New efforts!

[Arcana]

Did they actually auto ban people in the migration because they hadn't played for a while, or was it some other issue / mistake?

First rule of computer error messages is don't assume they are accurate: they are just whatever some programmer wrote.  An account that is "banned" could have been actually banned through an account ban process, or that could just be what the game says whenever an account is permanently locked out for any other reason.  Perhaps during the DCUO migration there was a process existing users had to go through to reregister their accounts (I haven't played DCUO in a long time myself and was not there for the migration) and any account that didn't go through that process was locked out to prevent problems with someone trying to hack an unused account.

A completely separate process might have purged character data that hadn't been used for a long time, or perhaps the migration team decided not to spend time migrating data for accounts that did not reregister because they didn't want to spend the time.  Not saying that's a good idea: I wouldn't have done it that way.  But an account that was listed as banned and had its data deleted might not have actually been banned and then purged deliberately.

Also, just because customer support says something is impossible doesn't mean it is impossible.  When customer support says the data is gone, asking why they didn't make backups might be the wrong question.  Its possible that customer support is not authorized to tell a customer they are going to send someone into the backup archives for defunct systems and spend developer time restoring, yanking, and converting old data for just one customer.

[Battlechimp]

Its really just the Scotty principle applied to customer service.  You say it can't be done, or its extremely time consuming/work intensive.   But you'll look into it.  Then you do whatever you heed to do and turn around and go "Hey, we managed to fenagle things and we got it to work!". And you come put looking like you pulled off some amazing feat.

But really, its the thing you say in customer service when you're pretty sure it can be done, but aren't 100% sure, or you have to go through someone else who should do it but might be having a bad day and go "screw them and the dog they rode in on".  Then if something goes wrong that's out of their control they have plausible deniabilty and they can still say that they didn't promise anything

[Baaleos]

Gary B. (Daybreak Games)
Apr 1, 12:35 PM
Your account was banned as a result of the migration process to the ProSieben Games server. I can unban this account and have your lifetime membership restored, but any progress you made on the ProSiebenSat.1 servers has been lost, along with any purchases you made on those servers as well.

For security reasons, we are unable to address your account issues without first verifying your identity. Please respond with all of the following information:

Name on Credit Card:
The last 4 digits of the Credit Card used on the account:
Full Billing Address:
Current answer to security question: (Where were you born?)
Email Address:
Please keep the format above. This will enable us to process your request more efficiently. Thank you for your patience.
Gary B.
Technical Support Representative
Daybreak Game Company

This is all I was told.
I've responded to Gary, asking if he can give me an ETA on my lifetime subscripting being re-enabled - he said he can't give an estimate, but it should be sometime this week.

TBH - This is a kinda piss poor excuse.
The benefits of having the subscription is meant to grant me 500 Daybreak cash each month.(That's a monetary reward that is promised to holders of premium)
By arbitrarily choosing to ban me as part of the migration process, they effectively with-held money that I was entitled to by virtue of the life-time membership/contract.
When I logged in, I only had about 4000, which was most likely inherited Tokens from when the game was owned by ProSieben, they too granted a monthly allowance of premium cash for their marketplace.
I have had a life-time subscription with DC Universe Online since its release day, it doesn't really make sense that I would just have 4000 Daybreak cash after having an account since 2011.
1 Year is 6000 db cash, so somewhere along the line, they stopped paying the premium cash.


Im sending them this reply

Hi Gary,
I was just wondering if you can elaborate on the reason for me being banned, and if that in anyway affected my monthly +500 daybreak cash allowance as described here. (My calculations suggest I am owed some Daybreak cash)
Eg: If its 500 Daybreak cash per month, then the 4000 DB cash I had when I logged in, seems a little too low for 2 years of lost time during the ban.
Am I owed any Daybreak cash for the lost subscription time, when I was banned in error?
BENEFITS INCLUDE
Premium benefits in all participating DGC games
10% off unlimited marketplace purchases*
500 Daybreak Cash Reward to claim each month
Special membership promotions and offers throughout the year




Regards,
Jonny

Note - edited the e-mail before sending, tried to make it sound less presumptive. Lol

The only thing I am weary of is that the '500 Daybreak cash to 'claim'' part.
It may shift the onus onto me, the consumer, for me to sign in every month to collect the daybreak cash.
Still - will be interesting to hear why they chose to ban by default, for an account migration.

