GRN Elite Pack compensation response

Nalthazar

It was nice to see that the team responded quickly to the change in the GRN Elite Packs and how they were listed in the upcoming patch changes in order to make them clearer to the player base, especially since the initial change was not announced in any way, but 120 crystals compensation is a pittance for players who spent thousands of crystals that they saved up to target specific cards. Even if in the upcoming patch all of the cards that are in each of the Rare + packs are put into the Mythic + packs, it will mean that the cards that we were chasing that were in the packs were unavailable when we spent the crystals. Given all of what happened, the compensation should have been based on the amount of packs purchased instead of a one-size fits all minimum. I can understand us not getting a 100% compensation if the Rare + cards do indeed enter the pool of Mythic + packs as that will mean that the crystals we spent will have actually narrowed the cards we could get down, but it should still have been more than a flat 120 crystals. I think it is nice that the team did chose to do something and compensate the player base, but it is too little. 120 Crystals is 30% of the cost of an Elite Pack. It gets us marginally closer to being able to get a pack, but it isn't a lot. I understand why there might be resistance in properly compensating us, as a large group of players who wanted to purchase the packs they were getting might just take advantage of a rebate, but that doesn't mean that something better shouldn't have been done. Even if it was as simple as a "Pick an Elite Pack in the GRN rotation and we will credit one to your account" it would have gone a lot further than 30% of a pack. Had I only purchased one Mythic + pack, I would have just been annoyed at what happened, but mollified by the 120 crystals. Given that I was one of the people who spent 2,000+ crystals for a bunch of cards I did NOT want to chase, I am still mad given the response. What is the point in spending money on in-app purchases and sinking hundreds of hours into events to save up for a new set if things like this could happen where such a simple thing like posting in the patch notes "Hey we are changing Rare + and Mythic + packs in the upcoming set so they have different cards in them. Make sure to check the individual packs to determine which exciting new cards you want to chase!", would have made it so the majority of the players would go into the new set with knowledge of a change that strongly impacted the usage of our most precious resource in this game. We shouldn't have to feel like it is always us against you whenever something happens in this game that strongly impacts the community. If this is the end all be all response to this @Brigby I don't think that I really want to continue making purchases and supporting the game while fueling my own enjoyment of it, only to feel like I have to worry about every bit of currency I spend in the event that something else changes and the thing I was excitedly trying to play for turns out to be unavailable. There is still an opportunity for you guys to hit a home run and respond in a way that would send a message to the players that when mixups occur they aren't just going to get **** by the group that should be trying to make us want to play the game more. 

DumasAG

Wasn’t it just the elite Rare+ that had a problem? The mythic+ pack was displaying and distributing correctly, I thought.

tfg76

The mythic+ was not displaying correctly either. The overarching "Elite pack" banner was showing the sum of all cards in Rare+ and Mythic+. Both Rare+ and Mythic+, if you drilled down, were showing correctly.

Tilwin90

Nope, both packs were problematic since a common card pool was presented while each individual pack had partial contents of that card pool.
Some people went for the 120 pack (no idea why you would waste purples on those packs as long as they don't guarantee non-dupes), while others went for the 400 ones. Because they can't tell who got what, they are going for a blanket minimum compensation here. Pure **** considering the amount of purples I spent, but whatever. They are known for not being either fair or consistent when it comes to compensations anyway. 

tfg76

For anyone that's bought jewels through some package recently, you have a recourse to complain to the app store you used, and try to get a refund for the package. Vote with your money guys!

DumasAG

Alright, so now that I know some people dropped 400 jewels for packs, and seeing as compensation is offered for what is termed misleading information about pack contents, then the compensation should be commensurate with the output for the pack purchased. That being said, if this is not compensation for the pack but instead an apology for poor communication about pack contents (because the individual pack contents were correct, but the overarching pack contents was misleading), that needs to be stated. 

[Deleted User]

Good:
- I appreciate the prerelease notes.
- some form of action took place. 

Bad:
- compensation did not scale with amount of pinkies spent.
- trust is wavering and damaged.. we all know trust is hard to rebuild (no guarantee this type of "confusion" will not happen again and starting to question other "transparent" things).
- took 2 Elite pack rotations to change (3rd rotation both rare+ and mythic + were the same, i think?) EDIT: this is wrong, they are still different. 

[Deleted User]

But i truly truly believe compensation should have been provided on an individual basis, dependent on the sheer amount of mana gems spent. 

