From gold to free, thanks to GREE ... France was the last straw

[warrends]

Figured I'd start with a rhyme. Why not?

I've been playing MW for well over a year. Got a terrible start because I did what the game told me to do: LEVEL UP!! (GREE games are the only games in the world in which they tell you what you specifically should NOT do ... every other game actually helps you level up appropriately; how stupid is that??). I've since rectified that situation by ignoring bad events, doing good ones, and getting into great factions.

In that time I've spent for a vault or so every 2-3 months. NO MORE!

I'm now a free player. In all 3 games: MW, KA and CC. Why?

The France leaderboard screw up was the last straw. They supposedly froze the leaderboard in-game in the last 30 minutes or so. I checked many, many times in the last few minutes to make sure that we were in the top 150. We were --- by a good 100K WD point margin easily. Then we finish outside of 150. By a measly 13K WD points. That's 10 seconds of hits for us. But we didn't. Why? Because GREE told us that we were in the top 150 and so we stopped firing. So this is the last straw. I've yet to complain about any of the multitude of GREE's software screw-ups. So this is my first. And they get no more money. Yeah I'm only one guy, but I'm ONE MORE customer who is fed up. Glitch after screw up after bad decision after ... the list is endless.

Interesting that GREE screwed up the KA war standings 2 weeks ago. Screwed up CC war standings last week. And now screwed up MW war standings this week. Anyone see a pattern?

For info: I am not doing this blindly. I love this game (though I'm not sure why ... I think it's my faction .. the social aspect is fantastic). But I also understand software development. I run a team of SW developers and we design and develop SW that is a helluva lot more complex than these games are. And our screw ups are few, and minor. Why? BECAUSE WE TEST! And do you know what we do after we test? WE TEST SOME MORE!!! This is not rocket science. But GREE clearly just dumps random crap code together and throws it out there for us, its customers, to use and get angry at least once a week. Another pattern. GREE uses its customer base as its Beta testers. Seriously. That is how bad these software issues are. Constant. Consistent. Very bad. All of these should be ironed out well before they go to production. In one of the games a month or so ago they got everyone to begin a quest before it started. Why? Because their art department posted the quest dates a day early. So everyone began them, got tons of useless XP, all a day before the event began. I cannot say how terribly stupid that is. Words just won't do it justice.

So agree or disagree. I don't care. I'm done spending money. I will tap like crazy for Tapjoy gold and gems in all three games. I'll have my credit score checked and I'll have my windows estimated and I'll watch Nokia phone commercials 100 times (not really ...). But my credit card will no longer touch the iTunes store for any GREE games until I see a good constant pattern of consistently good coding and bug-free gaming. And I have a feeling that this won't happen for a very long time. They appear to just be that bad. Other companies learn. GREE doesn't. And doesn't seem to care.

End of rant. And end of money. Respond or don't. I don't care. I've made my statement. This will do little to GREE's bottom line, but will do a lot to make me a much happier player. And since GREE can't do that, I'll do it myself.

[alphakennybody]

Preach....

[Viva la Revolution]

had the same probleme with top 50, luckily (for gree) we finished in top 50

[warrends]

Preach....

Definitely. From one of my bestest factionmates ...

[Vltor_Ace]

Preach it Warren! We missed top 400 by one hit... one measly hit... we thought we had a 50k cushion and still scored over 60k in last match for good measure. Now it shows we are 350 points out of top 400!

I didnt miss the k... just 350 points. That equals one hit away... the leaderboard screwup was our final straw also. I have 50 members, of those 40 spent light gold ($20 each)... that is $4000 gree will not see next time.

Sirius... are you there? Is there any way for gree to fix this huge screwup? I dont want free gold or easier LTQs... i want the units that we should have earned!

[Viva la Revolution]

Preach it Warren! We missed top 400 by one hit... one measly hit... we thought we had a 50k cushion and still scored over 60k in last match for good measure. Now it shows we are 350 points out of top 400!

