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To CM_Hunter - a response

I saw the twitch broadcast and recall you saying you read the forum, so here goes.

Regarding 'A Sincere Apology'

There are many issues regarding the apology i could address but will keep it to just three that centre around the last debacle of the coop hwe.

1.
An apology is meaningless in itself, whether written or verbal. It is the actions (or lack of) that go along with or follow on from the apology that is the telling part. The idiom that actions speak louder than words is very true, and has always been true, regarding apologies.

But first i will deal with your words, or rather the white elephant in the room that is missing from the apology - specifically, the new all time low act from GGS that isn't addressed in the apology at all. You knew the event was totally broke and no prizes would be given out. Yet there was a decision made not to inform us about that until a few hours from the end. And lets not pull punches here, someone effectively said 'don't tell them'. That is an executive decision, for sure. I worked in games for years and had friends in various positions up to producers and even a publisher and know that kind of decision would not come from any position lower than the rank of exec. producer.

There can be no justification for that decision, probably why you've swerved it in your 'apology', having been back in your offices for 24 hours and more GGS took the decision to remain totally silent to their user community. What conclusion to you expect us to draw from that act? It left players still playing in 'win mode', spending resources, expecting a hot fix at some point to fix the rankings (as this had happened previously) or at the very least a head's up to what was going on/or a likely outcome. You knew this as a company, so all we can conclude is that it was a money/resource grab of the most transparent kind and treated us with utter contempt - GGS must be confident that whatever they do it will not impact significantly on their user base as we're dumb enough to keep dancing to your tune no matter what you do, in short, you act with impunity. Because of all the things that have gone wrong in this game, of all the previous decisions or actions that have made the community unhappy (rightly or wrongly in your eyes), none come even close to that most morally reprehensible decision. 


2. Compensation - GGS has a history of having no idea of due compensation for effort/resources used by players in broken events. So much so the majority of us have the view that you (meaning GGS in general) dont really play or know your own game, if you did your compensation packages would be very different. I will say this tho, while not remotely good enough, from a GGS perspective the compensation package cited (we haven't received it yet and im not assuming we will tbh, im still waiting for the last gold fish rescue rewards....) is 'good' by GGS standards.

However, there is a glaring omission here. I will put individual player interests aside here (altho they are just as pertinent) and just look at coops. High level/ranking coops spend tens of thousands of gold on boosters in such events as the coop hwe. One thing i do know from dealing with game support concerning gold, GGS track gold spending in great detail, they can produce a history of your gold spending. Which begs the question, when the event ended, this total non event, where no in-game 'gain' of any kind whatsoever was received by any player or coop, why did you not immediately return the used gold to the coops? A direct answer to this would be fitting and appropriate. It's certainly not the first broken event that relates to this question and deserves an answer but in this totally non event occurence, what possible reason could you have for not returning used gold? Apart from the obvious, of course, we want to keep your 'money' so you spend money to top gold back up. However, if i go the step of giving GGS the benefit of the doubt, please do state the reason why the gold has not been returned.

3. To quote - "if you saw our recent live stream you may be aware that our team is perhaps a little smaller than some of you may have expected, and so it can take a little time to fully locate and repair issues"

This is a reason, but not an excuse. If the team you now have cannot cope with the game as it is and on going events as they are, and there is every evidence that this is the case, then surely you adjust. You fix things rather than introduce new elements that just break down and/or break things that were working fine previously. You temper ambition to match what you can actually deliver, rather than what you would like to do. The owners of this game are responsible ultimately, as they may ask of the team that which is not possible, and i'm sure this is a subject of discussion between the parties on a regular basis.

However, as i stated, it cannot be used as an excuse. If i buy a pair of jeans and they fall apart, you can state the stitcher isn't up to the job, which is a reason, but not a valid excuse, and any reputable outlet will refund me the money for those jeans. When players and coops spend gold, seaweed is not a refund, not remotely, additionally, you cannot take an item and put a gold value on it yourself and say it is due compensation (eg a new snow appearance and tell me that compensates me 40k gold - it does not). Cos here's the punchline, if GGS were handing out gold refunds of equal value to those spent, then the alarm bells would surely ring, and game efficiency would be continually scrutinised and the urgency to correct errors would become paramount. And further, they would make a much more concerted effort to make sure that game elements/events were tested properly and introduced events ran smoothly and ambitions would match the game's actual ability to deliver.

