17 explorers, no eggs since last update...

I didn't have many savages because the tool tip on them says 'can map sectors faster than normal explorers'. Why would I need more than one ? There was no indication they had a higher drop rate of event items than any other explorer. The lucky explorer, for which you pay double, mentions loot so shouldn't you get more eggs from a more expensive explorer ?

Personally I think the number of eggs needed to get the achievements for this should be the same as the adventure ones or as one person in this thread mentioned they should have been reversed, i.e you should need to get the 3200 eggs from adventure loot and only 1200 from your explorers. I probably have gained close to 2k eggs from adventures and haven't really been trying, whereas, I am going to be lucky to even get the 30 point achievement for explorers nevermind about the 50 point one.

I have 19 fully booked fast and Lucky explorers. Before the update I was averaging 320 eggs a day on very long searches. Since the update that has dropped to less than 150 a day. I will be fine obviously, but for the new players this is a money grab attempt.

I have only gotten 258 from explorers LOL

Devs I hope u understand this isn't about you being money grubbing greedy twats(Although, your defiantly leaning that way) its also not about us spending money or not(MANY of us, when able, are fully happy to put cash forth toward something we enjoy... WHICH LEADS TO THIS POINT:)

People DO NOT like to put money toward something when they feel they are FORCED to just to 'keep in the game' (Esp when said game is 'free to play')

Last year at easter, I felt I HAD to buy gems to even have a chance, which I DID need to (I needed the explorers AND I had to buy eggs) and I just managed to get all the rewards with i think 50 eggs left over. That was after spending 50bucks to buy gems AND use up my remaining store to get the explorers at the start. If I had not, I would not manage at all. I had hoped, and (STUPIDLY so I admit) thought that my purchase last year on the explorers would allow me an 'easier time' this year(Which it did yes) but instead you changed up the game AND made it nearly impossible... without of course 'dipping into' other sectors(IE pvp which requires more land on main island, which requires mountain busters, which are horribly over prices esp after over a year of being promised they would be cheap. Hell if I remember right the original idea, which isn't any different than what u have now ingame, was priced at 1/5th what u have them listed at now. Hell AFAICT that's the ONLY change and the ONLY reason you 'held it back' - not bugs, but u wanted to charge more.)

Point is: Make us feel we are forced to pay just to 'manage' - people WILL quit. Make us want to pay to 'enrich' our gameplay, and people WILL pay. its simple as that. (Also the constant Bullsh!tting and lying you guys do recently has really soured your relations, please look into that and try to be more honest, or at least attempt to make the lies convincing)

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Originally Posted by Narasn

I didn't have many savages because the tool tip on them says 'can map sectors faster than normal explorers'. Why would I need more than one ? There was no indication they had a higher drop rate of event items than any other explorer.

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They don't have a higher drop rate, they just return twice as fast as normal explorers, so you can do twice as many searches in the same amount of time, thus getting more returns. So, yeah, tool tip doesn't really explain that well.

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Originally Posted by Eriond

They don't have a higher drop rate, they just return twice as fast as normal explorers, so you can do twice as many searches in the same amount of time, thus getting more returns. So, yeah, tool tip doesn't really explain that well.

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Based on this thread and my own experiences the savages do have a higher drop rate than the luckies, especially AFTER the changes. I actually bought 3 more savages because of this. Should savages have a higher drop rate, I don't believe so, but right now they certainly appear to. Luckies return from adventures faster than savages but I think I have only got one set of eggs from my luckies since this changes and my savages return eggs every time.

17 explorers, and I am far from getting that achi. Something is really wrong with return rate of eggs:( Disappointing.

well since update, my luckies are bringing back(3 of them) 1 stack of 16. (ONE of the 3, i know its just chance, but even so...)

Before the update my luckies would often bring back 32 (Some still stacks of 16 but more often than not 32) and SOMETIMES would bring two stacks back each. Not once before update have any of my lucky explorers brought back '0' eggs.

All this was with luckies who only had books in the first tier(IE parchments, no actual books, no 'shovel' skill) so the 'change' should not have affected me whatsoever. NONE of my savages have books in them.

