AQ Bracket Issue [Resolved: Compensation Given]

So last AQ we were in expert, we dropped a tier. So how did we end up in normal for this AQ???

Comments

RogerRabs wrote: »

Ideally because they took so long to communicate this, they shouldn't only rely on the current AQ results. One compromise that could be fair is to give alliances the higher ranked rewards between this week & last. For example if you ranked 10th this week but 5th last week, you would receive the 5th place rewards. But if you ranked 5th this week and 10th last week, you'd get the 5th place rewards.

That way alliances either get their typical AQ rank rewards or possibly better. They should also refund all map costs for the week and maybe even make next week free as a sign of good faith.

@Kabam Miike @Kabam Zibiit

On Sunday I suggested a compromise solution I believed was fair: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/474923#Comment_474923

Short summary: pretend peak milestones actually went live this week, and award everyone the appropriate milestone and rank rewards they would have gotten had they replicated their performance last week, ignoring everything that happened this week. Then refund all map costs (and potions if possible) for this current week calling it a wash.

It is not perfect, but it solves many problems simultaneously. Everyone is likely to get more rewards than they would have otherwise because peak milestone rewards and their associated rank rewards are higher than the current system. But Kabam can't complain about that being a problem, because those are essentially the rewards were were supposed to get anyway this week. It addresses the question of alliances getting promoted in bracket from last week: since the peak milestone system addresses bracket promotion implicitly in how the reward scale. No one would get "penalized" or lose out on the opportunity of being promoted. And it treats all alliances in this week as if the entire week was messed up and shouldn't be trusted for the purposes of ranking. It returns all costs to alliances so no alliance pays more than any other, and since everyone's rewards were so low anyway during the normal bracket week it any alliance that decided not to do anything at all would not be at too much of a disadvantage to any other alliance that decided to go all out anyway.

There are a few odd corner cases where alliances could have been disadvantaged by this system I will admit, but I think it is reasonably fair to 99.9% of all alliances, and the rest could be handled on a case by case basis.

Vale84

DNA3000 wrote: »

Kabam Lyra wrote: »

Hi all!

We've posted an update on the resolution for this issue in this announcement thread. Thanks for your patience as we worked on this issue!

I'm sorry, but your announced compensation solution is extremely inadequate in one specific way. It states that rank rewards for the week will be calculated based on the point totals earned by the alliances in this week without acknowledging the problems during this week. This means if an alliance accidentally started the wrong map because they were defaulted to Map 2, they will be at a significant disadvantage compared to other alliances in the same bracket. And if an alliance chose not to start when they saw the problem thinking Kabam would fix it quickly, they would also be at a points disadvantage. And worse: Kabam officially told alliances that they were "free to continue" running AQ, implying that it was optional whether to continue or not and which maps to run. So any alliance that chose to interpret that statement as continuing to run AQ was optional would be in even worse shape.

If Kabam believed this was ever going to be a reasonable option to consider, they should have *immediately* told alliances that they MUST continue running AQ to the best of their ability, because failing to do so would result in them getting penalized relative to all other alliances. I cut the mods a significant amount of slack in not being in a position to clearly inform the players about what was going to happen here until a decision had been made, but that does not mean it is remotely fair to players to leave them in the dark as to what they were supposed to be doing, then decide that the compensation for the problem will involve measuring how well they did during the problem.

I'm afraid this is extremely black and white to me. This is punting the problem without trying to address the confusion that alliances experienced during the problem and the potential problems of map defaults being reset causing alliances to accidentally start the wrong map. These are all problems generated explicitly by an avoidable error on the part of Kabam, and Kabam should feel responsible to address them.

