Announcement Ask the CMs in English

Discussion in 'Headquarters Archive' started by CM Greg, Jul 14, 2015.

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  1. _Baragain_

    _Baragain_ Living Forum Legend

    Yea, but there will always be noobs/wallet warriors asking for handouts because they feel disadvantaged next to people who have been playing this game for 2-4 years.
     
  2. sebastian_fl

    sebastian_fl Count Count

    You are exactly right. Now when they sell everything you previously had to farm hard, it is impossible to catch up. Being okay-spender myself, I feel upset I spent so much time in this game. Didn't worth it. Signed up for pay-once beta already.
     
    -Skygazer- likes this.
  3. Reinier

    Reinier Someday Author

    You're right I did not take them into account for the price difference...simply because my mind reject the fact that jewels are accounted in an item price. ;)
    Who would sell/melt an item before removing the gems? So why add them into the value?
     
    Last edited: Feb 15, 2016
  4. taketh

    taketh Regular

    My question got dodged last time so i will copy and paste it:

    Hi,

    On the latest twitch, you are discussing how to make group play more helpful. You have probably forgotten but I was asking about why 1 person in a group gets 100% experience and the health of the monsters is only 100%, where as in a group of 4 people, each player only gets 25% experience and monsters health is scaled up to 400%.

    Did you remember this when discussing group play? Were you advocating the complete removal of shared experience so that each player in a group gets the full amount of experience and not be penalized to be in a group? The health scalability is a joke, I hate playing with noobs because of it, it would be nice if you were advocating a reduction in this.

    You gave me the impression last time that you didn't understand the issue. If there are 2 people in a group, the health of the monsters doubles in certain maps. So you are assuming that each player does exactly the same damage. That is not the case, players are different when it comes to damage, so the strongest player is faster solo. It is better for a strong player to solo a map, rather than group with a weak player who will just make the monsters twice as hard.

    You mentioned karma relating to the 1500 coin golden present. Would you like to comment about the karma when you charge people 500 ander for each coin, so that it costs 750k ander to open the box? It was Christmas, BP at its most generous, yet it couldnt help ripping people off as usual. BP always rips people off, every event is something stupid like 500 ander for a dragan pearl. How about karma when people who have pumped 100s if not thousands of dollars into the game, premium players, who still require help because this game is stupid hard. You charge people double, by premium and by ander, and still players are not strong enough to play the game. How about karma when such a rich company is accepting free labour when it comes to support? Since as a company you dont even pay basic staff, where does the money go? You can't value the support team and then not pay them if you cared about karma. If you agree to this practice, and given you provide a similar role to the support team by listening to complaints, would you like to give up your salary and work for ander too? How about the developers?

    Thanks
     
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  5. _Baragain_

    _Baragain_ Living Forum Legend

    Karma: In this case, defined by...
     
  6. sebastian_fl

    sebastian_fl Count Count

    Haruki, I would like to say thank you for the release and event. It helped me to finalize the decision to quit this unenjoyable waste of time.

    After a week of absence, I successfully downloaded the game and it started just fine. After reading the comments about the event, and I didn't actually expect anything else, I was pessimistic but still gave it a try. Did a couple of Q runs to test the crappy time dirt drop, wasted all my 15 amphora keys so was able to be able to close around 500 of progress :). As usual, some maps offered beautiful quests ending 9/10 after a run, so you had to waste another 100 dirt to complete the quest. As usual event offers nothing remotely useful. And the item drop on the event maps is as usual unexisting.

    But the funniest thing happened when I got the Nebula error after clearing one of the maps. Restart of the app got me back to the urban area, so I did re-enter. The map was empty. It got me to the same instance I just have cleared, and the only things out there were un-clickable clocks. So it was another waste of 100 dirt for nothing. This is another result of the dumbest possible cure of the Relog bug.

    So the bottom line to me is the following.