I didnt miss the k... just 350 points. That equals one hit away... the leaderboard screwup was our final straw also. I have 50 members, of those 40 spent light gold ($20 each)... that is $4000 gree will not see next time.

Sirius... are you there? Is there any way for gree to fix this huge screwup? I dont want free gold or easier LTQs... i want the units that we should have earned!
that sucks....... send a ticket to gree, mabye u will get some free gold

[smack it]

Before all the haters get in here and tell him to "stop whinning" or "just quit", think about this. His post was well written and obviously well thought out. He is a customer here, as are all of us, and he has a right to complain about substandard products that he has obviously paid for. If that isn't good enough for the haters, just remember that this is a forum where people come to comment on the game so instead of hating, just stfu!!!

[warrends]

Before all the haters get in here and tell him to "stop whinning" or "just quit", think about this. His post was well written and obviously well thought out. He is a customer here, as are all of us, and he has a right to complain about substandard products that he has obviously paid for. If that isn't good enough for the haters, just remember that this is a forum where people come to comment on the game so instead of hating, just stfu!!!

I appreciate that, but no haters yet. And I don't really care if they hop in. Said so in my OP. But thanks for the pre-hate post.

And it's been an hour since I posted my first. Have they fixed the games yet? Should I buy a vault? Why is this taking so long???? (I love sarcasm ... especially when aimed at stupid ...)

[warrends]

Preach it Warren! We missed top 400 by one hit... one measly hit... we thought we had a 50k cushion and still scored over 60k in last match for good measure. Now it shows we are 350 points out of top 400!

I didnt miss the k... just 350 points. That equals one hit away... the leaderboard screwup was our final straw also. I have 50 members, of those 40 spent light gold ($20 each)... that is $4000 gree will not see next time.

Sirius... are you there? Is there any way for gree to fix this huge screwup? I dont want free gold or easier LTQs... i want the units that we should have earned!

ACE!!!! That ending sucks worse than ours sucked. We'll vent to each other in CC ... FOR FREE!!! Now go kill some bosses before it ends tonight ...

[tayyib]

The froze leaderboard on purpose at the end so people dump all their gold , we lost top 25 because of leaderboard. U send them ticket and they come back to u with typical bs instead of fixing that they response u with lame excuses.

[tnorman78]

The leader board freeze cost us too...needs to be fixed...it determine whether more gold is used for the cushion or not

[jonmischler]

Gree still gets money from Tapjoy through the companies that post those offers and videos.

You only win when you don't play, otherwise the big wheel will still turn.

[Sigfried]

We were inside the top 400 by almost 60k when it froze. I find it very hard to believe that many factions were able to pour on that many points in the last few minutes to knock us down 80 slots in the ranking. Gree just continues to mess up. At least they screwed up to our favor with the guild quest, but that still doesn't make up for the fact that I fought hard all weekend and spent a load of gold to get us well into the top 400 only to have it taken away by faulty software.

[krill]

seems to be happening all over the place, We finished 13 places outside top 250, but looking at our point totals and the totals from the team in top 250, we have more points?? just doesnt make sense, not to
mention the gold that was spent to remain inside to 250.. pain in the......

[pb23]

If you think that any less amount of teams still wouldn't dump gold to compete for the next tier if the scoreboard WASN'T frozen... You're nuts. The same competitive drive and will to win exists whether you have the score board is off or not. I would go as far as to say LESS gold is spent when the board is off... too many teams thinking their cushion is good enough and coasting into the finish line. What would happen if the score was on? Obviously they realize their score is not sufficient, and they SPEND MORE GOLD. If they don't achieve their goal you a. Still have their money, and b. Don't have a TON of angry customers for some ridiculous gimmick you insist on keeping in the game.

[Badass action man]

Coining a new phrase here GREEtards

[jonmischler]

Coining a new phrase here GREEtards


I, sir, like the way you think. I also approve this.

