Charity Corner Official Statement From TNT!

[Secre]

I don't know how many of you might have might have seen this as it is a tucked away post on a board I assume nobody visits... I mean, I didn't even know it existed until today and a random Reddit post alerted me to it. Why they didn't release the statement as part of today's actual 'news' I don't know. Most of us at least know to check there daily!!

However. There is an actual statement from TNT:

[MysteryAF]

That's a well-written statement, but they still neglected to mention the people who wasted their shop points by buying items early. The problem is the statement should've been sent out publicly much further in advance, especially the bit about sticky snowballs and it being a prize shop. They had to have been planning this new twist on the event way back, but only made the statement about it until the event started. The 500 free shop points is a nice touch, I will admit. I just hope they do something about the initial buyers who got no discount. I feel bad for them.

[Secre]

7 minutes ago, MysteryAF said:

That's a well-written statement, but they still neglected to mention the people who wasted their shop points by buying items early. The problem is the statement should've been sent out publicly much further in advance, especially the bit about sticky snowballs and it being a prize shop. They had to have been planning this new twist on the event way back, but only made the statement about it until the event started. The 500 free shop points is a nice touch, I will admit. I just hope they do something about the initial buyers who got no discount. I feel bad for them.

I've actually just sent them a message on Facebook to almost exactly that affect:

"Hi Team,

Can I respectfully suggest that you move your Charity Corner forum post update to the main news field? Most people were thrown for a loop by the price change on the prize changes, because the first - and often only - place we check for news is... well, the news feed. Certainly it would never have occurred to me to check a random branch of the forums when I never go on the forums unless it's for NC trading. I only discovered the forum post because somebody off site mentioned it. I'd also note that whilst many of us will be pleased with the lowering of prices for prizes, you need to address refunding those who already bought their prizes. It takes a significant amount of time to deposit thousands worth of points at 15 items a go, and those individuals who bought early will be even more disheartened to see their points wasted in this way.

(No specific ticket number; I hadn't redeemed my points so don't need refunding. Just a note that there may have been better ways of communicating this change to your players.)

Communication is the key thing here and it has been rather lacking in honesty.

You could have communicated the anticipated change to the snowball situation six months ago, and your dedicated fanbase wouldn't have spent the time and effort in setting timers and ensuring they visit the Healing Springs as many times a day as possible. Instead it was communicated in a brief FAQ released on the day of the event starting. It wasn't rocket science to realise just how badly that would go over with people who have spent the better part of twelve months actively prepping for this anticipated event. A little communication - proper communication, not a post in an area of the site that most of us don't even know is there a day after the event starts - goes a long, long way. Make your fanbase feel appreciated, because currently I can see a lot of disappointment, anger and resentment leading to people cancelling their Premium and potentially leaving the site for good.

Many thanks."

[MysteryAF]

Yeah, that's very good. I hope they see that!

What about people like me who spent nearly a million NPs in random shops on Sticky Snowballs? 

I'm gonna submit a ticket, but I don't expect them to deposit a million NPs into my account.

[Secre]

24 minutes ago, MysteryAF said:

Yeah, that's very good. I hope they see that!

What about people like me who spent nearly a million NPs in random shops on Sticky Snowballs? 

I'm gonna submit a ticket, but I don't expect them to deposit a million NPs into my account.

I suspect they will say that it was your choice to buy those items, so it's your problem not theirs.

Which is kind of true... but doesn't take into account the expectation of something being the same as it has been for the last five years or so!

I got relatively lucky. When I went on a concerted effort to stock up on high ticket items, I hit the six point items. So I kept on buying SS from the Healing Springs whenever I remembered, but didn't want to pay the shop price mark up. So I had several hundred Organs, Cobralls in a Can, Tomato Bombs and Meteor Bombs rather than several thousand Sticky Snowballs!

[berriganify]

whelp, that stamp i bought got its price cut in half. rip my wrist i guess. what an absolute mess.

