You must be new. Plarium is the very worst company when it comes to caring about player relationships. They don't even respect the whales who keep the game going (might be hard to respect people with gamling addictions if you make your living from their bad financial decisions). And they couldn't care less about F2P players, even though our numbers give this mediocre game the popularity that attracts new spenders despite the huge turnover.
I play other collection gachas because I am a hoarder at heart, and digital hoarding takes less space ;). None of the companies are angels when it comes to player relations (it takes a certain nasty attitude to even market gachas, I believe), but none are anywhere as greedy, graceless, and uncaring as Plarium.
The rage comes from players somewhere deep inside realizing that they're being exploited and bamboozled. And then the game goes down at a time when they've been exhorted to spend more than usual, both time and real money, because NEATO PERSONAL REWARDS (*rolls eyes*). All the rage is well-deserved. There is no mutual respect here, except newbs usually still feel there ought to be. I am polite to moderators because none of this is their doing, but the company itself has no feelings, and deserves no respect.
As a developer myself, I don't feel particularly sorry for the devs now working overtime (everyone in the industry has been there, and the pay is commensurate with that). But neither do I blame them since it's not their fault either; they don't make the command decisions about when to roll out what new features. The quality control at Plarium feels understaffed and/or underfunded to me because too much obvious stuff slips through, and sooner or later that will always come to bite you, *shrug*. As damage control the company will dole out come digital "compensation" (which does not cost them anything) so they can appear generous and contrite without affecting their bottom line. I don't get het up about this game breaking, but I also no longer take it at all seriously, and most importantly, no longer spend a single cent. IMO that's the only way to get any value out of the pretty graphics.
I appreciate that this is a calm and well written post.
I am just curious how you feel bamboozled. Everything I get with gems, shards, energy, etc, are exactly what I have purchased. I know the pull rates and chances going in. And there is SO MUCH more free stuff than when I started. For example, CvC rewards didn't exist at all before CvC, and the clan quests gave us a whole new shop to buy energy and accessories. It is SO MUCH easier for me to have the energy I need and accessories to help my teams than it was before CvC and Clan Quests. The new dupe system looks better than I hoped, even if it's not going to really help my account, which has one legendary dupe and that's it.
Sure, some of these things needed to be changed after release. But Plarium did listen to your feedback and made changes. I know the mod team pushed for the changes to clan quests and geomancer on your behalf. That was Plarium actually listening to the players opinions.
I don't know. In spite of the hiccups the last couple weeks, I feel like I have more free things daily than I ever did before. I am out of time to play well before I am out of energy these days.
