players from joining, asking for refunds for payments that are weeks, months or years old and giving advice on how to do even more damage is not a proportionate reaction either.
I have two people in my fleet who were banned and at least one of them was still disappointed and unsure whether he would keep playing when the ban was lifted. But I find myself defending the company for an action that I believe was wrong, because I very much want to keep playing this game and I feel like a lot of people right now are actively working on damaging WRG so much that it will not recover from it. I don't find that appropriate either as a response to what was ultimately an unpredictable action with no precedent, that consisted in bad wording and a 3-day ban.
100% this!
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's also another problem with this. There are players who were disproportionately affected, because they lost valuable polestars from before the reset, will miss out on the last campaign tier or were banned by mistake. TP/WRG should find a way to make that right and think about individual solutions to implement consistently.
But they most certainly won't be able to do that as long as they're busy with damage control.
It's good that people aren't giving in on this. A lot of players did the same during the Adira situation and the offer wall/European privacy laws issues. But in neither of those cases people were trying to actively damage TP's and WRG's reputation and revenue. As long as that's still happening, it will be their first and probably only priority.
You must give them a chance and some time to fix stuff, if you actually want them to make things right.
I think 300 polestars is a bit of a stretch. Most of us we're banned for having five or so.
They then gave everyone not banned nineteen.
Go figure.
I thought that the "Retrieval Gift" (the 19 packs) would wait for me after the ban?! The message said that it would be live until 28th and there was no word that the banned players would not receive it.
I don't think it would be unfair after they stripped me from all of my formerly claimed ISM, constellations and polestars (bugged and unbugged).
Sitting here, I'm considering two views on how this impacted me (personally) - my game, and their reputation.
From a game standpoint, I'm content if not overjoyed with where my game stands currently:
- Event: I wasn't planning to work hard in the Faction portion because most points are earned in the Galaxy portion anyway, so I'm slightly behind but nothing crazy (I know this isn't the case for everyone).
- Dailies: I had already finished them before the ban on Thursday and was given back access early enough on Friday to finish them
- Compensation: They gave me enough Quantum to pull two legendaries of my choosing, and enough Constellations and ISM to play around and get two crew that I actually wanted.
From a reputation standpoint, my faith in them is completely burned. I've been playing for three and a half years now and I've always been able to justify their decisions, even when I didn't agree with them. I've sat here and typed away, trying to help other people understand the "business" perspective of their seemingly questionable decisions - this because I often believed that the decision wasn't the problem, but rather the lack of clarity and communication.
This Buy Again debacle has me grasping at straws to find a business decision that isn't "we're butthurt because you messed with our shiny new toy." I'm willing to allow that Shan's mention of the strain on their system is legitimate. If I had to hazard a guess, I suspect that the initial intention was to roll everything back, as they've done for similar snafus in the past, but that the rollback didn't go as planned and the zeroing out was unintentional - at which point, someone probably said "well, ban the lot of them while we figure it out." But this is me extrapolating, and not based on anything factual because of their complete refusal to communicate (see also Adiragate).
Compound the overreaction with a very intentional non-apology and I simply don't see what it would take for me to trust them again (or change my 1 star review). Perhaps transparently firing the idiot who overreacted could get me there, but something tells me he or she will still get their bonus at the end of the year.
So where does that leave me? I still, despite myself, enjoy this game. And I am actually having fun with the new feature. So I'll continue playing, if a bit half-heartedly. But my wallet is closed, and I'm not sure that it will ever open back up.
I think 300 polestars is a bit of a stretch. Most of us we're banned for having five or so.
They then gave everyone not banned nineteen.
Go figure.
Well, the nineteen they "gave" were what people would have gotten in the nineteen days. If I understand what they did. That is why some people could not claim nineteen, after the fecal storm....
🥌🦞
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
I think 300 polestars is a bit of a stretch. Most of us we're banned for having five or so.
They then gave everyone not banned nineteen.
Go figure.
