Fed Up

ScottWAR · #1 June 6th, 2011, 12:11 PM

Ok, After waiting way too long for this game to get fixed so that it is at least playable enough for a released game,...I have given up.

The game is STILL not ready for release. The AI cant put up a fight against a chimp making random moves,..much less a human.

I have waited and waited patiently. During that time we have received almost exclusively silence, except for a brief period of a whole week where we were assured the game would get fixed,......so what happened? It most assuredly isnt fixed. Putting a hubcap on a car that has one wheel on it doesnt fix the problem,...we still need the other three wells.

So I decided to try Shrapnels customer support to demand a refund for a defective product that DOES NOT work as advertised. What I found is that shrapnel has some roundabout process of support, that is without a doubt designed to keep people from contacting support. They say that you dont need an account to get support,...but I find no way whatsoever to contcact support without making one of their accounts.

So I am going to give Shrapnel one week to respond to this post telling me either how to go about getting a refund for this unfinished prduct or by telling me how to navigate the support process without having to create yet another account.

If I am not given this info,...or once I manage to contact support if I am not given a refund,....I will be filing a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Anyone else who is fed up with the lack of progress and communcation about this unfinished piece of software that is being marketed as finished,....I would encourage you to do the same.

Here is the website to make the complaint at..........
http://ftc.gov/

Just click on 'consumer complaint' in the menu on the right and tell them the truth about this game, and the comlplete lack of concern about stealing our money that Shrapnel has shown.

spillblood · #2 June 7th, 2011, 06:02 AM

Hey, ScottWAR, have you bought the game in physical form or as a download. Because I tried to get a refund on another game by Shrapnel once. They don't give any refunds for downloaded games. That's their official policy. You can ask customer support to confirm that. I think you'd really need to sue them to get a refund, which would be pretty expensive, I guess.

spillblood · #3 June 7th, 2011, 06:10 AM

To give you more info on my try to get a refund: I requested a refund for BCT Commander, because that game simply isn't optimized for Windows XP (and Vista) at all, and you can't form task forces without setting the keyboard to US-settings, which is pretty annoying. For example, the game always maximizes to full screen size without regarding the taskbar, so you have to unlock the taskbar, shift it down and shrink the window each time you open the game (which is ****ing annoying). It also is sold for a price that is much too high for such an old game, I think. I didn't manage to get a refund on that.

ScottWAR · #4 June 7th, 2011, 01:58 PM

The game is available as a download only,....and I dont care about their policy.....U.S. law supercedes it.
We have been more than patient and at some point we have to say enough is enough. We were promised the AI would be fixed,...it was improved,...but is still FAR from being anywhere near acceptable.
We ask for more information,...if their are going to be furher improvements to the AI,...and are met with silence yet again.
Since they have decided not to tell us anything,......yet again,...I feel we have no choice but to do something to get their attention. I have found in the past when a department of the U.S Government informs someone they have recieved a complaint and would like some information from them, that it is amazing how quickly they get off their arse and do something.
Maybe we will get some info before I have to file a complaint. If I see something being done to fix the game I wouldnt want a refund,...but at this point the patches are coming WAY too slow and doing FAR too little.

spillblood · #5 June 8th, 2011, 07:26 AM

I absolutely agree with you. Compared to other Indie strategy games I own it is too unfinished and not really fun to play, because there's no challenge involved (in single player). Compare it to Armada 2526 (a 4X space strategy game by Ntronium games I own) for example, that's a really fine game far more polished than World Supremacy, and it had a better AI even in the first released version, and they released patches regularly and ironed out all the bugs it had. Additionally, there was far more info by the Developers on the forums. World Supremacy has been an absolute disappointment so far.
Shrapnel absolutely shouldn't advertise single player. It simply has one of the worst AIs I've ever seen, and the last patch didn't really fix that, it just turned it from absolutely abysmal to bad. They should absolutely change the game page. The good reviews they show there are obviously from people who didn't play the game for a longer time (I've also seen bad reviews, by the way).

ScottWAR · #6 June 8th, 2011, 09:56 AM

Yeah,.....its a shame too, as there is a really good game screaming to get out.

The silence is the real problem. Since the release of the game we havent heard one single word from the developer himself,........not that we ever heard from him before,........and aside from the 'cha-ching' when we handed over our money, the ony thing we have heard period from Shrapnel is the promise that there was a patch being worked on that would fix the problems. One patch later,...there is some improvement,...but nowhere near enough to consider the game even ready for release much less 'finished',.....and once again we ask if this is going to be fixed,......and once again there is silence.
If this were EA,...I would just chalk it up to me taking a known risk and it panning out as expected,........... I thought Shrapnel was better than this,.....but I guess I was wrong.

spillblood · #7 June 8th, 2011, 10:05 AM

I still hope there'll be another patch. Malfador can't leave the game in this state, and it definitely was fun in the first games I played and in the games I played when the beta patches and V 1.09 came out. But just look at the last comments in the bug report thread. Seems people have already written off this game (which is also shown in the lack of posts here in the forum). Hehe, advertising moddability on a game that no one finds enjoyable enough (and which isn't fully finished) is pretty funny, I think.
Maybe I should write another E-Mail to Malf, like I've done many times before.

Ok, just wrote another mail. Let's see what Aaron has to say. I've pointed out that many people here are pretty annoyed and have written off the game.

spillblood · #8 June 9th, 2011, 07:19 AM

Hey, just wanna cite his answer E-Mail here: "As time permits, we may do another patch for World Supremacy. Honestly,
there hasn't been a lot of demand for it.
Aaron"
I think that's a sign that most people have written off this game and no one plays it anymore.

Skirmisher · #9 June 9th, 2011, 11:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spillblood

Hey, just wanna cite his answer E-Mail here: "As time permits, we may do another patch for World Supremacy. Honestly,
there hasn't been a lot of demand for it.
Aaron"
I think that's a sign that most people have written off this game and no one plays it anymore.

That doesn't sound like a guy that really cares. lol

ScottWAR · #10 June 9th, 2011, 03:18 PM

Are you kidding me?

I guess he doesnt understand that IF the game wasnt so unfinished there might actually be more demand?

I guess those of us who wasted our money on this game just dont matter?

Fine.

I will make sure I emphasize his response when I file my complaint monday.

Hopefully someone at Shrapnel will give hima call and let him know that his lack of concern for fixing his game is going to hurt Shrapnels reputation and he needs to fix it or face some kind of concequences.

If SOMETHING doesnt happen this will be the third and last game I buy from shrapnel.