We Paid for These Paragon Points, Mr. Positron

Which I would receive immediately and be able to enjoy from that point on for the duration. So those points would grant me more play time with the items I purchase. More play time = more value

I'm going to address those last two paragraphs that I bolded. I believe you have misunderstood how the points when the points will be awarded

Picking up from your later post, you paid in March. At that time, Paragon Points did not exist so you haven't been receiving any until Freedom launched. When the monthly billing date rolls around, you will get your points (unless you were in the group with a billing date that fell between the 1st and 11th, those will be awarded the 11th of this month and on progressively earlier dates until it lines up with the correct billing date by February).

You aren't having to wait until your renewal date March of 2012 to get those Points. You will get them awarded on that billing date each month. If you purchased an annual subscription today, you wouldn't get all of the Points front loaded. You would still get them on the billing date each month.

Their original plan was that they would front load either the Points or Reward Tokens (I can't remember which) for multi-month subscriptions, but technical issues are preventing that from happening so they have changed the plans based on those technical issues. You'll still get the points each month on the billing date and the Reward Tokens each month. You won't have to wait until your subscription renewal date.

There is a difference between what the terms Billing Date and Renewal Date mean.

The Renewal Date is the date that your subscriptions renews and charges your Credit Card or whatever payment method you have set. It is usually expressed and calculated using a Month/Day/Year format with each one being significant to the calculation. This could occur 12 times a year for monthly subscriptions, 4 times a year for 3-month subscriptions, 2 times a year for 6-month subscriptions or 1 time a year for 12-month subscriptions (including the 12-month + 2 bonus plans they've offered at times).

The Billing Date is the same date each month and it is the monthly anniversary of the Renewal Date. It is usually expressed and calculated using a Day format since only the Day is significant to the calculation.

For example, if you paid a 12-month subscription on March 15, 2011 then your Renewal Date is March 15, 2012 and your Billing Date is the 15th of each month. The 15th of each month (Billing Date) is when your Points are awarded.

Continuing that example, if you paid a 12-month subscription now, on October 7, 2011 then your Renewal Date would be October 7, 2011 and your Billing Date is the 7th of each month. The 7th of each month (Billing Date) is when your Points are awarded. However, since it is before the 11th, it may be that it temporarily awards it on the 11th and then subsequently on earlier dates until February when it would be back to the 7th. But we don't know if that was only for existing subscriptions or how new ones would be handled if they are before the 11th of the month.

Hopefully that will clear things up for you and some others.

That actually is a good point but do you mean that as an annual subscriber should get all my 14 months' points in 2 weeks when the next payment goes?

So let me see if I understand this post and the subsequent ones: the game, its developers and marketing department, in a deliberate and intentional move to decieve their customers, are telling their customers that they made this deliberate and intentional move, that they intend to rectify it and that your billing date and delivery of your points will be restored and this will unbalance and keep unbalancing people and their purchase choices.

This is your point, is it not? Because the logic (such as it is) doesn't hold together upon examination. If it's a misleading tactic, then why inform people that it's happening and offer to fix it? Why not maintain the status quo and say that it's an unavoidable problem and say it can't be changed whatsoever? What does a promise of rectification gain the company if the intent is to be devious?

Where is the bait and switch that you mention? The frontloading of points into accounts wasn't the promised amount? The amount of said posts was less than indicated? Was there ever a mention of giving someone's a year's worth of points if you paid for a year's subscription? Was there an intent to ever switch from the rewards per month on a given date stated explicitly by the developers?

To say your argument is a straw man's is an insult to straw man arguments.



S.

I'm sorry, but you're talking about product placement, advertising, incentive and reward. All of these things are acceptable, legitimate, legal and accepted practices by any advertising firm, brand name product or service that wishes customers to invest financially in them.

This is not shady, it is certainly not misleading. I would directly challenge you to show me and anyone else reading this to unequivically show us examples of direct obfuscation of fact. The choice to buy, as always, is up to the customer. It sounds to me you are raging against the machine that is the staple of the western world's advertising system. Movies have product placement, as do television, radio, internet and podcasts. And online games.

If I wish to, I can partake in all or none of the things you mention, be they microtransactions, in-game currencies or whatever. Technical glitches however you cannot prove or disprove have been intentional, and yet in the face of a statement of intent by the service provider (in this case Paragon Studios) you protest that this is somehow fraudulent. The challenge therefore would still stand.



S.

Generally, when one buys something, one usually gets what you've paid for at the time you pay for it, no?

