Crazy times
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Some ten days ago our beautiful tower defence game was launched and it saw success being featured by Apple in the “New and noteworthy” section and with big ads in the App Store! It’s an incredible event for any developer to be featured by Apple. Yay!
Launching a massively multiplayer game is pretty different from launching a regular game, and it’s never easy. There come problems which were impossible to encounter with just 50 testers, appear server load issues which did not happen during stress tests, and so on. During these 10 days we fixed a lot of things we didn’t see earlier. And still working on more.
Also, the game changed its name. It’s now called Spice Bandits. Yarrr.
Also, at the moment we are waiting for Apple to approve the Charadium update which fixes the issue with Facebook logins which appeared across different applications on February 1st. This update also has some very anticipated features in!
And… we are working on a few other games at the same time!
P.S. We are reading ALL comments in App Store and other places, and we are working to improve and expand both Spice Bandits and Charadium. Thank you for your feedback!
Finally managed to ace Line Camps mode, but had to use around 20 disco magics to win without getting damaged due to Aircrafts spawning too close!
Why did you decide to change the games name, what’s the reason behind this name change?
Charadium is really broken right now 85% people stil write out the words or write words to describe it. Charadium really needs an awesome update so people would start playing by the rules.
Warning system in charadium really doesn’t work at all you warn them, you need more than 1 warning as well as other people don’t care cause again 85% are the ones who are cheating.
Here is my idea time to assign live moderators who have the ability to kick and ban cheaters (ban lasts from 3-24 hrs). Of course the moderators should be carefully selected, people who don’t cheat, have played lots of games, have a good reputation.
Why do people play by the rules on iSketch (similar game to charadium, but for PC) ? Because there is a well respectable moderator that doesn’t cheat almost in every room kicking and banning cheaters!
Are there any docs for the game? The turrets all have F, S and W options for them but I can’t find any mention of these anywhere? Do they do anything and if so what?
Thanks
Another idea to add to Sara’s idea would be those who get many warnings in different games, (say like 7, overall) should be suspected of cheating a lot. Then, an official from charadium could go back and check by looking at their previous drawings..
If they are spelling words instead of drawing, you could remove points from them, ban them for a limited time, and officially warn them that they have been caught cheating..
In the next update of charadium, could you please consider the following:
– Adding a 3rd option along with “Play with everyone” & “Access Private Room”, which is: “Play with people nearby”. This means playing with people in same city, country, or region, depending on the availability of players..
– Make all leader boards public City, Country, and Worldwide. I would love to see who are the players that are better than me 😛
– A better system to report & ban cheaters. The idea above seems good.
Just for your information charadium, players with “the gavel” next to the username also cheat. We should be able to report them. They should not be immune! ~_~
Yaser, please send us the names of the offenders, we will investigate and demote those who abuse the power or do cheat themselves.
We probably have given the privileges to some who don’t deserve it (we have really lots of players in Charadium, we can’t check everyone manually), but after some initial cleanups this should get to normal.
Dear on5,
It would be really nice to know what you think about the ideas I suggested above about charadium.
Thank you 🙂
Fatima, the thing is there are way too many players in Charadium for us to be able to review even a relatively small portion of them manually. Also we believe the effect of cheating should be immediate, not delayed. That’s why we decided to go the way of chosen moderators (also automated, we wouldn’t be able to pick so many players manually).
Hi Spice bandit Team!
I really want to thank you for your great game. Unfortunately, I encounter a bug while playing coop with a friend. At one point, we loose synchronization between our games, without knowing. We realized it because on the other’s screen, the game is not the same : he sees a nuke where I’ve built a katyusha, or some earthlings have passed the towers on my screen whereas on his, they are dead. Result : one can loose while the other win, it’s a bit annoying!
Are you aware of the problem?
Ok On5, But what about these two ideas? I think they will make the game much more fun:
– Adding a 3rd option along with “Play with everyone” & “Access Private Room”, which is: “Play with people nearby”. This means playing with people in same city, country, or region, depending on the availability of players..
