Laurent Amiot
04-29-2012, 11:16 PM
The following may be interpreted as an angry rant. And, it is, in a way.
It's presently 1:45 eastern standard time (New York). In 1 hour 15 minutes, the latest crate event will be completed. I have 8 nuclear warheads, and I just opened another box, only to get yet another worthless unit that sooner or later, I will lose to regular attrition.
It is therefore mathematically impossible for me to reach the fabled 10 nuclear warheads, which would unlock the Falcon Supersonic unit. The first thing which, in my memory, grants a bonus to the Energy production (beyond being Iranian, which my character conveniently is).
"Oh, tough luck, you got 8 out of 10. Suck it up. You obviously should have tried harder". An easy response, to be certain.
Except I couldn't.
-I have begun participating in this event ever since the second hour it started. It was practically impossible for me to act more quickly.
-I have meticulously managed my energy reserves to ensure that every single hour cycle when the box opening opportunity would open, I would have enough energy to accomplish enough missions to drop a box loot.
-I have flawlessly managed my boxes to minimize loss of them, by making sure I never had more than one of them in my inventory.
-Every single box I have opened, I did so paying, using the crowbar, maximizing the odds of positive drops, and to minimize the impact of a failed box opening, which would place a single box as a possible target of raids.
-I have spent 20$ of my own money to purchase in-game gold, and this gold was exclusively used to acquire more energy to complete missions and acquire boxes, or to have a 100% success rate on box opening.
-I have downloaded approximately 40 applications from TapJoy as an additional source of Gold revenue, and this gold was also spent entirely to the objective of improving the odds of getting nuclear warheads.
Not only was my behaviour perfect as a player that would play for free, but I, in fact, spent actual money to further improve my odds. There were no mistakes, there was nothing further I could have done to improve my odds of success.
In spite of that, I have failed. There is no way left for me to gain the extremely important unit.
Other players, however, do not appear as they will have such difficulties. I have spotted numerous players with absurd quantities of premium units in their inventories. One particular player, for example, had 7 intercontinental ballistic love missiles (from the valentines event). That player had three times the attack and defense value of any other player I had ever seen in the game, and I've quickly calculated the effective cost to accumulate so much gold to be worth more than 10,000 US$.
This player was reported, as other players, to the support staff as an obvious cheater. The ticket was responded as acknowledged. And two weeks later, I see that these players have not been banned.
I understand the prerogative of Funzio to generate revenue through their games. Not only is income the only way the company can, in fact, remain in business, but also it is a private company, and private companies are not out for some altruistic lofty goals of saving the orphans from zombie nazis. They exist to make a profit. And that is the system by which most modern societies operate.
My objection, however, is this insulting carrot and stick approach, that promises the possibility of some great goal, but actually leaves you no realistic method by which to attain such goals.
I have made no mistake. I have performed to the absolute best possible a player which does not wish to invest his own money possibly could.
And in fact, I went above and beyond the behaviour of a regular player, and helped Funzio attain their financial goals by investing my own money into the hopes of reaching a goal they offered.
Ultimately, it was a lie.
What I see now is that there are really only two possible ways of attaining these lofty objectives. The first is to invest more money, and by that I mean an absurd sum of money into what ends being nothing more than numbers on a screen that steadily go up.
The second option is to cheat, which apparently has not been considered a problem to the Funzio staff, despite extremely clear evidence of foul play.
For these reasons, I, as a consumer of Funzio products, have had enough.
I have enough of being tricked into believing I have a chance to reach my goals.
I have enough of feeling the only way of attaining anything worthwhile is by investing money to crush other, deserving players.
I have enough of seeing my ethical and lawful behaviour placed with the same importance as cheaters and those who would exploit these numbers in unfair manners.
I've had a great deal of pleasure playing both Modern War and the new (and painfully buggy) Kingdom Age. I even reached the impressive level of 102 in Modern War, a reality which I take pride in. I invested more than a hundred dollars of my money over the past year. I was, for all intents and purposes, a good customer.
But I don't feel Funzio deserves my money anymore.
I've had enough of being played the fool.
I'm deleting my Modern War application. I'm also going to delete my Kingdom Age application. And I will not install any further programs from Funzio, nor invest a single penny further.
We vote through our wallets.
And I've had enough of being taken for a faceless bank account.
I'm concluding this rant with an important reminder. It's one message to delete a program. But those you are angry with cannot improve unless they are told where they went wrong.
