Williams Pinball App Data Collection

[GAH1068]

Akos directly responded to me a few days after Volume 4 dropped regarding this as well. I accidently hit the 200 coin 4th challendg purchase as well as bought 1000 coins (when I already have 40K) by accident.

It is way to easy to accidently push on of these while scrolling and he agreed he was going to take that to development to fix.

 

[sihumchai]

Zen is aware of the "No confirmation before spending Zen Coins" issue and are apparently working to add a confirmation dialog before actually pulling the Zen Coins from your account. If you had an inadvertent purchase using Zen Coins, I would contact Zen and tell them of your issue. When doing so, use the Williams App to contact them:

Within the Williams App, tap the Settings icon (blue menu bar, top right), then the Contact Us button.

This will auto-compose an email with pertinent info to Zen like the DeviceID and UnitID so they can help you out more easily. If you want, you can then copy & paste the auto-generated info into a new email composed using Gmail (or any of your other email accounts) on your Mac or PC since I find it much easier to compose email using a full-size keyboard rather than a small mobile device's keyboard.

The email should be sent to: support@zenstudios.com

Subject line should include "Williams Pinball Feedback" or similar to draw attention to the Williams app.

Hey MadScience, thanks for the advice. If I didn't write to Zen about this issue - I would have continued to feel pretty bummed out about the app. (I only gave feedback here and over the Play Store beta comments)

Here's the good news - I wrote to them and I got my coins back! They said they are working on fixing that issue regarding purchase confirmations, AND they have also removed the 2 Star table purchase from the store! (assuming that you already have a 2 star table).

Thanks Ray and Zen team for fixing this so quickly!

 

[Lord Boron]

Did anyone else just lose all their progress on iOS?

 

[shutyertrap]

Just checked, it’s asking me to pick my first table

I’ll flag them on Twitter, sound like another server problem.

 

[Ironmike]

Just when you think we are out of the woods.....

 

[twopossums]

Hopefully they hire weekend help. Every time the server goes down on the weekend it seems like we have to wait until Monday for them to reboot.

 

[shutyertrap]

Yeah, it's almost like they have the 'dump server' switch right next to the lights, and last man out flips the wrong one!

 

[wilbers]

Just checked and its the same on Android (played on PC by emulating through Bluestacks - my phone is an Android smartphone but one with minimal storage space).

Happened to play it for about an hour last night while I listened to the podcast; never noticed the recycle challenge button before so just played basic challenge several times - a few took less than 30 seconds on 5 star because score target was very low. Taking into account how much time it takes to do each challenge is it not easiest to just do that to get table parts?, 2nd challenge will always take longer because of the watching an advert thing. Interesting which adverts are skippable by double-clicking on the time remaining, and which ones aren't. I've only got 1 table at level 2 (Black Rose is only about 3 table parts away from level 2 as well), got about 8 to level 1, and can't play 3rd or 4th challenges yet (if ever).

 

[Ironmike]

Yeah, it's almost like they have the 'dump server' switch right next to the lights, and last man out flips the wrong one!

Awesome

 

[grashopper]

Even with the servers down shouldn’t we be able to play? I thought two stars got us play offline on the tables.

 

[shutyertrap]

Taking into account how much time it takes to do each challenge is it not easiest to just do that to get table parts?, 2nd challenge will always take longer because of the watching an advert thing. I've only got 1 table at level 2 (Black Rose is only about 3 table parts away from level 2 as well), got about 8 to level 1, and can't play 3rd or 4th challenges yet (if ever).

Surprised to hear that you have to watch ads to play the Advanced challenge still. I wonder if that is because you haven't reached level 2 most of your tables yet.

You'd have to do the math on whether playing 10 and 15 star is better than just cycling the 5 star over and over. You get on Basic 1 part for 5 star, 2 parts for 10, and 3 parts for 15 stars.

It's gonna take you getting to 3 stars I believe before you can play the Pro challenge. Don't bother with the Premium challenge as it's not worth the 200 coins for the rewards it offers up, not until you've got well over half your tables maxed.

 

[shutyertrap]

Even with the servers down shouldn’t we be able to play? I thought two stars got us play offline on the tables.

Well the game does have to sign you in at first to check for that option. If it can't reach the servers to do that, you're poop out of luck. One of those things nobody thinks about (consumer or developer) until it all goes tits up, so hopefully that'll also get fixed in the future.

