Oh I know about bugs I didn't even tell anyone about but brought straight to TP. Did you know it used to be possible to open double instances of the game and claim double event rewards? No one was punished for that. Just absolutely incredible.
The decisions we had to take today are not ones we took lightly.
It was a necessity due to the nature of the exploit, and the severity of its impact on the game. Both also being why we had to handle this differently than previous issues, even if said previous issues may appear similar on the surface.
This pack was announced as being available once per day and displayed a purchase limit of 1. The fact that it was claimable more than once was clearly a bug.
We understand that many players made a few additional claims without understanding there was an exploit, and those people will suffer no repercussions for their actions. However there were also players who exploited the issue to a degree that was not acceptable.
God damn, this is is some pro gaslighting, holy **tsk tsk**.
This was not an exploit, but if you want to consider it one, it was programmed and deployed by the developers, and the uusers are the victims of it. You put a "buy again" button which fooled the users into clicking it when they shouldn't, wth little way of knowing that.
You are angry that you messed up your game and will be losing money due to people having more resources than what you want them to have? Fine, but don't try to put the blame on the users.
They have just lost waaaaaaaay more money by banning people and stripping them of all resources as there is now a mass exodus from the game.
Oh, I never said this wasn't the stupidiest decision possible.
If players have monthly cards, or have paid for the premium campaign then at a minimum this is breach of contract.
I was thinking about the dil that I already paid for, but forgot about the premium campaign. I'm going to be pretty unhappy if this puts me off track for the final rewards. Small losses in the big picture, but the amount doesn't matter - it is unacceptable to take away your customers' actual money for something that was YOUR MISTAKE.
Yeah. This is an interesting hill for TP to make its stand on. Not the people who used macros, not the people who used iampicard, not the bugged dil offer, but a free reward that isn’t worth that much to most players.
Congrats, TP on your biggest mistake yet! How will you be able to top that?
That’s the insane thing, when the offer disappeared I thought “oh **tsk tsk**, that must have been a mistake. LOL someone’s got egg on their face.”
So I poked through and opened some of my constellations and realized, “well even if this was a bug, it’s minor at worst. It’s going to take me weeks to save up anything to even use. Oh well.” Weeks. Maybe months. And I’m a VIP13.
So I didn’t end up spending any of my polestars because I figured I’d try to make it easier on the programmers to do a clawback if they needed to. I wanted to wait to see what the reaction would be and worst case I’d lose my unintentionally ill-gotten gains and move on. This...I didn’t expect this. Holy cow.
Imagine leaving the jar of cookies open on the counter and then screaming at your child because they ate them.
This was not an intentional exploit for most players who pushed it. This was a button that said play again. Of course people are going to push it. It looks like you're supposed to. Like a hidden treat.
Exploit? This was NOT a glitch that someone took advantage of through the backdoor. This was a screwup on whomever coded the pack and released it out and has affected hundreds of players or more. I am glad I stopped spending my money a month ago after over $100 worth of Dilithium used on a Tuesday pack only netted me one featured Legendary crew. You just killed this game with one single decision to ban everyone who dared to hit that button a second time for three days. Good luck keeping this ship with a massive hole on the bottom now afloat.
Nope. I hit it 6 times then reported the problem. Everyone who hit it 20, 50, 100 times knew exactly what they were doing. They knew it was a bug. They assumed they wouldn’t get any punishment. They were wrong.
Yeah. This is an interesting hill for TP to make its stand on. Not the people who used macros, not the people who used iampicard, not the bugged dil offer, but a free reward that isn’t worth that much to most players.
Congrats, TP on your biggest mistake yet! How will you be able to top that?
That’s the insane thing, when the offer disappeared I thought “oh **tsk tsk**, that must have been a mistake. LOL someone’s got egg on their face.”
So I poked through and opened some of my constellations and realized, “well even if this was a bug, it’s minor at worst. It’s going to take me weeks to save up anything to even use. Oh well.” Weeks. Maybe months. And I’m a VIP13.
