Guess i should make an account and leave a post as well. im the frapser of the vid in question.
First of all Means definitely improved the game on many things. It used to be way worse. previous game directors didn't even fixed exploits or cared about them. However he needs to realise the only thing that didnt got improved (or not good enough) is the customers service and mainly FC's ban/exploit rules/system.
As for customer service they have some very good peoples that really help the peoples the best they can and really know what their are doing. Problem is everytime i sent an email i pray one of those peoples read my email and not the others. Maybe the others do also their best but they seems just clueless or don't answer at all. Yesterday i read on ao forums about a person who can't reactivate because their is a failed payment stuck in their payment list. GM's ingame can't help him. Mail support hasn't answered him/her for 2-3 days and i assume she/he wont get an answer before monday.
6months ago i had exact the same problem. somehow i managed to pay too much for my account. the payment system didnt knew how to handle this. My money was gone so technically i paid. but i got a reserve payment in my payment list and i was unable to remove it myself so i was unable to hit the re-activate button. after petitioning the ark told me the only fix to fix this is to mail to support. after 2-3 days waiting i got an e-mail of their support. I cant remember what was in there exact. but the problem was not fixed, after waiting an other 3-4 days i ended up petitioning again .i got a friendly GM who fixed the problem in less than 5mins.
Makes me wonder why [email protected] was unable to fix my problem, but a random ingame GM was. It doesnt seem this is a very uncommon problem, so why isnt the knowledge of more experienced GM's shared with the peoples who respond the e-mails? It can't be that hard to make a textfile everyone of their customer service can access how to fix problems. It would probably also save a lot of time.
Nobody can disagree since means took over there are a lot serious game breaking exploits fixed. FC and Means is really doing an awesome job there. thing is thats all they do. the exploiters usually get away with it, no warnings or bans are giving to most peoples who exploit. even if they are aware what they are doing and who it is, lack of evidence is usually the main reason/excuse they dont take any action against them. On the other hand there are peoples getting banned for sarcastically saying "yes ofc im sploiting!" or "sorry i just ebayed this". in both this cases the ban gets lifted when you get in contact with an other GM as there is no real evidence.... makes it seems someone made a joke to the wrong person or the GM is just retarded but this shouldn't happen.
An other thing i heard "these are just minor exploits and we dont take action against those". An exploit is still an exploit and there should be action taken no matter how serious it is. Just fixing exploits is not enough, a ban might be too extreme first time you use a "minor exploit" but the user should be atleast warned by FC hes not supposed to do this because its still an exploit. they choose not to. Now there are many peoples using "minor exploits" because they know FC wont do anything against the abusers. and how are peoples supposed to now when they are exploiting and when they arent?What is the border between minor and serious exploits?
Using a bugged perk that gave 15k stamina (clearly a bug) was considered as a serious exploit. however using a gun that removes the lockout of the most powerfull nano ingame is not even considered as an exploit. no, not even a minor one.terminating bases to make the bases go in wargas on an unintented way is considered as a minor exploit , nobody ever got a warning for doing this. The abusers wont stop and tbh you can't blame them, the abusers know this is clearly not the intended way, but why would they stop? FC is aware of this problem but they are just allowing them continue untill they figure out how to fix this so they can patch it out.
Why is FC doing this? You would be a hypocrite if you say "sploiters are only on 1 side". I dont think there is faction or org protected by GM's/FC. weird ban reasons or in most cases peoples not getting banned/warned happens on both sides. You could explain the unrightly giving/retracted bans by a GM who prefers a side though, i think in most cases the GM was just a noob or in a very bad mood. FC not banning/warning peoples or given pretty small duration bans to peoples who commit serious game breaking exploits (In most cases the abusers still get away with nothing) makes me think FC doesn't want to loose paying costumers. they are keeping everything silent and just patch bugs/exploits away. However by doing this you might get an unwanted outburst by peoples who are thinking "ok this is going too far now" and you will loose paying customers anyway. and thats what basically happened this week.
I know Means is reading this and he doesnt deserve all this hate. He did some really good things to this game. you could do like the other previous game directors and ignore these problem. or you could start realising there is something not right and you can work on it. I know your staff isn't that big and you are busy working on other stuff. but i do hope you don't ignore this and hopefully do something about it.
Comments
i really want to talk about this but all i can think to post is....
Wow, means reads mmorpg?
Games i'm playing right now...
"In short, I thought NGE was a very bad idea" - Raph Koster talking about NGE on his blog at raphkoster.com
tell that to former members of midnight rivaries and get laughed at hard.