    1. With every release, you are making game worse.
    2. Every event is super boring, unrewardful unenjoyable waste of time. A lot of time to complete.
    3. Everything BP does is clearly an action to pull money out of players. The 'buy' buttons are so convenient everywhere. So is the one-click purchase. So are all the purchase some junk popups.
    4. BP sells experience points, BP sells glyphs, BP sells gems, and even event gems. There is nothing more in the game distantiating the player from the payer. Even though I was a moderate payer myself.
    5. PVP is completely broken and there is no sign of BP wish and will to fix it. It is oriented on new players, and 1 hit dead strategy helps new players feel better, as they could sometime defeat stronger and older folks. I don't see why would BP change that sttategy, it brings money.
    6. PVE is broken. And your fixes make it worse. Inability to reset the boss map for free, as well as q6m2 or any other map is unacceptable for me, it is a game changer, and I'm on the route to change the game. Finally. And I will advise all my friends and groups to do so as well.
    7. The volume of defects is unbeliveable, they overlap with each other because of extremely high Technical Debt you guys have with you poorly written code and poor db design. You developers have no clue what software development is, what are the best practices, they do not respect Quality as the king of the project drivers. I don't see that changing. And I assume your defect kill rate is poor, your post release defect arrival rate is high. Etc.
    8. You have zero respect to community feedback, and I have seen multiple confirmations to this in this very thread, also the twitch sessions, and the BP actions/releases.
    9. You business drivers are far from creating the best player experience, pulling money based on addiction is the only respected driver out there. And you guys fail to understand that good and enjoyable playability will generate much more revenue. Someone out there, at the C level is dumb. I would love to know the name of the decision maker, so I could point out to this junk in some LinkedIn/InfoQ article.
    10. And you keep calling win app a browser game. Perhaps to win some useless junk title with no competition, fooling people. It has never ever been a browser game.

    N.I do have dozen of other points, but you do not deserve any more of my time.

    There was a mage on grimmag, called 'gofyourself'. And that word is the only thing I actually want to say to your Dev and that guy in charge. I will not be even missing this junk game you created. Bb and enjoy your peenuts.
     
    Last edited: Feb 15, 2016
  7. -Skygazer-

    -Skygazer- Advanced

    Crystal clear.
    Precise.
    Honest and open, surprisingly still polite.
    Ticks all the boxes for me and helps me fight my addiction now.
    I endorse the above 110% (wrong maths, true feelings)
     
  8. Дарки

    Дарки Junior Expert

    Briliant.
    Only one thing to add, if I may - I realize that because of the fact that 90% of the players are children and the game model of BP is so money oriented, the children in this game as a result developed money-oriented thinking to the Credit Card of their parents, SMS and other way of payment in the game, and during my time of the game I see clearly that sub-culture of "How to make someone to pay for my Hero" arrives in the heads of the children in the game. They dont have developed personalities and are vulnerable to cheap money-making model of BP.
    Nevermind - from my poin of view the Biggest of all "crimes" of BP is not how the ruined they oun game by they one, but how this "social experiment" driven only by the money influence to the childrens mind.

     
  9. trakilaki

    trakilaki Living Forum Legend

    Updated Items

    Roshan/Keen/Yachak/Sparks set
    • Items are scaling and have slightly random values now
    • The set-Bonus now also scales with the player level
    • Players can find them starting with character level 40
    • Pre-158 items have the updated set bonus and can be combined with newly found items, but stay otherwise untouched
    https://board-en.drakensang.com/threads/release-158-patchnotes.69164/
     
    motorola11, semen470, VukChe and 2 others like this.
  10. Armando

    Armando Forum Connoisseur

    Farewell, mate!
    I will miss your tech-savvy analyses here, and you as a valuable combatant for the "just cause".
    Have fun in whatever you will do with your leisure time now!
     
