Used to be, once upon a time, that when Zynga somehow messed up and negatively impacted one's game, CS not only would fix it for you without a hassle, but also typically gave some compensation.
Wow, has the pendulum ever swung the other way.
Now, when you have a problem, you only get access to Customer Service if you happen to have done whatever needs doing to trip the switch so that you will have it.
The suggestion is that only paying players have access - but the reality is that many paying players do not.
Now, we're supposed to use spam central and tell our Farmville problems to other players who can't do a blessed thing about them. The only response most posts get there is sorry, can't help you .... and/or hey, log in here and I'll steal your username and password (posts which Zynga mostly ignores and allows to remain now that they have a notice at the top telling all us really stupid people how to use the support site safely... i.e. not to get suckered into such lame spam attempts).
In any case, some of us - me included - do actually continue to have access to Zynga's CS agents. Unfortunately, they don't actually HAVE any any more. Now what they have are "Player Advocates" - and their role seems to be to piss off players by refusing to fix anything; refuse to refund the FC Zynga developers have, in their infinite stupidity, set the game to steal from players at every turn; and for added measure, call paying customers liars and cheats.
Even going through the BBB doesn't help - they just keep sending emails asking for more information until the BBB process expires and it tells you you just refused "their final offer" and no further action is required. Except, of course, that they don't actually MAKE any offers at all - they just keep asking for the same information you've given them over and over.
Whole thing is a joke.... Zynga is a company that is determined to fail and if you have any stock in them, you REALLY should sell.
There is no hope whatsoever for a company that is willing to lose a long standing loyal paying player by first stealing, then refusing to return 32 FC. For about $6 - even if I had bought it at full price, which I have not done since they started to steal FC from players every time I blink - they have lost my $10/month subscription plus whatever I would typically spend every time they offer a 40% off sale.... an average of about $50/month.
Wise business decision, eh?
Sell a product ... then steal it back... and when the customer complains, call her a liar and make her jump through stupid hoops for a couple of weeks then tell her again that she's a liar and a cheat and you're just fine without her business.
Hell of a business model you've got there, Zynga.
How many feet DO you have to shoot yourself in? Time for a new logo...a millipede, I think.
Showing posts with label stock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stock. Show all posts
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Too Late for Farmville? Part 3
Other things we want less of: stOOpid control-freakish rules, limits & requirements...oh, and clutter! Unless it's our clutter, then it's okay - yours is not.
Rules
I have - had - a system for my trees. Other players have - had - systems for their horses... or other critters, or whatever....
sure... go ahead and lock trees, horses, pathways, pens, whatever.... to a particular farm ... it's your game... if you want to piss off more players and make us leave because now you've decided it would be a good idea to break our collections AND our systems - if that's your goal, well done... you're doing an excellent job.
If, on the other hand, you'd like us to stick around, play, and give you money ... perhaps you could quit with things that really just don't matter?
Limits
Seriously...I buy expansions using actual FC and you fill them with ugly crap I can't move that needs 28 or 42 ugly stupid parts to get rid of each one and THEN you set a limit on how many I can collect for each post?
You want I should collect daily collections stamps and then you limit each post as to the number I can get from the (very) few friends I have who are still playing?
And while I'm on the topic, why IS it that in your other games the gift box actually works and lets me access whatever gifts people have sent me, but in Farmville, the max is 50 and anything over that seems to disappear into the ether? Does anybody even bother sending/receiving gifts in Farmville any more? I don't ... too tedious to flip through pages of crap I don't want to send to get to the few things I might ... and then the vast majority disappears anyway.
And the safety deposit box and bushel limits? Hello? We've been whining about the bushel thing for eons ... ever since you started throwing new farms at us for no good reason.
You've broken the gift exchange thing ... so we are left trying to craft the things we need ... but we are CONSTANTLY having to dump bushels that we COULD use for crafting things we need if only we didn't need so much fuel to keep trying to grow the bushels we need to craft the things we need to... well, you get the idea, right?