Savages were also hit too, with 12 of them maybe 4of them will return with anything, best 'haul' I got from a wave of savages was 112 total (that's all 12, most stacks of 16 a few 32, none higher)

They simply nerfed ALL explorer drops

(BTW this isn't about adventures if anyone's confused, they have always had a 'up in the air' drop rate where it seems its 50/50 chance to get 'anything' and THEN it works out to abysmally low or decent rates basically. This thread is about the outright BS lies we were told about explorers. And yes, the 2 achievements are prob 'swapped' by mistake and nobody wants to own up to a 'mistake' because apparently BB staff/devs are not human and don't make mistakes :P)

agree - many of my explorers don't yet have sturdy shovel.... and yet they went from great egg finding to zero eggs... something is amuck... and i don't see how any player will hit the 3200 eggs required in the achieve.. im only 1/2way there and were over 1/2 way thru the events... what about the newer players that don't have a 1/2 dozen explorers etc?

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Originally Posted by Atma-Darkwolf

I don't know if they paid you extra bonuses to write up that obvious LIE(Not even bs here, your outright LYING to the customer because if your NOT your gullible and dumb as a sack of stones to believe what u just typed) Good one there with customer service champ.

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I am not lying. We had included a vague description in the changelog, but when I saw this thread and your concerns, I decided to share some details with you and to be transparent.
Again, besides the "Sturdy Showel" skill, we have not made any other changes to the egg drop rate/amount. The programming team is investigating, but has not yet found any issue.

Cordially,
BB_Endesmor

I find it interesting that a lot of people are reporting this issue (not just on the US forums), but supposedly no issue can be found. I am curious, what is the process for testing that "nothing changed"? Is someone actually creating a test account on a test server, duplicating the account of someone reporting the issue, and then sending out explorers to see what the return rates are (I would assume on a true test platform you could change the time settings so explorers return right away, so this shouldn't take all that long to verify)?

Or is someone just looking at the change log and saying, nope, we didn't (intentionally) change that? Because we all know that sometimes changes/bugs are introduced with other changes unintentionally, but those would have to be tested for, and ideally, you would test with the setup of someone who is experiencing the problem to see if there is some variable in their account that is contributing to the issue.

I know there are some reporting they've accomplished the goal, but it seems most of them have a very large # of explorers and were likely much closer to completing the goal prior to the change last week already. There seems to be enough folks having issues for it to be more than "random-but consistent" bad luck. Where there is smoke, there is often fire.

How is testing done?

Players report an issue in the forums, tickets, or directly to a BB. From there, the issue is added to our bug tracking software, and assigned to the QA Team. The QA team will try to find more details (severity of the bug, likeliness, scope, reproduction steps, etc) and to reproduce the issue on the current live version. The data found by the QA team is sent to the programming and/or design teams.
The programmers will inspect the code and change portions of it, if necessary. Then, all the changes made to the game and/or the backend will be compiled into a new game and server version.
Finally, the bug is sent back to the QA team that will confirm whether it has been fixed or not. If the fix is a success, the changes will be included in the next live update. If the fix failed, the bug is sent back to the developers for further investigation.

It is a quite complex process and many persons are involved, some bugs are nasty and may require more time to be fixed.

I hope this answers your question.

Cordially,
BB_Endesmor

well take it from a customer there is a change in drop rates in all explorers (all (one more time all)) of them , if you cant find it your going to lose alot more people then normal because people see this as a problem.

u can just bloody well look at 'LIVE' logs. IE: logs showing the first week(IE: before the patch) and the week since, compare, have lightbulb appear over head and realize the issue REALLY EXISTS.

Or u know, quit BSing because I personally feel your last 2 responses are just more PR shovel'n the kaka down the stairs.

If it takes long to fix this, it will be too late unless the event is extended by a week or something.

Well, there's a maintenance tomorrow.

Anyone care to place odds on the problem:
a) Being fixed without admission of there ever having been a problem
b) Being made worse by some other "unrelated" change
c) Being totally ignored, as it must not exist even though lots of people have reported it
d) Being responded to with a form-letter response
e) c & d (i.e., status quo)

with 2 weeks worth of exploring in
before the change 1503 eggs from 132 searches
since the change 809 eggs from 136 searches
even if you remove 3 x 15 bonus eggs a day that should only give 315 eggs less not 694 less
in the first week my explorers were finding 0, 4 or 8 eggs on medium searches
similar for other searches but different amounts of eggs
since the change not one of my explorers has found the higher end number of eggs
medium searches now return 0 or 4 eggs
this is with my 3 regular explorers doing 2 searches a day
the only books they have are the decrease search time and find granite from medium searches
no books in the spade skill at all

I bought an extra explorer when I noticed the change

but it still is probably going to leave me about 150 eggs short

also
even if they realize it was a bug and give us eggs again they won't count for the achievement

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BB_Endesmor

I am not lying. We had included a vague description in the changelog, but when I saw this thread and your concerns, I decided to share some details with you and to be transparent.
Again, besides the "Sturdy Showel" skill, we have not made any other changes to the egg drop rate/amount. The programming team is investigating, but has not yet found any issue.

