Dev Notes: Week of January 5, 2015

[RhythmNBruise]

Note: I'm sorry these are so late this week - as noted below, I've had a sinus infection of the sort that makes it feel like I've been sleeping on a concrete pillow, complete with toothache. Hope y'all had a nice winter-holiday-of-choice!

This Week

This week we're working on issues that came up over the holidays - including reports of disappearing items/stat drops, problems when equipping items and others. (It can be very hard to tell from CS tickets whether we're seeing delayed reactions to a one-time problem or an ongoing issue, especially if it's not really high volume, so please try to let us know as soon as you see a problem, and give us a rough time-frame of when you noticed and what you'd been doing.)

Coming Up

We're working on some interesting features building on Hero Equip, but those are going to be a while. In the near term, our top priorities getting events running smoothly and fixing issues.


How's It Work: Help Me Out

I'm sorry, y'all, I've had a sinus infection for a week and my brains are made of cottage cheese. What would you like to know about how things work around here?

[truthteller]

We would ALL like to know why the Epic Boss has been missing for two cycles now??
Are you guys working on an EB Revamp like it was done in KA???
and Please give us the hard truth.........example: EB not generating revenues, so we need to adjust to make revenues

Cheers

[Jaguar69]

This week we're working on issues that came up ... so please try to let us know as soon as you see a problem, and give us a rough time-frame of when you noticed and what you'd been doing.)

If I were you, I'd try to tell to your CS to READ what players write, instead of giving them a no-sense answer, closing the ticket.

Also I'd like to know what is your team doing to reduce all the crashes that are afflicting a lot of users.

Thank you, Sir.

[Atego]

Note: I'm sorry these are so late this week - as noted below, I've had a sinus infection of the sort that makes it feel like I've been sleeping on a concrete pillow, complete with toothache. Hope y'all had a nice winter-holiday-of-choice!

This Week

This week we're working on issues that came up over the holidays - including reports of disappearing items/stat drops, problems when equipping items and others. (It can be very hard to tell from CS tickets whether we're seeing delayed reactions to a one-time problem or an ongoing issue, especially if it's not really high volume, so please try to let us know as soon as you see a problem, and give us a rough time-frame of when you noticed and what you'd been doing.)

Coming Up

We're working on some interesting features building on Hero Equip, but those are going to be a while. In the near term, our top priorities getting events running smoothly and fixing issues.


How's It Work: Help Me Out

I'm sorry, y'all, I've had a sinus infection for a week and my brains are made of cottage cheese. What would you like to know about how things work around here?

Get well soon!

Devs should read this Thread (http://forums.gree.net/showthread.php?103578-Comprehensive-List-of-Bugs-Issues-in-MW) and C O M M U N I C A T E with us asap.

[andy2]

Get well soon!

Devs should read this Thread (http://forums.gree.net/showthread.php?103578-Comprehensive-List-of-Bugs-Issues-in-MW) and C O M M U N I C A T E with us asap.

What he said! Please read that thread and give us an acknowledgement that you are aware of each issue and the status of the fix for it. This is about a month over due and very very much needed.

[Paisthecoolest]

Are there any plans to increase the rank above Apollo ops, the level beyond 300, or adding any new units for purchase with cash or valor?

[Kefa]

Coming Up

We're working on some interesting features building on Hero Equip, but those are going to be a while. In the near term, our top priorities getting events running smoothly and fixing issues.


How's It Work: Help Me Out

I'm sorry, y'all, I've had a sinus infection for a week and my brains are made of cottage cheese. What would you like to know about how things work around here?

Thanks for the updates. That sinus infection thing sucks - and seems to linger forever!

On to business.
On one hand, I sincerely hope you guys get the bugs worked out before you even start considering any more new features. We are losing teammates left and right here due to the various ongoing issues.
On the other hand, I sincerely hope you add equipment to the store soon. Having LTQs be the only way to acquire equipment, and having back to back to back to back LTQs running, while also making every piece of equipment basically an essential requisite to continued gameplay, we are losing teammates left and right to burnout.

[Pidgeot]

Where is epic boss. Would like the truth. Also, what are the percentages on the free and cash options on crate events?