– Make all leader boards public City, Country, and Worldwide. I would love to see who are the players that are better than me 😛
Dear developers,
I see that I’m not the first with this question (even in this tread it was already asked by Zac) but I didn’t find an answer to it:
what do the buttons S, W, F mean at the cannons’ control?
Thanks in advance.
(and a big THANK for the game!)
Was the moderator election a one time thing or will you guys be choosing more mods?
Michael,
Since on5 customer service is slow I’ll respond for them.
S-Strong
W-Weak
F-First
Moderator Update (Long/Detailed) Review:
EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED by the moderator selection. Obviously you just admitted that it wasn’t even done by a real person rather by an automated system, which most likely picked the top players “assuming” they get to the top fairly which is a huge mistake cause most of the top players are cheaters themselves!! Also what is very insulting is the news post “most respected players” NOT.. top players picked by an automated system and not reviewed at all would be the truth! I mean come on charadium must be the first game ever to not review moderators at all… FRUSTRATING!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here I divided most of the current AWFUL moderators into groups:
*Moderators who abuse their “power”, they kick players above them to get wins and ranks without any valid reason to kick, rather their own advantage.
VERDICT: The worst kind of moderators! That’s what you get for using an automated system to do the work for you instead of carefully handpicking honest moderators that play by the rules. Shame the system shame on you.
*Moderators who cheat, they use letters, write out parts or even worse the full word, write descriptions about the word using letters.
VERDICT: Terrible way to select moderators by using an automated system to do your work for you and pick these awful cheaters who apparently manage to get to the top by cheating, and an awful way to set a terrible example to new players when the moderators cheat themselves.
*Moderators who don’t know how to properly moderate (the difference between moderators who abuse their power and moderators who don’t know how to moderate is simple… Moderators who abuse their power kick you for their personal gain, moderators who don’t know how to moderate kick you because they think you broke a rule when you actually haven’t) They kick you, because they think that you broke the rule when you actually didn’t.
Example: Letters are not allowed however numbers and symbols are.. my friend kicked several times by these idiots for drawing $ sign on a dollar or for drawing 50, which is using numbers/symbols not letters.
VERDICT: There should be official DETAILED rules of what is allowed and what is not allowed while drawing on charadium (like on iSketch for example) As well as there should be a tutorial for moderators so they would know how to moderate properly!!
*Moderators who don’t even know that they’re moderators, they don’t even know they are moderators.
VERDICT: If a person is selected to be a moderator they should receive a proper notification that they have been selected (news post is not a proper way to inform that a player has been selected to be a moderator, most people don’t even read news posts anyways!)
As well as there should be an option for the person to select if they actually want to take the responsibility of being a moderator rather then forcing them to be a moderator.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And here is the list of THE WORST moderators out of the bunch:(PLEASE REMOVE THEIR MODERATOR STATUS IMMEDIATELY! Would post links for proof too, but charadium website is broken too now, doesn’t even take you to profiles when you click their usernames, FIX THAT TOO PLEASE!)
Bushpilot – Cheater, Doesn’t know how to properly moderate! (kicked my friend for using numbers in a drawing, which is allowed cause again letters are not allowed, numbers/symbols are allowed!)
minion – Cheater!
makaelam – Cheater!
shannonevans2012 – Cheater!
bi6d4ddy – Cheater!
ScubaDragon – Cheater!
vn2010 – Cheater,Power Abuse!
More AWFUL automated system picked moderators to come….
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tip to on-5:
Stop the automated system immediately that picks up top players who also most likely cheat to get to the top, remove the moderator status from cheating/abusive/unaware how to properly moderate moderator status immediately (some are reported below)…
and most importantly IT’S FINE TO PICK MODERATORS FROM THE TOP PLAYERS LIST, BUT THEY NEED TO BE REVIEWED BY A REAL PERSON NOT AN AUTOMATED SYSTEM, cause again to get to the top you can easily cheat!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is a response from me, trusted and truthful and fair charadium player that would NEVER LIE, Sara (not my charadium username) master (level 10, also one of few WORTHY moderators that don’t abuse their power, know how to moderate and don’t cheat) with 150+ wins!