Cordially,
BB_Endesmor

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I feel bad for you BB_Endesmor. You're stuck between a bunch of angry people on one side and programmers telling you there's no problem on the other. There IS most definitely some unintended consequence to the change that went live last week.

The number of explorers finding eggs on medium searches has not changed, that is, usually 6 out of 10 find something, usually 4 eggs each, with a few 8's in there.

The number of explorers finding eggs on long and very long searches has been hosed completely. Before the change, for one full week, I never had zero eggs from all 8 explorers I send on a long or a very long search. Since the change it's happened several times. 8 explorers out for 11 hours all coming back empty?? Something is way wrong.

Additionally, the lucky explorers seem to have been affected more than the others. Maybe this is an attempt to balance out the "overage" from the 1st week, maybe not. Every event since their inception, the lucky's would sometimes get a bonus stack of event loot (presents, etc). Since the change, they no longer get this bonus stack of event loot. Was that an intended consequence of tweaking the sturdy shovel skill? Was that something seen as a problem that needed to be corrected? We all thought it was a nice feature of the lucky explorer, especially since it's worked this way ever since they became available.

Going from an average of 412 eggs a day the 1st week to an average of 252 eggs a day using the exact same searches all the way thru the time period is a 39% overall drop in results. That's not right. I don't believe it's what the programmers intended, but it is what's happened.

The best thing would have been to have just left it alone till after the event. So the next best thing would be to just put it back the way it was till after the event. Remember when we got the "20% faster bonus" on everybody and that was all hosed up? There's obviously something quirky going on again.

The luckies do seem to have been really impacted. Not only do they not produce the bonus any more ever, but they are also a lot more hit or miss than they had been.

I have said it already on another thread. And I will repeat it again here.

I have also noticed the drop rates or return rates of each of the explorers are a lot less since the first week.

In the first week, the explorers brought back a significant amount of eggs. Since last week's Tuesday maintenance, it has a been a week now. And I can safely compare the first week with the second week. The explorer eggs return are Significantly lower! 50% less is my estimation.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Atma-Darkwolf

u can just bloody well look at 'LIVE' logs. IE: logs showing the first week(IE: before the patch) and the week since, compare, have lightbulb appear over head and realize the issue REALLY EXISTS.

Or u know, quit BSing because I personally feel your last 2 responses are just more PR shovel'n the kaka down the stairs.

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Totally agree with the above posting.

You guys have logs. You can just compare the logs of eggs earned from explorers the first week. And then compare the logs earned from explorers from the second week. The data is all there.

"RNG" has a statistical value associated with it. If there are this many players telling you there is something wrong with the drop rates/return rates- there must be a problem. I understand RNG. But for an entire week, it's been consistently bad. Then there is a problem.

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Originally Posted by swann_88

with 2 weeks worth of exploring in
before the change 1503 eggs from 132 searches
since the change 809 eggs from 136 searches
even if you remove 3 x 15 bonus eggs a day that should only give 315 eggs less not 694 less
in the first week my explorers were finding 0, 4 or 8 eggs on medium searches
similar for other searches but different amounts of eggs
since the change not one of my explorers has found the higher end number of eggs
medium searches now return 0 or 4 eggs
this is with my 3 regular explorers doing 2 searches a day
the only books they have are the decrease search time and find granite from medium searches
no books in the spade skill at all

I bought an extra explorer when I noticed the change

but it still is probably going to leave me about 150 eggs short

also
even if they realize it was a bug and give us eggs again they won't count for the achievement

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Your results are similar to mine. It's about a 50% drop rate nerf from the first week as a opposed to the second week.

