EF7-44D3-BDB4 which gives 202 gems.
Only works on German language servers, why again are we 2nd class citizens?
Printable View
EF7-44D3-BDB4 which gives 202 gems.
Only works on German language servers, why again are we 2nd class citizens?
+1
Seems German language servers are again being shown to have a special place.
When was it made available Nogbad2?
Hi guys,
We had three types of codes from Gamescom, which I will remind you is a primarily German event as it is held in Cologne. One code was redeemable on German servers and two codes were universally redeemable. There was something at Gamescom for all players rather than what is being suggested here.
Best,
BB_Alpaca
Alpaca, I'm sorry, that's not what you told us here http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/t...SO-at-Gamescom! on 16th August.
Yet again, we are clearly at the bottom of the heap, the German servers get codes like this, they get far more 'gift drops' for the most spurious of reasons "beginning of summer, end of summer, Angela merkel's birthday" etc... , yet we had to beg just for something to mark the 1st Anniversary here. Even the French servers have fared better in the past (like the fabulous 1000 gc plus buffs in April 2012), although these seem to have dried up of late as BB retreat further and further to the Vaterland.
We rarely get important news announcements passed down directly, instead having to relay on word of mouth and dodgy Google translations. Last week's maintenance fouling up the timers for the extra build slot on premium accounts being a classic case in point.
Surely our money is as good as anybody elses, especially considering the fact that we are expected to carry the 'problems' no other language server is expected to tolerate, you really should have a try playing a server which doesn't have 32 different chat channels, the difference in lag is remarkable.
We're not "suggesting" this at all, it's a fact. The German servers have a marked advantage over all others, up to date news, more gifts, Premium packs, and a helping hand every time there's an international competition.
So blatant, it's almost laughable.
I look forward to them showing similar largesse when our 2nd Anniversary approaches shortly.
That sort of contradicts itself, if there was something for everyone then the 220 gem code would work on all servers.Quote:
Originally Posted by BB_Alpaca
You also said in the post quoted by Nogbad something along the lines of "I can assure you it isn't favouritism." well yes it is again as the German servers were the only servers to get this code, which in my book is favouritism.
AS per something else you said "as I always pass on the feedback from these forums" Please pass on how angry we are that again the German servers have been favoured again.
All we are asking is to be treated equally.
And as for passing on feedback, did anybody bring up the continual ignoring of bugs on the test server, allowing them to go 'Live', as requested. Golden opportunity as SlasH was lurking around gamescom.
Sorry but we was told very firmly that information from gamescom obtained by other players was not to be talked about in these forums.
Who said this?Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorotheus
Also, the codes that were given out (by me at times) were scratched off the back of a card, I believe they were unique, could be wrong, never scratched one off myself, but were certainly intended for people who were there and made the trip to meet the BB_Team as a way to say "thanks" from what I understood.
That's from the Gamescom thread, and would seem to suggest that you had to attend to win free stuff.Quote:
Visit us in one of the time spans mentioned above and get some gifts.
Amongst other things, you can win free stuff for your game account. Check it out...
So I could have found myself there, picked up a scratchcard to win free stuff for my game account and then found it didn't work as I am a German speaking person with an account on the German servers...... nice.
Would be nice to get an update on activities coming out of Gamescom. Especially regards to bugs, game improvements, future direction etc.
Everyone I spoke to was told "DSO only". Can't vouch for when others were giving them out, but I'm pretty certain if you came to the team you'd have been asked which world you were on, which in your case would have been UK1.Quote:
Originally Posted by fishslice
As for feedback about where they are going, the Game Designers were really excited about Halloween, as you can see now a lot of cool new ideas going in there. They also mentioned about PvP being on the road map and being worked on, as seen as an announcement not so long ago mentions. But they're working away on it!
When I was there at the same time as the Designers, there was a German group there showing buildings they've made themselves (a lot like the ones Yoonooz has made here) to the designers but they were mostly talking in German, so couldn't really understand much, just bouncing ideas back and forth I believe.
Thanks peck_ed
Also, FYI, I can't redeem this, as it's a single person code and has already been redeemed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nogbad2
Worked fine for me, and it's already been passed around by word of mouth (as is the norm), and nobody yet has said it didn't work for them, but plenty of "dankes" in evidence.Quote:
Originally Posted by peck_ed
As I mentioned earlier, our 2nd Anniversary is rapidly approaching.