[Arcana]

Its really just the Scotty principle applied to customer service.  You say it can't be done, or its extremely time consuming/work intensive.   But you'll look into it.  Then you do whatever you heed to do and turn around and go "Hey, we managed to fenagle things and we got it to work!". And you come put looking like you pulled off some amazing feat.

But really, its the thing you say in customer service when you're pretty sure it can be done, but aren't 100% sure, or you have to go through someone else who should do it but might be having a bad day and go "screw them and the dog they rode in on".  Then if something goes wrong that's out of their control they have plausible deniabilty and they can still say that they didn't promise anything

The rule in customer service is that if you haven't been directly authorized to say something is both possible and doable, then either you say it can't be done or you say you don't know.  You never guess.  You never presume.  If you do, its entirely your fault if you're wrong or you get someone's hopes up and the company either can't or won't do the thing.  Like your fault as in good luck with your new career in the food service industry.

Even if you are 99% certain something can be done, that means you don't know.  Unless you have the authority to make something happen, and if you are in customer service you don't, don't go there.

[Taceus Jiwede]

The rule in customer service is that if you haven't been directly authorized to say something is both possible and doable, then either you say it can't be done or you say you don't know.  You never guess.  You never presume.  If you do, its entirely your fault if you're wrong or you get someone's hopes up and the company either can't or won't do the thing.  Like your fault as in good luck with your new career in the food service industry.

Even if you are 99% certain something can be done, that means you don't know.  Unless you have the authority to make something happen, and if you are in customer service you don't, don't go there.

Don't forgot you are always trained to act like you don't hate dealing with customers all the time.  That's a big rule too.  Doesn't really apply to the conversation at hand.  But I feel its still an important part of customer service.

[Solitaire]

What do people think, would the return of "City of Heroes/Villians" be a good or bad thing for "City of Titans" or "Valiance Online"?

[Baaleos]

Well - Gary from Daybreak games replied pretty quick.
Apparently ProsebianSat sent out notifications to the players to alert them of the migration (I never received one)
They banned players in order to stop them from logging into the wrong accounts, while the migration was on-going.
They then allowed people to file claims to have their premium currency migrated (this has since been discontinued, so I am all out of luck)
They are unable to retroactively give me daybreak cash for the time during which my account was banned.

All in all - a shit process.

Anyway - on Valiance online - I get that its a new game, still in early alpha, but the character creator and the character models seem very 'low quality'.
I mean, there is neck clipping, eye lash models appear as white on the females, and even logging in to play, I couldn't work with the GUI, it alternated between invisible, transparent and opaque.
The city also looked pretty poor.

I am slowly starting to like DC Universe online more than champions Online, in terms of Cityscapes.
Metropolis and Gotham look better quality than the ones we typically saw in City of Heroes.

[Brigadine]

What do people think, would the return of "City of Heroes/Villians" be a good or bad thing for "City of Titans" or "Valiance Online"?

Good. It would keep DEVs from getting lazy.

[JoshexProxy]

What do people think, would the return of "City of Heroes/Villians" be a good or bad thing for "City of Titans" or "Valiance Online"?

this is not a yes or no question, it's dependent on time.

There will be a period of time right after CoX returns where it will diminish the amount of players in other games and there will be losses in sales. However this period will just be until the shock wears off and will decrease slowly after that until people are comfortably in their CoX groove again. It may be upto several years before it fully settles out, but when it does people will be looking for something new, and that's when CoT and Valiance will have fine-tuned themselves into the "must play" category and you will reap the benefits.

not to say business will disappear completely especially during the weekdays, when no one is online this drives people to either grind silently or get bored and find something else that's a similar but different experience and that's where CoT and Valiance come in at that time.

the only way to avoid this would to be what brigadine said, make your content that much better than CoX that it draws players attention.

[ivanhedgehog]

What do people think, would the return of "City of Heroes/Villians" be a good or bad thing for "City of Titans" or "Valiance Online"?

It depends on timing. if coh comes back any time soon(in the next 6 months) then it will get established and have a player base. if either of the other 2 get an actual beta or even a good alpha going, the new shinies will draw away from it. VO hasnt had a patch in well over a month and they tend to disappear for periods of time. COT is still putting out lore and doing the background work necessary to show anything, I am not confident that either will produce anything this year, so ncsoft and the team can keep playing email tag for probably the rest of 2017 before they lose any ground.

[worldweary]

It will be years before City of Titans or Valiance Online have enough content to keep people playing for any length of time.People burn though content really fast and both games will most likely never have a large team working on them to make new stuff fast.

