This is my first post. I've read the forums many times, but never really been tempted to add my two cents. While I didn't see the infamous Buy Again button and heard about it after the fix, I've definitely been dialed in to the aftermath. I find myself on the side of...the players. Everyone has explained and ranted about the bug (I agree it's a bug and not an exploit), but that's the inciting incident now, not the real problem. With almost no real exception, the posts express solidarity by the players that the reaction from TP/WRG went too far. I've by turns been highly entertained by the fiasco and in sympathy with those affected by the ban. It's a customer relations nightmare they've created. People play this game--I play this game--because I love Star Trek. Will I still play, yes. But warily now.
From what I've seen so far, the new feature is yet another grind, complicated and less useful than Honor, which at least is useful to the 30-some years it would take to immortalize all my crew. It will take forever to make it useful without spending money and I'm less inclined to that now. The punitive measures have alienated many people, banned or not. I can see why. How they respond to this blowback will determine in large part the future of the game. I can see a lot of people still playing, but I'm not sure they can afford another screw-up, which is likely inevitable.
In Star Trek terms, we're dealing with the Ferengi, not the Federation. Is anyone surprised at the Ferengi being tone-deaf, unforgiving, etc? No. But there are always people willing to deal with them...to a point.
Here’s something no one is considering. So they took EVERYTHING crew retrieval related from me. Before this even occurred I had the means to pinpoint Leucon, jury rigger and geneticist. I was also one polestar away from getting Sinister Picard, that one being either civilian or undercover operative. Wanting both crew, I said ok, this is cool. I’m digging this. Now that those have been stripped away, I am definitely not going to expend any energy on this feature. Not because I’m bitter about the ban but because with nothing to start with, getting any crew worth anything would be such a huge hill to climb that it would take forever to pinpoint someone I wanted. So they spent months on this feature then stripped away any resources many people had to be able to use it.
I've seen a number of posts comparing this to checking out of a store and paying less than expected due to an error on the part of the store. I feel like this is more like a store putting items in a bin that says, "FREE! Limit 1 per customer" and people grabbing armfuls of that item.
They made it clear that it was supposed to be 1 pack per day. It was mentioned in an in-game message, in a post on the forums, and on the pack itself in the portal. The pack also worked as intended on the first day (Feb 10), which certainly showed us that we are meant to only pull once daily.
A bug becomes an exploit when a player uses it to gain an advantage. It is clearly advantageous to have as many trait polestars as possible, because then a player has a much greater chance of pulling a crew they want, defeating the purpose of making constellations and their polestars random.
TP's response of a 72-hour ban was definitely too strong, considering this is a game that encourages daily logins, it is during a mega event, and it punishes other players in their fleet. However, I do support punitive action against the players who clearly sought to abuse a mistake.
Here’s something no one is considering. So they took EVERYTHING crew retrieval related from me. Before this even occurred I had the means to pinpoint Leucon, jury rigger and geneticist. I was also one polestar away from getting Sinister Picard, that one being either civilian or undercover operative. Wanting both crew, I said ok, this is cool. I’m digging this. Now that those have been stripped away, I am definitely not going to expend any energy on this feature. Not because I’m bitter about the ban but because with nothing to start with, getting any crew worth anything would be such a huge hill to climb that it would take forever to pinpoint someone I wanted. So they spent months on this feature then stripped away any resources many people had to be able to use it.
this really s. u. c. k. s.....very poorly handled on all aspects - and the fact that they well into thier work day with no comms just goes to show the lacklustre attitude!
Let me start by saying I'm banned, so you can take this with whatever grains of salt you feel necessary. However, I also work in Marketing and social media / community management, and this could still be an easy fix:
Hello, Captains!
During a recent update, we introduced to the game some unintended functionality. While some players were able to take advantage of our error in the short span of time in which it was available, we were able to get it corrected in short order. Those taking advantage had the additional materials removed from their inventory to level the playing field to where it should have been for this exciting new feature of play.
However, perhaps it was pandemic stress or perhaps we were still in character as Q himself, but we made a choice that impacted many players in our beloved community, some unintentionally as a ripple effect. We recognize now that this action amounted to choosing the wrong Timeline and removing a great deal of love from our community, and for that we sincerely apologize.
