Regarding the relocation of the topic, I personally don't see the problem. They've done this with other discussions before. Typically discussions that go on for two or more pages worth of posts. And if it's got two pages of posts in a single thread and people seem intent to continue it, why not relocate it to its own dedicated thread?
That being said, the wheel-coin thing was a massive mess up and I think they scrambled to try to fix it as much as they could without just getting rid of it altogether. Companies don't like to admit fault, it's a pretty common thing, so I think expecting any of the non-volunteer admin to go "our bad" is likely not to happen. They had to nerf the wheel out of necessity, but if they removed the whole promotion, how might that look to the IRE bigwigs? If your store (which was part of a chain of stores) was selling some product and realized that people were returning it, getting more money back for it at a higher value than what they paid, buying more, and repeating, would you pull the whole product altogether? No. You'd reduce their ability to do that. You'd raise the price of the product and reduce the turn-in value to match the new price, which hopefully will be on par with what the CEO and the like of your chain would want. If you pulled the whole product from your store and released an apology to people who wanted the product, you would likely get reprimanded by higher-ups, and perhaps you and your staff would have to go in for retraining or whatever or you might have your pay docked for the amount of money that was lost and more.
I hope that they learned their lesson and will more carefully monitor the wheel, coin packages, and what the wheel throws out in the future. If not for the sake of the in-game economy, for the sake of them losing money as a company.
It is not the relocation of the topic that is being contested, it was the couple of posts suggesting people should not discuss things in Tweets.
In regards to this thread: I would like to see that those who made 1000+ free credits (or the equivalent) in value with no investment of real capital have the bulk of that rolled back. I do not consider this punishment; nothing was actually risked to make gain (it was guaranteed gain), and as long as your total (counting what you "gave away") is equal to or higher than where you started out you are still in a better position than you were.
It would help alleviate the concerns of much of the playerbase that a very few players have decided that they and their friends deserve a significant advantage in terms of investment (without, of course, the investment actually taking place). It would at least send some signal that you should not just pounce immediately on things that are way Too Good to be True, even if it is not as strong a signal as some of us feel it should be.
In regards to this thread: I would like to see that those who made 1000+ free credits (or the equivalent) in value with no investment of real capital have the bulk of that rolled back. I do not consider this punishment; nothing was actually risked to make gain (it was guaranteed gain), and as long as your total (counting what you "gave away") is equal to or higher than where you started out you are still in a better position than you were.
I think this is the response that makes the most sense, though unfortunately they should have done this right away.
Ciaran said: I honestly think the admin should look into rolling back the winnings of people that profited over 1k credits but didn't buy any with real money, but a solution like that doesn't seem possible.
Ciaran said: I honestly think the admin should look into rolling back the winnings of people that profited over 1k credits but didn't buy any with real money, but a solution like that doesn't seem possible.
People's values of their products and items were diminished because of terrible planning by the Administration, that is unacceptable.
What also is unacceptable is those who profited off it in a community that often has to police themselves. Theft was a common place in IRE games but was destroyed quickly in Lusternia, those who were thieves were branded as one and basically forced out, and never recovered their image.
I think it is 100% completely fair to blame those who abused the deal. They have diminished value for everyone else. They ruined a good thing with their greed. It is possible for a bad apple to spoil the bunch, and as a smaller community that has often been forced to police itself, we should hold them accountable. Shame and name.
if someone was willing to abuse this and ruin it for everyone else, diminish your value, where would they draw the line of abuse? How can I honestly believe they weren't abusing bugs before if they so openly abused and defended that abuse?
If a community like ours is willing to force out thieves, we should do the same for those who openly abuse exploits and ruin it for everyone else.
We have now gotten to the point where it is no longer just someone didn't get to profit off it, the values of your items and currency was devalued.
2014/04/19 01:38:01 - Leolamins drained 2000000 power to raise Silvanus as a Vernal Ascendant.
2014/07/23 05:01:29 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Munsia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:07 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Arimisia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:58 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Lavinya as a Vernal Ascendant.
