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Unsatisfactory customer service and gameplay

Dear to whom this may concern,

As I am writing this I am  highly frustrated with the game and the customer support received for a recent negative experience. 

Recently, I have been playing on Official small tribes, knowingly that there are rules and regulations in place which should serve as an advantage as I either play as a solo or with my girlfriend. 

After many days of continuous playing we have managed to get a full base with all end game items, 100 turrets capped on bullets and many different tames and breeds. We were happy with our progress and game play. 

It all changed, when multiple tribes came together in an attempt to destroy everything, steal the loot and kill our tames. Yes, you might say it is PVP, however small tribes restricts alliances and raiding by teams.

Obviously, I have made screenshots of the game and logbook to serve as proof of the teaming against my base. I contacted support, which is now my WORST experience with ARK after 5k hours of game play (without even getting into discussion about meshing, ddosing, sudden crashes, glitches and so on that we all know about and are hugely frustrated about). 

After DAYS of waiting for a response, i get served with a very superficial copy paste from the GM of having to submit a video recording as proof by uploading it to a third party website such as youtube. Firstly, no where it is written that this is normal procedure when you are submitting a report, as such i never recorded the incident thinking the screenshots are enough and that naturally the producers would investigate. Secondly, as a client already having a bad experience I AM BEING ASKED TO HUSTLE MY OWN INVESTIGATION AND TAKE THE TIME TO EVEN UPLOAD CONTENT ON THIRD PARTY WEBSITES? Thirldy, this has happened because the game s setup in a way in which it EASILY allows players to violate rules and code of conduct which the producers have put in place. All the above, to me, is already an outcry and simply outrageous for someone who has FINANCIALLY invested in the game. 

As I moved on with the ticket, making my case to the GM, i receive the same reply regarding the video evidence and my ticket gets closed. No Empathy, No Customer Support, No resolution, No Feedback, No Reconciliation, No Alternatives - just simply terrible customer service. 

I have put up with enough from this game and this company, this time I am not letting it go. 

 

 

 

 

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Welcome to ark. 

This is how wildcard roles. Have to agree that you should move to non official. I try not to switch between servers in fear of losing my character. 

I added in game suggestions for them to add a system for people like me. 

I play alone on multi-player i have a a very small social circle and im the only one in the circle who plays. 

They should add a system to add an alt account without needing another person or a secondary account and system to add yourself into the tribe. 

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You can't expect a game with so many players to take recordings of every action on their servers, so simply reporting an incident which is as vague as teaming is going to need more than just screenshots, screenshots can easily be doctored or selected to only show one side of a story. You wouldn't want someone on your server to be able to accuse you of something and simply provide a screenshot to be believed and action taken would you?

Most people are aware that in most games these days if you want to prove cheating you have to be ready to provide video proof, most graphics cards have that facility built in, no fancy software needed.

Also, yes you financially invested in the game, you have the game. You have not invested or paid anything extra to use official servers. If the level of support on official servers is not good enough for you then you can always host your own server, or play on one of the many unofficial servers. Even if you paid full price for the game (which very, very few people do or did) then it's still cheap for the amount of content you have received - 5k hours in any game is a huge amount of value.

 

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You seem like you're entitled to something 

 

""Secondly, as a client already having a bad experience I AM BEING ASKED TO HUSTLE MY OWN INVESTIGATION AND TAKE THE TIME TO EVEN UPLOAD CONTENT ON THIRD PARTY WEBSITES?""

 

 

Yes. Cheaters suck. This isn't Walmart. You can't just Karen your way to a ban. You need to provide actual proof rather than possibly doctored photos. Now you know for next time- they can't go based on your word.

 

Get proper proof.

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Went back to ark today, went on genesis and when i re spawn this is what happens, photo attached. 

I've seen different opinions on this topic, I have to say we all have our side of the story and our own truths. I absolutely agree that we should provide proper evidence to show case our issues, however is that reason enough for wildcard to provide poor customer support? How many of you have build up frustrations with all the non sense of this game, with all the glitches, violations of other players, lost progress due to glitches, lags and ability of others to interfere with the game like meshing and d dosing. 

How is acceptable for wildcard to do nothing to ease my frustration when im being delt a constant negative experience? 

Further update on my initial post, the GM simply blocked my ticket and ability to further my case without any more response, feedback or reconciliation. Anywhere in this world i have not seen a company behaving worse.  

