Feedback for Update 1.61

[DeletedUser20367]

It looks to me like this was written by someone who REALLY wanted email to be more like chat. Which would be fine except that this is an EMAIL system and it needs the functions that EMAIL systems have had for decades now. Bring back the delete button and enable editing the recipients list (which is supposedly coming). Those are the big two. Actually, bringing back the delete button should be the first five things on the 'to fix' list, maybe the first ten.

I could live with XYZ has left the conversation. I can even see where that could occasionally be useful to know, but only occasionally. I can also see where that could lead to Guild members being harassed for doing it.

 

[lemonwedgie]

Do any of you realize that when people leave a thread, all it does is add a notification to the existing message? It doesn't create new mails, and if you don't want to get 'spammed' by it just leave the conversations yourself. Or tough it out and wait for the 'spam' to die out as everyone finishes leaving their old threads. This 'problem' is a one-off thing caused by migration to the new system, and a lot of people just holding on to their mails rather than clearing them out on a regular basis.

This whole thread just sounds like a whole lot of 'I want to have my cake and eat it too', really. The new messaging system is great, and I see it only getting better once everyone's done cleaning up their old messages (by the weekend, probably).

Depnds on what type of guild you are in - we are message heavy, lots of activity with GvG, GBs, Stix ... the last thing we need are extra messages bumping to the top to tell us someone left the conversation. We asked for a new improved message system, we did not ask for this.

 

[DeletedUser17482]

O.
M.
G.

Everything I heard about this from Beta players could not prepare me for the disaster that is messaging. I have to wade through SIXTEEN PAGES of bumped threads as people (now? you waited until now?) leave every conversation in sight. Even the message I sent to my guild asking them NOT to leave, was left by half a dozen people.

What is the point of having a Beta, what is the point of soliciting feedback, what is the point of writing software, if you aren't going to PAY ATTENTION to your users? I'm this close to leaving the game, I'm so annoyed. The very best feature of this game is the social aspect and you have made it into something stress-filled. Not what I'm looking for in a game.

I've seen this kind of slip-shod development before. People who don't even play the game think "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if...?" and proceed to do whatever the heck they want without any regard for reason, common sense, basic human factors, or least of all, the feedback from their users. There was absolutely NO EXCUSE for ever allowing this release to see the light of day.

Come on, Inno ... we deserve better than this.

 

[DeletedUser13942]

If you pay attention to my profile, you'll notice what server I'm actually on. I deal with many more than just 'a message a day', and I much prefer the new system to the old one. Only 4 messages per page, messages frequently being lost for who knows what reason (particularly 1:1 messages), and being unable to permanently delete a thread that you were not interested in seeing (endless FP threads being the main example here) were all huge flaws with the old system that have either been improved upon or removed with this update. And if those didn't bother you, why does this system bother you?

This is all just needless whining for the sake of whining and/or hating change. People complained when the aid button was implemented as well (omg, my decorations are being polished and Inno sucks for implementing this!) Inno should have instead just completely purged messages completely and made everyone start their threads over with the launch of the new system; it would have been much more well-received since there would have been no residual effects caused by old leftover messages being converted. Seriously, all of the complaints I'm seeing are stemming from people spam-leaving messages from BEFORE this system was even added in.

I play beta, it's been there for a long time now..IT STILL SUX. Not going to improve with time. Your are entitled to your opinion I respect that. But instead of accusing everybody else of whining for whining sake just state your case. I have played it on beta quite awhile and my conclusion is that it is all bad for any ACTIVE guild.

 

[qaccy]

Depnds on what type of guild you are in - we are message heavy, lots of activity with GvG, GBs, Stix ... the last thing we need are extra messages bumping to the top to tell us someone left the conversation. We asked for a new improved message system, we did not ask for this.

I'm in the #3 guild over on D world, it's plenty active for us as well. This new message system is nowhere near as bad as the echo chamber here would want folks like me to believe.