Of course, if it's laid out clearly at the time you buy it, on the page where you pay, that it's spread out over a time period, then that's fair enough. If it DOESN'T, then UK law at least requires that you should receive all you paid for at the time you paid for it.

I've seen Zwill's original post. Have you? He mentions it taking months to align your points date to your bill date, but not months to start receiving points on the same date every month. You're making a big fuss out of not getting your points on you bill date when that does not matter in the slightest. It doesn't matter if you get your points on the 1st, the 15th or the 25th as long as you get them on THAT day every month, which you will starting the 11th of this October.

It affects me. My bill date was the 1st of October. I got squat. I'll get it on the 11th, and then I'll get more every 30 days or thereabout. I fail to see the problem. So long as my points aren't delayed in November or December, and they won't, then who gives a crap if I get them on the first or the 11th, so long as they pick a date and stick to it? They could have told us we'd all get our points on the 20th of every month and be done with it, but it's inconvenient FOR THEM for points dates to misalign to bill dates.


Please do the same. If there is a new item added to the store every week (and I doubt that's going to continue much longer), then you're still missing three weekly releases out of a four-week month, because you only get your points on ONE of those weeks. If people had gotten their money last week, they'd have blown them on the CoT pack and still not had enough for Street Justice.

So? Did you specifically discontinue your account for two weeks to make absolutely sure your bill date was on the 1st of each month? Having an early bill date is not an advantage. Having a late bill date is not a disadvantage. Having to wait 10 days is, but that's only going to happen once. You act like you'll have to wait 40 days between points stipends and have your date slip father and father back, and it won't.

Just for fun, I wish they'd moved everyone's bill date ahead to the 11th so everyone who had a bill date before then would now bill on that day. It would have solved the problem within a single month, and it they could easily have just given us the days our dates had to advance for free.

---

To consolidate - this is a one-time delay that only matters THIS month. You will get your next stipend within 30 days of the previous one from this month onwards. If you want to make an argument that having a later bill date is a disadvantage, you are wrong. If you want to make an argument that having your points delayed 10 days ONCE is a problem - it is, and they've already apologised for it.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

That is not true. It never was. You will receive 400 (or 550, I don't know) points once per month until April. You will receive them on:

The 11th of October
The 10th of November
The 9th of December
The 8th of January
The 7th of February
The 6th of March
And the 5th of April

Save for a shift of 10 days and a slow realignment of bill dates, that's what we were promised and this has not changed. Where are you getting this idea that your points will only be awarded only on your next YEARLY bill date?

Since the very beginning, this is what they've been telling us. You will get your Paragon Points on your bill date every month. If you're subscribed on multi-month plans, you will get them on the date that would have been your bill date had you subscribed per month. The only thing we would be getting in bulk was Reward Tokens, but it seems like that bombed post-Live, but Reward Points aren't the issue.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

If you'd do me the courtesy of reading my posts, you'd see that I've never complained about not receiving the points at all, but not receiving them on time, as originally Paragon promised. Until they arrive on the starting date of billing cycle, they're late.

As I said before, your considerations and my considerations are not the only ones in City of Heroes - and Paragon Studios has to treat all its customers fairly.

You're forgetting the weekly sales on items already in store that people whose points have been delayed may not be able to take advantage of, in addition to the new items, which the devs have suggested will be coming at a fairly regularly pace (what kind remains to be seen). The principle, to paraphrase another poster, is less fun per month.

Funnily enough, I did, as I mentioned at the time. I thought, in my naivety, that it would be simpler all around to have my billing occur on the 1st instead of toward the end of the month (I still can't remember which day it was). In retrospect, I have to laugh at my assumption about the reliability of the billing department.

To repeat, the delay in awarding points for the paid-in-advance VIP subscriptions billed on the first third of the month will continue for months. Anyone with their billing cycle in this period can expect not to receive their allocation in time for the first week's sales. Zwillinger only used this month as a specific example, i.e. October 11th (just in time to miss out). We await further updates, but until then, that's the status quo.

yes it is way more work than it is worth because for one thing it doesn't effect everyone. But only a small subset of people. For that it simply wouldn't be worth anyone's time and effort to engage in the shenanigans your envisioning as happening here. Really it is way to much for for far to little benefit.

The likely and realistic explanation is that there is a bug and they are working on it. Why is that so hard to imagine as the truth? I mean it's a computer program...... show me a bug free computer program and I'll start believing the conspiracy might be more likely than a bug.

If you could please cite your source for this information or let us know exactly how you come by it, it would be a great help for this discussion. Perhaps even a red name could confirm it in the forums.

