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Thread: Paying Customer's Views Part II

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
    Location
    Austin , Texas
    Posts
    145

    Default Paying Customer's Views Part II

    I have in the past written about the mistreatment of paying customers and all Evony members in general. My cries of frustration were garnished by the words of Dawnseeker, who gave a well written response that satisfied me and many others and left me to sit waiting patiently for the coming of Age II, as according to his words, all our cries for change would not come until Age II.

    So I wait patiently playing Age I and putting in my minimum of 3 - 4 hours per day tending to my account and vowing to myself that I will not spend more money until Age II is out and the changes that have been asked upon are implemented. While waiting I hear news of Age II beta being released and for testers to provide help to the development process. I for one did not really jump at the attempt to beta test Age II as I have been busy just keeping up with my Age I account. But, to my better judgment and an email from an Admin asking about helping with the beta test, I joined and began to help. This has been very taxing on myself as spending time in the beta test and continuing to upkeep my own account in Age I has been difficult to say the least. I have been busy building up my beta test account in order to properly test many of the functions of the game (I had beta tested Ultima Online prior to its sales release, so I did have beta testing experience). However, as of 2:00 AM -6GMT last night, my account on Age I has been suspended.

    First, I would like to explain that I understand that this suspension was a part of the big violation of TOS sweep that seems to be a monthly occurrence. And I would like to point out that a game like any other game on the "market" has a bottom line. That bottom line is to create profits. I and I'm sure many like me completely understand this and are willing to provide for a game such as Evony.
    -I personally have spent over $1500 U.S. and willing to spend more
    -Given countless hours of time
    -Provided "free" help to many other players in the form of information and problem solving (both in game and on these forums)
    -Have been an advocate for the improvement and continued development of Evony as a game that is both enjoyable to the players and profitable to the developers.

    But, for as much good as I do for this game and the people around me, I can be put on a suspension and possibly banned pending review. First of all, 99% of all the time I spend on my Age I account is spent doing nothing more than farming NPC's, I create troops primarily for the sole purpose of attacking level 10 npcs. I own 9 city and although the game encourages players to spend more money to attain higher ranks/titles, the game does not provide the means to properly utilize the amount of cities that is allowed. Currently, the more cities a player owns the more time that player must commit to the game in order to keep all cities at the same playing level as a city of another player that only has 1 or 2 cities. Secondly, I have been playing since the start of server 90 and have been a top player there since I began spending a large amount of money. I have since then continued to stay in the top ranks with steady growth and nothing out of the ordinary. As of last night, I have been playing on sever 90 for 4 months without any warnings, bans, or suspensions. Now, with my game play staying as steady as it has always been and without any change to my game play with the exception of beta testing Age II, I am finding myself in suspension/holiday mode. Personally I find this sort of mistreatment of a paying customer to be appalling and detrimental to the bottom line of the company of Evony, to continue growth and keep revenues flowing.

    I have in many occasions pointed out and suggested solutions to the growing issues that plague Evony, but it seems words are to no avail and the trend of mistreating customers and players alike will continue. I ask that Evony reconsider their actions and come up with a proper solution to the problems or they will create an even worse problem than the current. Setting the kind of precedence that attacks customers and players rather than finding a solution to the overall problems is one that is quite a "slippery slope."


    "If you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners corrupted from infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded, sire, but that you first make thieves and then punish them?" Thomas More, Utopia.

    Evony creates a game with numerous game flaws, then punishes customers and players for coming up with solutions to Evony's problems, then creates a which hunt which punishes potentially innocent customers and players in the name of the greater good. ( ever heard of the crusades and the knights templar? )

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Netherlands
    Posts
    156

    Default

    An active dev or patch team would require only a day or two (a slow or understaffed team would take a week at best) to fix issues like Evony has them in endgame. Especially because the changes are relatively simple to implement - whichever solution you choose.

    Either Evony is unwilling to patch, or simply has no control over the released game and cannot just put a dev to work on it. Even if there is another reason, the result is that I feel the customer is really the LAST priority of the company, but of course any company would deny this - completely logical.

    It is naive to think otherwise, really, especially after all I have seen on this forum in the past months...

  3. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by GeminEye View Post
    An active dev or patch team would require only a day or two (a slow or understaffed team would take a week at best) to fix issues like Evony has them in endgame. Especially because the changes are relatively simple to implement - whichever solution you choose.
    Which solutions do you suggest?

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Netherlands
    Posts
    156

    Default

    Which solutions do you suggest?
    The Game Suggestion forum is loaded with concise, complete and good solutions to the NPC farm issue compared to the defender's advantage. That is the endgame fix everyone is looking for - a way to keep playing the endgame without spending the majority of your time supporting your army.

