Some notes on today's cert grants

Alpha Squad camo (An exclusive camo set)

A Reset to all player certifications (so everyone can recertify) will allow SoE to take away the unearned certs players have spent, while also giving everyone a nice thank you for playing at the same time.

From my post: "We all make mistakes, but when SoE makes a mistake they are willing to own up to it, & fix it.
"

For sure this is a tricky PR situation, but a Rollback is the least bad option out of a load of bad options. Many games have had to do similar things in the past when exploits or hacks have been found, the main problem being the longer they wait between now and doing a rollback the worse it hurts the population.

But what other options do they have?

If they let it slide they are going to piss of a portion of their player base who view this as pay to win. BR1's with more lifetime certs that BR100's with that may certs why would they ever buy SC again?

If they give everyone some sort of "we f'ed up here everyone get some certs", how much?, whats fair? should everyone get 10k certs or more like some of these extreme cases? Or should every once who has bought SC get 2 certs per SC they have spent? (potentially the most fair but horrible for the game balance and getting people to buy SC)

A rollback is the most fair, right now people will loose at most a days worth of progress, they can evaluate the cert grants, rebuild the system to do it the right way and in a week or two all those who deserve something back will be getting something back.

i didn't buy a recent pack because i had a gun in it already,... should've done it and gotten 2x certs!

They aren't gonna rollback, what's done is done. I just don't get how SOE can mess up so bad like this. After I logged in tonight and saw I got maybe a couple hundred certs, I quickly reminded myself how some got 5 digits worth of certs. I logged tonight, don't feel like playing at the moment.

I'm sure I'll get over it eventually. But for now, I feel sick about the situation. It is one of the worst case of incompetence I've seen in my 14 years of playing MMO's and FPS games.

http://imgur.com/ERQ7U96

What the hell SOE? You better make this fair again.

It's sort of impressive really. Patches in this game are usually a complete disaster, but at least they find novel new ways to make patch day a total disaster.

I get that this is a big fiasco, but I would like to point something out to all the people saying they will use this as an excuse to quit the game. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you started playing this game to either shoot people or play with friends. How are either of those reasons effected by some random people getting a boat load of certs? It doesn't effect the way you play the game at all. So there's a few more people out there with 1-shot shot guns, rocket pods, and AP cannons. Big whoop.

As for the leader boards, again big whoop. So your epeen doesn't get stroked as much as it used to. In my opinion, the only stat I ever cared about was Facilities Defended as that one shows the most accuracy of how much of a team player you are.

Now, don't get confused with me saying this as I am kissing up to SOE. I don't think they should have given a refund at all and would've rather they spent time putting in a sort of Pawn Shop system where you can trade in guns you don't want to use anymore for AT MOST 50% of your SC/certs back and AT LEAST 10%. That would've solved the problem and gotten no body upset.

Also, everyone asking for rollbacks, I guess you missed this part in the OP.

For a rollback to be successful they have to work fast, really fast. I have my doubts SOE can do that, right now SOE/Higby doesnt seem to appreciate there is a problem with this kind of hand out at all.

The alternative is a full cert reset for everyone, only then can they deduct the overspend from all who spent it already.

To the people needing payment, give out time limited voucher codes (theres a box for vouchers on every purchase) to purchase other SC items through the Depot. Thats fair and doesnt involve certs in any way.

What is eta on rollback? Would like to play again, but not against uber characters. I want a level playing field.

It's extremely unfair that a game where you must perform actions to gain certs and can't pay for them gives them out like they aren't earned by players. The nature of the game is we all have to work for certs. But that was just trashed unless a rollback happens. Certs should never be free (or bought).

I was annoyed before, but now with this??

I think I may just get angry. Granting certs instead of refunding SC was unfair to begin with -- I knew from the moment it was announced that that was a big mistake (you should never allow anyone to purchase certs, even accidentally and indirectly), though I'd mostly gotten over it since you announced this terrible plan weeks ago -- but now you make these huge mistakes and then you refuse to fix it? Why? Out of some horribly misguided attempt to not upset the affected players? So instead, you'll just cheapen all the certs those players earned, screw up the cert to BR balance, and tick off all the players who either didn't get free certs or did but are mature enough to not want them because they didn't earn them. So again, is this to not upset the affected players? I ask because all players are affected here, not just the ones who got free certs for no good reason.

I don't care how whiny someone gets because they "lose" something they weren't supposed to be given in the first place. It's like those people some time back in the news who were mistakenly given millions of dollars in their bank accounts, so they spent it. Did the bank and government just say "oh well, our mistake"? No. Not at all. Surely you logged how many certs you gave and can take that amount away. If that puts the character into negatives, then rollback any cert purchases made since then. Or better, just rollback all their cert purchases since then so they can decide what they really want with their fairly earned number of certs.

Those people who essentially stole from the bank went to prison, by the way. Obviously the situation here is very different, but the analogy works until punishment is doled out. Players who spent the certs shouldn't be punished, but they should not be allowed to keep those certs or anything they purchased with them. Anything else is simply not fair, and as a paying customer myself, I find it hard to justify spending anything else on this game until you fix this.

Fantastic Idea.

I missed that part of the post. If they dont roll back, im gone. Tempted to charge back the $170 ive spent on this.

Infuriating.

perhapse they should just rollback everything that higher than 10k per Char... don´t think anyone has bought so mcuh on alt chars that it would be THAT mcuh more.. at least this 50k-100k Certs must be some horrible error...

This sums up pretty well my feelings on this matter as well. BR77 trivialized in a day. -={

I really really hate to say it, but I'm not going to ragequit. I talked with my outfit leader, and I'm going to chill out for a week, and if this isn't fixed I'm going to call mastercard and chargeback the 220 I've spent on this game. I'm sure after that I won't need to ragequit, SOE will do me the honors.

Reason? They said REPEATEDLY they would never sell certs, that's really the only reason I play is because while people (such as me) can pay for bonuses, and camo, and a ton of wonky guns (then always go back to the default SAW because it's just great) we all still have to earn our way via playtime. Now that turns out to be a lie, and the product they have sold me is not the product I was promised. I haven't ever done a charge back, but I have never been sold product X and been given product Y.

^ That's the exact logic there, in case people are wondering why we should be bothered by this or why we couldn't just look away and keep playing. Certs are like a sacred thing in the game, something people couldn't buy, they had to work for. People could complain about station cash, or the price of weapons. But at least we all work our certs, we earn them, and we spend them however we want.

For SOE to just hand out 5 digits worth of certs to many accounts, and not just on one character but on multiple of their characters, that's just ridiculous.

This is a great idea .

What would be REALLY incompetent would be not FIXING THE PROBLEM because someone FOOLISHLY said they wouldn't and "what's done is done". You can change your mind, SOE. Higby's posts shouldn't be considered policy set in stone.

I'm just stating how SOE deals with these things, I've played too many SOE games to know they aren't gonna roll back.