PSA: I have found a fix to the rollback bug and many others.

Dread

The ongoing bugs, the new bugs, the rollbacks, the open exploiting, the open cheating, the trolling, the lack of support, and the extremely heavy-handed and obnoxiously pompous "moderation" as-of-late in this once great community... all fixed permanently in one swift action.

I tried to be helpful whenever possible, positive when it seemed appropriate, and negative when it seemed appropriate. I have never been one to not speak my mind, no matter how popular or unpopular those opinions might be, as many of you I'm sure have come to realize.

I've given NG it's props and tried to understand their situation to the best of my abilities. Being a coder myself, I understand the trials and tribulations of dealing with software being used by people, as well as end-users lack of sympathy and understanding. Better than most. At some point however, things must change for the better or come to an end. For me, that time is now.

When I First started playing this game, I couldn't believe how much fun a pick-up and play freemium game could be. I gave the app a 5 star rating with a glowing review on google play. I joined the community, made many friends, a few foes, and even had a rather decent repertoire with the mods and admins. I've reported bugs, exposed exploits, suggested fixes, and even been rewarded with free goodies in-game for these contributions.

However, as of late, the bugs are out of control. having hours of my gameplay rolled-back as if it never happened is absolutely unacceptable. My support tickets go unanswered, and it has gotten to the point that playing and grinding is a waste of time in the truest sense, because at any second it could all be taken away. I simply don't want to play anymore.

Adding to that, I have seen many friends be censored, "punished", and even banned for simply voicing their opinions. Nobody likes to be talked poorly of, but that should be motivation to be better and fix the situation. Instead the community I once loved has become a place where white knight butt-kissers are allowed to troll other players without reprisal, while outspoken critics who truly love this game are banned because they say it how it is with no sugar coat, no pussy footing. I too am outspoken and am not afraid to say how I feel which means I would eventually be banned as well. Speaking out against the powers that be or sticking up for your friends has now become against the rules. This community is quickly becoming a place I no longer want to be a part of.

Many of you I will miss joking with, debating with, agreeing with, and arguing with. Some of you may feel the same about me. Many of you probably could care less if I stay or go. A few might actually be happy to see me gone. With all sincerity, I wish the best of luck to everyone in all three categories.

I will especially miss the friends I have made and my guildmates. I hope to keep in touch in one way or another.

Rather than troll the forums with insults or try to rally people to join some kind of digital revolution, I will do what will make the biggest statement of dissatisfaction that I feel I can. I am going to leave behind what could have been an awesome game with an awesome license, a long-lived gaming experience, and a wonderful community. I encourage anyone who feels the same to do so as well.

NG, with all due respect, please tread lightly and don't let your success in this venture be a short-lived one. I know I am just one of millions and don't matter to you, but believe me, I am not alone in regards to these feelings. I have seen this happen on dozens of games before and it has never ended well in the end. Everyone involved loses.

Respect your customers negative criticism, don't try to silence people. If these people didn't give a shit about you or this game, they wouldn't put the energy into doing so. Spend more time and energy on fixing the problems in the game and community, rather than just trying to "make it go away".

Fix the exploits and punish the cheaters. I can't believe the amount of people who not only cheat and get away with it, but proudly announce it to the community with absolutely zero reprisal from you.

Do a bit more QA on your code before releasing it, get a better support team who will actually do something about problems rather than ignoring the customers, and be more concerned about the quality of your product and less about the perception of your image to potential new customers.

Goodbye and good luck! It's been a blast.

-Dread

Felecia

Good bye Dread! Hope you will pop on from time to time to chat! Hopefully some of us will still be here. Peace!

Kappa123

really sorry to see you go
+1 for your reasons though. this game is a mess. hope you'll be back when (or if) it gets better

jester

Very well said.

Capleton

Full acc to the statement and sorry to see another good one leave.

According to another thread: doubt if this forum will be a better place when medicine leaves and cancer remains.

Take care Dread

aki

+1 very well said //another good one left.....

Annette578

@Dread
Very well said indeed ! I had almost this same conversation with my guild leader. I said awhile back, that when the game stopped being fun, that's the time to leave. Getting pretty close to that too. It seems like greed ruins so many good things! It has gone from fun to none in a nanosecond, wish they would take notice, & let it be like it started out! Anyway, best of luck to you! Some of us will miss the humor, wit, & teasing we did ! We all need to laugh more, life is to short ! Take care! Stay Alive!

TUCO

You will be missed @Dread

Best wishes for you wherever you go.

Teeceezy

Thanks for the feedback @Dread. It's been a pleasure having you around on the forums. All the best.

tammy

Lmao

Cya Dread!

Xoxo

Jenny

Good luck in the future @Dread

jester

+1 @Capleton

eetu

I do understand your frustration and can sympathize, but at the same time am sad to see you depart. All the best in your future endeavors!

All good things come to an end for each of us, but as a general note the game is getting a lot of new players, new exciting gameplay, the bugs are getting squashed one by one, and the community is building up.

