First of all, I like the game and want what is best for players and developers.
Developers: However, the thing that upsets me far more than the outage, or lost units is the way Moderators and Developers have handled this issue.
Before I explain that I will address some insults to americans. I think what we have here is a culture clash. What Europeans see as us being harsh or angry is actually us being honest and direct. Honesty and directness gets things done. It is a cultural difference for sure. It probably comes from Americans also being more religious where honesty is supreme and our spiritual ancestors got things done.
In America, the citizen is the boss, that is the way it was planned. The consumer is the boss, because that is the way it works out. I have a business. That means I have 90 bosses. The developers here have a business. They have a lot more bosses than I do. If you want so many american bosses you become rich and affluent, or just have the means to make more computer games, you're going to need to provide answers, you are going to need to be more direct, you are going to need to be more honest.
We were told for many hours that the server would be back up soon. Here in america we would call that lies.
We were repeatedly placated, pacified or ignored. We were given excuses rather than answers. This is why you are losing customers(bosses). All of us know technical problems happen. What we need is the bottom line. I'm not sure that idiom will translate well so I'll say it again in other words. We need you to be honest and direct with us so that we can make decisions and proceed with our life. Instead what we got was an attempt to stonewall and buy time. Those are idioms too I suppose. Stonewalling is to ignore someone by giving evasive answers. Its avoiding the questions. Honest questions. Questions which should be simply answered. Stonewalling is an attempt to buy time, to avoid accepting your mistake long enough to avoid consequences. Such things are generally unnecessary amongst typical americans. The opposite would be to own up to it. I suppose that is an idiom too. It means that you just simply state the mistake you made. In this case, with the server outage, it may not be a mistake, it may be an event outside your control. It doesn't matter really. What matters is that the problem is being resolved. The server outage was not the only problem. "What should we do during the downtime" was also a problem. In my case I was losing sleep believing the lies I was being told. (it will be up soon)
We're not idiots. We're understanding. We are forgiving, but forgiveness requires repentance. If you tell us the truth nearly all of the problems are immediately resolved. Peace is restored. That only leaves the mechanical problems to deal with. As it is, I suspect the mechanical problems are small compared to the interpersonal ones.
Here's what should have happened. First, we should have been given the best explanation possible for what has happened. The explanation might have been over some people's heads. Thats an idiom meaning they might not be capable of understanding the explanation. But strangely enough, they probably would have been satisfied with an answer they couldn't understand. Anyways, at this point, probably most americans would have just gone to bed, woke up the next day and dealt with whatever inconveniences they face. Since that didn't happen, we stay awake, likely getting upset because we're being lied to and ignored, and because we stay up and get upset it creates more problems the next day. Our problems become compounded because you didn't simply own up to it. Second, you should have explained to us how this won't happen again. I.e. as some pointed out earlier, the game needs to stop running if the game stops running. The fact that it doesn't is amazing to me. This is a pretty bad, pretty foreseeable, design flaw. If this design flaw is fixed, no one will be worrying about what is happening to their units. No one would be losing anything. There would be no need for "compensation". Other measures might need to be taken. It was said that this has something to do with a 3rd party service. Either they repent of their mistake and fix things or you need a new service provider. Its simple. Its discrete. That is all you needed to do. No compensation, no angry customers, no ongoing hassle. Such business tactics work on non-americans too. I live in a college town. I have customers from all over the world and they love the prototypical honest American business model. Bad things happen. No one ever gets mad at me even when its my fault.
Then there is the other problem. And I am afraid this might be just a German cultural thing. Your moderators are what we would call "control freaks", they are heavy handed. Not just on the forum but in general chat too. I'm guessing its not their fault, they are just following orders. That isn't how things work in America. You are dealing with another culture clash. Here we say what we want (for the most part) and everyone else deals with it. If people say things we don't like, we deal with it. Sometimes dealing with it means confronting them. But that isn't a big deal either. The truth generally wins and ends the discussion. Peace is restored. We're better off afterwards. If this were an American game there probably wouldn't be many chat rules and most of them wouldn't need enforced by moderators. Cuss words would be automatically blotted out, possibly with temporary bans until the offender can be talked to. Why is there a need for so many rules? There is no need to tell people to stay on topic. If you want an informative thread letting us know status updates on the server being down start a different thread, make it sticky, redirect people to it and don't let anyone comment on it. We can comment here. In the mean time we can talk about whatever and keep from being bored. if a new person comes on and doesn't know the server status, commenters will redirect them to the server status thread. Its so simple. It requires so little control.
The bottom line is, if you want to catch a fish you have to set the right bait. You need to make up your mind if you want american customers or not. I think you're driving my fellow Americans away as it is and probably others as well. I'm pretty sure if you adopted our culture you would all be happier. Unfortunately it seems many of my fellow Americans have been adopting yours.
This has not been an attempt to insult anyone. It is an attempt to solve problems.
To players: How often does compensation work? Unless something can be simply fixed what good is compensation? It seems to me that compensation normally breeds all sorts of other problems. Several people have commented on this thread about how one form of compensation or another would actually create an additional problem(generally for them personally). It happens in real life that way too whether you see it or not. Then I also see people making demands that xxx or yyy form of compensation would be sufficient for them. You have a purchase price? As I'm reading these demands I'm thinking, "you haven't thought this through" because all of these attempts to straighten things out will only make them differently crooked. Wanting is a simple thing. We often want things that aren't good for us. What is good for us is usually more complex. But in this case its simple. If the developers are willing to fix their problems we just forgive them. Isn't that what all of us want most? (the problems being fixed) Isn't the most important thing that the problems don't happen again? Would we rather just keep getting compensated arbitrarily?
