All Alliances Increasing To 20 Member Slots

GothicKratos

stray wrote:

GothicKratos wrote:

stray wrote:

Still no response from d3? That's incredibly poor customer relations. I also noticed the Google play store average score is now 4.3 stars down from 4.5 as an average since the update. Doesn't sound like much, but with 120k votes that's a fair few upset people.

If you really read through the thread, they are corresponding with people individually, through tickets and support e-mails. People have even reported partial refunds.

It would be far worse posture for them to try and fight their way through these (and similar) thread(s). It would be mindless bickering that would solve nothing.

I've read the entire thread, and the only response from staff is that those who bought slots in the last week can submit a ticket, and anyone outside that timeframe is SOL. So reading people's successful requests for refund one can only assume they are within the week, and those who were unsuccessful are outside that time. If I'm misreading that, then it's only because there has been nothing official saying there is any point submitting a ticket if you're out of the week, and if that's the case it comes right back to my initial point about poor communication and customer relations.

Valicar wrote:

I got my alliance slot purchases for the month of October refunded, but my wife has yet to receive hers, even though we both submitted our CS ticket at about the same time.

On that very page. The month of October. Ideal? Not really, but it's a start.

Like I said, people have confirmed that D3 is working with them, even if just a little bit, in this very thread, and it would be poor posture for staff to try and make any blanket statements in this thread because it is a complicated issue (aka their initial mistake).

Unknown

GothicKratos wrote:

stray wrote:

GothicKratos wrote:

stray wrote:

Still no response from d3? That's incredibly poor customer relations. I also noticed the Google play store average score is now 4.3 stars down from 4.5 as an average since the update. Doesn't sound like much, but with 120k votes that's a fair few upset people.

If you really read through the thread, they are corresponding with people individually, through tickets and support e-mails. People have even reported partial refunds.

It would be far worse posture for them to try and fight their way through these (and similar) thread(s). It would be mindless bickering that would solve nothing.

I've read the entire thread, and the only response from staff is that those who bought slots in the last week can submit a ticket, and anyone outside that timeframe is SOL. So reading people's successful requests for refund one can only assume they are within the week, and those who were unsuccessful are outside that time. If I'm misreading that, then it's only because there has been nothing official saying there is any point submitting a ticket if you're out of the week, and if that's the case it comes right back to my initial point about poor communication and customer relations.

Valicar wrote:

I got my alliance slot purchases for the month of October refunded, but my wife has yet to receive hers, even though we both submitted our CS ticket at about the same time.

On that very page. The month of October. Ideal? Not really, but it's a start.

Like I said, people have confirmed that D3 is working with them, even if just a little bit, in this very thread, and it would be poor posture for staff to try and make any blanket statements in this thread because it is a complicated issue (aka their initial mistake).

With that being the case, would it really be that hard for a staff member to say something like "we have reevaluated our initial 1 week buffer. If you feel like you have a claim to some kind of compensation please submit a ticket and we will individually review each case"

Not hard to type out, and removes or at least lessens, the frustrations people are feeling both with the lack of response and the initial statement about lack of compensation.

Mikaveus

Anyone who has suffered through the building of a 20-person Alliance, and given hard-earned or monetarily earned HP to do so, deserves SOME KIND of compensation. Just my 2 cents.

GothicKratos

The difficulty of the task is not my point. My point is, by making a post, all they're doing is opening themselves up for another 15 pages of people that want individual responses to their situations, when it's just as easily (if not more easily) solvable through a ticket, like originally suggested (and realistically what should be common sense).

The "we reevaluated things" post you suggested doesn't do anything except prod the fire. Them taking time to addresses the probable hundreds of tickets regarding this, instead of a five minute forum post, I would at least guess, is far more appreciated. Then, at that point, having followed up on one thing, they'd be expected to respond to JoeBlow1969 and JaneDoe4200 and TomDickHarry666 and so on and so forth, as not to "play favorites" or to be "hand picking responses".

If it's not one thing in the mob, it's another. It's best to walk away form the mob and handle the individuals. The mob will cannibalize you, but the individual is the hand that feeds. The mob will always disappear, but the individual might never come back.

Public Relations 101, if Wal-Mart can spin African children making shoes in caves/huts by doing community service/charity, then you can spin your much smaller problem by doing much smaller community services/charities.

Unknown

I agree submitting a ticket would be the common sense thing to do, had they not said straight off the bat that tickets were for people who'd bought slots in the last week. By saying that, they are basically saying that if your spots were bought longer than that, then submitting a ticket would be pointless. Hence the need for some kind of clarification if that isn't the case.

Also, any mob is made up of individuals. My example of what they could post wouldn't be directed at any single poster, but anyone who has written, or even read through this thread. By staying silent, any individual in the mob, and I'll put my hand up as one of those individuals, can easily jump to the conclusion that this company doesn't respect them enough to even acknowledge their, quite valid, complaints.