But GGS doesn't, so it comes down to 'well if it goes wrong just throw some seaweed their way' - cos that costs GGS absolutely nothing at all. Nothing. At. All.

So, CM_Hunter, you end on talking about trust (which at least you acknowledge was broken by recent events.. if not before, dockyard comes to mind) and i'd calculate that to the vast majority of players there is basically 0 of that lying around here after the coop hwe. If the company are serious about trust, then they have to look far beyond, glitches and bugs, they need to look at their core values and whether they can run a game while employing morally sound business ethics towards their customers. Because recent events do not demonstrate this at all.

Comments

  • elb (GB1)elb (GB1) GB1 Posts: 100
    Well said Corvid.Totally agree with every word.
  • EXCELLENT
  • Val C (GB1)Val C (GB1) GB1 Posts: 277
    Well said Corvid....A very respectful, no nonsense post.   Personally I've often wondered if any of the GGS team actually play the game so thank you for 'voicing' that.
  • ape-regina (INT1)ape-regina (INT1) INT1 Posts: 45
    Well said Corvid. I agree totally, for me, and on behalf of my coop.
  • Thanks Corvid, for your eloquent and much needed post. Let us hope GGS takes it to heart and act accordingly.
     
  • Shay1968 (US1)Shay1968 (US1) Posts: 1,324
    Corvid, thank you very much for taking the time to put that post together and break it down. 

    The are some players here that keep telling others not to "whine" or "you should have known better".  While for some the compensation was well above and beyond what they had invested in the CHWE event, for others their investment was much greater.  Top coops run cash and GOLD boosters and those players also run cash and Gold boosters. They are not particularly looking at the individual prizes, they are looking at the coop prizes and only see the individual prizes as small tokens.  So when players post saying "stop whining" or "you should have known better" it is apparent they are players that have not invested much or have not invested in their coop to win and are doing nothing but making rude and derogatory statements.  I have said it more than once, GGS waited SIX hours before the end of the event to state there would be NO ranking rewards for the top coops that were not listed.  So for 3.75 days many coops and it's members bought cash and gold boosters before knowing they would not be rewarded for their hard work.  I myself never played the regular HWE. However, I do play the CHWE but only to help my coop earn the coop ranking rewards and I play hard. That is cash or gold and a LOT of resources I would not normally use.  GGS needs to find a way to reward the top coops or they need to refund the GOLD and cash, if not this could be seen as blatant robbery. 
  • Corvid (GB1)Corvid (GB1) GB1 Posts: 625
    edited 20.12.2017
    I can only assume the community manager (who my original post was directed towards as the mouthpiece of the official public apology from GGS), or any other representative of GGS, is not prepared to give a direct answer to my question "in this totally non event occurrence, what possible reason could you have for not returning used gold?"

    This was in regard to the tens of thousands of gold a number of individual coops would have spent for an event that was broken from start to finish, no doubt hundreds of thousands of gold across the event was invested by coops collectively. Individual player gold invested in the event would, i imagine, add up to quite a bit as well.

    But not one single gold was returned to any coops or individuals (as i said in the original post, "
    you cannot take an item and put a gold value on it yourself and say it is due compensation (eg a new snow appearance and tell me that compensates me 40k gold - it does not)"

    So silence is all we get on this.

    Well, that's ok, cos silence speaks louder than words on occasion, and this is surely one of them.


  • TheGabi (US1)TheGabi (US1) US1 Posts: 117
    I can remember a time when I looked forward to logging on, harvesting my little farm, building, growing, and making achievements.  Joining a co operative making new friends, working together to obtain prizes and accomplishing better items.    Chatting idly as I waited for fields and sheds to mature, upgrade and just learning new game mechanics.   

