Ateam customer service is hillarious

Ok, so before I jokingly whine about Ateam, I want to say that this was an almost trifling small issue as far as I was concerned. I am not someone who spite’s Ateam a paycheck. They make a fun game that I like and I’m happy to kick in a little money every now and then.
That being said, this exchange I had with Ateam was revealingly ridiculous.

ME
I just purchased the delightful doom box and feel that I was clearly misquoted on the dark summons. I did not receive dark summons from my purchase I received free dark summons. Free dark summons do not have as high of a chance of summoning AA monsters, and from what I can tell have no chance of summoning an AAA monster since they were only loaded on to dark summons and the dark summon 11 pack.

Basically, what I'm reading from you guys is I am not going to get an AAA if i don't help pay you guys' salaries. I think that is fair enough, but I did pay you guys some money so this was not a "free" dark summon.


Ateam
Hello,

Thank you for contacting us.

Regarding your inquiry, we have checked the system and it is working properly. With regard to the appearance of a summoned monster, it is a matter of fixed probability. The monster obtained from summoning varies. Please be informed that we do not change the probability in every occasion.

Kind regards,
Ateam Support

ME
So what I understand from your response is that there is no difference in the percentage chance of getting an AA or an AAA monster between a paid dark summon and a "free" dark summon, correct?

When the AAA's were released it was stated that they were loaded on to dark summon and the dark summon 11 pack, with no mention of free dark summons or epic dark summons.

A large part of the reason I purchased the delightful doom box was for the AAA chance, so I just want to be clear on that point since it is the basis for my complaint.


Ateam
Hello,

Thank you for contacting us.
Regarding your inquiry about the Dark Summon X11 Pack, it mentions that players are guaranteed one Rank A Monster. There is no guarantee for an Event Monster or Rank AA Monster, however there is a chance to acquire one of those. Please understand that they are based on a fixed probability, and it does not mean that you can obtain it by performing a lot of summons. Also, we do not change the probability in every occasion.

We will let the development team know of your email and request that they make adjustments to the explanation or positioning of sentences in the game.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Kind regards,
Ateam Support

ME
I'm sorry, I feel like my question is not being understood.

Ateam has stated in the past that a Dark Summon has a higher chance of summoning a rank AA monster than a Free Dark Summon. Further when rank AAA monsters were first announced, it was stated that they had been added to Dark Summon and the Dark Summon 11 Pack, but it was not stated that they were added to Free Dark Summon.

My understanding is that the Free Dark Summons I was sold therefore does not have the same chance of summoning a rank AA or rank AAA monster than the Dark Summons that were advertised.

I am not saying that I expect to receive high rank monsters from Dark Summons, I am saying that based on what Ateam has said I do not think I have the same chance of receiving higher rank monsters with a Free Dark Summon, or any chance of a rank AAA monster.

As resolution I am expecting either that it is stated that I am incorrect in my understanding that there is not an equal chance of summoning rank AA or rank AAA monsters in a Free Dark Summon as there is in a Dark Summon or that some form of appropriate compensation be made to players who purchased the Delightful Doom Box.

The specific questions I would need to know the answers to in order to feel this issue is resolved are:

Is the percentage chance of summoning a rank AA monster the same for a Free Dark Summon as it is for a Dark Summon?

AND

Is it possible to summon a rank AAA monster with a Free Dark Summon?

If the answer to both of these questions is yes then please say so and I will feel the issue is resolved. If the answer to either one or both of these questions is no, then I will feel that you falsely advertised as to the contents of the Delightful Doom Box and would feel that it would be appropriate for players who purchased it to be compensated with the 3 paid Dark Summons that were originally advertised.


Ateam
Hello,

Regarding your inquiry, there is a possibility that you can acquire a Rank AAA in any of what has been mentioned. Though every summoning method is on a fixed probability, but the chances of acquiring differs for each method. (e.g. Dark Summon X11 pack has a higher chance of getting Rank A and up monsters compared to free Dark Summon)

Kind regards,
Ateam Support

ME
Ok, so what I'm getting from this is Free Dark Summons do have a possibility of summoning an AAA, but the chance of summoning an AA (and presumably an AAA as well) is less for a Free Dark Summon than for a Dark Summon.

This being the case do you understand my issue that I felt misled by the advertised 3 Dark Summons contained in the Delightful Doom Box. I might not have purchased the box had they been advertised correctly since higher chances of summoning an AAA, AA, or possibly a progression monster were very influential in my decision.

Are you willing to take any action to address this discrepancy?


Ateam
Hello,

The development team is open to all ideas and suggestions from players. Feel free to send us your opinions on what should be added or changed. Even if you do not hear back from us directly, we are still listening to what you submit.

Kinds regards,
Ateam Support


If you actually read all of that it is probably because you have had a similarly frustrating experience with the friendly maildealer-62@maildealer.gaiax.com. I personally found the back and forth entertaining, but it kind of kills me the extent to which Ateam went to dodge the question.