It is pretty disappointing that in this case, the optimal decision the players could have made in this situation was to completely ignore everything Kabam said from the moment the problem was detected and presume that no compensation at all was coming, and play as if it was the players' responsibility to address the problems the bug created themselves. Because ironically, the compensation packages essentially implicitly makes this presumption.

honestly at this point i'd tend to believe they pushing this to force ppl to spend resources and run map 6 for the reminder of the cycle despite ending rewards in the first 40 mins of day 1. Cause as negative as one can be there is no way a group of people can hold a meeting to compensate their customers and literally come out with the single, unique solution able to disappoint them all.

I guess further compensation is gonna need energy refills at a measely 5 energy per step, makes sense atm.

Nick_Caine_32

@Kabam Miike @Kabam Wolf @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Ahab @Ad0ra_ you waited until 3 maps into the AQ week after an initial vague answer, 500+ comments of people asking for clarification, and tons of users saying they defaulted to lower maps due to your error, and had to decide for themselves which maps to play the rest of the week. You then come on now and picked literally the worst possible option? We’re being punished for something we had ZERO control or answers on! I am so upset about this right now I don’t even know what to do. I have no faith in this game team or company to ever do the right thing again. My group is almost guaranteed to drop a tier for no reason at all, for things we had no control over. How is this fair? How can you all possibly be so tone deaf you didn’t even read all of the discussions on here saying the issue with what you just decided? Honestly, it feels like a slap in the face. I feel insulted. My alliance feels cheated. The level of discourse right now is worse than at any time I have ever played this game over the last 3 years. Why can’t you just be fair and roll the brackets back to the previous week? Why will no moderator answer our question and acknowledge we had nothing to go on, and that “feel free to play the week” was not any detail we needed to understand this week would actually count toward our placement? If your intent was to demoralize and break the last tiny bit of goodwill this game and you all had, then you succeeded. Honestly we were in expert tier all season and at this point I don’t even care anymore. That’s how broken this game is at this point. I’m disappointed and you all should be ashamed at this and many decisions lately. We deserve better.

BigTuna13

PLEASE READ!!!

Guys this is a perfect example showing that they do not take any advice or reference to the player base. These forums are a sham. If you truly want to display your frustration...STOP SPENDING MONEY.

Listen, keep playing, crank out arena, collect shards, do AQ, but STOP spending your actual money. If a significant number of the player base stops giving them dollar after dollar, they may have to look to other ways to re-establish player loyalty. If not, then the only answer is to stop playing altogether.

DNA3000

Vale84 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Kabam Lyra wrote: »

Hi all!

We've posted an update on the resolution for this issue in this announcement thread. Thanks for your patience as we worked on this issue!

I'm sorry, but your announced compensation solution is extremely inadequate in one specific way. It states that rank rewards for the week will be calculated based on the point totals earned by the alliances in this week without acknowledging the problems during this week. This means if an alliance accidentally started the wrong map because they were defaulted to Map 2, they will be at a significant disadvantage compared to other alliances in the same bracket. And if an alliance chose not to start when they saw the problem thinking Kabam would fix it quickly, they would also be at a points disadvantage. And worse: Kabam officially told alliances that they were "free to continue" running AQ, implying that it was optional whether to continue or not and which maps to run. So any alliance that chose to interpret that statement as continuing to run AQ was optional would be in even worse shape.

If Kabam believed this was ever going to be a reasonable option to consider, they should have *immediately* told alliances that they MUST continue running AQ to the best of their ability, because failing to do so would result in them getting penalized relative to all other alliances. I cut the mods a significant amount of slack in not being in a position to clearly inform the players about what was going to happen here until a decision had been made, but that does not mean it is remotely fair to players to leave them in the dark as to what they were supposed to be doing, then decide that the compensation for the problem will involve measuring how well they did during the problem.

I'm afraid this is extremely black and white to me. This is punting the problem without trying to address the confusion that alliances experienced during the problem and the potential problems of map defaults being reset causing alliances to accidentally start the wrong map. These are all problems generated explicitly by an avoidable error on the part of Kabam, and Kabam should feel responsible to address them.

