Compensate for 3+Day Downtime Last Week for Affected Players.

This is directed at the devs to basically do something to recompense the players that weren't able to log in last week because of the socket error which was purely a server side fault and not anything we did wrong, Also this is a request for for anyone else who was irritated by the forced downtime due to the patching error last week to chime in (From other threads I know there's plenty of you) to reply ,up-vote , and echo the sentiment. As far as I know , primarily PC players were affected due to the aforementioned launcher/patch issues. There is ample evidence here on the Bug report forums from multiple threads as well as multiple threads on Steam ie here (https://steamcommunity.com/app/24200/discussions/0/2977404149642838266/?ctp=4) with 50+ users irritated by the very same issue within a single topic.

I don't know if this is preemptive as I've personally been able to log back in since the very beginning of this week , and there still seem to be those that are still affected but it is really unbecoming to essentially(even if inadvertently) cheat us out of things like stabilizers on the bonus week because of a socket error that is purely the company's fault for the patching error (If you all intend to make it up to us at some point I haven't seen any indication that that is the case hence having to write this message) . I'm actually writing on behalf of my brother who contacted support and basically got told by a "senior GM" they wouldn't do anything about it , marked the problem as solved and his only option was to try to rally support on the forums and see if that did anything . Now we're both F2P and i've heard we're obviously not the most highly regarded account type around here , so perhaps maybe that's why the GM told him that (anecdotally some other guy apparently got 500 DBC for his troubles , but he seems to be an exception and may even be on the EU servers ? not sure ) but most of the complaints I read were from paying players who were extremely upset by the same problem and don't seem to have gotten anything to make up for it - again for a multiple downtime that is forced on players because of a server side error , there should be something given to make it up to everyone affected .I know some of us scrambled to uninstall redownload and reinstall the game and tinker with all kinds of settings just to play again on those days to no avail , and those were giant messes in themselves , and so far the impression being given off is they don't care one bit .Look, a lot of us are really into this game and this is one of the only things we have to look forward to during these rough confusing times - while I do appreciate things like the open episodes and some other things that have made the game more new user friendly this year - the oversight on this issue thus far has really bothered me especially when it feels like I've seen more done to make up for seemingly lesser issues ( a few hours of downtime or lag) ... Perhaps it is the case you all do intend to do something but there hasn't been any indication of it so far , days after the problem had been finally resolved for many and the Red error header on your forums regarding this problem has disappeared .

Said players , again if you'd like them to do something to make it up to us - (and I definitely know you're out there) -SPEAK UP . They definitely are far more likely to listen the more people who post in here than just this initial message from some noob. Heck , post here and tweet at them too because even long threads here explicitly regarding the problem don't seem to have garnered any direct response of them as of yet.

TL/DR - Give us at least the stabilizers we missed out on because of your server side forced downtime if not in addition to a little something else to make up for it ; Fellow players - chime in on here and twitter so they may actually listen to us .

I just wanna say I really like your forum name.

And regarding your post, don't get your hopes high. I started playing when this game launched on the PS3, back then this sort of thing always happened. The game would suddenly go offline for days at a time. Sucked for those of us who were on a single month subscription. But nothing was ever done to compensate us.

The last time they compensated us for a downtime, resulted in 3 days of no legendary for me, because of the "free" 3 days we got.

This was company wide though, I understand this issue affected a portion of all the games.

This is a best practice in most games these days. It's not a reach. I'd also like to receive the first day of stabilizers I missed out on bc of this. +1

Seriously , it's appalling they haven't done anything about it and seem to have just kind of swept it under the rug. There's still people with the problem persisting and you can find them scattered throughout various threads either on here or the bug report , and it's honestly pretty messed up and unfair , and it seems like you all have just accepted with being treated like dirt despite being longtime paying customers , if I were you I'd be far more irritated than myself , some n00b who started the game this year . As for the name it was tough enunciating just how many Na's there were in the song lol Edit: if it was company wide , they should do something to make it up for players of all of their games... good customer service (which hasn't been demonstrated here as of yet) like that generally helps keeps current players satisfied and makes them spread the word to their friends , and vice-versa...

If it had been something like a serious server downtime episode, I'd imagine we would have seen something by this point.

But from what I could tell, it wasn't affecting everyone at the same rate or across the board like other outages where compensation was handed out. It'd be easier if it had been that way, but now you'd be looking at giving downtime rewards to folks who didn't suffer any downtime.

You should see downtime as an opportunity to enrich your life. Explore the countryside. When DC goes down over here, I spend my day visiting a Roman fort, or a Victorian folly, or making love to a series of nubile young women, each more beautiful and adventurous than the last.

Try it.

So, we have a few options. One is to do an extensive and exhaustive search through logs and self-reports about those who had a problem and then give them individually some sort of grant.