Well, the nineteen they "gave" were what people would have gotten in the nineteen days. If I understand what they did. That is why some people could not claim nineteen, after the fecal storm....
🥌🦞
Exactly. You got 19 minus the amount of the bugged packs u already
had claimed before.
So regardless it said 19 on the description, i only got 9 more for a total of 19.
Totally fair, imho.
After much consideration I will be stopping any monetary support that I had planned. I will also be boycotting ad warps. I feel this “bug” was less game changing than the honor dump of a couple years ago. At the time of the honor dump most people spent it quickly in the hopes it would be harder to take back. The devs response was “we messed up, happy holidays”. Seems there could have been a similar response this time. It takes 18 days to get enough quantum to craft a 5*. Seems less game changing to have more polestars that are of limited use than it was to get 200k worth of honor.
If you are so inclined I would invite you to consider an ad warp boycott also.
They have further plans with this feature and it sounds like the constellations and ISM would have created a huge imbalance with these implementations yet to come.
We do not see the full picture here.
But just shrugging and saying "sorry to everyone who got nothing, and the rest: enjoy your stuff" would have been an aweful move, even if there was nothing more to come to this feature. Imo much worse than what they actually did.
I agree. There is no way they could have solved this to everyone's satisfaction once it had happened.
But I also think that most of the players who pulled extra packs would have been ok with those being removed from their account and would have ultimately accepted the possibility of losing a little of their previously obtained stuff because of it. Especially if WRG/TP had still sent out the message they sent out now to make up for the mistake.
The issue was the ban and the wording in the statement. Considering that the playerbase has been used for years to bugs, exploits and accidental drops that never get fixed or rolled back and that this is a game that heavily relies on the players' willingness to gamble on a small chance to get something better than expected, there was no way they wouldn't tap on a "buy again" button. The company should know this.
That being said, if there really was a problem with the accounts once they tried to remove the items, they had no other choice than to suspend them and fix it manually. Why they described it as a ban, I don't know. Maybe they were in a hurry to make a quick decision.
It's also possible that this is TP's policy and they just had to enforce it.
If there was a huge problem, they should have said it from the start and promised to compensate those affected another way once the accounts were fixed, but none of that was done. There was no explanation other than “players hit this button we put into the game more than once, so those players are locked out of their accounts for three days as punishment for exploiting something that in technical terms is not even an exploit since we put it there to begin with”. WRG/TP decimated players’ trusts, pushed big spenders away, and caused anyone staying to close their wallets for good. If there was a big problem, they would not have had to have Shan post an empty apology. I honestly think the whole “it screwed up accounts” in that post was a half-arsed cover for their own major mistake because they do not want to admit they screwed up royally.
I agree that it wasn't handled well at all.
But consider these things:
1) They had to decide very quickly, in a situation where they were probably all in home office and could only talk to each other remotely.
2) They most likely had to wait for TP's input or even had to do exactly what TP requested. And TP probably has a very low understanding and even interest for this game and its player community.
3) It's perfectly possible that they had to manually check what people had done with the constellations and how it affected the new feature and their accounts. Or that some accounts were impacted by their first attempt at fixing the issue. DB/TP/WRG has a history of not telling us the whole truth immediately.
4) Given the immediate and very strong reaction from the community, they would have probably acted faster if they could. I don't think they spent 24 hours twiddling their thumbs.
As I said, I agree that this was a messup and badly handled, but some of the reactions here seem to go in the direction of doing as much damage as possible to the game, the company and its employees as a retaliation. I don't like that either.
Banning someone for three days for doing something that might or might not have been an intentional exploitation of a very visible bug, that WRG should have noticed before it went live, is not an appropriate reaction.
But hoping for people to lose their jobs over this, leaving thousands of negative reviews within 24 hours to keep new players from joining, asking for refunds for payments that are weeks, months or years old and giving advice on how to do even more damage is not a proportionate reaction either.
