IMC, we need to talk

[strigoimare]

OK, let’s do a quick intro, here.

I’m a Brazilian (put down those pitchforks, now…) player of this great little game. I’ve been playing MMOs since the early 90s, in its many incarnations, and I was curious about ToS. I enjoy grinding games once in a while, and the whole plasticity of the Class systems appeals to the chronic Altitis in me.

I understand why you did some of the things you’ve done, so far (even if I disagree with them). The Trade system is a mess, but I get the rationale behind its current implementation. The segregated servers, I get them, commercial reasons and all. Even the whole TP item system. I’m cool with it (although it does mean that I will spend less than I would otherwise).

There is ONE thing, though, that is not admissible. ONE thing: Leaving your servers unattended while you know they are unstable for the whole weekend, just a couple days before the big F2P launch.

You see, I made the transfer from Klaipeda to Silute (against my better judgment, but I decided to follow a couple friends of mine that took the plunge). Good job on that, by the way. Some people had issues during the transfer, but I did not.

The ping at Klaipeda was not great… but it worked, most of the time. The game was playable, at a decent pace. When I first set foot on Silute, whoa! 6ms? Sign me up! Now look just how smooth playing with my Cryo is!

And then… I changed maps. And the Cryo got stuck. Well, ok, a map is borked, big deal. I logged into my Krivis… played a bit, and then changed maps. Stuck, too. Changing channels doesn’t work. Well, that’s annoying, but let’s carry on. The Paladin, let’s dust her off a bit! Well, that one didn’t even load the first time around in Silute. Stuck.

So, here I am, farming Tanus at Veja Ravine for the whole weekend, afraid of going anywhere and getting this little Archer stuck like the others.

Leaving me and many others in such a predicament for three days, without any change, server reset and official message is simply sloppy. It reeks of an amateurish company and customer practices, and you should be better than that to people who helped fund this game thus far.

I understand perfectly the whole “early access, take your chances, yadda yadda”. As anyone who has a whole set of chromosomes can see, I’m not raging, threatening to leave, burn anyone’s family or the such. I am simply disappointed.

I am willing to accommodate the odd misstep on a launch product, as long as I see the company behind the product. This weekend, I did not see IMC giving half a damn about ToS.

I’ll stick around for the time being. Others might not, due to this sloppiness. The market today is full of games. A company CANNOT allow itself the luxury of showing that it doesn’t care about paying customers. Not at this day and age.

There are workarounds, I am aware of them. But I’m not paying extra for any tunneler or VPN to access a game. I shouldn’t have to. And, when people do so, without understanding the security risks of using dodgy VPNs, you help endanger their security, IMC. Don’t do that.

Well, this is it. I’m curious to see what will happen in the next few hours. Step up your game, IMC. The game has potential.

PS: this is my current tally, thus far. And no, no Flower =/

[teonimesic]

Oh man, no flower?? I feel you bro (but I only killed 5 hundred of those bastards).

Well put it mate, very well written topic (Im brazilian too but I confess I got a little envious of your choice of words and grammar). The forum silence on weekends is totally unacceptable…

Im a software developer and have my own small development company (called Heavenstudio if someone doesn’t believes me), and if somehow I or some other dev break our customer’s software, you can bet we are gonna be working long hours into the weekend trying to fix it, and being as clear as possible on an ETA. It doesn’t matter if its mother’s day or anything, we broke it, we fix it. Its something called ethics.

And if we don’t? Well, we can only hope that customer is somehow still gonna pay us the next month, which most likely won’t happen. Worst case scenario? Probably a lawsuit, but thank god we never ■■■■■■ up things that much.

If the bugs is too weird (since stuff like cosmic rays can actually cause software bugs for example, look it up its pretty weird/awesome) and we can’t reproduce it / solve it, we will at least tell our customers that we have no idea what the problem is or how to fix it, but we are still investigating.

People get anxious when they try to use your service, which they paid for, and for some reason it doesn’t works and there’s no one who can answer them. Not being able to use a service for a few hours is bad, but an entire week without as much as giving a throught explanation? Come on…

I also agree with @strigoimare, I won’t be quitting or anything since I can somehow login without any issues (I have a dedicated corporate Embratel connection at my home), but the quality of their services needs to step up.

And also, the servers need to be scaled during weekends. We’ve had ping bottlenecks from day 1 on every server during weekends / peak hours, and you are using amazon for god’s sake, just make a script to auto scale your resources…

[strigoimare]

Exactly. And, even if we take ethics out of the picture, pulling your weight at launch makes the most sense, since all the work that the company has done so far funnels into the launch. It doesn’t make business sense, at all. The roadmap has to take things like this into consideration.

Anyway, interesting that your dedicated link works fine… it indicates that the problem might be more prevalent with dynamic IPs.

Cheers,

[ergo_]

I saw similar things happen on icbt2, back then was the chat, market and dungeons breaking, and i may be wrong here but i think they simply will not, under any circumstances, work on weekends. Which is incredibly naive of them. Now, I don’t know if there are laws against weekend work on korea(or anything of the sort), but in my experience they simply vanish on weekends.

