If you could ask GREE ONE question, what would it be?

[dudeman]

I can think of too many questions, so I'll go with "Will Limited Time Quests ever be a feature that is implemented into Crime City?"

[BigD@wg]

Question unanswerable due to being based on an incomplete understanding of both the codebase, the reason things go wrong, and reality in general as it relates to running large-scale multi-user semi-real-time long-running-with-new-content-added-and-expected game systems (not your fault actually, "throw more/better people at it!" is an easy battlecry to take up)

Fair enough. So why can't I get these type answers from support? Why must every ticket submitted be answered with your ticket has been closed. "we are sorry for the inconvenience and if you are still experiencing a problem contact support". There is no answer, no explanation, no resolution, just closes the ticket and disregards the complaint. Back in the day when you answered tickets this didnt happen. I didn't always get the resolution I wanted but at least it was a coherent explanation of the game and whether something actually could be resolved.

[Seany527]

Wow, never expected, or even thought of getting a response from CJ. VERY Impressed. Thanks!

[Pyrowoman]

@ CJ54
oh but your staff has sir i have several emails stating the fact never the less they still told me the same thing when reporting the same issue even with a new tablet with a OS Android 4.0, CPU Frequency 1.2GHz Cortex A8, RAM DDR3 512MB and Inside Memory 8GB and a new 32 gig tf card and directly plugged into my router and having the same issues. My husband and several of his staff had the game on their phones and had the same issues and uninstalled the game because it was never fixed and they also got the same response when reporting the same issues.

[Luciferianism]

My question would be why whenever I report obvious hackers who have 500 of the best equipment in every category do I get a repeated rubbish response like 'Thank you I'm looking into this player now and we don't reveal findings' then get attacked by the players 6 months down the line?

Why, can they not glance at an inventory like the following, and make a snap ban decision with ease?

[CJ54]

Fair enough. So why can't I get these type answers from support? Why must every ticket submitted be answered with your ticket has been closed. "we are sorry for the inconvenience and if you are still experiencing a problem contact support". There is no answer, no explanation, no resolution, just closes the ticket and disregards the complaint.

Well okay, that's a separate issue.

First, let me go back to your original question/concern/feedback first, since I was way too short and unintentionally rude. So, we have four games that run on roughly the same engine Crime City, Modern War, Kingdom Age and Monster Quest. They came out in that order. If someone were to play all of them for a length of time (not just puttering about) they'd find that Kingdom Age and Monster Quest are, on average, WAY less plagued with longterm bugs (with one or two notable exceptions) than the first two.

There's a reason for that. The first two games were created in a really small startup studio environment, and just generally have a lot more "hacks" built into the basic framework. What I mean by "hacks" is, imagine a car engine you're building where the radiator hose keeps popping off. You don't have the resources to rebuild the radiator, so you wrap the hose connection in tin foil and then secure that with duct tape (warning for anyone reading this: do NOT do this in real life). And that's fine for the moment, it fixes the issue, but later on when you have your entire car built you are going to have some issues from all these little "hacks" in the basic framework, especially when you try to add anything new.

An example of this would be item bonuses ("+5% to whatever"). When we first added those to the game WAY back in the day, it was done so in a pretty hacky manner, and that caused some weird stuff. We've since implemented an actual bonafide non-hacky item bonus framework, and the weird bugs we used to get with those generally don't pop up anymore (when they do, it is usually because of a data issue, i.e. someone put the number in wrong).

And you guys can't generally see it, but that is what we HAVE been doing: going back and replacing the old stuff that can cause all the weird bugs. It's just that this is a much slower and more delicate operation than complete re-writes (which is why Kingdom Age is generally smoother than CC or MW, we had a chance to address a lot of the old goofy stuff). And the slow-down isn't generally available hands or brains; even if you have some really smart brains around and enough hands to do whatever, figuring out how to rework complicated systems to remove basic faults without breaking everything is just generally slow work. It's comparable to replacing the foundation and electrical system of a house while affecting the functioning of the house and its inhabitants as little as possible.

Regarding the support question, this was I suppose what you'd call a hacky band-aid for a Support issue. I'll get into that a bit later, but I have to take care of some things over here on the backend first.

