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"Disciplinary" action: TP banned from my wallet for 3 months (minimum)
=j= Zathras
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After careful deliberation, I have decided to take the following action:
TP is banned from my wallet for a minimum of 3 months. It could very well be longer. I probably will at some point take the time to submit reviews that reflect my true and honest opinion on the quality of the product. In the past, I have been generous in my recognition of the difficulties in maintaining a property like this, but there's been no follow through by TP/WRG to show they are committed to putting out and maintaining a quality product.
I have no illusions about whether this will make any substantive difference; however, I feel it is an action I must take for my own self-respect. It is not a decision I take lightly.
While my monetary contributions to the game may pale in comparison to some, from my perspective, the resources are still a product of my own labor.
I was willing to let bygones be bygones, but for the following reasons and others I feel this is necessary:
I want to keep playing (for the moment) because of the resources I've already invested, but I'm totally soured by TP's stance and actions. I don't know how long I'll keep playing Timelines, but it is likely I will never play another TP/WRG property.
This is not a call to action. It is merely a statement of my own intent. However, if you feel inspired to take your own similar (or more severe) action, I stake no claim to the ideas within. You are free to take the actions that give you your own peace of mind. This is my attempt to address my grievances.
LLAP
TP is banned from my wallet for a minimum of 3 months. It could very well be longer. I probably will at some point take the time to submit reviews that reflect my true and honest opinion on the quality of the product. In the past, I have been generous in my recognition of the difficulties in maintaining a property like this, but there's been no follow through by TP/WRG to show they are committed to putting out and maintaining a quality product.
I have no illusions about whether this will make any substantive difference; however, I feel it is an action I must take for my own self-respect. It is not a decision I take lightly.
While my monetary contributions to the game may pale in comparison to some, from my perspective, the resources are still a product of my own labor.
I was willing to let bygones be bygones, but for the following reasons and others I feel this is necessary:
- TP's insistence on punishing players for their own mistakes and their doubling down on their missteps by not backtracking the assessment that their players (many paying customers) "cheated".
- As part of their corrective actions, they've removed all legitimately acquired resources related to Crew Retrieval, not just the ones that were acquired from their bug. This underscores their insistence that players "cheated" and some penalty must be applied. Example: before the bug, I had polestars capable of acquiring a particular 5* I very much wanted, but couldn't get because I didn't have the quantum yet.
I want to keep playing (for the moment) because of the resources I've already invested, but I'm totally soured by TP's stance and actions. I don't know how long I'll keep playing Timelines, but it is likely I will never play another TP/WRG property.
This is not a call to action. It is merely a statement of my own intent. However, if you feel inspired to take your own similar (or more severe) action, I stake no claim to the ideas within. You are free to take the actions that give you your own peace of mind. This is my attempt to address my grievances.
LLAP
23
Comments
That was the achievement glitch that gave everyone ~200k honor. While its not exactly the same as what happened this week, its similar in several ways. Both of these instances revolved around the player tapping a button that said claim or buy again. The player didnt program the button. The developer did. There were unintended resources gifted to players in both instances. But in one instance, the developer owned up to it and took responsibility for it. They decided to let everyone keep what they got, and they gave everyone else a chance to claim the same. They let the playing field level itself.
In the other instance the new company/manager decided that the issue was not their programming, or even their own responsibility. It was the lousy stinking cheaters who tapped the button. They used words like exploit, disciplinary action, banning, unacceptable behavior.
The new company and manager are obviously products of a culture that is only concerned with profit and has zero respect for its customers. I wont accept anyone being called a cheater because they tapped a button that said “buy again”.
I also cant support a company who refuses to apologize for anything. There have been far too many screwups since tp has taken over, each one affording them a chance to do better and do right by their customers. This latest issue was way over the top and it unfortunately showed the true colors of who we are dealing with, and who is taking our money.
Uninstalled and never coming back.
However I must admit I'm just glad I can play again because I invested so much time over the years it would destroy me to stop playing or lose my account.
That said I won't forget their "actions" but I can forgive cause you see where Khan like behavior gets you....
I hope they learn from this and implement more quality control of released stuff and not blame people for their own mistakes but instead step in front and be the bigger man/women by say we made an error we try our best to not let it happen again.
LLAP
It is similar in the not so important aspects: There were buttons that people clicked despite assuming that it was a glitch, and people got free stuff.
But it is the contrary in the most important aspect: It did not create any imbalance between the players. Everyone who logged in within a week got the same.