 

[wilbers]

Surprised to hear that you have to watch ads to play the Advanced challenge still. I wonder if that is because you haven't reached level 2 most of your tables yet.

You'd have to do the math on whether playing 10 and 15 star is better than just cycling the 5 star over and over. You get on Basic 1 part for 5 star, 2 parts for 10, and 3 parts for 15 stars.

It's gonna take you getting to 3 stars I believe before you can play the Pro challenge. Don't bother with the Premium challenge as it's not worth the 200 coins for the rewards it offers up, not until you've got well over half your tables maxed.

I meant do the basic 5, 10, 15 star challenge, recycle and repeat and not bother with the advanced one with the advert. I'll have to see if the advert goes away when I get a second table to 2 stars - its always been Medieval Madness for the advanced challenge because that's the table I picked first time I ran it.

Not that I'm likely to get that far into the app, but 15 minutes now and then might get most tables to 2 stars eventually. Still have the semi-mobile option of using my laptop.

 

[grashopper]

Well the game does have to sign you in at first to check for that option. If it can't reach the servers to do that, you're poop out of luck. One of those things nobody thinks about (consumer or developer) until it all goes tits up, so hopefully that'll also get fixed in the future.

Yeah I just figured it saved some of your progress locally so you could actually play offline. Zen has a different idea of offline than I do.

 

[MadScience2006]

Even with the servers down shouldn’t we be able to play? I thought two stars got us play offline on the tables.

Well the game does have to sign you in at first to check for that option. If it can't reach the servers to do that, you're poop out of luck. One of those things nobody thinks about (consumer or developer) until it all goes tits up, so hopefully that'll also get fixed in the future.

You can still do offline play if the servers are down (provided you have unlocked the offline play mode).

Just disconnect from Wi-Fi on your device, also disable cellular data for the Williams Pinball app since if Wi-Fi is disabled, it will try to connect via cellular as a second means to connect to the Zen servers. You do have to hit "Cancel" to continue to the offline aspect of the game if it can't connect due to no internet.

 

[grashopper]

You can still do offline play if the servers are down (provided you have unlocked the offline play mode).

Just disconnect from Wi-Fi on your device, also disable cellular data for the Williams Pinball app since if Wi-Fi is disabled, it will try to connect via cellular as a second means to connect to the Zen servers. You do have to hit "Cancel" to continue to the offline aspect of the game if it can't connect, due to no internet.

Tried that but it now shows I have zero progress. I’m guessing when it couldn’t connect when I started it the first time it saved over the local data and now it thinks I have nothing

 

[shutyertrap]

You can still do offline play if the servers are down (provided you have unlocked the offline play mode).

Just disconnect from Wi-Fi on your device, also disable cellular data for the Williams Pinball app since if Wi-Fi is disabled, it will try to connect via cellular as a second means to connect to the Zen servers. You do have to hit "Cancel" to continue to the offline aspect of the game if it can't connect due to no internet.

Nope, shows I don’t own a single table, have a single coin or ticket. This is probably because I already got blanked from the non server. Had I not opened the app and turned off cell data and wi-fi, then this might have worked. Too late now, gotta wait for Monday.

 

[twopossums]

Well it looks like they filled that weekend position. Lol. The game is back up.

The thing about not being able to play when the server is down is that I know I can play without internet connection so why does the server being down matter? I think the app is getting some sort of information. Be it that it thinks it connects and then when it doesn’t get any info on you it reverts back to you not having unlocked anything or what? I’m curious if closing out the app and then turning on airplane mode would allow you to play or if your screwed once the app reverts until the server is back up.

 

[grashopper]

Mine stayed screwed up. As a test I popped it up on my iPad after losing it on my phone. With airplane on it worked on the tables I had over two stars on. Loading it with airplane mode off it lost all of the tables then I closed the app and turned airplane back on and was still missing all progress.

 

[twopossums]

Dang. So I guess my theory is somewhat correct. The app must reach out to the server and doesn’t check if the server is up it just probably has a time limit or something to get back info on you. When it gets nothing the app assumes you’re new and bumps you back to a new user until the server tells it otherwise. No server , no new info on you. I had noticed that the time before when this happened my app redownloaded all the tables. Hopefully the fix this soon (or stop their servers from going down so much)