It is pretty disappointing that in this case, the optimal decision the players could have made in this situation was to completely ignore everything Kabam said from the moment the problem was detected and presume that no compensation at all was coming, and play as if it was the players' responsibility to address the problems the bug created themselves. Because ironically, the compensation packages essentially implicitly makes this presumption.

honestly at this point i'd tend to believe they pushing this to force ppl to spend resources and run map 6 for the reminder of the cycle despite ending rewards in the first 40 mins of day 1. Cause as negative as one can be there is no way a group of people can hold a meeting to compensate their customers and literally come out with the single, unique solution able to disappoint them all.

In another thread I mentioned that this solution probably doesn't disappoint everyone. Any alliance who noticed the problem, didn't trust the game client to default to the correct map, presumed no compensation was coming and so pushed on normally, and didn't trust what Kabam had to say about being given the option to continue running AQ or not, actually makes out well with the compensation package. They will likely get higher rank rewards than normal, and they are likely getting more milestone rewards than normal. And the only problem is, Kabam is saying that players who don't trust either the game or the employees, will be rewarded for that distrust.

That seems to be counter-productive to trying to cultivate a player community of less antagonistic people, but as I've never run a multimillion dollar mobile game company before it is possible this is a long game trick I'm unaware of.

Animejay70

How does a company making this much revenue not have a solution like this?

Are there no backups of the data? If not, then someone needs to be fired. Plain and simple.

TyEdge

Hey,

If anyone sees a post saying Kabam handled this well, please @ me. And not one from GW. A real poster.

BigDaddyJoe

This is how most of us feel @kabam ... that’s a perfect business strategy aye. I see nothing good coming from these last couple weeks. Trust / transparency is completely thrown out the window at this point. Will we continue playing this free to play game? Yea 😏 but will we spend any real money? Not this guy and I’m sure there’s quiet a few others that feel the same. Wow I can’t believe it, actually I can lol nothing surprises me anymore. Whoever the coach is that’s calling the shots for “the team” good job 😂😂😂 you are digging a hole that’s getting deeper daily. Just sayin. Constructive feedback is all I’m giving

Asmodeyus

DNA3000 wrote: »

RogerRabs wrote: »

Ideally because they took so long to communicate this, they shouldn't only rely on the current AQ results. One compromise that could be fair is to give alliances the higher ranked rewards between this week & last. For example if you ranked 10th this week but 5th last week, you would receive the 5th place rewards. But if you ranked 5th this week and 10th last week, you'd get the 5th place rewards.

That way alliances either get their typical AQ rank rewards or possibly better. They should also refund all map costs for the week and maybe even make next week free as a sign of good faith.

@Kabam Miike @Kabam Zibiit

On Sunday I suggested a compromise solution I believed was fair: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/474923#Comment_474923

Short summary: pretend peak milestones actually went live this week, and award everyone the appropriate milestone and rank rewards they would have gotten had they replicated their performance last week, ignoring everything that happened this week. Then refund all map costs (and potions if possible) for this current week calling it a wash.

It is not perfect, but it solves many problems simultaneously. Everyone is likely to get more rewards than they would have otherwise because peak milestone rewards and their associated rank rewards are higher than the current system. But Kabam can't complain about that being a problem, because those are essentially the rewards were were supposed to get anyway this week. It addresses the question of alliances getting promoted in bracket from last week: since the peak milestone system addresses bracket promotion implicitly in how the reward scale. No one would get "penalized" or lose out on the opportunity of being promoted. And it treats all alliances in this week as if the entire week was messed up and shouldn't be trusted for the purposes of ranking. It returns all costs to alliances so no alliance pays more than any other, and since everyone's rewards were so low anyway during the normal bracket week it any alliance that decided not to do anything at all would not be at too much of a disadvantage to any other alliance that decided to go all out anyway.

There are a few odd corner cases where alliances could have been disadvantaged by this system I will admit, but I think it is reasonably fair to 99.9% of all alliances, and the rest could be handled on a case by case basis.