The French had theirs this week, and here is what we all got:
http://thesettlersonlinewiki.com/upl...72119Anniv.png
I do hope we see something similar at least this time around, last year our 'package' was way below those of France and Germany.
Today the US servers got exactly the same for their 2nd birthday. One hopes we are treated likewise.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nogbad
Well, Friday the 20th September, yet another surprise in the mail (German server).
Entitled "It's your lucky day!", it contained an extra 2 days of premium (If used correctly, that's big xp and loot).
No apparent reason for this latest largesse (as is often the way), but I suspect it may have originally been slated to appear on Friday 13th, which was the week before.
Getting an awful 'deja vu' feeling from the 1990s, when BB retreated to their german fanbase after S2 did not sell well elsewhere.
Not because we didn't want it, believe me some of us went to great lengths to obtain a copy, the real reason turned out to be the publisher they hired, Focus Multimedia, who failed to get copies into the shops. But it was us, the loyal fans who got punished with the abomination that was S3.
A big thanks to whoever edited out that nasty post, trying to hold a reasoned discussion here, did not appreciate what that guy said.
Thursday the 26th September:
"Aunt Wilhelmina came to stay on Tuesday and Wednesday, and left today of course bestowing gifts". (Really should get Graubart a copy of the IT Crowd)
Seems yet again she forgot her nieces and nephews over here. :(
http://thesettlersonlinewiki.com/upl...599AuntWil.png
.de had extended Maint on all worlds that ran over even the *extended*, http://forum.diesiedleronline.de/thr...n-Sonderzeiten the forum kinda exploded with it all. Seems Wilhelmina was dispatched with gifts to make it up.
I bet that german servers will get compensated for the server mess up and the Eu server will get nothing...
Those were all advertised well in advance, complete with warning that they may overrun, as each server got a database maintenance.Quote:
Originally Posted by Iolanthe
They even staggered them, over 3 days, so there were always servers up.
The news article announcing these is still on the homepage, just click the plus sign a few entries down.
And another.
Apparently, this time it might be a holiday somewhere, but it will be the weekend for everyone so have some more freebies.
http://thesettlersonlinewiki.com/upl...92morefree.png
They were, aye. But I'm having trouble seeing a problem with sending gifts based on how long the game was down (different worlds had different gifts) to players whose games were, in many cases, down for a very long time (in game-life.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Nogbad2Those were all advertised well in advance, complete with warning that they may overrun, as each server got a database maintenance.Quote:
Originally Posted by Iolanthe
They even staggered them, over 3 days, so there were always servers up.
The news article announcing these is still on the homepage, just click the plus sign a few entries down.
.de do often appear to be ahead of the game in a number of things, but I'm not at all sure this was one of those times. Just seems wise to keep the focus focused. So to speak.Quote:
World 4-7 - Tuesday - 01:00 - 20:30 clock clock
Start: Tuesday night at about 01:00 clock
End Date: Tuesday, about 15:00 clock 20:30
Adventure & Premium: maturities be extended
World 9, 1 to 3 - Wednesday - 01:00 - 21:00 clock
Start: Wednesday, at about 01:00 clock at night
End: Wednesday, at about 21:00 clock
Adventure & Premium: maturities be extended
World 8, 10 to 14 - Completed
Start: Tuesday night at about 01:00 clock
End Date: Tuesday, about 07:00 clock early
Adventure & Premium: maturities be extended
On all worlds - except 8 and 10-14 - there will be a database optimization.
Experience has shown that this can take a long time to complete.
Please direct your islands before servicing a correspondingly .
Original, as above
Edit: My original "all" should have read "many".
Iolanthe, by that reckoning, we should have had a very generous visit from "Aunt Wilhelmina" last week, as nobody was able to log in for a very long time.
There is no mention that these rewards were 'compensation' for anything, just the latest in a very long line of unexpected gifts that only seem to apply to a single language version.
Meanwhile, others seem to have been cut back, the French used to get the occasional largesse bestowed upon them, usually tied to certain holiday dates, or anniversaries of Settlers' milestones. They have now dried up, if you want to get ahead, the DSO version now seems to be the only way to go.
Interesting to see the lack of response from anyone at all from BB. Really says it all. Once my current supply of gems ends they will get no more money from me and lose another player unless we see parity with the German servers. Yes, designed etc in Germany but money spent on it worldwide. Be like Morrisons supermarket ony doing special offers in Bradford as that is where they have their HQ.
Come on BB reply and explain yourself.
