[ZS] TGIF... This week in Dev 07/09/2012

TGIF! I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend and week. Thanks again to Kendall for covering for me while I was on my way to PAX Prime in Seattle where I had an awesome gaming-filled good time. We've got lots of little things to talk about this week, plus a message from our wonderful support person Aardvark.


Updates

• New Limited Items
• New Limited Quantity Items

Player Bans

FB: 13
MS: 36

As always, we are committed to keeping our games fun and fair for everyone, and will continue to ensure that players are playing fairly and within our Terms of Use by swinging the banhammer where it needs to be swung.

Facebook Offsite Game Policy Change

Facebook recently announced a change to their policy regarding offsite versions of games on Facebook. You can read more about it here

Faction Banner Contest

We're going to be doing a community contest for the creation of new Faction Banners that will be available for Factions to choose from. We will be making an official post with all the requirements next week, but those of you who actually read our TGIF posts will be able to start coming up with ideas early! Take a look at the existing images for the kind of designs that work well. Also remember that designs featuring specific Faction names or initials won't be considered as the banners need to be usable by any Faction.

Community Stories

Have you met someone in game that you're now best friends with? Have you done something really important because of some advice another player gave you? Have any other awesome/inspiring/cool stories about an interaction you had with another player through the game? We occasionally here through Support about players meeting their significant others through the game, or about how they've made lasting friendships, or other awesome stuff, but we've never been able to share it because Support requests are private and we value your privacy. That being said, we do want to share some of the awesome stories we know are out there, so if you have any you'd like to share with the community, please email me at community@kanoapps.com with the title "Community Stories". Stories can by anonymous, but if you'd like to say who you are in game, please mention your game name and what game you play. I'll pick one each week to share in my TGIF post, and I look forward to being able to share these awesome stories with you all! So start sending!

Game Gurus

A few weeks ago, we announced an exciting new volunteer opportunity within the community: Game Gurus. Game Gurus are essentially experienced players who will be helping new players by providing knowledge and answering questions in dedicated Guru areas of the forums, as well as other areas. We're still accepting For more information and to apply to be a Guru, check out my post!

After a number of applications and searching to find you the best in Guru technology, I present to you our inaugural Zombie Slayer Game Guru, Eraser. Eraser has been around the forums for a while now (formerly Skywalker OG) and definitely knows his stuff. If you're a newer player looking for help, feel free to post in our Zombie Slayer Game Guru thread.

Support Report

As promised, the following is a message from our support person Aardvark. This will be a semi-regular inclusion in TGIF, depending on whether she has enough time to write anything, of course.

Take it away Melanie:

First off, I took a few vacation days on either end of this past long weekend, and want to give kudos to Dan for doing such a great job of managing the Support inbox while I was away. I was dreading coming back to an impossible pile of requests, but emails levels were at more than manageable when I returned.

We've had a lot of messages about accidental item purchases this week, so I just wanted to highlight the Hide Offers option we have. If you go to your home page and look to the top right of the offers window, you should see a link that will make the whole thing disappear until you decide to show it again. This goes a long way towards eliminating the risk of errant item purchases! Note: This option is only available to players who have more than 90 days of play.

And finally, a quick tip for when you contact Support! We on the receiving end (mostly me) understand that players sometimes get upset when things don't seem to be going their way, and don't take things too personally when people express their frustration. That being said, I am still human and tend not to give top priority to players who threaten me, accuse me of being "on crack" or offer to show me their genitals.

-Aardvark

I'd like to say quickly that I completely agree with Melanie (Aardvark) about remembering that we and your fellow players are, in fact, human beings like yourself. Games are awesome, which is why we play them, but I think it's really important to occasionally take a moment to remember that you're playing with real people, and that they should be treated as such. You may not like how someone acts in the game, you might not appreciate that they've attacked you 1200 times in the last hour, and you probably don't appreciate them listing you down to negative xp every time you log off. But remember, someone playing differently than you do doesn't make them an idiot, ****hole, ****, ****, racist, or a pedophile. It makes them your in-game enemy, which does not make them your real-life enemy, and doesn't make them a real-life bad guy.
So please, please, please, please, please remember this: Your enemies are people. You don't have to like them, but at least treat them like that loud cousin you don't necessarily like but endure because your aunt makes really good peanut-butter cookies: with relative respect and an occasional disapproving headshake.

This is officially the longest TGIF ever. Congratulations if you made it through, I applaud you. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to warm up for the Great Canadian Beer Fest tomorrow. Wonder Bread out.

Play Now!

