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Two events in a row, you're tricked to spend more.

MrKongMrKong
Mabinogi Rep: 390
Posts: 4
Member
edited July 23, 2020 in General Chat
Before anyone asks, I am not talking about Gachapon or Reforging rates or whatever. I am talking about the information provided by Nexon, which is insufficient to minimize confusion and misunderstanding.

Just some background: I am a CPA and internal auditor. I'm not saying this to brag or anything (I know it can come off as snobby), but because my job very seriously drives my opinion on this matter. One of the biggest roles of my job is to make sure that the business language used by businesses provide good and reasonable support for the customers and/or clients. In other words, I am the guy who checks whether or not things are stated clearly. (side note - I never care about my own grammar or whatever in social media or forums, too depressing to be in work-mindset during leisure. so yes I will have grammar mistakes here despite my job.)

The recent language for two consecutive events have been very confusing and can easily mislead you. Specifically:

1. During Fynni Sync, you will sacrifice 1 pet permanently. The text states that the pet will disappear, but it does not specify that the pet will disappear permanently. It is perfectly reasonable to assume the pet will disappear while Sync is active, but it is not always known that you cannot "un-Sync" a pet.

2. The Reforging Tools are made available as of 7/23/2020, but the Reforging event does not start until Friday 7/24/2020 at 11AM PDT.


So yeah, as stated above, these two situations have the potential for people to quite literally lose money they shouldn't have lost. The first thing you might ask is well, the text is there, it says it clearly, anyone who doesn't read it... that's their fault.

That mindset is NOT best practice, and it is NOT sensible. For my job, I would perform an extensive test. What percentage of people will misunderstand? What percent failure is there? In this case, the "failure" condition would be if someone loses a pet they did not want to lose to Fynni Sync, or if someone uses a Reforging tool assuming that the increased Reforging rates are applied.

Usually, a very low failure rate is expected, or it is considered a control failure. At least in my job, a customer-facing communication would require a 1% or less failure rate. Just looking through the various guild discords, community discords, forums, in-game chat, etc., I am seeing that people are confused. I have seen many people talk about how they lost a good pet or used reforges without knowing the event is inactive. While I'm not getting a clear representation of the overall failure rate and it's impossible for me to test it, seeing multiple occurrences in a short time frame is pretty much also indication of a high failure rate.

To me, I don't care that people are failing because they are not reading carefully. It's not about that. It's about how many people are messing up. Doesn't matter how you do it - if it works for 99% of people, then it works. If it works for 85% of people, then it does not work, and 15% (a quite large portion) would be upset.

SO TL;DR. The language that is used in these events makes it so that people have the potential to waste money. Saying that they should have read it or interpreted it a bit closer is the wrong approach, because more than an acceptable number of people have made the mistake. The goal is not to clarify for the majority, the goal is to clarify for everyone, at least to reasonability standards (which currently it is not). Everyone who is looking at the actual methodology of communication should be looking at actual failure rates instead. Yes you can blame them on being lazy or dumb for not reading, but it is entirely, quite literally both legally, ethically, and responsibly, the company's responsibility to fix it, not the person to become "more smart."

Thanks for reading, sorry for ranting.

EDIT: a bit more background - I did not lose a pet to Fynni Sync. I also did not suffer from the reforging tool situation. I'm just looking at this from my perspective.
SebastianHabimaruSherriWolfsingerVivgalanthusLiberatePlatinaKoki

Comments

  • AlshianAlshian
    Mabinogi Rep: 7,065
    Posts: 1,230
    Member
    Its a shame that people are already spent on buying the Corgi pets so throwing this reforge event at them is a misfire which is likely intended due to this event being a "good deal" seemingly getting more from this event.

    Even with the discount its still too expensive and a waste of money for RNG your highly more likely to lose in.

