Where do I start...

[Nakaraska]

I do understand your inevitable point that I could be "fighting a losing battle" but i'm intrigued to understand; these bugs, do you raise these bugs to "deaf ears" on a constant basis or have you had success with any? Have you raised these known bugs in the suggestion forum for a mod response? Do you feel that it's completely not worth your time doing so?

This all adds to my overall "rant" around communication within the game between players and game staff. I imagine test servers are meant to be capturing such bugs prior to release and I can appreciate that you may never catch them all there but at the same time, i'm sure we may both agree that methods can be put in place to improve the reporting of bugs. And also, as I mentioned as well, patch notes could summarise some of the bugs they have actually fixed in a better fashion!

[daunapu]

Whatever rocks your goat.

From my 2years+ playing this game I can tell you that no one worth r2s attention as customer left the game cause of a hack/bot. And havent even heared of someone banned about something like this. Also r2 is making money from everyone in one way or another, even from free players, so such thing as ban will never ever happen. Which makes such crusades against hackers pointless.

This aint the first game i am playing and paying for, wont be my last. So i couldnt care less about other players or how the game is runned, bugs is whats bothering me and thats where i want to see it improve. Rest is ego boosting e-p33n, but some live for this.

Good luck with fighting windmills tho.

[Nakaraska]

If that's your perception, so be it. But you obviously seem to want to point at one certain element and not understand the point that a cheater is a cheater regardless of how much they gain and yes, it can make the difference between a win and a loss in MANY situations. And if you read my reply to you, I said "why" not "I think" so you're assuming that's what I think... I could assume quite easily from your response that you would go as far to say that R2 themselves create/support the bots so high-end cashers pay more...

I'm sure you know what bots allow you to obtain without being there, so add up all the enhancements you can obtain from them and then you will also realise that collected together it can be a pretty significant increase. Some players MAY cash more, but some players will also go "screw this, i'll find another game" and leave. You need to think of EVERYONE and understand more angles than just your own. How can you sit there and say it wouldn't make someone quit? Have you asked every single past and present player that question? Is your opinion of "said casher will spend more" the only thing that could happen? No. You say once I start to think big... I think it's you who needs to expand your train of thought...

[daunapu]

i like how you think that someone getting what? 20$ worth of items by hack/cheat/bot/whatever can beat a casher and make him quit. Only thing that can happen is the said casher will spend more, and thats exactly what r2 wants no? Even the GM told you that dont and wont perma ban anyone, just maybe a temporary punishment. Once you start thinking big youll realise this game doesnt have much "real" customers they care about, rest of us free players/low/mid cashers are just the background.

[Nakaraska]

Nope, but if honest players buy items to gain BR and others are gaining BR through bots/cheats that allow it (sepulcrum for example) and then beat cashers in the arena then why should they bother paying for anything at all? This is something I hear all the time from such players...

[daunapu]

Considering you guys are trying to make money, it makes no sense that you are allowing players to stick their bots on and effectively screw you of potential revenue.

I find the logic behind this so funny. Do you really think someone who use a bot or a cheat to gain some items will start buying those items if all bots/cheats miraculously disappear and by that bring more money to the company?

[Nakaraska]

Thank you for your reply Sanguine, your reply does make perfect sense and I appreciate the real-talk used and the honest response, but I do have some follow up comments and questions.

When we say "we'll take necessary action" we mean it.

That's fine, but your terms of service does not elaborate on any process or hierarchy around what is "necessary action" for example. People will ask you to perma ban people, and I for one understand that the decision is down to yourselves. But how many people do you think have read the terms of service? Where on current servers do you remind players that anyone caught cheating will be XXXXX? I am still seeing that same player on my server as we speak and it's almost been a week. It doesn't take long to view a video I feel that you should issue a list of potential punishments (whether temporary or permanent) around what can happen other than we may request lots of money from you, as the terms do state. In addition, you can also consider occasional system messages asking players to ensure they follow the terms of service or even forum referrals for news and updates. I would rather see that than a system message telling me someone has won 1000 level 5 gems!

Because my experience tells me less than half follow all of our rules as strictly as humanly possible

That's because their does seem to be a lack of enforcement to the rules. Certain things like account shares (you could argue) for example isn't necessarily a bad thing for you if say both users pay money into your game. Exploits are the fault of developers i'm afraid, that just shows that testing wasn't successful or a glitch requires an immediate fix. But bot use is a choice made by the player to essentially take advantage. But, and again, i'm still seeing the player I reported playing daily. It doesn't state anywhere how long an investigation can take (if you gave a timeframe, people may leave you be) so you should continue to expect constant messages from users because there does seem to be a lack of real communication. You don't have to break data protection rules to properly communicate...

A big problem why official R2's are never in-game showing their face is that we're busy with the 568 spam tickets that just say "iuabnrlifaf". Or the 12 tickets complaining about someone saying the word "***" in world chat.

That's because you don't explicitly state what the support function is meant to be for. For stuff like certain words being starred out, that can be a discussed suggestion on the forum (after all, you do want player feedback, debate counts as that too). I can't vouch for the random spam tickets because i've not seen one, but I can only imagine you could see one, notice its complete baloney and move on to the next. Do you have an automated response which details the time it takes to review a ticket? Or explains that certain requests will be ignored and should be raised via forum? What requests could they be? Just an example of some questions you guys can ask yourselves that may help with response times...

That being said, our in-game staff is usually on newest servers

Sorry, and I mean this with due respect, but that's not an excuse. Why continue to open servers if you can't police them adequately? Why do you need staff on the newest servers? If guides were openly available and easy to locate then maybe the need for such attention may diminish, and moderators can do other things to help improve the game. You also mentioned that going into a new server will find you a mentor; why not implement a live ticket service which covers all servers and allows players to report live cheaters or gameplay exploits/issues, similar to a chat room. They could be filtered and dealt with appropriately...