Telling someone who spent 2000+ pinkies and then finding out the cards they were chasing werent in the pack is pretty big... not as small as 120 pinkies.

You could have offered a mythic of their choice from that 1st mythic+/rare+ pack pool (you know, the chase card); i dont think a masterpiece would be appropriate. Or created an internal system in which players who spent 1200 or less gets 120 pinkies. 2000+ gets 400 pinkies... or something along those lines.  Another approach would have been to offer some compensation amount and then providing the option to remove up to x (x scales with amount of pinkies spent) number of unwanted pulled mythics for the pinkies (i.e. refund). Or providing an exchange of a pulled mythic for another mythic within the 1st elite pack pool (also dependent on pinkies spent)

I feel like there were other options available to let the players know, you know what D3Go cares and wants to make things right (not necessarily giving out pinkies but even the card exchange).. this would bolster trust and make us, the players, valued and cared for; ultimately promoting customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. (This will then promote easier wallet opening or even word of mouth marketing). 

DumasAG

jimpark said:

Good:
- I appreciate the prerelease notes.
- some form of action took place. 

Bad:
- compensation did not scale with amount of pinkies spent.
- trust is wavering and damaged.. we all know trust is hard to rebuild (no guarantee this type of "confusion" will not happen again and starting to question other "transparent" things)
- took 2 Elite pack rotations to change (3rd rotation both rare+ and mythic + were the same, i think?)

I mean, there are a lot of things they could have done. They could also respond that players could have looked at the contents for individual packs and seen what was available in each pack. They technically have a standing to not give any compensation. I'm not arguing that things were confusing, and even more so that the mythic+ pack didn't have all mythics available which I would have assumed was the case. I just went and checked Brigby's post, and the language is: 

"Although the contents were accurately listed, we understand that there may have been some confusion regarding the contents between the Rare+ and the Mythic+ Elite Packs; specifically regarding the Mythics and Masterpiece cards in both."

It's clear from reading that that they are not, in fact, offering compensation. They are offering a one time apology for any confusion based on advertising. Seeing as they're landing on the side of the argument of "we didn't do anything wrong but we want this to go away," I doubt anybody is going to be able to wring more than 120 jewels out of them.

Regarding dialogue that anything _shady_ occurred, I think that needs to be put to bed. Take your emotions out of the situation and consider the decision tree from their end. We'll put the umbrella "view all" of what's available for both packs, then we'll differentiate in the individual pack "view all". SHOULD they have differentiated, or had some sort of language somewhere to note that there was a difference? Obviously. But that's a very, very easy oversight to make. I think we can pretty safely leave the torches and pitchforks in their spaces for the moment. 

I think there's an interesting conversation to be had about what response would have felt right versus what was technically right. Yes, they're within their rights to say, "you should have paid more attention, but here's a pittance." But you are correct, @Jimpark, that they could have bolstered their rapport with the community by making the olive branch a mythic of your choice. I'm not sure the game is even capable of offering a choose-your-own pack, though, so maybe that's technically not possible? @Kinesia, you're pretty good with the things about the feels, where do you fall in this?

tfg76

This is a game with virtual currency, where "overpaying" customers because of issues have virtually no costs to the developer. Therefore, I feel like their attitude should be: whenever we make a mistake (that we can verify and agree with), give the maximum compensation the customer might feel is appropriate. For instance, if a game freeze occurs, give 1st place prizes to the player. In this case, refund all the jewels. It doesn't matter for the devs if there are a few extra mythics in play - just do better next time and test your stuff!

Firinmahlazer

IMO they went above and beyond offering 120 jewels to "compensate" players for something they should have been checking themselves. 

Also you said crystal(s) 7 times. Do you mean jewels or are you genuinely confused by which currency is which? 

Firinmahlazer

tfg76 said:

This is a game with virtual currency, where "overpaying" customers because of issues have virtually no costs to the developer. Therefore, I feel like their attitude should be: whenever we make a mistake (that we can verify and agree with), give the maximum compensation the customer might feel is appropriate. For instance, if a game freeze occurs, give 1st place prizes to the player. In this case, refund all the jewels. It doesn't matter for the devs if there are a few extra mythics in play - just do better next time and test your stuff!