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There has been lots of talk in the forums about given the factions the ability to choose there own Faction Banners to individualize there factions this would show up on the Factions Home Page and Leaderboard

We seemed to be getting somewhere with our comments and it was very highly rated

Is this Faction Banner Contest a way of a compromise ?

If so I'm not too impressed !

If not is this something we are going to get in the future ?

Thanks

 

Why are you not impressed by Kano giving us the chance to design new pictures for factions to use?

I think it's a pretty cool idea and look forward to seeing what people come up with.

 

First off.. I don't care ...

I think Mayhem want to create his own banner and not have to take one of the few "winners" kano will implement.

Anyway are we gonna get something NEW that impact the game or we gonna keep updating exiting gameplay ??

Great job banning some alts. Try put a 0 behind the number next week and we would get there soon

 

Because this is only going to appeal to a select few !

Yes people will change to the new pictures but it will be because they have no other options !

Designing a faction picture is more of a personal thing and depends on your taste and Faction Name

How many people leave the windows wallpaper up on their computer or phone ? How frustrated would you be if you had to stick with it and not be given the option to personalize it


Just to be clear KANO I WILL PAY £££ if you let me Change my Factions Banner !!!!

 

..and even a few €€€, too ))

 

Im working on a faction banner!

who else is working on an entry?

 

i could care less about a faction banner contest, i care even less for them wasting programming time on a feature i dont believe people will use (chat), and i really could care less about how early they need to start thier beer in the tgif posts.

what i do care about is if they are going to do any new content IN the game. I kinda do care if they could give us a faction contest, instead of a participation contest (which seems to be all they are concerned about- limit of world boss hits to 25 a faction per day? what a joke)

perhaps they feel there are tons of new players coming into the game....(no those are just more alts because people are bored! and they are finding their way around kanos vaunted alt detection software)

is there anyone working over there or is everyone interested in drinking beer? players are leaving the game, more than coming in......
if it was me that would be my first concern, not a faction banner contest....

just my opinion......i would love to hear yours

 

In regards to the "support report" HELL YEAH!!!
When you spend 6, 8, 10, 12 hours a day (everyday) playing the game its sometimes hard to distinguish the boundary between your real life and your game life. (your game life becomes your real life)
We all love the game and thats why we're here, thats why you're reading this post, but without a little respect how long can we expect it to last... really?
When you find yourself losing sleep because "The Arena" starts at 11:00pm Sunday night and you just HAVE to rank in the top ranks or because the current events in your faction has your brain racing so fast that you just can't get to sleep or maybe you wake up in the middle of the night and realize "Dang I was just dreaming in text" at that point the boundaries between game and life become so faded that you may wanna check yourself because odd's are that you are the one forgetting that their is an actual human behind the slayers you are tormenting.

Anyways... just wanted to say good job and nice wording on the "support report"

 

lol Guilty

 

Kano works 5 days a week and they have just as much right to a Friday afternoon, to do their own thing,( after listening to players biatch moan and complain constantly) whatever it may be play games, drink beer, etc That is my opinion

 

First of all...why not go ahead and say the bans are temporary? Makes it look like Kano is doing something when they are not. Hint...when 20 of 25 faction accts come from same IP u REALLY think their family is that big? OMG how pitiful. Then I see Kano has made XXXXXX (name withheld) a guru??? lmfao Come on..no offense to XXXXXX was basically run out of MS...he just likes to talk alot lmfao....how out of touch is Kano? First of all "new players" in MS are alts they don't need help....not sure about FB, but there even though the TOS has age limit, doesn't look like it's controlled very much. I'd say they have no clue what's going on at this point and don't really care. Ignorance is bliss....right???? last post here but before i leave one more thing to say....Kano used to have some cool games most of us on MS fed up. Wonder why? Guess you too busy with the stupid stuff like "Community Stories" to help in the game....yeah just what we all been waiting for. Those that play already know the drama and story lines lol. SMH (and instead of deleting my post which makes some very good statements why not just take out any part u not like? will be posted again.) Count how many actually come here to the forums....only takes one hand or foot. :$ Please put your resources where they are needed...improving the game.

 

I appreciate you guys taking the time to read my TGIF post and coming to the forums to post about it. I'll try to quickly address some of the issues brought up:

@Mayhem Personal faction banners are definitely something we've considered, although considering some factions abuse their ability to post a custom motto, we've decided it would be too time-consuming to arbitrate. There have been a number of requests for player-submitted faction banners, so we decided that a contest was a good way to handle it.

@TheThievingGypsies The weekly banned numbers are only permanent bans. I don't bother putting our temporary ban numbers. As for new content, we had a new location go out today, check it out, it's pretty sweet.