We don't give anyone but R2 the ability to ban because we've seen examples of abuse of power.

I can appreciate that, but that doesn't mean you can't lock certain elements from admins/mods like recharge history. It's the design of your privilege system that could do with an update; at the end of the day, you could find trusted users or sensible users and open very limited options for them to use. Similar to my moderator days on Counter-Strike; we could ban but that was it and if we abused the power, we got reported and loss the use. Again, it's down to how much you would want to police the element.

The same as "we've taken action, thank you for your report" for potential cheaters, we're not trying to blow you off by saying it has been reported and thank you

Offer estimated timeframes for ticket resolution and problem solved.

The idea of guides has logic both ways: on one hand letting players figure it out is good for the community, on the other some features should be described.

Your community is too busy complaining about lack of mergers, balen events and some even being fools. Maybe consider asking the users on testing servers, as part of their use, to vote on what new elements should be explained and what can be taught via game quests? Community input from players and you have a reason for not producing certain guides... win-win! In respect to "Fixed an issue with..." just summarise the issue. For example, you could say "Fixed an issue where Tower of Kings (Nightmare) was causing players to lag" or "Fixed an issue with Sylph Atoll where players were getting stuck on certain terrain." No detail necessary, but a summary would work.

I'm not clear on the specifics, but some players claim the server is dead when we see thousands of unique IPs on a server daily.

I can appreciate that. But you could consider questions as a company like "what level of unique IPs contribute to an active server?" or "is there another way of collecting this data into a format so merger discussions could take place?". Also, consider this... if your mods were were patrolling servers, you could even obtain input from them on server activity. World Boss, for example, seems to increase HP over player attendance, so there do seem to be indicators of activity you could use. Sylph Atoll reward distribution could also be a "factor" for server merges as people miss chests a lot due to lack of activity (I can appreciate thought that users can still be logged on but choose not to partake in bosses). I understand it could be a LONG process for a merge to take place, but asking players seems to be a proven failure because they seem to be wrong on a fair few occasions, so what can you do to implement a benchmark of activity before you consider a merger?

Some of your suggestions are already internalized while others are issues that include more parties than just R2.

A quick breakdown of which ones are internalized could be of benefit to see

Again, happy to help feed my own input or ideas to anyone directly through other platforms if you feel they would be of benefit to be heard.

[R2_Sanguine]

Looks like this is my party. I'll do my best to respond to as many of the major points as I can

When we say "we'll take necessary action" we mean it. Players feel this is disingenuous, but I have explained this particular issue multiple times in the past. Lets say, for example sake, OP gets banned for swearing and being obscene with another player. If that's the case, would OP want us to tell everyone why they were banned? Same goes with people cheating: there's a decent amount of cheaters we won't perma ban but instead opt for temporary punishment. We're not dismissing you, we're giving you an honest answer that protects their privacy as well as lets you know we know. Players seem to immediately ask for perma bans until it comes to their turn: how many players can safely say they have never sworn, shared accounts, cheated, exploited an unintentional interaction, etc? Because my experience tells me less than half follow all of our rules as strictly as humanly possible

We have Mentors and Moderators who take care of our forums and in-game issues. A big problem why official R2's are never in-game showing their face is that we're busy with the 568 spam tickets that just say "iuabnrlifaf". Or the 12 tickets complaining about someone saying the word "***" in world chat. We try to help everyone equally, but that does mean our time gets split into tasks that are either redundant or do not produce the maximum benefit for time spent. That being said, our in-game staff is usually on newest servers and our moderators are incredibly busy. If you need to get a hold of them, you can usually visit a new server and try to find the Mentor. We don't give anyone but R2 the ability to ban because we've seen examples of abuse of power. Same reason you don't want them seeing your recharge history is the same reason we don't give the ability to ban someone.

Bug fixes and quality of replies go hand in hand. The same as "we've taken action, thank you for your report" for potential cheaters, we're not trying to blow you off by saying it has been reported and thank you. That doesn't mean we don't misunderstand what is in the ticket and give a wrong reply. We're working on that.

The idea of guides has logic both ways: on one hand letting players figure it out is good for the community, on the other some features should be described. I've written a few LoA and WT guides for our support page as well as some generic how-to's like the screenshot guide. It comes down to deciding what features require guides and for what reasons.

Never seen server population data but I've requested merges until I near cried. Players don't see the amount of communication that goes on, but we don't decide not to merge based on a whim. I'm not clear on the specifics, but some players claim the server is dead when we see thousands of unique IPs on a server daily.

Those are just some comments from my personal experiences. Some of your suggestions are already internalized while others are issues that include more parties than just R2. I felt a bit of "real talk" would be better than some official PR-type statement. I hope I'm not being misinterpreted as trying to say "it's not our fault", but rather providing explanations as to what goes on and how that affects our future plans to support our players better (this question takes up most of my day ^_^). Thanks again for your input!

[Imonseph]

You want suggestions? OK. Here is a list of suggestions...
We're not complaining, we're trying to help you improve your game. I'm not even expecting a response from a moderator or developer to be honest...

How do you know you're heard if you not expecting a response, which you won't get?
I'm also a player, so means posting on forums is only to get opinions form other players like me...
But I have to agree that communication is a fail across R2 hosting the game for us..

I'd rather play wartune on another website platform that has a working customer service,
and relevant game moderators that have the knowledge of upcoming patches and maintenance,
are able to respond to the community (not just moderators) with reliable info on the game