Has HELL started to Freeze Over?

DISCLAIMER: While it is not within this arthur's personal experience  to have physically visited the place known as Hell, based on traditions of  the general populations belief of Hell being a physical place with in the hottest sections of the planet, the only other reference that claims first hand knowledge being the scriptures, I will accept that information as probable fact until other positive, verifiable proof is made available.

If you have been following this blog you are aware I posted a copy of a  fire breathing post I sent to Facebook corporation. Based on recent performance improvements in the return I am currently getting on my investment of time, it appears all hope is not lost  for the brainiacs at FB. It seems they  really do have the capacity to  comprehend the needs and viewpoint of their customer base,  IF you talk to them in terms they can comprehend.  Shorty after I sent  that post, I noticed a slight but steadily growing  increase in the number of assets I was receiving from my neighbors. Considering I have well over 600 neighbors, at last count, that is a refreshing difference. I can honestly say the assets I have been receiving lately are considerably more consistent  with the umber of neighbor I have.


Yesterday evening or maybe it was early this morning, I refreshed my Megapolis game and got a shock like I would never have anticipated.  For absolutely NO apparent reason that this arthur can ascertain, FB set me 500 Megabucks and a free building! At first I honestly  thought I was hallucinating. I looked up at the corner for the count and sure enough there were 52 Megabucks in my game.  WHO would have thunk it?

That's not all,  shortly after I spent the lion's share on finishing up a few projects that had one or two assets to finish  and expanding like it was going out of fashion, low and behold I found 50 additional expansion acts in my  game.  If this keeps up I may actually reactivate some of the games I gave up on.WELL DONE FB! Keep up the good work! I believe there may very well be hope for you as a  continued source of entertainment after all.

Facebook games: Dear Corporate

If you are a player and agree with this , copy,  paste and send a message to  to Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/facebook

UPDATE: Less then 20 miniy=ureas afgter I postd this to facebooks page I received an emal form them offering me a " special".  Here is my response.

Me

To Megapolis by Social Quantum

Today at 5:49 PM

This message contains blocked images.

dear sir or madam, did you get my message I sent to Face book?  Why would you think emailing me is going to change my mind? increasing your aggression in marketing is not going to fix this!

On Friday, July 18, 2014 3:51 PM, Megapolis by Social Quantum <no-reply@mail.socialquantum.com> wrote:

Original post.

Dear Sir or Madam July 18, 2014

I am writing you to share my thoughts as a consumer and point out some major marketing FUBAR's.

Your goal is profit, same as any corporation. Your market is face book gamers. Failure to adjust to the constantly changing needs of your customer base in this economy is corporate suicide. It is obvious to me that you do not understand the psychological affect of current corporate policy, on your customer base. P.T. Barnum understood the value of a handful of nickles. Perhaps no one in your corporation is old enough to remember his business. His best known enterprise was the Barnum and BaileyCircus. Other corporations that understand this would be Walmart, McDonalds and other fast food corporations. These company stay in business making a HUGE profit because they know how to LISTEN to the customers. I have noticed that complaints on the forums go unheeded completely. You need in house input and if you are not going to do it thru the forums, may I strongly suggest you hire people who have lived the “ uneducated and dead broke” lifestyle as a consultant full time to compensate for the fact your current people have no clue as to how to meet this need due to no experience in this demographic.

Over the years I have played and quit many facebook games. I play video games to have fun in my spare time. Realizing it was just a cash cow for you took some of the fun out of playing so I quit. I have picked up playing off and on over the years. Recently I started playing megaoplis. I knew it's just a cash cow to you, but I figured what the heck it is something to do. Recently I have realized your cutting off the single largest growing demograpic group in your marketing base. You are sabotaging your customer base by cutting off the poor.

Just like there is old money and the new rich, there are the old poor and the new poor. Even the old poor want to have fun and some of them actually have the technology to be able to play online games such as facebook. You have however taken out the fun by making it to hard to have fun while playing and losing the customers that send gifts to those who have cash for things like megabucks. I speak from experience as one who has been there and lived that lifestyle. Yes, I am referring to even some who live in the homeless camps that spread across this nation.

The new poor have spending habits that they want to be able to continue even if they have to cut back on how much they spend. Playing online games have become a natural part of that. They want to keep “ normal” in their life as much as is possible. “Normal” fun for many of them includes playing online games.

People play online games to have fun and to fill asperations that real life attempts to destroy. Games are a way to meet the inner need to successfully accomplish a challenge that is reachable. This does not include the demographic of children who play but get frustrated easily so they quit. By sabotaging these three items, you are literally driving away the customers that contribute to your bottom line.

Case in point: Me. I don't know if you can track how much each person spends on things like megabucks, but as a matter of fact I dropped a couple of hundered dollars in this game over a couple of months. I want to say three to four hundred. Then I realized it was a never ending story and that there is always going to be assets I want to get that would always cost money so I slowed down signigicantly. The plan was when I wanted to hurry up and finish a particualr poject I would buy megabuks. I even expanded my neighbors list to compensate for the fact you raised prices so much I decided it was not worth it. Now someone has significantly slashed the return I should have gotten on my investment of time by limiting my available gifts to such a paltry amount that it is literally becoming a JOB to play. By destroying the “ fun factor” you are reducing your own customer base. If you can track activity of players you will see I am slowly spending less and less time playing. It is not nearly as much fun as it was when I started.