I have two people in my fleet who were banned and at least one of them was still disappointed and unsure whether he would keep playing when the ban was lifted. But I find myself defending the company for an action that I believe was wrong, because I very much want to keep playing this game and I feel like a lot of people right now are actively working on damaging WRG so much that it will not recover from it. I don't find that appropriate either as a response to what was ultimately an unpredictable action with no precedent, that consisted in bad wording and a 3-day ban.
While I can see your points, I disagree with just about all of them.
1. DB and now TP make so many mistakes, and have a game with so many bugs that it’s impossible to believe that there won’t be future bugs.
2. TP crossed a line that I don’t think can be uncrossed. Never punish anyone else for your own incompetence.
3. TP then doubled down on their bans. Important life lesson: when you mess up, admit your mistake early.
4. TP still hasn’t admitted their mistake and have changed their story about their motivations.
5. TP has lost the benefit of the doubt, so I don’t care about their hardships.
6. Because of items 1-5, many (myself included) don’t think this game will survive. In my opinion, I am not certain as to why it should survive.
Before anyone asks, I’m still playing. That’s because I’m in good fleets and don’t want to leave them hanging. I’m not spending, despite finally getting dilithium offers, because I can’t trust the developer any longer.
I think 300 polestars is a bit of a stretch. Most of us we're banned for having five or so.
They then gave everyone not banned nineteen.
Go figure.
Well, the nineteen they "gave" were what people would have gotten in the nineteen days. If I understand what they did. That is why some people could not claim nineteen, after the fecal storm....
🥌🦞
Exactly. You got 19 minus the amount of the bugged packs u already
had claimed before.
So regardless it said 19 on the description, i only got 9 more for a total of 19.
Totally fair, imho.
Well, I was banned and stripped of all the polestars etc. All in the game, yada yada, but in such a case you miss out on those 19 packs, you have non....
I think 300 polestars is a bit of a stretch. Most of us we're banned for having five or so.
They then gave everyone not banned nineteen.
Go figure.
I thought that the "Retrieval Gift" (the 19 packs) would wait for me after the ban?! The message said that it would be live until 28th and there was no word that the banned players would not receive it.
I don't think it would be unfair after they stripped me from all of my formerly claimed ISM, constellations and polestars (bugged and unbugged).
This is my support issue ATM, I was banned, yes I had more than 20 pushes of the "Buy Again". Logging back in Everything was reset to 0 except the Q. I had no "Retrieval Gift" to at least compensate for the 19 pulls the community has been given. Plus my achievement rewards are are gone. So in effect I am still being punished for TP's mistake. According to: https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/discussion/17700/daily-retrieval-pack-issue-update-2021-02-12#latest
I should have received a "Retrieval Gift" to get up to speed. Support is currently saying I claimed my "Retrieval Gift" more than 20 times. Yet my inventory is 0.
My closed wallet will continue, until I get a better answer, and at least things are made consistent.
Some of these stories are very concerning and I truly hope CS can work them out, but for my personal experience, after I was allowed back, my resources and supplies were set to zero, and emptied, however, I was able to claim the shop freebies (It just loaded piles on the screen for like 5 screens and terrified me to death that it had glitched and I was bound toward another issue, but apparently was designed to dump all 19 at once this time), and received the mail with the currency. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll send in a ticket asking for the return of the first stages of my achievements earned prior to the roll back, which was I believe some credits and a constellation or two, but all in all, after getting back in and opening the provided supplies, I was close to being back to my original point, albeit with different polestars. My original batch was terrible from the start, and still isn’t very impressive or diverse, but I can see if some players had good polestars and lost them, they would like them back, which I hope can be examined case by case for players affected, but over all, I’m not “missing” anything except an achievement reward or two. Hoping this can put some minds at peace, the reset for at least this one banned player went fairly smoothly. You do need to log in while the pack in the portal is active, however, or I assume the 19 freebies will be gone forever as with any limited time or event pack.
