It has been weeks since Xio released this game, and they still have not fixed its many bugs. As such, besides being a Tetris rip-off, Mino does not work as advertised. I purchased it for $2.99 when it came out, since Xio claimed it would only be available at that "introductory price for a short time before being raised above that. Within 2-3 days, the price was lowered to $0.99, which they then claimed was the sale price. The price change by itself is a non-issue insofar as Xio's fraudulence is concerned. The real infringement is to load up the player roster with "bots" and not disclose that to the players. Only a few players such as "baconbot" are obviously bots, but others behave like bots and even respond like bots (e.g. several "players" always say the exact same 2-3 phrases in the same order, each time they appear. This is an outright lie. Their app also quits often and handles ranked matches in a very suspect way. It is very common to see the outcome of a match changed at the last second, or to encounter the defenseless "ghost" of a player just beaten and not be able to get away from it without beating it again and depriving the human player of points. I believe Xio is getting away with perpetrating a major fraud and should be stopped. If there is a way of obtaining a refund, please let me know and I'll pursue that instead. Frauds such as Xio ought to be called out and dealt with en masse. Only by acting together can app store customers ensure that their negative feedback outweighs the phony 4-5 star reviews, fake forum posts, etc. Thanks in advance for any and all input on the matter. Obviously I'm not in position to get Apple on the phone and personally vent my frustration with this shady outfit known as "Xio Interactive, Inc."
I think it's easier to blame this on Apple. Their approval process should have caught this when it was submitted to them. What's the point of the two weeks it's in their hands if they can't even stop something simple from this like happening? Good luck to you, I hope you can at least get a refund out of that mess.
They are using bots in order to foster the impression that the game has more legitimate online activity than it actually does. It would be as if a company such as Tapulous made up a bunch of player names, assigned them to bots, and then filled the rooms containing crappy songs with them and passed them off as real players without telling anyone. I'm not the first to complain of Xio doing this with Mino. Another motivation for them to "cheat at their own game" is to give the impression that the app is more stable and functional than it presently is - another no-no.
Ok I'll do that. I was under the (hopefully) mistaken impression that refunds are rarely or never issued.
yup about all you can do is go through your email to find the receipt for whenever you had purchased the game. And follow directions to the say something to apple. Not sure how much of this could be easily proved though. Simple case would be that they provided a product no matter certain discrepancies...while this is crap....i dont know how much you could do. It wouldn't hold up in court to give your a comparison. Service is rendered. Hmmm that sucks. LAMENESS FAIL!
No refunds....... Apple will not give them out, also it's still 2.99 and the bots lo to be there to help make it look popular/give u a challenge....... Deal with ur faild purchase and move onto a new game, everyone has that problem, and if they said their problems with apps apple would be overfilled with work to try and take out all terrible games, I mean that's how the market works pal, even console games work too, it's life
Yeah all I can do is try for a refund and change my review from what was at first a generous 3 stars to a 2 or 1. This thread hopefully gives them the little kick they deserve, since the $3 by itself is not the biggest issue in the world. Thanks for the feedback. [edit] I've spent about $150 on apps since getting my ipod touch last december. This will be the first refund request I've made, so who knows?
Dude, it's better then EA Tetris. I will never buy anything from them because they are single handedly responsible for the demise of, "Tris." Plus, some of them are real people. Just only join rooms that say, already playing.
Have you contacted them with your questions/concerns? [email protected] I'm sure they would be more than happy to answer your questions and explain anything that seems weird. For a developer, there's nothing more frustrating than seeing an angry customer that you can't talk to. We see the bad reviews, and we see the refunds, and we wonder why that person went through all that trouble without ever trying to write us a one-line email first.
Well, actually, some other game manufacturers also do the same - see for example the bots in UniWar. Nevertheless, IMHO, Mino is pretty nice a game. For example, I've found Crazy Drops by Colombiamug definitely less very interesting – particularly because Mino is lounge-based; so, if you’re looking for other players to play (it’s lounge-based, unlike this one), you may have more success. Also see my all-in-one MP article at http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?p=419463 if interested.