[RhythmNBruise]

We would ALL like to know why the Epic Boss has been missing for two cycles now??
Are you guys working on an EB Revamp like it was done in KA???
and Please give us the hard truth.........example: EB not generating revenues, so we need to adjust to make revenues

Cheers

The honest truth is that the EB health was set up in a way where it could only get so big on the back end. Now the EBs need to have more health to stay interesting and fun for top-level players, so we retired the event for a little bit to see if we needed to overhaul it or just make the numbers bigger. (Right now it looks like we're going to go with "make the numbers bigger and bring it back as-is for now, and continue to think about an overhaul for later.")

We're actually kind of surprised by how many people have said that they miss this event! It doesn't generally see a whole lot of participation, and it's a lot of work for us in terms of how much data it takes to make it run, so we were thinking about not bringing it back until we could overhaul it to make it simpler for us to set up, but we'll probably bring it back as-is if you guys want it.

[Gbrown]

Yes as is, would be great

[Pidgeot]

Yes, bring it back as is. I really do enjoy the event. Also, what about my crate question? what are the percentages on the free and cash options on crate events?

[ezmunie]

Not a fan of the epic boss. I'd just like all the bugs worked out so things will work and run smoother.

[plavine]

E
The honest truth is that the EB health was set up in a way where it could only get so big on the back end. Now the EBs need to have more health to stay interesting and fun for top-level players, so we retired the event for a little bit to see if we needed to overhaul it or just make the numbers bigger. (Right now it looks like we're going to go with "make the numbers bigger and bring it back as-is for now, and continue to think about an overhaul for later.")

We're actually kind of surprised by how many people have said that they miss this event! It doesn't generally see a whole lot of participation, and it's a lot of work for us in terms of how much data it takes to make it run, so we were thinking about not bringing it back until we could overhaul it to make it simpler for us to set up, but we'll probably bring it back as-is if you guys want it.
With all of the temp attack bonuses , I was actually starting to get half way through the epic boss event. Would you consider lowering the cost of the cash attack ?? This top players still can kill level 100 for free and maybe some lower players would have a chance too with out cleaning out their vault

[Sharky259]

Is there any way to include the number of each piece of equipment owned in the "Soldier Equip"? At present there is no way of knowing how many pieces of each we actually own.

[Leroy]

Is there any way to include the number of each piece of equipment owned in the "Soldier Equip"? At present there is no way of knowing how many pieces of each we actually own.

Also could be an idea to list our army equipment attack/defence stats as we can see our soldier.

[Mr P]

I would like to see epic boss back too.

[Ozymandias]

We're actually kind of surprised by how many people have said that they miss this event! It doesn't generally see a whole lot of participation

Really? How do you measure participation here? It's pretty much de rigour to participate in this from what I see, and requires much more activity than LTQs for example. And back In the day when it was hard to complete, you needed to log in every 20 mins or so. Obviously gold use will be v low now once odd health maxed out, but I would have though participation would be high

[SUPpose So]

We're working on some interesting features building on Hero Equip.



Like i said 4 weeks ago when the soldier equipment was brought in to level the playing field and try to revive flagging sales, Wait 3 months, start playing again and in 1 week you'll be as strong as those who spent big $$$$ to get the same...

[Hobbs]

I'm a fan of the epic boss event,however if you are planning on making bosses tougher I think it would be fair to drop the amount of bosses required to complete event!
150 is way too high as it is,it turns the event into a chore,I'd much prefer tougher bosses but less of them,it used to be 50 bosses and was much more enjoyable back then.
Also be nice to include equip,health packs,energy refills as prizes rather then units that wouldn't make most players army.

[Merc_mw]

The honest truth is that the EB health was set up in a way where it could only get so big on the back end. Now the EBs need to have more health to stay interesting and fun for top-level players, so we retired the event for a little bit to see if we needed to overhaul it or just make the numbers bigger.

What's wrong with having an event that doesn't interest top-level players? That's the perfect opportunity for LLPs to catch up and get more competitive. I say that as someone who does not add a single unit from epic boss. I participate to help the weaker players in the faction.

[Bluehavana2]

Are the devs going to acknowledge and address the current bugs?
There are some serious current concerns, most of which are outlined in the sticky http://forums.gree.net/showthread.php?103578-Comprehensive-List-of-Bugs-Issues-in-MW

I am especially concerned that there is one bug which may render WD unplayable (game freezing when attacking)

Can't say I really care about new features or EB until the current stuff is fixed!

