Windows Impossible daily task

[Phyllo]

Thanks. I'm in the same situation again and the last 5 visits are all I would need. So far, I have not found this bonus anywhere and the F.A.Q. only mentions it but doesn't say where to find it, either: https://fr-fr.facebook.com/notes/airport-city-free-to-fly/faq-bonuses/1346680025359214
How can I find it, how could I "earn" it (e.g. by completing a quest or a collection) or do I always have to buy it if I want to use it?

I've had the same problem again and again and I contacted support only to get very frustrating answers by a supporter who apparently never played the game since he simply doesn't understand the problem.

One example of his answers:

Anton Pavlov (Game Insight Support)

May 18, 17:04 MSK

Dear user,

Every player can complete this quest. No problem was found. I understand your reaction to the difficulties you faced when playing our game and I would like to thank you for drawing our attention to this matter.

I transferred your comment to our developers for consideration and they will certainly take it into account. By sharing your opinion and experience, you are helping us recognize what we do well, and what we need to focus on improving. We do appreciate that you are playing our game and contribute to making the game better and enjoyable.

Should you have any other suggestions or come across game questions you need my assistance with, please feel free to e-mail me back and open the request for a further discussion. Your interest in our game is highly appreciated!

Sincerely,
Anton
Game Insight Support Team

I then explained again for the xth time that 8 times 5 helping means 40 helping and that it is impossible to do 45 without having a chance to get the friend in need bonus.

His latest answer now is the same non-understanding:


Anton Pavlov (Game Insight Support)

May 19, 16:37 MSK

Dear user,
Upon revising your game profile I should say that we haven't found any traces of the described mishap.
Thank you for understanding!

Sincerely,
Anton
Game Insight Support Team


Sure, I leveled up to hearts level 6 as I wrote here and so I could not help 45 times but I was not on 6 on the 9th and 10th whe I contacted them and described the problem, nor on the following days when it happened again and again.

After this sad experience, I doubt I'll pay any real money for the game. I'll see how far I'll get without it and if I cannot progress any further, then so be it. A company who pays people do offer support without knowing how the game they support even works is not really determined to help their customers but only frustrates them.

 

[benfly123]

I had the same situation with 35, a day too early, I got to the next heart level the next day. I haven't got 40 yet.

Last night was really easy for me. Help 35, commercial buildings and guest planes.

I generally find the G! people unhelpful.

 

[Phyllo]

I had the same situation with 35, a day too early, I got to the next heart level the next day. I haven't got 40 yet.

Last night was really easy for me. Help 35, commercial buildings and guest planes.

I generally find the G! people unhelpful.

For me, it was several days in a row and I sent a screenshot every day and he still didn't understand. Sorry but I'm not going to pay real money if I'm being treated that way. That's probably the only thing that may make them re-think their policy.

 

[Jon Allen]

It's interesting hearing people's opinion on spending money on this game.
I played the game for more than a year before I relented and decided that it was worth spending a small amount of money to advance further and to pay the developers something after all the enjoyment I got. Having played the game for approx 3 years now I still only spent max 30GBP on the game.

I am amazed that people spend so much money on this game , but that is the joy of the diversity of the way people play the game.
And thanks to those that spend it continues to develop and improve.

Everyone has a different strategy of play and used the forum in different ways.

 

[Phyllo]

It's interesting hearing people's opinion on spending money on this game.
I played the game for more than a year before I relented and decided that it was worth spending a small amount of money to advance further and to pay the developers something after all the enjoyment I got. Having played the game for approx 3 years now I still only spent max 30GBP on the game.

I am amazed that people spend so much money on this game , but that is the joy of the diversity of the way people play the game.
And thanks to those that spend it continues to develop and improve.

Everyone has a different strategy of play and used the forum in different ways.

