SOE derped harder than ever

[Yenzal]

Please move this topic to the appropriate sub-forum.

I realize there's already a topic about the free certs that were given out this patch, intended to recompensate players who had bought duplicate items across their different characters. However, this is so hilarious it needs to be highlighted with another.

There was an error, and way more certs than intended seems to have been handed out randomly across accounts. It's only just now becoming apparent how massive of an error this was, with some accounts getting hundreds of thousands of certs on all characters.

Generally people have been reporting receiving many thousands more than they should have, and many have not even spent a single cent on the game.

Keeping in mind how many accounts and characters must be registered in PS2, imagine how many free certs were given out with this patch...millions upon millions, perhaps even billions!

All those certs will be used to purchase weapons, instead of Station Cash, ultimately meaning that SOE just gave out hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars for free.

Apparently they themselves haven't yet realized the magnitude of this, stating in the only official thread addressing this that there will not be a character roll-back: http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/some-notes-on-todays-cert-grants.114869/

 

[Yenzal]

This is current top 114 on Miller, sorted by certs. Remember that those who received "compensation" got it on all their characters.

 

[jo3]

All of this and i don't get anything suppose i should have made a NC and VS character

 

[Yenzal]

So I did some maths...

I assume the mean cost of all weapons is 500 SC (=~5$) and 750 certs.
I assume the mean value of unintended free certs given out is 2000 (which is arguably a low estimate considering some received upwards of 200.000 and most report receiving thousands more than intended).

Lastly, I assume PS2 has 1.5 million registered characters.

2000 free certs * 1.5 million characters = 3.000.000.000 free certs handed out. That is three billion certs.

3.000.000.000 free certs / 750 certs mean cost of weapons = 4.000.000 weapon purchases. That is four million weapons purchased using free money.

4.000.000 weapon purchases * 5$ mean weapon cost = 20.000.000$ free dollars handed out.

Honestly I did not expect the numbers do be this big...tell me my maths is wrong?

 

[senond]

This whole thing just shows how little of a plan the have at soe.
The Project Management showed how little they know before...but this seems to me like a whole new level of incompetence.

Makes me dislike the whole micro-transaction system even more. In the end you pay more to get even less finished products then before..

 

[Shyrka]

It's the apparent lack of testing that astonishes me. Something majorly bad happens with every single patch...

 

[McBawbagg]

now, normally, what any sane developer in this kind of situation (when refunding anything) would do is take a cert 'snapshot' at the start of the downtime before anything is done, then implement patch and all the downtime things that need doing, and then as the last thing you do b4 opening up the servers again you take another snapshot. This way you can compare and pick out any irregularities at a later date without the need for a rollback and without messing with the certs ppl might have earned since the servers opened up again. (And you test your algorithm several times at least with test chars on your private test server first ofc) This is how we have done every single skill point refund in eve. Even when you're certain everything has been done right you still take precautions. In SOE's case the refund directly influences their earnings so you'd think they would have been mega cautious.

Tbh I would be very surprised if they didn't do this or something like it and the fix, comparing the data sets will take some time so they might be working on this now for all we know. And this time they will surely take their time on it to make sure they don't add to their fuck up. If they didn't take any precautions then ppl will get fired over this, although I doubt the loss will be as high as 20 mil. I think the nr of accounts which got nothing back will be so big it will dilute the certs per account well below your estimate of 2000. But its still a shitload of money.

 

[Fest]

so annoyed I didn't make alt chars! free certs?! what an awesome business strategy!

 

[Sharpe]

[quote="Yenzal" post=15781]Please move this topic to the appropriate sub-forum.

I realize there's already a topic about the free certs that were given out this patch, intended to recompensate players who had bought duplicate items across their different characters. However, this is so hilarious it needs to be highlighted with another.

There was an error, and way more certs than intended seems to have been handed out randomly across accounts. It's only just now becoming apparent how massive of an error this was, with some accounts getting hundreds of thousands of certs on all characters.

Generally people have been reporting receiving many thousands more than they should have, and many have not even spent a single cent on the game.

Keeping in mind how many accounts and characters must be registered in PS2, imagine how many free certs were given out with this patch...millions upon millions, perhaps even billions!

All those certs will be used to purchase weapons, instead of Station Cash, ultimately meaning that SOE just gave out hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars for free.

Apparently they themselves haven't yet realized the magnitude of this, stating in the only official thread addressing this that there will not be a character roll-back: http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/some-notes-on-todays-cert-grants.114869/

[/quote]

Made a post about this on the official forum used a few of your screen shots and your math, have a look: http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/battle-rank-19s-with-more-cert-points-than-br-100s.115193/

 

[Stinkbeard]

Apart from there being an apparant bug I their algorithm (still has to be proven), I don't really see how they can undo this.