Please enjoy these 250 Chronitons, 3 Constellations and copy of Punk Rocker as a token of goodwill. In addition, you will find that each Event phase has been extended 24 hours to give players the opportunity to reach the appropriate tiered rewards after their absence. Those returning to play will find the 19 Packs available for them to claim as we originally intended.
Love,
The sheepish folks behind the code
This is so perfect! (Maybe except the Punk Rocker, why would we want a 3rd copy?)
You know, I don't need the punk rocker, but this response would be a great start for me! Replace the punk with a legendary citation, and I'd be perfectly happy with this.
I remember an event where a lot of players got accidentally locked out of the game and it took a few days to fix. They gave everyone a legendary cite for that. This feels worse. And its also intentional. A legendary cite dosnt even come close to being enough.
The apology, and especially the tone of the apology, is key here. The cite is a bonus, but acknowledging a mistake is what must happen.
I've seen a number of posts comparing this to checking out of a store and paying less than expected due to an error on the part of the store. I feel like this is more like a store putting items in a bin that says, "FREE! Limit 1 per customer" and people grabbing armfuls of that item.
They made it clear that it was supposed to be 1 pack per day. It was mentioned in an in-game message, in a post on the forums, and on the pack itself in the portal. The pack also worked as intended on the first day (Feb 10), which certainly showed us that we are meant to only pull once daily.
A bug becomes an exploit when a player uses it to gain an advantage. It is clearly advantageous to have as many trait polestars as possible, because then a player has a much greater chance of pulling a crew they want, defeating the purpose of making constellations and their polestars random.
TP's response of a 72-hour ban was definitely too strong, considering this is a game that encourages daily logins, it is during a mega event, and it punishes other players in their fleet. However, I do support punitive action against the players who clearly sought to abuse a mistake.
You analogy is flawed.
To use your analogy, what happened is like me reaching in to take my 1 free thing from the bin, then finding a note on that thing that says "take another free thing from the bin", and then having this happen each time I reached into the bin.
I only clicked the 'claim' button once. Then when I was into the pack sub-screen, I interacted with newly added functionality that was not there the previous day, which I assumed was deliberately added (the 'buy more' button).
Clicking a button that says 'limit - click once per day' multiple times would be an exploit. Clicking a new button that says 'get more' as often as possible is nothing more than playing the game as programmed.
I've seen a number of posts comparing this to checking out of a store and paying less than expected due to an error on the part of the store. I feel like this is more like a store putting items in a bin that says, "FREE! Limit 1 per customer" and people grabbing armfuls of that item.
They made it clear that it was supposed to be 1 pack per day. It was mentioned in an in-game message, in a post on the forums, and on the pack itself in the portal. The pack also worked as intended on the first day (Feb 10), which certainly showed us that we are meant to only pull once daily.
A bug becomes an exploit when a player uses it to gain an advantage. It is clearly advantageous to have as many trait polestars as possible, because then a player has a much greater chance of pulling a crew they want, defeating the purpose of making constellations and their polestars random.
TP's response of a 72-hour ban was definitely too strong, considering this is a game that encourages daily logins, it is during a mega event, and it punishes other players in their fleet. However, I do support punitive action against the players who clearly sought to abuse a mistake.
Except how do you really identify ones that knew what they were doing vs ones that were doing what they were told to by just clicking the button. I disagree with you, its on them to prove that other were cheating, not to unilaterally call everyone cheaters.
I hope this huts them. They won't respond except I did get an email from Shan calling me rude. I fail to see anywhere how this is a players fault. After all the people that didn't get banned were rewarded with what the players will lose when they were banned.
A bug is not an exploit, it an error caused by the programmers.
Shan will the people banned and stripped off their stuff be able to claim the 19 packs when the ban expired?
Stripping them needs to reset the claim counter too!
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.
I've seen a number of posts comparing this to checking out of a store and paying less than expected due to an error on the part of the store. I feel like this is more like a store putting items in a bin that says, "FREE! Limit 1 per customer" and people grabbing armfuls of that item.
They made it clear that it was supposed to be 1 pack per day. It was mentioned in an in-game message, in a post on the forums, and on the pack itself in the portal. The pack also worked as intended on the first day (Feb 10), which certainly showed us that we are meant to only pull once daily.
You analogy is flawed.
To use your analogy, what happened is like me reaching in to take my 1 free thing from the bin, then finding a note on that thing says "take another free thing from the bin", and then having this happen each time I reached into the bin.
