Stars, Ranking, Motivation, Reason why we are playing.

First of all: Sorry for another thread on the same problem, but...
many sisters (my guild members) are about to leave the game. We should be rank 3 or 4 in Germany, but are 12 with almost no points. I told them on monday they should give the game another 2 weeks. I know sometimes bugs are easy to find but hard to resolve, but this bug is a total show stopper. I have to answer at least 5 questions or comments per day of sisters complaining why we are making stars like super pros but still are on the second page of the ranking. And everyday it's getting more annoying.
So just to tell it officially and show my guild I did everything in my power to convince the developers of solving this bug asap. If it won't happen, we will leave the game on March 21st.
Other guilds may feel free to join this "ultimatum". (sorry, if an ultimatum is something that's against forum rules.)
Gaga
SistersOfDaryl (feel free to join us!!)
PS: I think it's enough time to solve this. And I really appreciate if there was a statement in the game's news section.
PPS: I'm a very frequent player spending many (too many) hours per week in the game. I'd hate to leave, but I would.
many sisters (my guild members) are about to leave the game. We should be rank 3 or 4 in Germany, but are 12 with almost no points. I told them on monday they should give the game another 2 weeks. I know sometimes bugs are easy to find but hard to resolve, but this bug is a total show stopper. I have to answer at least 5 questions or comments per day of sisters complaining why we are making stars like super pros but still are on the second page of the ranking. And everyday it's getting more annoying.
So just to tell it officially and show my guild I did everything in my power to convince the developers of solving this bug asap. If it won't happen, we will leave the game on March 21st.
Other guilds may feel free to join this "ultimatum". (sorry, if an ultimatum is something that's against forum rules.)
Gaga
SistersOfDaryl (feel free to join us!!)
PS: I think it's enough time to solve this. And I really appreciate if there was a statement in the game's news section.
PPS: I'm a very frequent player spending many (too many) hours per week in the game. I'd hate to leave, but I would.
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Comments
It's the people you travel with that make the trip fun.
Kinda like going to the casino. You know the house is going to take your money and time. But if you hire the drunk bus to take you and your friends there and back, it will be worth it.
(Maybe we never rank higher than 46 in the US because we chat too much rather than actually playing, LOL.)
Our understanding of fun is playing passionately and becoming the most successful guild of the world. It was a hard work to find enough other players who are as crazy as I am and it is still hard work motivating them.
That's why.
What I don't comprehend is why "being the most successful guild in the world" is inherently linked to your concept of fun? Also, why is your concept of success reliant on a position on an ever changing leaderboard? Why put negative stressors into an equation for fun?
There was a problem with the social servers communicating with the game servers. With so many people coming online at the same time to try the outposts, the servers were overwhelmed. Data leaked and save data packets were lost. Every single guild in the game had at least one member that lost stars in the meltdown. I personally lost 21 stars. Some of my guildies showed 0 stars on the guild but did enough missions for 180 stars. We didn't get the right number of rewards.
The meltdown effected every person that plays this game in some way. The programmers worked doggedly to fix the problems. They worked all weekend so that the next version with all the fixes would be ready for Google and iTunes to release Monday morning. The update still hasn't been released by those services. So, the programmers are doing server side patches to try and fix what they can and prevent further data leaks. However, the permanent fixes are in the update that Google and iTunes have in their queues pending approval and release. The developers have done what they can do, but permanent fixes won't come until we can download the update.
Here is the thing that you seem to fail to understand. THEY CANNOT give anyone their missing stars back because the data was lost. It doesn't exist. As far as the game engine is concerned, those stars never existed. They have no way of knowing which account lost how many stars. The only way to "fix" it would be to roll back all guild star counts to what they were before the update IF that save point still exists. That would also mean rolling back all purchases, rewards, and upgrades since then. That would create even more havoc. So, enjoy your game, get what stars and rewards you can, and please, stop whining about not getting what you want. Your ultimatum means nothing because your request cannot be fulfilled. It is not a matter of NG not wanting to; they simply cannot. So, make your choice: play from here as it is and make the best of it, OR rage quit the game.
While I am not NG staff or in any way an official spokesperson, I have been reading posts like mad. @Teeceezy, @OldGoth, @Alibaba, and the other mods have explained in threads as they had information to give us. They cannot answer every thread, especially when the same issue is being reported on 50 threads. It seems they had more important things to do than attend your pity party.
Yea this bug along many of the other ones that have creeped up are really frustrating. Along with the leadership boards, there are some pretty problematic bugs. Since becoming a player moderator, I've been able to talk with the developers and coders and they are working REALLY hard to fix all these issues and they have a lot on their plate. There are also more pressing bugs like the one that is causing rollbacks and affecting a lot of players. Many of these account problems have to be handled individually and on a case by case basis. If there was a magic, restore everyone's account in one go, they would definitely use it!
Most players don't understand how bugs work and how time consuming it can be! Not only are they looking at pages and pages of coding to find minute details and discrepancies, they have to asses every change they make and see how it will effect the game further. Furthermore, some bugs may have multiple reasons why it is occurring and until they find exactly all the reasons why it is happening, it will keep happening.
When you change algorithms and lines of code it can effect everything and cause bugs to pop-up in other areas that the developers did not expect.
It really does take time and a lot of work to see what the issue is (anyone that does coding knows how frustrating it is) then fix it with new coding and this grows exponentially with more bugs that appear.
A great game is defined by the quality and service that the company provides no matter how long it takes. Simply the fact that the NG staff takes time to listen and work with us proves that they want these issues to be fixed. No one wants these bugs and no one is causing them to happen on purpose.