The problem seems to me that SC equals cash to SOE (at least to their accountants and shareholders), you cannot give that back in such large quantities without causing a serious incident that directly effects stock value (there is a technical term for this but I forgot but think an instant 20m $ (in your calculations) downwards revenue adjustment). There are all kinds of very strict rules and regulations for these type of events which you really don't want to see invoked. In short it means that were they to refund in SC, their stock would almost certainly take a direct hit.

So they have to come up with an alternative. About the only thing that is availble is refunding it in certs since you can use those similar to SC in some cases but cannot convert them back to real money or buy them with real money. From that perspective (alternative currency limited to the game) they did the right thing (well apart from miscalculating it seems). However since certs also mean progress (exp), this has a really nasty side effect in that it jumps people ahead in the 'progress que'. However I don't really think there was any better way for them to handle this.

From a game community perspective this is really bad, from a corporate perspective this is much much better than having to report a huge operating loss on a game that still has to prove it's worth all the investments sony made.

As for the apparant bugs, they seem likely in some cases (I got 20k certs and going by your calculations that feels about right), but still have to be proven.

 

[Rolfsky]

The numbers I read in this topic are exaggerating but they for sure wrecked their own MMO economy and micro-transaction business model overnight.

I think it's too late now to correct individual cases. People have already started spending their certs en masse

People having unfair advantages, being able to unlock everything is a serious game breaker for any game, especially a MMO. They need to repair this before all hell really breaks loose and trust is forever lost.

Imo, they should act swift and decisive to contain damage:
[ol]
[li]Roll-back server.[/li]
[li]Give EVERY player the same amount of certs. This should be an amount that is higher than the average lottery cert prize outcome (probably 10K or so).[/li]
[li]Send email with apologies.[/li]


[/ol]
They need to act NOW or damage will become really irreversible.

 

[YamiNoTenshi]

[quote="Rolfsky" post=15832]The numbers I read in this topic are exaggerating but they for sure wrecked their own MMO economy and micro-transaction business model overnight.

I think it's too late now to correct individual cases. People have already started spending their certs en masse

People having unfair advantages, being able to unlock everything is a serious game breaker for any game, especially a MMO. They need to repair this before all hell really breaks loose and trust is forever lost.

Imo, they should act swift and decisive to contain damage:
[ol]
[li]Roll-back server.[/li]
[li]Give EVERY player the same amount of certs. This should be an amount that is higher than the average lottery cert prize outcome (probably 10K or so).[/li]
[li]Send email with apologies.[/li]


[/ol]
They need to act NOW or damage will become really irreversible.[/quote]

I don't really care if they give everyone certs but I think they should atleast remove 90% certs from the guys who got over 20k.
People getting over 100k certs is just extremely stupid.

 

[Zumbee]

Working as intended apparently:

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/some-notes-on-todays-cert-grants.114869/



"Quick update on this. We've seen a lot of people under the impression that somehow the cert grant was broken or given to "random players", and not players who spent Station Cash on repeat purchases. So far, after about 12 hours of investigating, and pouring through virtually every character on the list we've found zero characters who were granted certs that didn't make the appropriate StationCash purchases to warrant those cert grants based on the above grant logic. Yes, that includes all of these characters with 20-100k certs granted. A lot of confusion has come from players who purchased bundles which contained items that had previously or were subsequently purchased on other characters on their account - these were flagged as repeat purchases and treated as such. If you think you do know of someone who did receive certs without purchasing any duplicated items, we are really interested in knowing more, and you can email me directly (mhigby@soe.sony.com) with that information and we will look into it. We are still compiling a list of players who did not receive cert points for certain duplicated purchases.

We've definitely heard the frustration from players who were not part of this grant, and looking at some of the astronomical numbers of cert points that certain accounts received it's understandable why. It's worth noting that less than 5% of our player population was granted certs from this and less than 0.03% of players received anything more than 2000 certs from the grants.

As a note, we don't want "granted" certs to be part of the leaderboards, so in a future update those certs will be removed so that only "earned" certs are being displayed to ensure that the leaderboards more accurately reflect level of effort of the player.

I realize this update isn't going to make those of you who are upset about this cert grant less upset, but it's information we felt was worth sharing so people could have a better understanding of what is actually happening, amid a lot of misinformation being spread around.

I want to emphasize that our goal on this grant, as with all decisions made on this project, is to provide the best possible overall experience for our players. Moving beyond this incident, we will be reevaluating our policies for future compensations to ensure we have methods that do not cause the kind of impact to our player community that this admittedly has.

Finally, to those of you who feel betrayed or hurt by this incident, we humbly apologize."

 

[Stinkbeard]

[quote="Rolfsky" post=15832]The numbers I read in this topic are exaggerating but they for sure wrecked their own MMO economy and micro-transaction business model overnight.