We're not nearly as stupid as you think we are, by the way... we know you changed the settings on the bushels that we get from farming to try to push us toward buying what we need to craft things... what, exactly, ARE you people trying to do with Farmville, kill it entirely?
Now that the farms don't load/play properly with too much (any?) stuff on them, I've been trying to clear out my junk into my safety deposit box .... not enough room there either. Which means that I have to either sell off all my old stuff, or stop buying/growing new stuff. Guess which one most of us are choosing?
I invested time and money into my trees back when Farmville was fun .... not likely to dump all that in favour of new stuff now that it isn't.
Requirements
Stop already!
I know, I know... someone went to the trouble of making the fishing hole... the yarn barn... the dairy .... whatever... but honestly, if we don't like it, we don't like it - and constantly forcing us to do stuff like "craft 12 yarn" in the yarn barn is NOT going to change anyone's mind.
What, you thought that somewhere around #10 or 11, they were going to say "gee, this is fun after all!"?
Not happening.
Ever noticed that you had millions more players BEFORE you started shoving quests down our throats? Billions, even, by some accounts.
Less trees, less horses, less crops, less buildables, less farms - but you had many, many times more players than you do now.
I know, I know ... y'all are convinced that people started leaving in droves because they preferred other games on other platforms... they got bored, right?
Except that that is NOT what happened.
What happened is that they got frustrated, fed up and over whelmed.
Zynga lost sight of the fact that some sorts of players prefer this type of game and some prefer that...
some people like quests and demands and challenges and competition ...
but those of us that played Farmville? That was not why we played.
We liked working together with our friends.... collecting whatever we happened to be into .... mastering what we wanted to master.... and lots and lots of us LOVED decorating our farms the way we wanted them to be .... whether we were good at it or not (I'm not, but I enjoyed it anyway).
There were lots of other games that included quests and challenges and competition... if we'd wanted to be engaged in those, we would have played them.
Farmville appealed to people that liked to do things their own way - but is now being run by a whole lot of people that demand we do them their way. It's sad.
We came to Farmville...and stayed...and paid money ... for a different gaming experience - and Zynga has, over the last couple of years, completely and utterly BLOWN IT.
And yes, we know that we don't have to do the quests - but doing them is the only way to get the blasted ugly icons off our screen - so we often do them even though we'd rather not. The icons all over our screen - and stuff like the fishing hole and summer camp adventure and lost animals and... it is all clutter and every last bit of it annoys people like me no end.
Even if the farms weren't so bogged down with bad programming, unnecessary pop-ups, and other issues, I still wouldn't bother doing any all out decorating the way I used to - between the "new" hideous facebook and the sheer number of idiotic ugly icons your devs scatter all over my screen and around my farms, why bother wasting my time?
I don't know if Farmville can even be fixed any more... it may well be too late...
but I do know that it won't get better if someone up there in Zynga-land doesn't smarten up and start paying attention soon.
Rules
I have - had - a system for my trees. Other players have - had - systems for their horses... or other critters, or whatever....
sure... go ahead and lock trees, horses, pathways, pens, whatever.... to a particular farm ... it's your game... if you want to piss off more players and make us leave because now you've decided it would be a good idea to break our collections AND our systems - if that's your goal, well done... you're doing an excellent job.
If, on the other hand, you'd like us to stick around, play, and give you money ... perhaps you could quit with things that really just don't matter?
Limits
You want I should collect daily collections stamps and then you limit each post as to the number I can get from the (very) few friends I have who are still playing?
And while I'm on the topic, why IS it that in your other games the gift box actually works and lets me access whatever gifts people have sent me, but in Farmville, the max is 50 and anything over that seems to disappear into the ether? Does anybody even bother sending/receiving gifts in Farmville any more? I don't ... too tedious to flip through pages of crap I don't want to send to get to the few things I might ... and then the vast majority disappears anyway.