It's a fact that people are more likely to voice displeasure than contentedness, and that's what's happening here. The people who are fine with the system don't feel the need to say so, but too many will interpret that as everyone just hating it. Most players don't even use the forums. And most also don't care that the system was changed. I feel like the forum users are acting far too spoiled, because every time something is added to the game or changed one of the first replies is some form of 'I guess Inno doesn't care about making money if they're adding [feature] to the game', as if they're trying to scare the developers into doing what they want by predicting the future. Meanwhile, servers continue to be added, the game continues to be maintained, and there haven't even been whispers of the game shutting down. Must mean that on the whole, they're doing pretty well and the playerbase is continuing to grow, eh? And a playerbase wouldn't be growing if everything was as bad as the forums would lead you to believe. It's just nothing but a bunch of whining. Kinda like this post, I guess!

TL;DR The new system is fine, it's just going to take time to sink in because people don't like change and everything's fuddled up because of the transition from old to new. Once the old stuff's been filtered out, it'll be much better.

 

[DeletedUser8628]

1. I don't need to know when each person leaves a thread

2. Need to be able to add an individual to a thread

 

[DeletedUser9167]

One thing that would help both the old and new system would be to make "all guild member" messages have a dynamic/symbolic recipient list. So no matter who joined or left guild those threads/conversations would only go to those in guild at the time they are sent. Static recipient list is like 80's tech, get with it!

 

[DeletedUser10170]

Box of rocks .... new messaging system is dumber than a box of rocks.

- bring back delete
- "leave message" reactivates old messages "as new and important" to the front of the line; after scrolling thru 8 pages of such nonsense, I finally found this mornings messages.
- return avatar of a one-one message. In 2 of my worlds I avoid all group messages as they are nonsense ones. I need to easily distiguish a real one-one important message. Now, you only see the avatar AFTER you open the message; otherwise all look like group-wide messages at a glance.
- Likes; well, I like the new brighter ackground. That is about it

Box of rocks .. please attach a box of rocks to this messaging system and take it down by the river ... uh, oh, I hear Chris Farley coming.

 

[DeletedUser7058]

WHY WHY WHY change the messaging feature. the only thing you should have done is fix it on the app. This has crippled Guild communication. Please change it back. I can't see what I have opened and haven't opened and with so many people leaving the conversation no one knows what is being talked about. Also you put messages out of my OUT box and put them in the IN box. If not fixed this may be the nail in the coffin for me. you are basically F..ing with my day to day routine. Just once listen to the people playing the beta. Worst upgrade or should I say downgrade ever. Nice going would you all like to screw anything else up!!!!!

 

[DeletedUser6984]

As a player who uses both mobile app and the regular version of the game 50/50, I'm utterly disappointed. First, the way you setup the announcement, the impression was that the mobile app would go live today. You should have stated that it would not be live. Second, there is absolutely nothing user friendly about the new system. Everyone above has detailed the problem already.

The point I want to make is that I typically play for about 3-4 hours in the evening. I was so frustrated by the crap being fed to us that I turned off the game after about 30 minutes. I'm not going to waste my time sifting through useless spam, to find actual messages and this is the perfect way to push players like me out of the game! It would be better to stick with no mobile messaging than to have this as the "solution".

 

[DeletedUser]

I'm in the #3 guild over on D world, it's plenty active for us as well. This new message system is nowhere near as bad as the echo chamber here would want folks like me to believe.
if everything was as bad as the forums would lead you to believe. It's just nothing but a bunch of whining. Kinda like this post, I guess!

TL;DR The new system is fine, it's just going to take time to sink in because people don't like change and everything's fuddled up because of the transition from old to new. Once the old stuff's been filtered out, it'll be much better.

We get it pal, you are a forge of empire hipster and were into the messaging system way before everyone else! Meanwhile people will continue to give their feedback (well earned negative) in a thread where they were asked to give feedback.

 

[DeletedUser13408]

I appreciate the effort to bring messaging to the mobile platform, and I was looking forward to seeing some of the long-standing problems with the old messaging system fix, however now that I have seen the new system it is considerably worse - something I foolishly thought not possible.

There are at least two things that render the new system completely unusable. 1st of all, and I have to admit I'm shocked that I have to even say this, but a message system to be usable needs to have a subject. This isn't chat, and there must be a way to separate threads, but without a subject, there is none - conclusion? Unusable.

