@Shan That response is completely unacceptable. To make sure I understand, you say that the information you posted over a month ago was erroneous at the time and we (you) are just finding out? Furthermore, you say that improve playing experience you're going to nerf Faction start strategies? Lastly, you say that DB is going to tailor each event? So is it going to just be a guessing game for each Faction start? This **tsk tsk** is broken. DB is broken. The game is broken.
Please pass this to the team: keep this **tsk tsk** up and you'll break your customer base too, and not in the way you want to.
Do you recommend that each and every person send in a ticket to compensate for the losses that we incurred because of this miscommunication or will there be a global compensation? I'll be asking for a minimum of 500 chronitons. I expect that it will cost me even more than that.
Shan, we asked about 1 faction, you went back to check and explicitly clarified that they would stay at 20. Now you're saying, oops that was wrong, it's going to vary. I'm less concerned with the number of missions and more concerned with that you provided false information even after clarifying. What is being done to insure that the next time you provide the players with information it will be correct?
Shan, we asked about 1 faction, you went back to check and explicitly clarified that they would stay at 20. Now you're saying, oops that was wrong, it's going to vary. I'm less concerned with the number of missions and more concerned with that you provided false information even after clarifying. What is being done to insure that the next time you provide the players with information it will be correct?
Nothing. Or this wouldn't keep happening.
I think the issue is, and they have been really hit or miss with this, is that a quick response with fair compensation usually calms everyone down.
This time we were literally just told "we didn't tell you. we will tell you from now on"
Thanks DB. That is literally the most useless response that could have been given.
What is DB's plan for compensating players who planned and/or spent (real and/or in-game currencies) over the past week, while preparing for this event, based on the miscommunication from DB?
Also, are we correct is inferring that the number of shuttle missions, regardless of event type or number of factions, will essentially be inconsistent going forward?
Actually, I think the message is, "We're not going to tell you, so you can't yell at us if we mess it up."
(Signed, Not a troll. Just haven't taken the time to fix my identification name...busy with life.)
Shan, we asked about 1 faction, you went back to check and explicitly clarified that they would stay at 20. Now you're saying, oops that was wrong, it's going to vary. I'm less concerned with the number of missions and more concerned with that you provided false information even after clarifying. What is being done to insure that the next time you provide the players with information it will be correct?
Nothing. Or this wouldn't keep happening.
I think the issue is, and they have been really hit or miss with this, is that a quick response with fair compensation usually calms everyone down.
This time we were literally just told "we didn't tell you. we will tell you from now on"
Thanks DB. That is literally the most useless response that could have been given.
It's amazing that it took DB over two hours to come up with this sort of bush league response.
What is DB's plan for compensating players who planned and/or spent (real and/or in-game currencies) over the past week, while preparing for this event, based on the miscommunication from DB?
Also, are we correct is inferring that the number of shuttle missions, regardless of event type or number of factions, will essentially be inconsistent going forward?
Actually, I think the message is, "We're not going to tell you, so you can't yell at us if we mess it up."
(Signed, Not a troll. Just haven't taken the time to fix my identification name...busy with life.)
Also remember. They pushed the event notifications for the next week back to Friday, and they said it was to reduce mistakes.... New flash DB.... it has NOT reduced the mistakes.... Can you please come up with a plan that works? Or maybe stop trying to push new events on us every week? If every other week was a re-run maybe you could devote some time to ensuring the events work, and that all of the proper information has been communicated.
I just figured that what was meant by number of missions varying by event was that in a Hybrid, we'd have a lower standard number (apparently 12 for a single faction) than for a full Faction (6 apiece for three factions).
That would make sense to me, though I readily concede I'm essentially doing DB's job for them on this if that even is what they mean because nothing explained to us so far explicitly establishes that this schema is what was meant.
I can not believe some of the over-the-top reaction on here. Seriously what has this cost you, a couple of hundred merits on shuttle missions YOU CAN STILL USE (on the next event maybe?) and should be able to make up in a few rounds on the gauntlet, and not getting as much of an unfair advantage from exploiting a glitch in the game others might not know about.
This issue affects everyone equally, and doesn’t mean you personally are going to rank any lower.
@Shan - please make sure the devs know these things happen, it’s not a big deal, the artwork for this event is vastly improved and recent improvements to the cryo vault etc are top.