So I didn’t end up spending any of my polestars because I figured I’d try to make it easier on the programmers to do a clawback if they needed to. I wanted to wait to see what the reaction would be and worst case I’d lose my unintentionally ill-gotten gains and move on. This...I didn’t expect this. Holy cow.
Imagine leaving the jar of cookies open on the counter and then screaming at your child because they ate them.
It’s an amazing display of incompetence and tone-deafness. How to kill your product in 6 steps:
1. Ignore customer needs.
2. Present a solution to 1 issue that was raised more than 18 months ago. Make it as complicated as possible.
3. Roll out the solution fairly cleanly.
4. Fail to put a limit on freebies.
5. Punish people for taking more than a couple of freebies.
6. Punish others through social components of the game.
Edit: Like TP, I also mixed up my count. Unlike TP, I won’t punish anyone for it.
I just gotta chime in and say that while I quit spending back in December over some choices made, I feel that WRG has done a tremendous amount of damage to this game with various types of mistakes in just a few months time. I was hoping for a honor sale, maybe the two cites made permanent in the campaign, and some refining of the new feature to make it a little more useful. Instead actions like today just solidify my not supporting WRG monetarily ever again. I have zero issue with you taking back stuff people got from a BUG as that happens in other games. I do however take issue with games that ban people over stuff like this. Not only did your choice effect fleets and innocent folks in those fleets but for those you banned if they have the monthly card they lose 300 dilithium, if they purchase the campaign they lose three days of working towards that, and in general you just piled more poo on a player base that is already feeling covered up to their eyeballs in stank. On a positive note, thanks for the free game (while it lasts) and the free entertainment I also enjoy with each screw up you make and the responses to them on the forums. This has been much more enjoyable than actually playing the game today lmao
The moment TP added the new 'buy again' button after the initial claim was made, the terms & conditions of the pack were changed. That button was not in the game yesterday when we all claimed the first daily pack. It was newly added today.
The pack worked one way yesterday, with every player limited to a single claim.
The pack worked differently today, due to the addition of the 'buy again' button, which TP is responsible for.
TP changed the pack behavior unexpectedly today, so naturally players changed their behaviour to match. The new behavior was not initiated by the players, it was initiated by TP with the addition of the 'buy now' button. TP established a new terms & conditions for the pack, and players interacted with the game how the app presented it.
If that 'buy now' button was not supposed to be added, then it is TP's fault.
TP put a "BUY AGAIN" button there. I simply clicked it buy again at the game cost shown to me.
Not my fault y'all can't code or QA.
And your resolution of making it available for the rest of community is working as expected either - some players have gotten 19, and many have not.....
Again Not the player's fault yall cant code or QA
EDIT:
Banned for breaking ToS - been through this with fine tooth comb - pray tell, where does it state that a button available in game to use, is a violation.
- It was within lawful use,
- Within security, computre & system use,
This is really the hill you're choosing to die on? Really? I mean, I've seen really stupid business decisions in my time, but this is really pushing some bounds of sanity here.
The decisions we had to take today are not ones we took lightly.
It was a necessity due to the nature of the exploit, and the severity of its impact on the game. Both also being why we had to handle this differently than previous issues, even if said previous issues may appear similar on the surface.
This pack was announced as being available once per day and displayed a purchase limit of 1. The fact that it was claimable more than once was clearly a bug.
We understand that many players made a few additional claims without understanding there was an exploit, and those people will suffer no repercussions for their actions. However there were also players who exploited the issue to a degree that was not acceptable.
Normally if I want this kind of smoke blown up my aѕs I'd have to go down to the shady part of town after dark and hang around in a smelly alley and pay good money for it. But here it is for free and this is that premium stuff, too.
I was pleasantly surprised with a new 'buy again' button, so I pressed it. My excitement towards the new feature grew substantially, to the point I was impressed with TP's surprise gift for players.
I did not program the app.
I did not hack the app.
I did not use a 3rd party interface into the app.
I pressed a button that the app presented.
I did not exploit anything.
I did not breach any terms of services.