Hey Nogbad, some players on .de were puzzled by Aunt Wilhelmina so she was explained:
Quote:
Originally Posted by BB_Pandur
On the mysterious humour of Uncles:
Spoiler
Please note: All quotes by BB_Pandur and players on the German servers have been dragged through Google Trans, my apologies to those who wrote perfectly reasonable sentences originally.
The following gift here (sent the 3rd of October) looks like it was for Unity Day, marking the reunification of Germany East and West. It's a fairly big deal and rightly so.
While it's clear .de have advantages other language versions don't I reckon we can better make that point by comparing major downtime with major downtime and National Holiday with National Holiday rather than just posting what one world received that another did not.
Regarding the mass crash of much of the EU, the Test server, and other games entirely last week, as far as I've seen no-one in Settlers has had any gifts relating to that. Nothing much has been said after:
Quote:
Originally Posted by BB_Alpaca
Nor have .de fared much better from what I've found:Quote:
Originally Posted by BB_AlpacaI understand! I wish I had more information to give, but that will likely follow on Monday next week (30.9.2013). Please keep an eye on this thread.Quote:
Originally Posted by lulu10093
Best,
BB_Alpaca
[27.09.13]
Again, I'm not saying it's an even playing field all round, just that it makes sense to be sure examples of the disparity are sound, these above just really don't seem to be.Quote:
Originally Posted by BB_Pandur
Iolanthe, read your earlier post, where you said Aunt Wilhemina was probably compensation for the announced outages.
No evidence at all that was the case, and certainly not the done thing elsewhere.
Just look at these freebies clocking up, pretty obvious only 1 language server is benefitting from this.
Those last Pandur quotes don't even seem related to this. Nothing about compensation at all.
As for national days, last year France got a very tasty package on 14/7, this year nothing. Same for their 1st anniversary of TSO, this year, nothing.
And as I asked Dante last year, if this is indeed the case, then lets pick a significant day, and 'honour' it.
That's why I pushed so hard over our 1st anniversary, and our 2nd is only 5-6 weeks away.
The fact remains there is NOT a level playing field, 1 set of servers are getting gifts and features that are not available to the rest of us, unless you can find a Pandur quote somewhere telling you where to buy the English version of the Premium packs?
Sorry Nogbad, you've lost me completely.
^^This is about the announced outages. "The content [of the gifts packages] only differ from world to world, depending on length of service."Quote:
Originally Posted by Iolanthe
The last Pandur quote is about the crash many worlds suffered last week, as are the two quotes from Alpaca directly above. You mentioned it here:
Let me say again:Quote:
Originally Posted by Nogbad
Things like the Retail Packs are an excellent example of an actual difference, so is something like "On National Holiday X .de received a, b, c, d." "On comparable National Holiday Y .com received only one of those four things."Quote:
Originally Posted by Iolanthe
So you see, I'm perplexed by being told to reread my own post and utterly unclear on why anyone should attempt to find quotes that don't exist.
You are missing the point.
These pictures are just the mere 'tip of the iceberg'. I have many, many more, this is just representative of the last few weeks.
The point is, there is clearly a 2 tier system being run in this game. All I want is to play the same game, whichever language I choose to play in, and receive equitable treatment in each.
Your last quote is just mixing up several examples, and obscuring things.
We get nothing here for 'National Holidays" (as far as I know, reunification isn't one anyway).
We get nothing for major downtime, and from what I can gather from your rather out of context partial translations from Pandur, it even raises another issue. If they can be bothered to warn 1 language version in advance, and yet still provide 'compensation' for this, surely it's common courtesy to do the same for all.
I was not surprised by last week's 'difficulties' in logging in, my spidey sense was already tingling that we were probably going to be hit with similar after the German announcement. Trouble is, we never knew when.
There is clear evidence that we are right at the end of the line when it comes to announcements, if such even get fed down at all, and quite often they aren't.
As for "Aunt Wilhemina", the text stated very clearly it was for "holidays", in some areas not universal to the german language area. Now we have forum entries claiming it to be compensation. Either way, it didn't happen here.
There have been many of these gifts with similar text, particularly common are "the beginning of summer", and "the end of summer".
These aren't "national holidays", and last time I checked, pretty much the entire planet could qualify for these. Germany does not have a monopoly on the seasons.
I'm not asking for continual 'freebies', all I'm asking is that if BB seem to feel it's necessary to bestow gifts to their players, then they should do so for ALL of them, not just the ones who live nearby.