I can not believe some of the over-the-top reaction on here. Seriously what has this cost you, a couple of hundred merits on shuttle missions YOU CAN STILL USE (on the next event maybe?) and should be able to make up in a few rounds on the gauntlet, and not getting as much of an unfair advantage from exploiting a glitch in the game others might not know about.
This issue affects everyone equally, and doesn’t mean you personally are going to rank any lower.
@Shan - please make sure the devs know these things happen, it’s not a big deal, the artwork for this event is vastly improved and recent improvements to the cryo vault etc are top.
The bolded part is simply not true. Certain decisions made over the course of the past week were entirely dependent on the information provided by DB (ie: deliberately not farming Klingon or Romulan specific faction items, since the event would provide ample opportunity to do so), which could absolutely cause some players to be less competitive than they otherwise would have been (ie: a secondary event crew cannot be fully equipped now without certain Klingon items, meaning the crew member gives less of a boost in faction missions).
It's also just the principle of adjusting game play and/or spending (really money and/or in-game currencies) based on official DB communication, which impacts your overall game play for both the current event and in general.
I can not believe some of the over-the-top reaction on here. Seriously what has this cost you, a couple of hundred merits on shuttle missions YOU CAN STILL USE (on the next event maybe?) and should be able to make up in a few rounds on the gauntlet, and not getting as much of an unfair advantage from exploiting a glitch in the game others might not know about.
This issue affects everyone equally, and doesn’t mean you personally are going to rank any lower.
@Shan - please make sure the devs know these things happen, it’s not a big deal, the artwork for this event is vastly improved and recent improvements to the cryo vault etc are top.
Spending half of my lunch break at work trying to figure out what was going on was rather upsetting. This will also cost players hundreds of chronitons if they can't clear the threshold rewards in the faction portion. Finally, the very fact that we were misled (about the factions) and lied to (about number of transmissions) is just not acceptable.
I can not believe some of the over-the-top reaction on here. Seriously what has this cost you, a couple of hundred merits on shuttle missions YOU CAN STILL USE (on the next event maybe?) and should be able to make up in a few rounds on the gauntlet, and not getting as much of an unfair advantage from exploiting a glitch in the game others might not know about.
This issue affects everyone equally, and doesn’t mean you personally are going to rank any lower.
@Shan - please make sure the devs know these things happen, it’s not a big deal, the artwork for this event is vastly improved and recent improvements to the cryo vault etc are top.
Before I comment on this, some background:
1) I don’t kickstart Faction events. It’s never worked and it’s frankly more work than is truly worth doing, especially when Faction events are my escape from the grind of Galaxy events.
2) The change in mission count and only one faction instead of three doesn’t really affect me. I didn’t pre-buy any transmissions and, though more Klingon items would be nice (working on Chancellor Gowron and Klingon Janeway right now) it’s not the end of the world.
3) I get nervous when I go under 3500 merits because I do try to buy what faction items I can before turning to the replicator.
4) I’m grumpy because DB seems to be getting worse at communication between devs, management, and Shan rather than better as we would all like. Also, so many simple errors that could be prevented by having coders that are worth the paper their degrees are printed on.
All of that aside, some people have gone to a lot of trouble to prepare for the event and now are at a disadvantage through no fault of their own. If this kind of behavior were observed at an auto repair shop, hospital, or really anywhere else there would be serious consequences. Here, we’re having to live with constant mistakes and atrocious communication on a daily basis. And just because the artwork has been magnificent these last few weeks doesn’t mean we should ignore the consistently poor approach to planning and communication by the people getting our hard-earned money.
I can not believe some of the over-the-top reaction on here. Seriously what has this cost you, a couple of hundred merits on shuttle missions YOU CAN STILL USE (on the next event maybe?) and should be able to make up in a few rounds on the gauntlet, and not getting as much of an unfair advantage from exploiting a glitch in the game others might not know about.
This issue affects everyone equally, and doesn’t mean you personally are going to rank any lower.
@Shan - please make sure the devs know these things happen, it’s not a big deal, the artwork for this event is vastly improved and recent improvements to the cryo vault etc are top.
I have absolutely no reason to run Romulan shuttles right now, but I bought a bunch of transmissions as soon as the event was announced, because I wanted to keep my options open in case the Romulan missions were best-suited to my crew.