[Dutchie]

They add new features, fix defects while at the same time add new ones. Security is lax and an afterthought. This is the future of on-line social gaming where gaming companies develop "on the fly". These so called bugs with the leaderboard freezing at the end of an event is intentional even if they say it is not. The gaming community are not stupid and invariably it will hurt them in the long term as gamers will think twice before playing another game by said gaming company. The freemium model, I think, won't last very long as gamers want value for money and this is anything but! Time will tell!

[Who dares wins]

Everyone knows they freeze the board just before the end and so should you insted of complaining about it just quit I'm sick of people whining about it

[Dutchie]

Everyone knows they freeze the board just before the end and so should you insted of complaining about it just quit I'm sick of people whining about itHe did quit spending gold... Stop whining about the whining. The man has a fair and reasonable point. I see 'mug' written across your forehead!

[warrends]

Regardless of the 'haters' (and I'm honestly not sure if the above posts are pointed at me or GREE), the main points are fairness, ethics, visibility. You know, all those things that money-making companies hate to do when it messes with their bottom line. From all that I have read, GREE is raking in the dough hand over fist. They have a great thing going with all of their games (all seem to be tops in the app stores) and yet they clearly don't care about many, or most, of their customers. "Clearly" because they openly admit their deceptive practices, which is honestly even more stupid than just doing them in silence. They can easily afford to DO THE RIGHT THING and keep us up to date at the most crucial time in the most crucial event of this game: the last 30 minutes or so during wars. But so far they don't. And they've even admitted to it. Therefore my money stays with me. And if they get something from me tapping Tapjoy, good for them. But I'm sure it isn't nearly the $80-$100 a month for a vault.

Will others continue to pay? Absolutely. I'm simply venting, and it appears that there are a lot of others out there who are as pissed off as I am at the obvious, intentional and purposeful dysfunctionality placed in the game. It's just bad business. Period.

I'm waiting for a mod to hop in here and say "There there. There there warrends. Everything will be OK." Doubtful ... I'll raise my kids' allowances instead. At least they understand ethics and morals. And they are only 7 and 9.

[MagnusDux]

They could extend tiers like they did in CC - instead top 10 - make it top 15 ; instead of top 25 - top 30 and etc

[Gnorax]

My faction missed top 150, by 5k points when we were 100k out from being not in the top 150. Good thing that top 150 bonus was crap.

[warrends]

Good thing that top 150 bonus was crap.

That was the only thing that kept me from chucking my phone out the window ...

[BoilerPaulie]

Preach....

Couldn't agree more. I am done spending money on this game. I'm not going to do much to their bottom line either but my modest spending is coming to a halt as well. The screw-ups are too many and too frequent. If this were a game where real-world dollars had no bearing whatsoever on the game, I wouldn't care one bit. Lost time is lost time. Big deal. But when you take money in exchange for goods or services, and those goods or services don't meet expectations, any respectable company would own up to that and make it up to their customers, regardless of how much those customers spent on their product. Gree has done nothing of the sort and I've had enough of it. The game is fun to play, but I can't in good conscience throw money at a broken product, especially when support tickets are getting closed left and right without so much as an attempt at a resolution.

[Dutchie]

They could extend tiers like they did in CC - instead top 10 - make it top 15 ; instead of top 25 - top 30 and etcThat went down like a lead balloon!

[jkpandian]

We missed T250 by 18K, when leaderbord showed we were 50K ahead, to be sure we added 50K more, end result 18K down
We managed wars/gold spend all three days to hit T250, very dissapointing

[Hupernikomen]

As far as i know the leaderboard has never been frozen on mw. I wouldn't care if it was frozen had i been informed. Gree loves to send us popups with offers to spend our gold. They could easily have sent one saying....Surprise ending, scores will be frozen during the last hour of game play. We would have played accordingly. It wasn't until we saw our score was 60 to 70k ahead of the frozen scoreboard that we realized that our score was moving but the scoreboard was not. Like warrend, we pulled back too soon thinking we were in good shape.

I suspect they do this to prevent the barrage of screenshots at the end of every war that documents the vastness of mistakes in their coding system that keeps up with these scores...i.e. wd ending at various times depending on your location.