2nd of all, this business of spaming the entire to-list whenever someone "leaves" a thread, is not only completely annoying, it literally makes the messaging system unusable for purposes for which it is needed, which is a quick store-and-forward type of communication vehicle. now when I scan through a list of messages, all I see is "leaving". That does not tell me anything I want or need to know, and it prevents me from see . conclusion? Unusable.

I know there have been many objections to these "features" even while it was still in beta (which I am not part of) however, now that I have seen it for myself I simply have to let you know that these two things must be corrected - as far as I'm concerned the game is broken right now because I cannot accomplish the things I need to accomplish in game using this messaging system. As bad as the old messaging system was, it at least had subject lines, and it did not spend most of it's bandwidth simply spamming me with completely non-game-related information: "leaving a thread" is not relevant to my game-play.

I don't mean to be harsh but I simply must communicate that from my perspective you have made a bad messaging system completely unusable for the purposes for which it is needed. I certainly hope you will listen to the feedback which is being provided, here and by so many others, and correct these issues so that we can have a usable messaging system.

 

[DeletedUser10415]

Glarg has left the conversation.

 

[DeletedUser15276]

16 pages on this thread alone that this sucks
i suggest u inno peeps get er back to the old way real quick, u rolled it out in a day even though we told ya it sucked it beta, u can unroll it back in a day
no players, no $
no soup for uuuuuuuuuuuuuu

 

[DeletedUser17951]

I'm presuming that this new cross platform message system is the result of the game developers utilizing a design pattern that is not fully developed to this particular game. Either way I wish the best of luck to the software engineers as they continue to move forward and improve upon the current design. With this said if there is anything I would like to see changed it would be to remove the code lines that notifies everybody when a player has left a conversation.

 

[DeletedUser22703]

What is going on, I am lost with this new message system.I think I need to take a break from the game. It's a broken system from the start. This is the worst thing you all have done. It kills all your PC players which are your bread and butter. I think this will kill your game, this is far worse than a new reset time which was very unpopular. Is someone siting around saying "Today i'm going to destroy a good game"

The thing you need to change is to shutdown all of the dirigible idealists trying to change the game.

SD

 

[DeletedUser13360]

I think thats true of many - our guild is HEAVY on messages, they are constant as we have a lot of activity .... today ... nothing ... weird ...

Our guild is heavy on messages too. Very quiet overall today, and in fact, so quiet,, that people are NOT playing. I'm sure their eyeballs glazed over just looking at this catastrophe.

- - - Updated - - -

The player Qaccy isn't even in a guild Playerlib. Probably gets a message a day.

That explains it.

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I usually just lurk on the forums for this game. But I just had to register to give feedback to this latest game update. I have officially seen everything now.

Email, and other closely related message systems, have been around in one form or the other since the early 1980's (maybe even earlier), but long before the web or smartphones. I bet I have personally had over 50 different email accounts between various: schools, jobs, hobbies, games, web sites, list servers, BBS chat boards, and so on. So I just want to congratulate Inno Games to be the first software developers ever in the history of messaging to build a messaging system that comes complete with its very own self-generated SPAM. What mail or message system would be complete without its own built-in spam message subsystem that sends you a 100% completely irrelevant and unwanted message every single time one of your 80 guild members tries to delete a guild-wide message from their inbox? How did we every survive without this annoyance...err I mean new feature?

And let us not forget that it is not actually "delete" but "leave". This is despite 100% of anyone who has every used any kind of electronic messaging system anywhere before playing FoE being completely used to the concept of deleting a message they no longer wish to retain in their inbox. Oh wait ... yeah that's right it is not actually an "Inbox", but rather it is a clusterfudge of an identity-crisis, a ization of an inbox/outbox.

Software Engineering and system design is supposed to start with gathering reasonable user requirements, and end with field testing, and user acceptance. Reading just a few replies on this forum topic easily indicates that the developers at Inno Games should ask for a full refund on the software engineering degrees. Beta users obviously raised prudent issues, which were ignored. And now the rest of us regular users are punished with a bunch of "new innovations" that really should be filed under "if it ain't broken, don't fix it!".