    The infrequent coopcha was a delight, something we all worked hard at, and enjoyed.  Tossing some gold around to win a few more.  Sorta carefree play.  Relaxing and fun.   Farm expansions and new areas to develop.  Time to work on each event as it occurred.     Gosh those times are GONE.

    Now I log on, there are 4 sometimes 5 things running at the same time.  Diversity is not always good in some ways.  At this point I can't keep up, even if I bought hundreds of dollars of Gold.. there is just not enough hours in the day to enjoy playing any one special event.   

    Just when you decide you will make an effort at one of them and cut your losses on the others if for monetary reasons or just limited time you have available to play.  The Game is so Buggy it just crumbles right in front of you. Like watching the World Trade Towers turn to dust in front of your eyes.   

    This saddens me, it used to anger me, but I am even past the anger part.   It is just impossible to do teamwork there is just too much being thrown at me at one time, and it is not always working correctly so I am wasting my time, energy and precious resources I have saved for a big fat  "NOTHING".   
  • FromPol (FR1)FromPol (FR1) FR1 Posts: 1,712
    I saw the twitch broadcast and recall you saying you read the forum, so here goes.

    Regarding 'A Sincere Apology'

    There are many issues regarding the apology i could address but will keep it to just three that centre around the last debacle of the coop hwe.

    1.
    An apology is meaningless in itself, whether written or verbal. It is the actions (or lack of) that go along with or follow on from the apology that is the telling part. The idiom that actions speak louder than words is very true, and has always been true, regarding apologies.

    But first i will deal with your words, or rather the white elephant in the room that is missing from the apology - specifically, the new all time low act from GGS that isn't addressed in the apology at all. You knew the event was totally broke and no prizes would be given out. Yet there was a decision made not to inform us about that until a few hours from the end. And lets not pull punches here, someone effectively said 'don't tell them'. That is an executive decision, for sure. I worked in games for years and had friends in various positions up to producers and even a publisher and know that kind of decision would not come from any position lower than the rank of exec. producer.

    There can be no justification for that decision, probably why you've swerved it in your 'apology', having been back in your offices for 24 hours and more GGS took the decision to remain totally silent to their user community. What conclusion to you expect us to draw from that act? It left players still playing in 'win mode', spending resources, expecting a hot fix at some point to fix the rankings (as this had happened previously) or at the very least a head's up to what was going on/or a likely outcome. You knew this as a company, so all we can conclude is that it was a money/resource grab of the most transparent kind and treated us with utter contempt - GGS must be confident that whatever they do it will not impact significantly on their user base as we're dumb enough to keep dancing to your tune no matter what you do, in short, you act with impunity. Because of all the things that have gone wrong in this game, of all the previous decisions or actions that have made the community unhappy (rightly or wrongly in your eyes), none come even close to that most morally reprehensible decision. 


    2. Compensation - GGS has a history of having no idea of due compensation for effort/resources used by players in broken events. So much so the majority of us have the view that you (meaning GGS in general) dont really play or know your own game, if you did your compensation packages would be very different. I will say this tho, while not remotely good enough, from a GGS perspective the compensation package cited (we haven't received it yet and im not assuming we will tbh, im still waiting for the last gold fish rescue rewards....) is 'good' by GGS standards.

    However, there is a glaring omission here. I will put individual player interests aside here (altho they are just as pertinent) and just look at coops. High level/ranking coops spend tens of thousands of gold on boosters in such events as the coop hwe. One thing i do know from dealing with game support concerning gold, GGS track gold spending in great detail, they can produce a history of your gold spending. Which begs the question, when the event ended, this total non event, where no in-game 'gain' of any kind whatsoever was received by any player or coop, why did you not immediately return the used gold to the coops? A direct answer to this would be fitting and appropriate. It's certainly not the first broken event that relates to this question and deserves an answer but in this totally non event occurence, what possible reason could you have for not returning used gold? Apart from the obvious, of course, we want to keep your 'money' so you spend money to top gold back up. However, if i go the step of giving GGS the benefit of the doubt, please do state the reason why the gold has not been returned.