Its contrary in this important aspect:
Disruptor beam accepted the responsibility.
Tilting point didnt. They called people cheaters and banned them.
The rest of it is all fixable through global gifts and inventory adjustments.
I guess that is a question of POV.
Perhaps inventory adjustment was what they tried in panic and then realized that it sh breaks the accounts.
From my personal experience I am under the impression that figuring when someone got how many ISM and constellations from where exactly is time consuming for them. And I felt like they lost track on the step constellation -> polestar entirely. So if people quickly transformed all constellations into polestars TP maybe could not differ any more what was there before the pack went live, and what was not. Let alone which ones were legit and which were not.
It might have taken weeks to sort that out (if even possible at all) where people recovered Qs to consume some of the illegit polestars.
Exactly this. The achievement glitch amounted to a global gift. This time, with this glitch, they had to do something: letting a few players get 100s of free constellations and everyone else get the 20 (?) they had planned to give away wasn't an option - it would appear ridiculously unfair. They also clearly weren't just going to gift everyone 100s of constellations. They seemingly obvious solution would seem to be to roll back the affected accounts to their pre-glitch state, but I'm guessing doing that manually is too labor intensive.
Putting some responsibility on the players for taking advantage of an obvious bug seems reasonable: I know many people claim it wasn't obvious to them it was a bug, but as others have pointed out, failing to read the fine print and notifications, while human, isn't generally viewed in a legal context, at least, as a valid excuse. A three day suspension certainly seems harsh in comparison to disciplinary measures used in the past (and for what it may mean for some players for finishing campaigns for instance), but what's really the worst outcome here? You have some more free time, you probably can't get a top 1500 finish and some of the suspended would have trouble even hitting thresholds in the event (one event out of 52 during the year). A 3-day suspension seems minor to me (I was not suspended, though, admittedly), but significant enough, perhaps, to dissuade people from taking advantage in the future. Just my point of view - I can see how from another perspective it appears draconian. I am glad they shortened it, this time, but mostly because so many on here thought it was excessive rather than that I thought so myself.
I should add, in the interest of full disclosure, that I did "take advantage" myself. I claimed the first one, saw "Buy Again" , said to myself "that's funny, I wonder what will happen if I tap this", noticed that I did get a constellation and ISM and tapped a couple of more times to see if it continued to work BEFORE I headed to the engineering room to see if the bug had been reported yet (it had been). As I think I made four extra claims, I have abstained from making more than 15 claims on the 19 claim offer.
It wouldn't have created imbalance anyhow. Even if I had every Polestar granted to me by a poorly coded button, I can't utilize them due to the extremely steep credit and quantum costs without having to spend ludicrous amounts of money on buying credits and dilithium to refresh quantum. So at the end of the day, even if the free constellations were unintentional and some of the whales got their hands on a ton of constellations all it would have done was given TP more income and the whales would have still been whales. There would have been virtually a net zero change. Instead, TP pulled a "Who killed Hannibal" meme on themselves when they cried "Why would the players do this?"
And this is how I know Shan's post was insincere. She said that the bans were necessary this time and you can't compare it to any previous times because this time was so much worse or some such nonsense when in the past you had a pack that literally gave you free dilithium when you opened it. And you could open it as many times as you could until they disabled it. And nobody was disciplined and the dilithium gained wasn't even removed. There was the honor glitch that gave copious amounts of honor to people. There were no mass bans. I missed both of those windfalls. The dilithium one because I was unavailable to log in at the time and the honor one because I was worried about being banned. And there were no bans, so when the Buy Again button happened, the line of thinking is "I'm going to be left behind if I don't get in on this because everybody else will be doing it just like the other times."
But getting a few extra constellations that you could use to gain maybe two or three total stars on two or three cards that would have made absolutely no difference in game balance was just a bridge too far, apparently.
People have a lot of negative things to say about DB and to an extent they deserve a lot of it, but in the end they were not excessively punitive. A lot of the time when something this happened, instead of punishing those who pushed a button, we were all given free things as compensation. The term "sorryton" was coined because of how generous DB was with making sure the players remained happy. Since TP has taken over, I've seen certain aspects surrounding this game start on a gradual downhill slide. The reaction to this event was an end to this slide by an abrupt drop off of a cliff.
Like I mentioned in a different thread: I am convinced that the problems would have started with future additions to Crew Retrieval. Our current knowledge is not sufficient to assess the situation TP was in.