Transparency is forgeign to this company.

[Zero__]

We had a 150k cushion inside the top 75 and the placed 76th. Total idiocy.

[K.Illin]

Hi warrend, and thanks for your commentary. I agree with your sentiments, but I also believe that there is more to GREE's perceived screw-ups, than just improper software development.

I don't know if any of you follow financial markets, but the link below is to an article published in July of this year. Basically, it outlines the current state of GREE's managemement, or mismanagement of their company and their finances, and the path they have decided to take as a means of trying to correct, and secure their foothold back in the marketplace.

Do yourself a favor and read it, I think it will enlighten you, as to what is driving gree to do what they have been doing, which is essentially coming up with new, and creative ways to separate MW players from their money. Follow the link below:

http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/07/08/japans-gaming-giant-gree-retrenches-in-europe-shuts-down-uk-office-to-focus-on-development-in-the-u-s-for-western-market/

[Softie]

I'm curious as to how many people had this issue using iOS. For me, both my android accounts had their leaderboards frozen for at least half an hour but my leaderboard on iOS was working perfectly fine. So perhaps we're seeing another android discrimination?

[K.Illin]

I'm curious as to how many people had this issue using iOS. For me, both my android accounts had their leaderboards frozen for at least half an hour but my leaderboard on iOS was working perfectly fine. So perhaps we're seeing another android discrimination?

In our faction, we are probably 65/35 in favor of iOS, and I'm positive that it was picked up by a few of the iOS users. I guess we were one of the lucky ones, as the freeze up was picked up right away, when we we're at 148, and we continued pounding away to try and insure the top 150 win. As it turned out we placed 127, to our surprise, but I now suspect the freeze up had a hand in the increased ranking. Can't say it was android discrimination, but it was defnitely a good way to increase gold sales, for those who may have freaked out at the end.

[warrends]

Hi warrend, and thanks for your commentary. I agree with your sentiments, but I also believe that there is more to GREE's perceived screw-ups, than just improper software development.

I don't know if any of you follow financial markets, but the link below is to an article published in July of this year. Basically, it outlines the current state of GREE's managemement, or mismanagement of their company and their finances, and the path they have decided to take as a means of trying to correct, and secure their foothold back in the marketplace.

Do yourself a favor and read it, I think it will enlighten you, as to what is driving gree to do what they have been doing, which is essentially coming up with new, and creative ways to separate MW players from their money. Follow the link below:

http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/07/08/japans-gaming-giant-gree-retrenches-in-europe-shuts-down-uk-office-to-focus-on-development-in-the-u-s-for-western-market/

Interesting. Thanks for the link K.Illin. But this, to me, doesn't answer the questions about poor coding, unless they are laying off their dev and testing teams (if they have a testing team).

Customer service to me is the NUMBER ONE thing that keeps me going back to a company non-stop. USAA (insurance). T. Rowe Price (investments). Amazon.com (we all know what that is). And a very few others keep me as a customer and will forever. Why? Because any time they screw up (and in their cases it is all very few and far between screw ups), they not only make me whole again, but they go above and beyond. I've been ordering things from Amazon for 15 years. Hundreds of orders, maybe thousands (literally). And in the maybe 4-5 times they have messed up in some way, they not only said I'm sorry (and responded very quickly) but they, say, gave me a full refund simply for the inconvenience. That is how to treat customers.

Writing software is not easy, but as I said earlier it is NOT rocket science either. You write, you test, you break, you fix, you test, you break, you fix, and you repeat until you DON'T break it anymore. Again, that is how my SW dev team works. We do not put out broken software. Period.

GREE on the other hand just doesn't see this. They put out buggy code. They do sneaky things behind our backs. They have glitches on top of their glitches. And their customer service from what I read does more bad than good. To make money you need customers. To have customers you have to have a good product. To have a good product you have to have money to pay the people to make the product. It's a vicious circle, and their circle is busted at ... well, it's actually busted everywhere: bad product, bad customer service, etc.