I'd be totally ok with a roll back. Not honestly sure if I made a K or not but there's a good chance I did and I'd be ok giving all the stuff back. Not sure how it'd work though but I'd be ok with it.
I think this is a great idea. Anyone who profits over a thousand credits from a promotion loses it, and anyone who loses a certain amount from a promotion should get it back.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
If your store (which was part of a chain of stores) was selling some product and realized that people were returning it, getting more money back for it at a higher value than what they paid, buying more, and repeating, would you pull the whole product altogether? No. You'd reduce their ability to do that. You'd raise the price of the product and reduce the turn-in value to match the new price, which hopefully will be on par with what the CEO and the like of your chain would want. If you pulled the whole product from your store and released an apology to people who wanted the product, you would likely get reprimanded by higher-ups, and perhaps you and your staff would have to go in for retraining or whatever or you might have your pay docked for the amount of money that was lost and more.
This example works better if the 'product' is actually purchased in rewards points, not real dollars, which then allows for a devious refund scheme where few customers are able to multiply their rewards points so much that they can buy/gift to others whatever they want from your actual store for free. At the same time blocking other customers from using their rewards points to get the same deal.
I'd say the CEO would be more concerned primarily with how real sales are affected, and secondly about how the reputation of your store and desirability of its products could be impacted.
If your store (which was part of a chain of stores) was selling some product and realized that people were returning it, getting more money back for it at a higher value than what they paid, buying more, and repeating, would you pull the whole product altogether? No. You'd reduce their ability to do that. You'd raise the price of the product and reduce the turn-in value to match the new price, which hopefully will be on par with what the CEO and the like of your chain would want. If you pulled the whole product from your store and released an apology to people who wanted the product, you would likely get reprimanded by higher-ups, and perhaps you and your staff would have to go in for retraining or whatever or you might have your pay docked for the amount of money that was lost and more.
This example works better if the 'product' is actually purchased in rewards points, not real dollars, which then allows for a devious refund scheme where few customers are able to multiply their rewards points so much that they can buy/gift to others whatever they want from your actual store for free. At the same time blocking other customers from using their rewards points to get the same deal.
I'd say the CEO would be more concerned primarily with how real sales are affected, and secondly about how the reputation of your store and desirability of its products could be impacted.
I've never personally worked in retail so... thanks for correcting me. I was just trying to make an analogy that might be less abstract and more easily understood by more people.
I've never personally worked in retail so... thanks for correcting me. I was just trying to make an analogy that might be less abstract and more easily understood by more people.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to say it was a bad example - it's a good analogy!
It just made sense to me to highlight the difference between people buying your product (and therefore making the company money), and people buying something in game (which can also be a result of real purchases, but isn't always).
Alright, I'm going to rant a bit. I had decided not to post about this earlier, but I feel that when I wake up to people sending me forum messages telling me what a horrible person I am that it's time to just speak up so all of you can get off my back.
I'll begin by saying this. I profited a lot from it. But you all know that or I wouldn't have been more or less the solitary target for all of you to pick on. I am always the one mentioned when jokes are being made about crates. I am always the one mentioned when people talk about people who made a lot of profit out of this (Shuyin: "Falmiis, etc, etc"). Why is it never Letarne, Gero, Steingrim, Malarious or any of the other people who bought lots of crates? I daresay that at least one of these people have bought more than me. Because I have been the only one to be open about how profitable it is. I am the one who had been the most vocal over envoys trying to get it fixed, giving details of how recyclable the crates were in the long run.
Karlach's quote was posted out of context, but it was apparently enough for people to read it and use it against me. Here's what I said immediately after that comment: "and i'm not even saying that the one person did the game a favour" "i'm just stating that as a fact" "nobody is saying it's a good thing" "we're saying that it's better that the damage was contained" "not that it is good that there was damage at all"
I still hold this position. I have never said I have done the game any favours. All that I, and everyone else who joined in on the conversations (including those who haven't bought any/many crates) have said about this topic was that having it limited to a few people means that 1) the repercussions for the economy and business of the game are lessened and, 2) it's much easier for the admins to deal with a small group of players if they want to roll back things than if the crate stock was unlimited initially and one hundred players all got ten crates each. I even said just a couple of days into the promotion that I would be ok if things got rolled back.
