Season VIII Ending Discrepancy (**Updated)

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Hello everyone,

We wanted to acknowledge that there was an issue with Season VIII ending three hours earlier than planned. Please accept our apologies for the error.

The players primarily affected by the early ending were those that had chosen the final Event end time of the Season. The bug stemmed from the new selectable Event end times feature. While we were aware of the issues that could arise and believed we had adjusted accordingly – we did not have all of the needed fixes in place and the error occurred.

We are currently digging into the data and working out the who/what/where of how we can compensate anyone who was affected by the bug. At this time, there is no need to open a ticket with Customer Service. We are aware of the issue and working on correcting it. We will update here in the forums regarding any compensation or further info.

Thank you for your patience as we continue to investigate a huge amount of data to see how we can best proceed fairly.

*UPDATE (12/10/14)

Thanks for your patience as we looked into the issue of Season VIII ending three hours earlier than intended. There has been a huge amount of data to sift through and logistics to sort out as we've investigated who was adversely affected by the early ending and what form compensation should take.

For the players who selected the last time shard for the Eight Is Enough Event and thus could not add those final points to their overall season-ending scores, we will be providing the following (based on points earned before the Event ended);

2-3k Point Range - A Beast (Classic)

Animal Inside cover
3-4k Point Range - one 10x Heroic Pack token
4k-Plus Point Range - 1k Iso-8 and 100 Hero Points

We will also be expanding the awarding of Thor (Goddess of Thunder) covers by approximately an additional 35% of top Alliances. We plan on providing this compensation by the end of the week.

For the large amount of players, outside of the groups mentioned above, we are still discussing what and how we will be providing compensation. Further word on that will be forthcoming soon.

Thank you.

**UPDATE (12/12/14)

Compensation has begun going out to players today.

In addition to the above mentioned, we will be extending the same tiered rewards to ALL players who qualify and participated in the Eight Is Enough Versus Event, not just those in the final time shard. This is for players that could have used the extra hours in S.H.I.E.L.D. Training to get more Season rewards. We are looking at Doc Ock Versus Event participants to decide whom to provide compensation to because we believe if you were active in that Event, you were likely active in the last three hours of the Season and were thus affected.

*Please allow up to 48 hours from today to receive your in-game compensation.

For the very small subset of players who did not participate in the Eight Is Enough Event, but may have been participating in S.H.I.E.L.D. Training during the final hours of Season VIII, please open a ticket with Customer Service if you feel compensation is due and we will investigate on a case-by-case basis. Thank you!

Unknown

Compensation, we want compensation.

EDIT: In all seriousness it's hard to assess how people will be compensated, if someone makes a case that they could've broken Top 50 because they were going to do a bunch of simulator matches how much of that do you take into account for. Bast case scenario, everyone gets a free 10 Pack, most likely case everyone gets 2-3 Heroic tokens. Just my two cents.

Unknown

I think it is an incorrect assessment to assume only those who chose the last event shard for the last PvP event are affected. Everyone is affected. The shield simulator stopped running 3 hours earlier than it was supposed to. Many people I know were climbing for the mystique black cover progression reward at 2400 pts. They basically wasted their hp climbing and shielding only to have the shield simulator end before reaching 2400 pts.

Xeonic-Ice

TooBadUnknown wrote:

I think it is an incorrect assessment to assume only those who chose the last event shard for the last PvP event are affected. Everyone is affected. The shield simulator stopped running 3 hours earlier than it was supposed to. Many people I know were climbing for the mystique black cover progression reward at 2400 pts. They basically wasted their hp climbing and shielding only to have the shield simulator end before reaching 2400 pts.

Exactly. Everyone who played was affected. There are way too many intangibles to say specifically that it affected one player or group over another. 3 hours is a huge chunk of time where lots of things can happen. I've climbed from 0-1500 in the simulator before in under 3 hours.