As I wrote here: https://www.airportcitygame.com/threads/hide-the-green-arrow-to-upgrade.16740/#post-239380, I see it as a challenge to try to get as far as possible without spending real money on a "free" game like this before I then invest real money to support the development.
However, I do not like to be treated like a fool by the paid support of such a game who basically tells me that I'm just not understanding the game and should not whine but just do things right while in reality, the supporter doesn't understand the game. If the management allows support to be of such poor quality, that drastically reduces my willingness to spend real money on it.
I even suggested how this problem might be fixed with a simple if statement in the code but apparently, they don't even see the problem and so there will probably also not be a fix for it.
I also offered help in correcting some translation errors in the German version and didn't hear back on that at all, so my experience with support is frustrating and I assume that it won't be any better should I run into a real problem at some later stage like losing my account, my progress, my neighbours or whatever. If I would have invested real money then, it would make me mad.
Had I experienced an understanding supporter who would have said something like "I see your problem but currently, we can't offer a fix for it", all would have been good but treating me this way won't earn them any money from me.
Maybe Free2Play can bring this up in one of the next meetings they have and they'll offer real support instead of this, then I might change my mind again but not if things stay the way they are.

 

[Agent_L]

1) Your problem is that you treat the task as mandatory. It's not, all tasks are optional, this one is probably the most optional of them all. It's designed as a challenge for people who had done everything there was to do and are now bored, not for newbs to chase the impossible task at cost of sacrificing everything else.
2) Support's problem is that they don't even try to understand, they just serve the few most common problems then know how to serve. Just like every support ever. Plus, they don't give much attention to requests from non-paying users, what it expectable.
3) The design issue is that XP from Planetariums totally messed up the leveling curve. The game was obviously designed with leveling taking months, maybe even years - yet one can level so fast that all other aspects simply can't keep up.

 

[Phyllo]

1) Your problem is that you treat the task as mandatory. It's not, all tasks are optional, this one is probably the most optional of them all. It's designed as a challenge for people who had done everything there was to do and are now bored, not for newbs to chase the impossible task at cost of sacrificing everything else.

No, I don't. But if I have completed everything else and just can't visit 5 more, it is frustrating. I know that it is not an important task but it is a nice addon when it is easily done and usually, I do everything requested in it anyway with the way I play.
Just some examples here:

2) Support's problem is that they don't even try to understand, they just serve the few most common problems then know how to serve. Just like every support ever. Plus, they don't give much attention to requests from non-paying users, what it expectable.

Exactly, they don't even try to understand but tell me I'm the fool since "every player can complete this."
I think the "just like every supporter ever" statement is very unfair towards supporters. In our company, every problem is solved. If a supporter cannot handle it himself, he passes it on to development and then one of the developers takes care of it, passes it back to the supporter and he gets back to the customer. I think that is how it should work everywhere and I know of many other companies where it is handles the same way.
If they do not pay attention to non-paying customers, they miss the chance of making them paying customers. If they do not want to address problems non-paying customers see, they could state that somewhere or make support a feature that costs real money but therefore, you get real support. The way it is, support is a joke and I see that from many, also paying customers.

3) The design issue is that XP from Planetariums totally messed up the leveling curve. The game was obviously designed with leveling taking months, maybe even years - yet one can level so fast that all other aspects simply can't keep up.

All it would take to address this is one simple if statement, a task that would take any developer in their team less than a minute but since they don't even see the problem, nothing will change.

 

[Agent_L]

Exactly, they don't even try to understand but tell me I'm the fool since "every player can complete this."

Well, you're German, they're Russians and you're communicating in English. Misunderstandings are bound to happen. I'm not taking on your English, but THEIR English is the problem.

I think the "just like every supporter ever" statement is very unfair towards supporters. In our company, every problem is solved. If a supporter cannot handle it himself, he passes it on to development and then one of the developers takes care of it, passes it back to the supporter and he gets back to the customer. I think that is how it should work everywhere and I know of many other companies where it is handles the same way.

Nah. There is entire class of problems that are simply not economical to solve. I don't know what type of company you work for, but for companies that do retail, a single voice in thousands of customers is rarely heard. Unless the issue is reported by many people, it means that it's marginal.

If they do not pay attention to non-paying customers, they miss the chance of making them paying customers. If they do not want to address problems non-paying customers see, they could state that somewhere or make support a feature that costs real money but therefore, you get real support. The way it is, support is a joke and I see that from many, also paying customers.