Games i'm playing right now...
"In short, I thought NGE was a very bad idea" - Raph Koster talking about NGE on his blog at raphkoster.com
Guess i should make an account and leave a post as well. im the frapser of the vid in question.
First of all Means definitely improved the game on many things. It used to be way worse. previous game directors didn't even fixed exploits or cared about them. However he needs to realise the only thing that didnt got improved (or not good enough) is the customers service and mainly FC's ban/exploit rules/system.
As for customer service they have some very good peoples that really help the peoples the best they can and really know what their are doing. Problem is everytime i sent an email i pray one of those peoples read my email and not the others. Maybe the others do also their best but they seems just clueless or don't answer at all. Yesterday i read on ao forums about a person who can't reactivate because their is a failed payment stuck in their payment list. GM's ingame can't help him. Mail support hasn't answered him/her for 2-3 days and i assume she/he wont get an answer before monday.
6months ago i had exact the same problem. somehow i managed to pay too much for my account. the payment system didnt knew how to handle this. My money was gone so technically i paid. but i got a reserve payment in my payment list and i was unable to remove it myself so i was unable to hit the re-activate button. after petitioning the ark told me the only fix to fix this is to mail to support. after 2-3 days waiting i got an e-mail of their support. I cant remember what was in there exact. but the problem was not fixed, after waiting an other 3-4 days i ended up petitioning again .i got a friendly GM who fixed the problem in less than 5mins.
Makes me wonder why [email protected] was unable to fix my problem, but a random ingame GM was. It doesnt seem this is a very uncommon problem, so why isnt the knowledge of more experienced GM's shared with the peoples who respond the e-mails? It can't be that hard to make a textfile everyone of their customer service can access how to fix problems. It would probably also save a lot of time.
Nobody can disagree since means took over there are a lot serious game breaking exploits fixed. FC and Means is really doing an awesome job there. thing is thats all they do. the exploiters usually get away with it, no warnings or bans are giving to most peoples who exploit. even if they are aware what they are doing and who it is, lack of evidence is usually the main reason/excuse they dont take any action against them. On the other hand there are peoples getting banned for sarcastically saying "yes ofc im sploiting!" or "sorry i just ebayed this". in both this cases the ban gets lifted when you get in contact with an other GM as there is no real evidence.... makes it seems someone made a joke to the wrong person or the GM is just retarded but this shouldn't happen.
An other thing i heard "these are just minor exploits and we dont take action against those". An exploit is still an exploit and there should be action taken no matter how serious it is. Just fixing exploits is not enough, a ban might be too extreme first time you use a "minor exploit" but the user should be atleast warned by FC hes not supposed to do this because its still an exploit. they choose not to. Now there are many peoples using "minor exploits" because they know FC wont do anything against the abusers. and how are peoples supposed to now when they are exploiting and when they arent?What is the border between minor and serious exploits?
Using a bugged perk that gave 15k stamina (clearly a bug) was considered as a serious exploit. however using a gun that removes the lockout of the most powerfull nano ingame is not even considered as an exploit. no, not even a minor one.terminating bases to make the bases go in wargas on an unintented way is considered as a minor exploit , nobody ever got a warning for doing this. The abusers wont stop and tbh you can't blame them, the abusers know this is clearly not the intended way, but why would they stop? FC is aware of this problem but they are just allowing them continue untill they figure out how to fix this so they can patch it out.
Why is FC doing this? You would be a hypocrite if you say "sploiters are only on 1 side". I dont think there is faction or org protected by GM's/FC. weird ban reasons or in most cases peoples not getting banned/warned happens on both sides. You could explain the unrightly giving/retracted bans by a GM who prefers a side though, i think in most cases the GM was just a noob or in a very bad mood. FC not banning/warning peoples or given pretty small duration bans to peoples who commit serious game breaking exploits (In most cases the abusers still get away with nothing) makes me think FC doesn't want to loose paying costumers. they are keeping everything silent and just patch bugs/exploits away. However by doing this you might get an unwanted outburst by peoples who are thinking "ok this is going too far now" and you will loose paying customers anyway. and thats what basically happened this week.
I know Means is reading this and he doesnt deserve all this hate. He did some really good things to this game. you could do like the other previous game directors and ignore these problem. or you could start realising there is something not right and you can work on it. I know your staff isn't that big and you are busy working on other stuff. but i do hope you don't ignore this and hopefully do something about it.
They had no power. Not everryone is part of the elite group of scum that run this silly old shit game.