Dayv

scottee wrote:

I paid $20 for Team Fortress 2 back in the day. Soon afterward, they changed it to free-2-play. All I got for it was a worthless hat.

That's more than D3 is giving us.

Deathclaw

I got the same "reaped the benefits" message. This was my reply

"I appreciate the reply, I just wanted to stress that while as a commander of my alliance who purchased many of the slots, my rewards for the alliance were far outweighed by all of the members of the alliance who paid nothing, and I am sure that is a common theme throughout many alliances.

While I am glad that everyone gets 20 person alliances now, and I see the reasoning behind it, only a small fraction of the alliance population actually spent the HP to allow for the "Alliance Scene" to flourish. There was never any additional benefit to forming an alliance or being a commander, outside dealing with members who wanted rules/rules changed/etc.

I recognize that a HP refund is drastic, but some sort of recognition of the Commanders who spent covers and covers worth of HP would have been nice, particularly when only the top 100 alliances got covers as rewards. What I spent on roster slots would have easily purchased more 3 star covers than I received as alliance rewards.

While I am still going to play and enjoy the game, I am likely going to pass up anything in the future that "builds community" or does not reward me personally, and hope that others will carry (pay) for whatever the cost is. I feel like we helped set the alliances up, all of our members reaped far greater rewards than than the Commanders, and now I am left wondering why I bought in, and didn't just join a random alliance"

Unknown

Wow I haven't posted here in forever, mostly since I stopped playing *competitively*

My 0.02:


-Sending all alliances to 20 isn't a measure D3 would take if the bottom fell out of its profitability. They'd still try to milk it slightly, with some other avenue of profit. Personally, I'm expecting a Commander to be able to implement an ALLIANCE-LEVEL shield at some point, or to rally the troops to try to help pay for it. Such an option would be more valid now than ever now that alliances can go up to 20 with *minimal effort*

-If there was no "effective blah" announcement, the players are frankly well within their rights to grab torches, pitchforks, kitchen sinks, rubber chickens, small dogs, or what have they and take to rioting and demand some form of compensation. And none of this "here's a Heroic token". Something good that won't be a slap in the face to the actual top alliances.

-Last point: Kudos to D3 for giving us so many fish. You've now taught your players there's no real point in buying ANYTHING, since we'll get it all for free soon enough.

Unknown

After opening a whole alliance myself I do feel cheated by the change. I definitely haven't received "more rewards than the cost." It just means that in the future when I'm tempted to even drop money on this game I won't, I may just go pick something off of Steam instead.

Unknown

Got back the 1800 I spent on the last slot I bought so that's some recoup I suppose (lucky I bought it in October). Our slow climb to an Alliance with 18 people, never cracking above top 300 (Though top 500 is still a damn fine achievement despite not being rewarded adequately), hasn't come close to earning back what we spent so their argument about that is moot.

There is little else to say. I'm disappointed.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

RefinedBean wrote:

This kind of decision needed at least a month-long lead-in for people to wrap their heads around it and give feedback.
It should've been approached like this:

"In a month or so, all alliances will be going to 20 slots. We're giving you this heads-up for two reasons: 1. ... 2. ... "

There. That's it. You don't leave any doubt that the change ISN'T happening, but you get the community involved. That's the whole point of Will's position, right?

I have a serious question, since I have barely any experience with other games of this kind: have other vaguely similar games done precisely what you've described? Do you have examples of other games that have provided a full month of lead time and always actively obeyed player-forum demands sufficiently to stave off raging?

RefinedBean wrote:

It's not rocket science to realize that if people perceive they have more of a say in how things are going forward (re: compensation for HP spent on alliance slots, if any), they're much more likely to be invested in the outcome, WHATEVER IT IS.

"More invested", sure, but that doesn't equate to "less ragey." They tried the "pre-announce and let people voice their feedback" thing with recent character nerfs, and many forumites still went nuclear because the tweaks weren't precisely in line with what some forumites wanted (e.g. Spidey/CMags received more than simple numerical adjustments), even if the actual tweak was quite good (e.g. New CMags is still high/top-tier).

While D3's messaging could use some improvement, forumites will rage not only regardless of lead time, but based upon expectations that range from the pretty understandable ("I plunked down $100-200 for alliance slots a month ago, and I feel like I should get some some sort of compensation") to the unabashedly absurd ("Your dev Q&A didn't give us your internal development timeline in detail, so it's all bullkitty!").

These are fair questions, HM, and I don't have great answers for you unfortunately. Honestly, reading back over what I said, I think I'm making an apples-to-oranges comparison based off some best practice I use in my profession. When you create a dialogue with a good amount of lead-time, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER ANYTHING CHANGES OR NOT, the perception of the change is usually better than if you just drop it like a ton of bricks out of nowhere.

What this boils down to, honestly, is forum-goers coming to the harsh truth of the matter - in this instance, our wishes and opinions don't mean ****. And they shouldn't. This change was for the benefit of the game as a whole, and D3 made the decision just to go ahead with it and piss off the tiny amount of people it screws over.

I don't envy a) the people who were screwed over OR b) D3. The winner here is obviously newcomers and F2Pers, or people like me who never bothered creating/investing in an alliance.

Maybe there was no good way to do this, and so they went with the simplest option. And here we are.

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Hi everyone,

A quick note to let you know that we are listening to all of the feedback regarding the recent change to Alliance sizes and are taking your opinions into consideration. We'll have an update soon on the topic but we wanted to add that we will be extending the Hero Point compensation to include any players who opened additional Alliance slots during the entire month of October.

We'll have a bit more on the topic in the near future and we hope it proves useful to all players affected.

Thanks for reading.

Nellobee

Thank you for taking our feedback into account, Mr. Moore. I hope we can find an mutually satisfying resolution.

Unknown

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi everyone,

A quick note to let you know that we are listening to all of the feedback regarding the recent change to Alliance sizes and are taking your opinions into consideration. We'll have an update soon on the topic but we wanted to add that we will be extending the Hero Point compensation to include any players who opened additional Alliance slots during the entire month of October.

We'll have a bit more on the topic in the near future and we hope it proves useful to all players affected.

Thanks for reading.

Something like this is all we were asking for, some acknowledgement of our concerns. Better late than never

Unknown

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi everyone,

A quick note to let you know that we are listening to all of the feedback regarding the recent change to Alliance sizes and are taking your opinions into consideration. We'll have an update soon on the topic but we wanted to add that we will be extending the Hero Point compensation to include any players who opened additional Alliance slots during the entire month of October.

We'll have a bit more on the topic in the near future and we hope it proves useful to all players affected.

Thanks for reading.

I am waiting - meanwhile i stopped playing and removed mpq from my phone. I will check in the forums daily to see if you people do the right thing. Couldnt care any less about ur events and game right now.

EDIT: I just noticed this is only for the month of October, pfffft. Useless !!!
Ah well ... am out of here ... bye bye

Unknown

"David wrote:

Moore"]
We'll have a bit more on the topic in the near future and we hope it proves useful to all players affected.

unless this includes extending compensation to all players who purchased slots, not just in october, it will be far from useful for all players affected.

Unknown

jzahm wrote:

"David wrote:

Moore"]
We'll have a bit more on the topic in the near future and we hope it proves useful to all players affected.

unless this includes extending compensation to all players who purchased slots, not just in october, it will be far from useful for all players affected.

agreed.

Sandmaker

It's funny, the main reason for the backlash is that the free slots came too quickly. They were too generous too quick. They could've easily done something more gradual and got away scot-free.

For example, introduce "Alliance Slot" tokens as low end alliance rewards. Alliances that don't win a cover, gets a token (or half a token). It would've had the exact same effect as eventually giving everyone a 20 man alliance. However, people wouldn't feel like they got robbed, because their purchase becomes obsolete very slowly, and the smaller alliances still have to "earn" the new slots. Which is psychologically more acceptable.

It also leaves alliance slots opens as a monetization option for people who are too impatient to wait 15 tournaments to max out the alliance. So a win for the business too.

Instead of 15 pages of people asking for refunds, they would've probably gotten a couple threads thanking them for throwing the little guys a bone.

Deathclaw

At least they're still talking about it. If I had just bought slots in October, I would totally want a full HP refund. As a long time Commander, I realize that probably won't happen, but some sort of compensation. A huge chunk of ISO, a 10 pack or two, a (red or green) Devil Dino or a Lady Thor cover or SOMETHING that would make me feel like they recognize the investment.

And while the top 100 alliance commanders have probably received great benefit from reliably getting extra cover most tourneys, I'm also assuming that those same commanders have played a ton and fought super hard (possibly spending HP on boosts/shields etc) and its not like giving them some extra stuff is some great injustice.

Make Us Whole, and I don't mean convergence!

Unknown

received this response today:

D3PA Customer Support wrote:

Thank you for contacting D3P Customer Support.

We are sorry to see that you are frustrated and upset. However, please be aware that continuing to use profanity or insults can lead to your ticket being closed without a response.

That being said, we are currently in the middle of addressing this issue as we can see the MPQ playing community finds it rather discomforting. Please be patient and we will eventually release an update on the situation.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us again.

Best Regards,
D3Publisher Customer Support Team (AJG)

i guess this is a step in the right direction, but i'm not holding my breath.