And they acknowledged that there was a bug which caused a problem and that they would fix it.

Really that is pretty much the ideal response you can expect. But instead you spin fantasies about mendacious reasons for this to be something other than a bug. Which is just paranoid.

If you'll do me the courtesy of rereading my posts, you'll see that I've done no such thing. I have no idea why Paragon's billing department couldn't get this right and care only that they fix it promptly.

You have been told multiple times that they have a fix but it will take time to implement. They can't just wave their hands and made it work right. Since I work with databases every day I can imagine it might well be a nightmare to try and fix it in one pass but walking it back one day per month is likely very doable.

At a guess they will run a script against the database on the day before or the day of the change. The script will do something like this.

If billing date = today/tomorrow then set payout day to today/tomorrow and payout.

At a guess the system doesn't have a break in it so that if they started with trying to fix oh the 1st, then the 2nd then the 3rd. What likely would happen is that people whose billing date was the 2nd would get paid 2 times their point total, people paid on the 3rd 3 times their point total, people paid on the 4th 4 times their point total etc, etc, etc.,

So to avoid that they are walking it back one day at a time one month at a time. IE next month they will walk it back to the 10th. The month afterword to the 9th.... etc., etc., etc.,

I don't know the specifics but I would guess that the problem is related to the above. Fixing it in one pass isn't doable and the only way to insure they don't pay anyone multiple times and then have to take points away is to do a slow but steady fix. Maybe if someone in their database department has a revelation during the month they will find a fix that is faster but until then. ....

Wait, you actually ARE complaining about wanting your points SPECIFICALLY on the 1st and that them not being on the first is "late" even if they were last awarded on the 11th of the previous month? I honestly have nothing to say to this. I've been regarding that issue as obviously trivial thus far because it honestly looked that way to me, but if it means that much to you, then the only thing I can do here is give you my sincere condolences. Not much else to be done, I'm afraid.

I can't give you a specific quote, as much of this I've gathered from red name posts from Beta and since. If I had an afternoon to search I could probably find one, but I'm leaving for dinner in a bit. Specifically, that's how points were originally intended to be delivered - every month, irrespective of your billing plan.

The info on your subscription dialling back a day earlier every month is what I infer from Zwill's post that you quoted at least twice. He says that: "Over the next few months, your stipend date will line up with your bill date as long as you maintain the VIP status of your game account. " What this tells me is that rather than simply shift everyone's points date back ten days in November, they'll be shifting it in smaller increments so as not to drop too many points on people all at once, and possibly so their internal billing systems don't make too large of a leap.

When I have more time, I'll look for an explanation in the Going Rogue guides since those are easier to look through.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

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So do you retract your accusations that I "spin fantasies about mendacious reasons" or not? (What in fact I did say was: "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by computer error.")

As for how long it will take to fix the error or what they have to do, since I'm not the manager of Paragon Studios' billing department, that's not my concern. This is a customer service issue, and either it's resolved or it's not (it's not).

You are correct I mixed up your replies with All_Hell's. You never have attributed any of this to malice or mendacious reasons. Simply to what you perceive as poor customer service.

I am corrected on this.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I didn't ask for them early, and as I recall, the devs explained at the time that this was for the inauguration of CoH Freedom. If either of us had known that there'd be this kind of screw-up, I doubt it would have gone forward. As it stands, the mistake is on their side, not ours.

That's a supposition, not a confirmation from Paragon. This is a contentious enough topic without making assumptions.

Actually, I did see that before I made my OP but refrained from quoting that for two reasons: (1) It's Von Krieger's paraphrase* (2) It's not directly supported by Zwillinger's post, in which he does not get into either specific increments or deadlines. This discussion has to be an open record or else it will veer off into rumor and conjecture. Either it comes from the horse's mouth, so to speak, or it's chaff.


* Zwillinger has already had to clear up confusion in another case when something said in UStream was paraphrased.

We don't know, and as long as we don't know, I will "suppose" that the truth is the closest to what has been stated as the truth previously, which is that we'll be getting our points on our bill date every month irrespective of subscription plan.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

The points and tokens are new additions and I hadn't considered the implication of my pre-paying each year until this. I'm probably better off getting them budgeted out to me each month but you do make a good case.

And the issue here is whether we get them on time or not. We're not, and it will take months to fix. I suppose we'll get more information when we get it.

Actually, the issues is what you define "on time." Do you define it as "days since previous points grant" or do you define it "exactly on the bill date." As we've established, I'm very much sympathetic of the former and very much dismissive of the latter, largely because their promise was regularity, not a specific exact dating.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.