To be fair, they said they were being ddosed, and with some resources you can mitigate most of the damage but i doubt they can afford it. They cant even fit all their players into dungeon instances (according to popular belief), so really the solution would be… to wait it out. Thats no excuse to disappear tho.

[strigoimare]

I frankly think the DDoS was simply an excuse. The game behavior doesn’t match what it usually happens when a game gets DDoSed. At any rate, it speaks poorly of the game’s netcode.

And yes, I have had dealings with Korean companies in the past, and they vanish during weekends, even during crunch and emergencies, which is odd for us.

When you launch a game on several territories and on Steam, though, you cannot simply have this laidback tradition of 'not working, period". You gotta plan ahead.

[Lazael]

Its good to see someone actually caring to give some feedback…
One thing i do not understand is: IMC seem to have a quick responsive sense, taking all things into consideration, and leaving aside the fact that everyone expects a “magical solution” as soon as the problem starts to happen, but lets be realistic here, they do have a really quick 'crisis management" team when it comes to unexpected errors. The problem is they simply vanish into weekends.
And to be honest, most of the critical problems happened during weekends, so by now, as a loyal player the least i expect is that the company shifted arround a bit and learned how to at least SPEAK.
Me and many others wouldn’t be so sad about it if at least we saw exactly what OP stated here, to actually see the company caring about the game 24/7, and this much is the least expected from any company out there, its what makes ppl stay and play your game instead of just searching over steam’s giant library and start another game.
I really want to see this game growing so i can still play it for lots of hours, but IMC needs to pick it up FAST, or ppl like me and the OP will soon start to leave, and when that starts happening, it will be hard to bring those ppl who trully enjoy the game back.

[furkingbustar]

brazillian jajaja #20chars

[strigoimare]

Erm, ‘jajaja’ is used by Spanish speakers. Try ‘huehuehue’ or ‘kkkk’ next time.

But, nice try

[ehrgein]

Can’t even used derogatory terms properly, sad people.

I’m so glad I didn’t transfer, though. Hang in there, neighboor.

[nuclearmissile]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[strigoimare]

I wouldn’t go so far. Not at this point. Some people are able to play. Technically, I am able to play, in this wretched existence of Tanu Hunting =P

But, things like that can (and will) hurt the long-term viability of the game. This is bad for everyone.

EDIT: OK, I cannot bear Tanus anymore… time to hit the sack.

[ehrgein]

Make it 10k or I’ll be extremely dissapointed.

[strigoimare]

I will, but not today =) I’m a man on a mission, though!

[Keppa]

My thoughts exactly. They tend to have their work off on weekends, which I’ll understand IF this game has near to no bugs and errors but in this state, it is not wise to leave the customers hanging. SEA is apparently experiencing extreme lags as well and IMC never ever bothered posting any acknowledgements or any word regarding the issue. They just simply vanished.

[skycloud04]

The important question is, did you get that cursed tanu flower?
I’m searching for that since CBT but this weed is rarer than a vubbe blood

[Zipzo]

Honestly, you seem like a solid guy, with a good head on your shoulders…and for that I’m gonna be real with you…

This game is a cash grab. It’s a vibrant, well-disguised one, that’s for sure, and the artists deserve the accolades, but we are not going to ever get better than this. Their goal is minimum cost for maximum profit, and they will do whatever dirty they need to snare those smaller victories while the game slowly becomes decrepit due to newly disenfranchised players who come in on the hype of how the game looks, and leave with a taste too bitter to look back.

Everything about the way the game is designed functionally is mediocre. The communication is mediocre. The experience despite how pretty it is? Is mediocre. It’s almost like we’re part of some kind of experiment:

Just how shitty of a game are we willing to play on hype and superficial factors alone?

It’s really disappointing. Nothing hurts more than not wanting to play a game because factors not even related to the game itself. Factors completely external, controlled by publishers/developers.

Sad day.

[Darkon]

[xour.tos]

I agree with the OP. The video games industry have grown quite large these past years, and no company that wants to be taken seriously can afford to be silent for this long.

I’m willing to wait until tomorrow, if not, I’ll move on. Just as the OP I’m not raging or storming out, is just I’ve literally hundreds of games on Steam, GOG and Blizzard to play.

I like ToS, I really do, but I don’t think it worth so much trouble and frustration. Is not that good.

[Zero_Sama]

Feels Like IMC has abandoned the international community which is SAD because I’ve been waiting for this game for a long time.
All their late actions show that they care only about a rapid flow of cash in order to get back a part of their investment then they will most likely just drop the game (at least iTos).
Anyways, I’ll keep waiting for a period of 1 to 2 months and if nothing changes then well I’ll just quit =/ ( same goes for my friends )

[Moonspring]

Ironically, regardless of how accurate this is for ToS:

This is most perfect description of FFXIV:ARR I’ve ever read.