So now I've spent almost 200 merits on something I may not use for another month or so. Regardless of how easily I can replace them, that's still them being *replaced*, as opposed to being able to be re-allocated elsewhere.
And then there's the general frustration with the pattern of misinformation, time lost thinking that maybe this is a bug and I shouldn't start this because what if they fix it and stuff gets messed up etc.
I can see why people are upset. I would actually rather this had been a bug. Then I could say "these things happen" with a little more confidence. You say "these things happen" when your kid accidentally drops their ice cream cone and you buy them a new one. Miscommunication? On this level? That's not "these things happen". That's incompetence and it's unfortunately a pattern now. Shan isn't being given the information she should be given, and that's a real issue.
“Treason, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.” - Elim Garak
Cardassian wishlist: Tora Ziyal - Thanks!
Natima Lang
Empok Nor Garak
Tekeny Ghemor
Mira
Makbar
Dejar
Ulani Belor
I can not believe some of the over-the-top reaction on here. Seriously what has this cost you, a couple of hundred merits on shuttle missions YOU CAN STILL USE (on the next event maybe?) and should be able to make up in a few rounds on the gauntlet, and not getting as much of an unfair advantage from exploiting a glitch in the game others might not know about.
This issue affects everyone equally, and doesn’t mean you personally are going to rank any lower.
@Shan - please make sure the devs know these things happen, it’s not a big deal, the artwork for this event is vastly improved and recent improvements to the cryo vault etc are top.
Spending half of my lunch break at work trying to figure out what was going on was rather upsetting. This will also cost players hundreds of chronitons if they can't clear the threshold rewards in the faction portion. Finally, the very fact that we were misled (about the factions) and lied to (about number of transmissions) is just not acceptable.
This.
The issue is we were either lied to, OR they decided to make the change and not tell us. Either way the issue there is the communication. Not the merits.
The main issue for me is that I believe this was intentional, and purely done to try to boost sales during the Galaxy portion of the event. They probably realized that people were easily able to hit 130k during faction/galaxy hybrids and have further nerfed the kick-start so that people will either feel the need to spend more during the faction portion OR spend more during the galaxy portion.
Every single thing they say about this being for our benefit, or to improve our player experience is 100% propaganda and a bold faced lie to give them false justifications for the masses to believe they are on our side.
All of these changes are designed to boost sales. I cannot fault a company for doing so, but I can fault them for trying to put a crappy PR spin on it for the sake of trying to save face.
1) The changes to the faction events have NOT improved my experience
2) The changes to the faction events have NOT helped with the lag
3) The most recent change will NOT make me spend more
We were directly lied to regarding faction mission totals for 1 faction. We are being told it was a miscommunication. A miscommunication is accidental. This was a lie. When the changes were announced players were very specific in asking about the numbers for faction events. We were given an answer. Now we are being told that was a miscommunication. No, you decided to change it intentionally and then sweep it under the rug. Did some dev just say "oh to heck with it, this week I only feel like making 12 missions"?
DB: Either you lied to us when the change was announced, or you lied to us today. A "miscommunication" does not happen on this level. You expect us to believe that NO ONE noticed that the announcement said one thing and the actual event was completely different?
If in preparation for the event you have purchased transmissions for the 2 factions that were erroneously announced you can of course submit a ticket to have those reversed. To ensure a quick turn around make sure to be very concise and precise in your ticket.
I can not believe some of the over-the-top reaction on here. Seriously what has this cost you, a couple of hundred merits on shuttle missions YOU CAN STILL USE (on the next event maybe?) and should be able to make up in a few rounds on the gauntlet, and not getting as much of an unfair advantage from exploiting a glitch in the game others might not know about.
This issue affects everyone equally, and doesn’t mean you personally are going to rank any lower.
@Shan - please make sure the devs know these things happen, it’s not a big deal, the artwork for this event is vastly improved and recent improvements to the cryo vault etc are top.
Spending half of my lunch break at work trying to figure out what was going on was rather upsetting. This will also cost players hundreds of chronitons if they can't clear the threshold rewards in the faction portion. Finally, the very fact that we were misled (about the factions) and lied to (about number of transmissions) is just not acceptable.
I don’t have time to respond to everyone’s response to me, so I’ll just summarise by saying the impact is minor at best. You know DB will mail some merits or chrons which will compensate so why all the venom?