My alliance was a member short and I was actively trying to fill the spot and I thought I had 3 additional hours to find that player. We were ranked 109 at the time and I think roughly 9k points out of top 100. A single player would have made a huge impact if we had found one. I'm not going to dwell on woulda coulda shoulda but that's an intangible effect. We might not have made it, but with supposedly 3 hours left, I was doing my best to try and make it happen before it ended prematurely.

I'm not demanding compensation. It would be amazing but I don't expect it. The only players unaffected by this are the ones who didn't play.

Accident-eLe

You are effectively printing free money. Just give everyone a free blue thor regardless of status and a ten pack. Anyone on the edge individually is pleased and alliances aren't upset considering if you were already there you get a bonus and if you weren't everything becomes as it may have been. The player base as a whole is also happy because you are just giving them free things which makes them more interested in the game. Many have posted how nice the broken pve is because it is like a break for them. For the mystique thing just give anyone who had 2300 pts the cover. If you make buggy things that make people upset you lose sales. Good PR moves promote sales look at the alliance slots. Please don't turn this into another nightmare, instead be generous.

Mawtful

inb4 everyone gets a free event token for the first PvP of Season 9, 25 HP, and a fistful of ISO.

((IIRC, that was the compensation the previous 2 times something like this happened))

Lystrata

Really respect that Ice was posting about this just after it all happened yesterday, and that today there's another updated. Communication+.

Also really appreciate that you've implemented a system that makes the game far more convenient for everyone around the globe, and can understand that for the first season ending, this got a bit messed up. Tinykitty happens, such is life. No grudge for that.

However, as others have noted, I think it's a bit short-sighted to say who was 'primarily affected' by this. Can safely say I wasn't remotely affected, but for anyone who still had SIM to play, or alliances who were still finalising their player rosters, mercs who were looking for end-of-season alliances... this affected them. Anyone who hadn't finished 'all they could' was affected. It looks a bit cheap to try and downplay the matter.

Unknown

Accident-eLe wrote:

You are effectively printing free money. Just give everyone a free blue thor regardless of status and a ten pack. Anyone on the edge individually is pleased and alliances aren't upset considering if you were already there you get a bonus and if you weren't everything becomes as it may have been. The player base as a whole is also happy because you are just giving them free things which makes them more interested in the game. Many have posted how nice the broken pve is because it is like a break for them. For the mystique thing just give anyone who had 2300 pts the cover. If you make buggy things that make people upset you lose sales. Good PR moves promote sales look at the alliance slots. Please don't turn this into another nightmare, instead be generous.

I'm against the idea of giving away specific covers for free, it undermines the work people that either paid/grinded their way to get a specific cover.

Unknown

Accident-eLe wrote:

You are effectively printing free money. Just give everyone a free blue thor regardless of status and a ten pack. Anyone on the edge individually is pleased and alliances aren't upset considering if you were already there you get a bonus and if you weren't everything becomes as it may have been. The player base as a whole is also happy because you are just giving them free things which makes them more interested in the game. Many have posted how nice the broken pve is because it is like a break for them. For the mystique thing just give anyone who had 2300 pts the cover. If you make buggy things that make people upset you lose sales. Good PR moves promote sales look at the alliance slots. Please don't turn this into another nightmare, instead be generous.

Hold it there cowboy! Thor blue and a 10 pack? Considering how they compensated android lollipop users who weren't able to play at all for weeks, lost out on daily reward, PvP pve rewards and progression plus knock on effects with not having essential characters to be competitive for next few pve. Plus the hit to season scores plus being kicked out of alliances because they can't carry someone who can't put up points for weeks. Their answer is 3 Groot tokens. 750 isos. I'd be grateful if you get a standard token from them as compensation.

Unknown

Honestly,
Id be happy with anything, how bout 3-5 heroic tokens...in all honesty with the drop rates, thats mostly just ISO anyway

Or hell just throw us all a spare blue 4* Thor, call it good and I think we will ALL be content!

But seriously,

Thanks for all you guys do, I can only imagine the magnitude of "issues" complaints etc, that you DEVs have to deal with on a daily basis. Thanks for the constant updates, quick responses and a great game!

