Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Advice: Give refunds and apologize
I made a bunch of pets from 20-65 on special orders, now if those go invalid I'll be upset.
I suspect that the "invalid stat" fix was to get rid of the pre patch CL50 gurrecks etc. that were showing up as CL0, leaving a lot of non CH's running around with full grown CL50 creatures in tow.
That it hit BE pets other than that I think was an unseen side effect.
It appeared to me they tried to fix that bug(non CH calling CL50 pets etc.) and simply changed the cloning system to eliminate the little uber pets and leave the ones already in as grandfathered. But it went wrong.
I'm also figuring that the 2nd gen clones that get the whacky stats like 1000 dependability are also at the root of the invalid stats on 2nd gen clones.
Devs are probably scratching their heads, producer running around like his hair is on fire, and all of them thinking "well how do we fix this mess without creating that one!"
My personal approach to this situation on the Kettemoor server was fairly proactive. When L33t Kiddee-bacca X /tells me they want a CL10 pet with 10k HAM, light armor, and 45 resist across the board (" 'cause, ya know, my FRIEND has one."), I told them that those pets were probably bugged. Then Iset some realistic expectations. I'm sure I lost a couple customers, but hopefully I don't have an in-box full of hate-mail this evening.
To the defense of people who created/sold/bought those pets, though, I think we need to keep in mind that this is
100% DEVELOPER ERROR.
No BE hacked the system and re-coded the DNA scripts, or experimenting scripts, or whatever else they're using to make this game run (hamsters and Ouija boards, I'm beginning to think). Even with the NK DNA, that DNA was gathered according to the mechanics of the game, used in a template according to code, and creatures resulting from it were dealt with according to code.
Now, the cool thing about the BE community is that we have some pretty big brains among us. Obviously bigger than what Sony is typically using (I'm not trying tobe overly harsh, but it's a little sad when the PLAYERS are researching statistics, identifying obvious errors, and developing instructional documentation AND STILL PAYING SOE $15.00 a month). OUR COMMUNITY was the one who looked at the numbers, scratched the gestalt head, and said, "Huh. Either this is one crazy perk of crafting/owning a BE pet, or this thing might be broken." No one from SOE said a single word either way. It would have been as simple as saying, "Yep, you BEs are right, thanks for finding our mistake. Please stop using the DNA becuase we're going to nerf all of those pets in a couple of days." Keep in mind, though, that although we, as a community, SUSPECTED that the process was not behaving according to dev intent, there was never any dev around to confirm or deny what was discovered.
If players are aware of a bug, yes, demand for that bugged item will go way up. If they are also aware that the devs know aboutthe bugand are know how to fix the problem, then demand goes way down. Not communicating openly with the customers is a very cowardly way to do business. To let a profession invest so much time and effort AS A COMMUNITY to help THEIR GAME out, then to deal with them in such a manner, is an amazinlgy poor business decision.
So, I'll see how things go tonight. If the profession that I finally felt was worthwhile is mostly intact, I'll carry on. If it's "back to the drawing board," I'm sorry, I may finally cave in, launch those holocrons, and start spamming flourishes in the cantina with all the other holo entertainers. Or maybe $15.00 a month is better spent elsewhere.
*sighs* I really wanted to love playing this game.
Oh.
I saw your thread heading and thought you meant SOE...sorry.
I made two uber pets. One died in sampling 
The otehr I made last night for a friend who had just become jedi, because the devs had refused to inform us **edit** was going on. I never sold any.
I haven't used a kamurith DNA to the best of my knowledge for a month, because most of their resists were weak. I did use some mereks. I never got stats out of them that seems out of line (I don't think I ever used more than two mereks). I have used some other creatures that had a high stun resist that didn't carry through for about 6 attempts (and were thus likely "effective" resists), and I know I sold those failures, because they were otherwise nice CL 35-50 creatures.
I'm now terrified of going home and finding out that stuff I made and sold won't call. And not really knowing what to avoid to fix the problem ( though I have a suspicion, see my other thread on the bug).
