The Community is Missing the Point with the XP Issue

[Compassghost]

The point, as it is has always been, masked by a community that likes "pointing fingers" or throwing out "Deal with its" is that Customer Support is unable to physically do anything about the issue. Whether or not the issue affects us doesn't matter if it can't be redressed at all. What if people magically got negative 5000x free XP? Magically deleted all your captains? Reset it to 0? The issue is conceptually the same. Customer Support can't fix it.

 

 

 We cannot roll back any of the following actions:
- Actions dealing with Crew or Crew XP
- Experience or Research
- Actions prior to January 1st, 2015. (Except for vehicle restoration as noted below.)
- Gold spent on Name Changes or Account Management
- Actions made regarding Clans or Clan Management
- Purchases that have to do with Camouflage

 

Crew-based and XP based issues have already occurred with accidental captain dismissals. The solution was to add a bandaid UI fix to allow people to recover their captains in 5 minutes.

 

Does it solve the problem? This one, sure. But not others. If another issue happens with captains, like if a person somehow gets their captain bugged when trying to reset points, there's no way to fix that.

 

What we need, and what Customer Support needs, are tools that can rectify these issues, whether they are unintentionally negative or unintentionally too helpful. Kicking the can down the street because it doesn't affect you, or because you don't care, will bite all of us in the [edited].

[Tedster_]

They can remove xp, they can't have XP go below zero.  so they have to manually go in and undo people's research for those who spent the xp, or undo people's purchases on stuff they bought with it.  Or, they do a full server rollback, which is obviously not an option.  Same thing with gold/doubloons, thus when a gift goes bad or you do a chargeback, your account gets locked instead of going below 0 gold.

[Compassghost]

They can remove xp, they can't have XP go below zero.  so they have to manually go in and undo people's research for those who spent the xp, or undo people's purchases on stuff they bought with it.  Or, they do a full server rollback, which is obviously not an option.  Same thing with gold/doubloons, thus when a gift goes bad or you do a chargeback, your account gets locked instead of going below 0 gold.

 

I'm sure someone in Russia who handles the database can fix it. But we can't call up Russia to ask for that. Customer Support is typically as far as our issues can go. If we can't address issues that affect players negatively through customer support then by nature the definition of customer support is contradictory.

[Caucasian_Fury]

The point, as it is has always been, masked by a community that likes "pointing fingers" or throwing out "Deal with its" is that Customer Support is unable to physically do anything about the issue. Whether or not the issue affects us doesn't matter if it can't be redressed at all. What if people magically got negative 5000x free XP? Magically deleted all your captains? Reset it to 0? The issue is conceptually the same. Customer Support can't fix it.

 

You do realize that's not true at all right?

 

Previous patches have demonstrated on several occasions that WG can roll back your account indefinitely to it's creation. 

 

For example, the Minekaze lost it's upgraded 10 km torps in patch 4.1, those who purchased the upgrade got the XP and credits that they spent on it back. 

 

Even in the last patch, 5.2, when they introduced the ability to sell your modules for 50% of it's purchase value, they also retroactively gave back all the credits you would have earned selling those modules from all the ships you sold and had destroyed the modules instead of dismounting them with dubloons.

 

WG CAN roll it back, they choose not. 

 

Personally I don't care one bit.

[Compassghost]

 

You do realize that's not true at all right?

 

Previous patches have demonstrated on several occasions that WG can roll back your account indefinitely to it's creation. 

 

For example, the Minekaze lost it's upgraded 10 km torps in patch 4.1, those who purchased the upgrade got the XP and credits that they spent on it back. 

 

Even in the last patch, 5.2, when they introduced the ability to sell your modules for 50% of it's purchase value, they also retroactively gave back all the credits you would have earned selling those modules from all the ships you sold and had destroyed the modules instead of dismounting them with dubloons.

 

WG CAN roll it back, they choose not. 

 

Personally I don't care one bit.

 

That would be a server-wide database fix. I know they have a tool to create captains since in OBT players were awarded captains based on their play time in CBT. However, none of those are customer-facing tools.

 

I'm sure some database admin in Apple can give me $1 billion Apple Store credit, but customer service definitely does not get that level of access.

