Producer Letter #1 - Community replies

[maldoror97]

Obviously the new team didnt want any replies from the community, looking at the Producer Letter #1 being published as a closed thread. Let's post our (the communities) replys here, just in case they are interested to get a real feedback, in public.

Please be quick, as I dont think this thread will last long.

[maldoror97]

I start with my feedback.

1. Cheaters and Bannings:

I appreciate you are trying to do something about this. I also understand you can not give fair warnings to catch hackers and cheaters. Your ways and methods are ... the worst I have ever had to do with in any single game i ever played, and that is a lot.

I am playing 3 accounts, 2 on mobile devices, 1 on PC (Bluestacks). All of them are old timers, from the beginnings of the game. All are lvl 950- lvl 1000. Each of them has, roughly guessed, 1.5 - 2k $ invested in them over the 4 years.

Out of the blue you ban the Bluestacks account. For cheating. I have not cheated, so I ask for any prove. You forced me to spend endless hours on tickets, hoping on a reply i could work with. But no. After the first ticket i was told it was a permanent ban. After the second ticket I was told it was "only" a temporary ban, without telling why it was a ban at all in the first place. And as that temporary ban didnt work out, it was a permanent ban again after the third ticket.

There are chat groups running with the only purpose of finding out why accounts have been banned. I can only guess, my account was banned because i was running it on Bluestacks. If that is the case, the only way respecting your paying customers is: give them fair warning, that accounts being played on Bluestacks will be banned and set a date, giving them enough time to move them to another device (which might needed to be bought for this sole purpose... not good causing your customers extra cost just for your game). For example "Accounts being played using Bluestacks beyond 01 August 2017 will be banned". I wouldnt like that either, but better than dispossessing an account i have been playing 4 years, paid around 2.000 $ for and being considered a cheater.

2. Customer Support:
Your customer support is.. nil. Neither of the 2 guys i have been in contact with was able or willing to tell me why my account was banned for. Like i said, 1st it was a perma ban. Then it was a temp ban. When i logged into the game on Bluestacks, it was a permanent ban again out of a sudden. You are not trying to help your customer. You are not even trying to understand a ticket and what ppl complain about. You are trying to get rid of them as quickly as possible. And you succeed on that.

3. About last Guild war event:
Yes, easy way out. Compensation to all, instead of clearing things up.
------------------------------------------------------------

I was excited to witness a new developer team taking over. Now i wish we still had the old team. With your way of dealing with cheaters, you are driving away numberous players. Not the free-to-players, but the paying players. Right now you have each and every player worry about those random bannings. Those will not spend on gems until they can be sure of not being randomly banned.

You are the gravediggers of KnD.

[cafedecoy]

Great idea I hope the tone of the responses remain respectful and constructive then it will last very long

[Dreamcobra]

I've been waiting, and watching the forums (daily) for any more news, and I must say I'm rather disappointed...tho not terribly surprised... there has been nothing posted since the first post in June, 2017. It's now August 2017.

Banning any and all cheaters is a wonderful thing! Yes, I know, a few innocent people will get caught up in this, but if you are indeed fixing the previously abysmal "customer service" those issues should be resolved fairly.

My suggestions for things that could use improvement are fairly simple, tho not necessarily simple to code or implement. The game has quite honestly gotten to the point where both my husband and I are seriously considering leaving, as are many of the people we talk to, both IOS and Android side.

1. Guild wars are beyond stupid for a small guild - you cannot compete with the larger guilds you get put up against, and you certainly can't compete with people dropping dozens, if not hundreds, of gems in every battle, unless you just won the lotto. Far too many guilds use tactics that, while allowed by the game, are far from honorable, up to and including posting the charts showing how.

2. Weekend raids are generally decent, and still give incentive to log on at least, but they have been shortened by nearly a full day, and the milestone points required have been made not only higher, but farther apart.

3. Heroic mode is now basically not worth playing, unless you are independently wealthy, or are fully equipped with massively improved shadowforged armor .. which, generally means you spent RL money to get there. At one time, the "novice" levels of Heroic were beatable with an average character, often allowing 2 attacks before running out of points .. plus the XP awarded was higher than that available anywhere else. Now, it often requires the hiring of a friend to even get thru ONE attack, and you are left with 1 hitpoint. I've posted on this before, but thought it worth posting again.

4. Pets are neat, but the necessary clicks to hunt them seems excessive, when attempting to clear multiple seeds. Perhaps this could be looked into, along with the possibility to trade the lowest seed for a higher seed. I'd have no problem at all using 100 low level seeds to get 1 level higher .. or even 1000 to get 2 levels higher. I'm sure there are others with literally thousands of low level seeds they just can't be bothered to hunt.

5. XP and levels .. I'd really like to see something given to people that gain levels above 100 .. beyond a gold award that's generally less than that you get from a training field. Hit points, even 1 per level would be well worth it .. and it shouldn't be that difficult to catch up the older players, perhaps a potion per level, or group of levels?

6. Chests and keys. Please, for the love of the game, could you put something in the Bossarmor chest that is NOT 20K (ish) of gold, or an enchanted key? Every single key I have used has given me this .. and ONLY this. I do not see the logic in spending 35 gems to get a key I can get for 5.

[cafedecoy]

I think i can respond to a couple of your frustrations you mentioned on your post about the game, as another fellow player, and also a member of an alliance.

Are you in an alliance? If not maybe you should because you are certainly missing out on one of the very important aspect of the game. The people in the top guilds are not made of money, at least most of them are not. The only thing that they are doing differently from you is to go beyond playing the game by himself/herself but by working as a collective in an alliance.

