This is an extremely poor result for those of us that have lost items due to no fault of our own.
The company should be ashamed of itself for not having adequate processes to stop this from happening in the first place not to mention not being able to fix it in an expedient manner. Even worse than this is giving up and walking away without making everyone whole. You should own up to your mistakes and do whatever is required to fix it.
I’m not quite there yet. I have over 8,000 gold in my account. I quit both Ingress and Pogo over frustrations with game development (even though I still have saved currency in both games). I will wait to see what this next solution is, and what new content is released for the anniversary. It had better be good.
Fix as many green stars as possible. The above dragon is a good example for a definitely missing green star. No discussion needed. Decidable by algorithms.
There is no excuse for totally ignoring such clear cases.
And please do not consider fragment gifts.
This would make our registries even more worthless
How about the inability to enter a fortress to compete in Wizarding Challenges. Any plans to fix that? Since the most recent update the game freezes every time I try to enter a fortress.
unfortunately these events are just adding salt to the wounds.
Take the current event for example it has some ministry foundables boosted. Before my green stars where taken away I only had Arthur to place. Which I now have thanks to the event, but can’t prestige the frame as now I have none of the other foundables. It’s very unlikely I will be able to gain the fragments needed from the fortress challanges or madeye required to place these images again before the event is over.
This event should have allowed me to prestige the frame and start working on placing Arthur and Tonks on the next frame but now I am stuck on the current frame not making the progress I should be.
Looking at the other events planned this month. I am going to be having the same issue. Not making progress due to being blocked by foundables I had placed but are missing the green star.
Surely someone at WB or Niantic, whoever is in charge of this, can do a bit of math to figure out if images ought to be placed based on the sheer quantity seen? I would like some of my 106 demiguises back. Even half would feel fair *to me*, based on the flee rate I’ve experienced.
@hpwulola how is it possible for you to think it's alright to NOT return players fragments and rectify something that is no fault of a select group of players while others players remain unaffected? As a link between the company and the community are you happy with this explanation? It seems that we are simply being brushed under the carpet and given a thread to vent and let all our frustration out.
Moreover how is it fair to provide a make-good solution to all players while the affected players are already lagging behind in runestones, red books and gold frames in comparison to the players who haven't been affected having put the same or in most cases more time and money into the game?
I'm curious to understand how you feel about this and if you think this is fair? This thread (the second thread you started) on the matter has barely 5 posts from you since it began and already it has already reached it's 6th page. As a moderator do you think our concerns do not matter? So we remain in the back burner?
It is over a month now and we have now determined that we will have no fix.... Will it take another month to offer the entire player base a complimentary pack with your apologies?
@FireNightingale - da missus (mbs808) and i enjoyed exchanging gifts with you. i will miss your contributions to this forum, and the wonderful postcards associated with your giftboxes. aloha !!
"We hope to move forward and make it up to you with future events and content."
This reads like [HPWULola's boss's boss; Lola's alright]:
"We're continuously producing new content and events anyway as our core business function. You'll get over how upset you are and forget the waves of losses; time heals all wounds. Also let's stay on-message and relentlessly forward-looking."
"Accepting your purchases of our virtual currency to remove carefully-designed gameplay pacing throttles? Also our core business function."
"Spending costly engineer time to get a small fraction of the player base's progress accurately restored? Wrong side of the profit and loss sheet. We'll throw you some additional potions and runestones and books. This is a game, not a level of service/uptime-guaranteed production software-as-a-service, and players should focus on continuing to pay to play, in time and with currency purchases instead of looking backward when we cause sequential data-loss events. Our responsibility to you ends at the EULA."
"Remember, we're going to throw you an offset. So there's that."
edit: It's instructive to see this from Niantic's perspective. According to https://nianticlabs.com/about/, they turned $35M in 2015 investor funding into more than $1,000,000,000 in 2016. Literally the fastest in human history as a game, at the time. It doesn't make sense for the business to spend much effort (read: investor profits) on a sliver of a sliver of their revenue stream across games (read: the same 30 people posting in this thread over and over like me. 8D ).
There are three clear things to do, based on the official HPWU responses in this thread so far:
1) Get a refund on all your purchases that you have made in your app store
2) Leave a 1-star review and detail a warning to all potential future downloaders of the game
3) Stop playing the game, and encourage your friends to do so. Find a new game worth playing that has a competent game development and communications team
The game development and management team has basically said "too bad s*** happens, deal with it" without a single ounce of contrition and regret. I for one feel liberated from not playing this game anymore. Try to encourage others to see the light too.