It was of interest that Ateam did seem to clearly confirm that AAA’s can be summoned from free dark summons, and presumably from the epic dark summons spewed out by the death summoner that came out today.

lol I don't think they're dodging the question, this reeks of pre generated auto response forms


You should have gone on the attack about the 'free dark summons' part being sold, not the whole mess about the rates


quite simply, they said that you would get ds if you paid, and you paid and got free ds. That is a binary transgression on their part; false advertising. they said they were selling one thing, and upon receipt of payment; you got something else.


Really, you can probably try file inquiries about the summon rates, skill retention rates, etc... until the cows come home; they probably have pages upon pages of standardized responses for all of these questions (which have no doubt been asked many-a-time before).

however packaging and selling free ds as real ds is pretty dirty. even for A-team

(there's a fine line between greed and dishonesty, and they appear to have crossed it)

lol, all of those emails are prepared by a team of moron managers and given to their customer support supervisors with the instructions: tell all reps to just copy paste in regards to any issues, where a given keyword is seen. their inbound complaints system probably highlights the keywords for the reps and they just copy paste the answer. kind of pathetic how far GTeam is willing to go to cut expenses just to fatten up the board members' pockets. i wonder if obama can think up a way to tax them, they deserve it if they're gonna be so stingy as to have a totally non-existent customer service.

Armitaage wrote:lol, all of those emails are prepared by a team of moron managers and given to their customer support supervisors with the instructions: tell all reps to just copy paste in regards to any issues, where a given keyword is seen. their inbound complaints system probably highlights the keywords for the reps and they just copy paste the answer. kind of pathetic how far GTeam is willing to go to cut expenses just to fatten up the board members' pockets. i wonder if obama can think up a way to tax them, they deserve it if they're gonna be so stingy as to have a totally non-existent customer service.

lol reps, managers?

it's all their super intelligent japenese robots

there are no humans in the equation

I dont know about all of that. I doubt Ateam is more that 8-10 people. Its just some guys in Japan trying to keep up with a game that was more successful than they expected.

The only reason I was going on about The difference in summon rates is because if that is not the case that there is a difference (they could have changed it, or maybe it was all a misunderstanding in the first place) there would not be any transgression here.

I figure the whole thing was kind of a glitch. Dark Summons are always used the moment you purchase them. There is never a "you have 5 dark summons remaining" thing, you just get them all at once. I think they probably just threw in the dark summons as a bonus and made them "free" to avoid having to rewrite code and a bunch of crap to make it where dark summons can be held.

It wasn't exactly a ripoff either since they said it was 5000 sp worth of stuff for 3000 sp, and 5000 is already covered by 20 ep, 10 bp, and 10 decimators. The summons were just on top of that.

Nonetheless, Dark Summons were probably the deciding factor that pushed me over to decide to spend money on the deal. I did feel a little scammed even if they probably didn't entirely mean to. Very marginal difference though, but I would have been much happier if they were at least willing to own up to the discrepancy.

If anyone else wants to send Ateam a second on the issue the email I used was maildealer-62@maildealer.gaiax.com

Sounds like aspects of your question could have been lost in translation.

"Please be informed that we do not change the probability in every occasion..." what does that even mean? Probably what I would be saying if I used "google translator" or some other online translation widget.

"Regarding your inquiry, there is a possibility that you can acquire a Rank AAA in any of what has been mentioned..."
Uhhh... ok... Thanks?

I am extremely happy with my doom box. I don't care if they are regular or free dark summons. I paid for a package that included dark summons and, technically, it included dark summons. The "ad" doesn't specify that they are regular. It just say "Dark Summons". No rip off in my opinion. And you gotta love all those potions included and they're tradeable. Woo-Hoo!

I enjoy this game because it is hard to summon AA
If it is easy, then anyone can have AA, it would be bored

bacsiha wrote:I enjoy this game because it is hard to summon AA
If it is easy, then anyone can have AA, it would be bored

So true. I strongly agree.

Jewelguy wrote:I am extremely happy with my doom box. I don't care if they are regular or free dark summons. I paid for a package that included dark summons and, technically, it included dark summons. The "ad" doesn't specify that they are regular. It just say "Dark Summons". No rip off in my opinion. And you gotta love all those potions included and they're tradeable. Woo-Hoo!

You're very naive.
I never saw the term "Regular Dark Summon" displayed in the game. There are either "Dark Summons" or "Free Dark Summons." Saying that you will get a "Dark Summon" when you get a "Free Dark Summon," is clearly false advertising.

bacsiha wrote:I enjoy this game because it is hard to summon AA
If it is easy, then anyone can have AA, it would be bored

Hard? Hard implies that there is some skill involved and there is none. It is all about (a) luck and (b) how much money you spend. One guy can spend $30 and summon 10 AAs. Another can spend $300 and not even summon one.
What this has to do with the topic.. I don't know.