I can't agree with that logic, that people decide to pay because of support quality. There are people who make not giving a dime a challenge, and there are people like me who calculate that my time doing something is worth much more than spending $10 on greens to do it faster. We both know that support is to be called only on critical issues such as lost account.

All it would take to address this is one simple if statement, a task that would take any developer in their team less than a minute but since they don't even see the problem, nothing will change.

And you're deliberately unfair here. It takes a minute to fix if you know where. But if you look at the process then:

• Support guy must take the effort to understand your problem
  
• QA guy must replicate it, that is find conditions that cause it and create repeatable test case
• a dev must research how to fix it without breaking 10 other things
• business must make a decision if the bug is problematic enough to warrant fixing
  
• a dev again must do the actual fix (your less than a minute)
  
• QA must test the fix and deem it worthy release.

That's easily over 1000 EUR in manhours. And for what?

The bug you've encountered is temporary. It affects only people who gained regular xp much faster than hearts xp. Sooner or later, your hearts xp will catch up, and you'll be no longer affected by this bug.

I can easily imagine architecture that makes such fix much more complicated than "less than a minute". If the hearts xp is not available to the game during normal play, but only stored on the server and returned during visiting (it's not used in any other circumstances so it's possible), then even attempting to fix it would necessitate bridging the massive data gap, which would probably break 10 other things, knowing how fragile is the architecture of AC. So I believe "less than a minute" is not a justifiable simplification.


BTW, support is NOT reading your mails. You can provide all the info beforehand, and you'll be asked to provide it again later. They really just follow the flowchart. There is no room to communicate with support, most likely every support worker has like 60 seconds per 1 request.

 

[Phyllo]

The bug you've encountered is temporary. It affects only people who gained regular xp much faster than hearts xp. Sooner or later, your hearts xp will catch up, and you'll be no longer affected by this bug.

I wish this was true but as you know from my recurrent posts, it is not and today, it hit me again when I finally had thought I could complete the tasks for a while now:

The only modification in this picture is that I added my hearts level to see that I will have to deal with this problem for the next 31 days until I get to hearts level 7 which I then may enjoy for a couple of days before I end up with the same issue again. So this is not something that will simply go away sooner or later, I will keep bumping into it again and again.

As for your price calculation, with a good organization, most of what you describe can be omitted. Anyone who plays the game for a couple of days understands the problem and can immediately tell the developers what to do about it and then comes the under a minute and as people say here, G! doesn't seem to have any testing before they release an update, so we can ignore any cost for that as well.

 

[crescent moon (RIP)]

I wish this was true but as you know from my recurrent posts, it is not and today, it hit me again when I finally had thought I could complete the tasks for a while now:
View attachment 7342

The only modification in this picture is that I added my hearts level to see that I will have to deal with this problem for the next 31 days until I get to hearts level 7 which I then may enjoy for a couple of days before I end up with the same issue again. So this is not something that will simply go away sooner or later, I will keep bumping into it again and again.

As for your price calculation, with a good organization, most of what you describe can be omitted. Anyone who plays the game for a couple of days understands the problem and can immediately tell the developers what to do about it and then comes the under a minute and as people say here, G! doesn't seem to have any testing before they release an update, so we can ignore any cost for that as well.

The good thing is, it seems to stop at helping 50 neighbors, even when you are maxed out at 9 hearts. (unless, of course, they change it with the next update - )

 

[Phyllo]

The good thing is, it seems to stop at helping 50 neighbors, even when you are maxed out at 9 hearts. (unless, of course, they change it with the next update - )

That's good to know. So another 31 frustrating days (if it is included daily in the task) and then I should finally be beyond it...
Still not how it should be in my view.

 

[david smith]

I don't do daily tasks all the time, because most of them are speed up planes witch cost fuel not worth it.

 

[FlyingFalcon]

I don't do daily tasks all the time, because most of them are speed up planes witch cost fuel not worth it.

I just started flying maps but next time I fly a map I'm going to do it when I get the speed up with fuel in the daily mission since that is what I will be doing anyway. Otherwise I just ignore it because I don't feel like it's worth burning up that much fuel just to collect two random collectible items.

