Support orders no longer possible

JankaCsi

Dear players,
we would like to announce some major changes in our customer support flow.

As of the 1st of September 2020, we had to apply new rules in order to keep our support flow running smoothly. As some of you have already experienced, it was possible to obtain past Special and Vintage offer items via the additional sale from our support. Regarding the fact that this service has been exceptional and does not belong to our standard support services, we are forced to cut off the service completely in order to keep our support service effective and of a high quality, and at the same time, keep the Special and Vintage offers in the game exclusive and obtainable only during the limited time directly in the game. This means, that the players will be no longer able to get the goods as per the request which was raised and submitted to our customer support team. The special, vintage, limited offers as well as the previously premium and returning popular content in our update will still include items from the past years. This will be the only way to reach these offers in general, so if you are considering the purchase of a current special, vintage or limited offer, please do so when the items are currently available.

All the support orders which came in our system until the 1st of September 2020 12:00 PM CET will be still fulfilled.

We are sure, that you can understand our decision, which was not easy to make, but we need to focus on the primary support of our players and games.

Thank you for your understanding.
TS team

Sc00byUK

JankaCsi As a new player I made use of this service, it was exceptionally useful as a way to acquire things that I had no possibility to acquire though any other means (as I wasn't playing when they were available)

Is there no way you can create a shop that allows you to buy old SO/VO items after a certain time has passed. Old stuff is generally worse than new stuff, but I'll bet that if you put all the SO slots in there they would sell quite well (I don't think it's fair that X player has more slots just because he was playing when they were available, it doesn't really encourage new players.

Rather than remove the service, just make it part of the game and automated!
It's not like you don't know any programmers!

pixel_player58262407

JankaCsi I must now not buy gems to keep my wallet fuller

pixel_player63823774

JankaCsi great I didn't understand anything, it's starting well I'm discovering the site and it's starting badly for me

JankaCsi

Sc00byUK Hello and thank you for your input.The automation is not possible at this point since the requests are specific per each player (mostly localization,naming,pictures included,amounts,availability etc.). All of these requests have been fulfilled manually by our customer support. We can assure you that we will try to find any suitable way of partially improve the demand of the highly requested items, but for now we would like to stick to the system of Vintage/Special/Limited offers directly in our game. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.

TrashTerrier

JankaCsi Localization, naming, and pictures are already known by the game through the Museum, the game also knows which items are rewards and which items were available for a certain cost type (gems/gold), price and limits

It should be possible to add a "Buy" button to items in the Museum that meet certain criteria for purchase

pixel_player4492958

Game is getting to be a pain...maybe its time to quit.

TrevorFougere

TrashTerrier They actually do let you buy engines through the museum. But only certain ones. As the museum presumably knows what all the engines are, I see know reason why they can't put a "BUY" button on every engine you want to "collect". Just be prepared to pay 100's of gems for engines that are otherwise completely useless. 🙂

Ste_Di

[German translation]

Liebe Spielerinnen und Spieler,
wir möchten einige wichtige Änderungen in unserem Kundensupport ankündigen.

Ab dem 1. September 2020 müssen wir neue Regeln anwenden, um einen reibungslosen Ablauf unseres Supports zu gewährleisten. Wie einige von Ihnen bereits erlebt haben, war es möglich, frühere Sonder- und Ausverkauf-Angebotsartikel über eine Nachbestellung von unserem Support zu beziehen. In Anbetracht der Tatsache, dass dieser Service außergewöhnlich war und nicht zu unseren Standard-Support-Dienstleistungen gehört, sind wir gezwungen, den Service vollständig einzustellen, um unseren Support-Service effektiv und qualitativ hochwertig zu halten und gleichzeitig die Sonder- und Ausverkauf-Angebote im Spiel exklusiv und nur während der begrenzten Zeit direkt im Spiel erhältlich zu belassen. Das bedeutet, dass die Spieler nicht mehr in der Lage sein werden, die Angebote gemäß der Anfrage, die an unser Kundenbetreuungsteam gerichtet wurde, zu erhalten. Die speziellen, Vintage- und limitierten Angebote sowie die bisher exklusiven und wiederkehrenden populären Inhalte in unserem Update werden weiterhin Artikel aus den vergangenen Jahren enthalten. Dies wird die einzige Möglichkeit sein, diese Angebote im Allgemeinen zu erlangen. Wenn Sie also den Kauf eines aktuellen Sonder-, Jahrgangs- oder limitierten Angebots in Betracht ziehen, tun Sie dies bitte, wenn die Artikel aktuell verfügbar sind.

Alle Support-Bestellungen, die bis zum 1. September 2020, 12:00 Uhr MEZ, in unser System eingegangen sind, werden weiterhin erfüllt.

