Open letter to gree

[Spydrax]

KINGDOM AGE

25 December 2013
Re: Kingdom Age
Issues and concerns

Dear GREE,
I enjoy the game GREE developed and as a result, commit a great amount of my time and some money to continue playing. I appreciate your hard work and effort to bring me and the gaming community an ever changing and liquid gaming platform and I also appreciate the challenges you face to make that happen. Over the past year, GREE has implemented several changes that have revived and brought new excitement to this experience.

However, we’ve seen many changes that have diminished the fun, interest and overall positive mentality we all once had as well. These changes, whether event, stat value, unknown variables or other, have all been noted to GREE in and through various avenues provided to us as customers, these include: the forum, ‘tickets’ or emails. Many times, and far too often, our issues are met with automated responses and we're told nothing can be done, or proper compensation can not be refunded.

I ask that GREE provide an equal playing platform with fair and balanced events, post consistent dates and do not change events while events are running. I ask for; good customer service, that which is consistent with a ‘typical’ company that has interaction with their paying customers; proper time and effort be put into development to provide the best and cleanest events possible prior to releasing; consistant war pattern of no more than one per four (4) weeks, or one (1) per calendar month and to last no more than 73:00 hours; outline of odds design for the ‘Box’ events.

These requests are not unfair nor are they inconsistent with industry standards established by a multitude of companies, not only in the gaming market, but other businesses that have direct interaction with their clients. Customer service must be a top priority and we need a schedule of events that function properly.


Provide competent customer service
Create Fair and Equal events, based on ‘average’ or ‘typical’ individual and guild sizes
Provide transparency in war pairing algorithm
Post Dates and Times on event calender
Properly develop events to run efficiently when released
War frequency to be no less than 4 weeks intervals with no more than one (1) war in any calendar month
Increase top end level from 200 to 400-500
Distribute odds design for box events and other ‘odds’ based events
Update ‘Daily Scratch’ to be more like LOOT units in Raid Boss event using the level rating and rarity for good, better, best and great units
Include: ‘Are you sure’ button for all in-game gem usage, such as vault upgrade and relocate prompt to one of the corners to help reduce 'double tapping' gem confirmations or sales. This would NOT include wartime
Post war results within three (3) days from wars end



I respectfully submit these concerns for your review as my last post in this forum.


Respectfully submitted and goodbye,
Lord Spydrax


Closing commentary:

I'm tired of the game being developed for your power guilds, FUN, RK & SB. I'm sick and tired of all development, stat values for events and all consideration being focused to your elite 180. I find it disgusting that you discard and dismiss the rest of the thousands who play this game, many who pay, as nothing of value or not worthy of respect or consideration. It's truly fortuanate that you've worked to develop this game in an order that is consistant with additction, and well done for that, because that's what's holding your game together, additction, not the fun of playing. Great for GREE that your clientele to a large part doesn't enjoy your game, but are addicted or still playing for the community they've become close to.

I'm disappointed with GREE.

Goodbye fellow Forum members. Be great.

[Peacock]

A KA war event can typically chunk up 600% revenue of normal days, it was in the news. Reducing to once a month is like asking the developers to jump off the building. They are already struggling to keep the revenue up. You can probably guess how much losses they had suffered when Fun and RK only provide half of they did in the last war.

Events are focused on the top 3 cuz generally they provide 75% of the revenue to Gree. Difficulty has to be tweaked such that they spend the same or more for every event. Yes lots of people are paying but they belong to the 25%. If you don't spend, it is not going to affect them. If the top 3 don't spend, that will blow up their office.

It's not possible to provide a balanced field for every guild based on their strength. That will take up too much coding and time. Their service is poor cuz KA is not available on Andriod, which means half the market is gone. They can only work with half the resources they've for CC and MW.

Move on, there are other better things in life. Don't play their games again. You've learnt your lesson. KA is already at its matured stage, not wise for the company to inject more funds to improve the situation. But new games you need to give a clean look to players

[The red Baron]

Fully agree.

But it is not only a bad customer service, it is a selective one.
I "lost" 2 or 3 mountans by upgrades i did not want to do. Happens on the iphone.
I send letters to CS and got no response.
Other high gem spender had the same problem and got the gems back.

At the end i reduced my gem spending to a mountain per war and left TRK and are now in TRK 2.
Ohter members left the game.

[Person]

A KA war event can typically chunk up 600% revenue of normal days, it was in the news. Reducing to once a month is like asking the developers to jump off the building. They are already struggling to keep the revenue up. You can probably guess how much losses they had suffered when Fun and RK only provide half of they did in the last war.

Events are focused on the top 3 cuz generally they provide 75% of the revenue to Gree. Difficulty has to be tweaked such that they spend the same or more for every event. Yes lots of people are paying but they belong to the 25%. If you don't spend, it is not going to affect them. If the top 3 don't spend, that will blow up their office.

It's not possible to provide a balanced field for every guild based on their strength. That will take up too much coding and time. Their service is poor cuz KA is not available on Andriod, which means half the market is gone. They can only work with half the resources they've for CC and MW.

