Thursday, August 16, 2012

Post Holy War Drama

The way Mobage and Cygames have handled the last Holy War is awful. Since many anti-Mobage/Cygames posts have come up I decided it was a volatile enough issue to deserve a post.

Personally, Mobage is missing the mark huge on how they are handling this. The server downtime was hardly the issue they should be attempting to correct (and the way they are correcting it is just stupid). They should be punishing cheaters and just offered some gems/hp to those effected by the server downtime.

The fact that the server was down for many players for the day should have had virtually no effect on their final ranking. Ranking is based on points, meaning that it doesn't matter how many battles are fought, but how much HP is used during a battle. Players can just as easily accumulate a couple hundred thousand points in a battle on day two using HP you would have used on day one. So, Mobage should realize that peoples rankings weren't really effected by the downtime. Do they deserve some HP for the frustration, probably, give them all 25 personal HP for the downtime. Truth is, a day one inability to start a war wasn't that big of a deal for final rankings. (And yes, my order did have this issue, so I know it wasn't that big of a deal, I just started spending 20HP per war instead of 10HP for a while)

Some might ask what about gemstones related to win count? This is legitimate. I would say if any order was within 10 Wins of a tier, give them the gems for that tier. Nobody would complain about this and it doesn't harm anybody. It also serves as a decent apology.

I doubt many people would have problems with these and the downtime would have become a non issue and vanished by now. Now offer me a well playing job in PR, because obviously whoever Mobage/Cygames have working for them have no idea what they are doing.


Instead Mobage/Cygames decided:


1) Lets hold off on giving people the rewards they put their time and effort into getting. This won't make them mad.

2) Lets immediately hold a redo for the event! This will make all the people who spent HP feel that their hard work was for nothing!

3) Lets completely ignore the mechanics that were shown as broken during the last Holy Wars. So far we've decided to ignore: Bluestackers and Account Hackers, now lets ignore people who circumvent the 50AP rule by using alt accounts to attack defense leaders, and lets ignore people who use the 100 attacks rule that was meant to prevent point farming to force wins. Games that constantly have hackers/abusers always last long!


So, what do we do as players?


Some people have called for boycotting Holy Wars, personally, I don't think this method is effective. The reason is it assures lower ranking orders get the top rank. The Holy Wars will go on and there is no real effect to Mobage/Cygames.

The other method somebody posted was to leave negative reviews for the app on the marketplace. I believe this method is best. If people post negative reviews, Mobage/Cygames will take notice. But if everybody does this, it's like shooting your hostage and then asking for the money.

Personally, I say email Mobage/Cygames. Let them know that you are unhappy with their handling of the incident and if they do not make corrections you will make several awful posts not only reviewing their games, but recommending their competitors games in place of theirs on their review board.

If you do email or post. Please reference the two major abuses. They really need to fix those two things and if all the attention is placed on downtime (which really wasn't a big deal), they will just allow people to make this game awful for those who play correctly.

15 comments:

  1. Why is using Bluestacks a problem? I use bluestacks since the game keeps crashing on my android...

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    1. Bluestacking is a term used to describe the use of bluestacks to authenticate unlimited accounts. It used to be the game recognized bluestacks as a different device every time you reinstalled it.

      The problem is people using jailbroken devices or android emulators to create unlimited accounts. Not the actual use of these platforms.

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    2. Oh I see. Truth be told, I never actually made extra accounts on Bluestacks simply because it runs really slowly on it (why torture myself more?). Given the warning that they post on account/device verification, I would have thought that they would monitor it quite well...

      If Minas start to float around for 1Hp, then we know there's a serious problem.

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    3. There is actually a serious problem. Since the referral player only gets the mina when the account hits level 10, if mina was only worth 1HP few people would do it since it would take more than 1hp worth of time to refer.

      When Mina was released there was a guy selling them for 15Hp each on limitless supply, he was using a jailbroken device.

      They also use the extra accounts to get the bonus card packs and attempt to get HR/SR/SSR that way.

      Huge problem, mobage/cygames ignores it.

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    4. If they still choose to ignore it, I think mobage/cygames are acting moronically and shooting themselves on the foot (which seems to be the case).

      It's actually in their best interest to safe guard against fake device registration since part of their revenue comes from people purchasing legend packs and HPs.

      I think I find it ironic that what made RoB appealing, which is the competitive nature of the game, collectivity and frequent events, is what is actually making the game terrible right now due to the exploits. For a social game that relies heavily on competition, mobage/cygames should definitely be monitoring these exploits more closely (I don't know the solutions for let's say fake device registration, but they should).

