Bee Leader - (by Flightless) - Universal App

[flightless]

Originally Posted by TheFrost

And my real problem: Ads, but you can remove them when you finish the game, like I just did, when you fill all hives and reach rank Ace...

Final Rating: 3.5/4 out of 5. Great. Could have been higher... Game is great but...

Final Conclusion: Ever since I saw the inclusion of ads, this was its fate. The game is brilliant and one of the best highscore games nonetheless. But... I paid for it, and dont want ads in my soup. Add a IAP to remove ads and have them unlocked for the ones who supported you. Thats the way to go in my book.

@TheFrost @syntheticvoid @Capricornman

Thanks a lot for your feedback - we're listening and working on ways to try to keep everyone happy. It's very difficult without our own user registration services to actually properly track who downloaded what version and when and uniquely target them. We're unaware of an api to query the device to find out if a user paid for an app or got it free - same with app version history. Most ways we have thought of only affect the device you have installed the game onto and don't cover deleting the app, installing it on a new device or possibly some forms of restoration. We've chatted to other developers and some are in similar situations as well.

We're currently working with the crosspromo network to provide a list of users that we can use as an exclusion list. If they can supply the data we're using it immediately - this will include anyone who used v1.3 or v1.4 before it went free. Once again, this suffers from old or new devices using fresh installs of previously bought apps - how do we detect this? We also can't rely on Game Center for any sort of version information or history. And, of course, not every paying user has used Game Center either. @TheFrost and @syntheticvoid I think you've both mentioned that you've deleted the game now (and left comments here and on the App Store, we've read some) - that's exactly one of the problems we have. Also, iCloud at the time of release was a bit of a mess and rarely used by game devs, including ourselves.

So, we're still working on it. As noted by @TheFrost in v1.5 we remove ads completely regardless of paid or free when you reach the rank of 'Ace' or 'Bee Leader'. Also, if you play via Joypad all ads are disabled. We hoped this might help existing paying users and particularly hardcore players on TA who've previously played the game and ranked up a bit on their devices, and who play with Joypad. In the meantime we offered a free full version of Bee Leader for Mac for anyone here on the thread affected (but no-one's taken us up on that yet).

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Feel free to email us with any further suggestions. Hopefully we can get some data sorted very soon to keep everyone happy.

cheers,

// greg
http://www.flightless.co.nz

[pluto6]

Originally Posted by Capricornman

This update has been sitting on my device for weeks along with other updates. Yesterday I finally updated this game. Was that a mistake?! I haven't re-opened the game in awhile. Are there ads now?! I bought this game from the get go. Well I'm getting numb to all of this now

Yep - you now have ads.... If you sync occasionally with your computer you will have an old version on your computer that you could reinstall, but otherwise you are hosed. I never update any working apps except from a few "reliable" developers that have never pulled any stunts like this. But, many developers (like Mumbo Jumbo, and Alawar) put the description "minor bug fixes", when in reality, ads are put in, as if the lack of having ads is a bug....

[flightless]

Originally Posted by pluto6

Yep - you now have ads.... If you sync occasionally with your computer you will have an old version on your computer that you could reinstall, but otherwise you are hosed. I never update any working apps except from a few "reliable" developers that have never pulled any stunts like this.

Please take the time to read our previous posts. We're both working hard on this issue to try to keep everyone happy and to make developing indie games for iOS sustainable for us at the same time. Also, if we didn't care we wouldn't be replying and trying to sort it out.

cheers,

// greg
http://www.flightless.co.nz

[Capricornman]

Originally Posted by pluto6

Yep - you now have ads.... If you sync occasionally with your computer you will have an old version on your computer that you could reinstall, but otherwise you are hosed. I never update any working apps except from a few "reliable" developers that have never pulled any stunts like this. But, many developers (like Mumbo Jumbo, and Alawar) put the description "minor bug fixes", when in reality, ads are put in, as if the lack of having ads is a bug....

Thanks pluto6 for the info. Yeah it's too bad this happens but at least the dev is responding in this thread so we'll just have to wait and see what happens

[flightless]

Originally Posted by Capricornman

Thanks pluto6 for the info. Yeah it's too bad this happens but at least the dev is responding in this thread so we'll just have to wait and see what happens

btw, if you've previously played the game, what is your rank? If you've already played a bit and ranked up to 'Ace' or 'Bee Leader' ads should be completely removed from that device. We've added this feature regardless of whether or not you paid or got the game for free which we think is generally pretty friendly. Playing via Joypad? Also no ads.

It doesn't completely cover all of our or your concerns (and we're still working with the ad network to get device lists we can use to filter everything) but it certainly doesn't ignore them.

cheers,

// greg
http://www.flightless.co.nz

[lena]

Originally Posted by flightless

Most ways we have thought of only affect the device you have installed the game onto and don't cover deleting the app, installing it on a new device or possibly some forms of restoration.

That's a problem indeed, but not displaying ads for people who still have your app installed (which is many of us) would still have been better than displaying ads for everybody just because it's impossible to do disable it for every single person who ever bought it. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good and all that.

I do appreciate the disabling ads for people with rank Ace in the latest update.

[pluto6]

Originally Posted by flightless

Please take the time to read our previous posts. We're both working hard on this issue to try to keep everyone happy and to make developing indie games for iOS sustainable for us at the same time. Also, if we didn't care we wouldn't be replying and trying to sort it out.

cheers,

// greg
http://www.flightless.co.nz

I am not trying to be snarky, I just wish that the developers would put a huge ASCII warning that the update has ads, so we can at least make a decision. Sure, you make it free - throw the ads in, that's the price of free - but the people that previously purchased "update" to ads, without even knowing what they are getting. Kinda sux.
I'm glad you are trying to work it out. I've seen lots and lots of these types of discussions on TA over the past 4 years - I guess they are growing pains.

[flightless]

Originally Posted by pluto6

I am not trying to be snarky, I just wish that the developers would put a huge ASCII warning that the update has ads, so we can at least make a decision. Sure, you make it free - throw the ads in, that's the price of free - but the people that previously purchased "update" to ads, without even knowing what they are getting. Kinda sux.
I'm glad you are trying to work it out. I've seen lots and lots of these types of discussions on TA over the past 4 years - I guess they are growing pains.

We can appreciate all that, yep. The current App Store descriptions for both versions of the game include text at the top that describes that one has ads, and the other one doesn't, and provides links to both. The update text for v1.5 contains similar text as well.

The promo with Apple ran a lot sooner than we expected so we were unable to prepare ourselves with a couple of public versions to test and iron things out. As mentioned, there's no sdk's for developers to use to query information about the user or device which is a real catch22 when trying to determine who did what and when, and communicate that to other devices they might own. (Recent titles might use iCloud for this - wasn't really an option when we launched.) We're working to get the filter lists set up as soon as we can, so we don't expect the ads to be around for most of you much longer, if you have the patience not to rage-delete the game from your device

Growing pains, probably a good description. We've learnt a lot over the last few weeks and are working hard to make things better. This is our first big title, we're a small indie studio and we're not perfect. After the race to the bottom, the freemium market that our game finds itself in now is very different to the market a year ago when it was released, so we have to try things to keep making titles for iOS sustainable for us. Don't worry, though, we're not rushing to add virtual currency systems, meaningless coin or gem-packs, zombie modes, dress-up-your-bee in-app's, etc...

As always, all feedback and comments are great - the more constructive the better. We're reading it all and responding with changes where we can.

cheers,

// greg
http://www.flightless.co.nz