Its not a bad solution overall and i could completely get behind this except fot one aspect. This has happened before and their solution was that current week (2nd)doesnt count, next cycle (3rd) will be reset standings to week before error (1st). Replace the deficit of glory, map crystals, and 3rd week is now free.

That kind of set a standard.

BigDaddyJoe

Realize the forums are just a small part of the community. For every one of us here complaining there’s another 29 in our alliance that gets info from us in most cases.

V1PER1987

DNA3000 wrote: »

Vale84 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Kabam Lyra wrote: »

Hi all!

We've posted an update on the resolution for this issue in this announcement thread. Thanks for your patience as we worked on this issue!

I'm sorry, but your announced compensation solution is extremely inadequate in one specific way. It states that rank rewards for the week will be calculated based on the point totals earned by the alliances in this week without acknowledging the problems during this week. This means if an alliance accidentally started the wrong map because they were defaulted to Map 2, they will be at a significant disadvantage compared to other alliances in the same bracket. And if an alliance chose not to start when they saw the problem thinking Kabam would fix it quickly, they would also be at a points disadvantage. And worse: Kabam officially told alliances that they were "free to continue" running AQ, implying that it was optional whether to continue or not and which maps to run. So any alliance that chose to interpret that statement as continuing to run AQ was optional would be in even worse shape.

If Kabam believed this was ever going to be a reasonable option to consider, they should have *immediately* told alliances that they MUST continue running AQ to the best of their ability, because failing to do so would result in them getting penalized relative to all other alliances. I cut the mods a significant amount of slack in not being in a position to clearly inform the players about what was going to happen here until a decision had been made, but that does not mean it is remotely fair to players to leave them in the dark as to what they were supposed to be doing, then decide that the compensation for the problem will involve measuring how well they did during the problem.

I'm afraid this is extremely black and white to me. This is punting the problem without trying to address the confusion that alliances experienced during the problem and the potential problems of map defaults being reset causing alliances to accidentally start the wrong map. These are all problems generated explicitly by an avoidable error on the part of Kabam, and Kabam should feel responsible to address them.

It is pretty disappointing that in this case, the optimal decision the players could have made in this situation was to completely ignore everything Kabam said from the moment the problem was detected and presume that no compensation at all was coming, and play as if it was the players' responsibility to address the problems the bug created themselves. Because ironically, the compensation packages essentially implicitly makes this presumption.

honestly at this point i'd tend to believe they pushing this to force ppl to spend resources and run map 6 for the reminder of the cycle despite ending rewards in the first 40 mins of day 1. Cause as negative as one can be there is no way a group of people can hold a meeting to compensate their customers and literally come out with the single, unique solution able to disappoint them all.

In another thread I mentioned that this solution probably doesn't disappoint everyone. Any alliance who noticed the problem, didn't trust the game client to default to the correct map, presumed no compensation was coming and so pushed on normally, and didn't trust what Kabam had to say about being given the option to continue running AQ or not, actually makes out well with the compensation package. They will likely get higher rank rewards than normal, and they are likely getting more milestone rewards than normal. And the only problem is, Kabam is saying that players who don't trust either the game or the employees, will be rewarded for that distrust.

That seems to be counter-productive to trying to cultivate a player community of less antagonistic people, but as I've never run a multimillion dollar mobile game company before it is possible this is a long game trick I'm unaware of.

Sadly this is true. We made a decision to keep the status quo because, Kabam. I do feel slightly bad for those that decided not to run AQ and moreso for those who were defaulted to Map 2 and didn’t notice. And my following statement only strengthens your case, but anyone who has been around long enough should not be surprised by this. It’s a longstanding pattern of disrespect and incompetence that makes something like this just another drop in the bucket so to speak.

ASV27

Kabam Lyra wrote: »

Hi all!

We've posted an update on the resolution for this issue in this announcement thread. Thanks for your patience as we worked on this issue!

