devtrackers.gg
We saw understandable confusion and backlash from players following the unplanned downtime and removal of an in-game mail that contained a message and Pheons late Sunday night. We want to provide insight into how this occurred, and share how we plan to make it right as we move forward.
The in-game mail sent Sunday night was intended to be a purely informational message to alert players of the upcoming changes to the Skill Tree Effect system. While scrolling text with this message was already in-game, we’ve received community feedback that those messages have been missed in the past. To avoid players logging in and wondering what happened to their Tripod levels, we wanted to ensure we were surfacing the critical information through every possible avenue. The in-game mail delivery system requires items to be attached, unintentionally leading to 10 Pheons being sent to each character. Shortly after the mail was distributed, our team discovered an exploit that allowed some users to claim additional Pheons. We initiated downtime and worked to find a solution to the exploit.
While assessing the situation Monday morning, our priority was to bring servers back online without causing massive economic damage or further upsetting players by removing the valuable Pheons. To accomplish this, we unlocked servers and chose to not retrieve the Pheons that had already been distributed. Now that we have had some additional time to further dig into the impact of the event through data and player feedback, we will be making some changes to how we address this situation.
We want to ensure fairness. We know this situation was confusing, and it was unclear to players how many Pheons they should claim and how it was exploited by others. Although we initially stated we would not take back any of the Pheons that were distributed, we feel that fairness means everyone receiving an equal amount of Pheons.
To accomplish this, we will be removing the Pheons that players initially received from the mail and instead granting 30 total Pheons to all players. Please note that with this adjustment, players who previously collected and spent more than 30 Pheons from this incident will keep their purchased items but may see a negative Pheon balance.
Most players will either gain additional Pheons or see no change to their total balance, as 94.2% of players claimed 30 Pheons or less. The remaining 5.8% of players averaged claiming approximately 70 Pheons per person, and will see an adjustment to their balance to maintain economic fairness among players. This adjustment already took place during the downtime for the November Update. Additionally, we want to reassure players that we know how valuable Pheons are in-game, and we will continue to distribute them as rewards wherever possible.
We are also providing a compensation pack to all players as an apology and to offset the effects of the unexpected downtime. This compensation pack will be available in your Product Inventory when you log in before December 31st, and will include these items along with the 30 Pheons:
- 3 Days of Crystalline Aura.
- Hope Amulets (Character Bound) x2 - New items that can be used in the updated Skill Tree Effects system to increase a designated skill level to level 4. As this item is character bound, please be mindful of which character collects the compensation package.
- New Animal Skin Gift Package (Roster Bound) - This package will include a variety of new and old Animal themed skins to select from.
We apologize for the confusion and inconvenience that this situation may have caused, and hope the normalization and distribution of these Pheons can help make things a little more right. We’re looking forward to celebrating the rest of the month with players and sharing our “Feast with Friends” Update, which is loaded with new quality of life improvements, system updates, and of course, the Reaper Class.
Thank you for your patience as we worked through this situation, and we’ll see you back in Arkesia to Feast with Friends!