I understand CoH will most likely not have any updates but I still have years of power combos to try and content to play.I tried the Valiance early alpha and I agree with Baaleos,even with a lot of improvements I can't see myself ever playing it.My wife is not a gamer but she loved CoH so we will continue to wait for it's return not substitutes or successors.

[Brigadine]

It will be years before City of Titans or Valiance Online have enough content to keep people playing for any length of time.People burn though content really fast and both games will most likely never have a large team working on them to make new stuff fast.

I understand CoH will most likely not have any updates but I still have years of power combos to try and content to play.I tried the Valiance early alpha and I agree with Baaleos,even with a lot of improvements I can't see myself ever playing it.My wife is not a gamer but she loved CoH so we will continue to wait for it's return not substitutes or successors.

I really hope CoH 1.5 gets a dev team to make content and stuff :)

[Surelle]

This is all I was told.
I've responded to Gary, asking if he can give me an ETA on my lifetime subscripting being re-enabled - he said he can't give an estimate, but it should be sometime this week.

TBH - This is a kinda piss poor excuse.
The benefits of having the subscription is meant to grant me 500 Daybreak cash each month.(That's a monetary reward that is promised to holders of premium)
By arbitrarily choosing to ban me as part of the migration process, they effectively with-held money that I was entitled to by virtue of the life-time membership/contract.
When I logged in, I only had about 4000, which was most likely inherited Tokens from when the game was owned by ProSieben, they too granted a monthly allowance of premium cash for their marketplace.
I have had a life-time subscription with DC Universe Online since its release day, it doesn't really make sense that I would just have 4000 Daybreak cash after having an account since 2011.
1 Year is 6000 db cash, so somewhere along the line, they stopped paying the premium cash.


Im sending them this reply

Note - edited the e-mail before sending, tried to make it sound less presumptive. Lol

The only thing I am weary of is that the '500 Daybreak cash to 'claim'' part.
It may shift the onus onto me, the consumer, for me to sign in every month to collect the daybreak cash.
Still - will be interesting to hear why they chose to ban by default, for an account migration.

In the NA version of EQ2, you have to log in every month to grab the 500 Station Cash or it's gone, period.  It's been that way for a couple years now.  I'm an EQ2 gold/All-Access subber since launch day so I remember this change, just an FYI there.  Not sure how ProSebien handled it or what their rules were/are, though.

[Canine]

Good. It would keep DEVs from getting lazy.

I'm not sure where the idea of lazy devs came from.

What I saw of the last development team I was privy to any sort of information about (CoH via the ustream and twitch coffee time streams, and you don't want to know how long it took me to remember the name of the site zwill used before twitch) showed them to be anything but lazy, instead the devs were committed (and some might say that several of them should have *been* committed), and came across as anything *but* lazy.

On a related note, I've got a load of the coffee time videos archived on my NAS, but still can't bring myself to rewatch them for worries of nostalgia overdose. :(

[Felderburg]

On a related note, I've got a load of the coffee time videos archived on my NAS, but still can't bring myself to rewatch them for worries of nostalgia overdose. :(

You should post them somewhere, because I don't think that they're available online anymore.

[Brigadine]

I'm not sure where the idea of lazy devs came from.

What I saw of the last development team I was privy to any sort of information about (CoH via the ustream and twitch coffee time streams, and you don't want to know how long it took me to remember the name of the site zwill used before twitch) showed them to be anything but lazy, instead the devs were committed (and some might say that several of them should have *been* committed), and came across as anything *but* lazy.

On a related note, I've got a load of the coffee time videos archived on my NAS, but still can't bring myself to rewatch them for worries of nostalgia overdose. :(

Lazy Devs and programmers are a plague that has claimed many games lately. Paragon was one of the last studios I respected. I am not saying CoH Devs were lazy at all. I am talking about new games from the last 5ish years. Look at ED... it isn't even HALF assed... its like one eighth assed....

Side note: Should I give CO a go? I hate the micro transactions in STO so how do they compare.

[saipaman]

You should post them somewhere, because I don't think that they're available online anymore.

I believe the Twitch videos are also gone.

[Felderburg]

Look at ED...

I would but, uh.... what does ED stand for?

[Kelltick]

I would but, uh.... what does ED stand for?

Elite: Dangerous, perhaps? My best guess anyways.

[HEATSTROKE]

has there been any hint of any news?