Communication issues

[Haku 29]

Bit of a wall of text here, so tldr; the communication issues are alienating the playerbase and exacerbating most, if not all, problems.

Good to keep in mind for the administration: nobody is here because they want to have a bad time. You are getting such a strong response because people care and they want things to be better. They want you to do better.
(I’m writing this wall of text because I generally quite like this server and want to keep playing here, but you are making it rather hard at the moment since many of my friends and most of our opponents are quitting)

Setting aside your apparent disregard of any suggestion made by the playerbase, the communication issues are starting to become a huge problem. People being banned on discord and/or in game for making jokes(!) about the server or its administration is concerning. Banning people for changing the icon of the launcher on their own desktop, for having capslock names (easily achieved by using a japanese or chinese keyboard btw) and calling it hacking, or for making a joke in a legion discord server, erodes a lot of trust that is very hard to rebuild once the damage has been done. There is a big difference between satire, mocking of the issues the server is experiencing and the way those issues are being handled, and actual personal attacks or threats. The latter is inexcusable, but not tolerating the former is rather totalitarian.

Of course, being a pserver where your staff is easy to reach, critique will quickly feel more personal than it actually is, and things that aren’t necessarily dogpiling might easily feel like they are when it often is only 1 or 2 members of staff being in direct contact with the community (often in a live chat). That does not change the fact that if you cannot handle critique (fair or unfair), one might question if you are fit to run a server of this capacity. Perhaps consider hiring more staff, or rethink how involved your staff actually is with the community? That is not to say you should completely withdraw and let the (sometimes not-so) small fires run their course. I’m assuming members of staff and the administration are all adults, and I’m sure the community expects a certain standard to come with that (perhaps including some sense of self-irony, but one can apparently not be too hopeful).
 

The cocktail fiasco
Looking at the community outrage separately it might look like overreacting, but this being the third (or fourth?) event in a row that has a sudden change in drop rate, loot chances or instance availability/entries, you really should not be surprised the community is reacting like it is. Not having learned from past events that the players naturally gravitate towards whatever’s most profitable effort/reward-wise is not very impressive when this has happened enough times for this to be old hat by now. Not even bothering to apologise before going on the hard defensive is downright embarrassing.

Customer service 101: when you make a mistake (especially a big one), you apologise, and then try to find a solution that works both for the supplier and the client.

Being told that “it’s your own fault for not farming the first 2 days” falls in poor taste for several obvious reasons. Arguing that you cannot cater to everyone and “what about players who are away for the whole duration of the event” is a bit of a slippery slope fallacy that ignores the issue at hand: you made a mistake that had rather big consequences and are unwilling to offer an adequate response.

As we’re dealing with free pixels on a private server it seems absurd that the administration is so adamant about refusing to be accommodating (surely the cost of this being the final drop for many active players is bigger than sorting out some sort of compromise?). The majority of the community is not asking for free loot, they are asking for equal chances of trying to get rewards in the event, whether that be making 5 steel rakes or 50 steel rose cargos a day, or just casually playing like usual with some added drop. (I agree removing reset scrolls was correct, but that should have been done from the start. Now anyone who gambled on reset scrolls being taken off the shop can laugh all the way to the broker, worsening an already bad situation.)

The difference between having 6 boxes for ~10 min of effort compared to having to share 3-6 boxes with 6-12 other players for anything between 30 to 60 min of effort (where you also run a very real chance of being scammed) is astronomical.

Even Gameforge handled this sort of thing better. The first time retail had the alchemy event they admitted they messed up by leaving fire temple (unlimited entries and rushable in 2 min) in the drop list, however they let it stay up for the duration of the event as it would be unfair to those who weren’t able to farm the first couple of days if it was removed after the event was launched. Following events were adjusted. (It's also worth mentioning that while the servers saw a dip in activity in other parts of the game, the brokers filled with things like affordable manastones and the economy actually got a healthy boost out of it.)

Please do not view this post as one massive personal attack. As previously stated I am generally content with the server, but feel like this issue needs addressing more urgently than my other concerns (such of the lack of pvp). A static patch server will eventually feel stale if it's not looked after properly, but at the moment the communication issues have become a bigger problem than lack of content.

[Naydraug 4]

To be honest, I am not sure how can they even consider their reaction the most "fair" to everyone. When they removed rewards from a dungeon that is available for almost the entirety of the server.(Steel Rake)

Then removed Steel Rose scrolls, that was anyway soloable for an amount of people only, and now the people who have reset scrolls still can laugh at the admins for literally gifting them kinah. (I am one of them)

It is okey to make mistakes, but it is stupid to throw your own realism to a crowd and declare it as a truth. In truth you took away the fairness when both you removed Steel Rake drops and Steel Rose scrolls, it does not matter if people could or could not play, the truth is that you even removed the possibility of them having the chance thus you putting them into an unfair situation.(ie.: I have a friend who had a work deadline could not play first 4 days of the event, but now does not have oppurtunity to do anything what people could in the first 4 days) And yes blabla life is not always fair, well this is a game and we want a game to be fair.

 

About the steel rose scrolls... I guess you would not even consider giving the kinah and the ecoins back to the players after removing these scrolls that exist ingame, because you are too "busy".

You have so much power, but instead of working with it you just look for the most lazy solutions as possible that satisfies your own gratification instead of the mass.

Edited July 17, 2020 by Naydraug

[TheAlmighty 1,054]

Hello,

I can't give a long reply to this message, but would just tell from myself. 
We are not going to be rude or just give strict replies to the players. Sometimes we have to use one and the same message for everyone because we receive a lot of requests and suggestion on the same topic and with the same content just written in different words, especially in the hard times as right now. We can't make everyone's will true and add to the game everything, removing everything at the same time. 

We don't ban players for just jokes. We have rules and everyone can see them. Sometimes players literally sell their accounts and then tell us that it was just a joke. ANd it is every third seller. Should we just stop setting sanctions for any violation of the rules. there are players writing real abusive messages, giving anti-adverstisment to the server, showing hateress and other stuff. We can't leave it even if it was a "joke". Or sometimes there are just curses and profane language, strong language. I don't think this is something that should be accepted (when it all is even mentioned in our rules). Be careful with your jokes and language then.

Regarding the event (also replying to @Naydraug), we have already said what was the issue: The dungeons were not supposed to be open for high level players from the very beginning. So it was our mistake and we eliminated it as soon as it was possible. 
And the players themselves asked to remove the scrolls for another dungeon as they saw it as us trying to make money from this event (which we didn't even think on).

Event is not supposed to be super easy and give everything to everyone. 

6 hours ago, Naydraug said:

You have so much power, but instead of working with it you just look for the most lazy solutions as possible that satisfies your own gratification instead of the mass.

If we were not using the power, the server would be empty of the events but full of bugs and errors. We help lots of people to start the game and solve game issues daily, and at the same time continue the work on the game itself, on the technical part, solving issues with the server and bug riddles.