Another option is to not do anything, irritate the ones who were affected (and the people they tell about negative experiences) and probably not even blip the radar on those not affected.

Or...they give a small grant to everyone which engenders goodwill among those who couldn't log in and gives the other players some goodwill as well, a little bit of lagniappe, as it were.

I know generally which option is the best for overall customer experience...but would it really rankle you that much if someone got a little bonus, so long as everyone affected was compensated? I think that's by far the better side to err on.

Doesn't particularly rankle me one way or the other. But the whole "compensation for a few days" bit seems like a "mountain out of a molehill" situation.

Looking at the sub prices on the main website, you're looking at about $15 per month on the high end and around $10 per month on the low end of pricing. If my math is right (and it may well not be, it's been a long day and math wasn't always my strong suit LOL), at the high end you'd be looking at maybe a buck and a half in compensating for 3 days of not being able to play and just under a dollar on the high and low ends of pricing respectively.

If someone REALLY wants to try and raise a stink to get a buck or so from the company, more power to them. Just seems rather silly and not worth the effort to me, though.

Thought this was clear at the very least in the TLDR , but again A. (per the beginning of my post) This primarily affected PC (US and EU - and moreover it seems to be the PC servers for all their games) - giving all PC players 3 or so stabilizers would make up for it here on DCUO since the downtime was acknowledged in large red letters on top of the forums for 3 days.. B. I'm not looking for money, (The word "compensate" was the one the GM used ) just the 3 stabilizers I'm missing. They're important to me because my RNG is garbage and it would take me closer to 3 weeks to earn them than 3 days that I tried logging in every single day and couldn't because of their server side error, and there are lots of others in various topics upset on these very forums by the same issue - there's a steam thread with 60+ counting replies upset by the issue and multiple other topics with varying numbers .. You're welcome to think whatever you like and post it - helps bring attention to the topic at least , but its no fun being screwed out of half of one of the only bonus weeks you care about and yes it's common practice in other games/services/etc for customer service to at least own up to something that's their fault and make up for it - don't know why the prevalent attitude here seems to be complacency with getting treated badly to the extent of preferring and defending it .

I've seen all 3 done by several other games I've played this last year. Heck, some mobile games compensate a tiny amount of something for just having a 30 minute hiccup.

But with this bug, I'd probably say #2 would be what they go for. Ideally, #3 would be preferred.

I'll admit that I may have missed in the initial post that it wasn't about money. Nevertheless, if my math is correct (still kinda doubtful, but I've always been that way with any math I do LOL) you're still asking for the equivalent of, at most, a buck and a half from the company.

That's it. About $1.50 worth of compensation, at best. Personally I'd stop for a second and wonder if it was really worth the effort, but that's me.

As for the whole "treated badly" bit? That at the very least hints at malicious intent on the part of the devs, and I'd hardly call what happened intentional OR malicious. Were players inconvenienced? Sure, I can't deny that happened. But being inconvenienced doesn't necessarily mean you should get something for it, especially when the equivalent value is pretty low.

I play on the PC side of things. I saw the reports of troubles taking place and decided, "Nah, it's not worth the potential headache, I'll wait until things stabilize (which they did) before I try any serious play." So I missed out on some bonus Stabilizers as well. But this whole "we deserve compensation" bit is hard for me to look at in any serious way.

i mean this only affect certain players and it would probably be impossible to pin point WHO it affected. i say this as a USPC player was on last week with no problems. for them to give compensation it would have to affect nearly everyone as a whole on 1 or multiple sides. they probably wont give anything due to how minimal the damage was.

For the sake of keeping the argument fair had I gotten what I wanted from time capsule's this likely would've been much less of an issue for me , however getting the same thing 3 out of 4 times and missing out on 3 extra chances I was more than ready to login every day wasn't pleasant. From observation , there are numerous others cheesed about how TC's (per various other threads in this subforum) work so perhaps this issue is intertwined with that one as stabilizers and TC's go hand in hand.

On the other hand , you make many presumptions and indeed we are all speaking opinions. Any inferences you've made are that and that alone and separate from fact. Indeed your math isn't the greatest , because the fellow above you mentioned examples small mobile games compensating for 30 minutes of downtime , whereas we are talking about 3+ days here (that's roughly 144 times the downtime- and it's swept under the rug from a game that's been around for a decade of downtime during a bonus event they do maybe twice a year. That's what was meant by the comparatively getting treated badly part. They aren't attacking people, but they aren't providing a reasonable level of basic customer service. For me it's not a question of money but grinding 3 weeks instead of 3 days for a chance at some item for a time capsule and it irked many people in the thread" Launcher patch Fail" in the bug report as well as the steam one , there are close to 100 messages in those two threads alone , and various other topics about it.