  11. Scythe

    Scythe Someday Author

    Emotions are running (deservedly) high on this thread, and I hope it's clear to all (especially BP staff and volunteers) that we speak so much only because we care so much. However, I have a couple of suggestions I hope can better structure our concerns to increase their (miniscule) chances of being addressed:

    1) Create a SEPARATE "Game Concerns" thread/poll. This seems long overdue -- the last 20 pages (and more) of this thread have virtually been filled with comments of dissatisfaction, and while there is much substance to them, they can potentially crowd each other out or bury other game queries. Why not create a poll instead to allow players to pool their concerns in an easily absorbable manner? Mods (and perhaps staff) will then be able to stress to the dev team what the most-voted concerns or requested features are. This thread can then be reserved for communication with the CMs (well, just Haruki) in a manner true to its original purpose and early use: asking and receiving "inside" or advance information about the game that players are not privy to. It seems to me that players derive the most value from such responses, while the CMs might not always be able to satisfactorily ANSWER our deep-seated concerns (which does not mean they do not PASS the information along, but that is a role our mods can fulfill equally well).

    2) CMs are the messengers, not the decision-makers -- it's not us vs them, they're part of us too. With all the resentment we must feel at the direction this game is taking, it's understandably easy to direct that anger to an available outlet, but I do not believe Haruki deserves our ire. For instance, while I absolutely agree with every jot and tittle in sebastian_fl's comment here, it seems unfortunate that Haruki is at the receiving end of the emotions conveyed in the post. While I cannot claim to know our CMs' true intentions, I am convinced from what we've seen that Haruki genuinely wants to make the game more enjoyable for us, and is willing to communicate our dissent to her team to the extent of her authority. (As do our mods, who are players after all.) DSO is a great game at its core, and is no doubt the result of passionate employees such as Haruki and her colleagues. But even they cannot call all the shots, especially regarding revenue generation. A few excerpts from Glassdoor on the state of BP culture:

    CEO comes from a private equity finance background and has very little idea of how to run a games company. Unfortunately CEO holds himself in high esteem so doesn't seek advice or listen to those with more experience... CEO needs to hire an experience CGO/CPO that he can trust and stop micro-managing... During my time at Bigpoint (5 years), I have developed an understanding that Bigpoint does not care about other than profits.

    As such, it does not seem a stretch to say that perhaps the CMs and mods are doing their best to bring about changes that players want, but may face obstacles that we are not aware of.

    Tl;dr Can mods create separate (constantly-updated) polls for game concerns and requested features for us to put them in one place? So that other questions don't get buried in this thread. Also, be nice to the CMs and mods -- they're doing all they can. Direct your anger at the decision-makers, not them.
     
  12. Ella

    Ella Someday Author

    Haruki,

    I am honestly suggest to read from A to Z this Sebastian post on the next management meeting,because I am sure its represent 80% players opinion.Maybe its too late to stop people to leaving this game,but at least they will know the reason.
    From the finance part I am sure that for all company is cheaper to keep the people than to spend all over again money for the acquisition,or making a new game,but...I think now is too late...
     
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  13. _Baragain_

    _Baragain_ Living Forum Legend

    Yes and no. It may not be us vs the CMs because they are the only avenue that we have to the developers, but they are not a part of us. They are clueless when it comes to the actual pains of a player. They are mediocre players from what we've seen in Twitch and they don't play nearly enough to be considered players and they don't have to farm the way we farm. They live in an ivory tower and it takes some strong language in this thread to get their attention. Personally, I prefer Haruki to Greg, or even Dracaty. Dracaty was out of touch with the game, Greg seems to complain and get defensive when we point out how often BP f's up, but Haruki actually seems to care and try, but she is fighting a losing battle because the people at the top are are idiots who think that they know us better than we know ourselves.

    Haruki:
    There are almost 2500 posts in this thread. I'd wager that 80%-90% of them are negative. If that is your bosses' idea of a successful game, they really need to get a brain scan... to check if it is even still there. You get the powers on high to step out of their own ivory towers and slum it down here in the forums with you for a day and they will learn real fast. Maybe they will even start to pay attention to things that will actually make the game better.