And the safety deposit box and bushel limits? Hello? We've been whining about the bushel thing for eons ... ever since you started throwing new farms at us for no good reason.
You've broken the gift exchange thing ... so we are left trying to craft the things we need ... but we are CONSTANTLY having to dump bushels that we COULD use for crafting things we need if only we didn't need so much fuel to keep trying to grow the bushels we need to craft the things we need to... well, you get the idea, right?
We're not nearly as stupid as you think we are, by the way... we know you changed the settings on the bushels that we get from farming to try to push us toward buying what we need to craft things... what, exactly, ARE you people trying to do with Farmville, kill it entirely?
Now that the farms don't load/play properly with too much (any?) stuff on them, I've been trying to clear out my junk into my safety deposit box .... not enough room there either. Which means that I have to either sell off all my old stuff, or stop buying/growing new stuff. Guess which one most of us are choosing?
I invested time and money into my trees back when Farmville was fun .... not likely to dump all that in favour of new stuff now that it isn't.
Requirements
Stop already!
I know, I know... someone went to the trouble of making the fishing hole... the yarn barn... the dairy .... whatever... but honestly, if we don't like it, we don't like it - and constantly forcing us to do stuff like "craft 12 yarn" in the yarn barn is NOT going to change anyone's mind.
What, you thought that somewhere around #10 or 11, they were going to say "gee, this is fun after all!"?
Not happening.
Ever noticed that you had millions more players BEFORE you started shoving quests down our throats? Billions, even, by some accounts.
Less trees, less horses, less crops, less buildables, less farms - but you had many, many times more players than you do now.
I know, I know ... y'all are convinced that people started leaving in droves because they preferred other games on other platforms... they got bored, right?
Except that that is NOT what happened.
What happened is that they got frustrated, fed up and over whelmed.
Zynga lost sight of the fact that some sorts of players prefer this type of game and some prefer that...
some people like quests and demands and challenges and competition ...
but those of us that played Farmville? That was not why we played.
We liked working together with our friends.... collecting whatever we happened to be into .... mastering what we wanted to master.... and lots and lots of us LOVED decorating our farms the way we wanted them to be .... whether we were good at it or not (I'm not, but I enjoyed it anyway).
There were lots of other games that included quests and challenges and competition... if we'd wanted to be engaged in those, we would have played them.
Farmville appealed to people that liked to do things their own way - but is now being run by a whole lot of people that demand we do them their way. It's sad.
We came to Farmville...and stayed...and paid money ... for a different gaming experience - and Zynga has, over the last couple of years, completely and utterly BLOWN IT.
And yes, we know that we don't have to do the quests - but doing them is the only way to get the blasted ugly icons off our screen - so we often do them even though we'd rather not. The icons all over our screen - and stuff like the fishing hole and summer camp adventure and lost animals and... it is all clutter and every last bit of it annoys people like me no end.
Even if the farms weren't so bogged down with bad programming, unnecessary pop-ups, and other issues, I still wouldn't bother doing any all out decorating the way I used to - between the "new" hideous facebook and the sheer number of idiotic ugly icons your devs scatter all over my screen and around my farms, why bother wasting my time?
I don't know if Farmville can even be fixed any more... it may well be too late...
but I do know that it won't get better if someone up there in Zynga-land doesn't smarten up and start paying attention soon.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Zynga avoids addressing problems yet again
Zynga slashes work force by a fifth, warns on bookings...
according to this article, Zynga has been struggling to retain players ...and because they can't, they are slashing their costs by letting 20% of their workforce go.
Such a crock, that.
Zynga has, for more than a year, been doing NOT ONE THING to retain players.
In fact, they have been basically kicking us in the arse and telling us not to let the door slam behind us on the way out.
In every game that I have every played of Zynga's, they persist in making the same errors over and over.
They have absolutely NO interest in listening to players or in understanding the reasons certain people play certain games and accommodating these various players.
