The survey was not a part of the game, and therefore if there was a flaw with it, that does not mean that it becomes a bug. The Bugs section is for the reporting of in-game bugs only. At best, your thread was Off-Topic, and at worse Against the Community Interests. I say that last one because while you may believe that you were doing something which the community needs to hear about, you also need to realize what I and the rest of the Mods would have to deal with following that. Ok, you found that there was an issue with the security of the survey, at this point you had a few options:
1. Do nothing, no one else will figure this out.
2. Tell everyone because they deserve to know about it.
3. Tell the Mods, one of them will let either an Admin or Inno know about this
Each of these choices has a consequence. Doing nothing would have neither incited the Forums, nor would it have brought the issue to Inno's attention. Telling everyone has clearly had it's side-effects as players seem to think that the Mod team had something to do with the survey and therefore now distrust us. Telling anyone on my team or an Admin would have instantly brought this to Inno's attention as I am in regular contact with my immediate bosses, and a way to prevent this from being exploited could have been worked out and you would have had our gratitude for doing this.
Can you now see why I had all of those threads deleted?
I see why, it was an attempted cover up of a mistake that Innogames had made in the setup of the survey, and at salvaging an unsalvagable situation. It failed, and therefore you lost credibility. For future use, your best option would be to admit the error, inform the community you have notified Innogames, and that a solution will be forthcoming (they are taking action and admit responsibility). At this time you could calmly have stated that this was not an area that moderators could have impacted to avoid any stone throwing at mods. Most of us knew that mods did not have anything to do with the survey setup, however , they were made aware of the problems with the survey while it was still active, and they are virtually all pro 2.0 so it leaves the community with the question of whether or not any mod decided to 'duplicate' this bug any number of times. I like to think that while mods are not perfect, and have been known to use their powers to personal advantage, they would not take it to that extent. If nothing else from fear of embarrassment.
I suggest you being (whatever you are) Tyrion, Include a thread somewhere in the forums for people to report bugs that impact game events that were posted through Innogames in the game, yet are not considered game bugs. I have no idea what you would call that. Support tickets of course exist, but it is conceivable that a support ticket go unanswered for 12-24 hours, which might be why he posted it in a public forum, lacking any immediate alternative. I admit though, that by posting it in the forums he stirred a hornets nest that might not have needed to be stirred, but since he had no way of knowing what would become of his post, or teh implications of this problem/bug he made a judgement call.
I believe that I have addressed your 1-4 points with my above comments with regards to the Reporting of Bugs. As for your displeasure with the Survey itself:
1. Voting Time - People have had over 6 months to try out a 2.0 World, why should the vote needlessly be kept open for just as much time for people to try it out again? Many of the players who are claiming that they are against the upgrade have stated that they tried 2.0 and just didn't like it. Why keep it open just so they can reaffirm this?
2. Multiple Votes - This is likely more to do with the way that Surveymonkey, or whatever the website is that hosts these surveys has things set up. I highly doubt that Inno would create a survey with these issues. Your main problems are really the failures of that third party company.
3. URL Access - Again, this is a failing on the part of the company that hosted the survey, not Inno. See point #2.
4. Presentation of Vote - I've looked at the message sent to all of the 1.26 Players regarding the vote. The first message stated that a vote would take place for players to decide whether they wanted the upgrade to the 1.26 Worlds. The second mail was asking if a player wanted to update to get all of the new features and events. It was never advertised as a World by World vote, either in-game or on the Forums.
5. Yes, 2.0 has bugs, 1.26 had bugs. That is why there are regular updates which are meant to correct those bugs. However, 1.26 Players are not losing anything. You keep your cities, troops, alliances, points, ABP and DBP, and everything else. The only changes will be instead of the game being 1.26 it will become 2.0 in the future.
1. A trial 2.0 server could have been opened for a week or so for 1.26 players to have a final try just before the vote to get rid of 1.26 took place. It would have been an additional courtesy, and much appreciated. A grepo wide mail could have been done to accomodate this similar to how the survey took place. In fact, they could have made it a trial run where you start with 3 cities similar to how the hero worlds are, to get more gameplay time in rather than build time only in a shorter period of time.
2. My problem is that Innogames relied on Survey monkey or whomever without doing any quality checks to ensure this sort of thing would not happen. I know it's not their doing, but it happening is their responsibility even if it's not their fault.
3. meh, np here.
4. The presentation of vote may have had more to do with the huge influence it had on players to make a change. When you ask someone if they want something, and you aren't biased, you don;t support one way over another, this clearly shows Innogames bias, and therefore it is not an accurate representation of an opinion poll.
5. Tyrion, I don't know why you insist we aren't losing anything, As a 1.26 player I am losing what I like. I am losing the older graphics, the farming system, and the layout that I have grown accustom to and appreciate. Granted, 2.x looks better now than it did before, but nowhere near as easy for me personally to manipulate through as it is in 1.26 words. I am losing that. To me thats more important than the city count, as I can always rebuild whats lost, and maybe enjoy the journey, but I do not enjoy that journey in the new servers.
What Ac04 is saying is that since the announcement of the release of 2.0, and the clamor for it to be ported to the 1.26 Worlds by the players back then...
Both Adam and Jack have made a point of mentioning how back then we all wanted to move to 2.x, and I think Jack even mentioned that we built wonder islands on kappa in preparation for this. This is true, unfortunately we did it not realizing what 2.x would look like, or play like. I have an account on 2.x right now, just to see the differences. I have been logging in to do things, and I spend most of my time waiting for an hourglass to spin around on my screen. I am not impressed with it, but I will not deny that it
sounds appealing.
You're unhappy with how the mods are handling this? How do you think we should be handling this? I have told the mods that I want discussion to take place, but in a civil manner and within the rules. If anything is being edited or deleted it is because it does not fall within those requirements. ... The vocal outcry has been nothing but accusations of corruption, bias, heavy-handed tactics, censorship, and the like...
Let's address your points:
First, the mods aren't to blame, rest assured I have never thought that. The way they are handling this though is distinctly 'un-american' Freedom of speech and all that, but thats fine, you're representing a German company, we all know that germans have a different view on how to handle conflict. That's not a slight , just a cultural observation.
Corruption - It can't be proved that there was, I doubt there was intentional corruption taking place on the part of the mods, or on the part of Innogames. Corruption defined as the intentional mishandling
and manipulation of the events. They did however mishandle this, it's just not quite befitting the definition of 'corruption', and they did manipulate the survey towards 2.x. To a certain degree though is acceptable, and I suppose it will be left up to the individual to evaluate if they felt manipulated or not. Personally I felt, honestly felt, that they attempted to manipulate my vote, especially with the second question turned around, however, I will not define their actions as 'corruption' more because their attempt was blatant and therefore did not seem deceptive to me.
Bias - It exists, obviously, and therefore there should be a vocal outcry from those who oppose it. I think that's entirely reasonable, or we wouldn't have a need for any discussion threads.
Heavy Handed tactics and Censorship - You have the mods, and their few lackies (mod wannabes) that are in favor and vocal of 2.0 and then you have other players that are not. Who's opinion has been censored more? I had an entire post removed after only putting it up for seconds, but it was long enough to be +repped for it. Censorship took place, no reason was given. It did not break any forum rules. I was not given an infraction for it, so it falls into the definition of censorship. When you tell a person they can't do something, that they believe they should be able too, your gonna get flack for it.
You make the soup, you better eat it.
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