The future looks bright, upwards and onwards!

tammy

I thought it was onwards and upwards

Felecia

@tammy - or as a good friend of mine used to say "forward, never straight". Pearls of wisdom.

zoson

- There are constant updates to the game, at least one client update a month since release.
- There have been more bugs fixed than can be counted with an entire guild's worth of fingers and toes. This isn't even counting hotfixes on the server side that were transparent to us.
- The game has gotten more and more stable in general.
- Three new story episodes.
- Hard mode, and Nightmare mode.
- Several new challenge maps.
- Serious change to the challenge system with two per week(even if we don't like it).
- A brand new loot system with more control and more options.
- An entirely new way to play, PVP, along with map building and editing.
- There's been a dramatic increase in staff interaction on the forums.
- A GIANT increase in the number of users interacting on the forums because of in game link.
- We have seen an improvement and increase in moderation on the forums, even before the new mods.

I could continue, but the bottom line here is that if you actually look at the work NextGames has been doing - it's clear they've been busting ass the whole time.

"A step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction."

jester

We're going to miss @Dread.

Rick_ZK

The future looks bright, upwards and onwards!
That's for the devs but not for the veteran players.

kryptonix

@zoson for Mayor, nice post!

[Deleted User]

@Dread

Didn't talk to you much or get a chance to get to know you but enjoyed the few interactions we did have and you seem like a decent person. I wish you well and am saddened to see you leave also

zoson

kryptonix said:

@zoson for Mayor, nice post!

Thanks for not saying Governor.

Kappa123

@zoson you're gonna be a great mod and and a perfect fit to the team.

Jenny

@zoson My sentiments exactly!!

Capleton

@zoson I'm sure the staff is working hard to develop the game but first of all to make it work more or less.

Outpost:

- shield not working (proofed it yourself)
- matchmaking doesn't work as intended
- differences between rewards in preview and after you won
- connection errors (server-side) makes you loose your raid

Challenge:

- totally corrupted leaderboards due to server problems (not to mention individual board still contains 1000s of stars cos of the 'legalized' glitch)
- rollback issues for many players. Taking away lots of stars (and resources)

Balancing every part of the game but ignoring the issue many players already discussed since last year: paying a million XP to upgrade weapons/armor and getting 6k when scrapping it.

No need to mention I'm not forced to play this game
I would not be here anymore if I lost hope that NG will handle this problems.

But no need to point out the few positive aspects atm.

I just like to keep my head above other people's waist obviously...and hope for the best but expect the worst.

jester

Lolz

zoson

@Capleton You bring up some fair points. I'll try to address each one by one based on how I see it.

- shield: I actually think that it only does *not* work for the 'bot' players that are seeding us with TG and influence. Regular players are protected. Yesterday I didn't really have much time to play, and I got attacked once, then not again the entire day. I was basically offline for 7 hours straight, and I know @Doc_Pugh has been on the lookout for me.
- matchmaking: I don't see this as an issue. They've explained that the matchmaking is based entirely off your influence. +-100 points. My experience is this is spot on, and over time as people actually engage in PVP, the issue with lower level players getting stomped by low influence high level players will simply disappear.
- rewards differences: Acknowledged that there are two different issues here they're working on fixing.
- server connection problems: I haven't experienced this one personally, but I have had the game crash on me a couple times while in raids resulting in a loss. I do have a business class internet connection, and I generally do not ever have connection problems with this game while at home. So I'm not really ready to fault NG for any loss of connection issues. But I agree if it is on their end it's a big issue.

-corrupted leaderboards: Out of the few hundred thousand active players, the guild leaderboard bug affects 1000 players *at most* literally a tiny fraction of 1% of the overall users. By any programming standard, this is flat out, completely, unimportant compared to the other bugs they are working on. I know something like this would land on the back burner for me because it's really not game breaking. It's a meaningless list of imaginary internet points that doesn't really affect gameplay.
-rollback issue: Yeah, this is an awful bug, and I'm sure someone's hair is on fire at the NG HQ over this. However, if you look at the issues forum, they have been addressing these 1 by 1. Maybe not as fast as we would all like, but they are fixing players on an individual basis.

-balancing scrap xp: OldGoth and Teeceezy have both acknowledged this and are looking at rebalancing it now. Again this issue only affects a small subset of users, since there are, percentage wise, only a few of us that are high enough level for this to be a REALLY huge problem. And we all just grind away anyway.

Yeah there are problems... And nobody is saying there are not problems. A lot of the game DOES work, and the amount that does is far, FAR greater than what's broken. So to say the game doesn't work more or less I think is unfair. We play because of the things that do still work, and we continue to play because since the game released last year, NG has continually worked to improve the game.

Lets also not forget that they were obviously under a huge deadline crunch to release this update when they did - to directly coincide with the Hilltop within the show itself.

[Deleted User]

zoson said:

Yeah there are problems... And nobody is saying there are not problems. A lot of the game DOES work, and the amount that does is far, FAR greater than what's broken. So to say the game doesn't work more or less I think is unfair. We play because of the things that do still work, and we continue to play because since the game released last year, NG has continually worked to improve the game.

Well said @zoson

Tammy

robzombie

@Dread

All the best, mate.

blynknz

I think the other thing to note on @zoson's points are that it takes time to fix the bugs and release the fix. It takes time to develop new things and changes.
And like he said (or someone) they release updates monthly (and some quick fixes more often).