I have no intention on giving refunds. I made all of my creatures intentionally avoiding the DNA I had heard was bugged. I'm very afraid now that the bug runs through a lot of DNA, and even where it had little or no effect, it is going to kill my pets. I am going to tell anyone who got an uncallable pet to harrass the people who deserve it, the devs. I will try to craft replacements, but I'm not spending a week just replacing peoples pets, especially since I still don't know how to make a non bugged pet.
Hate to break it to you Matt, but I don't even know what DNA you're talking about and I've already had problems with uncallable pets...
- Tyl
About all the others pet I sold, I wouldn't mind reimburse my customers, but [b]who is going to reimburse the time I wasted to figure the piece of crap code they dared to make[/b]?
...
Yeah, I thought so.
Glad I made some millions before the nerf tho, time to surrender.
Bio-Engineer is the best profession there is. We can play god and create animals. I have been a Master now for a week. I made my first CL10 10k ham two days ago. I was completely amazed. The little guy had 280-290 dam and had 49% resis to all.
I was so amazed, I stayed up all night long working them over and over. Geez, I made like 10 and went through about 6k of meat and other resources. No telling how much Moun Gold. I wake up this morning and find out that not only do they not work, but my CL19 with 8kham no armor and 20% some resis and some vulns is invalid.
I guess back to the drawing board. It is really sad for us. I want to stick with this profession, When I got my holocrons, I didn't even want to mess with them. I would rather be a Bio then have to worry about who seen me use force skills and who didn't. Thats retarded. It would suck to have a character that you have to keep in a closet.
Anyways, I just wanted to throw my 0.02 cents in. I am going to hang on and hope for the best. The funny thing is. I sold most of the cl10 creatures for 50credits.I did sell somereal high. I am usually very poor and for the first time in my SWG life I actually had in mybank 150k.I did give warnings out, but now the humane thing to do is try to replace them with something they can control that is atleast decent.
I guess I am going nowhere with this other to say that,
Keep the faith fellow BE's maybe one day all will be right and shiney rainbows will pop out of our butts and all people will be holding hands.
aza'zel
TouYuan wrote:
How about my CL10 pet with 2-5k ham, 10-15% resists and many vulnerabilities that only did 110-120 damage.. was that an obvious one as well I should have known better on? Because they all became invalid as well you realize... you do realize that correct? You know that most of us that avoided the uber cl10 pets were still screwed over?
Maybe this is part of the "problem" that Blair has posted about? I don't think a 2K HAM CL 10 should be invalid, but 5K might be pushing it. /shrug
Hopefully some more information will come down from above..
Ri'a
I did not make any 'uber' non-ch pets just so I wouldn't be in the position of angry customers, refund questions.... I informed all of my customers about the bug, and my reasons for not making them a CL10 10K HAM uber pet---
having said that, I am now flooded with tells and emails from players who feel they were ripped-off from other BE's....
I have no sympathy for those who knowingly sold these pets to unsuspectign customers, without informing them of the bug....and if you claim you didn't know it was a bug...shame on you. For weeks, there have been numerous threads about this..and the upcoming "fix"....
and I have absolutlely no sympathy for a particular "vendor" on kettemoor who spams outside coronet starport...she was selling uber non-ch pets for 2.5million! I messaged her yesterday and said "I hope you are telling your customers that these pets will be nerfed or rendered invalid'.... her response? "....no they're not. mind your own business." followed by, "...are you a Dev?"
the systemhad abug and was corrected....good. the system isstill leaps and bounds from where it was....let's move on and continue workiing to decypher the new system..
I know exactly who you are talking about.. and I have her on /ignore as well.
I really only made some 20's and 30's pets for myself and a friend since the patch went live. I did try to make some lower level ones using DNA from Naboo but didn't go that far with it. Once I started reading about the bugged DNA and wacky CL's I decided to wait until the "fix" went in before making any pets for sale. There didn't seem to be much point in learning a system that was going to be changed/fixed. Now I'm sure I'll get back into it.
I'm also curious if any of my 20's and 30's pets will turn out to be invalid. I pretty much only used first generation DNA (and no bugged DNA) so I'm thinking they should be okay. I guess I will find out when I log in tonight!
Ri'a