What you see - and what you get.

[ksinori]

Haven't had trouble with an adventure since May - but today I really experienced a bad one. And on top of that - I ended up in the hands of a supporter that was out of touch.

Pressed attack. The general didn't move on screen. In the generals garrsion it said "Waiting for orders." Oh well - did not have time for more, so I left the game for something like 3 hours.
When I returned he had attacked - he was part of a double-block, so surely I did loose troops.

Of course I wrote support, as that could not be right.

Here is the killing support I got:

---------

I wrote:
"Was doing Traitors with a double-block.
Block general no. 1 was sent off. But nothing happend on the screen. I
checked the garrison, and what I could see, was "Waiting for orders" - so no
need to do anything. I didn't have more time, so I left the game.
3 hours later I returned to the game and could see that block general no. 1
had done a full attack.

He had won the fight as I do my blocks with a fairly high win probabillity.
However - that illusion with nothing happening on the screen and the general
still "waiting for orders", cost me 159Cavalry and 1Militia of a setting on
original 1M 193C.

So this was the last maintenance hidden surprise. Then it is really dangerous
to play adventures now.

I am lvl 50, so please do not tell me that I have made any mistakes. I have
no chance to control my game-play if I get misslead like that, on an
adventure.

Futhermore - it is getting harder and harder to attach and de-attach troops
to a general.

Last time I had problem with an adventure (that is a long time ago) I was
told that I could not be compensated, because I had finished the adventure,
so this time, (I will hate it), but I will leave the adventure unfinished -
at least untill my troop-number hits the ceiling. Strange that I have to do
that, but hey - then it is not that, stopping you from compensate.

It is a horrible and huge bug this one, hurry to the dev. guys with the info.

Thank you.

--------

Support wrote:

"Hello ksinori,

Thank you for taking the time to get in touch.

Thank you for the feedback on the adding/removing troops from generals. We will get that sent to the Devs.
But please be aware that Blocking is a tactic the community introduced to the game, as blocking was never officially coded in the game you will find you may have all kinds of issues when doing them.
Officially, you need to clear all camps before wanting to reach your final target camp, that's how the game was designed to be. We can guarantee you that If you had followed that principle the issue would not have occurred.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of blocking, as a rule, we can't compensate players for any loss as we do not provide support for that issue.
If you have any questions please let me know.
Kind regards,
BB_Blackwill
"The Settlers Online" Support Team

-----

I wrote:

"Yes-yes - got the point with blocks are on your own risk - but did you even read what happend to me?

I sent a general. Pressed "Attack" He did not start moving on the map - I checked his garrison - he was "Waiting for orders" - so no matter what his task was, I was not able to do anything, as I got no animated, moving general and I was told he wasn't moving in his garrison. Therefore I did not press "retreate".
3 hours later, when I returned to the game - he HAD attacked.

That - I really cannot be blamed. And as I wrote - I lost 159C and 1M because the game played a fool on me.

I really cannot explain it better.

It was NOT a block that went wrong - it was misleading information from the game to me.

I will however keep on trying to explain it if you do not understand what I am writing.

sincerely

Jan Jakobsen - aka ksinori (When on TSO)

----------

He wrote:

"Hello ksinori,

I understand what you meant, however issues like the one you had are down to lag.
Lag can come from different sources and it's hard to pin point the origin, it could be us, it could be your network, it could even be the PC itself.
As I said, before we have sent the report to the Devs and they will look into it.
Thanks!

Kind regards,
BB_Blackwill
"The Settlers Online" Support Team


---------

I wrote:

Okay - I will give you one shot more - then I will spread this fun on the forum.

I did NOT get any animation on the screen from the general, when clicking on his garrison the general was "Waiting for orders."
How can I then know that he was actually attacking?

It is NOT the loss that concerns me - it is the fact that the game misslead me.
I don't like that.

Something is really, really wrong when I cannot trust what I see.

And stop blaming the players - that is a really bad attitude.

I should not have to write you - the game should work. And if you write Beta-game one more time I will loose a fuse here ;-)

---------

He wrote:

Hello ksinori,

I have already sent your report to the Developers of the game, here on Support we cannot make changes to the game if there were any issues with it, we can only report them, and that has been done.
If you have any questions of anything else to report please let me know.

Regards,
BB_Blackwill
"The Settlers Online" Support Team

---------

I wrote:

I give up - you clearly do NOT know much about the game.
-----

Guess who is considering if this game is worth that much of my time and money.

[Kotugo]

Its understandable that losing troops is annoying, but support are much less likely to assist if you are overly aggressive with them.

Blocks are a bit of an abuse of game mechanics, in this case if you had just been attacking the way the game was designed, the attack would have been fine no matter how laggy it had been.

I have lost troops in a similar way, but the way I see it, the cost in troops I have saved from being able to block at all far outweigh any losses I get from an occasional bad attack. Also losing cavalry isn't a major loss, I would probably only be very annoyed if it was xbows I lost since they tend to be the hardest to replace.