If you want your stuff back, take it. Don't insult me. Don't penalize me further by taking stuff away that I had before today. DO NOT BAN ME.
Exactly this. I could not be more displeased with your awful customer service. Not only are you screwing me over, but this also effects my fleet mates since we now won't be able to hit the daily achievements. I don't expect I will continue playing.
WRG has hyped this new feature, is experimenting with new rewards (390 dil packs, packs offered at other dates then before, including cites for a while etc).
It also told us through timelines talk we could expect surprises.
Secondly the game has a record of misleading or unclear tests in offers.
Many an offer text has been changed after people who bought it complained that it did not deliver what was advertised.
The game owner 'exploited' wrong advertisement to encite players to buy an offer, changed the text but never delivered what was promised.
Today there was a buy again button. If something is a once of deal, do not offer a buy again button.
It would have been an exploit if you would have to do a secret action like clicking on the ism to get it again.
Clicking on A buy again button which does exactly what it promises is not an exploit. It may be a mistake from. WRG, but so could the text about it being available once only.
If we do not buy anything because there might be a mistake , we never will. Because they are so common. And a buy again button is very very obvious.
Is there no QA at all? Is there no testing? Or are they blind so they can not see a big buy again button?
Some players clicked on an in game provided buy again button,
WRG did the following in recent months:
Misleading advertisement where the text was changed but people were not given what they bought.
Refusing to fix bugs
Slow, inconsistent and complicated systems for complaints and error resolution to discourage players to try to do that.
Incompetent programming
Non existent or very bad QA or testing
Blaming, accusing, banning the customers for using in game buttons.
Punishing all users for perceived misconduct , but realy WRG error, by making it harder to get the free daily target ISM by banning lots of customers.
Only thing TP understands is revenue. I will not spend another penny until this is made right. They won't miss my $50/month but if we can get others to follow they may begin to care about player feedback. Please consider not spending any more money on this game. Maybe they will listen if it impacts their bottom line.
I got banned for three days for pressing ‘buy again’. I thought TP were offering a bunch of constellations to speed up the long winded-looking process of acquiring them over the weeks and months. How is this acceptable? If it’s a bug, just remove the stuff and move on. Perhaps they cannot remove the constellations/ polestars, or they’ve been used already. This is gonna ruin some players’ run at the premium campaign and mess up anything invested into the start of this event (I’ve now pointlessly sent out shuttles using around ten tokens). This is looking like a lot of us from are gonna refrain from paying. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!!! I’m sayin BOOOOO!
What a horrible response. @Shan you need to reconsider the way you responded to your bug. It’s obvious that your lack of customer service is having a negative impact on the player experience.
Only thing TP understands is revenue. I will not spend another penny until this is made right. They won't miss my $50/month but if we can get others to follow they may begin to care about player feedback. Please consider not spending any more money on this game. Maybe they will listen if it impacts their bottom line.
I am eagerly awaiting the day WRG profit margins drop so low from this debacle that they decide to throw Shan under the bus and fire her. Would love to see Shan take to the forums and expose all the shady WRG dealings that went on behind the scenes that we never heard about.
Nope. I hit it 6 times then reported the problem. Everyone who hit it 20, 50, 100 times knew exactly what they were doing. They knew it was a bug. They assumed they wouldn’t get any punishment. They were wrong.
You know exactly what the button said if you hit it multiple times yourself. It was not an exploit of a glitch by its technical definition. The was a screw up on whomever at TP who allowed that “Buy Again” button to be there by not double checking everything. DB never banned anyone for taking advantage of mess ups on their (DB’s) end because it was on them and not anyone else. Now that TP took over, they are punishing players for having something out in the open that anyone could utilize whether it was supposed to be there or not. I hope TP did not need the millions of dollars they invested into the game by buying it from DB because it is about to go belly up.
There are three ways to do something; the right way, the wrong way, and the Janeway.
I'm not sure that I can add too much to what has already been said. Only that this is an overaction, will cause me to play less if at all if not overturned, and again it's very inconsistent considering all the other stuff people actively did to break the game and didn't get nearly as harsh a punishment.
