Ticket Template for The Galactic Series
Grant77
✭✭✭✭
Customer Support,
In the current faction event 'The Galactic Series' there were a couple of unannounced changes that have negatively affected players. I am extremely dissatisfied with the official response from Disruptor Beam that blames the players and makes vague promises that do nothing to compensate the players for the lost resources that have been incurred due to this mistake. These same promises have been made before, but this is the second consecutive faction event with unannounced changes, the last one being 'War Interrupted', which had an additional 4 unexpected transmissions added to each faction.
I am going to outline the two unannounced changes and the issues that they have caused:
Change #1
Event factions:
In the event notes we were told that there would be 3 factions. These included Romulan, Ferengi Traditionalists and Klingon. You can find that in the first post of this thread: https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/discussion/4172/key-information-about-this-week-s-event-the-galactic-series-03-15-updated-03-15/p1
Note that the other factions were crossed out after the event started.
Issues
Crew leveling: Klingon and Romulan items are amongst the most important items in the game and players were robbed of the opportunity to acquire a great number of them during this event. Not only that, most players plan ahead and waited to level characters in anticipation of attaining these items in the event. Now many of us are left with a crew slot crisis because we have not received the expected items.
Faction transmissions: A faction event uses a lot of transmissions (usually over 50) so players often stock up on them before an event starts. With those factions being changed at the last minute, players have been left holding the bag for those purchases that they would not have made in the first place.
Change #2
Number of transmissions:
Recently some changes were announced to faction events and players have had to adapt to these changes with new strategies. Here's the announcement from forum moderator Shan:
Important We are making a change to Faction Events, starting with this event there will only be 6 unique missions instead of the usual 10. This will also apply to Hybrid Events with a Faction Event. Edit: This change will not apply to Faction Events involving only 1 faction. This change is being made as an effort to reduce server lag during events. We will evaluate the effects and make changes as necessary. Please note this will not affect existing/re-run events that already have more than 6 unique missions.
The key statement is that the changes will NOT affect single faction events. However, instead of the usual 20 missions, we only received 12 and were not informed of this in advance.
As stated in the opening, this is the second consecutive faction event in which the above changes were not implemented.
Issues
Threshold rewards: Due to the nature of faction events, the number of starting transmissions has a massive impact on how many points a player is able to achieve. For most established players, it is the single most important factor.
The unexpected loss of victory points is going to force players to spend additional chronitons in the galaxy portion that they would not have had the event proceeded as announced. I estimate that a minimum of 500 chronitons will be required from each player to obtain the same rewards.
Rank rewards: This is a difficult one to estimate, but players that rely on the faction portion to obtain points are certainly going to end up with a lower rank. This won't be a serious issue in my case, but everyone is going to be affected differently.
Conclusion
I urge you to take this matter seriously and compensate players appropriately. As a general framework, I think that 500 merits and 500 chronitons would be perfectly reasonable, with additional compensation for players that have unique problems.
Players have been misled consistently and despite promises from Disruptor Beam, the miscommunications continue to happen. An apology and a promise to do better is not good enough this time. Players do not believe that anymore. We feel deceived and lied to. It's time for you to take some steps to remedy the issue or else there will certainly be financial implications for the company.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I appreciate the hard work that customer support does.
<Insert name here>
In the current faction event 'The Galactic Series' there were a couple of unannounced changes that have negatively affected players. I am extremely dissatisfied with the official response from Disruptor Beam that blames the players and makes vague promises that do nothing to compensate the players for the lost resources that have been incurred due to this mistake. These same promises have been made before, but this is the second consecutive faction event with unannounced changes, the last one being 'War Interrupted', which had an additional 4 unexpected transmissions added to each faction.
I am going to outline the two unannounced changes and the issues that they have caused:
Change #1
Event factions:
In the event notes we were told that there would be 3 factions. These included Romulan, Ferengi Traditionalists and Klingon. You can find that in the first post of this thread: https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/discussion/4172/key-information-about-this-week-s-event-the-galactic-series-03-15-updated-03-15/p1
Note that the other factions were crossed out after the event started.
Issues
Crew leveling: Klingon and Romulan items are amongst the most important items in the game and players were robbed of the opportunity to acquire a great number of them during this event. Not only that, most players plan ahead and waited to level characters in anticipation of attaining these items in the event. Now many of us are left with a crew slot crisis because we have not received the expected items.
Faction transmissions: A faction event uses a lot of transmissions (usually over 50) so players often stock up on them before an event starts. With those factions being changed at the last minute, players have been left holding the bag for those purchases that they would not have made in the first place.