[corey0025]

Totally agree merc. Most enjoy eb and my faction was disappointed not to have it. They looked forward to seeing if they could get to 150 or not. I can kill the boss free the whole way through so a bit tougher for me wouldn't be a problem, but still it's nice to have an event that the majority can do for free!

[kmikulz]

If epic boss were to come back, it needs to go back to 100 boss kills instead of 150. I honestly do not miss that event, especially if we are going to continue to have nonstop LTQ's during all events. I do however miss PVP tournaments. I started my account around the time PVP tournaments were going on and put a lot of my skill points on stamina. Either let me redo my skill points, or bring back PVP tournaments PLEASE!!!!!

[kmikulz]

Current bugs I see, raiding is messed up somehow. Sometimes when I switch from raiding to maps for ltq's and I hit an ltq target it shows me as getting money off of my last raid, with BP, money, experience, etc. I have to restart game or go back to my base to get it to stop. LTQ targets now take forever to load and their are alot of invisible targets on all maps and that is getting really annoying, please clean that crap up. I also started getting error messages that I was not in the right area to hit that target, which seems to be happening a lot. Game load time still seems slow, ever since the 5.0 upgrades. I find myself playing other games more because of this like clash of clans. And speaking of clash of clans, can we get a base editor similar to what they have in clash of clans, it is a feature that would really benefit this game I think. I hate the scratchers, change prizes or turn it off please or go back to the other format of consecutive day logins for prizes with nice boosts. And please please please do something with defensive buildings to make them relevant again.

[Bndawgs]

Is there a fix in the works for the Alliance Defense bonus for droid? I currently don't see it listed in my list of bonuses. Wondering if it's even working?

[Kefa]

We're actually kind of surprised by how many people have said that they miss this event! It doesn't generally see a whole lot of participation,

I'm actually surprised by that statement, because every one I know and every faction I know strives to finish this event. It's always been one of the highest "participation" events there is, actually, from what I've seen. Unless by "participation" you mean "gold sales"?

[Ozymandias]

I'm actually surprised by that statement, because every one I know and every faction I know strives to finish this event. It's always been one of the highest "participation" events there is, actually, from what I've seen. Unless by "participation" you mean "gold sales"?

Given that a boss pops up every time you do anything, and you may as well kill it, it's hard to imagine that people just ignore them

[MW Flake]

Once again devs, you speak of shiny new things that nobody really wants, while yet another timed event begins hours late and with bugs halting people's progress, ignoring their pleas to FIX WHAT'S BROKEN!

[skywalker_98]

How about fixing that you can't upgrade soldier..I'm losing to players with less stats..try to upgrade soldier ..server error haven't been able to upgrade equipment since first time...players on team ..quitting 5 this week 2 yr players..said would wait around for fix..3 weeks now ..no word..no fix

[ezmunie]

Any plans to increase vault and/or levels?

[Mikelord]

Any plans to increase vault and/or levels?

Get in line buddy, I've been waiting 2 years plus now for IOS base decorations to be displayed correctly and that issue still hasn't been fixed, get in line with your vault question... Lol jk

[Rolinz]

Any chance of Gree selling Deploy Refills for FL like you do for Energy and Stamina and Health?

[Sparkle]

I'm a fan of the epic boss event,however if you are planning on making bosses tougher I think it would be fair to drop the amount of bosses required to complete event!
150 is way too high as it is,it turns the event into a chore,I'd much prefer tougher bosses but less of them,it used to be 50 bosses and was much more enjoyable back then.
Also be nice to include equip,health packs,energy refills as prizes rather then units that wouldn't make most players army.

Yes PLEASE bring Epic boss BACK immediately! There is no need to make anything harder for high level people. What in blazes are you thinking?! I built to where I can actually have fun finishing and winning the thing and you are worried about fun for somebody else? Leave it alone and make them something different.

[Sparkle]

Yes PLEASE bring Epic boss BACK immediately! There is no need to make anything harder for high level people. What in blazes are you thinking?! I built to where I can actually have fun finishing and winning the thing and you are worried about fun for somebody else? Leave it alone and make them something different.