Luckily our alliance didn't trust you would do the right thing so we've been doing map 5. We'll prolly be top ~50 now, which is great for us and screws over sooo many people.

cab55

We decided to stop and take a break based in what you said before, we made map 5 on day one and later stopped.
Now I don't care if we don't get compensation, after all we did nothing this week
But the frustrating part is that now we wil get demoted because you changed the speech at midpoint.

But before a rant I want to know: are you going to implement the new system in the next series of AQ starting on Sunday? Because in that case there won't be demotions and it will be fine for us, but if you make us start from the previous tier it will be unfair with us and with several alliances that have been working hard in previous series.

I hope you realize you screw half the people in here just because you are terrible informing about things.

Buttehrs

So my alliance just got 3 map 5 Crystal's. But 0 glory. Wtf is going on kabam

TyEdge

Map 5 crystals were for the 6/29 outage.

rnr87

That's from last weeks down time not this aq

Fantasy_91

Buttehrs wrote: »

So my alliance just got 3 map 5 Crystal's. But 0 glory. Wtf is going on kabam

That was for their outgage on day 1 of last week AQ.

Kpatrix

I'm dumbfounded. We get one response from a mod at closing time telling us about their one size fits all half a$$ solution and then radio silence as they all head out for happy hour drinks high fiving each other over the record shattering screwup this aq has become.

While most people take pride in doing something positive, it seems like these guys get off on their own incompetence.

DrZola

Two major game issues this week.

Solutions: (1) Incompetence; (2) Cowardice.

Dr. Zola

AerialFolly

I’ve lost what little respect I had left for the forum mods. And if you are just regurgitating the messsge from the game team I have lost respect for them and even more for you because you didn’t have the backbone to stand up and make a coherent message to the community.

This is insulting and shows he true colors of Kabam. For shame...shame.

You put out a confusing message then followed it up with a snipe answer to the community. I constructively ask that you reevaluate your communication plan and come back with something better.

DNA3000

DrZola wrote: »

Two major game issues this week.

Solutions: (1) Incompetence; (2) Cowardice.

Dr. Zola

I wouldn't go that far. What I see and have been seeing recently are symptoms of what I would characterize as stubbornness. Beyond that, I'm not sure what I should say about it.

Dexman1349

DNA3000 wrote: »

DrZola wrote: »

Two major game issues this week.

Solutions: (1) Incompetence; (2) Cowardice.

Dr. Zola

What I see and have been seeing recently are symptoms of what I would characterize as stubbornness.

You misspelled profit.

Kabam right now:
tenor.gif?itemid=3409084

Svain

DNA3000

Dexman1349 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

DrZola wrote: »

Two major game issues this week.

Solutions: (1) Incompetence; (2) Cowardice.

Dr. Zola

What I see and have been seeing recently are symptoms of what I would characterize as stubbornness.

You misspelled profit.

Kabam right now:

Game development studios are full of employees who do not in general share the profits of the game. Netmarble probably cares how much money MCOC makes, but for many of the developers it is probably the second most important thing to them. The most important thing to them is probably authorship.

At the end of the day do you want to be known as a small cog in a big wheel in a machine that made a hundred million dollars, or do you want to be known as someone who made an important wheel in a machine that made ten million dollars? Sometimes, when I struggle to understand what a game developer is doing, I remember that it is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.

Plus, have you ever seen a game developer's resume? They list all the things they made. They do not say whether or not players liked those things. Authorship.

ItsTheBroski

Kabam, with all the errors and mistakes you have made recently, I think it's seriously time for you guys to change. All the errors etc before was alright, I didn't mind it much. It didn't effect me much. But this big big error in AQ is what seriously got under my (AND MANY OTHERS) skin. I'm not someone that cares much about compensation, It's nice to receive something every now and then but it's not something I'm greedy about. But what seriously got to me was the way you treated this "AQ Bracket Issue".

