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No support and false advertising
TimeViewer
Member Posts: 270
The only thing you can look forward to in this game as a silver player is a total lack of support, auto replies and GMs who outright ignore you and your problems, they also engage in false advertising of services, bank tabs are listed as unlocking for all characters on an account but they only unlock for one. Any attempts to fix the situation get ignored, I found other players who have been waiting for over a month in the same situation. I had hoped that since Atari is the parent company this game would be run a bit more professionally but I found I had been wrong in my assumptions.
Play for free if you like but I wouldn't spend a dime on a company that chooses to ignore players based on their subscription status even when you spend more on the game than those with the subscriptions
µV
Comments
It's pretty clear on their matrix that customer service is not provided to free players. This is also true in pretty much every freemium game out there. Customer service only goes to those that pay for it.
Steam: Neph
The problem with that statement is that paying for cash shop is paying for the game, in fact it can be quite a lot more expensive I paid $30 last month far more than their gold subscription fee. Even signing up for Gold is bugged, I talked with other new players in game and none of us can find the signup for Gold, it's suppose to be under "My Account" but there is nothing there, nothing in the C-Store and their own official wiki (Cryptic managed) only points you to a comparison of Gold vs Silver. Even trying to report this gets ignored. Any tickets filed only recieve an auto response and the forum will only allow silver players to post in the tech section where it seems they also get ignored.
Their only policy seems to be ignore until the person goes away. I wouldn't exactly call that player friendly or even encouraging to sign up for P2P since the problem with that is just being ignored, strikes me as kinda ignorant.
µV
I had this probelm and got a resolution. Basically the in-game store does state 'for a hero' but the website states 'unlocks for each character'. I don't think they've fixed it yet.
I submitted a polite support ticket advising that it hadn't unlock for all chars and after a few days got a snotty reply advising me to check my understanding.
I politely responded with a link to the website, advised I could submit a screenshot as well and clarified that that's what I thought I was buying. They quickly replied, apologising and I kept the bank slots for my main char and got a refund of the points. All in all it took about a week to resolve.
So there is support there but you are painfully aware that you are 2nd class citizens.
I'd recommend you submit a ticket and politely offer them a screenshot too.
Your cash shop purchase does not pay for CS. You should research things before you spend money on them. Check out the F2P vs Sub Paying matrix:
http://www.champions-online.com/f2p_matrix
The chart would not copy over but if you check my link you will see you are not entitled to any CS except the self-help knowledge-base. I do hope you do get some resolution like the poster above me.
I hear you on not being able to sign up for gold. I don't know anything about it as I no longer play. Not a huge surprise from Cryptic though I guess.
Steam: Neph
im a silver user and i dont care about them not supporting silver users, i never ask no devs or whatever for help unless i sub.......im fine will all the restrictions stated on their matrix with only 1 exception.... chat restriction is the most stupid thing ever (yeah that goes for all fremium games) but from all freemium games CO is the only one that i actually really like so it pisses me off
and im not subbing just to have zone chat and PMs)
Once you have played for 20 hours among all your characters your chat restrictions should go away. It is just a way to avoid spammers.
The bottom line here is that if you pay for any service at all, including something in the C-Store, you should be able to get customer service for it if you need it, subscription or no subscription. The fact that you don't is shady... You paid real money for something, you should be entitled to prompt and professional customer service regarding that purchase. The MMOG industry is one of the only service industries that has been allowed to get away with these kinds of shenanigans. If any other company tried to pull what MMOG companies pull they'd have been sued into oblivion long ago. Not sure how it's allowed to perpetuate...
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"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Member Since March 2004
thank you, its really good to know that
As a superhero MMO, Champions Online does a lot of things right. The amount of visual customization and the thrilling superhero combat are definitely the game's strongest points. The zones are also large, interesting, and finally take the action out of the city. Instanced content and public quests score big in terms of action and story, but most of the rest of the quests are of the traditional MMO mad-libs variety where you combine the word kill/rescue/collect with a number and a noun. The crafting and PVP systems seem like they've been included merely because people expect them in an MMO and not because they fit with the overall concept of the game world.
Atari? Professional?
Not the way they treat their employees, no.
Customer support can't ignore paying customers. It doesn't matter if it's sub or cash shop item you have purchased, they're still responsible to provide you with what you have bought. In this case it's quite clear there's erronous marketing or just flaw in their system. There's no way they can ignore paying customers by saying they're only silver members.
Yes, it is ridiculous that if you are a silver player paying for things you can't get customer service.
I am (regrettably) a lifetimer who was in closed beta almost when it first started and bought lifetime before the game started.
I haven't really played it in several months and have been playing Guild Wars and finishing up my Hall of Monuments.
I am amazed at how bad public relations and customer service have been with Cryptic and CO though. City of Heroes (when Cryptic still ran it) under NCSOFT didn't have nearly as bad customer relations.
CO has been just one disaster after another: Launch day nerfs and fiascos, people ranting about lifetimes after launch and Cryptic retroactively editing web pages and claiming in forum posts that they hadn't (even when Google cache clearly showed that they had), Vibora Bay disasters that led to them firing a relatively honest community manager who was just doing his best, and then now the latest forum ranting about them deciding finally to implement all of their forum moderation rules and thus banning several lifetime posters who were respected.
I have actually played pretty much all of the major MMOs and browsed their forums since they first came out (I am an older person who even played MUDs before then...) and I have to say Cryptic under Atari has just been bizarre. They seem repeatedly to come up with these heavy handed decisions that ignore players, then claim that they didn't even though objective analyses like Google caches show that they did, and then try after the whole fiasco has already happened to apologize and say that they'll do better.
It is hard to reconcile this with CoH when I recall sending several PMs to Jack Emmert and having him respond personally in a very polite way (even when he didn't ever take any action on my suggestions.) I felt back then that they took community concerns seriously. I am not sure if it is someone new at Cryptic now or Atari causing things or old Cryptic personnel have become jaded, but they are a different company PR- and community-service- wise now.
Your right. Customer service is not provided for "free" players.
Regardless of how much money those "free" players are actually spending on the game.
I read their little matrix, and decided there was no way in hell I was going to buy what they were sellling. Until they add a third tier of service recognizing people purchasing content as a paying customer, I won't touch this game.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin