21 replies to this topic

[Jaxson]

CaptC… as a BBE player for more than 18 months, I have seen the game through multiple lenses.  However, I am a little surprised that as a reputable moderator of the BBE forum you would choose to make incorrect assumptions about me instead of simply asking questions that you could have then used to accurately form a response.

 

Even though your questions are absent, I will still provide on-point responses.

 

1)  In the first words of my initial comment I thanked the BBE team for fixing the most recent BBA bug promptly on a holiday.  And I do so again.

 

2)  To your point on booking bug tickets, I have done just that.  In all, I have likely submitted nearly a dozen tickets on various problems... including one which was preventing me from being able to sign-in to the game.  While each received a response, I was never asked for more.  Indeed, on the sign-in problem I referred to I received a successful workaround not from support, but a veteran member of my own studio during a brief time I was able to sign-on and get into studio chat.

 

Now, it is certainly possible that support was working in the background to solve my problem without informing me (since I do click the checkbox allowing them to get into my account), and I commend them for doing so.  But in my experience, your allusion to how support tickets are handled Is not what I've experienced in the real world.

 

3)  Your comment about the miserliness of Misty may indeed be correct, but the demeaning statements directed at me in your third paragraph are unsupportable and inappropriate.  If you review my actual words you will notice that the subject of the sentence was "19 diamonds" not that diamonds are charged.

 

On Monday I spent 190 diamonds (10 tries = $2 USD) plus my daily free try to upgrade an item that I've been trying to upgrade through most of December without success.  In 11 tries, I not only failed to get an epic upgrade I didn't even receive a rare upgrade.

 

I am happy to buy diamonds because I recognize that maintaining the game and its servers require revenue.  While I may not be a whale purchaser like some, I have spent more on this game by far than I have for any AAA title that I've ever played.  And while BBE has improved over time, it is not -- and does not pretend to be -- equal to a AAA game.  It's FTP and diamond dependent and I knew that when I started playing.

 

Instead of assuming that I was somehow ideologically opposed to BBE making a profit, if you'd asked you would have found out that my issue was with the rate specific items are charged and the results gained. For 190 diamonds, I should have been able to BUY the item upgrade, not be without both the diamonds and upgrade.  Other examples of a whale-biased game economy are littered throughout BBE, in my opinion to its long-term detriment.

 

It is cheaper (and more profitable) to retain a pool of consistent low-level purchasers then it is to have to spend the ad dollars necessary to compensate for player churn in the hope of gaining a whale.  That is economics 101. 

[CaptC]

I meant no defamation, Jaxson. If I unintentionally disparaged you, I apologize. I will only say that if my tone was sharp, it was likely because I didn't see much humor in your earlier comments regarding the "constant diligence to playability by the game devs and support staff." The people that I work with definitely DO care, as do I.

 

At any rate, now that we have explained ourselves, perhaps we can just agree to be more careful to avoid giving offense unnecessarily?

 

 

As far as economics: Freemium games live on whales, just like casinos. Additional revenue from the rest of us is nice, but without the whales, they die. Of course, without the rest of us, the whales don't have a game to play. So it is an interesting balancing act. BBE does it pretty well.

 

Misty is stingy on purpose. Artificial scarcity is what drives whales to purchase. Understanding that doesn't make her any less infuriating though. 

 

But, just a question: You say you have been trying to upgrade that particular piece for most of December? I hope you meant to say equipment slot, and not actually the same piece. I surely hope you are not refining the same piece across multiple days. If so, you are hurting your odds of getting the refinement you want, since the old refinement from the previous day will remain. You only get two tries per 19 diamonds to get the desired result. Once I give up refining a piece, if it isn't what I want, I sell it. Another piece of gear will be along soon with similar or better stats. For the same price of 19 diamonds, I then get three shots at the desired result on a new piece.

 

As to bug reports: Thank you for posting tickets. Many don't, they just complain here and assume it will get fixed, which is why I emphasized that part.

 

I likely misunderstood part of your note. I thought you were saying you were still having regular crashes. Re-reading, I guess you were complaining that you apparently could not resist clicking the ranking screen regularly?  I admit, I had the same problem from time to time, and I felt rather annoyed at myself whenever I did.

 

Edited by CaptC, 03 January 2019 - 05:18 PM.