For all your talk about "bits" I likewise have a hard time taking someone who virtue signals over a videogame based on children's cartoon characters any type of seriously . I encourage you to go the bug report "Launcher patch fail" thread as well as the steam one and attempt to "humblebrag " (or whatever it is you're going for) to everyone else there who was irked about what a patient and understanding fellow you as an individual are.This message wasn't written specifically to you (though you could stand to benefit from it and gain something you too were inadvertently cheated out of, but you prefer to argue) and whether you take it seriously matters very little to me. When contacting support, the GM literally advised to try to rally support on the forums , it's unfortunate a chunk of people here would rather be negative nancy's and defend a lack of simple customer service (props to those of you who have chimed in in support). That's not so much a headache as just a confusing observation regarding people's psychology.

To the other fellow , namely this affected the latter part of the week; were you able to play Wednesday - Saturday ? if so you'd be the first I've heard of able to do so. Good for you. However apparently it affected almost all of Daybreak's games especially for PC. Just because it didn't effect you doesn't mean it wasn't a significantly sized issue.

people crying about 3 days and wanting things? try 10 weeks and just hoping the game actually comes back (2011). 3 days is nothing.

Hmm.. (puts on "Devil's Advocate Hat')

Well..

If this sever error affected the game as a whole and NO ONE was able to log in for several days/ weeks or more, then I could see the devs extending the bonus week time or gifting the player base a unique item (think of "Back from the Hack" gift from the 2011).

Any player could claim that he/she was affected, because he/she could not log in. The devs would not have a record of that because that player could not log in. Therefore, it would be easy to take advantage of any compensation the devs would deem worthy to hand out. In order for the devs to fairly compensate when something goes wrong, it has to be an "most/all or nothing" situation in my opinion; most of/all of the players need to be affected in order for any type of compensation to be considered.

And yet you're still whining about it 10 years later. Must've been a real bummer back then since it's obviously still fresh on your mind today. But humor me and tell me more , I'm new to the game this year and wasn't aware of such lengthy downtimes in the past. Genuinely curious , not just sarcastically throwing shade at you back. So kindly don't tattle on me with the ominous little pink link in your sig. Doesn't change the fact you all are defending sweeping something under the rug and barely owning up to it whereas many other games are quick to correct their mistake for much less. There were big red letters on the forums for 3 days saying they're working on it. It was very clearly a major problem for a large amount of people. Yeah they seemingly got it fixed for the most part ( still see stuff here and there but no large topics like the ones I've mentioned in the thread so if the error persists its to a lesser scale now. However, I've seen people complain about less on twitter , reply with a simple "give us X" and lo and behold sometimes the demand was met. Was often for lag or a few hour downtime . Why it was the case then and things have tightened up now is unknown. Even with all of the seeming backlash here against resolving it , if you all got something out of it I wouldn't be upset. The same doesn't seem to hold true the other way around. Strange.

Well that weeks-long downtime meant NO ONE could play the game, and it came with the looming specter of people having their personal/financial information compromised as well, so it was more than just "a real bummer." Probably why it sticks out in people's minds more than a few days of intermittent connectivity.

I was really trying not to go this direction because I wasn't sure it was a fair comparison, but this whole thread is starting to come across as the equivalent of someone raising a royal stink and trying to make something of a federal case over their fast food order being goofed up somehow. For me that makes it even tougher to take seriously, but that's just me.

Squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Nothing gets fixed if nothing is said. This works across all walks of life. I'm not saying that one has to make a "royal stink" about it (which I don't believe the TC is doing), but something has to be said because too often nothing is.

Think of all of those awful customer service people that you have come across in your lifetime. Sure some of it is poor training, or just not really caring but a lot of it is because no one ever told them that they give subpar or lackluster service. Some people genuinely walk around thinking their excrement doesn't stink and that is just one reason to actually say something. Some people need to hear uncomfortable things and some people need guidance.

No one has to be a "Karen" about anything but one must articulate and voice their opinions/preferences/etc in order for them to be acknowledged and possibly addressed.

No one has ever gotten anything accomplished by sitting back quietly and letting (poor) business (practices) go on as usual.

A customer who comes into a customer service area asking for some help or requesting a fix for a problem they might have is generally going to get all the help they could ask for, especially if they're acting in a calm and reasonable fashion.

A customer who comes in making demands and essentially saying "this is what I deserve!" will get some help, but at best it'll be just enough to get them out of the store before they raise a stink. And even then that isn't always a guarantee that they won't raise a stink for no other reason than to raise a stink.

From the OP:

Sounds kinda like a demand to me.

I think a lot of people need to learn or try to remember that good customer service doesn't mean the company or employee you're dealing with is going to bow and scrape at your every whim. They are there to help, but they are also human, just trying to do their jobs the best they can and there ARE limits as to what can be done to remedy a problem you might have.