Having played this game so enthusiastically since day one, I keep trying to get over my anger about this situation, and I just haven't been able to so far.
I'm a level 54 player, and I feel that the most dedicated amongst us got damaged the most. I don't even know how many fragments I lost on May 7th. Hundreds and hundreds. Most of them severes and emergencies. The ones I spent SO MUCH TIME AND ENERGY to acquire! I got none back. Nada. (I'm lucky, however to have escaped the second and even worse removal of the green stars.)
So, as a hardcore player, I got hit worse than the casual players. Yet THEY were rewarded with an easier game, tons of books and runestones, a gift pack, and the return of their fragments. I can't imagine why I'm upset!
The hundreds of hours spent, the miles walked, can never, ever be compensated. The goodwill I felt and the trust I had may be gone for good. But what about the $589.82 I spent this year? I have the receipts. Where's my refund? (Seriously, you guys, is this possible?)
I feel so torn about whether to quit. Something that made me SO happy until a month ago is now making me SO unhappy. Do I just walk away from this investment? Count me among your really, really unhappy customers. Oh, and also count me among the injured customers who will be livid if your next fix goes out to everyone, instead of just those aversely affected!
Ouch, this sucks. And I haven't lost anywhere near as much as others here have. I can't imagine reading this response if I was someone who was so dedicated to this game that I paid thousands to attend the Fan Festival, only to have all of those fragments deleted and hear that the company is just giving up on trying to restore them. What a slap in the face.
Focusing instead on "future events and content" probably makes sense from a short-term financial perspective, but it is at the expense of your most dedicated customers' trust. Shame on the leaders at your company who made this decision.
So here is suggestion for make-good solution, that would make me happy:
Exploration Registry: 100 level 3-5 Runestones to each family page.
Challenges Registry: 30 red books for each Gold, Silver and Bronze page and 10 red book for each Basic page.
And this would be given only to those of us who were affected by these bugs.
Before anyone come asking why 10 books on Basic pages, it’s because some, like me, got some wands on that CD Fortress that are now gone. And I would like some compensation for those too.
But this is only a suggestion. We probably get just few potions and few gold which only serves as a slap to the face.
"We're continuously producing new content and events anyway as our core business function. You'll get over how upset you are and forget the waves of losses; time heals all wounds. Also let's stay on-message and relentlessly forward-looking."
"Accepting your purchases of our virtual currency to remove carefully-designed gameplay pacing throttles? Also our core business function."
"Spending costly engineer time to get a small fraction of the player base's progress accurately restored? Wrong side of the profit and loss sheet. We'll throw you some additional potions and runestones and books. This is a game, not a level of service/uptime-guaranteed production software-as-a-service, and players should focus on continuing to pay to play, in time and with currency purchases instead of looking backward when we cause sequential data-loss events. Our responsibility to you ends at the EULA."
"Remember, we're going to throw you an offset. So there's that."
If yes, can you please kindly provide a link to that?
This latest update is really disappointing. Through no fault of our own we have been robbed of hours of time and in some cases a lot of money.
The latest update says to me oh well we really messed up and it's really complicated to fix it so we just won't bother.
Even if just the green stars were replaced. Each green star on a gold registry represents around 55 fragments. I have lost goodness knows how many green stars on gold registrys but it would equate to hundreds if not into the thousands of fragments. These have been collected over a year and I have actually enjoyed playing the game, but all this it just feels so morally wrong. There is no other product that you buy or invest time in where this would be acceptable.
On your other games particularly Pokémon in each Pokemon's stats it records how many have been seen aswell as been caught. Now being built using the same platform I would have thought this data was stored in Wizards Unite. This could be used to at least replace some of what's lost. And if it's not I would recommend the data you actually store of players registrys is improved for when this happens again, because the way this has gone I would bet money that this or a similar issue will happen again, altho I feel I have already bet money by spending it on this game and lost.
It just feels so wrong and the worst part is I actually like this game and don't want to stop playing I just want it to be put right.
If you are not able to calculate exaclty how many fragments you have to return to impacted player : Just give us all returned fragments count or a percentage based on the page progression. It's maybe not fair for not impacted players (i think they won't care) but assume your mistakes.