And as of the last several months, they have trashed their one remaining strength area: customer service, adding it to the very long list of things that "we once did well but now can't be bothered."
People are NOT leaving Zynga's online games in favour of mobile games or multi-platform games the way Mr. Pincus would have the media and stockholders believe.
Mr. Pincus, apparently, also has no interest in actually paying attention to feedback from players.
We WANT to keep playing your games. A whole lot of us have invested a whole lot of time & money in our stupid farms or kitchens or frontiers or whatever... and we would like to keep right on playing.
But you've hired a whole bunch of developers that do not play the games and do not have respect for those who play the games they work on. And you've hired a whole bunch of managers, it seems, who also do not play the games and do not have respect for players. And hey, guess what? You've hired a bunch of customer service reps who do not play the games and do not have any respect for those who do...
surprise, surprise!! It doesn't work.
This, I believe, is the single biggest reason for Zynga's failure to thrive.
Used to be that the people that worked there played the games (and therefore, had respect for players).
Zynga got too big for their britches. They got rid of the people that loved the games, and replaced them with people that didn't even WANT to work for Zynga - they picked up a lot of their ~talent~ through takeovers and buyouts.... and they didn't bother to make sure that those people were adequately supervised, and they didn't bother to listen to any of their players any more cuz hey, if you don't have respect for us, why bother to listen?
Critical errors that all trace back to poor management, NOT to mobile/multi-platform games. Pincus should quit lying to himself and actually read some customer feedback once in awhile. And he should REALLY quit lying to the stockholders stuck with Zynga stock.
Although I really don't feel all THAT sorry for y'all, actually .... got to research and see what people who actually use the product are saying before you jump on those IPOs, guys!!! I could have told you it was a bad investment .... oh hey... I did, actually.
according to this article, Zynga has been struggling to retain players ...and because they can't, they are slashing their costs by letting 20% of their workforce go.
Such a crock, that.
Zynga has, for more than a year, been doing NOT ONE THING to retain players.
In fact, they have been basically kicking us in the arse and telling us not to let the door slam behind us on the way out.
In every game that I have every played of Zynga's, they persist in making the same errors over and over.
They have absolutely NO interest in listening to players or in understanding the reasons certain people play certain games and accommodating these various players.
And as of the last several months, they have trashed their one remaining strength area: customer service, adding it to the very long list of things that "we once did well but now can't be bothered."
People are NOT leaving Zynga's online games in favour of mobile games or multi-platform games the way Mr. Pincus would have the media and stockholders believe.
Mr. Pincus, apparently, also has no interest in actually paying attention to feedback from players.
We WANT to keep playing your games. A whole lot of us have invested a whole lot of time & money in our stupid farms or kitchens or frontiers or whatever... and we would like to keep right on playing.
But you've hired a whole bunch of developers that do not play the games and do not have respect for those who play the games they work on. And you've hired a whole bunch of managers, it seems, who also do not play the games and do not have respect for players. And hey, guess what? You've hired a bunch of customer service reps who do not play the games and do not have any respect for those who do...
surprise, surprise!! It doesn't work.
This, I believe, is the single biggest reason for Zynga's failure to thrive.
Used to be that the people that worked there played the games (and therefore, had respect for players).
Zynga got too big for their britches. They got rid of the people that loved the games, and replaced them with people that didn't even WANT to work for Zynga - they picked up a lot of their ~talent~ through takeovers and buyouts.... and they didn't bother to make sure that those people were adequately supervised, and they didn't bother to listen to any of their players any more cuz hey, if you don't have respect for us, why bother to listen?
Critical errors that all trace back to poor management, NOT to mobile/multi-platform games. Pincus should quit lying to himself and actually read some customer feedback once in awhile. And he should REALLY quit lying to the stockholders stuck with Zynga stock.
Although I really don't feel all THAT sorry for y'all, actually .... got to research and see what people who actually use the product are saying before you jump on those IPOs, guys!!! I could have told you it was a bad investment .... oh hey... I did, actually.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)