Birthday Deco - Unconventional Way

[SmallChange]

Thanks Mini, that was a far better explanation than mine.

[PerkyCox]

I've just got a 'pop up' diamond offer. £52.99 for 4000. 30% discount. It implies you will get deco, but it doesn't actually say you do.

I do not believe you will get a deco with that offer. Keep to the three new ones.

[MiniGardener]

Snap!
You did good, too, Small Change! It's always reassuring to find that others are interpreting things the same way I am.

It is also helpful to hear other voices and points of view. Generally good discussion, farmers!!!

[Nick[Supercell]]

This is what we considered "promoting": the display at Greg's farm that appeared several days before the party event that showed a number of new "party themed" decorations in addition to the chocolate fountain with 4 candles. As you said, we've seen these events before. We treated what we saw at Greg's as a "sneak peek". We assumed the chocolate fountain would be the global event prize. We guessed about the other items based on past experience, and we guessed wrong. In my opinion, it would have been better to leave the extra party decor out of the display until the unveiling of the unconventional news release.

Greg's farm was updated when we went live, to my recollection. Assuming something can be a bit dangerous, at least of a emotional level. I am sorry if you or anyone else assumed that the decorations on Greg's farm would be tied to the Birthday event. That being said, we never commented on them, thus never made any promises either.

It was you that said 'people quit games...new ones start playing'. In other words, 'so what if people aren't happy about stuff?!'

I just replied to a question. Some players quit playing any given game for some reason, and new players will start playing those games. I never said "so what" or "we don't care". I just answered a question.

How was Halloween the same? There was the Ghost on the Lake, the Personal Goal Rewards were Deco (as they were at Christmas) and there was deco available to all IN GAME.

The event was the same - global event with a special prize if the global goal is met. That was the one I was referring to.

*same event as we always do*. *no one complained last year* Yes, my point exactly. You dropped events because they were too hard to set targets for and a YEAR ON with the same events, week in - week out, people are bored of them.

We dropped one specific event a long time ago as it was impossible to predict. Players were left without the global goal prize. We thought it was best to drop the event-type. This has been discussed in many threads a long time ago.

You know if you put PARTY DECO on Greg's farm around your Birthday it's as good as a sneak peek. It was being discussed on the forums. Birthday event, birthday party deco, not released into the shop, being told it was going to be available in an unconventional way, it's disingenious to say you didn't promise anything. Sneak peeks don't 'promise' anything, this was no different.

We never promised that the decorations will be as a part of the event. The decorations were there from the moment we updated the game. That's how it works, and has always worked. As I pointed out in a reply above, "assuming something can be a bit dangerous, at least of a emotional level". Obviously it's not our intention to disappoint players, but assuming something without an official confirmation can result in disappointment.

Yes you fixed the reward for the event, but not for 3 days. 3 days of people not knowing if it would be fixed or not, not knowing if the personal goal prizes would be changed to deco or not, not knowing if you'd run the event next week instead or not. Then on top of that having to trash loads of orders because the machines weren't unwrapped for half of the event, let alone putting out anywhere near enough produce to fill the continual orders for new products - so it was either another Trash fest or soend diamonds.

The fact that we weren't able to react quicker, we take the blame. That was our bad.

Going around in circles... As I pointed out earlier in this thread - boat orders get filtered so that they do not request for new products from new machines. Truck and visitor orders do not. Something we will look into in future updates. And this is how it has been since we introduced the filters years ago.

Cheers,

Nick

[Bestajunior]

Going around in circles... As I pointed out earlier in this thread - boat orders get filtered so that they do not request for new products from new machines. Truck and visitor orders do not. Something we will look into in future updates. And this is how it has been since we introduced the filters years ago.

Cheers,

Nick

No the boat orders did not get filtered out before the machines had a chance to be finished. I have screenshots and letters to support time stamped in support of this if you would like to see them.