What needs to be gone is the awful amount of LTQ'S. They are NOT FUN beating the clock while waiting all day long to travel to the next map site only to tap the bejeezus out of the little critter that you can't isolate with fat fingers. The cost is way too much. They raise the xp too fast. Doing the faction aspects is a pain when the group wants stuff that is out of reach and they insist that you have to help get it for them when you are trying to get something more realistic. And the prizes cut in half at 5% for Prestige which used to be 10% is just robbery.

[Sparkle]

The ****ens you say...

[Moose02364]

How do you set a minimum wd score for your faction I thought that was discussed that we could set a minimum for our players ?

[MW Flake]

How do you set a minimum wd score for your faction I thought that was discussed that we could set a minimum for our players ?

As far as I know, Gree will set the limits, not individual factions.

[DieselPowered]

what is the minimum requirement?

[The Pharoah]

Yes PLEASE bring Epic boss BACK immediately! There is no need to make anything harder for high level people. What in blazes are you thinking?! I built to where I can actually have fun finishing and winning the thing and you are worried about fun for somebody else? Leave it alone and make them something different.

Agreed. For a lot of noobs and LLP account players, EB was their time to shine. They can't help in the FLTQs because they don't have enough energy, they're bullet magnets in WD event, and they're too puny to help in RB. Without EB there's no reason for factions to give them a spot.

EDIT: Sorry, just realised it looks like I'm calling you a noob. That wasn't my intention! Apologies.

[Hobbs]

How about we get an update on the missing equipment problem that some players experienced???
Answer to ticket is "we are working on it" kinda doesn't say much and to be honest confidence in CS is at an all time low reading the forum.
Can we get some answers on if/when this issue may be addressed,as for a "New Exciting Feature" and such an important part of attack algorithm it's very frustrating that this is also full of errors!!!
Spent Gold to get this Equipment and then it disappears,let have some Answers Please!

[Bluehavana2]

Seems like "dev notes" has changed from a dialog where we see that our concerns are being addressed to a hit and run which becomes the only hint that gree is even in the forum anymore. Sure would be nice to get a little interaction in here

[East Coast Bias]

If you are going to make the EB harder (which I would support), let's go back to 50 bosses. Jack up the health by 2-4 times. Tapping 150 bosses once is moronic.

[RhythmNBruise]

There was a server problem that was causing weird saving errors, which were the cause of both the "disappearing equipment" problem and the "can't change my equipment" problem.

We implemented and tested a fix for this late last week, and have pushed it to the servers. We're working on a script to restore all the lost items as well, although that's going to take a bit longer. (Unfortunately, I seem to have given my plague to the person who normally does all the scripting!)

[Ozymandias]

I
There was a server problem that was causing weird saving errors, which were the cause of both the "disappearing equipment" problem and the "can't change my equipment" problem.

We implemented and tested a fix for this late last week, and have pushed it to the servers. We're working on a script to restore all the lost items as well, although that's going to take a bit longer. (Unfortunately, I seem to have given my plague to the person who normally does all the scripting!)

I still can't change my equipment

[RhythmNBruise]

Hrm, that's weird. Do you have a ticket open with CS?

[Atego]

Same here. I still cant change my eq. And Yes, i send a ticket to CS. I get The "Issue will be fixed soon, ticket closed" Answer as Usual.

[samtex666]

There was a server problem that was causing weird saving errors, which were the cause of both the "disappearing equipment" problem and the "can't change my equipment" problem.

We implemented and tested a fix for this late last week, and have pushed it to the servers. We're working on a script to restore all the lost items as well, although that's going to take a bit longer. (Unfortunately, I seem to have given my plague to the person who normally does all the scripting!)

Same here... sent tickets... all closed... no solution... but Gree asks for feedback LOL

[CC1]

The title says it all. But I'm still going to say more. After years of effort and money, I finally got the point that I could beat the boss. I only got to do it twice. Then it was removed. It's one of our team's favorite events. And no don't make it ridiculously harder. A growth rate in line with the average player's stats makes sense to me. Setting it up to be in line with the top 1% of players does not make sense to me. Trying to squeeze more money out of your top 1%-5% players (who are already spending a fortune) while discouraging sales to the other 95% because it's so far out of reach its not even considered seems quite ridiculous. And no I'm not one of the top spenders - not by a long shot. I'm a moderate to above average spender. But, I'll go free if the price exceeds what I'm willing to pay as will other moderates.