Here are some screenshots showing how broken this app is. A refund is not enough. The app should be removed from the app store ASAP unless a company representative is willing to publicly avow that Xio Interactive is not deceiving its customers. During this match, my opponent seemed to have disconnected. Notice that, in each screenshot, the state of my playing field changes, but that of the opponent stays the same. I played this one match over 10-12 minutes (ranked matches usually take 2-4 minutes at most) because I didn't want the scoundrel to benefit from the disconnect at my expense. None of the lines I sent him accumulated on his board. Also notice that in the final screenshot, the results screen, my "lines sent" "lines received" and "drops" are MONDO compared to the opponent's (e.g. 536 drops vs some small number). This happened today with another opponent ranked only in the 800's, causing me to lose almost 100 points in one game (!) This BS also happens on a friend's ipod as well on a coworker's 3g iphone. Xio Interactive would be out of business in two weeks flat if this were a platoform with quality controls. Apple, you're really beginning to $uck There are also "assassin" bots and "sand-bagging" players who appear and play at a 1600+ level, even though they are often rated only 800-1000. Take a look at the following screenshot. In this match, I must have sent the opponent at least 12-16 lines in chunks of 2-4, yet his/her playing field looks as if the match began, while mine is in a mid-game state. This same bot/player usually appears for the sole purpose of bleeding points from those on a winning streak. If I'm on a losing streak, it will play at a strength of 800-900 in order to allow it to be pummeled a bit, so as to be sufficient low-rated to bleed points from the next player it encounters. What really bites is that, once honoreyv (sp) has bled a ton of points, it takes MANY games to recover those points from the same player because of how low-rated he/she/it is. Several other "assassins" include "soul4ja," "destroyer" and "guest" (a bot, I'm sure).
I know... apple has been really awful about this lately. They'll ban a game in a second for having a bit too much blood but copyright infringement or other issues that would actually BOTHER people and it goes right on through. The biggest example of this Khalid Shaikh (or whatever it was) but at least he got banned. It doesn't really seem like its as awful as it sounds. The only grounds for removal right now is that its copying Tetris and the price seems a bit funny, but other than that that's the dev's issue. It's their choice to turn off customers by not updating bugs and by putting in bots.
Heart to Heart Hey Grubjelly/lukeb1, I am a programmer who worked on Mino. I play as the name "guest" and I at least am surely not a bot! After playing so many testing games while developing, I have gotten rather fast at dropping though But in all seriousness, let me humbly apologise for your bad experience. We don't want unhappy customers, and we surely don't wish to deceive anyone. I've been trying to send you a message through the game for the past 2 weeks, but let me repost it here: "Hey lukeb1, We want to address the criticisms you've left in various comments and reviews. Please send an email to [email protected] and we'll mail you a refund, as well as a promo code. If you talk with us we can fix any problems you have. Thanks, -Xio Interactive." Now, at the risk of encouraging additional negative reviews, let me make you an offer: Would you be interested in joining us as a beta tester? We're starting a private mailing list where beta testers have direct access to developers for bug reports and feature requests. We desperately need someone who can help us identify bugs, take screenshots, and catalogue problems. Only then can we hope to fix some of these bugs that plague you. As for the bots, I guess its bad form to not be very explicit about a bot. So, we've added a message when you play a ranked game that matches you against a bot. Here is how it works, if you click 'ranked game' and no other player is there for a match, after 60 seconds you will be matched against a bot, with an explicit message. Do you think that is a fair trade-off? Or do you think it would be better to instead just have no matches when no one else is online? Let me say finally that we're just some friends who wanted to make a fun game. We don't want to make anyone unhappy. The only reason we're even charging for the game at all is that we put thousands of cumulative hours into learning Objective C and making the game, and we need to build up some kind of reserve for potential legal issues. If we were trying for loads of cash we surely would have just gotten a second job! With that in mind, please understand that we just want to make the world a slightly more entertaining place, and you can help us. What do you say Grubjelly? -Michael Carter, CTO Xio interactive ([email protected])
That's a fine response I don't have much time at the moment to comment at length but, in short, I might be interested in beta testing a bit and will send you an email. The main problem with not knowing whether I am up against a bot or not in ranked match is that computers play games differently than human players in order to attain any given level of rated performance. If I get my ass kicked by a 1300 bot 5 times in a row, it will be a different kind of beating than that administered by a similarly rated human player. Bots just don't fall for certain tricks or make certain kinds of errors. Knowing one's opponent is half the battle at all but the most elite ranks, which I of course don't belong to yet. Mino's a pretty good game though. At this point, I don't need a refund, but thanks for offering one. I don't mind getting beaten a bunch of times in a row by a human player over 1400-1500, but the worst thing is when the highly ranked opponent is suddenly replaced with a bot in the 800's who plays FAR stronger than that rating and bleeds 100+ points per game. My advice is to tame a few of those bots and make them play fairly. That provision you mentioned whereby one is alerted during a ranked match to the status of the next opponent - human or bot - also seems like a good idea that I'm sure most customers will appreciate Just out of curiousity - are Tobrien and Jobrien bots? I've never seen them in ranked matchs, but they always appear together in the casual rooms. Tobrien always says the same thing: "You got nothing, Luke!" I think of those two as tweedledum and tweedledee.