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16 hours ago, d1nk said:

You seem like you're entitled to something 

 

""Secondly, as a client already having a bad experience I AM BEING ASKED TO HUSTLE MY OWN INVESTIGATION AND TAKE THE TIME TO EVEN UPLOAD CONTENT ON THIRD PARTY WEBSITES?""

 

 

Yes. Cheaters suck. This isn't Walmart. You can't just Karen your way to a ban. You need to provide actual proof rather than possibly doctored photos. Now you know for next time- they can't go based on your word.

 

Get proper proof.

In my opinion the photo provided should be enough for a GM to:

- Get the tribe log of this tribe and verify that the the events and timestamps of the picture are not doctored.

- Get both supposedly offender tribes log, merge them and find if there has been more occurences of this tribes allying to attack other tribes. Indeed I think this part could be coded to be auto-checked frequently to ensure no alliances are made on small tribes.

 

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On 8/14/2020 at 12:30 PM, LEDminer said:

The cold hard truth is that you need to give them what they ask for, or else they will just close your ticket and move on. No required evidence, no service.

While this is true that they won't do anything without getting requested materials, providing it doesn't guarantee them doing anything about it or doing anything at all.

 

In one of my interactions with support, I described the case of abuse thoroughly and got turned down because my report didn't provide any kind of evidence. That's understandable - anyone can claim anything and they can't just act at my word alone. 

So I had to wait for another case of abuse, made a lot of screenshots and sent those.

As you can probably guess, by "any kind" they actually meant "video or gtfo". So again - had to wait for yet another case of abuse and make a video.

To that support replied that this is not a violation of their rules and closed the ticket.

 

The hell? My initial description, screenshots and video was all showing exact same thing. So if it wasn't something they can be bothered with, they could have told me right from the start, but they didn't. From that I can only come to one conclusion - all of this was just an attempt to get rid of me, hoping I will get tired of them sending me back to get abused again and again, and quit on my own.

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44 minutes ago, LEDminer said:

Their customer support is terrible, yes, at least in some cases.

I don't play on official servers, for many reasons. One reason relevant for this discussion is the terrible maintenance and support. Why bother with these when I can just pop into singleplayer and play with less issues?

Also, that last statement gives me an impression in entitlement.

Of course we are entitled. These companies exist because of us, clients, which pay for their product. If as a client you are dissatisfied with the product you receive, didn't earn the value for your buck, you have every right to complain and not agree with what your dealt with. This game is not for free, its quite expensive if you consider the cost of the base game and all expansions, especially when you are dealt with a poor product and poor customer support. 

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Teaming is rampant on Small Tribes.  It's own intention was a failure from the start tbh.  It may make things a little harder for the megatribes on Smalls to attack you, but they definitely team up.  There is no way for WildCard to really enforce this effectively and that rule is largely seen as a joke.

Expect multiple servers to be claimed by various groups because that is the reality of Smalls sadly.

I think one way to solve this however would be to one show all tribes on server that are active, number of days/months/years on server, and have an external site that tracks who each tribe has attacked on server and if others have attacked same tribe at same time (and who someone is from another server and their tribe they are in).  Or just show that info in the game on a stats page to make it a little easier to see who might be teaming.  Might be up to the community to come up with these tools or third party sites if it's even possible.

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The problem lies with how games are monetized in the marketplace and what people come to expect from value, the  customer service aspect is almost completely ignored (by the consumer)at POS.

The type of service this game requires is a $15 a month subscription model that can pay for the service aspect of the game.  Problem is people want a free game and this one really comes out pretty much free, even if you buy the game.   I paid only 18$ for the base game and SE back in the day.  $18 is not a lot of money for a game I play all the time.  $20 more for aberration and extinction? again, that's chump change.  The most I've spent is on the Genesis DLC, that is almost as much as I have spent so far, still - nothing really.  

We paid $45 for CIty of Heroes back in the day and for 2 years of $15 a month, I paid another $360 to play the game.  That's what we'd expect to pay to get the level of service this game sadly kinda requires at times.  

 

 

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2 minutes ago, GrumpyBear said:

The problem lies with how games are monetized in the marketplace and what people come to expect from value, the  customer service aspect is almost completely ignored (by the consumer)at POS.

The type of service this game requires is a $15 a month subscription model that can pay for the service aspect of the game.  Problem is people want a free game and this one really comes out pretty much free, even if you buy the game.   I paid only 18$ for the base game and SE back in the day.  $18 is not a lot of money for a game I play all the time.  $20 more for aberration and extinction? again, that's chump change.  The most I've spent is on the Genesis DLC, that is almost as much as I have spent so far, still - nothing really.  

