This is NOT a post about bots. This is NOT a post about moderator decisions. Please, before you press the hide button, please at least try to understand that. This is, ultimately, a post about customer service.
I just have one question for the moderation team. If the discussion is about something the company is doing… where its paying customers want to register their concern… where do you want that to happen?
Every store has a complaints department. If you run a food store or a toy store, and the food has gone bad or the toys are broke, even if you didn’t grow the food yourself or make the toys, as the seller you still have to listen to the complaints.
Because people are not mad at the one person who’s made an entire squadron of naval bots to make squadron RP for themselves. Or the guy at the top of your leaderboard who’s playing 200 basebombing games a day 24/7. If someone is angry at one player like that, then yes, you could say we should build a case about that one player through a particularly egregious server replay and bring them to your attention. No argument. But what we’re trying to do here is state how unhappy we are at the way Gaijin is going with this game in that regard, and how concerned we are that the inaction will undercut the investment we as players, in time, in money, have put into their product. Where do we register that complaint?
Where do we tell Gaijin our concern that of the several hundred people they account-banned this year, none of them seem to be the botters? Where do we inform the company the obvious inaction bothers us if not here? Where do we point out that, when you change the scoring system like you did in 2021 to give a fixed score for death, that opens up the game for botting (as it did)? Where do we register our concern that, because last month’s economics changes made naval less lucrative relative to the other modes, now botting has spread to them as well?
When all you say is, “use the server replays,” or “send a moderator a DM” and then close the thread every single time, all you’re basically saying is “there’s nowhere in this store to complain, write a letter to someone who cares.” Nowhere for your paying customers to try to influence a policy of inaction that is evident to everyone now.
We understand Gaijin is doing nothing visible about this problem, either because they can’t or they won’t. But as customers we still deserve a place to ask why. And by shutting down every possible way those customers have of trying to reach the company, all the aggressive forum moderation policies on this are doing currently is increasing anger and discouraging people playing and buying more, because it looks like the company is surrendering. Surely you have to see this. Your actions of denying this space to discussion is taking the righteous anger every player in any game has about cheaters and converting it into anger against Gaijin, because it’s Gaijin reps on this forum now that are protecting them now by denying they exist. THAT’s the action that we want to object to.
I don’t have any faith this thread will stay open for long, of course. The trouble is any time a moderator shuts down a thread leaving their own comment as the last word, there’s no way for us as forum members to say, “hey wait, that’s not what we were talking about, you’re not listening.” So many times I’ve wanted to write the above as a response to a locked thread through this last Bot Month, to engage, to have dialogue on this, the real issue. So I’m putting it here in general discussion, just trying the one time, only because I think someone at least had to try once to reach Gaijin, as customers, within the rules, on their own official forum, about the CUSTOMER SERVICE problem here, not their botting problem, before giving up and accepting this is now the game Gaijin wants us to have. Peace.