Move on, there are other better things in life. Don't play their games again. You've learnt your lesson. KA is already at its matured stage, not wise for the company to inject more funds to improve the situation. But new games you need to give a clean look to players

The reasons Spydrax posted are the very reasons why revenue is down. Companies which base their games on having a large player base which spends low amounts of cash are faring way way better than Gree, Mobage and similar whale fishing companies. They might have lower immediate revenue, but their games run longer and people spend longer. Especially with the world financial situation as it is, this type of game runs way better. I do like Kingdom Age and Dragon Realms for that matter, but I think Gree dropped the ball when they fixed the energy glitch. Now all events cost large amounts of money to be finished, instead of some events just costing several hours a day.

[Peacock]

Gree farm, harvest and left the piece of land (KA) to take its toll. They moved to another piece of land (Dragon Realms) to repeat the process. That's the way Japanese run their online games. Yes it's atrocious, it's against the principle of making a game. But things ain't going to change if the same person is still running the company. Immediate revenue is their priority at the end of the day. It's upsetting but their games are really addictive than others in the market

Like I say nothing is going to change for this game. If KA spiral down, I'm sure they've expected that, they will just shift all their resources to Dragon Realms

[Rastlin]

I "lost" 2 or 3 mountans by upgrades i did not want to do. Happens on the iphone.
I send letters to CS and got no response.
Other high gem spender had the same problem and got the gems back.
.
Yes I got my gems back in a few days from GREE... It is not right that some do and some don't. I have been an advocate for equality for all players for a long time....

Lord Spydrax, I am very sorry to see you go... You tried to make a change and those that love to complain here on the forums chose to not do anything... It makes me sick...as I know it did you and why you have left..

[Person]

Gree farm, harvest and left the piece of land (KA) to take its toll. They moved to another piece of land (Dragon Realms) to repeat the process. That's the way Japanese run their online games. Yes it's atrocious, it's against the principle of making a game. But things ain't going to change if the same person is still running the company. Immediate revenue is their priority at the end of the day. It's upsetting but their games are really addictive than others in the market

Like I say nothing is going to change for this game. If KA spiral down, I'm sure they've expected that, they will just shift all their resources to Dragon Realms are you even playing dragon realms? SB here spent more than all guilds in DR combined last war

[Ninja_122]

I believe it is time our voices are heard for it is far too long things have not been working out for the many players that are frustrated and have had one too many bad results from Gree. Either on the form of the so tireless generated generic reply by email to the nonsense answers that show the player "customer playing or not"...that they dont even read the ticket you send in the first place...the list goes on. We as customers or player are not being given the proper respect nor treatment when we bring our concerns or problems experience on the game. Yes it is a business, but is is poor business when u neglect to treat your customers or even reply with answers that are not only unsatisfactory but that make no sense. Matching algorithm for example, bugs, glitches, crashes, time for matches when battles are on, yet surprisingly enough, there are those still willing to spend tons of money to continue fueling a game that has turned and changed to overlook the most obvious and principal rule for business... Customer Service. I believe that Spydrax has the right idea of trying to get Gree's attention to hear the many players in KA community that is being ignored either because they dont spend the amounts that RK, FUN, SB, TRK, DW spend, but still players/customers that deserve to be heard. I believe the many will benefit if all or the few "top spenders from those guilds" give their support and stand with the rest of us players to get some real support/answers from Gree to work together and make sure the game instead of turning players away gives them the incentive to remain if that is what interest Gree in the end.
Thank you Spydrax, I feel honour to call you my friend and thank you for trying to help the many. United we stand a chance. The KA community is a great community that deserves to be heard through the right channels, but Gree must be willing to listen n receptive to make the game interesting enough to retain the many or lose them faster, as it is, a slow migration has started a few month ago of many retiring...what other proof do they need to realized they are losing business and for us player, what else do we need to come together and support each other? whether we spend tons of mountains or not, we are still players of the same game that still have the right to be heard. Thank you all.

[rsd007]

I didn't read ur full post, but it seems u are talking sense, something Gree doesn't listen too

[Krayt]

You want to be heard, question is how to do it.
There is talk of boycotting the war(again I might add). To that I say good luck. You will not get the full KA community behind you. Even if all say they would, you would still have rogues out there thinking this was there chance. Hell I will be honest, if you boycott the war and I have a chance to give my guild first place I will take it.

You want to do something to get Gree's attention to make change. The problem is getting those top spending players/guilds to agree.

You find a way that everyone will agree and CAN work then I am behind you

[England Jon]

I read about the number of tickets being sent in by people. I have been playing this game for over 15 months. I have not sent in a single ticket. I wonder what people are doing that require such a high number of tickets.

[Valid or]

I read about the number of tickets being sent in by people. I have been playing this game for over 15 months. I have not sent in a single ticket. I wonder what people are doing that require such a high number of tickets.
Most tickets are bug reports that people have come across druing play, some are from people trying to transfer their game from their old device to a new one(in game transfers have been broke a while now), some are reports on suspected hacking, and last but not least some are from people claiming others are interfering with there game play.
Think that covers the average tickets they receive.
My total tickets sent in are 5 since I started playing, all bug reports from events.

[Person]

My tickets so far have been about not seeing events even a day after they started, missing final ltq rewards though the splash showed I received it and crashing issues. Those last weren't resolved, apparently my iPod 4G is too old :)