Clawback of items obtained through a programming bug is often appropriate, and I don't quibble with their decision to do so here. With that recourse available, however, also calling it a forbidden exploit and punishing players were poor choices and, in my view, totally inappropriate, regardless of player intent. They obviously did not think it through. I like to imagine that they were all tired from the hard work of the roll-out and got angry at their own customers, which can be fatal to any business. The gifts they later offered were very nice, but I actually feel hurt by their failure to express any regret for accusing their customers of cheating and imposing punishments that went beyond correcting their own mistakes.
I also find it utterly implausible that obtaining too many Constellations or Polestars made anyone's account "unstable," since large quantities of these items can be obtain through $ purchases. Assuming there was an instability that took an extra day to fix, it is far more likely that the instability arose from trying to undo the additional punishments during the 72-hour period of the original ban they imposed. If so, their misleading explanation exhibits failure to take responsibility not just for their mistake in imposing a punishment in the first place but also for the additional mistake of imposing a punishment that was excessive. I do not and cannot know if my suspicions are accurate, but their explanations contain vagueness, defensiveness and implausibilities that leave room for these suspicions to linger.
It will be impossible to forget this experience and, without some expression of regret, impossible to fully forgive. In some ways, I hate myself for still enjoying the game.
I think 300 polestars is a bit of a stretch. Most of us we're banned for having five or so.
They then gave everyone not banned nineteen.
Go figure.
I thought that the "Retrieval Gift" (the 19 packs) would wait for me after the ban?! The message said that it would be live until 28th and there was no word that the banned players would not receive it.
I don't think it would be unfair after they stripped me from all of my formerly claimed ISM, constellations and polestars (bugged and unbugged).
This is my support issue ATM, I was banned, yes I had more than 20 pushes of the "Buy Again". Logging back in Everything was reset to 0 except the Q. I had no "Retrieval Gift" to at least compensate for the 19 pulls the community has been given. Plus my achievement rewards are are gone. So in effect I am still being punished for TP's mistake. According to: https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/discussion/17700/daily-retrieval-pack-issue-update-2021-02-12#latest
I should have received a "Retrieval Gift" to get up to speed. Support is currently saying I claimed my "Retrieval Gift" more than 20 times. Yet my inventory is 0.
My closed wallet will continue, until I get a better answer, and at least things are made consistent.
I have 2 accounts, both were banned, both were reset. My VIP14 account got the “Retrieval Gift”. So I know what the gift is supposed to look like & how it is supposed to work. However, the only crew I want on that account are not in the portal, so the new crew retrieval feature does little for that account. My VIP0 account did NOT get the “Retrieval Gift”. That is the account that would actually use the new crew retrieval feature & can’t. CS has so far refused to even look at the code on that account to ascertain that it didn’t get the “Retrieval Gift”.
Clawback of items obtained through a programming bug is often appropriate, and I don't quibble with their decision to do so here. With that recourse available, however, also calling it a forbidden exploit and punishing players were poor choices and, in my view, totally inappropriate, regardless of player intent. They obviously did not think it through. I like to imagine that they were all tired from the hard work of the roll-out and got angry at their own customers, which can be fatal to any business. The gifts they later offered were very nice, but I actually feel hurt by their failure to express any regret for accusing their customers of cheating and imposing punishments that went beyond correcting their own mistakes.
I also find it utterly implausible that obtaining too many Constellations or Polestars made anyone's account "unstable," since large quantities of these items can be obtain through $ purchases. Assuming there was an instability that took an extra day to fix, it is far more likely that the instability arose from trying to undo the additional punishments during the 72-hour period of the original ban they imposed. If so, their misleading explanation exhibits failure to take responsibility not just for their mistake in imposing a punishment in the first place but also for the additional mistake of imposing a punishment that was excessive. I do not and cannot know if my suspicions are accurate, but their explanations contain vagueness, defensiveness and implausibilities that leave room for these suspicions to linger.
It will be impossible to forget this experience and, without some expression of regret, impossible to fully forgive. In some ways, I hate myself for still enjoying the game.
They didn't "clawback" what people got from the extra pulls. They nuked the affected people's entire inventory of the stuff they removed. Back to zero......