[cooch]

My question would be why whenever I report obvious hackers who have 500 of the best equipment in every category do I get a repeated rubbish response like 'Thank you I'm looking into this player now and we don't reveal findings' then get attacked by the players 6 months down the line?

Why, can they not glance at an inventory like the following, and make a snap ban decision with ease?

Or how about when you notify Gree a guy at lvl 147 has a lvl 180 casino and you get "sorry for the inconvenience in your game, if you are still having the problem, let us know" or something like that. Even gave them what was on player msg board and told them the msgs (including mine) that were erased since I've been told by forum 'experts' Gree can read all these erased msgs.

[Peppers]

CJ,
Since you are reading this...

What are y'all going to do with the Android time travelling cheats? The respect point cheats? Etc?

They are making the game miserable... although the timetravling hoods with all level 10 buildings can be quite lucrative.

[cooch]

Well okay, that's a separate issue.

First, let me go back to your original question/concern/feedback first, since I was way too short and unintentionally rude. So, we have four games that run on roughly the same engine Crime City, Modern War, Kingdom Age and Monster Quest. They came out in that order. If someone were to play all of them for a length of time (not just puttering about) they'd find that Kingdom Age and Monster Quest are, on average, WAY less plagued with longterm bugs (with one or two notable exceptions) than the first two.

There's a reason for that. The first two games were created in a really small startup studio environment, and just generally have a lot more "hacks" built into the basic framework. What I mean by "hacks" is, imagine a car engine you're building where the radiator hose keeps popping off. You don't have the resources to rebuild the radiator, so you wrap the hose connection in tin foil and then secure that with duct tape (warning for anyone reading this: do NOT do this in real life). And that's fine for the moment, it fixes the issue, but later on when you have your entire car built you are going to have some issues from all these little "hacks" in the basic framework, especially when you try to add anything new.

An example of this would be item bonuses ("+5% to whatever"). When we first added those to the game WAY back in the day, it was done so in a pretty hacky manner, and that caused some weird stuff. We've since implemented an actual bonafide non-hacky item bonus framework, and the weird bugs we used to get with those generally don't pop up anymore (when they do, it is usually because of a data issue, i.e. someone put the number in wrong).

And you guys can't generally see it, but that is what we HAVE been doing: going back and replacing the old stuff that can cause all the weird bugs. It's just that this is a much slower and more delicate operation than complete re-writes (which is why Kingdom Age is generally smoother than CC or MW, we had a chance to address a lot of the old goofy stuff). And the slow-down isn't generally available hands or brains; even if you have some really smart brains around and enough hands to do whatever, figuring out how to rework complicated systems to remove basic faults without breaking everything is just generally slow work. It's comparable to replacing the foundation and electrical system of a house while affecting the functioning of the house and its inhabitants as little as possible.

Regarding the support question, this was I suppose what you'd call a hacky band-aid for a Support issue. I'll get into that a bit later, but I have to take care of some things over here on the backend first.

Thanks for explanation CJ. I was wondering as a non computer person whether the only way to make it bug free was to rebuild the whole infrastructure of the coding or major fixes as short cuts are always necessary when you are in start up mode and less resources than necessary are thrown at things. Wonder why Gree didn't get our so called code experts on forum to understand this dilemma...I guess they haven't worked in real world or came in after a system was fixed. Makes perfect sense. Seen this in non-game industries/companies with systems home built that begin to crumble under the weight of more bells and whistles demanded/requested by folks like me until it becomes a situation of fundamental fix or replace...

[Flyingsquad23]

Why after I finally got the syndicate data on my kindle fire did the menu's and status bar become microscopic.

[MattThomas08]

CJ,
Since you are reading this...

What are y'all going to do with the Android time travelling cheats? The respect point cheats? Etc?

They are making the game miserable... although the timetravling hoods with all level 10 buildings can be quite lucrative.

Same question. Is this being addressed? I personally see it as the biggest detriment to the game at the moment and most likely to make me stop playing. It's so easy to hack and while it can be lucrative robbing the time hacks, it's frustrating that they and the respect hackers exist in such abundance.

[Ramshutu]

Same question. Is this being addressed? I personally see it as the biggest detriment to the game at the moment and most likely to make me stop playing. It's so easy to hack and while it can be lucrative robbing the time hacks, it's frustrating that they and the respect hackers exist in such abundance.