Messaging systems have been around now for more than 3 solid decades, and their are very goods reasons for the old tried and true constructs

• It is called a freaking "subject" or a "topic", not a "group". A "subject" or a "topic" is a generalized, short summary of what people in the conversation are talking about, while a "group" is the collection of people who are talking (or listening) in the conversation.

• Users delete messages in order to remove remnants of an asynchronous conversation they no longer care about and to simplify the process of locating other remnants of asynchronous conversations they do care about. Users do not leave an asynchronous conversation, they leave synchronous conversations like interactive chat rooms or channels.

• No one else in the entire universe cares, or should care, when any user any where in the world deletes a message to clean up list of messages they want to manage. If 80 guild members each delete 1 guild-wide message under this new message system, a total of 3,160 "so-and-so left the conversation" messages are generated in the collective inboxes (which are not actually inboxes) of all guild members that have yet to leave the conversation. Meaning the first person to leave generates 79 messages that need to be read (one each by th eother 79 guild members), the next erson to leave generates 78, and so on down to when the second to the last person decides to leave the conversation.

You do require college-level education to design game updates don't you?

BRAVO! Standing Ovation.

 

[DeletedUser15276]

Our guild is heavy on messages too. Very quiet overall today, and in fact, so quiet,, that people are NOT playing. I'm sure their eyeballs glazed over just looking at this catastrophe.

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That explains it.

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BRAVO! Standing Ovation.

mine too, tons of people usually on , not hardy even a message tonight or trading, people just said forget it,and theyll forget this game too unless ya get this garbage rolled back, otherwise, u just killed the game

 

[DeletedUser10517]

Have had overnight with this system now and here are my thoughts.

~It is a nuisance to find out who gets the messages. If a message is sent to me, I like to know whos copied in. The old system, you just hovered over the title and it told you.
This system is a series of clicks, which is a pain in the rear.

~When I do some of my threads, the subject has an introduction page, and is followed by other messages. Now, because they are all sent by the same person, it all shows as one 'conversation' and its difficult to see where the separation between messages is.

~I hate the idea that its now "Conversations" rather than messages and has been designed so added messages just tag onto to the last message, if they same person talks.
Why? Im sending messages......not having a conversation......and I want simply, easy to see, separate messages in return.
If messages are now 'Conversations......what is 'Chat' now? I was under the impression that CHAT was conversational.....???

~There is a big avatar showing us who 'spoke'........and the name is printed in teeny tiny letters at the end of their 'speech', which is another pain in the butt and very difficult to see.
If a member doesnt recognise the Avatar, or there are several of the same Avatar......squinting to find out who sent it is annoying.

~The white background is dreadful for the eyes.

~The message envelope doesnt blink anymore.

~The box to write in is too small.

~Having new messages at the bottom, rather than the top is a nuisance when you run chain like messages.

~Wanting to see the original post is more difficult because we have to click 'See More Messages' over and over until it gets there.

~Im restarting MORE threads than before as members are leaving conversations either by not understanding that they wont come back, or accidentally.
This issue could settle down, but I feel there will always be people leaving threads that I know they need to see and thus making me restart them.

~I also need to restart important announcements all the time. Before, I could bump the old one every couple of weeks, and know that everyone could see it.
Now, I have to redo it every time.
Sure, it only takes a minute to cut and paste into a new message.........but Im doing that with several messages at once.
This new system has made everything so much more difficult.

~Total lack of Guild communication yesterday evening generally, except for the thread where everyone is stating how terrible the new messaging system is.

I have never seen such a large amount of dissatisfaction since starting playing the game. Even the time move on GvG didnt create a guild full and a Global Chat full of dismay and upset.

Why on Earth didnt you keep the old style system and just introduce a method for removing a person from the send list?
When all said and done, thats all anyone really wanted.....and a bit of stability.

But even then......you could have said "Messaging is fine" and leave it as it is. Id rather have the old one back with the bugs than this new, dreadful, one.

I most certainly am not spending money on Diamonds anymore, and its not a small amount........GvG is virtually impossible for me to play past 2pm anyway, and if this message system is the kind of thing my money is being spent on, then you have more of it than sense.
So I will refrain.

 

[Alacrity]

............