Now here's the real kicker. My raffle. Initially, I had intended to do some sort of contest and I asked people on Ad-Hoc for ideas. Most of them were related to writing, like a design contest or a limerick contest. Subjective things that I knew would be a nightmare because if the Beauty challenge was anything to go by, I would have never heard the end of it. I also considered doing a treasure hunt of some sort, but the point was to make it fair for everyone. So I eventually settled on a raffle where people could only buy one entry each. Originally I was just going to make it 1 credit, but I had concerns that we'd be seeing a lot of alts that nobody has ever heard of taking part if it was that low. I asked people on Polaris about what they thought was a good price given there was a cubix as the top prize. All of the responses I got were much higher than the 5 credits I settled on. I made the mistake of getting people to deposit the credits to Hallifax, because now certain people are accusing me of using it as a credit making scheme for credits. Here's the deal. I put 100k goop into this raffle. I could have sold that 100k goop, which had been selling quickly at 40:1, at 50:1 and I could have donated the 2k credits and made a lot more than what the raffle made for Hallifax. I only used Hallifax because it made it very easy for me to keep track of who had bought their entries.
I didn't ask for the goop change, but somehow that is being blamed on me too. When Estarra came down and talked to us she was actually considering making it so that goop could only be used for consumables and reskins. I told her what a bad idea that was and suggested they just change the discs to dingbats because the problem wasn't with value as much as how much of it came in the form of stuff that could be traded in for credits. Someone else then said no, they didn't need dingbats because they already have everything they want, and they suggested nerfing the fireworks rewards (which does nerf the value of the crates). I woke up the next day to find that they decided to make goop arties trade in for goop only and the firework thresholds were nerfed.
The comments I've heard from people have been nothing but petty. How about you back off and direct your anger at the one person who actually could have fixed all of this less than five minutes after the promotion began when I told them to fix it? All this experience has taught me is that next time I find something that benefits me I keep it to myself.
I mean you mentioned on Envoys how ridiculous it is 5 minutes into the promo and then take advantage of it, admit to taking advantage of it, and still defend your behavior.
And you are mad when you get called out on it? And the lesson you take away is to keep it to yourself so you can profit from it more?
What?!?
2014/04/19 01:38:01 - Leolamins drained 2000000 power to raise Silvanus as a Vernal Ascendant.
2014/07/23 05:01:29 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Munsia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:07 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Arimisia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:58 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Lavinya as a Vernal Ascendant.
Yes I took advantage of a good deal. Have I ever said I didn't?
And yes, the lesson I took away from all of this is to keep it to myself because I don't see any of the other people who did this getting singled out like I have for the past week.
I don't know where I questioned you admitting it or not, I am talking about your doubling down on the fact that going forward instead of bringing it to their attention, you will just take advantage to avoid blame.
2014/04/19 01:38:01 - Leolamins drained 2000000 power to raise Silvanus as a Vernal Ascendant.
2014/07/23 05:01:29 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Munsia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:07 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Arimisia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:58 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Lavinya as a Vernal Ascendant.
Can you blame him? He's being crucified on the forums by everyone, while getting nasty forums messages telling him he's a bad person. Once again, like I said earlier -- nobody, not a single person actually believes they're doing good or being righteous in this promo. It's a decidedly neutral thing. However, people are entitled to defending themselves from having their name dragged through the muck. Hello?
Right, and the lesson he takes away from this is instead of showing restraint, the only restraint he will show is in telling the administration the issue so he could take more advantage while avoiding blame.
2014/04/19 01:38:01 - Leolamins drained 2000000 power to raise Silvanus as a Vernal Ascendant.