    I would encourage players to save your money so you don't hurt yourselves during this Covid-19 pandemic because you'll never know when something displeasing were to happen that you would have to make do with what money you have left to go through with it.
  • FrahaleahFrahaleah
    Mabinogi Rep: 1,680
    Posts: 245
    Member
    Alshian wrote: »
    Its a shame that people are already spent on buying the Corgi pets so throwing this reforge event at them is a misfire which is likely intended due to this event being a "good deal" seemingly getting more from this event.

    Even with the discount its still too expensive and a waste of money for RNG your highly more likely to lose in.

    I would encourage players to save your money so you don't hurt yourselves during this Covid-19 pandemic because you'll never know when something displeasing were to happen that you would have to make do with what money you have left to go through with it.

    The corgis are a prime example of waiting, better pets will come out, always will be

    Reforges on the otherhand, event or not, the chance of getting anything good reforge-wise is gonna be slim no matter what Nexon throws at us, least until they let us blooming pick the reforge (Which would never happen, money-loss)
  • HabimaruHabimaru
    Mabinogi Rep: 3,630
    Posts: 761
    Member
    I always like to read educational-posts. I actually find it quite common with corporations to not really be in high expertise when it comes to language & wording for customer/consumer-understanding as was evidenced when I worked in the tech-support field and how I actually ended up writing up my own trouble-shooting manuals in order to assist the customers instead of using the ones provided by the company (this might be a reflection of a lack of skilled workers in the work-force, and I am not claiming that for any one particular company or corporation, but just in general, literally world-wide... I have observed this phenomenon both domestically and abroad).

    With Nexon there is an additional complication of needing to translate content from the original Korean-language into the English-language, and I do speak a number of languages, and I can say as a fact and from experience that being able to speak fluently & write in perfect grammar in more than one language is actually a very rare skill-set, and I do not necessarily default into any one language's grammar-rules but might mix a few different language-grammars into one sentence just because it is my preference/signature.
    The travel-industry highly values its multi-lingual agents because of the number of International-tourists, although, due to an apparent over-hyped «A.I.D.S. scare» version 2.0 being promoted yet again by those «conspiracy theorists» (i.e.: reporters) populating the [main-stream] «news» stations, falsely scaring the public into thinking that they WILL DIE [exactly like they did with their «fear-pr0nz-mongering» over A.I.D.S.] has apparently caused the tourism-industry to essentially shut down completely). If people would just turn off their damn televisions though and READ the actual statistics we could all get back to normal life sooner.
  • WonderWeaselWonderWeasel
    Mabinogi Rep: 925
    Posts: 17
    Member
    I see what you're saying and where you're coming from but I fundamentally disagree. At some point, some amount of responsibility has to fall upon the people that are making these easily preventable mistakes. You can account for laziness and stupidity all you like, there will always be people stupider and lazier than what you accounted for. What exactly is Nexon supposed to do in this situation to improve upon what you see as inadequate? They could put these warnings up in giant, flashing lights and people would still miss them. These situations function as a microcosm of natural selection, in my opinion.
    Sherri
  • VivgalanthusVivgalanthus
    Mabinogi Rep: 410
    Posts: 2
    Member
    Glad to see there's someone else viewing it this way, I thought I was the only one. The very first time I used Fynn Sync I did read the note about how you'd lose your pet to Fynn Sync, but it didn't necessarily state you'd lose it permanently, so I was pretty bummed out when I 'lost' a regular pet (I did get extra space on my synced pet, so wasn't completely for nothing) which luckily wasn't a mount and such... They kinda expect people to just interpret they meant "this" when they said "that", while they could be clearer by saying you won't be able to see the pet ever again as it will be sacrificed.
  • CMKyriosCMKyrios
    Mabinogi Rep: 3,640
    Posts: 220
    Member
    I'll ask our Localization team if we can add permanently to the warning prompt when performing Fynn Sync.
    Vivgalanthus
  • MaiaMaia
    Mabinogi Rep: 7,195
    Posts: 903
    Member
    I 100% agree with the reforge event. The fact that 99.9% of events start after maintenance coupled with the fact that the sale starts right after maint seems very misleading. This is the 2nd (possibly more) time they've done this and people complained before. A lot of people have no self control or simply don't understand that the event hasn't started and Nexon certainly seems to be taking advantage of those facts.
  • FluoretteFluorette
    Mabinogi Rep: 4,840
    Posts: 815
    Member
    Believe it or not, the information in quite a number of announcements have been insufficient and/or unclear, and it looks like it's been that way for years now. :( I recall seeing other threads on these forums discussing exactly this and requesting more clarity and improvement in the wording of them.

