Postscript: Bugged Falcon rewards timer

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Events, Tournaments, and Missions
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I’ve now gone several rounds via email with D3’s customer support about the bugged Falcon covers awarded to first-place finishers in the Doctor’s Orders tournament. They are obviously not going to revoke erroneously awarded Falcon covers from those who received them, as everyone who did has now been given the Magneto covers they missed out on, whether they filed a ticket or not. Likewise, it is clear to me now that D3 refuse to give Falcon covers to those who won Magneto covers in other award tiers.

I know many of you think I’m just a whiner. I know many of you think that Falcon is a comparatively weak character, and therefore this doesn’t matter. I know many of you think that it’s completely fair that some players receive bonus awards. Here’s why your wrong on all counts:

Eventually, the first-place reward bug is going to hand out erroneous rewards that make a much bigger difference, and if D3 can’t or won’t do anything about it, that’s a problem.

The Doom tourney was not the first, second, or even third tourney in which the first-place finishers did not receive the correct “rewards from the previous rank,” despite the fact that this bug was reported as fixed several patches ago. Clearly, then, the question is not “Will this happen again?” but “When will this happen again?”

What if it happens for the last PvP tournament in the current PvP season? Ostensibly, they could hand out 3 10-packs of heroic tokens for free. They could hand out an extra Nick Fury cover for free. Looking to the past, what if this had happened with Lazy Thor several weeks ago instead of Falcon? How would you have felt if you were struggling along in a God of Thunder or Divine Champions tourney with your boosted 134 3/3/3 LThor while facing boosted 173 3/4/4 LThors, knowing that those players got two extra covers for free that you couldn’t get without spending $20? What if they had used those extra covers to hit a couple of 1100 rewards and were running a boosted 212 3/5/5 LThor that you could not have gotten? A little different than Falcon isn’t it?

And when it happens again, if past behavior is any indication, D3 will do nothing about it except to hand out more stuff to the people who got the free bonus stuff in the first place. All without any official announcement or recognition. (I know at this point some of you will say that I should stop whining and win 1st place every tourney just in case; that’s all well and good, and I certainly could, but that doesn’t correct the imbalance for the portion of the playerbase which necessarily doesn’t finish in 1st place.)

Now let’s look at the reasons why D3 may not have been willing to correct the bugged Falcon reward, either by removing the erroneously rewarded covers or awarding covers to everyone else. As I see it, there are three possible reasons: 1) they do not have the manpower; 2) it would be difficult to remove covers, and they are too lazy; or 3) they do not care one whit about competitive balance or fairness in their game. One of those reasons is at least excusable, but all are problems, because all of the conditions would likely be unchanged the next time the bug happens.

Look, I recognize that all games have bugs. The difference is how companies handle those bugs when they hit. I have no idea what D3’s staff is like. I have no idea who made the decision about how to handle the bugged Falcon rewards, or if a centralized decision was even made at all. There has, however, been absolutely no public recognition or statement about the bugged rewards, nor has there been any promise to remedy it in even a smaller way. They could, for instance, have announced a promise to offer an extra set of Falcon covers as rewards over and above what they would have offered normally, so that those who didn’t get the unfair bonus would not be stuck two covers down for quite so long. But instead they have said and done nothing. I’m not in the gaming industry, but I’ve been a customer for about 35 years now, and that strikes me as extremely poor customer service and even worse community management.

I enjoy the game. I never even considered quitting over this error. I know that I’ll eventually finish my Falcon. Maybe, for those reasons, I’m part of the problem. Why would D3 expend the manpower and resources to remedy a failure like this if none of their playerbase is going to leave anyway?

Tell me, though, wouldn’t this be a better game if they did man up and fix mistakes, though?

Flame away.

(tl;dr: The first-place reward bug will eventually hand out something much more game-breaking, and if they’re not fixing the little errors, will they be willing or able to fix the big ones?)

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tl;dr slippery slope argument

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Not recalling the free Falcons does not imply they aren’t going to work on fixing the prize issue.

Would I have liked 2 extra Falcon covers? Yes. Would I have pushed to first if I knew they were there? Yes. Is it a bit unfair? Yes. Do I care that much? Nope.

It definitely didn’t have any major repercussions on results in Top Gun either due to kyipgate.

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They thought they fixed the prize issue before.

Would I have liked 2 extra Falcon covers? Yes. Would I have pushed to first if I knew they were there? Yes. Is it a bit unfair? Yes.

I obviously feel exactly the same.

Do I care that much? Nope.

I obviously do care, because…

It definitely didn’t have any major repercussions on results in Top Gun either due to kyipgate.

