Birdhouse - My Support "letter" for the development team

Pasting from another thread:

I have a glitch, it says I can donate '10 more items today' but when I do that, sometimes it only lets me donate 9 and shows one still outstanding. So, I thought I'd let SC know about it, just in case they've had a few reports about it...so I explain this and take a screen shot showing the 9 I could donate with one outstanding.

I thought you might get a laugh out the reply, but I'm mostly posting it here because of what they say about the TIMES.

Hello Farmer


Thanks for contacting us with the attached screenshot!


As per your above e-mail, it's perfectly understandable that you were not donate to your neighbors as the donate button is grayed out and it shows you can donate after 11 hours and 16 mins.


I too had experienced the same yesterday. Later, when I checked with Greg, he informed me that there’s a limit of 20 items we can donate per day, so if we have reached that limit, we will have to wait another day to help your neighbors again. If we have reached our daily limit, make sure to encourage our neighbors to help the rest. Working together and being generous is a winning formula!


Kindly note that as we are a Finnish company, the game is working based on UTC timings.
Remember, the day starts in the farm at 12:00 AM UTC whereas your donation time also starts at the same time. You can donate 20 items from 12.00 AM UTC to the next day 12.00 AM UTC, you will not be able to donate more than 20 items as you know.

Say for example: If you have not donated any item from 12.00 AM UTC to 10.00 PM. Here, you have only 2 hours remaining in a day to donate 20 items. Suppose, if you are donating all 20 items at 10.30 PM UTC. Then, the cool down period will show as "Donate again in 1 hour and 30 mins. Suppose, if you had donated all 20 items at 1:00 PM UTC then, your cool down period will show as "Donate again in 11 hours" .


Hope that I have cleared your query regarding your matter, but please feel free to reply in case of any clarifications.


Regards,

I had explained this was AFTER I had just made the donation of 9 and just before this it had said I could donate '10 more items today'. (We only request/donate crops in 10's).

If their replies get any more sickly sweet & patronising I fear I might just throw up! It just winds people up more!

Horseraddish they experienced *the same* yesterday, they don't even understand the problem!

Is it just me or does that second paragraph about the times not make any sense?

Surely in the first instance of making your first donation at 10:30pm you could donate again immediately but only have 1.5hrs to do so, not a 'cool down' period, but a 'complete by'?

The second makes sense, but I'm not sure that's how it's actually working?!

So, they don't know ♥♥♥ their system is either! The response you got is very different from the one I got. They specifically told me the wait time is 24 hours from the first donation. Others have posted the same in trying to figure this out. IF it reset at midnight-ish, it would be what I had suggested as a solution and absolutely not what I am experiencing - reference the 18 hour wait to donate again after I finished at about 10PM CDT. This gets more and more screwed up by the day.

HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO PLAY THIS GAME WHEN SUPPORT CANT EVEN GET IT STRAIGHT?

Meanwhile, once again yesterday, in an attempt to help my hood, I was finally able to donate at about 9 or 10PM last night. So, today I will lose another day essentially before I can donate again. IF, this were working as "Greg" told your support person, i would only have had to wait a couple of hours before being able to again donate. Yet, its currently 12:30PM, and I have another 6 hours to wait. Hmmmmm......maybe Greg is either insane or a liar? After all, do any of us reallly know him?

As I said before, I'm done with this. I'm not putting in any requests. If I happen to be on and can help a neighbor I will, but I'm not actively trying to participate in the turd house any more.

Nick, if you see this thread, you need to chat with the development team. This. Sucks.

Oh, and as to the tone of the support responses these days I don't find it sweet at all. I find it completely condescending. Do they realize most of us are not 12? A neighbor contacted me yesterday, annoyed as hell. She'd also gotten the "I talked to Greg" blah, blah, blah ♥♥. She didn't find it cute at all. She asked a serious question and got a nonsense reply.

Cyan is launching a new MYST series game, first in years, on 7/26. My HD time is gratefully going to be zilch while I play a top level game created by top level programmers. Can hardly wait. Maybe when I come back, the turd house will be but a faint bad memory. I can only hope.

OMG! I just got the following reply from help. Do you SEE any issues here? Once again, this is totally different from the info given to SmallChange!
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Well, every 24 hours (a day) you can donate 20 items. Each time you donate an item, you will notice the counter go down from 20. The counter will reset itself the following day starting from 20 even though the previous day you may not have completed 20 donations.

For example, if you only donated 15 items, the next day you will not have 25 donations, but it will start from 20 again.

For Ex: the donation will reset at the time you can start donating, which in this case would be 1pm. So if you finish all your donations at 10pm you will have to wait until 1pm the next day to get a new set of 20 donations.

After starting your donations at 1pm and finishing your donations at 10pm, the waiting time will not be 24hours from the time you end your donation, it is 24 hours from the time you started donating. So if you finish at 10pm you will wait about 13 hours before you can donate again. Therefore, count 24 hours from the time you start your donations.

And if you start donating at 1pm today and tomorrow you donate at 4pm, it will start counting 24hours from 4pm. That is why it is different every day. The start times are different for everyone.
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The above would seem to make it clear that , once again, it is NOT a daily feature, and it is NOT even every 24 hours. It is 24 hours from the first donation, which means you can easily lose entire days if you start late enough. This has already happened to me twice now.

Honestly, you couldn't make this stuff up!

We need someone to take an interest in the game & the players. Someone who actually gives a toss that support is pecking useless. Someone who reads the Bugs & Problems section and solves the problems. I'd post this over there, but there's just no point.

Cyan? Myst? I've no idea, but I'm off to google.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by haydayforum

However, i do agree the sneak peek was confusing. At the time i wondered why Nick called it trading when the picture clearly said donate. I am sure this increased the diappointment. Bad PR on SC part.

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Absolutely, it's trolling.

The feature is junk, it needs A LOT of work before it's of any meaningful value.