[bender018]

Thank you Mini and Small Change for expressing my feelings and thoughts about this.
I tried earlier to explain that the problem is that you can't buy these new decos in-game anymore. I have lots of diamonds, vouchers and coins to spend on goodies, but I refuse to buy anything with real money (mostly because I will lose my movie tickets - and I'm loving and playing Hay Day since September 2012!). Why? It has never been necessary - until now. I collect nearly every deco item available (unless I don't like them) but now for me it's impossible to get them at all.

[Vfrood]

Nick, very easy to say you listen to people. Whatever you're producing, it will have been asked for in forum ideas....

You'll do a great job (Has someone ever mentioned bats... oh no. We're having them with haloween) to put something in game that hasn't been mentioned minimum once in forum ideas.

And i second mini that showing balloons, castle and pinata right after update was promising something as we got those items shown with Christmas and Haloween... So bring these deco's in combination with the fountain and YES we will assume they will come in event like other events...

Further on: I started a thread about doing something surprising with events etc. You don't even react on that.

Many people are annoyed and bored by yet another visitor event 2x coins or fishing.... it's very predictable what will come. You made mistakes earlier. Easter 2014 you were on holiday as everyone on first day said goals couldn't be made without sleeping. You don't do drag and drops because of that. While if someone had been there on office it could have been saved. I thought goal was 500.000.000 cotton items to be made. If making blouses it wasn't possible even fully mastered....
Easy to set a far away goal in a time no-one is online much, and most people are celebrating with family and later on say it is unpredictable. We WERE saying goal wouldn't be made. Next failure (you weren't back from holiday) was new years event where goal was set some nearer but having many people on holiday not to be made.

And still you are avoiding our questions. Yes. You are.

Top of all is the pile of failures.
1. Update went wrong. People had to buy diamonds. Oké we were compensated...
2. Update went wrong. Products from taco and tea were asked. On saturday it was possible to make products with those...
3. Gregs farm was covered with prizes. In AMA (long before update) was told they would come unconventional. Don't show them....
4. Event showed just diamonds. SC wasn't there to react.
5. Update went wrong. Fishing event was broken up and replaced by boat event....
6. 6 days ago and in AMA too there were speculations in forum. I just bumped 3 threads....

I don't want to spoil your future holidays, but knowing update went wrong, already knowing there was coming a truck event that would ask for things we didn't have.... i would have had someone to check every now and then how things were organized.

I don't know why Snakiddy was banned, but that is the worst option to do with clients. YES. we're clients.

edit: I'm not attacking you, Nick. You're the customer manager and the man to aim comments to I'm attacking the firm.

[Heasewood]

Well I hope SC doesn't repeat this fiasco, I think the hype (obtaining deco in an unconventional way) was misleading, surely at the very least one member of the SC team saw the excitement building about what that meant for the players. Speculation about new type of event, something exciting to look forward to, something special... surely someone realized the potential for this to backfire?

Had SC from the beginning said that the items would be attached to a special diamond package deal the outcome would have been considerably different. But NO they let the speculation and expectation build and then dropped the bomb.

Obviously there will be major upset and disappointment at this, how could they not see this?

i second this! If it was widely known new decos were only available for £££££ then maybe there would not be so many hurt feelings..... As it is many believed the birthday event would be something different, with new decorations as prizes, rather than the normal weekly event with a different decoration at the end......especially as to finish the event it took a special effort as many trucks asked for items that were not available for all.

[WhatNotHappy]

Thank you Heasewood for understanding what I was trying to get across.
And to MiniGardener for your earlier comment.

[Nick[Supercell]]

No the boat orders did not get filtered out before the machines had a chance to be finished. I have screenshots and letters to support time stamped in support of this if you would like to see them.

The filter is 48 hours if I recall correctly. I need to verify this tomorrow at some point when I get to the office. There's a chance that if a building takes more than the given filter-time, some boat requests can request products from the new machine. Again, something we will look into. Note - it doesn't filter out new products produced in old machines tho!