Unknown

TooBadUnknown wrote:

I think it is an incorrect assessment to assume only those who chose the last event shard for the last PvP event are affected. Everyone is affected. The shield simulator stopped running 3 hours earlier than it was supposed to. Many people I know were climbing for the mystique black cover progression reward at 2400 pts. They basically wasted their hp climbing and shielding only to have the shield simulator end before reaching 2400 pts.

So I think the most fit compensation is Black Mystique cover.

Unknown

TooBadUnknown wrote:

I think it is an incorrect assessment to assume only those who chose the last event shard for the last PvP event are affected. Everyone is affected. The shield simulator stopped running 3 hours earlier than it was supposed to. Many people I know were climbing for the mystique black cover progression reward at 2400 pts. They basically wasted their hp climbing and shielding only to have the shield simulator end before reaching 2400 pts.

2316 in simulator with a 46 and a 47 queued and having spent the HP to get there is my issue. I hope those in the same situation don't get overlooked in the assessment of who might have been negatively impacted.

spccrain

I personally think a mystique black or a few heroics is good. I wasnt affected too badly by it as I was in time shards 3 but a few of my teammates were in 5 and their inability to climb affected any alliance with someone in that shard. Honestly thought heroics are basically iso now a days anyway.

Unknown

I probably wasn't as affected as many but still lost out on the mystique cover. (Was shielded, under 100 points away, waiting till work ended to hop).

The thing that's particularly unfortunate about this failure is that I spent HP, which I paid for, to get to that point and that HP is now completely wasted (as I was already comfortably top 50 for the season and was only doing the sim for the mystique cover).

I get giving a token (pun intended) reward for PVE issues or certain service interruptions, but feel like it's got to be something more for something like this as it makes it hard for me to justify spending more money for HP in this game if I know it can all just disappear due to something like this with no benefit to me.

I'm not going to argue for what the compensation should be, but I do think it needs to take into account the fact that people spent real money to buy shields and boosts for these events that turned out to be nearly worthless. I think at the very least some kind of HP refund is in order.

mohio

As I posted in the other thread, I wasn't all that effected by it. Without starting the final PvP and "only" being on ~1500 in simulator, I was maybe 5-600 points out of 50th place individually in season. As others have correctly noted, there's no way to know if I would have made it there or not, but I could have pretty easily put up another 1000+ points which would most likely have been enough (with others locked out of sim I put up 600 pts in the pvp and it put me in 50th exactly).

Anyway, my point for this post is that even people "lower on the totem pole" have been effected. We have a rather large number of 2* players in our secondary alliance and a few of them were counting on hitting the simulator for a few more points just to get to the season 10-pack progression reward. One guy needed just 20-40 points to get there, but was obviously unable to do it when he had planned on. To me, these cases are even worse than the guys like me who were saying we could have climbed a few spots if the shield sim were still open or if my final pvp score counted towards my season score, cause it will be hard/impossible for D3 to find them, yet they were almost assuredly kept out of receiving rewards they were going to get (and I would put in the guys saying they were lining up matches to get to 2400 in this group as well).

Unknown

Few options:
Have 3 boxes of prizes where each player picks the one they want.
Give everyone 750-1000 more points in simulator and give out rewards people would have reached.
Make next season double iso.
Make 1 week double iso.
Lightning rounds with 25 people.
Simulator for next season has more 3* progression rewards.
25,000 iso

Accident-eLe

futongus wrote:

Accident-eLe wrote:

You are effectively printing free money. Just give everyone a free blue thor regardless of status and a ten pack. Anyone on the edge individually is pleased and alliances aren't upset considering if you were already there you get a bonus and if you weren't everything becomes as it may have been. The player base as a whole is also happy because you are just giving them free things which makes them more interested in the game. Many have posted how nice the broken pve is because it is like a break for them. For the mystique thing just give anyone who had 2300 pts the cover. If you make buggy things that make people upset you lose sales. Good PR moves promote sales look at the alliance slots. Please don't turn this into another nightmare, instead be generous.