Fixing this is not difficult. They need to slow down their enhancements and fix the current bugs first. Make sure that everything in-game NOW works correctly. That's the number one complaint I see in the forums and that's the way to develop software. Then add more. And they need a human customer service staff. Not computers that spit out the standard "We'll get to you when we get to you if we get to you" response.

Anyway ... that's my perception. Correct or not, that's how I see it. And I will continue to play this game for free because it is fun and because I found a fantastic faction that I plan to call home for a very long time to come. And my wallet shall remain closed to this company for most likely quite a while.

[BoilerPaulie]

I agree 100% on the customer service piece. I am an Amazon Prime user and probably will be forever, and a USAA member and probably will be forever. Their competitive rates are only a small part of that loyalty. Their customer service is what has earned my loyalty time and time again. They don't mess up often, but when they do, they make it right.

My guess is that GREE can't afford to excel in customer service because they can't manage the number of mistakes they would have to compensate for. That's a systemic problem that they would have to fix in order to have anything resembling customer service. It's a simple part of the "6 Sigma" concept - if you have a low defect rate (like 0.00034%), that can be handled pretty well without large losses in profit. But with a higher defect rate, you can't sustainably correct errors. GREE's problem is exactly that, if you ask me.

[General Gamble]

Same thing happened with my faction. We saw we were in Top 1000 (we are only 13 strong) and we were inside of Top 1000 by over 40K points with less than 10 minutes to go. We stopped but checked back regularly and saw we were still in Top 1000 so I stopped bleeding gold. Then we find out we finished 1459th! Talk about hoodwinked!

[britton]

26th twice I feel your pain.

[HExXxENBEAST@SUP1]

I'm free too. I spent $750 two wars ago with Ferr, then my account was taken over and HACKED AGAIN. This, after Gree told me that they changed my UDID to keep my game secure after a previous issue.
So, $750 pissed away, no refund and no reply except to tell me that my account had like 50 of the top faction prize and some other obvious BS units inserted into a game that only the dumbest hacker in the world would insert, especially being in a high end faction.
Utter BULLSH!T.

[HExXxENBEAST@SUP1]

I agree 100% on the customer service piece. I am an Amazon Prime user and probably will be forever, and a USAA member and probably will be forever. Their competitive rates are only a small part of that loyalty. Their customer service is what has earned my loyalty time and time again. They don't mess up often, but when they do, they make it right.

My guess is that GREE can't afford to excel in customer service because they can't manage the number of mistakes they would have to compensate for. That's a systemic problem that they would have to fix in order to have anything resembling customer service. It's a simple part of the "6 Sigma" concept - if you have a low defect rate (like 0.00034%), that can be handled pretty well without large losses in profit. But with a higher defect rate, you can't sustainably correct errors. GREE's problem is exactly that, if you ask me.


-10 Sigma. They'll never make it to even green belt operational savvy. Clear belt if they're lucky.

[whitepath23]

Wareneds I believe you have spelled it out perfectl6...idont know if gree cares or not...but I have event tickets that are not fixed...or fixed with a generic reponse that doesnt fitthe problem.....so it has lead me to consult an attorney and I am moving forward here in my local district...if the problemis large enough and more people want to join the suit could be come class action. Even when you call grees office you get no reponse...so I figured getting an attorney and a process server was the way to go...the plan is to file on or about october one...so I willlet you know

Figured I'd start with a rhyme. Why not?

I've been playing MW for well over a year. Got a terrible start because I did what the game told me to do: LEVEL UP!! (GREE games are the only games in the world in which they tell you what you specifically should NOT do ... every other game actually helps you level up appropriately; how stupid is that??). I've since rectified that situation by ignoring bad events, doing good ones, and getting into great factions.

In that time I've spent for a vault or so every 2-3 months. NO MORE!

I'm now a free player. In all 3 games: MW, KA and CC. Why?