 

[Kesh]

The root of your problem is very simple. You bought yourself fast progress. In normal situation, normal player at specific level need x days. You did it in half of that time. This task is based on estimation that player will get to this level in more days then you which will lead to premise that you gather enough hearts to advance to higher heart level. Now you are in disbalance in heart\game level and you cannot pass the task. In terms of completing daily task you used wrong strategy.

 

[Phyllo]

I don't do daily tasks all the time, because most of them are speed up planes witch cost fuel not worth it.

It depends on the type of task. This one just says "send out 40 flights and finish 40 flights" - plus the impossible 50 helpings. Sending and receiving 40 flights is what I do daily anyway, so it would have been a welcome gift to get a tiny extra for it.

 

[Agent_L]

I wish this was true but as you know from my recurrent posts, it is not and today, it hit me again when I finally had thought I could complete the tasks for a while now:

Yeah, because you're still leveling too fast : )

The only modification in this picture is that I added my hearts level to see that I will have to deal with this problem for the next 31 days until I get to hearts level 7 which I then may enjoy for a couple of days before I end up with the same issue again. So this is not something that will simply go away sooner or later, I will keep bumping into it again and again.

As for your price calculation, with a good organization, most of what you describe can be omitted.

What I've described is "good organization". Letting devs fix bugs at random without proper regression testing makes the costs soar into hundreds of thousands.

Anyone who plays the game for a couple of days understands the problem and can immediately tell the developers what to do about it and then comes the under a minute and as people say here, G! doesn't seem to have any testing before they release an update, so we can ignore any cost for that as well.

They have some testing. What they don't have is reading our bugreports with intention to understand them : D

/edit: let me reiterate: this game cannot handle planetariums and space launches at the scale we're doing them here. Your problem is merely a consequence of this. The solution is technically quite simple - remove drop from friend's Planetariums. Then your game level won't outgrow your hearts level.
This is fixing the underlying issue. But, nobody want it.

 

[Phyllo]

Yeah, because you're still leveling too fast : )



What I've described is "good organization". Letting devs fix bugs at random without proper regression testing makes the costs soar into hundreds of thousands.
They have some testing. What they don't have is reading our bugreports with intention to understand them : D

/edit: let me reiterate: this game cannot handle planetariums and space launches at the scale we're doing them here. Your problem is merely a consequence of this. The solution is technically quite simple - remove drop from friend's Planetariums. Then your game level won't outgrow your hearts level.
This is fixing the underlying issue. But, nobody want it.

I've leveled up way too fast even before I knew what a planetarium is. (See my first post in this thread, I had not clicked on a single planetarium back then). Besides, if the developers introduce planetariums, they should keep in mind what they do when they do that and adjust the other parts of the game accordingly. THIS would be good organization.
I've also just built my blue pad today and my mc will be on level 3 in 3 days so that I can start red launches then, so I participated in the first launch today and did not gain any experience from that so far.

What I meant with good organization regarding removing the issue would be working the way I know it from our company.
Any - and I mean ANY - of our supporters would identify an obvious error like this immediately AND s/he also would know which developer to contact regarding this. In German, we call this "kurzer Dienstweg". The developer would know it only takes a minute to fix it, so there is no need to even ask a supervisor since that would cost more than doing the actual fix. Then the developer would run a couple of tests to make sure he didn't break anything with his change and release it to QM for further testing. They'd check if there were any new issues with the fix and with such a tiny change (we're talking about a single if statement added at a well known place) not find anything, so the whole procedure from getting the ticket to being tested by QM would be done in under half an hour which certainly would not cost 1000 EUR as you suggested further above. It would keep the customers happy instead of frustrating them by offering support that does not deserve the name support.

In my experience, involving management in such small procedures only leads to exaggerated cost since management will pass papers three times through various offices which results in more cost than the actual fix if it is done without involving them.

As I said further above, if they do not want to offer support to non-paying customers, that is fine with me but then they should simply not do it and not pretend they would and then come up with something like this. From what I see from paying members, support isn't really better for them and that is what annoys me so much about this.