      Boy, am I glad I never joined the Holy Wars (or ever been competitive in general). Seems like the game is more frustrating than fun.

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  2. What about "legit" accounts? I have 4 devices that have registered accounts, only serious about one though. Do you feel that this in some way contributes to the problem since I basically have 3 feeder accounts for my main?

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    1. When you look at any game, you should consider how the game designers intended it. Mobage created a system where one account per device would be active. Now, as developers did they figure their target demographic had several devices? If their target demographics had several devices available would one player be on all of them, or would a couple different people in the household play?

      I think you know very well that the game was never intended have one player authenticate four accounts and use them to power up a main account. That being said, I have a second account that I play. I don't use a feeder account except for my high level account feeding my low level account.

      Personally, It doesn't sound like you're using your alt accounts to do anything but feed your main account which doesn't effect other players so I couldn't care less.

      I DO care about people who create 30 accounts right when a new referral account is released. I DO care about people who make 2-3 accounts a day to get rare card packs. And I REALLY DO care about people who use their alt accounts to engage in scamming activity, attacking defense leads outside of HW activity, and overall playing in such a manner that makes the game worse for others.

      I think a good rule of thumb is that if you have the devices, it's legit.

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  3. People already complain about how they dont want to have to register their devices. But I understand the reason behind it instead of emails, as you can mass create email addresses and REALLY screw this game up. Like the person above, i have 6 referrals. my gf is a referral and she has 2 of her own referrals. I think maybe they should limit the amount of referrals in a 30 day span to like, 5-10. Idk, maybe 5-10 no matter what. I dont see how you can get 2-3k HP without cheating and not spending ANY money. I always question low level buyers who have a boat load of Anything.

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    1. At low levels you accumulate HP by selling feeder service. Once you get enough HP you move on buying/selling. Buy low, sell high the larger the item you can purchase, the more profit you make.

      Buy a 4 Lances for 160HP each, flip four lances for 190HP each. It's about finding motivated sellers and motivated buyers. That is the best way once you reach a certain point to gain/maintain HP.

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  4. Im in the same boat as Timothy...I use 3 different devices to feed one main account. They belong to my daughters but I dont plan on spending actual dollars. Its fun and challenging. But I see now there is virtually no chance for a regular player to reach top ranks with all these exploits. Sad really...

    Reading all this stuff makes me realize how in a week you see certain players already have Max evolved Mina. Im scratching my head as to how and it makes sense now. I agree with your sentiments Lucarda, these exploits are too serious to ignore.

    BTW thanks for all your info, it has personally helped me A LOT.

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    1. Low levels a lot of time are fed by their high level account or are people re-rolling to Man.

      There is a point that once you get rich though you stay rich. A lot of people are willing to sell several HR for a lower price and if you can flip them by selling them each individually for a profit you can make quite a bit, especially with SR/SSR.

      I know several people who spend 1000HP right after the last HW to purchase wall breakers to sell them all two days later for 1400HP. (because of the announcement of another HW, usually they sit on them for a month.)

      You can get rich legitimately and stay rich if you're smart. I will also note a lot of the top tier players do spend money on the game, which I don't.

      Also, a lot of the people with Max'd Mina purchased the cards separately, combine them, sell at profit.

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  5. Not even true... So you're saying that they should get items for not attempting to fight... Genius. Yea they had problems but how can you say that they can come back after just 2 days, that's so ignorant. First off why waste every powder in 1 match? You get extra points for winning a matchup which would add more point than spending everything in 1 fight. Everyone has different strategies to winning a war. And for having a rewar is clever, they gave most people HP in return for their mistake and I see it as back to back holyW events rather than a redo. It's smart to where everyone has a fair advantage going into war #2 because even lower orders have a chance to make something from nothing. As a player perspective I think its great that their giving mire rewards for orders that are also strong enough to win not 1 but 2 wars with very limited resources.

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    1. I was going to respond to this, but your overwhelming illiteracy encourages me not to.

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  6. Hey i've got a question for you. I want to know what things are taken into consideration when the match orders to battle. Hw 5.5 my order was pitted against orders that where way out of our league. Does it go based on order lvl? Or is it some other formula based on order strength

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    1. It's actually based on point totals. If the orders you were facing were heavily inactive at first and were starting to get active you might have crossed paths on their way up to proper rating.

      There's actually a strategy to get gems with 50 wins by keeping your order rank very low.

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