If they gave everything away for free the game would make no money. Despite what some people here think the game was made to make money. Overpaying players absolutely has an effect on developers because they would be out of a job. 

tfg76

Firinmahlazer said:

tfg76 said:

This is a game with virtual currency, where "overpaying" customers because of issues have virtually no costs to the developer. Therefore, I feel like their attitude should be: whenever we make a mistake (that we can verify and agree with), give the maximum compensation the customer might feel is appropriate. For instance, if a game freeze occurs, give 1st place prizes to the player. In this case, refund all the jewels. It doesn't matter for the devs if there are a few extra mythics in play - just do better next time and test your stuff!

If they gave everything away for free the game would make no money. Despite what some people here think the game was made to make money. Overpaying players absolutely has an effect on developers because they would be out of a job. 

Clearly, but they could also stop doing that if they stopped creating stupid bugs all the time.

Feden

DumasAG said:

Regarding dialogue that anything _shady_ occurred, I think that needs to be put to bed. Take your emotions out of the situation and consider the decision tree from their end. We'll put the umbrella "view all" of what's available for both packs, then we'll differentiate in the individual pack "view all". SHOULD they have differentiated, or had some sort of language somewhere to note that there was a difference? Obviously. But that's a very, very easy oversight to make. I think we can pretty safely leave the torches and pitchforks in their spaces for the moment. 

Except something shady very much did occur.  I was one of those who noticed the packs were different before purchasing so that part of this issue didn't impact me at all.  However, the solution was garbage.

The Mythic+ packs are different than they were before. I'm sure I'm not the only one who already spent thousands of jewels chasing a card.  I did so with the thought that if I don't pull it now, I can get it in 3 weeks when the same Mythic+ pack comes back to the vault.  Unless you're now going to tell me players shouldn't have the expectation that the Mythic+ pack contents be the same each time they come up?  

(Luckily I got my chase card on my very last pull before the change, so I'm not following up much more on this.  Still very upset though in case that wasn't clear...)

Mburn7

Feden said:

DumasAG said:

Regarding dialogue that anything _shady_ occurred, I think that needs to be put to bed. Take your emotions out of the situation and consider the decision tree from their end. We'll put the umbrella "view all" of what's available for both packs, then we'll differentiate in the individual pack "view all". SHOULD they have differentiated, or had some sort of language somewhere to note that there was a difference? Obviously. But that's a very, very easy oversight to make. I think we can pretty safely leave the torches and pitchforks in their spaces for the moment. 

Except something shady very much did occur.  I was one of those who noticed the packs were different before purchasing so that part of this issue didn't impact me at all.  However, the solution was garbage.

I agree that objectively there was something shady.  Oktagon made an intentional change without notifying us in any way.  They may not have intended for it to be confusing, but they didn't exactly make an effort to make sure that it wasn't either.

The point of patch notes is to notify us of EVERY change that is made to the app, so that there is no confusion.  Omitting a major change like that (aka something that involves us potentially spending real money) from the patch notes is by definition shady.

[Deleted User]

Firinmahlazer said:

tfg76 said:

This is a game with virtual currency, where "overpaying" customers because of issues have virtually no costs to the developer. Therefore, I feel like their attitude should be: whenever we make a mistake (that we can verify and agree with), give the maximum compensation the customer might feel is appropriate. For instance, if a game freeze occurs, give 1st place prizes to the player. In this case, refund all the jewels. It doesn't matter for the devs if there are a few extra mythics in play - just do better next time and test your stuff!

If they gave everything away for free the game would make no money. Despite what some people here think the game was made to make money. Overpaying players absolutely has an effect on developers because they would be out of a job. 

I agree I don't think they should hand out the farm. But they definitely could have taken measures beyond giving the 120 pinkies. And this would have made people feel a lot better. For instance just simply giving the option to have your pinky purchases refunded i e the cards are removed from your collection and they give you whatever amount of pinkies back. This would be more fair and not enable freeloaders while giving the option to the players, i.e. empowerment as opposed to at the mercy of miscommunication. 

Its a lot of work, yes; but i believe it would send a message like the difference between making a donation and actually going and doing charity work. 

They could have even provided x% (like just 10-20% of total pinkie purchase amount back). 10% to acknowledge the error and provide the change option above. After all the pinkies will get spent but we just want to know we arent cheated of our purchases with misleading information; and i believe this would rectify it. 

For me it wasnt nearly as bad since i found out on the forums after i made a very limited amount of pinkie purchases. But had i dropped 2000+... well it would be a different story. 

So this wasnt about getting free things for me; it was about righting a wrong and not condoning these misleading actions in the future. 