    So, a feature for a limited market of this game has taken priority over functional things that would be welcomed in all markets? You claim that it hasn't hampered the other things being worked on, yet it was THE highlight of R161... that says that it took away time from another feature that we would have actually cared about in R161. Unless R161 was originally going to be a bug fix only release (which it would have been a little lite on if that is what it were) and you simply through it in at the last minuet to give the release a little pop, then there is nothing else for us to assume than that the team wasted time on something that a majority of your players couldn't give a damn about to bring wings to the Asian branch of this game.


    At times, I'm at a loss for words. I don't know how to express the hypocrisy that the DSO team demonstrates with every release. I'm still here and am not leaving any time soon, but I wonder how many have my patience when the DSO team constantly shows us just how little they care about their players.
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2016
    geoff1, Bubble, VMmage and 5 others like this.
  14. CM Haruki

    CM Haruki Community Team Team Drakensang Online

    Hey there everyone,

    get comfy as you surf through this post of CM answers. The waters are rough.
    The lighthouse twinkles on the horizon though.

    Last news about server change depend on the performance of Project Americas which, in less fancier words, is the shifting of the American instances to perform better for all the players in those areas. We will see how the final deployment of this works and how the server activity reacts to this last shipment. After a due assessment of all those circumstances, we will talk again about the pros and cons of server migration.


    Chicken wings are always very welcome in a complete and balanced diet. Specially the ones that are fried and come with garlic.

    On a more serious note. We have not nerfed the drop rate of mini-bosses in normal maps: they always drop green items and not blue. The question with realm fragments was already brought up to the team: they are seeing into increasing the drop of these items inside the game in the near future. It's true that January was particularly bad if you did not have enough stocks of Realm Fragments in your inventory to take part in all the events... And another no-go, we have not severely nerfed the drop rates of Mystic Cubes at all.

    Cheers!


    Hello there,

    I am pretty sure that more than 99% of the players will appreciate this feature and that's why we are keeping it in the roadmap for this year. We are quite adamant when it comes to defend this one and make it happen.


    Hey there again,

    asked again and had a little conversation with the game designers. As expected, it's not within the current priorities. There is nothing on those lines (crossbow or stunning stun) planned yet. Maybe somewhen. But probably after other pending features have been implemented in Dracania.


    Passing this to the team to get some more proper answers.


    Hey there daywaker2,

    I remember asking the designers about this and this falls into the category of craftable possibilities for the future, which are nice to have, indeed, provide veterans with interesting possibilities to craft but... They fall way behind in the priorities list. Sorry! ^^


    Dear merlin,

    our dear developers do not normally do anything with personal problems that arrive to Support. Unless your problem is of a very mysterious and unexplained nature that requires them getting all dirty and digging in the databases. Please refrain from posting this kind of requests here, as this is not the place. ;) If the answer provided to you was not satisfactory, please open another ticket and ask for a review. Thanks and cheers!

    Oh, believe me, loosing players is quite the top-notch priority for every game that beats with life and that is fueled by the online community. But yeah. We had a batch of last-minute changes which resulted in a different kind of patchnotes than the ones we originally intended. That's why we are still waiting to reach a compromise for release 162 - but we are pushing for all those community features, really, to drop inside patch notes as soon as possible.


    Hey there,

    thanks for your concerns. We have not seen a recess in the number of rangers being played in this game as a result of their alleged ostracism - numbers are quite stable and we are still monitoring this apparent "lack of grouping" that you are mentioning, sure. We do not want to see a ghetto of rangers trying to run PW on their own. That´d be terrible. If this is really an issue we certainly will deploy measures to counteract it.


    Read before. It's coming - when? We cannot say when. Sorry!
    And now, back to the interesting topic of grouping problems...


    Hey there,

    you can tell your friend that with the hotfix of rel161 that we deployed today, past cloaks that have been obtained through this quest in the past and prior to the release of 161 have now all new and updated enchantments and stats.