I only clicked the 'claim' button once. Once I was into the pack sub-screen, I interacted with newly added functionality that was not there the previous day, which I assumed was deliberately added (the 'buy new' button).
Clicking a button that say 'limit - click once per day' multiple times would be an exploit. Clicking a new button that says 'get more' as often as possible is nothing more than playing the game as programmed.
That "Buy More" button allowed you to receive more packs, akin to continually taking additional items from the bin. The intended feature of the pack disappearing after being claimed once would be similar to an employee of the store checking IDs, putting the name on a list, verifying that the customer has not received the item, then handing them the item.
You don't. You don't try to parse the morality you fix the problem in the most efficient, fair, and community-friendly way possible.
The best way to do that would have been a "We're doing a universe reset in one hour" and rolled it back to noon CST or whenever the pack went live. "Sorry for the inconvenience of everyone who bought packs and got a great card. Boy did we screw this up. Here's a 10x pack for everyone, a 1,000 chrons, and we'll have some other things we're working out the details on"
I've seen a number of posts comparing this to checking out of a store and paying less than expected due to an error on the part of the store. I feel like this is more like a store putting items in a bin that says, "FREE! Limit 1 per customer" and people grabbing armfuls of that item.
They made it clear that it was supposed to be 1 pack per day. It was mentioned in an in-game message, in a post on the forums, and on the pack itself in the portal. The pack also worked as intended on the first day (Feb 10), which certainly showed us that we are meant to only pull once daily.
You analogy is flawed.
To use your analogy, what happened is like me reaching in to take my 1 free thing from the bin, then finding a note on that thing says "take another free thing from the bin", and then having this happen each time I reached into the bin.
I only clicked the 'claim' button once. Once I was into the pack sub-screen, I interacted with newly added functionality that was not there the previous day, which I assumed was deliberately added (the 'buy new' button).
Clicking a button that say 'limit - click once per day' multiple times would be an exploit. Clicking a new button that says 'get more' as often as possible is nothing more than playing the game as programmed.
That "Buy More" button allowed you to receive more packs, akin to continually taking additional items from the bin. The intended feature of the pack disappearing after being claimed once would be similar to an employee of the store checking IDs, putting the name on a list, verifying that the customer has not received the item, then handing them the item.
Yes, and that 'buy more' button was newly added from the previous day's pack behavior. Why would I have any reason to think it was a bug, when it should have been easy for them to re-run the previous day's pack flawlessly as they have done many times before? I honestly believed that newly added functionality was deliberately added, as one of the "other surprises" that Ben mentioned during the podcast demo.
Had that new button not been added, and the pack just failed to disappear from the store screen as it should have, then I would not have been so inclined to open it multiple times since I would have known it was a glitch. TP added a new button, which modified the behavior of the pack, and I just went along with it.
Here's how it works on a larger and infinitely more complex game: LOTRO. Every new region for the past several years has been filled with bugs. The hard core raiding groups are familiar with these bugs. They found them (and reported them) on the test server. The bugs are never fixed on the test server. They go to the bugs on the live server and exploit the heck out of them. For example a while ago we were picking flowers. A rare flower was supposed to drop say 5% of the time. Instead it was dropping 100% of the time. This is pretty similar to the Timelines bug here, except that you had to ride around to look for the flowers.
The people there on day 1 exploit the bug until they get their fill for a couple days then report the bug on the live server so that no one else can get it. The company finally fixes the bug. There is no punishment - no taking back of resources. Just case closed. It's led to the feeling that you have to be there on day 1 of a new region or you miss out. And that's what the kids fear most these days.
So in the case of Timelines it was a bug created by the company. To tap it a couple times is not an exploit, but to tap it 20, 50, 200, 500 times is certainly an exploit of the bug. A small child knows this. Exploiting bugs is prohibited by every single gaming company. How the company chooses to punish is another matter. In this case a ban makes no sense. It's not something the players sought out. It took no effort from the players. Removing the resources gained was appropriate. Probably they can't tell exactly what resources were gained from the exploit so taking an extra day or two's resources seems reasonable. That should have been it. Case closed.
Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, is all ancient history. Then, before you can blink an eye, suddenly, it threatens to start all over again."
Basically, it's like someone with a bowl of candy on Halloween saying "please take one piece of candy" then saying "it's okay, you can grab some more" each time the kid takes one. Then hunting that kid down, beating him, taking all of his candy away, calling the cops, and getting him arrested. All the while leaving the front door unlocked and letting some other kids run off with several laptops and deciding not to press charges.