🥌🦞
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
After much consideration I will be stopping any monetary support that I had planned. I will also be boycotting ad warps. I feel this “bug” was less game changing than the honor dump of a couple years ago. At the time of the honor dump most people spent it quickly in the hopes it would be harder to take back. The devs response was “we messed up, happy holidays”. Seems there could have been a similar response this time. It takes 18 days to get enough quantum to craft a 5*. Seems less game changing to have more polestars that are of limited use than it was to get 200k worth of honor.
If you are so inclined I would invite you to consider an ad warp boycott also.
They have further plans with this feature and it sounds like the constellations and ISM would have created a huge imbalance with these implementations yet to come.
We do not see the full picture here.
But just shrugging and saying "sorry to everyone who got nothing, and the rest: enjoy your stuff" would have been an aweful move, even if there was nothing more to come to this feature. Imo much worse than what they actually did.
I agree. There is no way they could have solved this to everyone's satisfaction once it had happened.
But I also think that most of the players who pulled extra packs would have been ok with those being removed from their account and would have ultimately accepted the possibility of losing a little of their previously obtained stuff because of it. Especially if WRG/TP had still sent out the message they sent out now to make up for the mistake.
The issue was the ban and the wording in the statement. Considering that the playerbase has been used for years to bugs, exploits and accidental drops that never get fixed or rolled back and that this is a game that heavily relies on the players' willingness to gamble on a small chance to get something better than expected, there was no way they wouldn't tap on a "buy again" button. The company should know this.
That being said, if there really was a problem with the accounts once they tried to remove the items, they had no other choice than to suspend them and fix it manually. Why they described it as a ban, I don't know. Maybe they were in a hurry to make a quick decision.
It's also possible that this is TP's policy and they just had to enforce it.
If there was a huge problem, they should have said it from the start and promised to compensate those affected another way once the accounts were fixed, but none of that was done. There was no explanation other than “players hit this button we put into the game more than once, so those players are locked out of their accounts for three days as punishment for exploiting something that in technical terms is not even an exploit since we put it there to begin with”. WRG/TP decimated players’ trusts, pushed big spenders away, and caused anyone staying to close their wallets for good. If there was a big problem, they would not have had to have Shan post an empty apology. I honestly think the whole “it screwed up accounts” in that post was a half-arsed cover for their own major mistake because they do not want to admit they screwed up royally.
I agree that it wasn't handled well at all.
But consider these things:
1) They had to decide very quickly, in a situation where they were probably all in home office and could only talk to each other remotely.
2) They most likely had to wait for TP's input or even had to do exactly what TP requested. And TP probably has a very low understanding and even interest for this game and its player community.
3) It's perfectly possible that they had to manually check what people had done with the constellations and how it affected the new feature and their accounts. Or that some accounts were impacted by their first attempt at fixing the issue. DB/TP/WRG has a history of not telling us the whole truth immediately.
4) Given the immediate and very strong reaction from the community, they would have probably acted faster if they could. I don't think they spent 24 hours twiddling their thumbs.
As I said, I agree that this was a messup and badly handled, but some of the reactions here seem to go in the direction of doing as much damage as possible to the game, the company and its employees as a retaliation. I don't like that either.
Banning someone for three days for doing something that might or might not have been an intentional exploitation of a very visible bug, that WRG should have noticed before it went live, is not an appropriate reaction.
But hoping for people to lose their jobs over this, leaving thousands of negative reviews within 24 hours to keep new players from joining, asking for refunds for payments that are weeks, months or years old and giving advice on how to do even more damage is not a proportionate reaction either.
I have two people in my fleet who were banned and at least one of them was still disappointed and unsure whether he would keep playing when the ban was lifted. But I find myself defending the company for an action that I believe was wrong, because I very much want to keep playing this game and I feel like a lot of people right now are actively working on damaging WRG so much that it will not recover from it. I don't find that appropriate either as a response to what was ultimately an unpredictable action with no precedent, that consisted in bad wording and a 3-day ban.