I feel like this is one of the few cases where most of the players are in agreement with that sentiment and that you guys should quickly reverse the bands and maybe if you need to claw back a few constellations so be it. it's better to admit that you're wrong now then just to wait on it before you lose too much more people and completely damaged the environment that has been fostered here
I'm not going to pretend that after the first couple of clicks I didn't realize that something was wrong. And I continued clicking, and even went and opened some of the constellations just to see what I would get, assuming it would get rolled back and knowing I couldn't actually do anything with it since I was down to 150 quantum and sure as heck wasn't going to spend dilithium.
But to pretend that this is 6x worse than using a macro to cheat my way to the top of the leaderboard during an event is more than a bit shocking. Add to that the fact that TP actually took away ISM I earned legitimately PRIOR to their mistake, and it's enough to make me question if I'm going to log back in 72 hours from now.
I've spent thousands of dollars on this game and have been a huge defender of the company's questionable choices in the past, but with the company doubling down on this decision I think it's safe to say both of those things are over.
WRG has hyped this new feature, is experimenting with new rewards (390 dil packs, packs offered at other dates then before, including cites for a while etc).
It also told us through timelines talk we could expect surprises.
Secondly the game has a record of misleading or unclear tests in offers.
Many an offer text has been changed after people who bought it complained that it did not deliver what was advertised.
The game owner 'exploited' wrong advertisement to encite players to buy an offer, changed the text but never delivered what was promised.
Today there was a buy again button. If something is a once of deal, do not offer a buy again button.
It would have been an exploit if you would have to do a secret action like clicking on the ism to get it again.
Clicking on A buy again button which does exactly what it promises is not an exploit. It may be a mistake from. WRG, but so could the text about it being available once only.
If we do not buy anything because there might be a mistake , we never will. Because they are so common. And a buy again button is very very obvious.
Is there no QA at all? Is there no testing? Or are they blind so they can not see a big buy again button?
Some players clicked on an in game provided buy again button,
WRG did the following in recent months:
Misleading advertisement where the text was changed but people were not given what they bought.
Refusing to fix bugs
Slow, inconsistent and complicated systems for complaints and error resolution to discourage players to try to do that.
Incompetent programming
Non existent or very bad QA or testing
Blaming, accusing, banning the customers for using in game buttons.
Punishing all users for perceived misconduct , but realy WRG error, by making it harder to get the free daily target ISM by banning lots of customers.
Its not some players who are exploiting.
The players are being exploited by WRG.
You totally left out the elephant in the room. Changing a KEY Ranked Reward in an Event, less than an hour before the Event ended. At least they accepted responsibility for that one, and addressed it in a good way. Compensation for that was probably better than the best SorryTon pack we ever got from DB. Their actions today, after they made the mistake, are major steps back!
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
The decisions we had to take today are not ones we took lightly.
It was a necessity due to the nature of the exploit, and the severity of its impact on the game. Both also being why we had to handle this differently than previous issues, even if said previous issues may appear similar on the surface.
This pack was announced as being available once per day and displayed a purchase limit of 1. The fact that it was claimable more than once was clearly a bug.
We understand that many players made a few additional claims without understanding there was an exploit, and those people will suffer no repercussions for their actions. However there were also players who exploited the issue to a degree that was not acceptable.
The decisions we had to take today are not ones we took lightly.
It was a necessity due to the nature of the exploit, and the severity of its impact on the game. Both also being why we had to handle this differently than previous issues, even if said previous issues may appear similar on the surface.
This pack was announced as being available once per day and displayed a purchase limit of 1. The fact that it was claimable more than once was clearly a bug.
We understand that many players made a few additional claims without understanding there was an exploit, and those people will suffer no repercussions for their actions. However there were also players who exploited the issue to a degree that was not acceptable.
The decisions we had to take today are not ones we took lightly.
It was a necessity due to the nature of the exploit, and the severity of its impact on the game. Both also being why we had to handle this differently than previous issues, even if said previous issues may appear similar on the surface.