    Many suggestions point out that lowering upkeep is no solution (greed: players will want more and the same problem arises with lower upkeep) but providing a rebalance in terms of defender's advantage and the use of different troop types is easily fixed. All that needs doing is slight tweaks and playtests with them - eg. archers walk faster or slower into combat, for example. It's a numerical change that would take two minutes of implementation, and maybe a day of simulated playtesting before it would be patched.

    Good devs understand their game and would have foreseen the endgame situation we have today, but alas. The least that should be done (or should HAVE been done ages ago) is a fix afterwards. But alas.

  5. #5

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    I completely agree with you Icer412 I've spent around 120 bucks so far obviously much less than you and for the second month in a row I've been banned, not told why, and summarily ignored by customer support. I haven't used any third party programs, I haven't done much at all except attack a few other players and mostly NPCs. I'm currently considering charging back the charges on my credit card because of this, the product I spend money on should be reasonably available to me. There should also be some sort of due process to these arbitrary bans that involves the defendant instead of just banning people for no reason and then ignoring them. That's going to hurt the bottom line of Evony, no matter what happens I plan on not spending anymore money on this game whether or not they get to keep the money I spent depends on how they handle this latest incident. I'm definitely fed up!

  6. #6

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    Who cares if you are a paying customer or not. That is totally irrelevant. If you want to complain about the fact that you have to farm all day, then there are plenty of other threads about this already. The fact is you were put on holiday because you were doing something suspicious with your account. Complaining that you have to farm all day sounds like your justification why you were doing something wrong.

    You keep starting one thread after another how you are being mistreated. The fact is you agreed to the terms of use when you started playing this game. Now it is time for you to deal with it. Evony has the right to run their business as they see fit. We can agree or disagree with how we think they are doing but they are the ones running it.

    If you think you are being wronged by them then file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. Starting one thread after another how you been wronged isn't going to get you anywhere.

  7. #7

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    its all very simple really ... i dont know about other servers - but my is slowly dying and with today's holidays fun imposed on 90% of best players ... well it will be completely dead soon ... good job Evony .... heard computer games are not healthy ... i guess u must care a lot then to sacrifice your revenues in order to protect our health and make us go and enjoy some other activities
    .... off to enjoy RL

  8. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by Anaea View Post
    its all very simple really ... i dont know about other servers - but my is slowly dying and with today's holidays fun imposed on 90% of best players ... well it will be completely dead soon ... good job Evony .... heard computer games are not healthy ... i guess u must care a lot then to sacrifice your revenues in order to protect our health and make us go and enjoy some other activities
    .... off to enjoy RL
    If 90% of the "best players" were involuntarily put into holiday mode, they can hardly be the "best" unless you mean the "best at breaking the rules", but then again, they got caught.
    But....the eternal ray of sunshine REALLY wanted to see you, so I helped brighten your day by removing the city from around you! ^.^

  9. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by brutis View Post
    ICER412 i completely agree with you. i have spent thousands of dollars here, and to be honest with i have been a victim of the *** user over 5 times, and after a years of getting beat down everytime i started to get up i decided enough is a enough,so i had 2 choices either quit a game that i love to play or give into the *** and protect my investment. i chose to protect my investment. 90 percent of the players that use the *** buy coins. the only thing they use the *** for is to have a big enough army to protect what they have invested so much time and money in, so in essence if we protect what we have spent so much time and money into we get ban. i for one am considering quiting and so are many other i can take my money elsewhere where i will be respected as a customer. i would really love to see evony make its own *** and charge for it. which is the only real solution to the problem that both sides will be more than happy with but u wont because evony doesnt listen to ideals that will make them real money
    possible solution, evony should allow us to select a City to be our capital. Capital should act like the last city, it is uncaptureable and it also should have 1/4 food consumption and double the population, if possible tripple.
    Assigning a Capital is semi permanent, and can only be changed once a month or if you buy an item that allows you to.
    This way you can invest as much as you want in this city.


    CAPITAL SOULD BE UN TELEPORTABLE. SO NO ONE CAN MASS TELE A CAPITAL OR ADVANCE TELE.

    Just a thought.
    Last edited by deadlysage; 02-26-2010 at 07:39 PM.

  10. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by deadlysage View Post
    possible solution, evony should allow us to select a City to be our capital. Capital should act like the last city, it is uncaptureable and it also should have 1/4 food consumption and double the population, if possible tripple.
    Assigning a Capital is semi permanent, and can only be changed once a month or if you buy an item that allows you to.
    This way you can invest as much as you want in this city.

    Just a thought.
    Thus giving everyone an unconquerable war city?

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