@I'm sorry to hear that our TGIF posts give you the impression we're not working. I can assure you that everyone here works incredibly hard, to the point where visitors occasionally feel uncomfortable when visiting because everyone's usually too focused on their work to notice (I admit, it was kind of unnerving the first time I came to the office.)
The reason I mention some of the fun things we do, like beerfest (which was awesome, by the way) is because I think it's important for players to remember that we're people too. We're not some nameless corporation, we're a bunch of extremely hard-working geeks who work our butts off to provide you with some awesome games. We also happen to rather like beer, don't be hatin'.

@sTINKer As I mentioned above, our ban numbers are permanent bans only. Also, I can appreciate disliking how someone plays the game, but please remember that they are, in fact, a human being, as well as a hard-working volunteer devoted to helping out in the community.
It's quite easy to be negative about a situation, but it's much harder to try to identify how something can be improved in a positive manner. We care about our games and our players, and if you feel something isn't right, help us do something about it.
It's also important to remember that I'm not a developer. I don't program. I am unable to fix stuff in the game. When I'm doing something like helping players in the forums or starting clever initiatives like "Community Stories" it isn't taking away from some aspect of game development. I am here solely to make playing our games an awesome time, and my community initiatives are my way of doing so. I am, however, open to suggestions, which you can either message to me or email me at community@kanoapps.com.

Well, this post kind of exploded. A few of bullet points for people who are afraid of paragraphs:
-Ban numbers are perma-bans, and are in fact accurate
-Don't hate on our community volunteers. Instead, be one.
-Don't hate on us. We work really hard for you guys.
-Don't hate on my community initiatives. They're awesome.
-Be positive, be awesome, help us help you (uh oh, here it comes...)

And in case this picture isn't enough Tom, click here for an awesome animated gif.

 

"touche" (lol not even sure I spelled that right) my fault on this one getting too caught up in my own game. Everyone here deserves credit. Have a great week and thanks for those that try. :$
But I don't understand the reason Kano will not post the names of the permanent bans...if they are gone there should be no issue...might make us more rececptive to believe. :$ Banned accounts and those that deleted the game stay in the game...it's very deceptive. Personally would like to know if someone in my squad is banned to remove the dead account...........if they are good enough to place on the world lists we can tell but not many of us check there often and when we do those are not the accounts being banned...heck take a vote who wants to know...bet ya everyone does.... :$ For accounts that delete game and ms they should not be around for others to kill...some have actually perished...it's a disgrace. To know someone has died in real life and watch them killed over and over in a game is a damn shame. Please think about this and find a solution to those that aren't in the game anymore. thank you MOVED THIS THREAD MYSELF...

 

Man, I just love this image some players seem to have of us. The whole Kano team frolicking through the office which is actually a giant, Scrooge McDuck-style money bin, beers in hand spilling every which way. Maybe someone occasionally wandering over to an single ancient workstation and pressing a few buttons for a laugh.

We should get one of the graphics guys to immortalize that image for the wall so I can more clearly imagine myself there when I need a break. Maybe we could make an April Fools Calendar and set it as the background.

 

Well I know you cant implement every idea that the majority on the forum like to have.
But putting out a new location every 2 month isn't really enough if you ask me. The outbreaks will take less than a week to complete. The 2 Bosses thats gonna follow is gonna take 10 days. All this without using any refill or UN at all. (the UN I will have to save for the property upgrades LMAO)

In a couple of weeks I can sit back and wait about 6-7 weeks for the usually new stuff.

Seriously you guys need to make it interesting for the high level players too. I really don't get why so many of them still buy the UN to make a few levels when there is nothing to aim for.
Guess many of them already put so much money in the game that they fell stupid to quit, and then still more and more do !

 

I left Ms behind personal resons. I wasnt "run out" in any way shape or form. You may have thought I was a giant PITA and happy to see me go, but that only says that Im indeed a good player.

Kano made me a guru, because there are 10,000 things to know about zombie slayer, and i know 10,001, and willing to share answers with anyone humble enough to ask for help.

 

hush nem lol...u know by playing how many times and accounts? (hug) we still love ya

 

Boy am I glad my social network is FB and thanks kano for being awesome people all the time

 

As if Kano could keep up with you. It's not their fault that a few people have out leveled the content Kano has so far provided. They're doing their best, but to be honest, I resent any time that Kano spends catering to the approximately 2% of us that have exhausted the content so far provided. Particularly since those few know in advance that that their going to run out of said content.

I have nothing against you guys personally, but I do have zero sympathy for your plight.