The same goes for codes, you've probably seen the site where people have recorded every single code given, and it makes even more interesting reading. Take Gamescom for an example, after being told it was an "International Event" that happened to be held in Germany, when news broke of this extra code not available outside of DSO, the story got changed to it being an uniquely German event. Wonder why so many of our own people bothered attending then?
We are now almost at our 2nd anniversary here, yet it still seems that we are some inferior 2nd-class version, where problems that would not be welcomed elsewhere can be dumped. Last year quite a big thing was made of the 1st anniversaries, certainly in Germany and France, yet it took some considerable 'nudging' to get ours acknowledged, and even then it paled in comparison.
We still have no access to the Premium Packs, which is a crying shame and counter productive. The poor value replacement for the "Starter pack" ended up in Amazon's bargain bins to get rid of stocks, whereas people are still trying to find the original version, the premium Pack made much more sense, and could have provided a nice little income.
if you want proof on how much of a difference these things make, of the 5 servers I play, I have to make little effort to progress on one in comparison to the others. It has even caught up this one, which I have played for much longer, and invested in much more. With all the free high value buffs, and refills and resources that have just been given away, instead of working hard to make a balanced, productive economy, I literally only have to have 1 high level version of each building, and just drop the mega buffs upon it. i also have 5 extra premium days, again just given away in a mail, the moment I can find time to line up a few decent advs to utilise them, even this server will be left far behind.
Once more, the request is simple.
1 game, wherever you live and whatever language you speak.
The same benefits, the same availability of features and content, and the same information provided to all.
Our money is as good as anyone elses (better in fact, considering the gem pricing), please let us enjoy the same game and features.
Couldn't agree more.
I would love to see some official response to this post above mine from BB_Alpaca.
+1Quote:
Originally Posted by Benedicter
Hi all,
Lots of DE worlds suffered a huge amount of outage for a long time, far more comparatively to our instance's worlds' log-in issues the other week. As their worlds are much older than ours, some scripts we had to run took twice as long as they did on our servers, among other reasons. This is why they received compensation.
Reunification is a national holiday. As for other national holidays that apply to UK, if you suggest some you would like to celebrate in the game, I can see what I can do for everyone.
Re: Gamescom, yes, it's one of the biggest gaming conventions in the world, but the event was almost entirely in German and foreigners understood little of it (myself included, because my German is terrible). Obviously the largest majority of people we were visited by were German, so something was prepared for them, and we also had codes for international players too. For instance, if TSO were to come to the Eurogamer Expo, say, I doubt there would be a DE code.
Either way, please think about national holidays you would like to celebrate (for instance, perhaps Queen's Birthday).
Best,
BB_Alpaca
Nogbad I am agreeing with you, just not with your earlier approach.
While it's clear .de have advantages other language versions don't simply posting what the German servers had on a day other servers had nothing, as you did with their gifts of the 3rd, doesn't make a very solid point, it looks rather like if .gr (Greece) were upset because .net (US) had something for America's Independence Day. On the other hand, if these hypothetical .gr players posted both what .net had and what they had for a similar day to show there was a difference it would make a point that is much harder to brush off.
If you have "Aunt Wilhelmina's" holiday announcement that's grand, I haven't seen it and Pandur's posts, mangled by Google though they are, are what I have found. They are linked to the originals for both context and so that people may do their own translations.
Cheers Alpaca, this multi-tier "system" has been a thorn for a very long time, that non-.de worlds had to raise an unholy fuss just to get the chance to spend money on Nords 2 is mystifying, that information readily available on .de never makes it out to the rest of the world is terribly frustrating and the last time the Holiday aspect came up in this forum near the end of this thread it didn't get very far at all. It would also be lovely if something could be posted globally about the Euro-wide mass crash, this tendency to silence BB often adopts is so very rarely reassuring.
This all makes for very sad reading and answers seems to be evading the actual issues, as we've grown to expect here. Now you want suggestions of national holidays? National holidays are a matter of public record in any country. If there was any real desire for a level playing field, an equal sense of care for all nationalities that play the game, the developers would look up an equal number of holidays or events for themselves in each location and celebrate each with equal gusto, not because one country complains about unfair treatment, but because treating each country fairly is the right thing to do, and a great way to encourage people to invest time and money in the game. When unsure of how highly valued a holiday or event is to people, it's so very easy to just ask people in that country and use that information to decide which events might merit a celebration. Where nationalities are not well represented in the game, and lets face it, you can't realistically have a national holiday celebration for every country on the planet, these players should have the opportunity to earn or receive an equal reward for a less specific reason. Time for the team to be a bit more proactive in an international sense instead of waiting to be accused of unfairness. If the thinking was always "we've done this in xyz country, now we must equal it exactly in every other location by the end of the year", there would not be an issue. Anything less than that is a failure. That would be the sort of equality that seems to be missing. There is a degree of separation that seems to keep this kind of information in the shadows, but it seems to be a pervasive problem that remains fairly well hidden and relatively easy to gloss over. The lack of transparency also fuels accusations of unfairness, not all of which are always true, and that in itself is counterproductive.