2014/07/23 05:01:29 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Munsia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:07 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Arimisia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:58 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Lavinya as a Vernal Ascendant.
I am not trying to avoid blame. I am saying that there is nothing to blame when it comes to the players. If there is a good promotion in any context then people will take advantage of it. It is not the fault of the people who take advantage of it. The fault lies solely with the people with the power to make and change the promotion.
Players -- not just Falaeron -- but all the players on the forums and on the Envoys channel have MORE THAN SUFFICIENTLY described the problem with the promo, demonstrated that actual problem, and offered multiple solutions to fix that problem. The players have upheld their part of policing themselves entirely. The ball is 100% in the admin's ballpark. They haven't claimed the promotion was being used unfairly...at all. By only making a few tweaks and not actually coming out and saying "hey this was unintended" or making a serious, major change, that's their response.
Right, and the lesson he takes away from this is instead of showing restraint, the only restraint he will show is in telling the administration the issue so he could take more advantage while avoiding blame.
Yes. If there was another dumb and broken promo next month I and many others will hop on that too. Again, it is not any of our faults. Some of us have offered to vet promos like these even just 10 minutes before they go live. That is the most we can do. If these promos continue to come out then we cannot be blamed.
Can you blame him? He's being crucified on the forums by everyone, while getting nasty forums messages telling him he's a bad person. Once again, like I said earlier -- nobody, not a single person actually believes they're doing good or being righteous in this promo. It's a decidedly neutral thing. However, people are entitled to defending themselves from having their name dragged through the muck. Hello?
I would say that people sending him private messages are doing so specifically not to crucify him on the forums, actually. And yet, instead of taking any real sense of responsibility for his own actions (including his own posts defending himself), he doubles down on his right to behave this way. He is now saying the only thing he would do differently next time is to just not say anything about it and happily abuse something he knows is not right to benefit himself.
Maybe the private messages should not have been private. /Shrug
And I disagree. People can show restraint and do have a moral compass, and we as a community have had to police ourselves when the administration did not show restraint.
Not everyone will seek to profit and plunder like you. You have chosen that right because you do not want to lose out. You are getting blamed because you are the only one defending your greed.
And you you can do more. It's called restraint. Or morality. Or being nice. You can continue to act like a selfish ass, but you'll be called out and dragged through the mud every chance you get.
2014/04/19 01:38:01 - Leolamins drained 2000000 power to raise Silvanus as a Vernal Ascendant.
2014/07/23 05:01:29 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Munsia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:07 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Arimisia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:58 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Lavinya as a Vernal Ascendant.
Okay, here, let me throw down a new paradigm for you. You all are just such cowards that you don't want to go after the administration for putting out a broken promo and refusing to actually fix it. So you're going after the next best thing -- a player that's open about his winnings, open about "hey let's fucking change this, look at what just happened", so on and so forth.
Well -- hey, Falmiis is certainly not going to be posting a single thing at all about his credits or his purchases now. So I hope you're prepared to bite the bullet and actually go after the admin like you should be.
And you you can do more. It's called restraint. Or morality. Or being nice. You can continue to act like a selfish ass, but you'll be called out and dragged through the mud every chance you get.
Now here's the real kicker. My raffle. Initially, I had intended to do some sort of contest and I asked people on Ad-Hoc for ideas... ...because now certain people are accusing me of using it as a credit making scheme for credits. Here's the deal. I put 100k goop into this raffle. I could have sold that 100k goop, which had been selling quickly at 40:1, at 50:1 and I could have donated the 2k credits and made a lot more than what the raffle made for Hallifax...
I do not see "earn credits for my org to engender good feelings and make myself feel better" as being nice, personally. It is equivalent making a lot of money in morally dubious ways and then donating some of it to make it feel less sketchy to you and bask in appreciation / plaudits.