…while it didn’t have repercussions on Top Gun, it could absolutely have repercussions in the future. The indication that D3 doesn’t care about fair rewards is disturbing.

EDIT: Simply saying, “Look, we tinykittied up, we’re sorry, but here’s what we’re going to do about it” would make such a world of difference.

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If you’ve been a video game customer for 35 years, then you know that video game companies used to have ZERO customer service, because once they put the cartridge/cd in the box, they never had to do anything about it again. Plenty of games with gamebreaking bugs never got patched or updated. And oh well, you’re out your $50.

But back to the topic on hand:

I think the best way to think about this that hasn’t already been stated is how the U.S. judicial system handles court cases, especially when suing for financial rewards. The goal is to make each part “whole”. That means as close as possible to the state they would have been in if the even had never happened. In an ideal world, that means the extra Falcon covers getting removed. A major reason they can’t do that is because the Falcon covers would have then affected every subsequent roster decision made by the players who received it. Did they change who why were going to pump iso into? What matches to play? Who else to level? Sell off a character/cover? It’s impossible to undo all that, and an attempt would lead to further disruption in the affected players. They’d be taken farther from being made “whole”.

Giving extra covers to those who won Magnetos, but didn’t place first, would also be taking players further away from being made “whole”. If you give it to all the top 10 players, or all the top 50/100 players (I can’t remember what the threshold was), then why wouldn’t the other 490 or 400/450 players complain? Then you give Falcon covers to the entire player base. Is that being made whole?

This mistake only affected the 1st place winners. Were other players promised something that they did not receive? No, they received exactly the prize they were promised.

Sometimes, the best way to minimize the effect an error has on the game is to ignore it. Any other response would have further implications.

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I’m pissed that my 1* tokens are bugged and didn’t give me as much of an advantage as the next guy who got better covers . . .

move on please, the issue was resolved

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The rest of your argument aside, this last line is just excellent customer service 101. It’s a basic and required rule in organizations that are considered to have top-notch CS. The good will you get from giving a little extra to everyone will generally outweigh the negative reaction to doing nothing.

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Please. Standard tokens are not bugged, they are random.

How exactly was this resolved?

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#1 reason why this issue is way less of a problem than everyone is making it out to be.

I got 1st place. Yes, I received extra falcon covers. Yes, I won 1st place in falcon tourney. I’m also gonna win 1st place in next tourney. And the next 1. And the next 1.

You know what’s not gonna change me getting 1st place in 9 of every 10 tourneys I compete in? Taking away 2 extra falcon covers I was accidentally given. You could take me down to a single falcon cover from my 4 and take away his buff from my falcon and no one else’s and guess what? I’m still gonna win 1st place.

Those extra covers didn’t mean shit to me, nor did they to probably 80% of the people who got 1st.
We win 1st because we been playing this game for a LONG time. We have invested time and/or money, and to put it most simply, we are just better at it than the rest.

D3 could spend all this time and effort you speak of to take away out falcons. It would be wasted time because we are all still gonna win.

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With something like this (and ESPECIALLY with something like the recent server crap-out) you do something like “give the promised rewards to the players who didn’t get the promised rewards IN ADDITION TO any rewards they did or didn’t get, and give the entire playerbase 500 HP as consolation for the error.” That’s the way every subscription or IAP game company I know of handles something like this.

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Yes. You randomly got something better than the next guy from a token.

I randomly benefited by getting a cover from a bug and the apology I got from the Devs afterwords along with the cover I wanted and had to wait for a few extra days for.

Point is that it’s not an issue that gives anyone who received them any kind of advantage worth a damn. 2500hp argument is a joke because many people don’t buy covers and most of the people who won these wouldn’t have paid 2500 for them anyhow.

And D3 doesn’t have unlimited resources for manually fixing every single complaint players like you have. They need to approach these whenever they can with broad sweep repairs which doesn’t included hoping .2% of the player base got something accidentally so lets give it to everyone.

Most people would rather they put their energy into fixing real issues and creating new interesting/exciting content

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@gamar

That’s the system I’m used to. Any time there’s a large span of down time or a big error there’s usually premium currency handed out to player base. This company doesn’t seem to follow that route because not doing so doesn’t seem to effect their retention, the 1 point I do believe that the OP got correct.

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More power to you, Psyko, but that’s not the point. The point is fairness, customer service, and community management. When an NFL team is winning a string of Super Bowls, if the league accidentally gives that team two sets of rings, do they just laugh at the other teams and fans and say, “Don’t worry about it, sweetie, they’re better than you and they’re just going to win next year anyway?”