On this particular one though, so your two complaints are
A) that when it let you open 12 missions from one faction you then scratched your head for an hour?
And you might not get nurse garlands jumper in the event and might have to play the game a little bit more to make it? If playing the game is that much of a hassle perhaps it’s not for you
I can not believe some of the over-the-top reaction on here. Seriously what has this cost you, a couple of hundred merits on shuttle missions YOU CAN STILL USE (on the next event maybe?) and should be able to make up in a few rounds on the gauntlet, and not getting as much of an unfair advantage from exploiting a glitch in the game others might not know about.
This issue affects everyone equally, and doesn’t mean you personally are going to rank any lower.
@Shan - please make sure the devs know these things happen, it’s not a big deal, the artwork for this event is vastly improved and recent improvements to the cryo vault etc are top.
Spending half of my lunch break at work trying to figure out what was going on was rather upsetting. This will also cost players hundreds of chronitons if they can't clear the threshold rewards in the faction portion. Finally, the very fact that we were misled (about the factions) and lied to (about number of transmissions) is just not acceptable.
I don’t have time to respond to everyone’s response to me, so I’ll just summarise by saying the impact is minor at best. You know DB will mail some merits or chrons which will compensate so why all the venom?
Um, no. Part of the reason people are upset is that it doesn't look like any mail will be sent out with compensation. We were all told to open a ticket if we specifically spent merits on Romulans/Klingons (which is fine if you did that, but doesn't work as a general apology). So your assumption will likely prove false.
Time will tell though.
“Treason, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.” - Elim Garak
Cardassian wishlist: Tora Ziyal - Thanks!
Natima Lang
Empok Nor Garak
Tekeny Ghemor
Mira
Makbar
Dejar
Ulani Belor
I have absolutely no reason to run Romulan shuttles right now, but I bought a bunch of transmissions as soon as the event was announced, because I wanted to keep my options open in case the Romulan missions were best-suited to my crew.
I've been sending out one Romulan shuttle in each of my non-event waves lately in anticipation of next month's mega-event featuring Romulans. But then, I have the luxury of doing that since I'm caught up on my crew. I can easily appreciate how disappointing it is for players who are working on Romulans (or Klingons) and expected to be able to double dip by running those shuttles this weekend.
I would hasten to add, though, that since this is only a hybrid, everyone can get back to running whatever shuttles they want on Saturday afternoon. It's still an inconvenience, yes, but it's not the loss of half a week that a full Faction event would represent.
Plus, we'll have lots of Gold-Pressed Latinum, Isolinear Chips, and Spices to use in Phase 2, so there's that.
I have absolutely no reason to run Romulan shuttles right now, but I bought a bunch of transmissions as soon as the event was announced, because I wanted to keep my options open in case the Romulan missions were best-suited to my crew.
I've been sending out one Romulan shuttle in each of my non-event waves lately in anticipation of next month's mega-event featuring Romulans. But then, I have the luxury of doing that since I'm caught up on my crew. I can easily appreciate how disappointing it is for players who are working on Romulans (or Klingons) and expected to be able to double dip by running those shuttles this weekend.
I would hasten to add, though, that since this is only a hybrid, everyone can get back to running whatever shuttles they want on Saturday afternoon. It's still an inconvenience, yes, but it's not the loss of half a week that a full Faction event would represent.
Plus, we'll have lots of Gold-Pressed Latinum, Isolinear Chips, and Spices to use in Phase 2, so there's that.
I'd rather run a bunch of Romulan shuttles after the event has been confirmed. But than, maybe I can't even trust that? (sorry, I had to)
But yeah, this week I had to run a bunch of unexpected Bajoran shuttles to level up my Niners Kira who ran out of Bajoran earrings by lvl50. And otherwise all my shuttles are usually for levelling crew, I don't typically get to run "far in advance" shuttles like you were doing.
The Spices will be nice, I always hate getting those (but not as much as I hate that darned hyperspanner), though not really enough to make up for my frustration/disappointment today.
“Treason, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.” - Elim Garak
Cardassian wishlist: Tora Ziyal - Thanks!