This pack was announced as being available once per day and displayed a purchase limit of 1. The fact that it was claimable more than once was clearly a bug.
We understand that many players made a few additional claims without understanding there was an exploit, and those people will suffer no repercussions for their actions. However there were also players who exploited the issue to a degree that was not acceptable.
Need to fire all in TP , clean house over this crap, there the problem and we get screwed , in normal world if you did this on a job you be fired so fast and replaced if your client base got screwed so bad
Comments
Proud Former Officer of The Gluten Empire
Retired 12-14-20. So long, and thanks for all the cat pics!
God damn, this is is some pro gaslighting, holy **tsk tsk**.
Public profile
Captain Zombie's Combo chain calculator
I was thinking about the dil that I already paid for, but forgot about the premium campaign. I'm going to be pretty unhappy if this puts me off track for the final rewards. Small losses in the big picture, but the amount doesn't matter - it is unacceptable to take away your customers' actual money for something that was YOUR MISTAKE.
That’s the insane thing, when the offer disappeared I thought “oh **tsk tsk**, that must have been a mistake. LOL someone’s got egg on their face.”
So I poked through and opened some of my constellations and realized, “well even if this was a bug, it’s minor at worst. It’s going to take me weeks to save up anything to even use. Oh well.” Weeks. Maybe months. And I’m a VIP13.
So I didn’t end up spending any of my polestars because I figured I’d try to make it easier on the programmers to do a clawback if they needed to. I wanted to wait to see what the reaction would be and worst case I’d lose my unintentionally ill-gotten gains and move on. This...I didn’t expect this. Holy cow.
Imagine leaving the jar of cookies open on the counter and then screaming at your child because they ate them.
Nope. I hit it 6 times then reported the problem. Everyone who hit it 20, 50, 100 times knew exactly what they were doing. They knew it was a bug. They assumed they wouldn’t get any punishment. They were wrong.
It’s an amazing display of incompetence and tone-deafness. How to kill your product in 6 steps:
1. Ignore customer needs.
2. Present a solution to 1 issue that was raised more than 18 months ago. Make it as complicated as possible.
3. Roll out the solution fairly cleanly.
4. Fail to put a limit on freebies.
5. Punish people for taking more than a couple of freebies.
6. Punish others through social components of the game.
Edit: Like TP, I also mixed up my count. Unlike TP, I won’t punish anyone for it.
This goes beyond screaming.
TP applied a diuretic to the child and is now starving them for 3 days.
Moderator of r/startrektimelines
Fleet - Inner Planets Alliance Fleet of Pubs
Captain Level - 99
Player since - May 2016
The moment TP added the new 'buy again' button after the initial claim was made, the terms & conditions of the pack were changed. That button was not in the game yesterday when we all claimed the first daily pack. It was newly added today.
The pack worked one way yesterday, with every player limited to a single claim.
The pack worked differently today, due to the addition of the 'buy again' button, which TP is responsible for.
TP changed the pack behavior unexpectedly today, so naturally players changed their behaviour to match. The new behavior was not initiated by the players, it was initiated by TP with the addition of the 'buy now' button. TP established a new terms & conditions for the pack, and players interacted with the game how the app presented it.
If that 'buy now' button was not supposed to be added, then it is TP's fault.
PLAYERS SHOULD NOT BE BLAMED.
You forgot underpants...
😳
TP put a "BUY AGAIN" button there. I simply clicked it buy again at the game cost shown to me.
Not my fault y'all can't code or QA.
And your resolution of making it available for the rest of community is working as expected either - some players have gotten 19, and many have not.....
Again Not the player's fault yall cant code or QA
EDIT:
Banned for breaking ToS - been through this with fine tooth comb - pray tell, where does it state that a button available in game to use, is a violation.
- It was within lawful use,
- Within security, computre & system use,
can you show me where / how ToS was breached?
I also forgot question marks and profit. So did TP apparently.
Normally if I want this kind of smoke blown up my aѕs I'd have to go down to the shady part of town after dark and hang around in a smelly alley and pay good money for it. But here it is for free and this is that premium stuff, too.