The France leaderboard screw up was the last straw. They supposedly froze the leaderboard in-game in the last 30 minutes or so. I checked many, many times in the last few minutes to make sure that we were in the top 150. We were --- by a good 100K WD point margin easily. Then we finish outside of 150. By a measly 13K WD points. That's 10 seconds of hits for us. But we didn't. Why? Because GREE told us that we were in the top 150 and so we stopped firing. So this is the last straw. I've yet to complain about any of the multitude of GREE's software screw-ups. So this is my first. And they get no more money. Yeah I'm only one guy, but I'm ONE MORE customer who is fed up. Glitch after screw up after bad decision after ... the list is endless.

Interesting that GREE screwed up the KA war standings 2 weeks ago. Screwed up CC war standings last week. And now screwed up MW war standings this week. Anyone see a pattern?

For info: I am not doing this blindly. I love this game (though I'm not sure why ... I think it's my faction .. the social aspect is fantastic). But I also understand software development. I run a team of SW developers and we design and develop SW that is a helluva lot more complex than these games are. And our screw ups are few, and minor. Why? BECAUSE WE TEST! And do you know what we do after we test? WE TEST SOME MORE!!! This is not rocket science. But GREE clearly just dumps random crap code together and throws it out there for us, its customers, to use and get angry at least once a week. Another pattern. GREE uses its customer base as its Beta testers. Seriously. That is how bad these software issues are. Constant. Consistent. Very bad. All of these should be ironed out well before they go to production. In one of the games a month or so ago they got everyone to begin a quest before it started. Why? Because their art department posted the quest dates a day early. So everyone began them, got tons of useless XP, all a day before the event began. I cannot say how terribly stupid that is. Words just won't do it justice.

So agree or disagree. I don't care. I'm done spending money. I will tap like crazy for Tapjoy gold and gems in all three games. I'll have my credit score checked and I'll have my windows estimated and I'll watch Nokia phone commercials 100 times (not really ...). But my credit card will no longer touch the iTunes store for any GREE games until I see a good constant pattern of consistently good coding and bug-free gaming. And I have a feeling that this won't happen for a very long time. They appear to just be that bad. Other companies learn. GREE doesn't. And doesn't seem to care.

End of rant. And end of money. Respond or don't. I don't care. I've made my statement. This will do little to GREE's bottom line, but will do a lot to make me a much happier player. And since GREE can't do that, I'll do it myself.

[warrends]

Wareneds I believe you have spelled it out perfectl6...idont know if gree cares or not...but I have event tickets that are not fixed...or fixed with a generic reponse that doesnt fitthe problem.....so it has lead me to consult an attorney and I am moving forward here in my local district...if the problemis large enough and more people want to join the suit could be come class action. Even when you call grees office you get no reponse...so I figured getting an attorney and a process server was the way to go...the plan is to file on or about october one...so I willlet you know

Fly (part of his in-game name, for those that don't know him), I wish you luck with that. Personally I won't bother. This is the norm in the gaming industry. Some companies learn. Most don't. Those that learn succeed. The others fail. Happens every day, and moreso now because all of these small 1-2 person companies pop up out of nowhere, make a few simple phone apps, call themselves a "company", and then either intentionally or unintentionally fail.

Maybe you'll get some others who are angry enough to join you. Good luck.

[Blade of 3]

Same thing happened to my faction. We were out of 150 by 9k points. It's ridiculous.

[Commander C]

Preach it Warren! We missed top 400 by one hit... one measly hit... we thought we had a 50k cushion and still scored over 60k in last match for good measure. Now it shows we are 350 points out of top 400!

I didnt miss the k... just 350 points. That equals one hit away... the leaderboard screwup was our final straw also. I have 50 members, of those 40 spent light gold ($20 each)... that is $4000 gree will not see next time.

Sirius... are you there? Is there any way for gree to fix this huge screwup? I dont want free gold or easier LTQs... i want the units that we should have earned!

800$, not 4,000$

[Drakhoan]

I noticed that math too, but figured there was something i was missing.