    You can see other examples of unclear and insufficient information/wording in other areas, too. For example, the messages on the loading screens in game (perhaps partly due to lack of space):
    --> "Stop worrying about repairs, NPCs have 100% repair rate"
    --> "You can feed your Partner, which alleviates their hunger, by right-clicking them"
    --> "You'll level faster when you rebirth"

    In each statement, there's a piece of the puzzle missing in order for it to be true. You're only given part of the story and left to make sense of it on your own.
    Granted, these examples don't necessarily cause players to spend too much/lose money. However they can still be misinterpreted and cause confusion, which is still a problem that clarity/improvement would help to mitigate.
  • PlatinaKokiPlatinaKoki
    Mabinogi Rep: 7,760
    Posts: 950
    Member
    edited July 24, 2020
    MrKong wrote: »
    Before anyone asks, I am not talking about Gachapon or Reforging rates or whatever. I am talking about the information provided by Nexon, which is insufficient to minimize confusion and misunderstanding.

    Just some background: I am a CPA and internal auditor. I'm not saying this to brag or anything (I know it can come off as snobby), but because my job very seriously drives my opinion on this matter. One of the biggest roles of my job is to make sure that the business language used by businesses provide good and reasonable support for the customers and/or clients. In other words, I am the guy who checks whether or not things are stated clearly. (side note - I never care about my own grammar or whatever in social media or forums, too depressing to be in work-mindset during leisure. so yes I will have grammar mistakes here despite my job.)

    The recent language for two consecutive events have been very confusing and can easily mislead you. Specifically:

    1. During Fynni Sync, you will sacrifice 1 pet permanently. The text states that the pet will disappear, but it does not specify that the pet will disappear permanently. It is perfectly reasonable to assume the pet will disappear while Sync is active, but it is not always known that you cannot "un-Sync" a pet.

    2. The Reforging Tools are made available as of 7/23/2020, but the Reforging event does not start until Friday 7/24/2020 at 11AM PDT.


    So yeah, as stated above, these two situations have the potential for people to quite literally lose money they shouldn't have lost. The first thing you might ask is well, the text is there, it says it clearly, anyone who doesn't read it... that's their fault.

    That mindset is NOT best practice, and it is NOT sensible. For my job, I would perform an extensive test. What percentage of people will misunderstand? What percent failure is there? In this case, the "failure" condition would be if someone loses a pet they did not want to lose to Fynni Sync, or if someone uses a Reforging tool assuming that the increased Reforging rates are applied.

    Usually, a very low failure rate is expected, or it is considered a control failure. At least in my job, a customer-facing communication would require a 1% or less failure rate. Just looking through the various guild discords, community discords, forums, in-game chat, etc., I am seeing that people are confused. I have seen many people talk about how they lost a good pet or used reforges without knowing the event is inactive. While I'm not getting a clear representation of the overall failure rate and it's impossible for me to test it, seeing multiple occurrences in a short time frame is pretty much also indication of a high failure rate.

    To me, I don't care that people are failing because they are not reading carefully. It's not about that. It's about how many people are messing up. Doesn't matter how you do it - if it works for 99% of people, then it works. If it works for 85% of people, then it does not work, and 15% (a quite large portion) would be upset.

    SO TL;DR. The language that is used in these events makes it so that people have the potential to waste money. Saying that they should have read it or interpreted it a bit closer is the wrong approach, because more than an acceptable number of people have made the mistake. The goal is not to clarify for the majority, the goal is to clarify for everyone, at least to reasonability standards (which currently it is not). Everyone who is looking at the actual methodology of communication should be looking at actual failure rates instead. Yes you can blame them on being lazy or dumb for not reading, but it is entirely, quite literally both legally, ethically, and responsibly, the company's responsibility to fix it, not the person to become "more smart."