The practice of having gifts automatically go to projects I did NOT chose to start is another way the fun factor is being destroyed. If you insist on doing that, give the player the option of moving assets from one project to another. Yes, I see the “special offers”. That is not enough compensation for having my gifts ripped off to make me pay money to replace the fun your company removed.

Also you need to add a “ are you sure you want to spend this megabucks” on assets. The way it is set up now if te player acidenlty hits the add assets buttoin to many times it automatically spends megabuicks we are saving up to use on other items such as expansion.

You will, no doubt have a steady stream of new customers to replace the lose of profits. That fact does not cancel out the cold hard fact that corporate growth is hindered. Any thing that hinders a growing custmer base hinders profit. As the economy gets tougher and more customers get into harder economic times, you lose money. If you do not start accomodating the growing demographic of the new poor, your company will be guilty of breaking the single largest corporate commandment in history.

THOU SHALT NOT DESTROY YOUR OWN CUSTOMER BASE!

Barbie Rede

Follow up on Zynga Ganes on Face book

Apparently enogh game players have walked out and more are threathing to vote with their feet the same way that they are finally starting to take the hint and correct real problems. They call them bugs.  Yeah right. See post in bugs and issues on the castel ville forum if your interested. Me? Yeah I play, You can't work on honey does and boats all the time. I made up my mind after back yard mosters that Im NOT BUYING any thing unless I am happy wih game performance. I dont care if it's beta or not. Beta is not an excuse for the situation as it has been.  USE your own judgement. LET THE BUYER BE WARE!  It appears to me that the general consensus of the players/ posters that  these alleged "bugs" are all intentionally designed to be ploys to entice / coerce you to buy the crowns. I happen to agree with that opinion.

Zynga games : castle vlle, Back yard Monsters etc, etc

PLEASE PASS THIS ON!
 I Posted this in the Zynga forum. It will be interesting to see what if any thing positive (for he players) happens. 

My honest opinion

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Not sure if this is correct forum but since crafting is directly connected to these items I will post it here.

Just tried to craft wool tunic for the career woman quest. When I went to actually craft it I found that my wool cloth that I had been saving up on was gone! This is not the first time something like this has happened. It has gotten to the point of being predictable. It has happened with gold bars for buildings as well as other items. I have posted on different issues of this nature in previous post.

People play these games to have a bit of fun and light entertainment. These constant problems with inventory disappearing, especially when it is related to what ever current quest is in progress, really rob the enjoyment of playing the game.
I will give you an example. I started playing BYMonsters several months ago. I really liked the game. Two other members of my house were playing it with me. In one month I dropped about 100.00 USD into the game for golden mushrooms. Some for my self, some for them. It became redundant and boring becasue it was to long to get the golden mushrooms naturally and it took so long to do stuff that checking on game progress to advance to the next item became a chore that was just not fun any more.

Current situation other then wool cloth disappearing is same as the golden mushrooms. When I started playing Castle ville, the alchemy powder that comes randomly was a fairly frequent item that you could get a good flow / momentum going. If memory serves on lower levels you could get it from a pond. Now I find that I have to go visit neighbors and only do certain types of things to get any and even then after collecting one or two I have to wait hours to be able to collect more as it stops appearing. at all after having collected a couple of them. Since this is needed for gold bars, it is critical to me building royal buildings and other quest items.

It is not that I object to spending money on a silly computer game. I have already done that and will no doubt do it again. ( May have been under different FB id) It is the same as spending money to go to the movies. NO better no worse. What I object to is having a "game" turn into a chore that demands I spend money on items that I KNOW I had in my inventory or need to progress instead of being able to spend those same dollars on items I WANT to spend that same cash on. I d not appreciate feeling like I am being manipulated into something on any level for any reason.
That is basically my reaction to all these on gong issues that all seem to be connected to quest especially. Yes there are people who get impatient and will spend the cash. I am not one of them.
PT Barnum said he would rather have a handful of nickles then a dollar bill in his hand. I suspect he under stood VOLUME sales. Large box store corporations understand this concept. It is a money maker.
AM I going to keep playing this game? I don't know. The fun factor is getting really thin. I saw the sale on crowns. Bad timing on your part was one reason I did not buy crowns. The other reasons are these issues that my self and others have repeatedly mentioned. Last night and today when I thought about playing what popped into my mind was not go have a bit of fun but the headaches associated with trying to play this game. All these problems are literally teaching me to associate Zynga with aggravation and headaches. When I first got an invite from a friend to play castle ville, memory of the aggravation and ongoing cost of BYM came to mind. It as a week before I decided to give Zynga another chance. I had hoped Zynga had figured out the importance of volume sales and discretionary spending of consumers in hard economical tiles. THIS IS NOT A GOOD CORPORATE IMAGE TO LEAVE IN CUSTOMERS MINDS!
The lack of being able to store items is also a MAJOR issue that comes into play when i think about spending money on this game as I myself an others have already posted in massive proportions .
This appears to be a issue on all Zynga games not just Castleville. Hopefully Zynga will correct this. IMHO it is a marketing issue that is losing your corporation volume sales.
The concept is good, Its a bit of fun that I personally really enjoy. Life is to short to volunteer for more headaches.

On a more specific note, crafting items that take long periods of time or that demand hard to get items is REALLY BORING!!!!!!!!
LACK OF STORAGE SPACE IS ANOTHER AGGRAVATION!
You have massive feed back on this. It does not make any sense that the same issue is still reoccurring with the professional bug shooters on staff of a corporation this size. It is costing Zynga cold hard cash when ever any one leaves game play over redundant issues.

Barbie Rede firefox