[Misniso]

 

You do realize that's not true at all right?

 

Previous patches have demonstrated on several occasions that WG can roll back your account indefinitely to it's creation. 

 

For example, the Minekaze lost it's upgraded 10 km torps in patch 4.1, those who purchased the upgrade got the XP and credits that they spent on it back. 

 

Even in the last patch, 5.2, when they introduced the ability to sell your modules for 50% of it's purchase value, they also retroactively gave back all the credits you would have earned selling those modules from all the ships you sold and had destroyed the modules instead of dismounting them with dubloons.

 

WG CAN roll it back, they choose not. 

 

Personally I don't care one bit.

 

These operations are easy to do.  It's not so much rolling back than looking to see "if something exists, then do this."

 

For the Minekaze, if they have the 10km upgrade and spent exp on it...remove the upgrade and refund.

 

For the modules, if there's something in your warehouse, sell them ALL off and credit you with the result.

 

When it comes to rolling back the tech tree, you'd need to go through each person who completed that part of the Kongo mission and got the nutty amount of exp.  Then check to see if they spent that free exp on anything.  To do that, you'd need to pull up the data from the backups and compare everything.  Then, if it looks like they abused it...remove each item by hand before calculating the amount to refund.  Check the final totals, verify that the free exp that you have is above 0, and remove.  Credit 5000 free exp afterward.

 

Cue someone complaining that their free exp is less than it was before they started the mission.

 

Way too complicated.

[11thCavalry]

The point is, the Russian Programmers had a weeeee bit too much Vodka to drink while self pleasing themselves while watching videos of the "Great Patriotic War"

[WWWWWWWWWWWVWWWWWWWWWWWW]

I personally don't care if people get to keep the xp or not.  Good for the few that got it.  Maybe ill get lucky on the next screw up.  If it was something that was negative had occured people would eventually get what the were owed with interest.

[J30_Reinhardt]

Alls I can reckon is someones going to the gulag for this. Or the unemployment line.

[Crucis]

The point, as it is has always been, masked by a community that likes "pointing fingers" or throwing out "Deal with its" is that Customer Support is unable to physically do anything about the issue. Whether or not the issue affects us doesn't matter if it can't be redressed at all. What if people magically got negative 5000x free XP? Magically deleted all your captains? Reset it to 0? The issue is conceptually the same. Customer Support can't fix it.

 

You do realize that's not true at all right?

 

Previous patches have demonstrated on several occasions that WG can roll back your account indefinitely to it's creation. 

 

For example, the Minekaze lost it's upgraded 10 km torps in patch 4.1, those who purchased the upgrade got the XP and credits that they spent on it back. 

 

Even in the last patch, 5.2, when they introduced the ability to sell your modules for 50% of it's purchase value, they also retroactively gave back all the credits you would have earned selling those modules from all the ships you sold and had destroyed the modules instead of dismounting them with dubloons.

 

WG CAN roll it back, they choose not. 

 

Personally I don't care one bit.

 

 

CF, you're confusing WG with its customer service.  Compass is correct (I strongly suspect) when he says that CUSTOMER SERVICE cannot do these rollbacks.  And using an example from a patch is a VERY flawed counter, because a patch rollback is work that's done by the database programmers, not customer service.

 

While I've never worked in the gaming industry, I do know a fair amount about databases, database programming, what customer service may or may not be able to do.  And I strongly suspect that the tools that the database programmers supply customer service are VERY limited in their ability to change data in the game's databases.

 

 

[AutismSpeaks]

The point, as it is has always been, masked by a community that likes "pointing fingers" or throwing out "Deal with its" is that Customer Support is unable to physically do anything about the issue. Whether or not the issue affects us doesn't matter if it can't be redressed at all. What if people magically got negative 5000x free XP? Magically deleted all your captains? Reset it to 0? The issue is conceptually the same. Customer Support can't fix it.

 

 

 

Crew-based and XP based issues have already occurred with accidental captain dismissals. The solution was to add a bandaid UI fix to allow people to recover their captains in 5 minutes.

 

Does it solve the problem? This one, sure. But not others. If another issue happens with captains, like if a person somehow gets their captain bugged when trying to reset points, there's no way to fix that.