As for outage rewards, instead of risking favoring one server over another, design and publish a structured compensation level based on unplanned or additional downtime that will reward any server equally based on the number of hours that it was unavailable. Then there is no chance that one nation is favored over another, and, importantly, no chance that accusations of unfair treatment can be made, whether or not that is actually the case. It is just disappointing that such simple safeguards are not already in place to ensure and demonstrate fairness and transparency.
So much is hidden from the players here. So many questions never get a straight answer. We are forever getting little nuggets of information via google translate. Why? It just makes us think that there really is something to hide. Personally, I decided to stop spending money when I started to see how unfair international events were, despite ridiculous claims that the playing field had actually been leveled or that anyone could win, and started to notice accusations of certain servers being given more than their fair share of rewards, but that's another rant altogether.
Alpaca, you have my sympathies. You are tasked here with defending the indefensible actions of others, and that is never easy. I appreciate that you are asking for holiday suggestions now, but consider also how to ensure that you guys don't have to be in this position again in a few weeks or months. I don't know how much you can or can't do to make real changes, but this is a sticking plaster solution to placate people for a moment. If you can sow the seeds of change regarding how the developers think about these issues on an international level, that would be a much greater accomplishment than getting us a Queen's birthday gift.
Alpaca, as BiteMe said above, we understand that you are in between a rock and a hard place, and your predecessors were also put in the same unenviable position.
News is not being filtered your way as much as it should be.
It's not just a case of "National Holidays", in fact I've tried to exclude them from the examples. This particular one stated quite clearly on DSO's News page (still readable if anyone cares to click the + sign a few entries down), that it was NOT a holiday everywhere in that region.
The alleged "compensation" mails bore no mention of why they were given, it's taken digging through questions on their forum to unearth this particular nugget. Particularly galling since each affected server was given at least 3 days notice in advance, complete with times of these extra outages for database maintenance, yet we are supposed to 'grin and bear it' every time ours get taken down unexpectedly.
Most of these gifts are completely spurious, "end of summer", beginning of spring etc... , and the extra 5 days of Premium didn't even have a back story, it was just for the heck of it.
I'd certainly have no qualms if these just got given to all servers simultaneously rather than try to work out moveable feasts for each language version, I'll pretty much join in the fun with almost any German celebration (although obviously not the 20th of April), it would certainly make administering these things much simpler all round. The only date I would single out would be "server birthday", maybe not for each and every one, but at least the 1st for each language version. So in our case, it would be November to commemorate the heady days when Newfoundland opened in closed beta.
Back then, even we got 'compensation gifts' when the servers used to take the weekend off.
Sharing these across the entire Settlers 'family' will also negate another piece of nastiness, when during server vs server events, one version gets huge advantages over the others.
I'd still like to see the Premium Packs available, even as a download version it's better than nothing.
Please, can we just be treated equally for a change? I'd like to feel that we are all playing the same game, with the same advantages and content, and that the money we spend here is worth just as much as spending it elsewhere. At the moment, it's really counter-productive, because investment in another language version is clearly more rewarding. We get all of the problems no other version is expected to shoulder, (perhaps .de would like to take a couple of language channels on to ease our lag a bit, I could suggest a couple ;) ), yet seem to be expected to put up with being a 2nd class version.
As for your comments about Gamescom, I refer you again to your announcement here:
http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/t...SO-at-Gamescom!
And especially, your answer on the 16th August here, when players voiced these very concerns:
http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/threads/25197
One question.... where do i write the game codes?
On the settlers homepage, or by clicking 'gem+' while playing, look for 'voucher' button 2 buttons above the blue 'play now' circle button.
Playing Devil's advocate here, I do remember getting a recycler for Christmas, or was it New Year? I'm sure there was something for Easter too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nogbad
thank you :)
Those are the holidays recognised on all servers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim_B
What we are highlighting here is the number of 'extras' that only one language server enjoys.