[CC1]

And please, Please, PLEASE get your customer service department tuned up. As Atego and Samtex666 mention, it's a joke. Most often you get a response that answers a question you didn't even ask or speaks to an issue you weren't raising. It's like the people themselves are robots and will choose a pre-scripted answer based on a keyword in the ticket. For example if I'm mentioning the game freezes when I try to revenge attack someone in my news feed. I'll get a scripted response telling me how equipment works. Real example btw.

How can you expect to learn of issues from customer service tickets when so many are miscategorized? The real issue or severity never makes it to a devs desk. And most members don't come to the forum to raise issues. They file a ticket (or don't because they think it's pointless). Then they get frustrated at the response, or lack thereof. If you think the CS complaints in the forums is rough, you'd blush at the things said in our communication apps (Groupme, Line etc.)

[xlt]

The honest truth is that the EB health was set up in a way where it could only get so big on the back end. Now the EBs need to have more health to stay interesting and fun for top-level players, so we retired the event for a little bit to see if we needed to overhaul it or just make the numbers bigger. (Right now it looks like we're going to go with "make the numbers bigger and bring it back as-is for now, and continue to think about an overhaul for later.")

We're actually kind of surprised by how many people have said that they miss this event! It doesn't generally see a whole lot of participation, and it's a lot of work for us in terms of how much data it takes to make it run, so we were thinking about not bringing it back until we could overhaul it to make it simpler for us to set up, but we'll probably bring it back as-is if you guys want it.
Wow, it finally got fun and reachable to be able to try to finish it and now it's gone. Epic Boss had become part of the game that I looked forward to play.

So when it comes back after the overhaul, it will again be impossible to finish...again.

[2MblaZ]

Anybody at CS looking at lost accounts?... Tried linking back to tablet after WD ended in order not to waste data on cell plan, instead got Welcome page with lvl 1 start, got to Lvl 2, named it "Give back my game", sent ticket [Your request (#2191463)] - now on both, Android and iOS got 2 lvl 2 players after linking, getting notifications of being attacked/raided, but player is gone...

Your request (#2191463) - not even generic response, and the sticky thread looks kinda abandoned in 'Announcements' section, nerdyGirl's last post was almost 3 weeks ago, is she gone?...

-_-

[Bubseg]

U mean u r goong to make epic boss harder so people have to spend more to defeat it ,
Just like every ltq , Lesson the ltqs and bring a different event. ,
Ltqs are so dated and boring

[samtex666]

There was a server problem that was causing weird saving errors, which were the cause of both the "disappearing equipment" problem and the "can't change my equipment" problem.

We implemented and tested a fix for this late last week, and have pushed it to the servers. We're working on a script to restore all the lost items as well, although that's going to take a bit longer. (Unfortunately, I seem to have given my plague to the person who normally does all the scripting!)

This one is a lie!!! I got an answer from Gree support with a few items as compensation....

(2) - 5.56mm Assault Rifle
(3) - Brown Stealth Boots

(2) - Radar Watch
(7) - Stamina

Woooow 7 Stamina.... I am missing much more items than those you gave us!!! And used gold to get them!!!

So I ask if we get the items back, that we lost???

I get another answer:

"Greetings Sam,
Thank you for writing in.
I do apologize for inconvenience but we are unable to compensate you any more for this issue as we have compensated the same for all players."

So the lost items are lost forever?!?!?!
No script to solve the issue???

THANKS I'm done with buying gold!

[Fergus14]

Hrm, that's weird. Do you have a ticket open with CS?

Here's a ticket (#2209824) about not being able to change equipment - AND I STILL CAN'T - however accoring to your CS response:

"We have addressed and corrected the issue where it was not possible to make changes to your Soldier equipment"
Its just signed, Regards R, so I have no idea who that is.

As everyone else seems to be getting compensation of rifles, boots and watches watches I'd like the same or just roll them out to those who haven't yet got them or had a ticket dismissed.

I'll await your rseponse.