Kabam, you basically stated that you guys messed up and that there would be no fix because there was none available. With this information stated, you told us to run AQ if we choose to. Then come back 2 days later and tell us "Oh by the way, we will be giving out rewards based off your points". HOW IS IT OKAY to say "You can finish AQ if you CHOOSE" and then turn around and say that rewards will be based on if you did? That's simply not okay Kabam.

I normally don't get mad, this time though you guys struck a nerve and I HIGHLY believe I'm not the only one. Go forward Kabam, not backwards......

Asmodeyus

DNA3000 wrote: »

DrZola wrote: »

Two major game issues this week.

Solutions: (1) Incompetence; (2) Cowardice.

Dr. Zola

I wouldn't go that far. What I see and have been seeing recently are symptoms of what I would characterize as stubbornness. Beyond that, I'm not sure what I should say about it.

I have to agree with the incompetence here but not as harshly as it sounds. (And correct wording eludes me right now) It also wasnt the mods fault for delivering the message. It was the team deciding this and telling two different mods to announce two contradicting responses. One for wait till the end of the week, the other to push out an incompetent resolution without having acknowledged the very first complaints. (The default was changed we didnt notice, we're locked in) This made this solution biased and unacceptable right from the start as it penalizes those that caught the error first and reported it.

edit: typos that i managed to catch

k666k

We started map 3 also believing it wouldnt affect our rewards as when this happened previously they c9mpensated with the rewards from the previous AQ series, beyond a joke right now!

Run477

Sighsohard wrote: »

Run477 wrote: »

Sighsohard wrote: »

Run477 wrote: »

Fredhorst23 wrote: »

Run477 wrote: »

Sighsohard wrote: »

Without any confirmation of compensation for runnning map 5 for substandard rewards milestones and ranks my alliance has elected to do map 3. Should this come back to harm us that might be the straw that breaks the camels back. Most of us are sick of the issues with this game and if we’re firther punished because kabam cannot communicate in a timely or professional manner a dozen or so of us will likely throw in the towel and walk away from this game, finally. The community can only take so much man. There’s plenty of games out there that this kinda **** wouldn’t be a problem.

So our alliances that ran map 5 should be punished instead? I’m confused.

I think hes saying nobody should be punished. This week should basically not count.

I guess here’s the problem. Kabam has not told us anything. So some of us are running map 5 assuming we are going to get the rewards we should have got. Others are running map 3, I assume, thinking they will get the rewards they got last week. If this is accurate, whichever compensation kabam produces is going to tick people off. And it could have all been avoided if one mod would have came on here and just told everyone what the outcome would be.

Yea I’m saying no one should be punished. They should give every alliance double what they got the previous week and refund all map start prices from this week

That would be pretty fair imo.

Yes and no. It’s a lot of time spent by the map 5 people. You can say that map 5 crystals are better than map 3 crystals. But honestly, I don’t need t4cc as much as I need t1a and alliance potions. I would have rather been running map 3 if I was going to just be getting map 5 rank rewards regardless. It’s definitely a great outcome for the people that didn’t run map 5 all week.

I said pretty fair. Not perfect. What’s your idea of what they should do that would be more fair than my suggestion?

Give me 50k glory sounds great...

I think the fair thing would be that kabam gives the rewards that should have been earned based on scores run. So if we run 5 days of map 5, we should get the rank rewards for that based on ournorestige plus whatever aq rank we get. T

unknown

This content has been removed.

k666k

I dont think anyone actually thinks through the other issues that occur from these mistakes, they address the initial issue without considering the knock on effects, for example map 2 set as default instead of map 5 and ppl click without checking, ppl assume it will be like last time this happened when they compensated with the previous AQ series rewards, and also the time it took to give answers.
These issues should take priority and we should be given more information as and when it comes.
It was implied that the performance this AQ series was not going to be relevant in the initial post, you cant contradict public statements like that.