    Hey there mister,

    my absence from this thread was motivated, among other thingies, by a ninja trip I made to Portugal. As it has become painfully apparent from my last post and this one: yes, the beginning of the year has been away from optimal. We all agree with that, seriously, and the last-minute changes in the roadmap are a severe kick down there and are not nice. As I said in my previous post as well, we want to get some statements from Production and we are working with the team in order to reassess priorities for this new year that comes and be transparent and efficient about it. Because, yes, I am above all a community manager and my job is not only to post cool clickable thingies on Facebook but ensure that you are heard and that you enjoy playing the game. Sooner than later, if possible.

    So yeah, expect more concrete information as we talk to the Producer and push for everything that has been promised.
    Explanations will be provided and also resolutions and clear status quo of the next months trajectory for DSO.

    Cheers!

    I find the absence of screw special offers in your ad disheartening.


    No, we do not see you as few malcontents. At all. DSO is growing to other markets, yes, and China is getting ready to be launched. But the global community, as we like to refer to this segment of you guys, is equally important.

    ------------------------------

    And here I stop from today; getting closer and closer to the final pages of this thread. Only then we can call this a present dialogue more than a retrospective answering. Thanks for your patience and read you tomorrow!!

    Kind regards,
    Haruki
     
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  15. Noohbee

    Noohbee Forum Apprentice

    ORIGINAL QUESTION of Why? :

    Nerf the drop rates of mini bosses in normal maps (Ie: wolf in eternal watch/ mini boss in hailstone mountains), atleast before they are sure drop of a "blue item"....?????
    Realm frags now rare as hell.. ???
    Severely nerf the drop rates of mystic cubes??? Im sure its true since whole lot of people are complaining about it!

    [​IMG]
    I am referring to these mini bosses.. IDK why i'm even bothering to make a post now.. since I can't prove it otherwise..?
    But I am pretty much sure having farmed these maps for so long on my first toon that these mini bosses drop a 100% blue item(ok i can't prove em anymore right? lel) , the drop nerfs on these minis leads me to my assumption that all drops are nerfed especially cube drops.

    And that people are complaining about it on different forums, facebook groups about the poor cube drops...I would like to go on and qoute some people but is too time consuming? As a player averaging 8hours or more daily it is definitely felt along with the other things (realm frags etc).

    But the CM says so, and I can't prove it otherwise... Im just an 8-10hr daily player anyways. Now i feel like an idiot.
    Hmm..not trying to downplay cm's knowledge, but maybe ask the right person in charge? Who knows if he has played with the numbers! The cubes has been touched by the recent updates afterall (referring to making it drop on all players even non premium)
    Cheers!
     
  16. Armando

    Armando Forum Connoisseur

    Let me tease you a bit, Haruki... Surely you can do this better than me? :rolleyes:
    "One poll per release keeps the comm at ease"

    P.S. If this:
    is really what we may expect next, I have to admit that I am personally actually very happy with your priorities ;)
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2016
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  17. BoyssanBG

    BoyssanBG Forum Apprentice

    And one more question.How about the "fair-play" during exhaustion in which players are removing their items with HP and like this dear devs they are taking hp back.When this is going to be fixed?
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2016
  18. BoyssanBG

    BoyssanBG Forum Apprentice

    I will follow your steps as well :) Thank you for all the nice moments before r150 when the game was still working I hope we will meet again someday somewhere .. gl Ross :)
     
  19. joão

    joão Forum Apprentice

    Hey Haruki

    When comes transmog and new class?
    How will it work alchemy system?
    The old set karabossa pawerful. We can buy it again? Which release he comes?

    Thanks
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2016
  20. Rhysingstar

    Rhysingstar Forum Ambassador

    Yet somehow when the dev's wanted to increase the amount needed for events, that happened quickly and without a glitch. Then as usual, a few months later they'll re-adjust the drop rate for us players.
     
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