We paid $45 for CIty of Heroes back in the day and for 2 years of $15 a month, I paid another $360 to play the game.  That's what we'd expect to pay to get the level of service this game sadly kinda requires at times.  

 

 

I'd pay for a monthly GM enforced server cluster if WC offered it tbh if that is how we'd have to solve this issue.  I mean people are already paying for things like MTS on a seasonal basis for GM enforcement.  Pretty sure many would pay up if WC delivered.

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33 minutes ago, Chewytowel said:

I'd pay for a monthly GM enforced server cluster if WC offered it tbh if that is how we'd have to solve this issue.  I mean people are already paying for things like MTS on a seasonal basis for GM enforcement.  Pretty sure many would pay up if WC delivered.

I agree with both of your statements. However, this is an issue which should be addressed by wildcard directly, not the client. Us as players have payed what was due based on the price offered by the producers, if poor management cannot set the prices to cover their expenses to offer the proper customer service and  smooth running game, that is not our fault and we should not be having bad experiences due to it. 

Any corporation has issues, but clients don't care about their problems, its their issues to resolve.

To give a superficial example, its like you order a pizza with ham, cheese, and tomatoes for 12 bucks, and you receive a pizza with just the cheese without the tomatoes and ham, and the waiter tells you that you only payed 12 bucks. 

This is their offering, and unfortunate they do not abide by their own standards really. I find it unacceptable. 

 

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4 minutes ago, Rozenharm588 said:

I agree with both of your statements. However, this is an issue which should be addressed by wildcard directly, not the client. Us as players have payed what was due based on the price offered by the producers, if poor management cannot set the prices to cover their expenses to offer the proper customer service and  smooth running game, that is not our fault and we should not be having bad experiences due to it. 

Any corporation has issues, but clients don't care about their problems, its their issues to resolve.

To give a superficial example, its like you order a pizza with ham, cheese, and tomatoes for 12 bucks, and you receive a pizza with just the cheese without the tomatoes and ham, and the waiter tells you that you only payed 12 bucks. 

This is their offering, and unfortunate they do not abide by their own standards really. I find it unacceptable. 

 

Yeah it sucks but I guess if they can't solve the issue maybe paying monthly would help substantially on a competitive cluster specifically, or someone making a third party tracking site.  WC has had a hard time for years now enforcing their own servers it seems.  Not that they don't do anything in their defense however, but they could most definitely do better.

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Just now, Chewytowel said:

Yeah it sucks but I guess if they can't solve it maybe paying monthly would help substantially on a competitive cluster specifically or someone making a third party tracking site.  WC has had a hard time for years now enforcing their own servers it seems.  Not that they don't do anything in their defense however, but they could most definitely do better.

Definitely they could do better and should, without any hesitation, do it. However, imagine they bring up the prices, they say it is to make it better for us, and in the end they remain at the same standard of customer service and game mechanics? 

Didn't they already do that by increasing the price of the game over time, and the same occurring issues are happening over so many years?

This is not due to lack of finance, its due to careless and ignorant management. As an outsider, it looks like they wish to make as much profit with as little cost associated to it, and it works. It works because we allow it to happen. 

I personally have never felt more abused by a company as I have felt with my experience with this game. 

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20 minutes ago, Rozenharm588 said:

I agree with both of your statements. However, this is an issue which should be addressed by wildcard directly, not the client. Us as players have payed what was due based on the price offered by the producers, if poor management cannot set the prices to cover their expenses to offer the proper customer service and  smooth running game, that is not our fault and we should not be having bad experiences due to it. 

Any corporation has issues, but clients don't care about their problems, its their issues to resolve.

To give a superficial example, its like you order a pizza with ham, cheese, and tomatoes for 12 bucks, and you receive a pizza with just the cheese without the tomatoes and ham, and the waiter tells you that you only payed 12 bucks. 

This is their offering, and unfortunate they do not abide by their own standards really. I find it unacceptable. 

 

I'm not sure how many places offer $12 unlimited slices of pizza that is guaranteed to not meet your satisfaction level.  

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14 minutes ago, LEDminer said:

But the servers they run for us to play on cost a big buck for them, and are completely free for us. The money you spent on the game is nothing compared to what they spend.

And yet again, people are forgetting that official servers are not the only way to play the game. Open up your eyes folks.

I've played all type of servers, official unofficial and even had my own clustered server with nitrado. I never enjoyed the low longevity of it, so that why i wanted to go back to official. 

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