“I know what you’re thinking, Obi-Wan,” Ferus said. “But you are not a Master, and I am not an apprentice.” Ferus’s face was flushed. “You seem locked in an old pattern.”
Excerpt from Jude Watson's The Last of the Jedi Book 2 - Dark Warning
FR Popcorn Time: We don't review so YOU have to! (sincerely, FR devs)
Leading with a PSA: Don't gene up your new Vigil dragons.
It's that lovely time of year again. The sun is shining. The birds are singing. New dragons are getting released. Genes immediately have massive errors. Players lose out on money. Devs are unapologetic and fix nothing ...
Patina/Oxidize, a comparison (Before on left, After on right):
These are massive changes. The original dragons were darker, often with more contrast and compelling colors. The dragons after the change are muddy, dull, and sometimes introduce unwelcome accent colors for many players.
These are real scries and real dragons. These are dragons people invested treasure into. These are dragons people genuinely loved and were excited about, and it's only natural to want to gene up your brand new dragon right away! Why wouldn't you? You're celebrating a whole new breed, and that's how it's done!
Well, I guess, that's not how you should be doing it on FR.
This kind of "mistake" is embarrassingly routine. It happens religiously. All the time. Every breed release. It's not just a minor change but a major one that heavily impacts dragons. It's the rule for FR to do this every single time ... so much so that the position to avoid new breeds for over 40 days keeps spreading.
It's clear that FR is employing the players as unpaid labor to do their quality control for them. Which isn't great, but there's a (narrow) window for acceptability ... only if players aren't literally paying for losing out. Which they are: Newly gened dragons. Booned and sold hatchlings, and now those buyers have lost out too.
It's gotten to the point that you're almost a laughingstock for being excited enough about a new release to gene a dragon immediately, because the problems are that predictable:
Blaming users for normal and expected gameplay is not okay. You're supposed to be excited enough to buy and use genes and race to sell new hatchlings! The devs are selling this product to you! That is absolutely their intent!
Then they retcon the product after you buy it. With no apology. There's an "explanation" presented in a way that sounds understanding and reasonable, with (yet another!) promise that they've heard you, and they understand, and they will make a note! <3 <3 <3
Is this enough?
Have you ever noticed the blatant lack of apology? Every time something like this happens? There is a chronic refusal by the devs to accept actual responsibility or admit fault. It's just empty promises. And it's particularly jarring when you realize a couple of things:
These massive errors keep happening. There is no effort to change things despite lip service, and it's the players who get screwed by it and are expected to constantly pay for it.
This is a product the site is selling you. It's a defective product. When defective products are sold, you're owed a refund and/or replacement. And yet, they refuse to offer refunds. They very obviously avoid mentioning compensating you for your losses.
They always claim to "fix" the gene, but that isn't what's broken. What's broken is the dragon you thought you had, but now you don't, and the funds you lost. The real fix is to restore that dragon or deliver you a refund. If you are not paid to be FR's guinea pig (free labor), then you are a customer. You're paying them, and they need to deliver.
FR wants you to pay money into their site, and they get you to do that by releasing new breeds. But they refuse to accept responsibility and return your funds when they inevitably screw up the release. They refuse to have a trial period for you to preview and test out the genes for their self-imposed 40-day "things might or might not change" limbo. The 40-day human trials they currently conduct are literally at your expense ... and they refuse to communicate about it. They delete real concerns without telling you. They won't respond to repeated requests for information. And then they release changes at the exact end of the 40-day human trials so that the clock is run out and you have no more opportunity to comment on the new changes.
Exactly. It's about time players are catching on. It goes without saying that the window for this should be a generous 60 days. FR must accommodate the entirety of the 40+ days they allow for error reporting, plus the inevitable extra time they tack onto it, plus time for people to be away from the game and learn about changes later.
Until then, it's buyer beware.
(And that's on top of other ultra weird gene issues like Belfry, and choosing to release this new breed in the middle of a bot attack, instead of something sensible like delaying the release. So the "fix" to the bots (unprecedented!) was to break the scrying workshop right when people really want to use the scrying workshop and the devs would (presumably) want to make money off of people using the scrying workshop. Even though the breed released in the middle of the week and the bot numbers are down, the devs decided to leave scrying broken through the weekend. Way to hamper enthusiasm, I suppose. Or perhaps a subtle way to communicate that they don't actually have their gene act together and you should probably not even be scrying anything for a while!)
Niran (WONGRAVEE NATEETORN aka SKY) helps out his new employee and friend Pete (HIRUNKIT CHANGKHAM aka NANI) overcome his sudden burst into the occult.
