Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-172.250.84.222-20160307011139/@comment-26249703-20160505122135

Vermaden wrote: RomGuyony wrote: I got a reply this morning after opening a ticket, and received the same response as plenty of others: claiming it was my fault for messing with the date/time settings of my device. I'm not going to bother pursuing it any further... This is their standart response for everyone. Reply that it is not your fault and that You havent messed with time. You should get a compensation for this lack of 100 gold. I sent this:

"Dear Anuj,

I understand this is your standard copy & paste response for this problem, but I would love to have some clarification. On the website I frequent, there were numerous reports of missing rewards for that week only. Around 100 comments of the kind, regardless of the rewards promised (ranging from Group B to D). There were reports in the first couple of weeks the new increased rewards were introduced, but I put it down to your "Game Team" not getting their act together on time and it was eventually sorted. There have been no reported problems since that week.

Do you honestly thing it's a massive coincidence and that everyone used a "game exploit" during that one week, but not the weeks before or after? Even then, each week consists of 4 Time Trials, with one of them being rotated out and another coming in every week. By that logic, if some sort of exploit was used on even a single of those 4 Time Trials, then it should be expected that either during 3 weeks before or after the week in question (or any combination of the two adding up to three weeks around it), rewards would have been withheld, as they were that week. Yet, that wasn't the case.

Even then and what I really cannot get my head around, is what kind of exploit could be used regarding Date/Time settings? I'm baffled by that and would love for you to share your "theory". This issue occurred on the morning of Monday the 11th of April (UK). The few people that claimed to have received their rewards, that week, were people that had collected them shortly after the tournament ended, around 01:00 to 03:00 UTC in the night of Sunday to Monday, or people that waited until Monday evening onwards, without entering Weekly Time Trial Tournament due to the reports, for the Results pop-up to appear (which didn't appear on Monday for me and others).

Since you say the issue comes with messing with device Date and/or Time settings and it occurred around the time most countries were switching from Standard Time to Summer Time (clocks going forward), I'm half-inclined to think you misread that situation as the players trying some exploit, but it wouldn't explain why a minority of regular users were not affected by it. My actual theory comes from the fact that there was a minor patch downloaded that morning, which I believe was done to crudely "fix" the issues in Stage 06 Goal 01, where people managed to perform two donuts and come in first place, but still failed. I know it wasn't changed because it was too hard, as the main point of these fixed goals when the user's PR is below the "recommended" PR is to force people to spend Gold. There must have been some issue with the patch introduction and how the results are stored/transmitted, which fixed itself over time (or your Game Team fixed, who knows), but it was definitely broken for a while on that Monday and a lot of people paid the price for it, ultimately being given the blame for it. I'm not sure if you realise how insulting that feels. Since the patch was sent out to everyone, even users (such as myself) that had already completed Generations, not only was the Special Event not made easier for me, but I lost out on 100 Gold.

When something negative occurs to your consumer base and neither party knows what the issue is (or maybe you do and are not willing to share that information), you really should consider siding with the users. After all, "the consumer is always right" and in this case, the consumer is definitely right, while being pinned the blame in a very nonchalant and passive-aggressive manner. I really hope that if you cannot or are not willing to put this right, you at least give a more thorough explanation on your sloppy theory/explanation.

Kind Regards, Romain."

I tried to be as polite and understanding as possible, but it annoys me just having to try and reason with them, so unless the follow-up is somewhat positive, I think I'll just leave it at that. Cheers, still, for the advice.