Nick, very easy to say you listen to people. Whatever you're producing, it will have been asked for in forum ideas....

Oh trust me, forums is only one channel we follow. We do not simply do something is it has been requested once or twice, but if the idea is doable it may still get into our backlog.

You'll do a great job (Has someone ever mentioned bats... oh no. We're having them with haloween) to put something in game that hasn't been mentioned minimum once in forum ideas.

We put stuff into the game which has never even been mentioned. That's because we need a roadmap which we follow. On top of that, we add features/ideas which come from our fans, not only on the forums, but on all channels.

And i second mini that showing balloons, castle and pinata right after update was promising something as we got those items shown with Christmas and Haloween... So bring these deco's in combination with the fountain and YES we will assume they will come in event like other events...

A promise is always a promise, and we have done no such promise.

Further on: I started a thread about doing something surprising with events etc. You don't even react on that.

I most probably have read it, made notes and moved on. I don't comment on all ideas as you may have noticed. I take notes if I feel the idea is worth noting, and if I am unsure I ask our designer to take a look as well.

Many people are annoyed and bored by yet another visitor event 2x coins or fishing.... it's very predictable what will come. You made mistakes earlier. Easter 2014 you were on holiday as everyone on first day said goals couldn't be made without sleeping. You don't do drag and drops because of that. While if someone had been there on office it could have been saved. I thought goal was 500.000.000 cotton items to be made. If making blouses it wasn't possible even fully mastered....

Sorry but I am missing your point here. :/ We dropped the item-drop event type because it was too difficult to predict the outcome. That was said a long time ago.

Easy to set a far away goal in a time no-one is online much, and most people are celebrating with family and later on say it is unpredictable. We WERE saying goal wouldn't be made. Next failure (you weren't back from holiday) was new years event where goal was set some nearer but having many people on holiday not to be made.

Read my reply above. Changing goals of events on the fly is to my knowledge not possible!? The prize (like we did with the current even) is via a maintenance, but changing the required amount (for the item-drop events) is not. Can't really remember to be honest, as that event was dropped quite some time ago and haven't looked into it in a while. I can try to get an answer to it later when I get back to work (if it even makes sense as the event is not coming back).

And still you are avoiding our questions. Yes. You are.

I am still waiting for questions. Not accusations, nor going around in circles.

Top of all is the pile of failures.
1. Update went wrong. People had to buy diamonds. Oké we were compensated...
2. Update went wrong. Products from taco and tea were asked. On saturday it was possible to make products with those...
3. Gregs farm was covered with prizes. In AMA (long before update) was told they would come unconventional. Don't show them....
4. Event showed just diamonds. SC wasn't there.

Tho there's not a single question in the above, I will cover them for you:

1. Yes there was a flaw with the new crops. We compensated with diamonds, and later on gifted the missing crops.
2. Like I have commented above, the filter works for x-amount of time no matter which machine. Something we will look into. And the filter works only for boats, which is something we will also look into.
3. Greg's farm has the new decorations yes, always. That's how the game works. We never said they will be a part of the event.
4. Event showed diamonds due to a hiccup, which we fixed early on Sunday.

I don't want to spoil your future holidays, but knowing update went wrong, already knowing there was coming a truck event that would ask for things we didn't have.... i would have had someone to check every now and then how things were organized.

Trucks have always worked like that. You can trash them if you can't make them. New orders respawn every 30min so it's not the end of the world to trash the orders.

I don't know why Snakiddy was banned, but that is the worst option to do with clients. YES. we're clients.

If you break the rules too many times, you get automatically banned. Simple as that.

edit: I'm not attacking you, Nick. You're the customer manager and the man to aim comments to I'm attacking the firm.

Not really, I am a community manager. I am here to make sure your voices are heard and that you get replies to your questions. Sort of a messenger.

Now I a off to sleep and continue tomorrow, unless things are just going around in circles (in other words, nothing new I haven't already commented on or replied to).


Cheers,

Nick