Look at the top leaderboard for example at each event.. the total points seem like a lot but if you divided those points by 40 equal parts, its actually not so bad at all. And alliance does exactly that so you don't have to dump the burden of making points to just a few people in a guild who happens to be active that weekend.

Lets say you have a full guild of 40 people. Everyone has their own life to deal with, and week in and week out different individuals are available or busy. Its impossible to get everyone in that guild to free up a weekend and all decide to be 100% active. However, its not that hard to get.. say 5 people from one guild to decide one weekend to be active. You collect those individuals from a handful of guilds and put all of them in one guild for one weekend.. now you can launch a top run.

I have done many decently competitive events on 100% free energy without having to buy any gems, the key factor is that I was in the company of 39 others who scored just as much as I did to achieve this goal. Its possible to get to top 50 or even t25 pretty easily for free. You start having to worry about buying some gems starting at t15 and up, but it's not ridiculously expensive and comparable to what you would spend on a typical weekend to entertain yourself. Many players also pick and choose when to relax and when to go join a top run. I have seen many many players who watch ads diligently then every once in a while take those gems to top 10, top5, top 3, top 1 runs... it IS possible to get a decent collection of shadowforged/shadowforged+ armors if you situate yourself with a good group that can offer these well organized and economized runs and if you wish you can even host one of these well organized and economized runs.

So get out of your head that you have to do everything by yourself and permanently stuck in your guild with your handful of semi active players.

You call ths not honorable? I call it smart or practical. I see nothing wrong with a group of people who enjoy the game coming together to make a collective effort in events in order to distribute the burden evenly amongst themselves and to get the highest ranking/points with little waste. There is no cheating or hacks involved. It's just a lot of people analyzing/understanding the game to fine tune this effort for efficiency.

[Dreamcobra]

I have no issue with alliances, they make sense. It's the stripping that I find dishonorable.

[cafedecoy]

Stripping does not make you get more points, it just gives you the convenience to score faster. You run out of gems before you run out of time.

[London Knight]

Stripping also leads to attempts at bullying & intimidation . As a GM without Line ( basic Smartphone won't support K&D and Line at same time ) , I was unable to communicate that my phone/game had crashed & that I'd not stripped again after doing an attack .
Thus Team we were fighting started getting abusive by changing their names to offensive terms . Water off a ducks back to me , but derogatory text aimed at female members of our Guild - one only 14 - was beyond rudeness in my book .

Unfortunately we tend to fight them EVER Blitz & War ( sometimes twice ... ) and they continue their sickening taunts at us ....

I won't name names here , but I've gotten quite good at using Google Translate to tell them to grow up & behave themselves in their native language ...

All over a perceived slight , due to a mistake beyond anyone's control ...
Nice .

Reminds me of the now long disbanded & banned 'Devi8' ( Deviate ? ) Guild on World Server : all male team with highly offensive names , often based on sex acts & threats of ®ap€ etc ... Well done GREE on finally terminating them ... after about 8 months ....


Refuse to be part of a formal Alliance due to the often constant pressure , but will strip for GM's on my Friend list on request :-)
Politeness costs very little ...

[cafedecoy]

Jerks will be jerks at any given opportunity. I don't think stripping made these otherwise fine people suddenly nasty, it just happened to give them a convenient excuse to at that particular time. A properly run alliance is supposed to make your gaming experience easier, not harder.

[London Knight]

Yes thank you & very true ! Idiots , Fools , Prats , Bullies & whining Spoiled Little Brats who never had anyone say 'NO !' to them & throw a Tantrum when you do CAN be found anywhere . In real life & online ... it's just that we ALWAYS seem to keep fighting them or they repeatedly apply to join or rejoin our Team under various aliases after they cause offense & get booted ... *angry*

[cafedecoy]

haha i know exactly what you mean

[leo125]

What on earth is happening on the Euro server. I have an account on global and just before Christmas changed my tablet(Android) and started a new account on the Euro server. This account is now level 180 and has 13 SF armours. I was earning DF amour parts from arena, Guild War and Raids.
This has now stopped and the rewards are only rings and amulets!
Everything gas changed in the last 5-6 weeks.

The Boss armour chest with the spider key gave 3 & 4 star pets - now usually gives an enchanted key.
In Heroic stage I can just about complete Novice stage even with a choice of 13 SF and 2 friend with SF armour.
In the last Raid I started fighting a level 3 650K point boss and earned 6.5 million points with just free points . I could the 650K boss with 2 lives. Partway through the day a level 3 Raid changed to 450k points and took 4 lives to defeat. Talk about goal posts moving!!!
Just where is the game going?

[cafedecoy]

What on earth is happening on the Euro server. I have an account on global and just before Christmas changed my tablet(Android) and started a new account on the Euro server. This account is now level 180 and has 13 SF armours. I was earning DF amour parts from arena, Guild War and Raids.
This has now stopped and the rewards are only rings and amulets!
Everything gas changed in the last 5-6 weeks.

The Boss armour chest with the spider key gave 3 & 4 star pets - now usually gives an enchanted key.
In Heroic stage I can just about complete Novice stage even with a choice of 13 SF and 2 friend with SF armour.
In the last Raid I started fighting a level 3 650K point boss and earned 6.5 million points with just free points . I could the 650K boss with 2 lives. Partway through the day a level 3 Raid changed to 450k points and took 4 lives to defeat. Talk about goal posts moving!!!
Just where is the game going?

I wish a rep from the devs can answer your question directly as all I can do is relay what has been told to me... which obviously has been filtered through my own head and may not be too accurate. One of the goals of the new team that is running KnD was to offer same new content to both Eu and NA servers. Since it wouldn't make sense for the NA servers to go back in time, they fast forwarded release of new content in EU server. The EU server is more or less caught up (still some details here and there that needs to be worked on though) so you should see things settle down pretty soon.