You've got the button crew locked behind bars while after phase change tomorrow macro crew will be allowed to run free and use an actual exploit explicitly banned by the TOS. It's asinine.
The best thing would've been to apologize, claw it back, and then run an LTO for quantum to capitalize on the freebies since everyone was locked by that currency anyway. It would've made a mint.
I believe a pertinent point here is simply that those of us who have not been banned are strongly against this ban as well (mainly). It is a worrying turn of events to see players treated so harshly for a mistake that was not of their making.
I also believe that TP/WRG could easilly rectify this by stating that after listenimg to the STT community all bans will be overturned.
After all they claim we are all in this together so hear our voices and respect the will of the community.
I would also say that after this it is absolutely necesary to have a clear complaint code for players as it appears at the moment the current system is unworkable when the CS team can just ignore players and refuse escalation to a more senior level of management. If players have to be accountable, then so do employees of TP/WRG.
I genuinely hope that this is seen by @Shan and they are humble enough to accept the community is backing the players in this instance and they are willing to see sense and back down.
The longer this goes on though, the less likely this matter can be resolved in a manner that will not have a long lasting negative effect on all of us.
The people there on day 1 exploit the bug until they get their fill for a couple days then report the bug on the live server so that no one else can get it. The company finally fixes the bug. There is no punishment - no taking back of resources. Just case closed. It's led to the feeling that you have to be there on day 1 of a new region or you miss out. And that's what the kids fear most these days.
I must have missed out on a lot. My main is still in the Iron Hills. I am not sure if she will ever get any further.
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.
Basically, it's like someone with a bowl of candy on Halloween saying "please take one piece of candy" then saying "it's okay, you can grab some more" each time the kid takes one. Then hunting that kid down, beating him, taking all of his candy away, calling the cops, and getting him arrested. All the while leaving the front door unlocked and letting some other kids run off with several laptops and deciding not to press charges.
You've got the button crew locked behind bars while after phase change tomorrow macro crew will be allowed to run free and use an actual exploit explicitly banned by the TOS. It's asinine.
The best thing would've been to apologize, claw it back, and then run an LTO for quantum to capitalize on the freebies since everyone was locked by that currency anyway. It would've made a mint.
I've seen a number of posts comparing this to checking out of a store and paying less than expected due to an error on the part of the store. I feel like this is more like a store putting items in a bin that says, "FREE! Limit 1 per customer" and people grabbing armfuls of that item.
They made it clear that it was supposed to be 1 pack per day. It was mentioned in an in-game message, in a post on the forums, and on the pack itself in the portal. The pack also worked as intended on the first day (Feb 10), which certainly showed us that we are meant to only pull once daily.
You analogy is flawed.
To use your analogy, what happened is like me reaching in to take my 1 free thing from the bin, then finding a note on that thing says "take another free thing from the bin", and then having this happen each time I reached into the bin.
I only clicked the 'claim' button once. Once I was into the pack sub-screen, I interacted with newly added functionality that was not there the previous day, which I assumed was deliberately added (the 'buy new' button).
Clicking a button that say 'limit - click once per day' multiple times would be an exploit. Clicking a new button that says 'get more' as often as possible is nothing more than playing the game as programmed.
That "Buy More" button allowed you to receive more packs, akin to continually taking additional items from the bin. The intended feature of the pack disappearing after being claimed once would be similar to an employee of the store checking IDs, putting the name on a list, verifying that the customer has not received the item, then handing them the item.
Wrong. This is like you taking one item, going up to the checkout and the employee saying "Do you want another one?"...multiple times. The employee is the one who screwed up by making the offer multiple times, not the customer who said yes.
I clicked 'buy again' as I no longer read any of TP's communique. I just click confirm, ok or whatever button I need to stop seeing the message. I thought you had given us a lovely gift for the new feature. I certainly did not think i was exploiting a bug. But I also wasn't banned.
Thanks for the awesome comment. They don't even realize what's happening in the Google store
I left a 1* review yesterday and checked today. Mine is there, but I see no other reviews from yesterday or today, and the overall average hasn't changed. It makes me wonder if Google is suppressing reviews temporarily or if my app just isn't updating. I can't imagine that I'm the only angry player who has left a review in the last 24 hours.