If you think about it :
Dark detectors can be a compensation for severe and emergency
Runestones can be a compensation for forteress foundables
In this 2 cases, it take a lot of time for target a specific foundable so it can't be a solution
Greenbooks can be a compensation but it will be unfair for not impacted players
Anyway, you can't leave us with 0 fragment compensation. I personally don't want your redbooks or potions or coins we don't play to collect them. We are playing for completing registries.
The other way to assume your mistakes will be to refund real money to players impacted.
I suppose if they could determine who lost fragments or stars they also could fix it.
Therefore, the "make-good solution" will have to be applied to all players.
@HP himself
Though I lost green stars I do not want anything for free that I did not earn. Any gift will (further) reduce the value of what we collected by playing.
Any effort should be put into fixing this issue as far as possible. I strongly vote against any compensation!
If the company positioning is now that we didn’t lose much considering fragments had no rollover value prior to the “fix” perhaps you can remove the XP, runestones and red books the majority received that day so we can all “move on” together on a fair playing field.
The Apple App Store only allows refunds within a 90 day period. How can I pursue a refund for all the gold packs I have bought over the last year? I have sincerely tried to move on but the insane effort I went through on the weekend to replace Luna and Neville lost fragments so I could enjoy prestiging at least one page made me realize the time to recover is too great and seeing everyone get the same make good gift will pour salt in the wound of this whale. If I can’t have my progress back the only alternative is to refund all the money I have spent thus far
Comments
This is an extremely poor result for those of us that have lost items due to no fault of our own.
The company should be ashamed of itself for not having adequate processes to stop this from happening in the first place not to mention not being able to fix it in an expedient manner. Even worse than this is giving up and walking away without making everyone whole. You should own up to your mistakes and do whatever is required to fix it.
I’m not quite there yet. I have over 8,000 gold in my account. I quit both Ingress and Pogo over frustrations with game development (even though I still have saved currency in both games). I will wait to see what this next solution is, and what new content is released for the anniversary. It had better be good.
Fix as many green stars as possible. The above dragon is a good example for a definitely missing green star. No discussion needed. Decidable by algorithms.
There is no excuse for totally ignoring such clear cases.
And please do not consider fragment gifts.
This would make our registries even more worthless
Another example:
How about the inability to enter a fortress to compete in Wizarding Challenges. Any plans to fix that? Since the most recent update the game freezes every time I try to enter a fortress.
@hpwulola can you specify if I have 8/7 fragments and I decide to place the image, will I have 0/7 or 1/7 after that?
“Make it up to you with future events”
unfortunately these events are just adding salt to the wounds.
Take the current event for example it has some ministry foundables boosted. Before my green stars where taken away I only had Arthur to place. Which I now have thanks to the event, but can’t prestige the frame as now I have none of the other foundables. It’s very unlikely I will be able to gain the fragments needed from the fortress challanges or madeye required to place these images again before the event is over.
This event should have allowed me to prestige the frame and start working on placing Arthur and Tonks on the next frame but now I am stuck on the current frame not making the progress I should be.
Looking at the other events planned this month. I am going to be having the same issue. Not making progress due to being blocked by foundables I had placed but are missing the green star.
@Ellena124 If you have an un-placed (no star) image that is 8/7, when you place it you will see the star and the number will go to 1/7.
@Videl82 Me too. Had all 4 dragons, many fragments from each, placed image on all. Attended Day of Dragons to do so. No green stars, lost fragments.
Really furious about it.
Surely someone at WB or Niantic, whoever is in charge of this, can do a bit of math to figure out if images ought to be placed based on the sheer quantity seen? I would like some of my 106 demiguises back. Even half would feel fair *to me*, based on the flee rate I’ve experienced.
not returning anything is unacceptable.
@hpwulola how is it possible for you to think it's alright to NOT return players fragments and rectify something that is no fault of a select group of players while others players remain unaffected? As a link between the company and the community are you happy with this explanation? It seems that we are simply being brushed under the carpet and given a thread to vent and let all our frustration out.
Moreover how is it fair to provide a make-good solution to all players while the affected players are already lagging behind in runestones, red books and gold frames in comparison to the players who haven't been affected having put the same or in most cases more time and money into the game?
I'm curious to understand how you feel about this and if you think this is fair? This thread (the second thread you started) on the matter has barely 5 posts from you since it began and already it has already reached it's 6th page. As a moderator do you think our concerns do not matter? So we remain in the back burner?