The 120 pinkies gesture is nice but unfortunately this blanket system doesnt accommodate the the heavy purchasers of the spectrum so it falls short. Overall the blanket system is more of a sorry this happened, here is a coutesy for your troubles but the main thing is rectifying the situation by providing nothing more for free but exchanging to not punish the victims. 

We want to know this company has our backs when things go wrong. We want to trust them. We want to know valuetown is a real thing. We want to feel validated for our feelings (in this case being done wrong). We want appropriate measure to be taken. We want to feel cared for and not treated as a strangers. 

Firinmahlazer

jimpark said:

Firinmahlazer said:

tfg76 said:

This is a game with virtual currency, where "overpaying" customers because of issues have virtually no costs to the developer. Therefore, I feel like their attitude should be: whenever we make a mistake (that we can verify and agree with), give the maximum compensation the customer might feel is appropriate. For instance, if a game freeze occurs, give 1st place prizes to the player. In this case, refund all the jewels. It doesn't matter for the devs if there are a few extra mythics in play - just do better next time and test your stuff!

If they gave everything away for free the game would make no money. Despite what some people here think the game was made to make money. Overpaying players absolutely has an effect on developers because they would be out of a job. 

I agree I don't think they should hand out the farm. But they definitely could have taken measures beyond giving the 120 pinkies. And this would have made people feel a lot better. For instance just simply giving the option to have your pinky purchases refunded i e the cards are removed from your collection and they give you whatever amount of pinkies back. This would be more fair and not enable freeloaders while giving the option to the players, i.e. empowerment as opposed to at the mercy of miscommunication. 

Its a lot of work, yes; but i believe it would send a message like the difference between making a donation and actually going and doing charity work. 

They could have even provided x% (like just 10-20% of total pinkie purchase amount back). 10% to acknowledge the error and provide the change option above. After all the pinkies will get spent but we just want to know we arent cheated of our purchases with misleading information; and i believe this would rectify it. 

For me it wasnt nearly as bad since i found out on the forums after i made a very limited amount of pinkie purchases. But had i dropped 2000+... well it would be a different story. 

So this wasnt about getting free things for me; it was about righting a wrong and not condoning these misleading actions in the future. 

The 120 pinkies gesture is nice but unfortunately this blanket system doesnt accommodate the the heavy purchasers of the spectrum so it falls short. Overall the blanket system is more of a sorry this happened, here is a coutesy for your troubles but the main thing is rectifying the situation by providing nothing more for free but exchanging to not punish the victims. 

We want to know this company has our backs when things go wrong. We want to trust them. We want to know valuetown is a real thing. We want to feel validated for our feelings (in this case being done wrong). We want appropriate measure to be taken. We want to feel cared for and not treated as a strangers. 

 Nobody was "done wrong" and I sincerely believe it was an oversight and not an intentional change. Why is everyone here in such a rush to find a way to feel slighted and then demand a gift to make them feel better? Furthermore every time something like this happens people treat the development team like the legion of doom, acting like they are sitting around trying to find a way to screw over the players. 

The 120 jewels is a way of saying "hey even though the contents of the packs are clearly displayed if you just would have taken the time to check the individual packs we understand how some people may have been confused. Our bad."

Ultimately it is everyone's responsibility to check the content of the packs before making a purchase. If you blew 1000 jewels because you didn't take the time make 1 extra click then I'm sorry you had to learn a lesson the hard way but it's not the devs fault .

[Deleted User]

Firinmahlazer said:

jimpark said:

Firinmahlazer said:

tfg76 said:

This is a game with virtual currency, where "overpaying" customers because of issues have virtually no costs to the developer. Therefore, I feel like their attitude should be: whenever we make a mistake (that we can verify and agree with), give the maximum compensation the customer might feel is appropriate. For instance, if a game freeze occurs, give 1st place prizes to the player. In this case, refund all the jewels. It doesn't matter for the devs if there are a few extra mythics in play - just do better next time and test your stuff!

If they gave everything away for free the game would make no money. Despite what some people here think the game was made to make money. Overpaying players absolutely has an effect on developers because they would be out of a job. 

I agree I don't think they should hand out the farm. But they definitely could have taken measures beyond giving the 120 pinkies. And this would have made people feel a lot better. For instance just simply giving the option to have your pinky purchases refunded i e the cards are removed from your collection and they give you whatever amount of pinkies back. This would be more fair and not enable freeloaders while giving the option to the players, i.e. empowerment as opposed to at the mercy of miscommunication. 