Serious question. What would have happened if everyone sat out on the promotion the second we realized it was broken? If direct communication, public outcry, and ongoing "abuse" of the promotion didn't catch the administration's attention, would we have seen any changes to the wheel or crates at all if nobody bought the crates? Would we see any further examination of future promotional payouts before they're advertised and made live? Was the expectation that everyone would sit tight for over a week and not participate in the promotion while the admin looked into it? What data would they have to look into if nobody was spinning the wheel to oblivion?
Even now, nine days into March, we've heard no official administrative response. Two posts regarding adjustments to the wheel and artifacts, but no acknowledgement that the promotion was mishandled, no acknowledgement that players who spent actual money on credits were essentially subjected to a bait and switch by the unannounced price increase. I'm baffled that any players are getting flak for this.
Comments
That being said, the wheel-coin thing was a massive mess up and I think they scrambled to try to fix it as much as they could without just getting rid of it altogether. Companies don't like to admit fault, it's a pretty common thing, so I think expecting any of the non-volunteer admin to go "our bad" is likely not to happen. They had to nerf the wheel out of necessity, but if they removed the whole promotion, how might that look to the IRE bigwigs? If your store (which was part of a chain of stores) was selling some product and realized that people were returning it, getting more money back for it at a higher value than what they paid, buying more, and repeating, would you pull the whole product altogether? No. You'd reduce their ability to do that. You'd raise the price of the product and reduce the turn-in value to match the new price, which hopefully will be on par with what the CEO and the like of your chain would want. If you pulled the whole product from your store and released an apology to people who wanted the product, you would likely get reprimanded by higher-ups, and perhaps you and your staff would have to go in for retraining or whatever or you might have your pay docked for the amount of money that was lost and more.
I hope that they learned their lesson and will more carefully monitor the wheel, coin packages, and what the wheel throws out in the future. If not for the sake of the in-game economy, for the sake of them losing money as a company.
In regards to this thread: I would like to see that those who made 1000+ free credits (or the equivalent) in value with no investment of real capital have the bulk of that rolled back. I do not consider this punishment; nothing was actually risked to make gain (it was guaranteed gain), and as long as your total (counting what you "gave away") is equal to or higher than where you started out you are still in a better position than you were.
It would help alleviate the concerns of much of the playerbase that a very few players have decided that they and their friends deserve a significant advantage in terms of investment (without, of course, the investment actually taking place). It would at least send some signal that you should not just pounce immediately on things that are way Too Good to be True, even if it is not as strong a signal as some of us feel it should be.
Edit: You even used 'rolled back'! I'm reporting you to the dean!
What also is unacceptable is those who profited off it in a community that often has to police themselves. Theft was a common place in IRE games but was destroyed quickly in Lusternia, those who were thieves were branded as one and basically forced out, and never recovered their image.
I think it is 100% completely fair to blame those who abused the deal. They have diminished value for everyone else. They ruined a good thing with their greed. It is possible for a bad apple to spoil the bunch, and as a smaller community that has often been forced to police itself, we should hold them accountable. Shame and name.
if someone was willing to abuse this and ruin it for everyone else, diminish your value, where would they draw the line of abuse? How can I honestly believe they weren't abusing bugs before if they so openly abused and defended that abuse?
If a community like ours is willing to force out thieves, we should do the same for those who openly abuse exploits and ruin it for everyone else.
We have now gotten to the point where it is no longer just someone didn't get to profit off it, the values of your items and currency was devalued.
I'd say the CEO would be more concerned primarily with how real sales are affected, and secondly about how the reputation of your store and desirability of its products could be impacted.
It just made sense to me to highlight the difference between people buying your product (and therefore making the company money), and people buying something in game (which can also be a result of real purchases, but isn't always).
I'll begin by saying this. I profited a lot from it. But you all know that or I wouldn't have been more or less the solitary target for all of you to pick on. I am always the one mentioned when jokes are being made about crates. I am always the one mentioned when people talk about people who made a lot of profit out of this (Shuyin: "Falmiis, etc, etc"). Why is it never Letarne, Gero, Steingrim, Malarious or any of the other people who bought lots of crates? I daresay that at least one of these people have bought more than me. Because I have been the only one to be open about how profitable it is. I am the one who had been the most vocal over envoys trying to get it fixed, giving details of how recyclable the crates were in the long run.