It is over a month now and we have now determined that we will have no fix.... Will it take another month to offer the entire player base a complimentary pack with your apologies?
@FireNightingale - da missus (mbs808) and i enjoyed exchanging gifts with you. i will miss your contributions to this forum, and the wonderful postcards associated with your giftboxes. aloha !!
"We hope to move forward and make it up to you with future events and content."
This reads like [HPWULola's boss's boss; Lola's alright]:
"We're continuously producing new content and events anyway as our core business function. You'll get over how upset you are and forget the waves of losses; time heals all wounds. Also let's stay on-message and relentlessly forward-looking."
"Accepting your purchases of our virtual currency to remove carefully-designed gameplay pacing throttles? Also our core business function."
"Spending costly engineer time to get a small fraction of the player base's progress accurately restored? Wrong side of the profit and loss sheet. We'll throw you some additional potions and runestones and books. This is a game, not a level of service/uptime-guaranteed production software-as-a-service, and players should focus on continuing to pay to play, in time and with currency purchases instead of looking backward when we cause sequential data-loss events. Our responsibility to you ends at the EULA."
"Remember, we're going to throw you an offset. So there's that."
edit: It's instructive to see this from Niantic's perspective. According to https://nianticlabs.com/about/, they turned $35M in 2015 investor funding into more than $1,000,000,000 in 2016. Literally the fastest in human history as a game, at the time. It doesn't make sense for the business to spend much effort (read: investor profits) on a sliver of a sliver of their revenue stream across games (read: the same 30 people posting in this thread over and over like me. 8D ).
@GryffinReddit can I ask where you got this information? Thanks!
=
@Bormacska , I got that info in the message from the URL in the message. Niantic Labs About page on their website.
Thanks!
There are three clear things to do, based on the official HPWU responses in this thread so far:
1) Get a refund on all your purchases that you have made in your app store
2) Leave a 1-star review and detail a warning to all potential future downloaders of the game
3) Stop playing the game, and encourage your friends to do so. Find a new game worth playing that has a competent game development and communications team
The game development and management team has basically said "too bad s*** happens, deal with it" without a single ounce of contrition and regret. I for one feel liberated from not playing this game anymore. Try to encourage others to see the light too.
Going to my registry still freezes my game. Any idea when that will be fixed?
Having played this game so enthusiastically since day one, I keep trying to get over my anger about this situation, and I just haven't been able to so far.
I'm a level 54 player, and I feel that the most dedicated amongst us got damaged the most. I don't even know how many fragments I lost on May 7th. Hundreds and hundreds. Most of them severes and emergencies. The ones I spent SO MUCH TIME AND ENERGY to acquire! I got none back. Nada. (I'm lucky, however to have escaped the second and even worse removal of the green stars.)
So, as a hardcore player, I got hit worse than the casual players. Yet THEY were rewarded with an easier game, tons of books and runestones, a gift pack, and the return of their fragments. I can't imagine why I'm upset!
The hundreds of hours spent, the miles walked, can never, ever be compensated. The goodwill I felt and the trust I had may be gone for good. But what about the $589.82 I spent this year? I have the receipts. Where's my refund? (Seriously, you guys, is this possible?)
I feel so torn about whether to quit. Something that made me SO happy until a month ago is now making me SO unhappy. Do I just walk away from this investment? Count me among your really, really unhappy customers. Oh, and also count me among the injured customers who will be livid if your next fix goes out to everyone, instead of just those aversely affected!
@hpwulola
It's my opinion, but I understand that you did everything to return lost fragment.
Thank you for your effort.
So, from now on, I want you to use your power for make coming events & game system more enjoyable, more exciting.
For example, about spawn during event.
I think "One thema-One month" is so nice, but if every spawn become Magical Games and Sports, I can feel "this is the Quidditch Month!"
Ouch, this sucks. And I haven't lost anywhere near as much as others here have. I can't imagine reading this response if I was someone who was so dedicated to this game that I paid thousands to attend the Fan Festival, only to have all of those fragments deleted and hear that the company is just giving up on trying to restore them. What a slap in the face.
Focusing instead on "future events and content" probably makes sense from a short-term financial perspective, but it is at the expense of your most dedicated customers' trust. Shame on the leaders at your company who made this decision.
@sakiyuishiro Totally off topic but so nice to see you on the forum again. What is your gift preference?