Juniper
It's presently 1:45 eastern standard time (New York). In 1 hour 15 minutes, the latest crate event will be completed. I have 8 nuclear warheads, and I just opened another box, only to get yet another worthless unit that sooner or later, I will lose to regular attrition.
It is therefore mathematically impossible for me to reach the fabled 10 nuclear warheads, which would unlock the Falcon Supersonic unit. The first thing which, in my memory, grants a bonus to the Energy production (beyond being Iranian, which my character conveniently is).
"Oh, tough luck, you got 8 out of 10. Suck it up. You obviously should have tried harder". An easy response, to be certain.
Except I couldn't.
-I have begun participating in this event ever since the second hour it started. It was practically impossible for me to act more quickly.
-I have meticulously managed my energy reserves to ensure that every single hour cycle when the box opening opportunity would open, I would have enough energy to accomplish enough missions to drop a box loot.
-I have flawlessly managed my boxes to minimize loss of them, by making sure I never had more than one of them in my inventory.
-Every single box I have opened, I did so paying, using the crowbar, maximizing the odds of positive drops, and to minimize the impact of a failed box opening, which would place a single box as a possible target of raids.
-I have spent 20$ of my own money to purchase in-game gold, and this gold was exclusively used to acquire more energy to complete missions and acquire boxes, or to have a 100% success rate on box opening.
-I have downloaded approximately 40 applications from TapJoy as an additional source of Gold revenue, and this gold was also spent entirely to the objective of improving the odds of getting nuclear warheads.
Not only was my behaviour perfect as a player that would play for free, but I, in fact, spent actual money to further improve my odds. There were no mistakes, there was nothing further I could have done to improve my odds of success.
In spite of that, I have failed. There is no way left for me to gain the extremely important unit.
Other players, however, do not appear as they will have such difficulties. I have spotted numerous players with absurd quantities of premium units in their inventories. One particular player, for example, had 7 intercontinental ballistic love missiles (from the valentines event). That player had three times the attack and defense value of any other player I had ever seen in the game, and I've quickly calculated the effective cost to accumulate so much gold to be worth more than 10,000 US$.
This player was reported, as other players, to the support staff as an obvious cheater. The ticket was responded as acknowledged. And two weeks later, I see that these players have not been banned.
I understand the prerogative of Funzio to generate revenue through their games. Not only is income the only way the company can, in fact, remain in business, but also it is a private company, and private companies are not out for some altruistic lofty goals of saving the orphans from zombie nazis. They exist to make a profit. And that is the system by which most modern societies operate.
My objection, however, is this insulting carrot and stick approach, that promises the possibility of some great goal, but actually leaves you no realistic method by which to attain such goals.
I have made no mistake. I have performed to the absolute best possible a player which does not wish to invest his own money possibly could.
And in fact, I went above and beyond the behaviour of a regular player, and helped Funzio attain their financial goals by investing my own money into the hopes of reaching a goal they offered.
Ultimately, it was a lie.
What I see now is that there are really only two possible ways of attaining these lofty objectives. The first is to invest more money, and by that I mean an absurd sum of money into what ends being nothing more than numbers on a screen that steadily go up.
The second option is to cheat, which apparently has not been considered a problem to the Funzio staff, despite extremely clear evidence of foul play.
For these reasons, I, as a consumer of Funzio products, have had enough.
I have enough of being tricked into believing I have a chance to reach my goals.
I have enough of feeling the only way of attaining anything worthwhile is by investing money to crush other, deserving players.
I have enough of seeing my ethical and lawful behaviour placed with the same importance as cheaters and those who would exploit these numbers in unfair manners.
I've had a great deal of pleasure playing both Modern War and the new (and painfully buggy) Kingdom Age. I even reached the impressive level of 102 in Modern War, a reality which I take pride in. I invested more than a hundred dollars of my money over the past year. I was, for all intents and purposes, a good customer.
But I don't feel Funzio deserves my money anymore.
I've had enough of being played the fool.
I'm deleting my Modern War application. I'm also going to delete my Kingdom Age application. And I will not install any further programs from Funzio, nor invest a single penny further.
We vote through our wallets.
And I've had enough of being taken for a faceless bank account.
I'm concluding this rant with an important reminder. It's one message to delete a program. But those you are angry with cannot improve unless they are told where they went wrong.
Juniper