    Thanks for reading, sorry for ranting.

    EDIT: a bit more background - I did not lose a pet to Fynni Sync. I also did not suffer from the reforging tool situation. I'm just looking at this from my perspective.

    Might have to blame Korea for that.

    Nexon NA literally can't do a thing without KR's permission. which might also explain why they can't explain crap correctly: Korea doesn't want them to. Otherwise, we'd have a competent team dealing with this game.
    Habimaru wrote: »
    I always like to read educational-posts. I actually find it quite common with corporations to not really be in high expertise when it comes to language & wording for customer/consumer-understanding as was evidenced when I worked in the tech-support field and how I actually ended up writing up my own trouble-shooting manuals in order to assist the customers instead of using the ones provided by the company (this might be a reflection of a lack of skilled workers in the work-force, and I am not claiming that for any one particular company or corporation, but just in general, literally world-wide... I have observed this phenomenon both domestically and abroad).

    With Nexon there is an additional complication of needing to translate content from the original Korean-language into the English-language, and I do speak a number of languages, and I can say as a fact and from experience that being able to speak fluently & write in perfect grammar in more than one language is actually a very rare skill-set, and I do not necessarily default into any one language's grammar-rules but might mix a few different language-grammars into one sentence just because it is my preference/signature.
    The travel-industry highly values its multi-lingual agents because of the number of International-tourists, although, due to an apparent over-hyped «A.I.D.S. scare» version 2.0 being promoted yet again by those «conspiracy theorists» (i.e.: reporters) populating the [main-stream] «news» stations, falsely scaring the public into thinking that they WILL DIE [exactly like they did with their «fear-pr0nz-mongering» over A.I.D.S.] has apparently caused the tourism-industry to essentially shut down completely). If people would just turn off their damn televisions though and READ the actual statistics we could all get back to normal life sooner.

    So, in this case, the legal, ethical, e.t.c action is for Nexon NA to hire people who can understand Korean, along with making educated guesses when something isn't explained?
  • TenrainTenrain
    Mabinogi Rep: 1,110
    Posts: 15
    Member
    ... I agree it does seem misleading. I just purchased some reforges, a fair amount with 0 success ranking up/anything worthwhile. You just sort of assume when the sales start the event is at the same time, so that's pretty much money gone to waste since i was waiting for a rank up event...
  • HabimaruHabimaru
    Mabinogi Rep: 3,630
    Posts: 761
    Member
    edited July 24, 2020
    I wasn't suggesting nor recommending any particular action; only pointing out that language and work-place skills aren't always easily available.