I could have easily made a million and one different quick decisions that did not include suspending accounts and attacking the players involved by labeling them essentially as thieves and criminals. It is not rocket science when dealing with an unintended button getting loose and some players clicking it and obtaining virtual items from it. TP is definitely lying through their teeth here because their explanations do not add up. If it was truly an issue with glitches as a result, they should have said it immediately and taken action to make sure those affected did not lose out on their earnings in the event, dailies, and so forth. Their lack of transparency tied with all of the nonsense they have pulled already in less than a year was enough to be the last nail in the coffin for a lot of players. Even Niantic with the myriad of issues within Pokemon GO is not this deft when it comes to their player base. Whether or not we enjoy the game is irrelevant here; we are not going to allow a company to run over the ones keeping their precious game alive for the sake of one instance of entertainment. The morality and the principal matter more than a few hours of playtime that can easily be acquired elsewhere that takes their players more seriously.
There are three ways to do something; the right way, the wrong way, and the Janeway.
As I said, I agree that this was a messup and badly handled, but some of the reactions here seem to go in the direction of doing as much damage as possible to the game, the company and its employees as a retaliation. I don't like that either.
Banning someone for three days for doing something that might or might not have been an intentional exploitation of a very visible bug, that WRG should have noticed before it went live, is not an appropriate reaction.
But hoping for people to lose their jobs over this, leaving thousands of negative reviews within 24 hours to keep new players from joining, asking for refunds for payments that are weeks, months or years old and giving advice on how to do even more damage is not a proportionate reaction either.
I'm not specifically hoping for people to lose their jobs, but the lack of a real apology is unacceptable. To be honest, I don't care if they give us more crew or polestars or other shiny bits. The ONLY thing that will save this game and the company who runs it is a sincere apology that leads to a change in policy. Blaming customers for your own mistake is Bad Business 101. Doubling down on that bad business choice only makes it worse.
What they need to do first is apologize. Once that is done, appropriate follow up action--including but not limited to proper quality assurance protocols--will occur.
Finally, if bad business choices lead to poor reviews and fewer players joining, that is the nature of what bad business choices do. Honestly, I don't want new players walking into a game that is poorly run and blames players for company mistakes. Those potential new players need to walk in with their eyes open before they spend money on things that later get taken from them when they click the wrong "Buy Again" button an unspecified too many times.
Comments
They then gave everyone not banned nineteen.
Go figure.
I agree that it wasn't handled well at all.
But consider these things:
1) They had to decide very quickly, in a situation where they were probably all in home office and could only talk to each other remotely.
2) They most likely had to wait for TP's input or even had to do exactly what TP requested. And TP probably has a very low understanding and even interest for this game and its player community.
3) It's perfectly possible that they had to manually check what people had done with the constellations and how it affected the new feature and their accounts. Or that some accounts were impacted by their first attempt at fixing the issue. DB/TP/WRG has a history of not telling us the whole truth immediately.
4) Given the immediate and very strong reaction from the community, they would have probably acted faster if they could. I don't think they spent 24 hours twiddling their thumbs.
As I said, I agree that this was a messup and badly handled, but some of the reactions here seem to go in the direction of doing as much damage as possible to the game, the company and its employees as a retaliation. I don't like that either.
Banning someone for three days for doing something that might or might not have been an intentional exploitation of a very visible bug, that WRG should have noticed before it went live, is not an appropriate reaction.
But hoping for people to lose their jobs over this, leaving thousands of negative reviews within 24 hours to keep new players from joining, asking for refunds for payments that are weeks, months or years old and giving advice on how to do even more damage is not a proportionate reaction either.
I have two people in my fleet who were banned and at least one of them was still disappointed and unsure whether he would keep playing when the ban was lifted. But I find myself defending the company for an action that I believe was wrong, because I very much want to keep playing this game and I feel like a lot of people right now are actively working on damaging WRG so much that it will not recover from it. I don't find that appropriate either as a response to what was ultimately an unpredictable action with no precedent, that consisted in bad wording and a 3-day ban.
