GREE and Customer Support

[Jeshu]

All:

There are many threads running and much discussion about issues and concerns in game. The1NOnly formed a chat room on Kakao for Guild Leaders and Officers, and again, most of the discussions revolved around the same frustrations. Action plans were discussed, but we decided to first attempt face to face discussions with Gree.

I got the main issues and concerns from the guild leaders in that chat room, and received permission from the guilds there to speak on their behalf.

I spoke with the head of Customer Support at Gree on Wednesday April 24. We went over the top issues raised by the guild leaders, and he was sincere and truly interested in helping us. We agreed during that call to have a conference call with some of the guild leaders, the customer support team, and the lead developers for KA.

I followed up our phone call by emailing him my working notes. By Thursday some of the issues raised were dealt with, and some over the following weekend. Gree sent me an email with an interim report of the status of the issues raised.

I also suggested that Gree form a Customer Focus Group of players to meet with them every other month. This will insure they are aware of our concerns before anger and frustrations reach a fever pitch.

On Friday, April 26th, the folks that volunteered to be on the conference call met. We wanted to get our position agreed on before we met with Gree. Those notes follow:

NOTES FROM 26 April 2013 Guild Leaders Meeting

Participants:
Lord Bell ODK
Awesome FUN
Bryan FK
AK -- DW
Tiki RK
Slick TBC
Nic BKG

Requests:
1. Remove hacker guilds.

2. Remove hackers
GREE RESPONSE: Our teams are working on requests 1 & 2. We now have a policy specialist dedicated to maintaining fair game play for all players. This is important for us because we want our players to enjoy the game.

3. 4 weeks notice of date of wars
GREE RESPONSE: I’ve asked the developers to update the app with the timer to countdown to the start of the war. The time will vary but I believe they are committed to provide as much notice as possible.
4. Break between events
GREE RESPONSE: I’ve shared this feedback with our developers. From your perspective how much time would you recommend between events?

Guild Leaders discussed and agreed on 3 days between events.

5. Take break to resolve programming errors lots of bugs
GREE RESPONSE: Our teams are working on this regularly. We are going to review the best method to resolve bugs.

6. Faster/better response to tickets
GREE response: We definitely had an increase in the time to respond to tickets. It is due to the growth in popularity of our games. That said, we know the current response time is unacceptable. We’ve made significant improvements and will continue to do so until we are at industry leading responses. My team is 100% committed to this.

Guild Leaders Discussed, and agreed to the following:
1. Players need way to escalate ticket if not happy or if emergency.
2. Feedback to person submitting ticket if resolution is going to take awhile
3. General post about response times if backlogged. Set player expectations about when to expect fix.
4. Dedicated staff member on hand during wars to deal with emergency issues reported.

7. Limit wars to 3 days
GREE Response: I’ve shared this feedback with our developers.
8. Restitution to guilds who did not make top 10 due to hacker guilds.
GREE Response: We are going to need to review this further.
9. Members unbanned
GREE Response: I believe this was addressed. Please correct me if I am wrong.
10. Gems:
a. Bonuses not received
GREE Response: Our team is going through email requests to address any missed bonuses. We do recommend sending us an email if the player hasn’t already done so.

Guild Leader Discussions:
AK offered to collect names and player IDs and send as well.
Slick asked if he could have email address of head of customer support.
AK said she would ask if she could share email with group. If yes, she will provide.

b. Bonus purchase plan -
GREE Response: Can you please elaborate on this?
Guild leaders discussed and resolved on the following:

a. want it by determined by volume purchased, not dollar amount
b. want it by itunes ID not kingdom, so that player gets credit for all purchases towards the bonus
c. Players want ability to transfer gems by themselves between accounts/games/kingdoms.
d. want tiering same as previously.
e. no enrollment needed. Bonus should be automatic as soon as volume is achieved.

c. Gem bugs – Guild Leaders discussed:
1. . BUG. Player refills energy with gems. Gets 3 strikes versus 4 stikes. Agreed that each player who used gems should get 1,500 gems as restitution. Since this was a universal complain of everyone using gems, easiest and most fair if GREE gives same restitution to each player who filed complaint if they used gems during the battle.
2. Striking players who were not on-line. This resulted in loss of energy, and loss of gems at same time, plus no gain of CP. Guild leaders agreed to 200 gems per complaint.


3. Purchased Gems won’t download
GREE Response – Along with other developers we are working with Apple on this issue. This issue is one of our top priorities.
Ak-Manin noted that she is now able to download gems, so this may be fixed.


d. Recommended Improvements:
1. Confirm button on any actions that involve gem spends, like vault upgrade or accelerating building.
2. Separate gold and gems on purchase page. Gems at top, gold at bottom. This will prevent accidental purchase of gold when gems were intended.
3. Customer focus group with guild reps…every 2 months. Will insure continued relief value for player group, and better feedback to developers.

Clearly they didn't listen... They are doing the opposite by having the next war in less than 2 weeks...