    3. To quote - "if you saw our recent live stream you may be aware that our team is perhaps a little smaller than some of you may have expected, and so it can take a little time to fully locate and repair issues"

    This is a reason, but not an excuse. If the team you now have cannot cope with the game as it is and on going events as they are, and there is every evidence that this is the case, then surely you adjust. You fix things rather than introduce new elements that just break down and/or break things that were working fine previously. You temper ambition to match what you can actually deliver, rather than what you would like to do. The owners of this game are responsible ultimately, as they may ask of the team that which is not possible, and i'm sure this is a subject of discussion between the parties on a regular basis.

    However, as i stated, it cannot be used as an excuse. If i buy a pair of jeans and they fall apart, you can state the stitcher isn't up to the job, which is a reason, but not a valid excuse, and any reputable outlet will refund me the money for those jeans. When players and coops spend gold, seaweed is not a refund, not remotely, additionally, you cannot take an item and put a gold value on it yourself and say it is due compensation (eg a new snow appearance and tell me that compensates me 40k gold - it does not). Cos here's the punchline, if GGS were handing out gold refunds of equal value to those spent, then the alarm bells would surely ring, and game efficiency would be continually scrutinised and the urgency to correct errors would become paramount. And further, they would make a much more concerted effort to make sure that game elements/events were tested properly and introduced events ran smoothly and ambitions would match the game's actual ability to deliver.

    But GGS doesn't, so it comes down to 'well if it goes wrong just throw some seaweed their way' - cos that costs GGS absolutely nothing at all. Nothing. At. All.

    So, CM_Hunter, you end on talking about trust (which at least you acknowledge was broken by recent events.. if not before, dockyard comes to mind) and i'd calculate that to the vast majority of players there is basically 0 of that lying around here after the coop hwe. If the company are serious about trust, then they have to look far beyond, glitches and bugs, they need to look at their core values and whether they can run a game while employing morally sound business ethics towards their customers. Because recent events do not demonstrate this at all.
    Hello,

    I am a french player an not fluent in english, so sorry for my bad english.

    I agree with you and appreciate how you analyse and write.

    More, this evening with this last bug of ggs (a lot of player have won too much $ today) and ggs treat them as cheater, and in this case ggs can examine all accounts, delete $. So ggs can refund gold and other things for each player.

    very very bad attitude from ggs :-(

  • Corvid (GB1)Corvid (GB1) GB1 Posts: 625
    very true FromPol and if any were in any doubt whether GGS can track the comings and goings of your farm, there shouldn't be any doubt any longer (tho its never been a question with gold cos they can produce your gold history if you have a 'loss')

    and typically, when it's their error that leads to players wasting gold or farm dollars they choose not to refund as in the highlighted case of this thread

    as to the 'fairness' of treating players as cheats due to a bug in the game, that's a question for another thread (I don't know how different the monetary value of the items affected were compared to normal prices and whether the bug was clearly a bug to those players, but on the surface it does sound a tad harsh)
  • Corvid (GB1)Corvid (GB1) GB1 Posts: 625
    @CM_Hunter

    I see you have responded on the forum recently in another thread, so true to your word on the big farm Twitch broadcast, you do read the forums, which is nice to know

    that being the case, are you still not going to respond to my very fair and relevant question cited a number of times in this thread - "in this totally non event occurrence, what possible reason could you [GGS] have for not returning used gold?"

    if you feel my question is in some way unfair, irrelevant to the playing community, moronic, absurd or any other label that could be attached to it indicating im just plain dumb, please feel free to say, im not easily offended
  • CM_HunterCM_Hunter Posts: 448
    Hi there Corvid,

    I would never refer to you, or any of the community with such labels. You're all very appreciated for your passion and dedication to the game, and your opinions and thoughts form the basis of my day-to-day work.

    In regard to your question about why gold was not returned, I think it's fair to say that many companies explore other options in regard to compensation, and historically this has been the case for other bugs and issues in our games in the past as well.