Change #2
Number of transmissions:
Recently some changes were announced to faction events and players have had to adapt to these changes with new strategies. Here's the announcement from forum moderator Shan:
Important We are making a change to Faction Events, starting with this event there will only be 6 unique missions instead of the usual 10. This will also apply to Hybrid Events with a Faction Event. Edit: This change will not apply to Faction Events involving only 1 faction. This change is being made as an effort to reduce server lag during events. We will evaluate the effects and make changes as necessary. Please note this will not affect existing/re-run events that already have more than 6 unique missions.
The key statement is that the changes will NOT affect single faction events. However, instead of the usual 20 missions, we only received 12 and were not informed of this in advance.
As stated in the opening, this is the second consecutive faction event in which the above changes were not implemented.
Issues
Threshold rewards: Due to the nature of faction events, the number of starting transmissions has a massive impact on how many points a player is able to achieve. For most established players, it is the single most important factor.
The unexpected loss of victory points is going to force players to spend additional chronitons in the galaxy portion that they would not have had the event proceeded as announced. I estimate that a minimum of 500 chronitons will be required from each player to obtain the same rewards.
Rank rewards: This is a difficult one to estimate, but players that rely on the faction portion to obtain points are certainly going to end up with a lower rank. This won't be a serious issue in my case, but everyone is going to be affected differently.
Conclusion
I urge you to take this matter seriously and compensate players appropriately. As a general framework, I think that 500 merits and 500 chronitons would be perfectly reasonable, with additional compensation for players that have unique problems.
Players have been misled consistently and despite promises from Disruptor Beam, the miscommunications continue to happen. An apology and a promise to do better is not good enough this time. Players do not believe that anymore. We feel deceived and lied to. It's time for you to take some steps to remedy the issue or else there will certainly be financial implications for the company.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I appreciate the hard work that customer support does.
<Insert name here>
1
Comments
That's not actually true. That event was a rerun so therefore it retained the original ten missions.
But what I'm annoyed at is the fact that the bonus crew is so few. Note: I am only counting 4 or 5 star crew as anything below that is just about marginal.
QUARK VARIANTS
1. Klingon Quark
2. Tourist Quark
3. Convergence Day Quark
4. Martian Quark (Event)
ROM VARIANTS
5. Grand Nagus Rom
6. Niners Rom (Event)
FAITH VARIANTS
7. Faith Garland (Event)
ATHLETE TRAIT
8. Delta Flyer Paris
9. Gladiator McCoy
10. Niners Kira
11. Niners Sisko
12. Tsunkatse Seven
13. Duelist Torres
I think my big beef with this is that the Athlete trait is already a small population, but the variants of Rom and Quark are barely anything. I don't see why the Ferengi trait wasn't added to this event. It wouldn't up the selective pool that much, but it's a nice step in the right direction. We'd get Captain Nog, Grand Nagus Zek, Pel, and Grand Proxy Neelix also as bonuses.
I feel like maybe every event should have a minimum of 20 4-5 star crew who can add bonuses. Anything less than that out of a total and ever-expanding crew of 516 is just DB being stingy and relegating the top spots to those few players who already have pretty much the whole gamut of crew. 20 crew out of 516 isn't even 5%, you can give us at least that, DB.
Captain of the voyage vessels: Queen of Bashir, Landsknecht, and Sunspear, the first luxury starship cruiseliners.
Amenities include wifi, fully-functioning holodecks, a full-service bar, 3 party decks, a Trill spa, and a business centre.
Fun fact: The ships are propelled by bouncy castle technology.
That was not made clear before the event started. Directly from Shan:
"We are making a change to Faction Events, starting with this event there will only be 6 unique missions instead of the usual 10."
There were no stipulations made about reruns. That's simply an assumption that you made.
I think they were saying that four missions were not “added”, they were just left there.
But yeah, there were no stipulations in the original post.
The implication in the original post there (from certain perspectives at least) was that DB had arbitrarily added missions to the event.
Whats really crazy is that some 3 stars are making it onto shuttles... and I have a pretty deep crew. Boxer Chakotay and Hockey Kim are my good friends right now.
My biggest objection to just taking this quietly is that the most apt solution to this miscommunication directly puts more $$ into DBs pockets.
Less vp from the faction part of hybrid event means those who didn't hoard chrons as for a full galaxy would need to buy more.
When a company wants their goofs to be overlooked it is most helpful not to be the recipient of financial gain from the goof.
Goes a long way towards showing goodwill that these aren't convenient errors that make them more money.