 

What we need, and what Customer Support needs, are tools that can rectify these issues, whether they are unintentionally negative or unintentionally too helpful. Kicking the can down the street because it doesn't affect you, or because you don't care, will bite all of us in the [edited].

 

I love all of the "We can't possibly do that.  It is beyond the powers we are given" speeches.

 

If every player on the NA server was accidentally given 1 Million Free XP, do you think that would still be their response?

 

Hell no.....they can fix it.  They can fix it easily.  They choose not to.  Therefore, I chose to spend cash on other things.

 

 

My wallet warrior days are far behind me now.  They have made me a Free-To-Play player.

 

[11thCavalry]

 

I love all of the "We can't possibly do that.  It is beyond the powers we are given" speeches.

 

If every player on the NA server was accidentally given 1 Million Free XP, do you think that would still be their response?

 

Hell no.....they can fix it.  They can fix it easily.  They choose not to.  Therefore, I chose to spend cash on other things.

 

 

They have made me a Free-To-Play player.

 

 

Same here bro -- i was about to put some down to get Free XP to get more ships... but nah, not now.

 

plus, WT has some pretty cool new stuff out, prob throw that cash at them now... more modes and so on... i think WOWS will be on back burner now until they get some new ships..

[1nc0mp3t3nt_1]

 

I love all of the "We can't possibly do that.  It is beyond the powers we are given" speeches.

 

If every player on the NA server was accidentally given 1 Million Free XP, do you think that would still be their response?

 

Hell no.....they can fix it.  They can fix it easily.  They choose not to.  Therefore, I chose to spend cash on other things.

 

 

My wallet warrior days are far behind me now.  They have made me a Free-To-Play player.

 

It would require database work. Just like the server transfers to ASIA did. It's time consuming and those who did get it when it was bugged are numbered in the far few. It would honestly take them more time than its worth to find everyone who got the bugged exp and rewind manually. 

 

I am kicking myself for not being skilled enough to get on and get that free exp early

[Spongeman131]

 

I'm surprised at the action they're taking here. Currently they're:

-losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars on potential dubloons for XP conversion

-making 98% of the community mad by allowing a select few to jump up to TX thanks to an exploit created by an oversight by WG

    -telling 98% of the community life isn't fair, deal with it

    -ruin the already fragile and poorly played TX matches by introducing more people who probably haven't worked their way up the tiers yet and will skew stats incorrectly for higher tier ships

 

When instead they could:

-make money on dubloons thanks to xp conversion

-tell 2% of the community life isn't fair

-make 98% of the community happy and restore some good will

-keep more unskilled players out of TX games

 

It seems like a no brainer to me here. But clearly not for WG.

 

[11thCavalry]

I'm surprised at the action they're taking here. Currently they're:

-losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars on potential dubloons for XP conversion

-making 98% of the community mad by allowing a select few to jump up to TX thanks to an exploit created by an oversight by WG

    -telling 98% of the community life isn't fair, deal with it

    -ruin the already fragile and poorly played TX matches by introducing more people who probably haven't worked their way up the tiers yet and will skew stats incorrectly for higher tier ships

 

When instead they could:

-make money on dubloons thanks to xp conversion

-tell 2% of the community life isn't fair

-make 98% of the community happy and restore some good will

-keep more unskilled players out of TX games

 

It seems like a no brainer to me here. But clearly not for WG.

 

too much work. WG has proven over and over, they are quite lazy.

[Nicoli_Voldkif]

I'm surprised at the action they're taking here. Currently they're:

-losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars on potential dubloons for XP conversion

-making 98% of the community mad by allowing a select few to jump up to TX thanks to an exploit created by an oversight by WG

    -telling 98% of the community life isn't fair, deal with it

    -ruin the already fragile and poorly played TX matches by introducing more people who probably haven't worked their way up the tiers yet and will skew stats incorrectly for higher tier ships

 

When instead they could:

-make money on dubloons thanks to xp conversion

-tell 2% of the community life isn't fair

-make 98% of the community happy and restore some good will

-keep more unskilled players out of TX games

 

It seems like a no brainer to me here. But clearly not for WG.

 

- losing money sucks for them but is no big deal in the long run.