Here’s a few more AWFUL automated system picked moderators:
JayEmR – Cheater!
iParty – Cheater!
*Also note that most terrible moderators will be labeled under cheater, cause it’s the easiest to tell just by looking to their drawings that I see them drawing during live charadium games, also it’s the easiest to prove just by FULLY looking into their drawing history. It’s harder to see moderator abuse it’s power or see a moderator who doesn’t know how to moderate, but do know that if I report them under
those accusations they’re 100% true cause I always make sure that they did that.
I don’t think all the top players were made moderators because I’m well within the top 200 in the world and I was not made into a mod. 😛
And now I have to deal with people who warn me for the sole reason that I got an answer faster than they did and that it’s “suspicious” how I can guess drawings they couldn’t. And then I have to rebuild my reputation back up.
Indigo,
Mostly jealous jerks will warn you cause you get in the lead of them and then win. I have NEVER CHEATED or broken a rule on charadium, but I did get warned by some jealous people cause I won instead of them (reputation… not 100% as it should be since I’ve never cheated, no thanks to those jerks.). And getting words fast isn’t that hard once you play 100+ games it gets easier to guess everytime, people just get jealous that you win!
And your right not all top players were made into the moderators by an automated system… hmm… maybe random players from top 1500 ?… this just makes me question and daubt the automated system even more!
This brings us to the current charadium issues:
*Fix the username links on Charadium website, so when you click on the username you would be taken to their charadium profile (nothing happens when you click on their username now)
*Remove Moderator Status from the cheating moderators (cheating moderators reported above!)
*Start Handpicking Moderators and reviewing them fully (their drawing history etc.) instead of using a failing automated system (hope it will be shut down asap!).
*Valentine’s Day is over! It’s been a week since it was over already. About time to remove the “Valentine’s Day” bonus.
*Add more words to charadium (how many words are there currently in charadium? Less then 1000?), so it wouldn’t be so easy to guess the drawings, cause now it’s incredibly easy after you play lots of games due to small amount of words in charadium.
Update: Charadium Moderators are elected automatically based on activity, success, and reputation in live games (there are many criteria).
(Facebook post by charadium on charadium facebook wall!)
*Meaning they’re constatly being elected by an AWFUL automated system, meaning it wasn’t a one time thing sadly…
Hopefully on-5 will FINALLY understand that nobody uses a system to pick moderators (Developers only use automated systems to look up candidates to become moderators based on criteria, but they never let the system automatically select them to become moderators, because they need to be reviewed by a real persoe before making the final decision)
Facebook post about the moderator update on charadium wall (NOT BY ME!):
My husband, myself, my two children and several of our friends and their children have complained to the App Store and requested refunds for the purchase of Charadium. Over the past few days I have noticed moderators allowing lewd content to remain in rooms and I have had enough. I also know for a fact that you removing good moderators and allowing poor ones to remain. I had high hopes that the moderator change would clean up this game but due to your poor decisions that has not happened. I can only hope that this application will be removed from the stores for continuing to make lewd content available.
Looks like many people who want to play CLEAN AND FAIR are disappointed that an automated system selects/removes moderators instead when a real person should be reviewing and making appropriate decisions if a player is wothy to be a moderator and checking if they cheat/abuse their power.
System just can’t do this at all on-5. Simply put:
A moderator who is actually reinforcing the rules and banning the spammers/cheaters who ironically are about 70% charadiums player base, can be easily mistaken as abusing his powers!
A moderator who cheats and writes out part/full/description about the word using letters, a system can’t look up and evaluate his pictures and deem if he cheats or not!
A REAL PERSON needs to make final decisions and review/check moderators!
“We are doing our best to make Charadium better. Never worse”
Really?! Oh the irony of this sentence…. Please actually try on-5 to FIX current charadium issues as well as start handpicking moderators!
Constantly being added based on activity, success, and reputation? I’m in the top 200 in the world, have a 71% success rate, and 97% reputation (sadly, also not 100% as it should be due to sore losers).