That's part of the whole issue. Most people who only pulled the pack 2-6 times apparently faced no consequences because of it. I'm one of them.
Why some were banned instead, I don't know and it's certainly not fair.
But I'm sure there were also players who tapped on buy again as often as they could in those 10 minutes (in part because on other platforms some admitted it). And that's probaby why it was a problem.
100% this!
But they most certainly won't be able to do that as long as they're busy with damage control.
It's good that people aren't giving in on this. A lot of players did the same during the Adira situation and the offer wall/European privacy laws issues. But in neither of those cases people were trying to actively damage TP's and WRG's reputation and revenue. As long as that's still happening, it will be their first and probably only priority.
You must give them a chance and some time to fix stuff, if you actually want them to make things right.
I thought that the "Retrieval Gift" (the 19 packs) would wait for me after the ban?! The message said that it would be live until 28th and there was no word that the banned players would not receive it.
I don't think it would be unfair after they stripped me from all of my formerly claimed ISM, constellations and polestars (bugged and unbugged).
From a game standpoint, I'm content if not overjoyed with where my game stands currently:
- Event: I wasn't planning to work hard in the Faction portion because most points are earned in the Galaxy portion anyway, so I'm slightly behind but nothing crazy (I know this isn't the case for everyone).
- Dailies: I had already finished them before the ban on Thursday and was given back access early enough on Friday to finish them
- Compensation: They gave me enough Quantum to pull two legendaries of my choosing, and enough Constellations and ISM to play around and get two crew that I actually wanted.
From a reputation standpoint, my faith in them is completely burned. I've been playing for three and a half years now and I've always been able to justify their decisions, even when I didn't agree with them. I've sat here and typed away, trying to help other people understand the "business" perspective of their seemingly questionable decisions - this because I often believed that the decision wasn't the problem, but rather the lack of clarity and communication.
This Buy Again debacle has me grasping at straws to find a business decision that isn't "we're butthurt because you messed with our shiny new toy." I'm willing to allow that Shan's mention of the strain on their system is legitimate. If I had to hazard a guess, I suspect that the initial intention was to roll everything back, as they've done for similar snafus in the past, but that the rollback didn't go as planned and the zeroing out was unintentional - at which point, someone probably said "well, ban the lot of them while we figure it out." But this is me extrapolating, and not based on anything factual because of their complete refusal to communicate (see also Adiragate).
Compound the overreaction with a very intentional non-apology and I simply don't see what it would take for me to trust them again (or change my 1 star review). Perhaps transparently firing the idiot who overreacted could get me there, but something tells me he or she will still get their bonus at the end of the year.
So where does that leave me? I still, despite myself, enjoy this game. And I am actually having fun with the new feature. So I'll continue playing, if a bit half-heartedly. But my wallet is closed, and I'm not sure that it will ever open back up.
Well, the nineteen they "gave" were what people would have gotten in the nineteen days. If I understand what they did. That is why some people could not claim nineteen, after the fecal storm....
🥌🦞
Exactly. You got 19 minus the amount of the bugged packs u already
had claimed before.
So regardless it said 19 on the description, i only got 9 more for a total of 19.
Totally fair, imho.
While I can see your points, I disagree with just about all of them.
1. DB and now TP make so many mistakes, and have a game with so many bugs that it’s impossible to believe that there won’t be future bugs.
2. TP crossed a line that I don’t think can be uncrossed. Never punish anyone else for your own incompetence.
3. TP then doubled down on their bans. Important life lesson: when you mess up, admit your mistake early.
4. TP still hasn’t admitted their mistake and have changed their story about their motivations.
5. TP has lost the benefit of the doubt, so I don’t care about their hardships.
6. Because of items 1-5, many (myself included) don’t think this game will survive. In my opinion, I am not certain as to why it should survive.