Natima Lang
Empok Nor Garak
Tekeny Ghemor
Mira
Makbar
Dejar
Ulani Belor
First off Shan my apologies for you getting the brunt of this. You have to post the information that is given to you and it isn't your fault. This is directed at the people giving you said information.
"We previously announced that there would be three factions involved in this event, but there will only be one: the Ferengi Traditionalists. This was a miscommunication on our part, and is not a bug."
You needed more time to get the correct information. Take longer to put up the original information and get it wrong in probably the biggest way yet. Call it a miscommunication, call it the dog eating your homework, but from the outside it is (unintentionally but still) a lie. The underlying cause is semantics and makes no difference to the player base.
"In our original announcement, we stated that events with a single faction would remain unchanged and would provide 20 unique missions. This was incorrect. For events involving faction missions, the number of unique missions will depend on the nature of the event."
That was about 6 weeks ago and you are just now learning that it is incorrect? I would like to know when that changed internally. Be open about how when, and what went wrong if you want to regain some trust. Fluctuating numbers of faction missions will make no one happy. Everyone has different strategies that they use to hopefully get up to 4000 vp missions as soon as they can and having to guess what that is going to be once the event starts will make people angrier. Consistency is I believe what most people would like to see.
"We apologize for the confusion."
This one actually bothers me. From the player side we have no confusion. We prepared to play a 3 faction, 6 missions per faction shuttle event lasting for 48 hours. Following that up is a 48 hour galaxy event for the second half. That was the information we had for a number of days. It is obvious from the posts and previous events that is what was expected. I appreciate the apology but please do it for messing up or changing things without letting us know but not any confusion because we don't have any.
To the people just venting I get it but constructive and civil discussion is the best way to go. Thank you for the work you do Shan.
The Guardians of Tomorrow Protecting the Galaxy's Future from itself
I can not believe some of the over-the-top reaction on here. Seriously what has this cost you, a couple of hundred merits on shuttle missions YOU CAN STILL USE (on the next event maybe?) and should be able to make up in a few rounds on the gauntlet, and not getting as much of an unfair advantage from exploiting a glitch in the game others might not know about.
This issue affects everyone equally, and doesn’t mean you personally are going to rank any lower.
@Shan - please make sure the devs know these things happen, it’s not a big deal, the artwork for this event is vastly improved and recent improvements to the cryo vault etc are top.
Spending half of my lunch break at work trying to figure out what was going on was rather upsetting. This will also cost players hundreds of chronitons if they can't clear the threshold rewards in the faction portion. Finally, the very fact that we were misled (about the factions) and lied to (about number of transmissions) is just not acceptable.
I don’t have time to respond to everyone’s response to me, so I’ll just summarise by saying the impact is minor at best. You know DB will mail some merits or chrons which will compensate so why all the venom?
On this particular one though, so your two complaints are
A) that when it let you open 12 missions from one faction you then scratched your head for an hour?
And you might not get nurse garlands jumper in the event and might have to play the game a little bit more to make it? If playing the game is that much of a hassle perhaps it’s not for you
You are completely missing the actual point of our arguments. DB outright lied to us over a month ago about the mechanics of these types of events. They lied about how many Factions were going to be featured in this event. Literally no one was prepared for the mechanics they threw at us once the event went live as it completely went against what we were told over a month ago when we inquired about the changes to Faction events and Faction portions of Hybrid events. People spent in-game currency as well as real money to prepare based on what has happened in the past and the word that DB gave us then and earlier this week. That preparation went in the garbage when the event went live and we saw the changes.
The scores for the start of the event were ridiculously low and still are. That should show you how badly players were affected by these unexpected changes. I would not be surprised that players who were ready to begin playing just said “screw it” after seeing only one Faction and the max opened shuttles was twelve and not twenty like we were told would remain the same with a single Faction in an event.
DB is losing money on these moves. Forcing players to spend money will net them less money since feeling forced to do something eliminates any interest in performing those tasks and actions as opposed to feeling you have a choice. DB is only shooting itself in the foot and they just allowed a whole barrel to go off at once in it.
There are three ways to do something; the right way, the wrong way, and the Janeway.
I don't think it's a big deal. More of a nuisance or mild speed bump, if anything.
Instead of completing the threshold rewards before phase 2 and quitting, I may have to spend some chrons and build some items. Whatever. Between now and noon on Saturday I can probably save up 1000-1500 chrons from tomorrow's cadet challenges and running 6-7 hour long voyages per day (nets me about 250-400 chrons usually). If that's not enough then I have all of Sunday and Monday morning to finish it off.