1. It allows you to to have more ability to focus on a card that you want than other players who did not take advantage. This would (rightly) be perceived as unfair and wasn't really something that TP/WRG could let stand. And even the perception of unfairness is bad for games.
2. I find the idea that "it wouldn't have created imbalance anyhow" to be seriously flawed after-the-fact rationalizing. If it didn't make a difference, you wouldn't have kept clicking away to get more.
"All it would have done was given TP more income"
Potentially true. In the short term, perhaps anyway. But, as I noted above, even the perception of unfairness is bad for games. But it was actually the right thing morally and probably in the business sense (long-term) to do something to correct or adjust for those who had taken advantage of the glitch. Was what they did the right response? Certainly reading the forum suggests, no, it was too punitive, and, as with unfairness, perceptions matter here as well. If it is generally perceived in the player community (not just forum respondents, I would argue) as too punitive, then it is too punitive.
Their mistake was their fault. Maybe remember though, the button the previous day worked just fine and the mistake was corrected in less than 5 min, even if the consequences of the mistake may persist forever. People taking advantage of it (knowing full well what they were doing) is their fault, at least in part. People taking advantage out of ignorance or inattention is understandable, but doesn't excuse them entirely.
Nobody said it was and overall I find your shortsighted Strawman rebuttal somewhat lacking. It really only nitpicks some semantics on my part and doesn't address any of the issues at hand.
Yea i agree that we should know better on how this game is developed and how many bugs it has.
If they wanted to revert the mistake by taking back whatever we got from that pack i see no problem with that but how you do it matters. By blaming your customers for your mistake is never a good way of doing business.
And since they gave a little, I will give a little. I said before that I wasn't going to spend anymore money until they removed the bans, and since they did I will still buy my dilithium card and my premium campaign track.
But until TP starts addressing things that we the players actually want for this game, I will no longer be making any large purchases. And what do we want?
More content: And not only more missions to do on the Galaxy map, we want new things to do with our crew every day. There is not a lack of ideas plastered all over the forums, so it shouldn't be hard.
Fleet tools: The admirals need to be able to have more control over their fleets! The ability to switch Squadron leaders would be a big start. But even more would be nice. The ability for Admirals to move people from one squad to another. And there needs to be a Vice Admiral rank added, and the Vice Admiral needs to be able to do all the things an Admiral can do, except Disband the fleet.
The Voyage Dilemma bug needs to be fixed!
The disappearing crew bug needs to be fixed. (While I haven't experienced this personally, I know a few people that have.)
The chat in this game is horrendous, most messages disappear in one way or another. And the language filter blocks so many normal phrases that have zero adult language in them. It is beyond aggravating.
There are probably more things that either need to be fixed or added to the game, I am sure I forgot some. But TP you get the jist. These things have been asked for hundreds of times over many threads.
Until these things are addressed, you can only expect to get $30 a month out of me. And that is all.
(Edit: That means for both mine and my girlfriend's accounts. Because I am the one that spends for both of them.)
Assuming this means the developers have not respected the very basic rules of database design.
Does coming to the right realization but for all the wrong reasons still make it right, though?
It's a philosophical dilemma.
I think from history we know that this has been the case, yes, given the incapability of the system to upscale the inventory limit.
It is an optimistic view that this feature, which might as well have been started years ago and parked in a drawer in between, is any better.
Previous tickets I've filed has convinced me they have all the logs necessary to roll back the gains gotten in error. It might have been a bit of work (even with automation), but it was their mistake to correct. Correction should have been neutral and not judgmental. Punitive action was not justified.
You won't be able to change my mind. (Please take this as a hint not to reply with paragraphs of rebuttal.)
BUT, i will reduce my monthly spending even further
(already had reduced it by a huge amount even before this incident).
There was a time i spent 400-500$ a month on this game.
Now my new limit will be a max 50$.
Indeed, I agree! it's entirely the wrong message to send to TP:
You messed up, blamed the players for your mistake, and didn't apologize for it. This resulted from your lack of communication and lack of quality control, TP, neither of which you have addressed nor have you shown any indication that you'll improve upon in the future. Bad TP! Here take $30 out of my wallet every month.
talk about mixed messages!
Cheers.
I wasn't banned, I wasn't directly affected by this issue at all. But the way TP have handled this is appalling and it's left a bitter aftertaste. Our fleet has lost members because of this, long-term players who have decided not to come back after the ban because of how they were treated. The fact that TP can trample on the player base like this and not even have the decency to apologise is reprehensible.
I love this game, I hate the people running it. Going F2P seems like the only available compromise these days.