[shauns_fiancee]

I 100% agree with every word said above, i won't repeat it other than to say that, yes, this is an incredible mess.  Imagine the people out there who spent millions on the snowballs only to have everything they purchased cut in half.  Just... they must have been able to see in advance by them that these problems were going to happen... these problems were obvious and they completely failed to communicate.  Posting in some back corner and not on their site?  Jeez

[Trea]

I picked up my 500 NP then went back out to donate some more items, and now the 500 NP are gone.  Has anyone else had that happen?

[Secre]

There is another update. It's in the same random board as the initial update rather than the actual news feed mind you. Because why would you put important news but the news feed!?

  

11 hours ago, berriganify said:

whelp, that stamp i bought got its price cut in half. rip my wrist i guess. what an absolute mess.

I'm glad I waited to redeem my points! You should be getting your points back but at this point I don't trust them as far as I can throw them. The entire thing is just a complete hot mess!!

3 hours ago, shauns_fiancee said:

I 100% agree with every word said above, i won't repeat it other than to say that, yes, this is an incredible mess.  Imagine the people out there who spent millions on the snowballs only to have everything they purchased cut in half.  Just... they must have been able to see in advance by them that these problems were going to happen... these problems were obvious and they completely failed to communicate.  Posting in some back corner and not on their site?  Jeez

As I said, I didn't even know that board exists. I only use the forums for NC Trading and it wouldn't have occurred to me to check for an update there if it hadn't been for somebody posting on Reddit.

2 hours ago, Trea said:

I picked up my 500 NP then went back out to donate some more items, and now the 500 NP are gone.  Has anyone else had that happen?

Yeah. This seems to be a common issue. If you don't redeem them immediately, you lose them. The quick donation page is down for now so maybe they'll fix it... maybe they won't. It's anybody's guess at this point!!

[MysteryAF]

4 hours ago, Trea said:

I picked up my 500 NP then went back out to donate some more items, and now the 500 NP are gone.  Has anyone else had that happen?

Is anyone really surprised at this point that a Neopets feature isn't working properly? Cause I sure as heck aren't. You know, I said in my initial post in this thread that the 500 point bonus was a nice touch, and they even managed to screw that up.

I'm not punishing my wrists with this event until they sort it out, and maybe not even then. I'm almost too peeved to bother at this point.

[Angeló]

- Waiting to get my point difference 

- 500 Free Points are non-redeemable at the moment

- The Capsules should be Trade-able 

- NP Quick Donation is not working

[Secre]

48 minutes ago, MysteryAF said:

Is anyone really surprised at this point that a Neopets feature isn't working properly? Cause I sure as heck aren't. You know, I said in my initial post in this thread that the 500 point bonus was a nice touch, and they even managed to screw that up.

I'm not punishing my wrists with this event until they sort it out, and maybe not even then. I'm almost too peeved to bother at this point.

I haven't redeemed mine yet... I'm waiting til I'm done donating I think as I can then plan out what I want to buy with my total points. Which will be somewhere around 16,000 I believe with my final push. The quick donation not working is aggravating though!!

24 minutes ago, Angeló said:

- Waiting to get my point difference 

- 500 Free Points are non-redeemable at the moment

- The Capsules should be Trade-able 

- NP Quick Donation is not working

Completely agreed on all counts. This is just one dumpster fire after another at the moment... admittedly, I wouldn't buy those capsules if you gave me the NP to do so!!

[Duma]

16 hours ago, berriganify said:

whelp, that stamp i bought got its price cut in half. rip my wrist i guess. what an absolute mess.

Item prices always go down as more of them flood the market. Buying them in the beginning of an event is never really smart, even if the amount of points it cost to get one had stayed the same.

As for the points needed to buy from the prize shop, they said they will return the difference. Give them some time to sort that all out. And maybe in the future wait with getting things from the shop until the end of the event?

The Sticky Snowball situation is annoying for sure but I can't really blame them as it was obviously being abused.