I'm still going to get there, it might just take me a little longer. Oh well.
So there was some miscommunications on our end, and this event will only have 1 faction.
My apologies.
If i remember correct, when you announced the reduction of max open missions for 2/3 faction events, you stated that 1 faction events still have the max of 20 missions, and now its 12 only. Another misscommunication? @Shan
Double fail. Can we get some consistency please?
Oh but they are consistent... At their inconsistencies!
So there was some miscommunications on our end, and this event will only have 1 faction.
My apologies.
If i remember correct, when you announced the reduction of max open missions for 2/3 faction events, you stated that 1 faction events still have the max of 20 missions, and now its 12 only. Another misscommunication? @Shan
Double fail. Can we get some consistency please?
Oh but they are consistent... At their inconsistencies!
Comments
Please pass this to the team: keep this **tsk tsk** up and you'll break your customer base too, and not in the way you want to.
Fix this **tsk tsk**.
Do you recommend that each and every person send in a ticket to compensate for the losses that we incurred because of this miscommunication or will there be a global compensation? I'll be asking for a minimum of 500 chronitons. I expect that it will cost me even more than that.
Shan, we asked about 1 faction, you went back to check and explicitly clarified that they would stay at 20. Now you're saying, oops that was wrong, it's going to vary. I'm less concerned with the number of missions and more concerned with that you provided false information even after clarifying. What is being done to insure that the next time you provide the players with information it will be correct?
Nothing. Or this wouldn't keep happening.
I think the issue is, and they have been really hit or miss with this, is that a quick response with fair compensation usually calms everyone down.
This time we were literally just told "we didn't tell you. we will tell you from now on"
Thanks DB. That is literally the most useless response that could have been given.
Actually, I think the message is, "We're not going to tell you, so you can't yell at us if we mess it up."
(Signed, Not a troll. Just haven't taken the time to fix my identification name...busy with life.)
It's amazing that it took DB over two hours to come up with this sort of bush league response.
Also remember. They pushed the event notifications for the next week back to Friday, and they said it was to reduce mistakes.... New flash DB.... it has NOT reduced the mistakes.... Can you please come up with a plan that works? Or maybe stop trying to push new events on us every week? If every other week was a re-run maybe you could devote some time to ensuring the events work, and that all of the proper information has been communicated.
That would make sense to me, though I readily concede I'm essentially doing DB's job for them on this if that even is what they mean because nothing explained to us so far explicitly establishes that this schema is what was meant.
This issue affects everyone equally, and doesn’t mean you personally are going to rank any lower.
@Shan - please make sure the devs know these things happen, it’s not a big deal, the artwork for this event is vastly improved and recent improvements to the cryo vault etc are top.
The bolded part is simply not true. Certain decisions made over the course of the past week were entirely dependent on the information provided by DB (ie: deliberately not farming Klingon or Romulan specific faction items, since the event would provide ample opportunity to do so), which could absolutely cause some players to be less competitive than they otherwise would have been (ie: a secondary event crew cannot be fully equipped now without certain Klingon items, meaning the crew member gives less of a boost in faction missions).
It's also just the principle of adjusting game play and/or spending (really money and/or in-game currencies) based on official DB communication, which impacts your overall game play for both the current event and in general.
Spending half of my lunch break at work trying to figure out what was going on was rather upsetting. This will also cost players hundreds of chronitons if they can't clear the threshold rewards in the faction portion. Finally, the very fact that we were misled (about the factions) and lied to (about number of transmissions) is just not acceptable.
Before I comment on this, some background:
1) I don’t kickstart Faction events. It’s never worked and it’s frankly more work than is truly worth doing, especially when Faction events are my escape from the grind of Galaxy events.
2) The change in mission count and only one faction instead of three doesn’t really affect me. I didn’t pre-buy any transmissions and, though more Klingon items would be nice (working on Chancellor Gowron and Klingon Janeway right now) it’s not the end of the world.
3) I get nervous when I go under 3500 merits because I do try to buy what faction items I can before turning to the replicator.
4) I’m grumpy because DB seems to be getting worse at communication between devs, management, and Shan rather than better as we would all like. Also, so many simple errors that could be prevented by having coders that are worth the paper their degrees are printed on.