[Loreal]

I started to notice a couple of days ago that whenever I defeat monsters in any of the game areas gold pieces mysteriously disappear, both when I change area, press the protect button in my vault or just every couple of seconds while defeating more monsters. I have been cheated out of at least several thousand gold pieces this way in the last two days alone. I sent an email to support about this, but apparently it will take a while before they can reply. I also noticed that at irregular intervals a couple of experience points get subtracted from my total number earned, like 3 or 4 at a time. Has anyone else experienced the same thing? If so, do you know how to stop it? Have I been hacked? I'm thinking of leaving this game, because of this issue. I will definitely no longer buy gems until this issue has been resolved.

[Rinkled4]

There have been some good suggestions to improve the KA app. Some suggestions however directed at Gree could be seen as faults of some players. I fail to see how it is a good suggestion to spread out events further. On one hand you read complaints about the gap between free and gem players. To spread the events out only widens the gap. Have so many events that even the biggest gem spenders can't keep up then the door opens for others to achieve more stats/units. It is a fault of some players to presume that if they have difficulty completing every single event that it is a problem with Gree.

[osuljj84]

Silly question (and I may have already missed it somewhere along the way, apologies if i did..), but have people tried reporting issues regarding IAP to Apple directly? I believe there's a way to report that type of stuff regarding apps to Apple and then be sure.. a resolution will likely come - especially for those quitting the game due to not receiving IAPs and such (you can get refunds from Apple by reporting those things).

I believe there was a situation in Clash of clans last year where they made significant changes to the way you got matched in battles against other players (their system is SOMEWHAT like KAs) and people started exiting the game in mass and actually wrote to Apple to get refunds based on this major change... I believe Clash of Clans eventually re-tweaked their system and got their act together since Apple was in fact processing the refund requests... That's the way you get these companies to listen.

In fact - I'd be interested in seeing how Apple would respond to a moderate (perhaps high?) gem spender quitting the game on grounds of negligence on Gree's behalf of not taking actions to limit hackers and requesting a refund.. perhaps an experiment for the next group of people considering leaving?

[MattThomas08]

http://www.funzio.com/forum/showthre...-of-Crime-City

With some of your inspiration, this idea has spread in many ways to CC. We look forward to working with you all toward progressing the games to be fair and fun for all participants.

[Ak-Manin]

I heard from Gree Friday, and they will let me know what they working on to improve the game and address the concerns. They are open to the idea of customer focus group from across the span of users. Hopefully I'll learn more and can share that here.

[itsaklayton]

Thanks for the update, Ak

[Jailbroken<TNW>]

Hey just wanted to say. I finally got my Gems from a failed purchase. Took 2 weeks and 3-4 emails to GREE. But they did finally credit it to my account. I threatened to call ITunes for a refund and I had to send them screen shots of my purchase. Hopefully they are trying to work this out with everyone... Think they should have waited to start this next event though. Wayyy to many bugs... Other guild members still waiting on a reply from them. So we will see.

JB
Kingdom Killers. We just placed 34th Dwarven Mines.

Current bonuses:
Casualty Rate: +14%
Upgrade Cost: +22%
Upgrade Time: +22%
Member Increase: +24

Guild invite code 364-118-223

[Rastlin]

I heard from Gree Friday, and they will let me know what they working on to improve the game and address the concerns. They are open to the idea of customer focus group from across the span of users. Hopefully I'll learn more and can share that here.

Glad to hear they might come back to the table and talk.

[Xiaoge99]

GREE do great than most of game companies I have saw.They can aways find the key of solution.

[procsyzarc]

In fact - I'd be interested in seeing how Apple would respond to a moderate (perhaps high?) gem spender quitting the game on grounds of negligence on Gree's behalf of not taking actions to limit hackers and requesting a refund.. perhaps an experiment for the next group of people considering leaving?

I am very close to testing this in monster quest. For those who don't know there is a battle list bug where players over L130 can only see players who are L60 most of which are dead accounts since people hit L60 and are all of a sudden hit by players 100 levels higher with 30 times their stats think stuff this and quit as their army is destroyed. This has been going on for 7 months 100's of people have sent tickets to Gree and 1000's more have quit but the only resonse we get is "our engineers are aware of the issue".

After 7 months and they still haven't fixed it this will be a good test to see if apple will refund all purchases since the game hasn't worked since day one.

Will also be a good test to see what Gree does to an account after it gets refunded

[Kusa]

Half y'all say we want time between events then half y'all can't wait seems pretty split on that issue.
Honestly i love the events not split in time gives free users a chance to pass gem spenders up in stats.

[Rastlin]

H
free users a chance to pass gem spenders up in stats.

That is 100% impossible.

[New Guy]

GREE do great than most of game companies I have saw.They can aways find the key of solution.

Only a Gree implant would say this!!!

[Xiaoge99]

So many bad games,so I am here playing KA for one year.they make a great progress for 1.2 to 1,7,until 1.82