I thought the bot just hiccupped and accidentally missed me. Now I feel shunned by the almighty automated system.
I am still waiting for official word on the WSF… which doesn’t seem to do what it say…
Devs, please address some of the comments on the “Making Of” post…
co-op missions “chess” is extremely difficult to pass because when it starts one of the participants immediately loses. (
I am someone who was a moderator, but I had “gavel” removed from my username for some reason.. Even though I never abused my power, but thats not my complaint..
My complaint is that I was just in a room “Shiny Squares” where moderators were abusing their power: Moderator “amandaw” spelt out the word Obama instead of drawing it. And other Moderator “Alex85” went along and guessed, without saying anything..
I find this to be outrageous, where cheaters get keep their “gavel” & mod power, and people like me who play fair are removed from being mods! This has gone long enough.. This problem has to be officially addressed by On5 right now or I want a refund, the game is not fun anymore.. 🙁
Thanks for sharing your concern about abusive moderators. We have an automated system that promotes and demotes moderators based on complex rules (activity, reputation, etc.) We’re also watching the moderators ourselves and with the help of user reports we eliminate priveleges of the abusive ones. So if you spot an abusive mod – just mail it to support@on-5.com and we’ll process it through 😉
I really like this game, but it crashes A LOT! I just lost three p2p battles simply because the app quits. Any recommendation on fixes would be appreciated.
Last night, after weeks of game play, a level 31 rank, and one big spice purchase, the app randomly crashed and on reload, started the whole game over on the tutorial. Gamecenter still has all my ranks and accomplishments, how do I get the game itself back to how it was!!??
I’m having the same problem Drew did. My game crashed a week ago, and I lost both of my in-app-purchases along with all my save data. Like Drew, all of my gamecenter and crystal data is saved when I log into their services, but the game data is gone when I try to play.
I contacted Chillingo, and they assured me the devs would have things working by today (24 Feb). So far, I haven’t heard anything.
I hope this gets fixed soon. This game was the most fun I’ve had with my iPhone in the last year.
Please help!
Spice Bandits is Awesome! and I have left feedback of that nature everywhere that I can (Facebook, Twitter, etc). Please fix the “tap friend to request help” as it does not work consistently. Also I do not u derstand the buttons that appear below weapons on the iPad app. Please add a “help” or “FAQ” section. Keep doing what you are doing…best tower defense game I have seen and if you can get online attendance up you will be doing big things!
Drew / Dug : Deleting and reinstalling the game forces a resync. That solves the problem for me.
Can anyone please tell me what the w s f options are when clicking a tower
Thanks
Dug,
I have THE Same problem here. I still have my rank, spice and medals, but i can only play the training mission and the first mission. After That it’s back to training only….. Hope Theo fix this soon….
Rinus
I have tried deleting/reinstalling several times. Browsing through the reviews in the app store show that many others have had similar problems.
To the devs:
Will there be a solution to this problem? Do I need to have Apple refund me my IAP’s?
I really enjoyed this game, I got up to level 52 is how much i liked it, but today some irrecoverable damage happened.
I was in the middle of a game when the game crashed, which happens at regular intervals, usually just relaunch no problem. But the crash today somehow corrupted my install or something (ipod touch 2011 4th gen), when I relaunched the game, it showed the initial tutorial greeting, was it admiral spice who appears on the right side of the screen and says something? The map looked empty but if I touched a spot previously populated by a map, I hear the map menu sound; I have all the maps downloaded btw, but nothing shows up on the map.
Not only that, it says I have no spice, none of anything on the map screen, nothing, everything is 0/0, my game center listing still showed my achievements and whatnot, but I can’t access the tech shop or anywhere. I had around 350 spice left (forgot exact amount), all gone. So I uninstalled the game, removing myself from the game center too for this game.
This looks like a serious problem, I do not know how to replicate it.
Really really really need to fix the crashing guys, I’ve lost around 80 spice by using some during a game and having the game crash. When I go back in my spice is gone and so is my game, wasting my resources. I don’t know why I didn’t just drop the game by now considering the losses.
