Scopely's Response to TWD-RTS Region War Feedback Sparks Outrage and Starts a #Spendingstrike

After much anticipation, Scopely has released a statement on the Scopely Forum regarding the many issues that were reported during the region wars event.

" Dear Players,
This weekend we ran the very first Cross Region War, and we appreciate all the feedback that you’ve provided. We realize that there’s much room for improvement and so I’ve outlined some of the bigger concerns which have come out of the team meeting.
Top Concerns:

• Region matchups unfair
• Matchmaking taking a long time

For CRW, matchmaking takes a region’s recent event activity and their overall strength, and creates a basic score in which they’re placed in the queue. The system then attempts to match regions of similar score. However, in certain cases, regions were matched up against stronger, older regions. Because of this, some regions also experienced longer than preferred wait times while the system tried to find a suitable match.

The team has identified some possible tweaks that can be done, and we will be working on the tuning for future CRW events to improve the overall experience. Keep in mind that there is never a perfect formula for matchmaking, but we will work on finding the best balance that we can for future events.

Additional Feedback:

• Retreat option for winning teams
  By design, the retreat feature takes in total 20 minutes between being matching and 10 minutes to retreat after the war has started. We will be looking at if this is really the best method/balance or not.
• Matches with banned account
  This is being currently being investigated, but there is currently is no way to join a War if your account has been banned. We will look deeper into what happened here.

Compensation:
To help make up for the frustrating experience, we will be sending out 3 War Energy Refill Cans, and 4,000 Helmet Tokens to all players. This will begin going out tomorrow afternoon.

We thank you for your patience while we work out the kinks! "

The Scopely community forum has been on fire since Scopely staff responded to the many angry players of The Walking Dead: Road to Survival mobile game. The player responses have been overwhelming and it's safe to say that the majority of players aren't having it. In fact, I have read hundreds of responses and there were only a handful that were in support of Scopely.

User lolaskates posted, "A pretty much expected half-assed response. In no way does any part of it sound the least bit apologetic for the disaster that happened. Just saying you guys will look into the issues for all the damn concerns just goes to show how much of a lack of testing you guys did to ensure this would have gone the way both parties wanted. What an utter disgrace to humanity. Keep your pitiful 3 cans and 4K tokens to yourself and hire better and more competent staff."

The above post, along with the comments in the photos and most other posts in response to the statement are all in agreement that Scopely is not doing right by their players. They claim to have read everyone's feedback and have, like always, "consulted with their team" but they do not seem to comprehend what players are trying to say. They seem to be spending more time deleting posts that suggest an uprising from their community forums than trying to fix it.

Their overall response regarding the issues faced during the region wars shows that players are legitimately angry. They are no longer willing to sit down and accept a couple of refills for an error that could have been avoided. Why should they accept such a minuscule offering from something that they have invested so much of their time, energy and money in? The offer was simply disrespectful when you consider what the players truly deserve.

A respectful and truly apologetic offer would have included something of benefit and not $5-$10 worth of 'chance'. It wasn't just a lagging delay or an issue of a few misplaced or unrecorded points that could have been solved with something as simple as a refill. There were several major concerns and conflicts in the game that ruined the weekends of thousands of paying customers. And there have been several other issues with game play in the last few weeks including the most recent Blitz War that is happening now. Players are getting stuck in the war as the timer runs downs even after a faction has lost. This kind of defeats the purpose of a "Blitz" War. Everyone understands that glitches happen with mobile games, but the developers should show the players that they are hearing them and working to make it better.

It's time that Scopely execs step up to the plate. It's especially important that they issue an apology to the players that are their bread and butter. This time the active players in the game need to really benefit from the stress and troubles that were caused by poor planning. Make it worth it for people to continue. Here are some options that show that Scopely cares and is really hearing their community.

• 10,000 Coins
• One Free 30 Day Pass, 2500 Coins and 10,000 Five Star Recruit Tokens
• Ten of Each Refills (World, Raid, War & Territory), 5,000 Coins and 5,000 Five Star Recruit Tokens

As you can see from the suggestions above, the compensation needs to be substantial to show that the community is valued. Until then it is time to go on the #SpendingStrike that many players are suggesting.

These options are big enough to appease the upset players. They would give many different possibilities to each player depending how they use them. Rather than everyone ending up with the same items. If everyone gets the same advantage it is no longer an advantage. This would not be a huge hit to Scopely at all but would actually benefit them. Happy players are more likely to continue spending money.

The compensation should be given to everyone that has been active within the game and should be release immediately.

I have attempted to make contact with Walter Driver, CEO of Scopely on multiple social media platforms as well as e-mail. I will continue to do so until I have received a statement to share with the RTS community. In my communications I have included suggestions for compensation for each account, as well as a request for an apology for the players.

I decided to hold off on the article about how to get your money back in hopes that Scopely was truly working on making this right like staff had claimed. And I am hoping to hear back from Walter Driver himself. But even with thousands of hits on the last article they still haven't made good on their end. Keep the #SpendingStrike going while i finalize and verify with Apple and Google Play(I've already spoken with Google Play twice) , and if we haven't heard from Scopely by then, we will kick them were it really hurts!

Don't forget to rate and vote at the bottom. Scopely staff have confirmed they are reading these articles.