No Ravel, you are not only 1. I see 100+ 1/5 review in last 2 days.
That's really great to know! If that doesn't cut through the noise, I don't know what will. It's hard to sell anything in a game if no one downloads it.
I’ve seen the torches & pitchforks raised many times for different snafus in STT. Hell, I’ve done that myself more than once, so I understand why we players do so. I’m not sure if I should add my voice to the chorus this time, though, since everything I think about it has been written better by others more eloquent than myself. That being said ...
The only truly comparable incident to this one that I can recall was the bugged Independence Day packs. For that one, they clawed back the stuff but did not ban players for tapping the button repeatedly.
Even after reading the company’s official statements regarding this one, I honestly do not understand the banning, which has only added fuel to the fire. To ban players is incredibly short-sighted of the company, given that it occurred not only during the rollout of their new game feature, but also in the second week of a mega event.
Anyway, I plan to stick around in some fashion as long as the game does, but I no longer feel bad about taking a sabbatical when I can’t handle the stupidity and/or incompetence any more.
This image sums up what you, the company, have brought upon yourselves:
"In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it's us players who define the game." — Nicky Case, The Evolution of Trust
No Ravel, you are not only 1. I see 100+ 1/5 review in last 2 days.
I figured it out. I needed to sort by recent rather than relevant. I'm now going through and clicking yes each time it asks if a review is relevant, so that others will start seeing recent reviews as relevant reviews too. I'm just that angry about this. If TP is going to tank the game I love, I have no qualms with tanking TP.
Comments
Here’s something no one is considering. So they took EVERYTHING crew retrieval related from me. Before this even occurred I had the means to pinpoint Leucon, jury rigger and geneticist. I was also one polestar away from getting Sinister Picard, that one being either civilian or undercover operative. Wanting both crew, I said ok, this is cool. I’m digging this. Now that those have been stripped away, I am definitely not going to expend any energy on this feature. Not because I’m bitter about the ban but because with nothing to start with, getting any crew worth anything would be such a huge hill to climb that it would take forever to pinpoint someone I wanted. So they spent months on this feature then stripped away any resources many people had to be able to use it.
They made it clear that it was supposed to be 1 pack per day. It was mentioned in an in-game message, in a post on the forums, and on the pack itself in the portal. The pack also worked as intended on the first day (Feb 10), which certainly showed us that we are meant to only pull once daily.
A bug becomes an exploit when a player uses it to gain an advantage. It is clearly advantageous to have as many trait polestars as possible, because then a player has a much greater chance of pulling a crew they want, defeating the purpose of making constellations and their polestars random.
TP's response of a 72-hour ban was definitely too strong, considering this is a game that encourages daily logins, it is during a mega event, and it punishes other players in their fleet. However, I do support punitive action against the players who clearly sought to abuse a mistake.
The apology, and especially the tone of the apology, is key here. The cite is a bonus, but acknowledging a mistake is what must happen.
You analogy is flawed.
To use your analogy, what happened is like me reaching in to take my 1 free thing from the bin, then finding a note on that thing that says "take another free thing from the bin", and then having this happen each time I reached into the bin.
I only clicked the 'claim' button once. Then when I was into the pack sub-screen, I interacted with newly added functionality that was not there the previous day, which I assumed was deliberately added (the 'buy more' button).
Clicking a button that says 'limit - click once per day' multiple times would be an exploit. Clicking a new button that says 'get more' as often as possible is nothing more than playing the game as programmed.
Except how do you really identify ones that knew what they were doing vs ones that were doing what they were told to by just clicking the button. I disagree with you, its on them to prove that other were cheating, not to unilaterally call everyone cheaters.
I hope this huts them. They won't respond except I did get an email from Shan calling me rude. I fail to see anywhere how this is a players fault. After all the people that didn't get banned were rewarded with what the players will lose when they were banned.
A bug is not an exploit, it an error caused by the programmers.
Stripping them needs to reset the claim counter too!
*Press Release*
The 'Naked Sulu's" official statement
That "Buy More" button allowed you to receive more packs, akin to continually taking additional items from the bin. The intended feature of the pack disappearing after being claimed once would be similar to an employee of the store checking IDs, putting the name on a list, verifying that the customer has not received the item, then handing them the item.
The best way to do that would have been a "We're doing a universe reset in one hour" and rolled it back to noon CST or whenever the pack went live. "Sorry for the inconvenience of everyone who bought packs and got a great card. Boy did we screw this up. Here's a 10x pack for everyone, a 1,000 chrons, and we'll have some other things we're working out the details on"
That ship has long, long sailed
Yes, and that 'buy more' button was newly added from the previous day's pack behavior. Why would I have any reason to think it was a bug, when it should have been easy for them to re-run the previous day's pack flawlessly as they have done many times before? I honestly believed that newly added functionality was deliberately added, as one of the "other surprises" that Ben mentioned during the podcast demo.
Had that new button not been added, and the pack just failed to disappear from the store screen as it should have, then I would not have been so inclined to open it multiple times since I would have known it was a glitch. TP added a new button, which modified the behavior of the pack, and I just went along with it.
The people there on day 1 exploit the bug until they get their fill for a couple days then report the bug on the live server so that no one else can get it. The company finally fixes the bug. There is no punishment - no taking back of resources. Just case closed. It's led to the feeling that you have to be there on day 1 of a new region or you miss out. And that's what the kids fear most these days.
So in the case of Timelines it was a bug created by the company. To tap it a couple times is not an exploit, but to tap it 20, 50, 200, 500 times is certainly an exploit of the bug. A small child knows this. Exploiting bugs is prohibited by every single gaming company. How the company chooses to punish is another matter. In this case a ban makes no sense. It's not something the players sought out. It took no effort from the players. Removing the resources gained was appropriate. Probably they can't tell exactly what resources were gained from the exploit so taking an extra day or two's resources seems reasonable. That should have been it. Case closed.
You've got the button crew locked behind bars while after phase change tomorrow macro crew will be allowed to run free and use an actual exploit explicitly banned by the TOS. It's asinine.
The best thing would've been to apologize, claw it back, and then run an LTO for quantum to capitalize on the freebies since everyone was locked by that currency anyway. It would've made a mint.
Proud Former Officer of The Gluten Empire
Retired 12-14-20. So long, and thanks for all the cat pics!
I also believe that TP/WRG could easilly rectify this by stating that after listenimg to the STT community all bans will be overturned.
After all they claim we are all in this together so hear our voices and respect the will of the community.
I would also say that after this it is absolutely necesary to have a clear complaint code for players as it appears at the moment the current system is unworkable when the CS team can just ignore players and refuse escalation to a more senior level of management. If players have to be accountable, then so do employees of TP/WRG.
I genuinely hope that this is seen by @Shan and they are humble enough to accept the community is backing the players in this instance and they are willing to see sense and back down.
The longer this goes on though, the less likely this matter can be resolved in a manner that will not have a long lasting negative effect on all of us.
You crack me up. Brilliant analogy.
Wrong. This is like you taking one item, going up to the checkout and the employee saying "Do you want another one?"...multiple times. The employee is the one who screwed up by making the offer multiple times, not the customer who said yes.
I left a 1* review yesterday and checked today. Mine is there, but I see no other reviews from yesterday or today, and the overall average hasn't changed. It makes me wonder if Google is suppressing reviews temporarily or if my app just isn't updating. I can't imagine that I'm the only angry player who has left a review in the last 24 hours.
That's really great to know! If that doesn't cut through the noise, I don't know what will. It's hard to sell anything in a game if no one downloads it.
I’ve seen the torches & pitchforks raised many times for different snafus in STT. Hell, I’ve done that myself more than once, so I understand why we players do so. I’m not sure if I should add my voice to the chorus this time, though, since everything I think about it has been written better by others more eloquent than myself. That being said ...
The only truly comparable incident to this one that I can recall was the bugged Independence Day packs. For that one, they clawed back the stuff but did not ban players for tapping the button repeatedly.
Even after reading the company’s official statements regarding this one, I honestly do not understand the banning, which has only added fuel to the fire. To ban players is incredibly short-sighted of the company, given that it occurred not only during the rollout of their new game feature, but also in the second week of a mega event.
Anyway, I plan to stick around in some fashion as long as the game does, but I no longer feel bad about taking a sabbatical when I can’t handle the stupidity and/or incompetence any more.
This image sums up what you, the company, have brought upon yourselves:
I figured it out. I needed to sort by recent rather than relevant. I'm now going through and clicking yes each time it asks if a review is relevant, so that others will start seeing recent reviews as relevant reviews too. I'm just that angry about this. If TP is going to tank the game I love, I have no qualms with tanking TP.