And yes, you said S, W, F stand for something:
S-Strong
W-Weak
F-First
But how does that work? Is it that the F is to point the tower at the first invader in the line, W points the tower to the weakest invader, and S points it to the strongest?
I won’t be playing the game until an update to fix the crash, other than that it’s pretty fun. But dam does it ever pees me off when I lose my spice!! Yarrrr!!!
Love spice bandits however it started crashing upon startup from a blank white screen. I can’t play anymore ): is this an issue being worked on? Or do I have to start all over again:s
Hey on-5…i’ve just lost all of my data!!!!!!!! I am still level 56 but all my progress was lost!! I need to play the tutorial all over again and unlock towers and upgrade points!!! It’s extremely frustrating…i really enjoyed playing it… But now i don’t think i am interested in doing it from scratch
Please fix this bug…my in-game name is “elha2060”
I have just had the same bug happen to me as several people: game crashes and on reload I get a blank map which makes level-selection noises if you tap it, but I can’t do anything. It still says my level is 41 and that I have some spice, but I can’t play any more. I also get a little box over the XP meter saying ‘you will level up when you go online’. Has the game lost its Internet connection somehow? Also, my crash was very strange. I was playing ‘parking’ for the first time and after placing some initial towers, suddenly all I could do was build gun towers and upgrade them to level 2!
I hope this is fixable. After becoming a little bit addicted to progressing through this otherwise great game, I really won’t be starting from the beginning!
Hey, the bug was fixed and my progress has returned thank GOD…
I hope everyone that has this bug get his game fixed
My game is restored too! 🙂
After playing Spice Bandits religiously for 5 weeks straight, I can only say that what started as a 5 star app; best td game I’ve ever played, is now a 1 star. I had accumulated 635 spice over the course of the campaign, both single and multiplayer, to just have my reserve wiped out. What gives, where is my spice. Multiplayer is buggy; waiting to sync, others didn’t make it, plus the fact that you can’t find anyone in the later levels! 5 people needed? Good luck finding 1 other! Can’t believe I lost all my spice!
I paid $ 2.99 for the 200sp, but I spend neuspel a drop, as cheychas sp = 0.
Please do not make jokes.
login “k.zlodey”
I apologize for the mistakes I had in mind, that did not have time to spend a single drop, because I have all disappeared SP.
Hi
I had 215 spices, but all dissapeared….. I have now 5 sp only. Please put it back.
macgeen
Where are my spice??? i had about 90 spice (paid)…..
Vi7torio
Zlostik – We will make sure you get your sp back asap.
vi7torio, macgeen – let us know your Crystal usernames and we will make sure you get your spice back.
Hi On5, will I get my spice back too or do you only reply to the last 4 messages?
Algamut – Please give us your Crystal name and we will look into it and restore your spice.
I had the same problem, all my hard earned spice, just under 300, disappeared overnight! Please fix this On5! I really love the game I would hate to stop
I’ve never used crystal. Whenever I start the app, game center welcomes me back as Algamut. Where can I get the info you need?
Algamut – This will be enough. You should be getting your spice back in a bit.
BigG1213 – Please give us your Crystal username. We will the give you your spice back.
My username is BigG1213
I was saving spice for the weekend. You never know when there is another offer in the weekend for some towers… 😉
Now i lost all my spice except for 10 spice… :s
Is this a bug?!
I now read some other people who lost their spice… I like it back too…
Some users may observe problems with their spice balance. This is a temporary issue and we are working to resolve it. Spice balance will return back to normal within 24 hours, no spice will be lost.
We are sorry for the inconvenience!
On5, glad to hear you’re fixing this. I went from ~250 to 13 spice. Wish the bug went in the other direction!