Before anyone asks, I’m still playing. That’s because I’m in good fleets and don’t want to leave them hanging. I’m not spending, despite finally getting dilithium offers, because I can’t trust the developer any longer.
Well, I was banned and stripped of all the polestars etc. All in the game, yada yada, but in such a case you miss out on those 19 packs, you have non....
This is my support issue ATM, I was banned, yes I had more than 20 pushes of the "Buy Again". Logging back in Everything was reset to 0 except the Q. I had no "Retrieval Gift" to at least compensate for the 19 pulls the community has been given. Plus my achievement rewards are are gone. So in effect I am still being punished for TP's mistake. According to: https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/discussion/17700/daily-retrieval-pack-issue-update-2021-02-12#latest
I should have received a "Retrieval Gift" to get up to speed. Support is currently saying I claimed my "Retrieval Gift" more than 20 times. Yet my inventory is 0.
My closed wallet will continue, until I get a better answer, and at least things are made consistent.
I also find it utterly implausible that obtaining too many Constellations or Polestars made anyone's account "unstable," since large quantities of these items can be obtain through $ purchases. Assuming there was an instability that took an extra day to fix, it is far more likely that the instability arose from trying to undo the additional punishments during the 72-hour period of the original ban they imposed. If so, their misleading explanation exhibits failure to take responsibility not just for their mistake in imposing a punishment in the first place but also for the additional mistake of imposing a punishment that was excessive. I do not and cannot know if my suspicions are accurate, but their explanations contain vagueness, defensiveness and implausibilities that leave room for these suspicions to linger.
It will be impossible to forget this experience and, without some expression of regret, impossible to fully forgive. In some ways, I hate myself for still enjoying the game.
I have 2 accounts, both were banned, both were reset. My VIP14 account got the “Retrieval Gift”. So I know what the gift is supposed to look like & how it is supposed to work. However, the only crew I want on that account are not in the portal, so the new crew retrieval feature does little for that account. My VIP0 account did NOT get the “Retrieval Gift”. That is the account that would actually use the new crew retrieval feature & can’t. CS has so far refused to even look at the code on that account to ascertain that it didn’t get the “Retrieval Gift”.
They didn't "clawback" what people got from the extra pulls. They nuked the affected people's entire inventory of the stuff they removed. Back to zero......
🥌🦞
I could have easily made a million and one different quick decisions that did not include suspending accounts and attacking the players involved by labeling them essentially as thieves and criminals. It is not rocket science when dealing with an unintended button getting loose and some players clicking it and obtaining virtual items from it. TP is definitely lying through their teeth here because their explanations do not add up. If it was truly an issue with glitches as a result, they should have said it immediately and taken action to make sure those affected did not lose out on their earnings in the event, dailies, and so forth. Their lack of transparency tied with all of the nonsense they have pulled already in less than a year was enough to be the last nail in the coffin for a lot of players. Even Niantic with the myriad of issues within Pokemon GO is not this deft when it comes to their player base. Whether or not we enjoy the game is irrelevant here; we are not going to allow a company to run over the ones keeping their precious game alive for the sake of one instance of entertainment. The morality and the principal matter more than a few hours of playtime that can easily be acquired elsewhere that takes their players more seriously.
DB: Do Better.
Member of Starship Trista.
I'm not specifically hoping for people to lose their jobs, but the lack of a real apology is unacceptable. To be honest, I don't care if they give us more crew or polestars or other shiny bits. The ONLY thing that will save this game and the company who runs it is a sincere apology that leads to a change in policy. Blaming customers for your own mistake is Bad Business 101. Doubling down on that bad business choice only makes it worse.
What they need to do first is apologize. Once that is done, appropriate follow up action--including but not limited to proper quality assurance protocols--will occur.
Finally, if bad business choices lead to poor reviews and fewer players joining, that is the nature of what bad business choices do. Honestly, I don't want new players walking into a game that is poorly run and blames players for company mistakes. Those potential new players need to walk in with their eyes open before they spend money on things that later get taken from them when they click the wrong "Buy Again" button an unspecified too many times.