All of that aside, some people have gone to a lot of trouble to prepare for the event and now are at a disadvantage through no fault of their own. If this kind of behavior were observed at an auto repair shop, hospital, or really anywhere else there would be serious consequences. Here, we’re having to live with constant mistakes and atrocious communication on a daily basis. And just because the artwork has been magnificent these last few weeks doesn’t mean we should ignore the consistently poor approach to planning and communication by the people getting our hard-earned money.
I have absolutely no reason to run Romulan shuttles right now, but I bought a bunch of transmissions as soon as the event was announced, because I wanted to keep my options open in case the Romulan missions were best-suited to my crew.
So now I've spent almost 200 merits on something I may not use for another month or so. Regardless of how easily I can replace them, that's still them being *replaced*, as opposed to being able to be re-allocated elsewhere.
And then there's the general frustration with the pattern of misinformation, time lost thinking that maybe this is a bug and I shouldn't start this because what if they fix it and stuff gets messed up etc.
I can see why people are upset. I would actually rather this had been a bug. Then I could say "these things happen" with a little more confidence. You say "these things happen" when your kid accidentally drops their ice cream cone and you buy them a new one. Miscommunication? On this level? That's not "these things happen". That's incompetence and it's unfortunately a pattern now. Shan isn't being given the information she should be given, and that's a real issue.
Cardassian wishlist:
Tora Ziyal - Thanks!
Natima Lang
Empok Nor Garak
Tekeny Ghemor
Mira
Makbar
Dejar
Ulani Belor
This.
The issue is we were either lied to, OR they decided to make the change and not tell us. Either way the issue there is the communication. Not the merits.
The main issue for me is that I believe this was intentional, and purely done to try to boost sales during the Galaxy portion of the event. They probably realized that people were easily able to hit 130k during faction/galaxy hybrids and have further nerfed the kick-start so that people will either feel the need to spend more during the faction portion OR spend more during the galaxy portion.
Every single thing they say about this being for our benefit, or to improve our player experience is 100% propaganda and a bold faced lie to give them false justifications for the masses to believe they are on our side.
All of these changes are designed to boost sales. I cannot fault a company for doing so, but I can fault them for trying to put a crappy PR spin on it for the sake of trying to save face.
1) The changes to the faction events have NOT improved my experience
2) The changes to the faction events have NOT helped with the lag
3) The most recent change will NOT make me spend more
We were directly lied to regarding faction mission totals for 1 faction. We are being told it was a miscommunication. A miscommunication is accidental. This was a lie. When the changes were announced players were very specific in asking about the numbers for faction events. We were given an answer. Now we are being told that was a miscommunication. No, you decided to change it intentionally and then sweep it under the rug. Did some dev just say "oh to heck with it, this week I only feel like making 12 missions"?
DB: Either you lied to us when the change was announced, or you lied to us today. A "miscommunication" does not happen on this level. You expect us to believe that NO ONE noticed that the announcement said one thing and the actual event was completely different?
I don’t have time to respond to everyone’s response to me, so I’ll just summarise by saying the impact is minor at best. You know DB will mail some merits or chrons which will compensate so why all the venom?
On this particular one though, so your two complaints are
A) that when it let you open 12 missions from one faction you then scratched your head for an hour?
And
Yeah, that's what they do nowadays. Censor and close everything they don't want to respond to
<*Magically waves hand*> "These are not the factions you're looking for..."
Hmm... Yes... I see... "Four legs good, two legs better..."
Guess we should be chanting: "Yes DB! We will spend harder! 20 missions good, 12 missions better!"
Um, no. Part of the reason people are upset is that it doesn't look like any mail will be sent out with compensation. We were all told to open a ticket if we specifically spent merits on Romulans/Klingons (which is fine if you did that, but doesn't work as a general apology). So your assumption will likely prove false.
Time will tell though.
Cardassian wishlist:
Tora Ziyal - Thanks!
Natima Lang
Empok Nor Garak
Tekeny Ghemor
Mira
Makbar
Dejar
Ulani Belor
I've been sending out one Romulan shuttle in each of my non-event waves lately in anticipation of next month's mega-event featuring Romulans. But then, I have the luxury of doing that since I'm caught up on my crew. I can easily appreciate how disappointing it is for players who are working on Romulans (or Klingons) and expected to be able to double dip by running those shuttles this weekend.