😂👍
Exactly this. I could not be more displeased with your awful customer service. Not only are you screwing me over, but this also effects my fleet mates since we now won't be able to hit the daily achievements. I don't expect I will continue playing.
It also told us through timelines talk we could expect surprises.
Secondly the game has a record of misleading or unclear tests in offers.
Many an offer text has been changed after people who bought it complained that it did not deliver what was advertised.
The game owner 'exploited' wrong advertisement to encite players to buy an offer, changed the text but never delivered what was promised.
Today there was a buy again button. If something is a once of deal, do not offer a buy again button.
It would have been an exploit if you would have to do a secret action like clicking on the ism to get it again.
Clicking on A buy again button which does exactly what it promises is not an exploit. It may be a mistake from. WRG, but so could the text about it being available once only.
If we do not buy anything because there might be a mistake , we never will. Because they are so common. And a buy again button is very very obvious.
Is there no QA at all? Is there no testing? Or are they blind so they can not see a big buy again button?
Some players clicked on an in game provided buy again button,
WRG did the following in recent months:
Misleading advertisement where the text was changed but people were not given what they bought.
Refusing to fix bugs
Slow, inconsistent and complicated systems for complaints and error resolution to discourage players to try to do that.
Incompetent programming
Non existent or very bad QA or testing
Blaming, accusing, banning the customers for using in game buttons.
Punishing all users for perceived misconduct , but realy WRG error, by making it harder to get the free daily target ISM by banning lots of customers.
Its not some players who are exploiting.
The players are being exploited by WRG.
I got banned for three days for pressing ‘buy again’. I thought TP were offering a bunch of constellations to speed up the long winded-looking process of acquiring them over the weeks and months. How is this acceptable? If it’s a bug, just remove the stuff and move on. Perhaps they cannot remove the constellations/ polestars, or they’ve been used already. This is gonna ruin some players’ run at the premium campaign and mess up anything invested into the start of this event (I’ve now pointlessly sent out shuttles using around ten tokens). This is looking like a lot of us from are gonna refrain from paying. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!!! I’m sayin BOOOOO!
They won’t be getting another dime from me.
You know exactly what the button said if you hit it multiple times yourself. It was not an exploit of a glitch by its technical definition. The was a screw up on whomever at TP who allowed that “Buy Again” button to be there by not double checking everything. DB never banned anyone for taking advantage of mess ups on their (DB’s) end because it was on them and not anyone else. Now that TP took over, they are punishing players for having something out in the open that anyone could utilize whether it was supposed to be there or not. I hope TP did not need the millions of dollars they invested into the game by buying it from DB because it is about to go belly up.
DB: Do Better.
Member of Starship Trista.
I feel like this is one of the few cases where most of the players are in agreement with that sentiment and that you guys should quickly reverse the bands and maybe if you need to claw back a few constellations so be it. it's better to admit that you're wrong now then just to wait on it before you lose too much more people and completely damaged the environment that has been fostered here
I'm not going to pretend that after the first couple of clicks I didn't realize that something was wrong. And I continued clicking, and even went and opened some of the constellations just to see what I would get, assuming it would get rolled back and knowing I couldn't actually do anything with it since I was down to 150 quantum and sure as heck wasn't going to spend dilithium.
But to pretend that this is 6x worse than using a macro to cheat my way to the top of the leaderboard during an event is more than a bit shocking. Add to that the fact that TP actually took away ISM I earned legitimately PRIOR to their mistake, and it's enough to make me question if I'm going to log back in 72 hours from now.
I've spent thousands of dollars on this game and have been a huge defender of the company's questionable choices in the past, but with the company doubling down on this decision I think it's safe to say both of those things are over.
You totally left out the elephant in the room. Changing a KEY Ranked Reward in an Event, less than an hour before the Event ended. At least they accepted responsibility for that one, and addressed it in a good way. Compensation for that was probably better than the best SorryTon pack we ever got from DB. Their actions today, after they made the mistake, are major steps back!