So here is suggestion for make-good solution, that would make me happy:
Exploration Registry: 100 level 3-5 Runestones to each family page.
Challenges Registry: 30 red books for each Gold, Silver and Bronze page and 10 red book for each Basic page.
And this would be given only to those of us who were affected by these bugs.
Before anyone come asking why 10 books on Basic pages, it’s because some, like me, got some wands on that CD Fortress that are now gone. And I would like some compensation for those too.
But this is only a suggestion. We probably get just few potions and few gold which only serves as a slap to the face.
@DaniD19 Did they actually say this?
"We're continuously producing new content and events anyway as our core business function. You'll get over how upset you are and forget the waves of losses; time heals all wounds. Also let's stay on-message and relentlessly forward-looking."
"Accepting your purchases of our virtual currency to remove carefully-designed gameplay pacing throttles? Also our core business function."
"Spending costly engineer time to get a small fraction of the player base's progress accurately restored? Wrong side of the profit and loss sheet. We'll throw you some additional potions and runestones and books. This is a game, not a level of service/uptime-guaranteed production software-as-a-service, and players should focus on continuing to pay to play, in time and with currency purchases instead of looking backward when we cause sequential data-loss events. Our responsibility to you ends at the EULA."
"Remember, we're going to throw you an offset. So there's that."
If yes, can you please kindly provide a link to that?
This latest update is really disappointing. Through no fault of our own we have been robbed of hours of time and in some cases a lot of money.
The latest update says to me oh well we really messed up and it's really complicated to fix it so we just won't bother.
Even if just the green stars were replaced. Each green star on a gold registry represents around 55 fragments. I have lost goodness knows how many green stars on gold registrys but it would equate to hundreds if not into the thousands of fragments. These have been collected over a year and I have actually enjoyed playing the game, but all this it just feels so morally wrong. There is no other product that you buy or invest time in where this would be acceptable.
On your other games particularly Pokémon in each Pokemon's stats it records how many have been seen aswell as been caught. Now being built using the same platform I would have thought this data was stored in Wizards Unite. This could be used to at least replace some of what's lost. And if it's not I would recommend the data you actually store of players registrys is improved for when this happens again, because the way this has gone I would bet money that this or a similar issue will happen again, altho I feel I have already bet money by spending it on this game and lost.
It just feels so wrong and the worst part is I actually like this game and don't want to stop playing I just want it to be put right.
@Jagiellonia i am not sure if they said that as it was @GryffinReddit who posted that.
I was just quoting what @hpwulola has said in her comment at the bottom of page 4.
@GryffinReddit did they actually say that? If yes, can you please provide a link?
@hpwulola @HPWUrobert
If you are not able to calculate exaclty how many fragments you have to return to impacted player : Just give us all returned fragments count or a percentage based on the page progression. It's maybe not fair for not impacted players (i think they won't care) but assume your mistakes.
If you think about it :
In this 2 cases, it take a lot of time for target a specific foundable so it can't be a solution
Greenbooks can be a compensation but it will be unfair for not impacted players
Anyway, you can't leave us with 0 fragment compensation. I personally don't want your redbooks or potions or coins we don't play to collect them. We are playing for completing registries.
The other way to assume your mistakes will be to refund real money to players impacted.
Take your responsability please
@Jagiellonia The post starts with
This reads like [...]:
So no, they didn't actually say that.
@others
I suppose if they could determine who lost fragments or stars they also could fix it.
Therefore, the "make-good solution" will have to be applied to all players.
@HP himself
Though I lost green stars I do not want anything for free that I did not earn. Any gift will (further) reduce the value of what we collected by playing.
Any effort should be put into fixing this issue as far as possible. I strongly vote against any compensation!
If the company positioning is now that we didn’t lose much considering fragments had no rollover value prior to the “fix” perhaps you can remove the XP, runestones and red books the majority received that day so we can all “move on” together on a fair playing field.
The Apple App Store only allows refunds within a 90 day period. How can I pursue a refund for all the gold packs I have bought over the last year? I have sincerely tried to move on but the insane effort I went through on the weekend to replace Luna and Neville lost fragments so I could enjoy prestiging at least one page made me realize the time to recover is too great and seeing everyone get the same make good gift will pour salt in the wound of this whale. If I can’t have my progress back the only alternative is to refund all the money I have spent thus far