Jewelguy wrote:I am extremely happy with my doom box. I don't care if they are regular or free dark summons. I paid for a package that included dark summons and, technically, it included dark summons. The "ad" doesn't specify that they are regular. It just say "Dark Summons". No rip off in my opinion. And you gotta love all those potions included and they're tradeable. Woo-Hoo!

Just because you are content with the doombox doesnt mean A-team is being ridiculously greedy with false advertising here. There is a difference between free dark summon and dark summons here especially for the AAA's.

By your logic A-team can suddenly sell you my energy potions for real money and just say it said "energy potions" and and didn't specify.

It is a fact that they are greedy, but their customer service is a joke , not answering questions directly, this is my reply when i hv question about the auction house. They know there are similar cases and seem not to take actions to improve the AH


> ■ Date & Time When Issue Occurred (required)
> 12/12/2012,
> ■ Inquiry Details
> i put my AA urth, A ladon, 1 soul of wisdom , C monster & monster limit
> plus, on auction with 10k gold commission. When i check the AH, on my
> friend's device, i cannot find my auction, i checked through every pages in
> item, aa & c monster filter, cannot find it as well. Pls investigate for
> me, Thanks a lot
> ■ Game Items Involved (Item/Monster Name etc.)
> stated above

Hello,

With regard to your concern, we would like to apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you.

We would like to inform you that due to the condition of communication,
there are cases which the time lag occurs before the auction is
reflected to the system.

We ask for your kind consideration.

Should you have any other concerns, please contact us again.

Kind regards,
Ateam Support

pierrelkf wrote:It is a fact that they are greedy, but their customer service is a joke , not answering questions directly, this is my reply when i hv question about the auction house. They know there are similar cases and seem not to take actions to improve the AH


> ■ Date & Time When Issue Occurred (required)
> 12/12/2012,
> ■ Inquiry Details
> i put my AA urth, A ladon, 1 soul of wisdom , C monster & monster limit
> plus, on auction with 10k gold commission. When i check the AH, on my
> friend's device, i cannot find my auction, i checked through every pages in
> item, aa & c monster filter, cannot find it as well. Pls investigate for
> me, Thanks a lot
> ■ Game Items Involved (Item/Monster Name etc.)
> stated above

Hello,

With regard to your concern, we would like to apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you.

We would like to inform you that due to the condition of communication,
there are cases which the time lag occurs before the auction is
reflected to the system.

We ask for your kind consideration.

Should you have any other concerns, please contact us again.

Kind regards,
Ateam Support

Yeah, i've had the same problem in auction. Its really weird when you are looking for a specific AA and you keep seeing that same guy offering a tlon reg at 350 multiple times, but no one else's. Clearly a glitch. I understand many parts of the the game that are intentionally frustrating, like making the process of grinding B summons really tedious. That makes sense because everyone would have an overpowered max(20) team otherwise, and it looks more like they are paying attention to market forces there. I have no idea however why they insist on making the auction so screwed up. Why cant I search by multiple filters? If I could search by AA, and Brute at the same time I would check the auction every day...

the thing is my auction rot & never shown up on AH, & they do nothing about it. Their solution to problems is to let them rot, this made me remember the SUMMON GRAND PRIX on the last day where a C summon can win. I know a player question about this & they said to deal with it.........."I took ur $, if u hv any problems i 'apologize', but theres nothing I could do & i wont deal with them"

I just wanna point out, when small glitches comes together & their CS, they re more annoying than vagrant land crashes

BigBad wrote:

pierrelkf wrote:It is a fact that they are greedy, but their customer service is a joke , not answering questions directly, this is my reply when i hv question about the auction house. They know there are similar cases and seem not to take actions to improve the AH


> ■ Date & Time When Issue Occurred (required)
> 12/12/2012,
> ■ Inquiry Details
> i put my AA urth, A ladon, 1 soul of wisdom , C monster & monster limit
> plus, on auction with 10k gold commission. When i check the AH, on my
> friend's device, i cannot find my auction, i checked through every pages in
> item, aa & c monster filter, cannot find it as well. Pls investigate for
> me, Thanks a lot
> ■ Game Items Involved (Item/Monster Name etc.)
> stated above

Hello,

With regard to your concern, we would like to apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you.

We would like to inform you that due to the condition of communication,
there are cases which the time lag occurs before the auction is
reflected to the system.

We ask for your kind consideration.

Should you have any other concerns, please contact us again.

Kind regards,
Ateam Support

Yeah, i've had the same problem in auction. Its really weird when you are looking for a specific AA and you keep seeing that same guy offering a tlon reg at 350 multiple times, but no one else's. Clearly a glitch. I understand many parts of the the game that are intentionally frustrating, like making the process of grinding B summons really tedious. That makes sense because everyone would have an overpowered max(20) team otherwise, and it looks more like they are paying attention to market forces there. I have no idea however why they insist on making the auction so screwed up. Why cant I search by multiple filters? If I could search by AA, and Brute at the same time I would check the auction every day...