Agreed. You do SOMETHING. Back in the day, when WoW would occasionally go down for a day or most of it, Blizzard would give game time.

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Yeah I agree with that point. They should make up for their errors in some way.

The part I disagree about is it having a big effect on the game because I don’t believe this particular error caused much problems. Other errors in the past, however, (can’t think of specifics right off hand) have had a bigger effect and got the same silent treatment. That’s where I believe the issue is.

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Random tokens are random.

Bugs are not random, they are caused, which creates accountability.

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note: added emphasis is mine
I think this is the crux of my issue with D3 and why I’m unlikely to spend money on this game (which I guess means they will just ignore me since I don’t matter to them, but it’s a forum so I’ll say it anyway). I don’t mind that little bugs like this crop up, or that they said they fixed it, but now it’s back. It’s the total lack of communication that really bothers me. An acknowledgment of the bug happening again and claiming they are working to fix it goes a long way. There are several other things going on in the game that we continue to hear nothing about from them. I don’t expect them to come out and tell us their scaling, rubberband, or matchmaking algorithms, but it’d be nice to have a little announcement saying “hey we’re not quite happy with how X was this past tournament, so we’re changing it a little, please let us know what you think about it.” (I know IceIX did mention they have been fiddling with scaling some, but it’s still quite a mystery to everyone what is going on, and the fairly large negative response has apparently not warranted more communication on the matter).

Another example has been the progression rewards. The past 3 or 4 PvE have all had completely unreachable top rewards. We’ve all been complaining about this issue and have heard nothing from D3 about it. Not that I want them to admit fault to anything (like if their calculations for how many points people would grind is off), but it’d be nice to hear something from them like “the 3* cover in progression rewards is only meant to be achieved by the top .1% of all players and we are working on hitting this goal for every PvE.” Even more examples come to mind (where are they in the funbalancing/nerfing process?, any announcement about “kyipgate” (and Knock3rgate before that), etc.) but I’ll end the tirade here.

Maybe D3 owes us nothing in terms of communication, but as a (potential) customer, I would much prefer to know what direction the game is headed before deciding to spend money on the game. Even just knowing that they are a company who wants to keep its users/customers in the loop on what’s going on with the game would encourage me to reward them with some spending.

tldr: Lack of communication is the bigger large-scale issue to me than a couple covers handed out to the top finishers in one PvP

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I can agree with you on this. The Falcon covers in and of themselves are a drop in the bucket. Most errors, however, get the silent treatment (not all; some have been acknowledged and cured). My concern, however, is that they show no willingness to do ANYTHING for bugged tournament rewards, which COULD in the future be much, much worse than a couple of Falcon covers. Why play tournaments if the rewards might not be as advertised, and might be grossly unfair?

Look at it this way, what if SECOND THROUGH FIFTH got bonus covers? I’m pretty sure the first place finishers would be pissed.

And again, I’m not necessarily moaning here solely as a member of the wronged class. I’ve had my fair share of first-place finishes. I was shorted my 3000 ISO a couple times, put in a ticket, and got it. That’s an even smaller error, but in that case, I wound up with an extra 250 ISO, which is what the original bugged reward was. This is a chronic, recurring error that can apparently vary in size a great deal. Ignoring it and hoping it goes away does not seem like a very smart response on D3’s part.

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The people affected by the bug were given the correct covers in the end

Sorry for your inconvenience, keep the 2 covers you got accidentally

And they did apologize by email to the people affected directly by the bug

Giving everyone a freebie doesn’t fix the bug and with 110k+ active players, they’re not going to do anything manually

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Server downtime is something that affects every player though, causing them to not be able to play the game. This affecting ~2000 winners, or how every many brackets there were. I agree there should be compensation for people who are negatively affecting by a company error. It’s hard, in this particular case, to see how anyone else is materially, negatively affected. No one else lost anything. If it weren’t for the forums, no one would even know about this. One person might tell their alliance, and the rest of the alliance would say, “Cool!” And that’d be the end of it.

Fair isn’t about everyone getting the same. It’s about everyone getting what they need/deserve.

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I would agree with many of you that handing out currency or even covers might not be the most appropriate action in this case, although it would certainly be acceptable to most.

A point I made in the event thread but didn’t here bears mentioning, however: In a game that is about collecting [covers/cards/characters/gear/whatever], erroneously giving a portion of the playerbase 1/6 of one “collection” does affect every player.

To that end (as I did mention above), an appropriate action would have been a statement such as, “We’re sorry we gave some people free covers, we’re going to insert one more round of Falcon rewards than we had planned to so others won’t be behind.” How hard would that be?