NG has been making great strides and working diligently to make the game better! Since December they have implemented so many wonderful and interesting features as @zoson has pointed out, many of which players have suggested.
You also have to remember that most of the time they are working on a live system, meaning they are looking and making changes while the game is online and there are... who knows how many players on their servers accessing the data from a huge variety of devices at any given time. This automatically limits what they can do because they don't want to disrupt game play. While they can make some changes while the game is online, sometimes they have to issue fixes that necessitate the servers going offline (hence unexpected maintenance for hotfixes) or they have to patch the client sided program which is distributed by google and apple which take time (hence patch updates like the upcoming 1.7.1) to be verified and released; this is completely outside of their control. Until everyone can get the update (that probably already resolved some major bugs) the programmers are left using temporary measures to apply fixes and prevent further loss of data as @thebluebox excellently pointed out.
In any game, when an update happens there are ALWAYS bugs, glitches, and exploits that appear that the developers did not foresee or anticipate.
Something short of having the game completely offline for several days (which would cause an uproar in any gaming community-I've seen it happen before and it is not pretty, but sometimes needed) where developers can sit in peace and hash out every single issue, they have to work with what the tools and circumstances they have to resolve each issue. Lastly, they aren't just fixing bugs (current priority), but they are also working on ideas and features for future updates, which case in point all takes time. The least we can do as a community is be patient (hard when we want instant gratification), provide feedback, constructive criticism and let them do their jobs effectively.
After all this is a game, so let's have fun and enjoy it together!
@thebluebox great post! It explains some of the major issues going on very well! Thank you!
Everyone plays the game differently and to each their own! Some care more about one specific aspect of the game than others. We cannot fault them for that especially if it starts malfunctioning. We just ask that they understand that it will be fixed and we have to respect their concerns.
Yes, it is really frustrating to have multiple threads on the same issue reported, especially when they all say the same thing. Instead of reading the discussion already occurring on the same topics, players are just posting their frustration which I can understand. This makes life harder for people managing the forum because it increases the chance that we miss things and don't get the full picture.
As many of you have noticed. The forums are undergoing a massive restructuring that will let everyone see an organized and structured view of all topics. This takes time and we have to do it section by section. Once everything has been organized. It will be much easier to convey information and follow everything that is being discussed.
We have already, for the most part, changed the Bugs & Issues section and I want to thank everyone for following the rules (posted above) in posting and discussing issues in their relevant threads. It is tremendously helping the programmers pinpoint where specific bugs are occurring and ways to fix them. It has also let us effectively assist player's with their specific problems.
Thank you all and let's continue to work on making this a great community!
Alibaba lvl49
LINE me: princealibabwa
Aegis Official FB Page
We really appreciate all your work and interest in how we are doing.
We are not expecting wonders of you, no, wait, we are...
Just kidding.
On the more general topic of challenges, starz, leaderboards, here's my 2c to the original topic (not your post @eetu ):
A - the challenge is just that, a challenge. We are competing for starz both in the guild and in the leaderboards. I don't think there are many, if any, players who play the challenges just 'to have fun'.
B - if the leaderboards do not reflect what you are battling for, what's the point?
C - on top of that we are seeing that a whole bunch of players have greatly profited from the exploit we had a few weeks ago. They have now successfully upgraded both their teams as well as most of their equipment to the max. I for one cannot compete with that.
D - furthermore we have a bunch of players that make excessive use of auto-farming and get huge amounts of xp every day. I cannot compete with that either, and many other neither.
E - add the outposts which might be a good alternative to pass the time. Yes, the idea is fun and like challenging myslef there. Known problem there is that the matching algoritm process is botched, I walk away from each raid with less TG than I had before.
F - replaying the episodes: those were a LOT of fun, testing and improving ourselves. Aiming for the higher lvl Uncommon survivors was a great incentive. Unfortunately, this has been cut now, while at the same time a whole bunch of players have already mastered these lvls and the high-level survivors.
G - farming in the exploration missions: we all do it to fill our much xp and food. All the players that profited from (F) are profiting here also, as the walkers and the rewards are much higher for them.
Taking all these into account it is painfully obvious that an elite group of players/guilds has an unsurmountable advantage over everybody else. There is simply no way to catch them, compete with them or ever close the gap.
I remember the days when I bought gold to speed up the construction of a building, or the upgrade of a survivor to compete globally. Then came a big pause when we sat on full food storages for over a month, helping the main field of players to catch up.
Now, no money spending will help a player to keep up with the ones that have profited from a combination of exploits and cheats.
To summarize, I am not here to bash NG. I want to explain to NG where a lot of the feelings, complaints, players leaving the game are coming from.
Why would someone want to compete with someone who made 1000 starz in one exploit, does auto-farming every night, and upgraded his entire camp with another exploit? This is like trying to wrestle not with Bruce, but the Hulk, pointless.
It would really, really help if we could get a sense of direction from NG where we are going to go. And yes, we know you are working on bug fixes for the outpost matching and the starz summary in the guilds. But those do not resolve the underlying 'un-leveled' playing field.
contact us via email at [email protected]
Swapping spawning walkers for fatties every round would resolve this very quickly.
We could even get our bruisers back by removing body-shots, because they wouldnt be needed anymore to limit farming.
contact us via email at [email protected]
I would partly disagree, Bruisers had a lot of value when they were able to stun beyond any lvl limitations. Since that was removed, they became virtually useless.
But, again, that's besides the point of why we play challenges and what can be done to keep us glued and competing.
contact us via email at [email protected]
100% agree
contact us via email at [email protected]
I farm, but only in the old fashioned way, by repeated explore missions and camping at the exit through a few rounds of walkers to boost the XP take. I have a lot of L11 survivors that need to be 12s... ;b
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