There are people who spent 900 certs extra on Decoy Flares due to your typo. Where is the refund?

For reference

http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/14uyqe/nc_decoy_flares/

Today's patch fixed the unintended disparity in the Reaver's decoy flare cost. This had to be one of the most egregious and silly errors in the game yet, making fully certed Reaver flares 900 certs more expensive than those of the other two empires' ESFs.

This disparity went for a significant amount of time before even being commented on by a developer,(http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/nc-decoy-flare-price.66718/page-2#post-831596) leaving a very large window where people were never aware of the issue. This is compounded by the fact that many people stick to one faction, making it that much more difficult to recognize that the Reaver's flares were overpriced compared to the other factions. Almost no effort was made on the part of SOE to make people aware on a wider scale of the fact that certing into anything higher than Rank 1 constituted a complete and utter waste of certs.

If there was ever a situation where people deserved a refund in certs, this was it. We're not talking about paying station cash for something that had its functionality/stats changed via the inevitable ebb and flow of game balance (something that has its own debate).

We're talking about someone errantly typing 500 instead of 200 and 1000 instead of 400 into a variable or input box, making the feature more expensive than it was intended to be, without an official announcement or effort made to steer people away from purchasing it until it was fixed.

As of right now, no certs were refunded.

This sets a horrible precedent of paranoia for people spending certs. Are players now supposed to question and double-check the cost of everything they consider spending on for fear of SOE slipping up again? Are we now obligated to make a character on each faction to triple-check the cost of every cert feature?

This isn't supposed to be a beta, players should at least be able to have a modicum of faith in the game's integrity to tell them the correct price of something.

Yes I understand that SOE isn't obligated to do anything here considering the TOS. I'm only talking about what would seem to be the only fair recourse in this situation. If this issue didn't constitute a refund of certs, I honestly don't know what does.

A few miffed comments follow.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/14uyqe/nc_decoy_flares/c7gp4s0
http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/14uyqe/nc_decoy_flares/c7gs8t2
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/nc-decoy-flare-price.66718/page-5#post-867039

Did you try contacting support?

They tell you they cannot do anything.

SOE realised that when they released PS2 they only wanted two factions, so they're trying everything in their power to transfer the NC players to VS/TR.

What the hell.. NC players should definitely get some kind of compensation..

The NC seems to be SOE's red headed step child.

No kidding!

It's pretty ridiculous

Heres your answer
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...r-pilots-soe-is-making-fun-of-us.69281/page-2

Basically, this means we're going to wait really long so everyone forgets about this and pretend like this never happened.

Seeing as certs are free, unless I am mistaken that you can buy them, I don't see anything wrong with them not giving a refund because they may not have an ability to track who bough it when it was overpriced. This issue is relatively minor compared to fixing the game.I do have an issue in not announcing it though. That should totally be announced under news ASAP. I do agree that is bad.

I'm guessing they can track Certs, if not then there is probably a lot of duping going on in this game. But like all F2P games there is always a large base of hackers because they can keep making new characters

And whose fault is that!?

It's very simple, anyone who unlocked Rank 2 and above of the cert before today overpaid.

Absolutely unacceptable.

Well, that's ********. I don't even stand to gain here. Still ********.

Well it was a tax tacked on by the TR government, you can fight us all you want but taxation, taxation never changes...

That's an unfortunately common response from support. Don't take it as a final answer though. I can't speak for this game but I (and others) have got refunds in other games where a similar issue has occurred. It just required a polite but firm follow-up.

good,get over it.

I know, I was a bit enraged but as of now, we have been told

Of course those affected should get a refund. Its sad that you won't, even when they admit it was their fault you lost certs due to this.
I'm not really surprised that this happened. They are not a particularly professional company. See patch notes for further proof of this. I am convinced that as time goes by we will see more and more stuff like this happen.

Sure they make a fun game, but I would be terrified if they were ever in charge of anything important. Like something in government defense or a nuke plant or something that required professionalism and attention to detail. Not the right people for that. Not in the slightest.

We should be happy they are just trying to make games.

Come on SOE, step it up a notch.

This is honestly shameful on SOE's part. I have no more trust in those guys anymore. It's one thing where you don't refund for a balance change, but this is clearly a bug. A BUG. When we are in a full release where the game is meant to be functioning on the basic levels, being shafted by SOE like this no longer becomes acceptable, and is the highest order of being unprofessional short of physically slapping your customers in the face.

This doesn't affect me - I never bothered cert'ing Decoy Flares past rank 1 due to how easy missiles already are to just evade.

That being said: it's entirely ******** on SOE's part to not issue certification refunds to affected players. This isn't a case of "I spent the certs but don't like the ability", or "SOE nerfed it and I don't want it anymore". This is an outright case of "SOE ****** up and had the wrong cost for the ability."

A refund is absolutely deserved. I was really starting to think that they'd already managed all of the major ways they could alienate their playerbase, but refusing to do cert refunds for something like this pretty well tops it off.