And myself and other "so called" programming experts have some ideas about novel ways of detecting hackers in general that may or may not be simple. What would be a good way to forward these to you, and would you be interested

[The Billionaire]

Why are they so sloppy?

I'd only read the first post when I wrote the above answer but since CJ is in a talkative mood I'd like to ask some more productive questions.

Yes LE buildings would be nice but obviously the way the game was originally designed hinders that. Is that also the case for not being able to do anymore expansions? And what's the story behind that issue?

Will we be seeing PvP syndicate events again? They seem to have disappeared from both games lately

Will CC get the new MW profile page because it absolutely rocks! Nice work

Also LTQ's? Will we see them?

As for the sloppiness, what I mean is splash pages during the Egypt war still saying brazil?

The splash page at the start of the key case event said collect prizes at intervals 3, 5, 7, 9 & 10.

Obviously it's the collect ten template but how does this stuff make it into the live environment without being spotted?

But on the whole improvements have been made and I nearly necro'd the 'What We Want To See In Crime City' thread the other day to update it and show that changes have been made even if it is slow progress.

Lastly, how did all that free gold get given out and why change the structure of the gold bonus program? I don't know anyone who is pleased with the new structure.

[Chuck5]

My one question:

With all the money that is made on these games, why can't they hire programmers that are competent enough to rid the games of bugs and glitches and hire support people that are knowledgeable and helpful instead of regurgitating a scripted response?

Agreed that's what I would ask

[CJ54]

Wonder why Gree didn't get our so called code experts on forum to understand this dilemma...I guess they haven't worked in real world or came in after a system was fixed. Makes perfect sense. Seen this in non-game industries/companies with systems home built that begin to crumble under the weight of more bells and whistles demanded/requested by folks like me until it becomes a situation of fundamental fix or replace...

It's a pretty common situation across the tech industry, particularly with things that become way more popular than initially expected. We do actively work on it, but there's a psychological component at work in regards to the way people see the situation (If someone used to be upset about ten bugs, and only two of them still exist, that person may well now be saying that we never fix anything because those two bugs are still around staring them in the face. Fixed bugs are generally quickly forgotten, as they should be honestly.).

A lot of the tech minded guys and gals on the forums have a pretty reasonable expectation for things. When they don't, it's usually because they worked in a different sector that had very different constraints. Games are sort of unlike anything else and also like everything else at the same time, since making or maintaining a graphical game (even a simple one) is going to involve dipping into an ungodly number of different technical systems.

@ CJ54
oh but your staff has sir i have several emails stating the fact never the less they still told me the same thing when reporting the same issue even with a new tablet with a OS Android 4.0, CPU Frequency 1.2GHz Cortex A8, RAM DDR3 512MB and Inside Memory 8GB and a new 32 gig tf card and directly plugged into my router and having the same issues. My husband and several of his staff had the game on their phones and had the same issues and uninstalled the game because it was never fixed and they also got the same response when reporting the same issues.

Yeah, that should not be happening. We've been fighting some changes in the last two builds of Android in both CCiOS and MWiOS that caused some memory issues. The thing is, without actually looking at a detailed memory profile of your device while it was playing the game, we can't be sure it's the same thing but I'd bet so. On the upside, if it is that, it is getting addressed. Regarding any other glitches, I don't know without knowing the nature of how they are presenting.

I can think of too many questions, so I'll go with "Will Limited Time Quests ever be a feature that is implemented into Crime City?"

Can't say for sure, but the magic 8-ball on my desk says "Outlook good".

CJ,
Since you are reading this...

What are y'all going to do with the Android time travelling cheats? The respect point cheats? Etc?

They are making the game miserable... although the timetravling hoods with all level 10 buildings can be quite lucrative.

Anyone who has been pulling some kind of exploit like that and is still around is going to get a really nasty surprise very soon, during which process I will be playing the world's smallest violin for them and drinking a glass of red.

And myself and other "so called" programming experts have some ideas about novel ways of detecting hackers in general that may or may not be simple. What would be a good way to forward these to you, and would you be interested

Send 'em over, always glad to hear 'em.