Wir sind sicher, dass Sie unsere Entscheidung, die nicht leicht zu treffen war, verstehen können, aber wir müssen uns auf die primäre Unterstützung unserer Spieler und Spiele konzentrieren.

Wir danken Ihnen für Ihr Verständnis.
TS-Team

pixel_player39254747

A bit of notice ahead of shutting it down would have been appreciated

TrashTerrier

pixel_player39254747 DeGroot_Siem pixel_player65003589

JankaCsi wrote:
We are always trying to announce any changes in our game beforehand. The reason we have not announced this specific change prior the implementation was simply because we wanted to prevent the over-flooding of the support orders in our system this way

pixel_player1593118

pixel_player39254747 All about the money.

pixel_player49976968 Trainstation 2 is their baby now. It's about the money.

RML_MIKE

by the way: no, I can't understand, but ....
as long as the annoying offer-trains can run over our tracks, as long as we are bombed with gem-offers, risky-boxes etc. etc. everything is ok.

Thanks for your professional support up to this time .... means, waiting 5 month and writing 25 mails to get back a disappeared "green-building" players can't sell ..... this is really high quality, we should not minor be giving services to new coming players by support-team ;-)

KimmiKat

RML_MIKE I got tired of those offer trains and loot/risky boxes. I stop playing when our local jurisdiction blocked the game due to the "gambling" aspect aka Risk Boxes.

It was a fun game.

DeGroot_Siem

let's make a change and inform everyone afterwards.... great strategy.

pixel_player65003589

Would have really been a bit more professional to give at least a minimal notice of this change, rather than say it is NOW in effect. This game gets less enjoyable as all these "improvements" are implemented.

Koz_St_I

Well whatever your rymer reason is for doing this I sure as hell hope you gonna start lowering the price I'm the items that you're offering

Giovanni_Corleone

Too bad, another useful feature died out! I'm playing since 2014 and I was able to get dozens of locos from Pixel that way.
I understand your intentions but why such a radical move all of a sudden? I always received my items within 24 hours.
If you can't do that anymore because you're short on manpower or sth., then take your time. I'd rather wait one or two weeks instead of getting nothing anymore.
2020 really sucks and it doesn't end !

yamanrajab

This decision has nothing to do with the orders jam, it is a sheer economic move. they just want to make the VO/SO more valuable at there time which leads to more Gem purchase which is understandable at least for me, but what i don't understand at all is not being able to buy the previous Bonus slots.

Cargran_Need-Lithium_Gold

Very unfortunate. One thing less for them to do... Doesn't seem like "Players to Players" anymore... more of a controlled environment to make more money.

I've always thought it would be great if they added an (automated) trading/gifting feature between players as many other games have. Players could make deals/trades or just give something. Ex. (Deliver 1b gold and the other player will gift you a certain train you might want etc.)

TrevorFougere

Most players play games with the expectation that they are on a level playing field with the other players. The ever inflating SO's guarantee that new players can get the best trains, etc, regardless of how long they've been playing the game, or when they started. If you ditch the museum, you'll never hear another peep from people wanting to complete their collections. The museum could be left as an informative resource about all the fictional trains that have entered the game. Other than that it's a useless appendage within the game.

On the other hand, all the train slots should be made available to all players. Anyone entering the game today gets to play with half a leg chopped off. Aside from the mess on the kitchen floor, it hurts like hell to know that you can never compete with the "best" players in the game. Don't tell me they can't be made available in the shop (under ITEMS). You do that all the time for new ones.

The game becomes more "Trumpian" all the time. Please pass my salutations on to the Cockwombles that are making these decisions.

Rolf_Al

TrevorFougere They actually do let you buy engines through the museum. But only certain ones

The Buy button normally appears only with the actual SO engines and opens the SO shop.
For VO I don't know, because at this time I've already collected this engines.
The only other exception I know of was a bug when a batch of Pierre's contracts were released and the rewarded Pinot engine was available to buy.

TrashTerrier

TrevorFougere They actually do let you buy engines through the museum. But only certain ones. As the museum presumably knows what all the engines are, I see know reason why they can't put a "BUY" button on every engine you want to "collect".

When engines appear in SO the "BUY" button appears, though only the engine appears in the shop when clicking the button, it only takes a minor adjustment to make the wagons that belong to that engine also appear. when the items leave the SO, they can keep the button and the items will only be available through the museum for SO costs from that point, untill it appears in VO, then from that point on the VO costs will take effect

Details, such as minimum level, limits and the availabillity to buy (due to extensions), are known by the game and shouldn't be an issue. In fact, it already works perfectly fine with the permanent shop items

TrevorFougere Just be prepared to pay 100's of gems for engines that are otherwise completely useless. 🙂

Not any difference than when you ordered through Support 😉