Its a lot of work, yes; but i believe it would send a message like the difference between making a donation and actually going and doing charity work. 

They could have even provided x% (like just 10-20% of total pinkie purchase amount back). 10% to acknowledge the error and provide the change option above. After all the pinkies will get spent but we just want to know we arent cheated of our purchases with misleading information; and i believe this would rectify it. 

For me it wasnt nearly as bad since i found out on the forums after i made a very limited amount of pinkie purchases. But had i dropped 2000+... well it would be a different story. 

So this wasnt about getting free things for me; it was about righting a wrong and not condoning these misleading actions in the future. 

The 120 pinkies gesture is nice but unfortunately this blanket system doesnt accommodate the the heavy purchasers of the spectrum so it falls short. Overall the blanket system is more of a sorry this happened, here is a coutesy for your troubles but the main thing is rectifying the situation by providing nothing more for free but exchanging to not punish the victims. 

We want to know this company has our backs when things go wrong. We want to trust them. We want to know valuetown is a real thing. We want to feel validated for our feelings (in this case being done wrong). We want appropriate measure to be taken. We want to feel cared for and not treated as a strangers. 

 Nobody was "done wrong" and I sincerely believe it was an oversight and not an intentional change. Why is everyone here in such a rush to find a way to feel slighted and then demand a gift to make them feel better? Furthermore every time something like this happens people treat the development team like the legion of doom, acting like they are sitting around trying to find a way to screw over the players. 

The 120 jewels is a way of saying "hey even though the contents of the packs are clearly displayed if you just would have taken the time to check the individual packs we understand how some people may have been confused. Our bad."

Ultimately it is everyone's responsibility to check the content of the packs before making a purchase. If you blew 1000 jewels because you didn't take the time make 1 extra click then I'm sorry you had to learn a lesson the hard way but it's not the devs fault .

It was not clearly displayed like this for an extended duration of time. The contents were always similar between the "view all" buttons located in all three areas (elite collection big banner, rare+ elite pack, and mythic+ elite pack). This was the NORM. Therefore, we had no reason to doubt a change unless announced by D3Go, which they failed to do. This is clearly an easy to misunderstand issue. 

If the packs always had differing contents, i wouldnt argue at all; because it was always that way. And yes in this case, it would be my fault 100%. But this is clearly not the situation. 

Furthermore, what you are presenting is complete mistrust in D3Go at all times. As someone may have mentioned somewhere.. doesnt it feel wrong to have to look over your shoulder and examine things to ensure they havent changed something and not announced it? Im not saying blindly go trusting people. But clearly the point you are making is going in the direction of mistrust and the condoning of mistrusting behaviours. This isnt some convoluted insurance company that has fine print - we all know in those situations it is my responsibility to know the stipulations. Despite this, it is wrong to change something that was always the same (terms/stipulations) without informing me of said changes (with new terms/stipulations) by the insurance company... or do you not agree? But i dont know much or anything about law or how these mobile/digital terms of service and such work; nor am i seeking legal recourse or want any kind of legality to get involved. 

Furthermore, i did not treat them as a legion of doom. I provided my opinions with reasonable arguments that you are free to see as well as agree and disagree. I provided these viewpoints based things I have picked up from successful businessmen, TED talks, leadership/motivational speakers, research articles on leadership and management, etc. 

Additionally, somewhere in either this or another elite pack i posted about giving the benefit of the doubt that this was an probably an honest error. 

And lastly, i dont necessarily disagree with what you say about responsibility because normally I would be one of those people that say, " well, you didnt check." I am a reasonable and logical person as well. So i do respect your opinion and what you are saying. Had the situation been different, i might have agreed with you; but for the reasons above as well as in another post/discussion, i do not believe this situation is one i can agree with you on for the most part. If i had to clarify 20-30% i agree with you, 70-80% i dont. 

[Deleted User]

And if it was unintentional and an error, it would honestly make more sense to take all the elite pack pulls (well maybe just the mythic+) out of our collection (remove them) and then give back the pinkies. This way we are back to status quo and people can spend their currency as they see fit to their needs. Then no one has to feel sour about anything.

Well maybe D3Go would because someone would have to do all that work for the players that want it. 

Brigby

*While I do not see anything wrong with the current discourse, I understand this may be a passionate topic for some and could potentially become a heated discussion, so I just want to give a friendly reminder to please have all comments be civil. Thank you!