You can't say the event hadn't changed in years as it basically did every year. They kept on changing things and tweaking things over the years. In the beginning (I didn't participate back then) I heard you received a random item in the same rarity as items donated, plus you were only allowed to donate in a specific category. A few years ago (I believe 2 years) they switched it up again and went to donate whatever and get perks. The perks gave coding headaches so to focus on transferring away from flash they decided to go with items this year. Maybe, when the conversion is done, they'll have time again to look more closely to the perk coding and go back to those as rewards. And they don't always need to give us reasons why they do things the way they do it. Sure communication is important but I'm pretty sure they do think about things and don't just change things up without a reason. Change is always annoying, not just for players but also for them (coders). I'm glad they did give us some information about the why but in my opinion it's not a mandatory thing they NEED to do.

The bugs that are happening now are annoying but I'm sure they will be fixed and they're probably caused by the changes made mid-event.

I'm not going to say anything about the capsules as I'm not interested in those anyway so I have no clue what's wrong with them. I've heard the chance of getting something nice is way too low and if they're non trade-able I can see that can be really annoying. Maybe they'll change that too? Who knows, I hope so for all the people that do like items from the capsules.

[midnight_spell360]

1 hour ago, Duma said:

The bugs that are happening now are annoying but I'm sure they will be fixed and they're probably caused by the changes made mid-event.

Well I just got a text from my sibling, hexagon_dragon, and they had donated 2442 points worth, finished manually filling up the De-Clutter Tray with 15 r80+ items, pulled the lever to see Granny's Speech bubble to say they got 30 donation points, and went to the Prize Shop to verify that this amount was added on (they were recording their amount on Sticky Notes-thank God!) and it showed 0 donation points!!! Everything was 'erased'??? WHAT? 

I think everyone should just stop donating to CC until this glitch gets fixed!!! How will we know when TNT/JS will fix this? ...  IDK!!!

[Secre]

1 minute ago, midnight_spell360 said:

Well I just got a text from my sibling, hexagon_dragon, and they had donated 2442 points worth, finished manually filling up the De-Clutter Tray with 15 r80+ items, pulled the lever to see Granny's Speech bubble to say they got 30 donation points, and went to the Prize Shop to verify that this amount was added on (they were recording their amount on Sticky Notes-thank God!) and it showed 0 donation points!!! Everything was 'erased'??? WHAT? 

I think everyone should just stop donating to CC until this glitch gets fixed!!! How will we know when TNT/JS will fix this? ...  IDK!!!

There's a glicth. My points are showing correctly on the quick donation page but as zero in the prize shop. Someone coded something badly. I assume. I know nought about coding!

 

@Duma However you'd have thought they'd have learned by now that if they bother to communicate in advance then people don't get anywhere near as het up about things. So instead of letting people prepare by diligently purchasing Sticky's, they could have hit that early - like six to eight months ago - and said that they would be closing that loophole. They probably also ought to have either reduced all snowballs or perhaps reduced Stickys to 3 or 4 points instead of a measley one. 

I've never done CC before either so whilst I was looking forward to the perks, I never had them to lose them if that makes sense! But again, communication six months ago rather than letting everyone prepare for an event that has been overhauled in a way that removed what a lot of people were looking forward to would have been far, far better.

You say they don't have to give reasons, but I'd disagree. If they are fundamentally shifting things in an anticipated event then they have to be ready for the fallout if they don't communicate these changes in advance with their customer base. People spend a lot of time and money on the site... and it's a basic customer support thing to announce these sort of shifts in advance. If I behaved like this at work, reducing all the hard work my sites put in, I'd be up on a disciplinary. I get that you sometimes have to make unpopular decisions. But it is always best to be open, transparent and honest as far in advance as you can. 

The glitches are annoying and had they been the only issue, that's all they would have been. An annoyance. However, in combination with the rest of this mess they are being seen as the straw that breaks the camel's back. 

[berriganify]

1 hour ago, Duma said:

As for the points needed to buy from the prize shop, they said they will return the difference. Give them some time to sort that all out. And maybe in the future wait with getting things from the shop until the end of the event?

lol yeah, fool on me for assuming that they would publish a completed event. i've never seen any sort of prize shop cuts its prices mid-event before.

the stamp was the only thing i wanted, so i just decided to get it now so that i could move on to other things. no idea what im going to do with these refunded points. buy another one and sell it i guess?

