Flawed Spend Rewards Promo

lottie#8801
lottie#8801 Posts: 29 Arc User
edited February 2018 in General Discussion
I would like to highlight that the latest Charge & Spend Rewards promotion is slightly flawed as it does not count accumulated spends, unlike the usual separate spend rewards. This leaves players spending on individual items which have silver amounts at a disadvantage.

http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/pwi/news/detail/10796294-wonderland-launch-charge-and-spend-rewards
Spent Gold in whole increments only will be counted. Spending Silver will not grant you points. it must be a minimum of 1 whole Gold spent to receive RP for the Spending portion of this promotion.

My suggestion is that the mechanics should account for combined spends for RP over the promotion period.

On the usual spend rewards, spends are chalked up individually and tallied as we go along, ie:
2.50g + 7.50g + 5g = 25g = We get our spend reward in mailbox.

For this spend reward, whatever amounts we spend under 1gold was never considered in the tally. So I spent 0.25 silver x 50 and although I chalked up 12.50 in gold spend, the system did not reward me with relevant RP. For what I was purchasing, there was no option to bulk purchase either, only individual pieces at 25 silver each. I feel penalised in a sense that eventhough I spent a large amount, I was unable to receive the RP for it.

I sent a ticket to Customer Service and was told to post on the forums instead. Are we able to change the premise of this promotion so that it counts a user's collective spends over the entire period and everytime the user hits a whole number with silver spends tallied, they should also get 1 RP.
Example:
If I spend 50 x 0.25 = 12.50, system should register I get 12 RP and the 50 silver remains as part of my total spends but not yet getting RP
(right now because it is silver spends, I am getting 0 RP)

If I then spend 1.50, system should now tally that my combined spend on the remaining qualifies me to get 0.50 + 1.50 = 2.00 = 2RP
(again right now I am getting 0 RP)


I hope you would reconsider the mechanics of this promotion and not penalise the players who charge and spend in bulk regardless of the minimum quantity. We are still spending money in bulk when combined across the individual spends, but we are getting penalised for doing silver spends instead of gold spends on individual items.

Like I said, my suggestion is that the mechanics should be combined spends for RP over the promotion period.
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Comments

  • yoabu#2667
    yoabu#2667 Posts: 50 Arc User
    I'm pretty sure that the reason for this is not their intent to penalise spending small amounts at a time, but rather shortcomings of the charge reward system, which in this case is used also for spend rewards. That system operates on full gold values (evidenced by it rounding up the RP gain to 150 when you purchase the 149.5 gold pack). This kind of rounding would lead to abuse when spending 50 silver at a time. Apparently they don't consider implementing a robust system for this kind of combined promo worthwhile. I guess maaaaybe if enough people voice their concern, they will change their mind.

    TL:DR I don't think it's as simple as flipping a switch and it will take a lot of persuasion to get this sorted out properly.
  • valdisman
    valdisman Posts: 568 Arc User
    *Special Campaign Notice* You will recieve points for Charging AND Spending!

    Spent Gold in whole incriments only will be counted. Spending Silver will not grant you points. It must be a minimum of 1 whole Gold to recieve RP for the Spending portion of this promotion!
    #kylehawkinsuck
    Moonshine drinker
    In a world of 10s, be an 11.
  • valdisman
    valdisman Posts: 568 Arc User
    I do see your point though. Even though you're charging and spending, players aren't getting rewarded for it unless it's in bigger amounts.
    #kylehawkinsuck
    Moonshine drinker
    In a world of 10s, be an 11.
  • kalystconquerer#0876
    kalystconquerer#0876 Posts: 1,421 Perfect World Employee
    Hello!

    So this stemmed from what happened with the Spend shop I implemented last year (sometime in July I want to say?). That used the Charge Rewards structure but instead accounted for just Spending.

    Initially, when I set the spend ratios, there was users who spent and then was confused as to why they weren't getting points. When I took a look at why, it was suddenly apparent - the ratio of Spend accounted in whole increments, not in the Silvers (cents) people were spending. Attempting to do any sort of decimals wouldn't take in our system either.
    I would have to have our engineers take a look to find a universally acceptable solution (considering that the infrastructure of Charge Rewards not only is used for PWI but for FW and SWM, both of which rely on different currency conversions) and I'm not sure they could cook up a solution in a reasonable amount of time.
  • lottie#8801
    lottie#8801 Posts: 29 Arc User
    edited February 2018
    kalystconquerer#0876 wrote: »
    Hello!