I think BB should just extend the event by a week or two to make up for the problem. The fact that it is a 50% drop change the solution is: For each week that it hasn't been fixed since last maintenance, they need to extend it by a week to make up for the difference.

LOGS won't lie. If programmers can't find it in their code, they should at least look at the logs of all the players. It's easy to create/code up a log parser and tally up eggs returned and how many explorer searches made. Just compare the data.

not 100% sure, could be wrong, but since the 'update(Last weeks not this mornings) I have seen ONE single stack of 32 eggs, ALL others have been (if anything) 16.(Well last wave luckies got 17 cuz now they got books)

But im curious how many of u see stacks < 16(Assuming 0 books) and about what % of returned eggs are bigger stacks?(Now not before, before I noticed a nice even split of 'none/16/32' groupings, so on average all explorers brought back 16 per ELS (Luckies sometimes getting dual stacks)

Im thinking this may be part of trhe issue, not only did they 'gently tweek' the ;chance' down some(50% less?) they also lowered(to abysmal rate) chance of 'larger' stacks. Together both of those can easily cause what we have while one or the other 'May' have been missed.

This morning made the 3rd or 4th time all 3 lucky's came back from a very long search with all three of them finding zero eggs. Really?!?!?! 11 hours and 8 minutes for a search and all 3 find nothing?!?! Multiple times?!?! Really??!!! Nothing's changed in the drop rate?!?!?! Really?!?!?! This has never happened in any other event up until the change in sturdy shovel last week. There have been times where only 1 found something, but never none of them. Ever. I have 2 savage scouts and 3 experienced explorers tricked out with books that go on long searches. Yesterday all 5 came back with zero eggs for the second time.

I spent gems/money on 12 savage scouts, 1 lucky explorer and what....... now that's all a wasted investment?!?!?! Really?!?!?! WoW thanks!!!! I was really hoping something would have changed with last nights maintenance, but guess that was just plain silly of me.

you said really so much like your stunned, i mean, I think we were all 'at that point' when the change first happened(and the 2nd wave of explorers returned, because when they first returned we were thinking 'that's RNG working on you, lets give them another chance')

Anyways, as it is I think we are more at the stage where we are thinking 'REALLY?" that's what your trying to 'feed' us (And we feel bad for the BB's in the fact that they have to shovel the Sh!t down but still, regardless of what they are 'told' to say, it still goes a long way in harming the CS relations with customers.)


If you notice a sharp decrese/decline in the gem sales from this date on, you won't have to look very far to see 'why!'

kay full wave of explorers returned after this most recent update, and NONE brought back eggs, none at all. HMMM! LOL Punishment for 'daring' to raise stink about changes?

Just had 3 lucky explorers return from very long treasure searches with 0 eggs. I'm not sure even 1 of them returned without eggs before the change.

I see two options that would make up for the last week: extend the event or reverse course and make it the way it was before for the last week. I fear we will end up with option 3, an e-mail with a gift of 100 eggs (total, not per explorer).

I'd like to also say that I think the explorers should be bringing back more eggs. Whether or not the current amount is the intended amount, it is very low. I have 2 luckies and 3 tavern explorers and I've been sending them out nonstop (at the very beginning I was doing med searches as they are booked for those but after a few days switched to very long as it was clear med was not going to get me enough) and I right now have only 380 eggs found with explorers. For 5 explorers out searching that to me seems very low return to me.

Some napkin math assuming a person has 10 explorers and those explorers all return with 32 eggs for every other very long search and assuming that each very long search takes 1 day and 20 hours (44 hours) then after 4 weeks you would have been able to do 15.27 searches (4 weeks * 7 days * 24 hours / 44 hours). So that's 7.63 searches (15.27 searches / 2...remember assuming getting 32 eggs every other search) that would drop eggs or 244.16 eggs (7.63 * 32 eggs) per explorer so 2441.6 eggs total (244.16 eggs * 10 explorers). So even with 10 explorers and a 50% chance of getting 32 eggs you still would not be able to get the 3200 eggs from explorers achievement.