Hold it there cowboy! Thor blue and a 10 pack? Considering how they compensated android lollipop users who weren't able to play at all for weeks, lost out on daily reward, PvP pve rewards and progression plus knock on effects with not having essential characters to be competitive for next few pve. Plus the hit to season scores plus being kicked out of alliances because they can't carry someone who can't put up points for weeks. Their answer is 3 Groot tokens. 750 isos. I'd be grateful if you get a standard token from them as compensation.

I know it is not likely I am just saying it solves everything. There are 2 many variables that determine whether or not people would have gotten rewards. They either chose to give nothing or give to everyone. And to those who don't like everyone including themselves getting a blue thor (d3 won't do it anyway because they don't give a ****) because those players didn't earn or buy it maybe next time you can get left out in the cold. Granted I got mine but I definitely know groups with sister alliances that had people moved around for pve that got screwed. Sure a lot of people nit in top 100 alliances get 1 cover they didn't earn. If you are at the top why do you care anyway. Those people don't influence your PVP and she probably won't ever be featured again. Second half gas nothing to do with futongus's quote. Not attacking you or anything.

mouser

It's an interesting kettle of fish. Most players weren't affected, yet some were greatly affected. Most alliances were probably not affected, but some likely were. My own personal experience was being 300 points away from moving up from the top 50 tier to top 25 tier in season rankings for an extra 10-pack. Got up for a grind in the final hours to find the season had ended. I only had 1000 points in simulator and a roster that could easily go to 2000 or more.

Am I upset, no not really. Maybe some of the other players in my bracket were sandbagging simulator as well and we would have had a mad rush at the end. Who knows.

The trickier part is coming up with an appropriate compensation from D3. There are so many different ways that players could have been affected I doubt it's practical for D3 to try and sort out everything at an individual player level. Even identying shard 5 PVP players for unique compensation is probably a lot of work for D3 from my past impressions.

My suggestion to D3 would be some unique new token pack including 4* Thor and an above average % possibility of 3*s or other 4*'s. Then decide an appropriate # of tokens as compensation with the objective of only having a small portion of the players upset after using them. The higher the 3*+ rate the lower the # of tokens. Maybe the simplest suggestion would be 3 tokens with guaranteed 3*'s and a higher then usual % for a 4* Thor.

Unknown

I was grinding for 2400 progression mystique when the season ended

GothicKratos

mouser wrote:

The trickier part is coming up with an appropriate compensation from D3. There are so many different ways that players could have been affected I doubt it's practical for D3 to try and sort out everything at an individual player level. Even identying shard 5 PVP players for unique compensation is probably a lot of work for D3 from my past impressions.

My suggestion to D3 would be some unique new token pack including 4* Thor and an above average % possibility of 3*s or other 4*'s. Then decide an appropriate # of tokens as compensation with the objective of only having a small portion of the players upset after using them. The higher the 3*+ rate the lower the # of tokens. Maybe the simplest suggestion would be 3 tokens with guaranteed 3*'s and a higher then usual % for a 4* Thor.

This is actually right on point. I feel like giving a cover is too much, but tokens are undoubtedly too little. Hero Points is probably the "best" way to go about it. Something flat and across the board -- 350 Hero Points sounds about right on the nose to me.

mouser

Could do a unique token with HP as one of the possible rewards. D3 showed they had that coded already in the Anniversary event tokens.

Maybe something like 4* Thor, the most recent 3*'s Gamora, R & G, Mystique, or HP as token rewards. Shouldn't be too many players unhappy with receiving any of those.


How many tokens? I'd suggest more then 1, probably 3 or 5. Not to make the overall rewards handed out greater, but to increase the odds that everyone affected will be happy with something from their tokens. E.g. If 300HP was the target "average" compensation then I'd suggest 3 tokens with the aforementioned covers or 100HP as rewards.