[shauns_fiancee]

yes this happened to me too, on the donation page it says i have over 6000 points but when i go to the prize shop it says 0!!!!  aashshdhd.  my 500 free points were gone before that and i haven't been refunded for the price decrease.  I agree, i'm not donating any more until this dlkjasdkhf is fixed or whatever.

 

and now their server is down!  those poor people must be running around screaming

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[jellysundae]

I wonder if it's safe to spend any points yet ^o^;;

From what the boards are saying (a 100% accurate source of information, i know!) the prizes from the tier 1 and 3 caps were mixed up...

So far I've mostly just been donating and my point spending has only been on 2 tier 1 caps, so no big losses for me. But I would like to be able to get going with things without risk at some point! xD

poor TNT, this gonna go down as the biggest dumpster fire of an event ever?

 

[MysteryAF]

I remember the last Charity Corner when the website was frequently down and there was no checkboxes for the first half. At the time, I didn't know how it could get worse. Silly, naive past Mystery. I've never seen damage control on a live event before.

[oceanblue5333]

I think they are trying to reconcile some of the glitches. I had bought a Tier 1 capsule and received a "croissant", was pretty disappointed and decided to use my points for other items in the future.  Found this in my inbox this morning along with a new capsule in my inventory.  It contained some pretty cool stuff! 

Charity Corner Tier 1 Capsule Makeup

Message: [Report Message]

Hello oceanblue5333, You’re receiving this Neomail because you purchased 1 or more Tier 1 Mystery Capsules during this year's Charity Corner event prior to this Sept 18th neomail. Recently, our team uncovered an internal issue that was causing the rarity drop rates of Tier 1 and Tier 3 Mystery Capsules to be switched. The issue has since been fixed; Tier 1 capsules will now properly grant higher rarity items at a higher rate, and Tier 3’s will grant the lowest. We’d like to sincerely apologize to you for this oversight. Due to those previous balance issues, you have been re-granted the same amount of Tier 1 capsules that you previously purchased. You can now find those capsules, working with the correct drop rates, in your Inventory. Any existing Tier 1 capsules you had unopened will now have the corrected rates. The Neopets Team

[MysteryAF]

Okay, now I'm curious. I ragged on the Mystery Capsules a lot, but I wanna open a few.

Ahahaha I should've guessed I'd get worthless items. I got too cocky after I opened those goodie bags earlier. I opened 3 capsules and the most valuable thing is worth 3500 NP

It's whatever, 500 of those 1200 points were free anyway. Trying to be less frustrated about this whole thing, even if it's been a mess of an event.

I'll probably save the rest of the points for whatever becomes valuable. Probably the stamp, cause they're usually higher demand than a background or weapon.

[oceanblue5333]

You may want to hold off.... I just purchased another Tier 1 and got this  

[SnowGura]

Agreed, I never check that board. It should be in a more public place. I kept seeing everyone saying TNT put out a statement and couldn't figure out where it was. Seems like the twists and turns of CC this year never ends ... o__o

[berriganify]

2 hours ago, MysteryAF said:

'll probably save the rest of the points for whatever becomes valuable. Probably the stamp, cause they're usually higher demand than a background or weapon.

some of the wearables can be worth a surprising amount. the background is currently selling for about the same as the stamp, ~300k, and the glass and necklace about half that. the petpet is also worth about even with the point cost.

[MysteryAF]

9 minutes ago, berriganify said:

some of the wearables can be worth a surprising amount. the background is currently selling for about the same as the stamp, ~300k, and the glass and necklace about half that. the petpet is also worth about even with the point cost.

Yeah, but I also feel like the price will fluctuate more as the influx of items hit the stores. Based on demand alone, I think the stamp will end up being the best. There's gonna be more stamp collectors out there than people wanting a specific wearable. Then again, I had a wearable item worth 16 million NPs at one point (but that was from Altador Cup, and it was way more expensive than the other prize items).

Really, I think the smart move for me right now is to wait and let the market settle.