I think it's too late now to correct individual cases. People have already started spending their certs en masse

People having unfair advantages, being able to unlock everything is a serious game breaker for any game, especially a MMO. They need to repair this before all hell really breaks loose and trust is forever lost.

Imo, they should act swift and decisive to contain damage:
[ol]
[li]Roll-back server.[/li]
[li]Give EVERY player the same amount of certs. This should be an amount that is higher than the average lottery cert prize outcome (probably 10K or so).[/li]
[li]Send email with apologies.[/li]


[/ol]
They need to act NOW or damage will become really irreversible.[/quote]

Although I can relate to the perceived 'unfairness' part, I do think the 'advantage' the refunded players get is a bit overestimated.

It's not like that 100k+ cert br 19 player that can instantly buy a fully decked out mozzy will actually know how to fly that thing and take you out much more efficiently and effectively.

Skill above anything else remains the main differentiator. It's very similar to buying that lvl 80 WOW warrior of ebay to be abe to actually play these tier 5 dungeons you heard so much about, only to find out that you can't because you don't know how to tank or keep agro.

 

[McBawbagg]

[quote="Zumbee" post=15840]Working as intended apparently:

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/some-notes-on-todays-cert-grants.114869/



"Quick update on this. We've seen a lot of people under the impression that somehow the cert grant was broken or given to "random players", and not players who spent Station Cash on repeat purchases. So far, after about 12 hours of investigating, and pouring through virtually every character on the list we've found zero characters who were granted certs that didn't make the appropriate StationCash purchases to warrant those cert grants based on the above grant logic. Yes, that includes all of these characters with 20-100k certs granted. A lot of confusion has come from players who purchased bundles which contained items that had previously or were subsequently purchased on other characters on their account - these were flagged as repeat purchases and treated as such. If you think you do know of someone who did receive certs without purchasing any duplicated items, we are really interested in knowing more, and you can email me directly (mhigby@soe.sony.com) with that information and we will look into it. We are still compiling a list of players who did not receive cert points for certain duplicated purchases.

We've definitely heard the frustration from players who were not part of this grant, and looking at some of the astronomical numbers of cert points that certain accounts received it's understandable why. It's worth noting that less than 5% of our player population was granted certs from this and less than 0.03% of players received anything more than 2000 certs from the grants.

As a note, we don't want "granted" certs to be part of the leaderboards, so in a future update those certs will be removed so that only "earned" certs are being displayed to ensure that the leaderboards more accurately reflect level of effort of the player.

I realize this update isn't going to make those of you who are upset about this cert grant less upset, but it's information we felt was worth sharing so people could have a better understanding of what is actually happening, amid a lot of misinformation being spread around.

I want to emphasize that our goal on this grant, as with all decisions made on this project, is to provide the best possible overall experience for our players. Moving beyond this incident, we will be reevaluating our policies for future compensations to ensure we have methods that do not cause the kind of impact to our player community that this admittedly has.

Finally, to those of you who feel betrayed or hurt by this incident, we humbly apologize."[/quote]

hahaha are they trying the jedi mind trick on us? These are not the certs you are looking for ... honest

 

[Rolfsky]

Their claim is incorrect, they made mistakes and did refund certs for stuff people didn't buy in the first place. I had Higby look into my case. It turned out that if you bought a sales bundle which contained guns you already owned, they got refunded in this update. Something that was not mentioned.
However, I only bought (duplicate) stuff for my TR char and guess what, they granted me 3400 certs for my NC an VS alts as well, effectively tripling my refund.

And they did this to everybody. So if someone bought for 200K certs/14000 dollar (using 700 SC = 1000 cert rate) worth of duplicate stuff (how is that even possible?), he got this 200K refunded on ALL his characters. That's roughly 42000 dollar of SC, nice return on investment!

Bottom line: Nobody wants a roll-back and if this issue concerns only a few people (5%) good for SOE as I don't want this to backfire on them. But mistakes have definitely been made and people like me did get refunds for stuff they didn't pay for in the first place.

 

[Frymewitheggs]

Actually Rolfski higby explained exactly what you said on Reddit.

Yes he went onto say only 5% were affected. But he also said that evdn fewer were well over 2000 certs. 0.003% or some such. No smoke and mirrors here.

 

[Raiche]

I didn't get anything and i got duplicates from buying packs as well. I bought quite a few actually both for prowler and air as well as some other kits.
Sent support ticket.

 

[Rolfsky]

[quote="Frymewitheggs" post=15852]Actually Rolfski higby explained exactly what you said on Reddit.

Yes he went onto say only 5% were affected. But he also said that evdn fewer were well over 2000 certs. 0.003% or some such. No smoke and mirrors here.[/quote]

I know, that's why I mentioned it.