I, personally at least, I mean I am only speaking for myself here, would be horribly insulted and offended by a silly 'offer' of 100 eggs as a 'sorry' and I think I would simply just quit(And would attempt to find a viable option for OTHERS to migrate too also)

Just speaking for myself, but that would be worse I think than a simple 'sorry we messed up!' comment with no 'compensation'

If they going to compensate us, they should simply mark the achievement 'done' for EVERYONE, ALL Players regardless of how many explorers, etc, AND provide at the very least, enough eggs to buy one of the 'significant' rewards(Even if only the 'new' general)

This is one of those really, really big screwups that they should stand up and take it with respect.

i agree -- extend it by a week... and yes your right the 100 egg apology would be not nice... since many of us are out over 2k eggs at this point based on the 1st weeks results.... i agree marking the achievement done would go a long way...

So it's April 1st today... NOW would be the right time to admit that this 3.2k egg achievement was just a joke... ;)

2nd wave of luckies back this morning: 0 eggs, 2nd time luckies(And first earlier with savages) since the 'next patch' and I'm thinking april fools here. At least am hoping so :/


Edit: but weird, savages all returned this morning and 3 of the 11 were empty, 2 of the 11 had 32 egg stacks, rest had 16. Defiantly a improvement, wont k now for sure until tomorrow but it might be they were fixed(but luckies broke more?)

Can anyone else confirm lucky/savage egg drops?

Guys. A quick, simple glance over the logs on ANY server can provide data even the 4 year old child would understand. Rather this was intended or not there has been roughly 40% nerf to amount of eggs explorers bring after the nerf compared to before.

You are acting as the devs don't know about it or somehow miss that. 5 sec glance at those 2 weeks and you know there is a difference.

So assume the devs know about this and either planned it that way (the explorers were bringing too many eggs to their liking), or messed up some coding and now will not take responsibility for it (admit it).

Personally, I think it was exactly intended. When they saw people getting 300-400 eggs a day from searches red flags were up. Unfortunately, the average players got hit hardest (as always). Perhaps the beating stick hits them always hardest because there is an intended reason too. "Buy more gems and your life in game will be easier"

Stop pointing out the obvious. Demand an explanation to what we (players) believe is an issue,

.....fight...... Rabble rabble!!!!!!

I will update you as soon as I have more information about that.

Cordially,
BB_Endesmor

I cant believe this thread was taken seriously... I am averaging close to 300 eggs a day, if anything the egg drop rate has been too high from explorers considering we are also getting them as loot from adventures.

There needs to be an aspect of challenge to an event, and it has never been present before. You guys got things right by creating a new unique collectible (really impressed someone in the dev team finally caught up with basic economics) and also got things dead right by giving a unique building where the 2nd highest tier is as good as a FM. The next highest tier makes it the best building in the game, it should be VERY hard to accomplish. If it was easy it wouldn't be an 'accomplishment'....

I think the anger stems more from the fact that BB changed something DURING the event, not so much from the achievement itself (although creating an achievement that can only be attained by spending gems is questionable as well, IMHO). Had the change been made either before or after the event, nobody would have brought it up. Learning point for the next event...

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Originally Posted by Edge

I think the anger stems more from the fact that BB changed something DURING the event, not so much from the achievement itself (although creating an achievement that can only be attained by spending gems is questionable as well, IMHO). Had the change been made either before or after the event, nobody would have brought it up. Learning point for the next event...

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Yep

I think what bothers me the most is that BB is not being honest and upfront about it. Instead just flat out lie. I don't mind the nerf that much. But I mind that they lie.

I noticed about 300 eggs a day the first week. Now it's barely over a 100. It's definitely a 40%-50% drop rate change (as many have reported from their own observations).

But the fact that BB came out and said. "NO. Nothing was changed. NO. The drop rate was the same. NO the coders/developers denied making any changes to reduce the explorers egg returns."

It's okay to say. "Hey we nerfed the explorers because there was an unintended bug that gave brought back too many eggs and we're balancing it so you get just the right amount.". Just come out and say that instead of the whole run around. Giving customers the run around is just digging yourself a hole.

The real question is once they do find the logs and compare the difference, will they tell us? And what they'll do.

Or if they want to continue with their story / cover up, and just give customers some 100 egg sorry mail for those who feel frustrated but not admit there was any problems hoping we will be just happy with that.



And its very likely, that their 'bug fix to the shovel skill caused some other bug on the explorers drop rate/returns. But some programmer failed to find the bug. This hasn't been the first time that BB tries to fix something and created another bug that they failed to realize until people point out the behaviors. Example being the tree cutting timer.



At this point, they'll probably extend it by a week like they did last year when enough people complained about it.