    So this stemmed from what happened with the Spend shop I implemented last year (sometime in July I want to say?). That used the Charge Rewards structure but instead accounted for just Spending.

    Initially, when I set the spend ratios, there was users who spent and then was confused as to why they weren't getting points. When I took a look at why, it was suddenly apparent - the ratio of Spend accounted in whole increments, not in the Silvers (cents) people were spending. Attempting to do any sort of decimals wouldn't take in our system either.
    I would have to have our engineers take a look to find a universally acceptable solution (considering that the infrastructure of Charge Rewards not only is used for PWI but for FW and SWM, both of which rely on different currency conversions) and I'm not sure they could cook up a solution in a reasonable amount of time.

    Hi @kalystconquerer#0876 ty for your response.

    All I'm suggesting is that, once the silver spends make a whole gold spend, award 1RP. And carry forward the silver till there is a whole gold spent to credit the additional 1 RP. It's the same as the usual Spend Rewards where it's a combined spend across all spends during a specified period. It does not discriminate silver spends vs gold spends, as it is calculated over combined spends over time and carried over during the promotion period.

    During promo period all my spends should be accrued and relevant RP rewarded over time, using a simple carry forward system example:
    Day 1.0: Spend 0.25 x 5 = 1.25, Total Spend = 1.25, Get 1RP, carry forward 0.25
    Day 1.1: Spend 1.50 x 3 = 4.50 + Balance Carried forward = 4.50 + 0.25 = 4.75. Get 4RP, carry forward 0.75
    Day 2.0: Spend 12.50 x 1 = 12.50 + Balance Carried forward = 12.50 + 0.75 = 13.25, Get 13RP, carry forward 0.25
    Day 3.0: Spend 0.25 x 47 = 11.75 + Balance Carried forward = 11.75 + 0.25 = 12.00, Get 12RP, carry forward 0
    Day 5.0: Spend 0.25 x 50 = 12.50 + Balance Carried forward = 12.50 + 0.00 = 12.50, Get 12RP, carry forward 0.50

    And so on and so forth, until the end of promotion.

    If by the end of the Promo, I still have balance silver that cannot make 1RP fine, I will take it that I had to forego that unless I want to spend more. But please dont penalise us for spending bulk purchases and just never get rewarded. I really feel we should not be penalised for buying small quantities under 1gold and just never receive the bulk spend rewards eventhough we spent the same amount of gold as a person who was able to buy in batches of whole numbers.
  • diesfast
    diesfast Posts: 46 Arc User
    @OP / lottie,

    I, too, encountered the Silver vs Gold increment spending issue and then went back to re-read the Promo text, seeing that my spent Gold, on items that were less than 1 Zen were null and void (throatkick there), however my total Spend was in whole gold increments (bought some 50 silver items totaling 12 Gold, should've been 12 RP) ANYWAY... I submitted a ticket to Support, they verified my Boutique Spending amounts for items. (one of which was 44 Gold worth of War Avatar Catalysts (110 of them) .. so that combined, Charge and Spend RP ended up being 160 Gold for an Dragon Orb Mirage. After a short while, they did indeed verify that my RP finally equaled what should've been automated with simple coding, and I was granted the RP to claim the reward I intended on earning.

    Now, Support could've told me to **** off, as the Promo DID actually clearly state, paraphrased, **** your partial ZEN purchases and the dollar you charged for it, but they were nice and helped me out.

    Now, as far as the explanation as to why, REALLY?, this is the first time Silver hasn't been counted into Spend RP. I've Spent various times on Silver and/or Gold items and ended up with what I expected, logically. Bulk silver purchases totaling whole increments of Gold has always previously suited me. ~back in July, sigh. Okay.
  • lottie#8801
    lottie#8801 Posts: 29 Arc User
    @diefast

    Ty for your response. I'm glad you shared your experience of support handling this incident for your favourably. I'm concerned why we both submitted a similar query and was met with 2 different responses.

    As mentioned in my first post, support said they could not change the mechanics of the promo and asked me to post my concern on forum (which is why I had to post here in the first place). So basically, in not so many words, they DID tell me to **** off.

    Now thanks to you, I shall write back through the support channel and request that they review my case and ALL players who had similar issue.

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