- I doubt 98% of the community is mad about this, I would say that easily 70+% don't even know it happened. I would guess that less then 1% are mad and mostly that they missed out on it as opposed to any hate towards players skipping tiers.  There are people that are above me in lots of different lines, did they concentrate on that line? play more games? Better then me? got me don't care and I would guess that most don't think about it either.

- Life isn't fair deal with it. I don't need WG to tell me that.

-Tier X matches have a lot of problems and frankly having more people with Tier X only fixes some of the issues and is completely irrelevant for the rest.

[centarina]

I'm surprised at the action they're taking here. Currently they're:

-losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars on potential dubloons for XP conversion

-making 98% of the community mad by allowing a select few to jump up to TX thanks to an exploit created by an oversight by WG

    -telling 98% of the community life isn't fair, deal with it

    -ruin the already fragile and poorly played TX matches by introducing more people who probably haven't worked their way up the tiers yet and will skew stats incorrectly for higher tier ships

 

When instead they could:

-make money on dubloons thanks to xp conversion

-tell 2% of the community life isn't fair

-make 98% of the community happy and restore some good will

-keep more unskilled players out of TX games

 

It seems like a no brainer to me here. But clearly not for WG.

 

its not 2%.  i doubt its more than100 player  (wg does have that data, we don't)       plus most people don't have issue with XP,  but credit.  if you are the type to skip ships, sure it benefits  you, but I find that I prefer to not skip and play it through to get the real experience.      it still doesn't help with credit  to buy those ships.

[Taichunger]

 

- losing money sucks for them but is no big deal in the long run.

- I doubt 98% of the community is mad about this, I would say that easily 70+% don't even know it happened. I would guess that less then 1% are mad and mostly that they missed out on it as opposed to any hate towards players skipping tiers.  There are people that are above me in lots of different lines, did they concentrate on that line? play more games? Better then me? got me don't care and I would guess that most don't think about it either.

- Life isn't fair deal with it. I don't need WG to tell me that.

-Tier X matches have a lot of problems and frankly having more people with Tier X only fixes some of the issues and is completely irrelevant for the rest.

 

This↑

 

If you werent in the forums, how would you know it even happened? 90% of players arent here.

 

 

 

[crzyhawk]

I didn't get any bonus exp, and I do not understand why I should be upset. 

 

WG made a mistake, and some other folks got some free stuff that they didn't deserve.  That does not impact me at all.  I'm not entitled to that free exp anymore than THEY were.  Like finding a 20.00 bill in a parking lot, it just happened to be their lucky day.  We should all be glad for them that they got something cool, and hope that next time WG puts out some shoddy code, we'll be the ones that benefit.

[bad_arcade_kitty]

then their customer service would do something to fix it manually

[Compassghost]

I didn't get any bonus exp, and I do not understand why I should be upset. 

 

WG made a mistake, and some other folks got some free stuff that they didn't deserve.  That does not impact me at all.  I'm not entitled to that free exp anymore than THEY were.  Like finding a 20.00 bill in a parking lot, it just happened to be their lucky day.  We should all be glad for them that they got something cool, and hope that next time WG puts out some shoddy code, we'll be the ones that benefit.

 

You missed the point. It's not whether it affects us. It's whether an issue that affects us in the future will have the same response, whether or not it is negative. Imagine if you are one of 10 people get their crews deleted because of some stupid bug. Are you fine with customer support not being able to fix that? Because they can't.

[Compassghost]

then their customer service would do something to fix it manually

 

They can't. They've stated repeatedly that they can't.

[Caucasian_Fury]

 

 

CF, you're confusing WG with its customer service.  Compass is correct (I strongly suspect) when he says that CUSTOMER SERVICE cannot do these rollbacks.  And using an example from a patch is a VERY flawed counter, because a patch rollback is work that's done by the database programmers, not customer service.

 

While I've never worked in the gaming industry, I do know a fair amount about databases, database programming, what customer service may or may not be able to do.  And I strongly suspect that the tools that the database programmers supply customer service are VERY limited in their ability to change data in the game's databases.

 

 

 

Fair enough. You are technically correct which is the best kind of correct. 