Lost at least half to 2/3 of my spice please restore thx
Lost 1300 spice!!! Just gone. Please restore! Crystal username is gator9er
My name is drax281 on spice bandits I had an issue with a gravity gun top level where I guess I bought it and not the 2 before I didn’t want them originally please help I tried to find the on-5 support but I just can’t find it to post the screenshots you think you can fix this without them I lost 80 spice because of this
Forgot to mention I noticed spice missing on iphone and have screenshots of iPad before I connected to Internet showing balance. When I connected iPad to internet spice was deleted from my iPad as well. Crystal user gator9er
Seems like a bunch of people have had the same problem, but I figured I’d chime in and say that my spice also got reset from around 115 to 10 sometime in the last two days. Just checked and it is still the same. Since it is happening to everyone, I’m guessing that the spice levels are stored on your servers, not on my iPhone. If so, would deleting the app and reinstalling it fix the problem? My Crystal username is tehOwnerer.
Thanks
Fix Mystic Portal Camps mode plx! Been waiting for over 4 hours (yes, I’ve watched 2 full movies on HBO in the meantime..) to get into a game. Getting 8 people together is a daunting task, but I’ve managed to do so about 10 times in those 4 hours, but the game never starts. Just sits there at “Loading room data” with 8 players present.
Have been seeing the same people over and over, so I’m pretty sure it’s not just me.
Or just remove that horrid map altogether so we can proceed with unlocking the next levels..
Thanks.
Hi on5, i just bought the new iphone 4s and found out my saves and most importantly my spice purchases were not carried over… What do i do? Uninstall the game and forget about you guys?
Kp, mr.wacko, Rick and tehOwnerer – All lost spice should be returned by now. Please inform support@on-5.com if it’s still not there. Thank you.
remzjay – Thank you for your message. We will discuss what could and should be done in this situation.
James Wong – It can sometimes take a while to show everything. However, as long as you are connected to Crystal, all of your data remain. Please let us know if it’s still not showing.
Drax281 – Please send the screenshots to support@on-5.com. Thank you.
R u going to fix spice bandits? I updatedcthe app and now it’s frozen. I can’t open the game on my Ipad at all.
Thanks, loved the game!
Hey, I crazy this game so much.
Why sometime tower is change to lower tower ?
Thanks you.
I LOVE IT!!!
Love the game Spice Bandits! I had no problems so far with spice balance, but the game keeps crashing every 10 minutes or so. Gets a bit annoying when you’re in a big multiplayer game. I’m using iPod touch 4th gen. updatet with IOS 5. Will this get fixed, as I want to purchase some spice, but I am reluctant if the game keeps crashing…
And again, love the game, best one i’ve played in a long time!
Erikje007 (also my Crystal-name)
I have been playing Spice Bandits on an iPad 2, and when I bought an iPad 3 I restored it from a backup of my iPad 2 so everything should be identical — but no. I’ve lost EVERYTHING in Spice Bandits. I’ve gone from Level 58, Lt General with 43078 XP down to nothing. Tried deleting and reinstalling, nothing. Tried doing the tutorial level since some users said that fixed similar problems, nothing.
My Game Center username is Coopstock. Please fix this.
@Laura: Laura, could you provide more details for the freezes? At which point does the game freeze?
@jesus_jill: This bug has been fixed in the coming update, so it won’t be happening anymore very soon.
@Matthew JC. Powell: At the moment you can carry on your progress from one device to another through Crystal.
@Erikje007: Is the game crashing randomly every 10 minutes or have you maybe noticed something that makes the game crash every time? Maybe there’s a specific scenario that leads to the crash?
@On-5: I, so far, didn’t discover one specific action and/or scenario wich leads to a crash. It often crashes when I play multi-player games, but this is not always the case.
Thanks for your response. Hope you can fix it.
I am having trouble getting “friends” to show up as online in spice bandits. I was sitting next to a friend who could invite me, but I could not invite them to a game. This also impacts the friend reward. Please advise.
I installed your app on ipod 3, and i enjoyed it for the five minutes i was successfully able to play. Now, every time i start the game, within two minutes it becomes unresponsive. This happens both while im playing and if i wait in the menus. I believe i would enjoy this game very much, but it is difficult whenever i cannot complete the second map halfway. Please contact me with some sort of fix.
Erikje007, Arnoldmo, Bigbub21 – Thank you all for reporting these issues. We are looking into them and working on fixing every single one.