It doesn't really apply to traitors, but I found it a lot easier to time blocks if I have no other players invited to adventures (2/3 player ones), as soon as you add an extra player it causes the lag to shoot up

[ksinori]

The real issue is this simple line - that apparently is hard to understand:

I did NOT get any animation on the screen from the general, when clicking on his garrison the general was "Waiting for orders."
How can I then know that he was actually attacking?

[Jeans78]

I really have read this thread carefully through - and BB - do something. Show us - you really appriciate your playsers - and take us serious.
Took a look at this guys Island - and as far as I can se - he have used a big amount on this game. So please show that you take this seriously. We all know there can be errors in this game - but this one - was really bad. Errors here dont cost troops or anything - its just anoying. This one really was a real fault - not just an error - and the fault wasn't on the player, but the game.

I dont think many players of this game do have the amount of money to spend on this game - as this guy seems to have - and if he - and more like him leaves the game - because support can't manage the decission to give him some kind of excuse or at least to cover his losses, then BB dont understand much.

A player on lvl 50 - spending this amount on the game - doesn't try to cheat anyone - I guess he just want an explanion -and understanding for the problem fra support. Support often sends us answers that shows - they don't know anything about the game - just the technic about it. Thats not allrigth.

Just my opinion jeans78

[Gavona]

The real issue is this simple line - that apparently is hard to understand:

I did NOT get any animation on the screen from the general, when clicking on his garrison the general was "Waiting for orders."
How can I then know that he was actually attacking?

It happens to lower mortals too. Besides the visuals I have also found the information in the "News" tab to be misleading. In Nords the other day I got a "Your general is retreating message" but in fact he didn't retreat and returned to the garrison wounded with no troops. It is the entire interface that is misleading.
I

[Krydolph]

The biggest problem I see with the reply from support is that BB keeps referring to blocks as basicly bug abuse! Of course a block is on your own risk, and shouldn't be reimbursed on regulair ocations. But you should see that when you have unlocked the buildings you can get and cleared your island, blocks are the only thing thats keeps some fun in your game - it is certanly not building farms and wells we love!

When this is said, forget this was for a block, imgine it happens for someone who forgets to press ok after he changed the setting on his general, and attacks by mistake, he then sees its wrong, but doesnt retreat because it wasn't sent. then he leaves his computer like ksinori, or maybe he just goes to the island to accept some trades, because we have learned from other topics that if you dont accept instantly, you may lose your resources "because the mailbox isnt an extra storage"
Wouldn't that be a real problem then?

When all this bb bashing is done - then I want to point out that he several times declares that he has made devs aware of this problem, so its not like he just dismisses it all together!

[Peajay]

It is sad to see friends quitting this game due to lost troops costing 24 hours of down time, training up to 200 cavalry means barracks are busy not training recruits or other troops you'd be training to adventure with.

Unless BB can solve the server lag issues, more people will stop playing, plain and simple.

[Eliseu]

What can i say...i had a bug happening(troops were what i selected after sending but when the log appeared,the troops were the old ones),opened a thread about it,send message to support...of course,they blame me and my connection when clearly,connection has nothing to do with this.
Same BB_Blackwill.He even copy-pasted the same response after my 3rd mail of bringing arguments.
Of course,it ended with the conclusion that it's my fault and i had lag cuz of my connection,everything is fine at their end.
For like one month things have been getting worse and worse and it's clearly not our fault but no...they refuse to admit it.
Nothing more to say to this...what can you do ? they will say nothing is wrong,there is rly nothing you can do but quit and hope more ppl will do the same and they wil open their eyes when they won't get their payment at the end of the month.

[Sinister-King]

Wheres the confusion?

I thought BB_Blackwill handled the mail absolutely fine.

He stated that a bug report was sent to the developers, if they find an issue they'll update the system. Also as mentioned blocking isn't a strategy intended for the game so he cannot compensate for your loss.

Its worth remembering that you are speaking to support staff, not the developers.

Sounds to me he understood your mail quite clearly ?

[ksinori]

I KNEW I shouldn't have mentioned it was a block general. It seems to confuse players too.

Reason why I did that was, that if the supporter handling my complain DID know just a little about the game, he would have wondered why I would send an attack containing 1M and 193C. He clearly didn't - wondered or knew. The generals task is not important.

I told him what went wrong - I could see nothing on the screen, and my general was "Waiting for orders." Instead he attacked.

I expected to get compensation for the loss - but I got a lot of story-telling instead.
One overworked supporter managed to ruin my experience with TSO.

First the game do strange things - and I am not being helped out by support.

Tell the dev guys, I asked for that, but then you do what - as a supporter?

Handle the business: The customer is always right.

Now it takes a lot more than that compensation before I spend money on the game again. I will NOT support that kind of support.

I am afraid that way to many players are being bullied by support. And do not stand up.