I would hasten to add, though, that since this is only a hybrid, everyone can get back to running whatever shuttles they want on Saturday afternoon. It's still an inconvenience, yes, but it's not the loss of half a week that a full Faction event would represent.
Plus, we'll have lots of Gold-Pressed Latinum, Isolinear Chips, and Spices to use in Phase 2, so there's that.
I'd rather run a bunch of Romulan shuttles after the event has been confirmed. But than, maybe I can't even trust that? (sorry, I had to)
But yeah, this week I had to run a bunch of unexpected Bajoran shuttles to level up my Niners Kira who ran out of Bajoran earrings by lvl50. And otherwise all my shuttles are usually for levelling crew, I don't typically get to run "far in advance" shuttles like you were doing.
The Spices will be nice, I always hate getting those (but not as much as I hate that darned hyperspanner), though not really enough to make up for my frustration/disappointment today.
Cardassian wishlist:
Tora Ziyal - Thanks!
Natima Lang
Empok Nor Garak
Tekeny Ghemor
Mira
Makbar
Dejar
Ulani Belor
"We previously announced that there would be three factions involved in this event, but there will only be one: the Ferengi Traditionalists. This was a miscommunication on our part, and is not a bug."
You needed more time to get the correct information. Take longer to put up the original information and get it wrong in probably the biggest way yet. Call it a miscommunication, call it the dog eating your homework, but from the outside it is (unintentionally but still) a lie. The underlying cause is semantics and makes no difference to the player base.
"In our original announcement, we stated that events with a single faction would remain unchanged and would provide 20 unique missions. This was incorrect. For events involving faction missions, the number of unique missions will depend on the nature of the event."
That was about 6 weeks ago and you are just now learning that it is incorrect? I would like to know when that changed internally. Be open about how when, and what went wrong if you want to regain some trust. Fluctuating numbers of faction missions will make no one happy. Everyone has different strategies that they use to hopefully get up to 4000 vp missions as soon as they can and having to guess what that is going to be once the event starts will make people angrier. Consistency is I believe what most people would like to see.
"We apologize for the confusion."
This one actually bothers me. From the player side we have no confusion. We prepared to play a 3 faction, 6 missions per faction shuttle event lasting for 48 hours. Following that up is a 48 hour galaxy event for the second half. That was the information we had for a number of days. It is obvious from the posts and previous events that is what was expected. I appreciate the apology but please do it for messing up or changing things without letting us know but not any confusion because we don't have any.
To the people just venting I get it but constructive and civil discussion is the best way to go. Thank you for the work you do Shan.
Protecting the Galaxy's Future from itself
You are completely missing the actual point of our arguments. DB outright lied to us over a month ago about the mechanics of these types of events. They lied about how many Factions were going to be featured in this event. Literally no one was prepared for the mechanics they threw at us once the event went live as it completely went against what we were told over a month ago when we inquired about the changes to Faction events and Faction portions of Hybrid events. People spent in-game currency as well as real money to prepare based on what has happened in the past and the word that DB gave us then and earlier this week. That preparation went in the garbage when the event went live and we saw the changes.
The scores for the start of the event were ridiculously low and still are. That should show you how badly players were affected by these unexpected changes. I would not be surprised that players who were ready to begin playing just said “screw it” after seeing only one Faction and the max opened shuttles was twelve and not twenty like we were told would remain the same with a single Faction in an event.
DB is losing money on these moves. Forcing players to spend money will net them less money since feeling forced to do something eliminates any interest in performing those tasks and actions as opposed to feeling you have a choice. DB is only shooting itself in the foot and they just allowed a whole barrel to go off at once in it.
DB: Do Better.
Member of Starship Trista.
Instead of completing the threshold rewards before phase 2 and quitting, I may have to spend some chrons and build some items. Whatever. Between now and noon on Saturday I can probably save up 1000-1500 chrons from tomorrow's cadet challenges and running 6-7 hour long voyages per day (nets me about 250-400 chrons usually). If that's not enough then I have all of Sunday and Monday morning to finish it off.
I'm still going to get there, it might just take me a little longer. Oh well.
Oh but they are consistent... At their inconsistencies!