    Note : ...because what I mention next not only potentially goes off on some tangents, due to some or possibly more than just some of its content also being potentially super-ultra-sensitive (for reasons that are not very well-known except by those who are part of the Supreme-Court or High-Court systems and above [yes, above, believe it or not]), I have decided to nest the rest within spoilers within spoilers for now.
    While MicroSoft does have fairly accurate multi-language platform-translations, they also literally have a whole entire world-wide influence, and, due to the essential «monopoly» over the O/S market* are also essentially able to afford unlimited expenditures for «professional» translators/interpreters (seriously, I am not kidding, people who are able to speak/read/write fluently in two or more languages with perfect grammar, especially if they are able to get into the «technical-writings» field & translate «technical-writing» between languages accurately are actually paid just as much if not more than your average doctor... without the huge risk of liability from potential medical-malpractice lawsuits from people like me who know how to expose the fraud/scam of the medical-system in legal-writing if they so much as even attempt to make or force me to take some sort of drug, insurance-requirements, not to mention the incredibly huge student-loan debts they incur from a combination-drug-pushing so-called «education» system that teaches them absolutely nilch about healthy nutritional-habits and God-forbid they even think about there being a «cure» for anything that may cause death lest they lose their medical-license).
    ↑Spoiler #1 : Rant about MicroSoft & how/why they are able to afford to have so many accurate technical-language-translations.↑
    ↓Spoiler #2 : Rant about Gill Bates (intentionally mis-spelled) and how his unethical financial-practices seem to «magically» increase his net-worth when he «donates to charity» through his own so-called «philanthropic» organisations (I don't go into much detail about it other than describing how I know about it from my studies of the court-systems & their administration over «[Cestui Que Vie] Trust» accounts; few people seem to yet know that every «case» that goes through the court-systems, world-wide, yes, world-wide, are connected to the «bonds» [all of which are connected to «Birth Certificates» which is literally an «international "franchise" system»] which are essentially like «stocks» that are literally traded & sold on Wall Street & other such stock-markets [such as Dunn & Bradstreet, Standard & Poor's, etc.], but it's also so very highly compartmentalised & hidden behind loads of Legalese such that even your CPA wouldn't be able to track down or uncover the fraud without first learning the «Lawyer language» double-speak/legalese/jargon/euphemisms/etc., and I'm sure they'd much rather do other things with their time ).↓
    Monopoly Over the O/S Market* : amongst other apparently unethical things that Gill Bates does in order to «magic-trick» himself into suddenly having even more «net-worth» according to system-rules by donating to his own philanthropic-organisations for «charity» purposes and some-how ends up even «richer» (i.e.: higher net-worth according to the balance-sheets) than before for each of the «donations» that he makes to these charities... although I won't get into the details, too much, I have seen through the court-systems and know how the «money laundering» operations work through the use of what are called «Trusts» that can be linked to corporations, organisations, and when U.S. politicians talk about [under-mining] «The Public Trust» they are NOT referring to «the faith & confidence of the general population for leaders to act in an ethical manner» but is literally about the «Financial [Cestui Que {Vie} TRUST] ACCOUNT, and there is also something called a «CUSIP» number that is always attached to any Trust or Corporation being sold/traded on any given Stock-Market [and basically to cut a long story short I'll just sum things up in two words...: «Illegal... Conversion...»]).
    So, in this case, the legal, ethical, e.t.c action is for Nexon NA to hire people who can understand Korean, along with making educated guesses when something isn't explained?
  • ChaosShadowChaosShadow
    Mabinogi Rep: 2,590
    Posts: 139
    Member
    edited July 25, 2020
    I agree with the statements made on the reforging event, but I highly disagree with you in regards to the issue with Fynn Syncing. Nothing is misleading about their warnings. If you read the words "The pet will disappear," common sense should tell you that you will lose the pet. Common sense is not the issue though. At least, I hope it isn't.

    I'm sure the entirety of Mabinogi's community understands what it means for something to disappear. In the hypothetical scenario where pets would temporarily disappear instead, that would be stated plainly in the multitude of warnings given. The real issue is that people are power hungry and impatient. They don't care about what the dialogue says, or the instructions, or anything else that might be important. They just want that brand new shiny power that came out, and they want to get it before anyone else- Or at least as soon as they possibly can.

    I don't care what kind of company it is, I personally don't think a business should ever make itself a total slave to its customers. With that said, customers in this case should be expected to employ at least a little bit of common sense and patience. Nexon made the warning very clear and stated it multiple times in multiple places. They're only having to put in the extra work to restore people's pets now because people are too impatient to spend a few minutes of their time reading a few paragraphs of text.

    I'm not against the word being added to the warnings and I applaud Kyrios for taking the time to address something despite it being unnecessary, OP, but quite frankly, I think you're making a big deal out of nothing with the first accusation.
  • PlatinaKokiPlatinaKoki
    Mabinogi Rep: 7,760
    Posts: 950
    Member
    CMKyrios wrote: »
    I'll ask our Localization team if we can add permanently to the warning prompt when performing Fynn Sync.

    Its posts like this that worry me: that the team has to ASK if they can relay certain information/clarify things.

    The request for clarification shouldn't require approval.