[crzyhawk]

No I got that point.  I understand there are things that customer service CAN do and things they CAN'T do.  I'm a sys-admin by trade.  I have to take those user calls from time to time, and have to tell them I can't recover their lost work.  Usually it's because of their own stupidity, but not always.

 

Technically, WG (not necessarily customer service) COULD fix the issue.  They've got backups.  They could go to their back-ups and pull a value out of the backup data base, and they could put that in by hand.  It could be done, but you're likely going to need a DBA to pull the data out, and hand-jam it into the current production database.  For one instance, it's not even difficult likely.  For the amount of times it might likely be necessary?  That could get expensive, if you have to bring on additional DBAs just to handle the amount of customer service requests you get, and that impacts the profit margin.  The guys they have working the customer support gigs are likely the same effing idiots we have where I work who are on the help desk.  Some of those guys, you have to walk through step by step how to reboot a damned windows box.  Others are so lazy they just won't do it, and you have to do it yourself.

 

Do I like it?  No I do not.  I understand it though, it just is what it is.  Stamping my feet and crying isn't going to change it.  It's different from Murmanskgate where they PROMISED something, then changed their tune.  THAT I cried and stamped my feet over.  Deleting my best captain?  It would be a kick in the jimmy, and I would certainly not be happy about it, but I'm not going to give birth to kittens over it. 

 

As long as it doesn't cost me RL money, *shrug*.  It's a game.  I'll play it until it's no longer fun, then I won't play it anymore.

 

EDIT:  you also have to consider how often they run backups.  It might be they do not have a saved value which ONLY reflects the extra exp being given.  Now you're having to have a sys-ad like myself go in and dumpster dive through the server logs to find the battle where they free exp was awarded, and dig that value out of the logs, so that DBA can appropriately subtract that from the users in question.  Then you're likely going to tell me that I need to dive though the logs and find EVERY user who got free exp from the bug (because they aren't all going to self report), extract those values and provide them to a DBA so he can manually subtract the value from what's there, assuming it hasn't been spent of course.  If it's been spent, it's MORE digging through logs. 

 

At this point, I am telling my boss, you have to be effing high if you think I am going to dig through all those logs, just so the company can recover some free exp that THEY gave away by mistake.  I make way too much money for that menial crap, and it's not worth my time to spend digging for that detail.

 

It's much easier to just say "Well, crap, Merry Christmas to you, lucky bastards."  and then have words with the developer who didn't properly test his code before rolling it into production.

[crzyhawk]

 

You know, I've seen what you have been trying to say here today  and I understand it and agree with you.  It's just that your voice is getting lost in the wails of a thousand derrieres in pain.

 

There seems to be a lot of basic "infrastructure" lacking in this game, to use that term for lack of something better.  Both on the visible UI end of things that we deal with and the non visible back end that the game techies have to use.

 

I've been playing these games a long long time and some of the exploits I have seen (and some I discovered) are so much more damaging then this little hiccup.  Take a game like EverQuest for example.  That game was one of the first to have people literally grow up online and have thousands of hours and years of their lives invested in a character in a persistent virtual world.  Not like this game, where the only persistent thing we have is our stats.  But a real identity and an economy that was as complicated as any city's might be.

 

I remember one time I logged in to EQ in Kaladim (a noobie starter city for dwarves) after they did a big patch on the server.  As one of the first people to get back on the server I soon discovered that the level 1 mobs outside the city were dropping like 3 plat in coin per kill.  Anyone who remembers the original EQ knows that a plat was something you typically didn't see for several months.  And here was low level mobs dropping them every few minutes.   I sent an email to John Smedley (CEO of the game) and within 30 minutes the servers were brought down.   An hour later, they came back up and we all had a little 30 minute roll back. No harm no foul.  Biggest complaint at the time was some raid guild lost out on a rare overland spawn and I think a GM spawned it for them a week later to make amends.

 

My point is, in these games, bugs like this could have long lasting and serious consequences to the health of the game and most companies like Verant/SOE and Blizzard soon learned to design features into their back ends to mitigate exploits and tools to fix the damage. Ghost seems to agree that those sort of tools are badly needed here.

 

Uhg, I still have characters I created in 2001 in dark age of camelot.  I totally understand what you mean by years and hours.