    I apologise that I can't respond to the many posts on the forum all the time, as especially when there are issues in the game my time is often taken up by these and I have come to rely on the moderators to disseminate as much information as possible amongst the forums, but I do read the forums and the moderators do make sure to send me comments, threads and opinions of particular interest. I hope to increase the amount of communication, though this is tough at the moment I aim to do what I can!
  • Tony P (GB1)Tony P (GB1) GB1 Posts: 88
    Quote "In regard to your question about why gold was not returned, I think it's fair to say that many companies explore other options in regard to compensation, and historically this has been the case for other bugs and issues in our games in the past as well."
    A) Not really interested what "many companies" do, irrespective of being "fair to say.
    B) Just because something has been done in the past does not mean that is the right thing to do in the present.
  • [slightly off topic]  Hey mods!!!  Great idea for you next forum game!!!

    Count how many times you've seen the words "sorry" or "apologize" appear in communications fromBGS staff!!

    Since, Idk, pick a date, maybe first of October???
  • Corvid (GB1)Corvid (GB1) GB1 Posts: 625
    edited 13.01.2018
    thanks for replying @CM_Hunter (i know you must be a busy guy and appreciate you taking the time)

    tho as i know you are very aware -  I think it's fair to say that many companies explore other options in regard to compensation, and historically this has been the case for other bugs and issues in our games in the past as well. - doesn't answer the question, as the question refers to thinking behind this strategy and not the strategy itself

    with events that are somewhat broken or near completion when broken, i could maybe see an argument for a compensation package that doesn't include the returning of gold (i certainly wouldnt agree with it but i can see a case being made for it, albeit a weak one)

    however in this specific regard, there was no real event, it was broke from start to finish, it served only GGS as a tool for hoovering up gold (altho obviously that wasn't the intention) and did nothing for the players from the very beginning and it's GGS's responsibility to either then correct the problem in quick time (which they didnt do, the fact it was the weekend is irrelevant) or act responsibly returning players' 'money' for something that just didnt happen

    in very real terms players bought from GGS products that simply didn't work as the event was a 'ghost', it was never happening - if you (and i mean you, mr hunter) bought something from a shop that was broken when you actually got it out of the box and tried to return it and the shopkeeper said "
    it's fair to say that many companies explore other options in regard to compensation other than giving customers their money back....., so here's a banana", I dont think Mr Hunter would be happy

    a certain games company lost 3 billion, yes read 'em and weep (tho i shed no tears), 3 billion in stock value recently due to shortsighted decisions where their user base was totally ignored, cos they thought they were untouchable, ie what we say goes, they will just put up with it

    GGS aren't remotely in that company's league but i think the lesson is very clear for any games company that you ignore your user base at your peril (i know you will claim you dont, but then they all say that, actions are what count with people). it took years, for sure, for that company's ongoing actions to come home to roost, but when it did, it was spectacular, and the ramifications of it are far from over

    the relevance - you spoke in one of your apologies about trust and earning it back due to ongoing problems we are all aware of, but that particular event was by far the most guilty of broken trust due to the poor decision making, ignoring of a user base and inadequate response and compensation once GGS were aware of it.

    everything can break sometimes, everyone has bought a dud at some point, that's not the issue, it's not whether a company sends me a broken product that bothers me, it's how they respond and handle their responsibility to their customer after the fact that shows the ethos of that company and in that, GGS really didn't (and doesn't) look good, to put it mildly 


  • Shay1968 (US1)Shay1968 (US1) Posts: 1,324
    GGS certainly did not look good.  They waited until just 6 hours before the CHWE to end before stating there was a problem and that "unregistered" coops would NOT get the rewards. Three and a half days passed before ANY indication was given ... three and a half days!
  • And Corvid says it the way it is.

    But of course some will accept GGS uslessness and buy more gold..

    So, no. A challenge is a challenge for them. No matter what.

    GGS loves them. Its quite crazy. But hey......for them a challenge is a challenge. BF problems or not. Others moan, gold buyers buy.

    Im so glad im not like that.

    Im wittle but wise

    Thanks Uncle Bob
    I wuvs you

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