Karlach's quote was posted out of context, but it was apparently enough for people to read it and use it against me. Here's what I said immediately after that comment:
"and i'm not even saying that the one person did the game a favour"
"i'm just stating that as a fact"
"nobody is saying it's a good thing"
"we're saying that it's better that the damage was contained"
"not that it is good that there was damage at all"
I still hold this position. I have never said I have done the game any favours. All that I, and everyone else who joined in on the conversations (including those who haven't bought any/many crates) have said about this topic was that having it limited to a few people means that 1) the repercussions for the economy and business of the game are lessened and, 2) it's much easier for the admins to deal with a small group of players if they want to roll back things than if the crate stock was unlimited initially and one hundred players all got ten crates each. I even said just a couple of days into the promotion that I would be ok if things got rolled back.
Now here's the real kicker. My raffle. Initially, I had intended to do some sort of contest and I asked people on Ad-Hoc for ideas. Most of them were related to writing, like a design contest or a limerick contest. Subjective things that I knew would be a nightmare because if the Beauty challenge was anything to go by, I would have never heard the end of it. I also considered doing a treasure hunt of some sort, but the point was to make it fair for everyone. So I eventually settled on a raffle where people could only buy one entry each. Originally I was just going to make it 1 credit, but I had concerns that we'd be seeing a lot of alts that nobody has ever heard of taking part if it was that low. I asked people on Polaris about what they thought was a good price given there was a cubix as the top prize. All of the responses I got were much higher than the 5 credits I settled on. I made the mistake of getting people to deposit the credits to Hallifax, because now certain people are accusing me of using it as a credit making scheme for credits. Here's the deal. I put 100k goop into this raffle. I could have sold that 100k goop, which had been selling quickly at 40:1, at 50:1 and I could have donated the 2k credits and made a lot more than what the raffle made for Hallifax. I only used Hallifax because it made it very easy for me to keep track of who had bought their entries.
I didn't ask for the goop change, but somehow that is being blamed on me too. When Estarra came down and talked to us she was actually considering making it so that goop could only be used for consumables and reskins. I told her what a bad idea that was and suggested they just change the discs to dingbats because the problem wasn't with value as much as how much of it came in the form of stuff that could be traded in for credits. Someone else then said no, they didn't need dingbats because they already have everything they want, and they suggested nerfing the fireworks rewards (which does nerf the value of the crates). I woke up the next day to find that they decided to make goop arties trade in for goop only and the firework thresholds were nerfed.
And you are mad when you get called out on it? And the lesson you take away is to keep it to yourself so you can profit from it more?
What?!?
And yes, the lesson I took away from all of this is to keep it to myself because I don't see any of the other people who did this getting singled out like I have for the past week.
Maybe the private messages should not have been private. /Shrug
Not everyone will seek to profit and plunder like you. You have chosen that right because you do not want to lose out. You are getting blamed because you are the only one defending your greed.
And you you can do more. It's called restraint. Or morality. Or being nice. You can continue to act like a selfish ass, but you'll be called out and dragged through the mud every chance you get.
Okay, here, let me throw down a new paradigm for you. You all are just such cowards that you don't want to go after the administration for putting out a broken promo and refusing to actually fix it. So you're going after the next best thing -- a player that's open about his winnings, open about "hey let's fucking change this, look at what just happened", so on and so forth.
Well -- hey, Falmiis is certainly not going to be posting a single thing at all about his credits or his purchases now. So I hope you're prepared to bite the bullet and actually go after the admin like you should be.
Even now, nine days into March, we've heard no official administrative response. Two posts regarding adjustments to the wheel and artifacts, but no acknowledgement that the promotion was mishandled, no acknowledgement that players who spent actual money on credits were essentially subjected to a bait and switch by the unannounced price increase. I'm baffled that any players are getting flak for this.
Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."