When Trion introduced the Trove Adventures update it was supposed to improve clubs. To some extent, this has happened, but things were introduced that kill clubs.
These features coupled with members not bothering to log in or actually complete adventures is what gives the huge clubs a massive advantage. Members of the huge clubs get faster to the better fixtures and club levels. The members who care, end up flocking to the clubs that advertise a club level higher than 1.
The club killers are the following features:
1. Being able to change your displayed club only once every 24 hours. This also prevents being able to see any club messages of any other joined clubs of the total of five clubs.
2. Club levels take a long time if only one or two members of a club make an effort, especially if those members are only casual players who only play one to two hours at most per day.
3. Fixtures are the main causes of clubs being killed. They provide bonuses, but to upgrade them or to buy new fixtures, a club level of 4 is needed and a lot of Clubits.
Nice features are:
1. More member levels and being able to set permissions.
2. Fixtures bonuses if the club is big.
Expected side effects:
1. More players stopping to play Trove.
2. Even more dead clubs.
3. Possibly some more "elite" clubs appearing eventually.
Thursday, December 21, 2017
Thursday, November 23, 2017
The incompetence of Nedbank MFC
A bit more than one year ago, I was involved with helping my tenants to buy a small motor vehicle. In this case, the financial organisation involved is MFC which is a division of Nedbank.
The problems started in the very first month after initial payment where MFC messed up the date of the debit order and tried to withdraw money on a date when there was no money on the account. This had repercussions down the line because of being behind with payments according to MFC when in the meantime, the debit order happened before salary was paid into the account. Multiple attempts to correct this debit order date have failed. Payments are done manually every month since then.
Another major annoyance is when asking at the bank, the bank says that payments are up to date, but MFC calls me about payments being in arrears. This is a timing issue as far as I can tell. The arrears amount suddenly showed up even when the statement shows payments were done.
Lately, MFC has decided to call me daily, always a different person on the phone. After a verification process, I end up having to tell that person the long saga. A few times I have been told to send an email to a particular email address to get a consent form. I tried that four times over months with no response while the calls keep on coming. The consent form is needed to allow MFC calling the person who does the payments.
Recently, I started sending complaints, sent inquiries and emailed the specified email address daily. After three days, I suddenly had three people responding by email. Even after sending the third party details, I still end up getting daily calls.
All that MFC seems to see is that payments are in arrears. That monthly payments happen, seems to be ignored. They also do not seem to be happy with the plan to pay more monthly in order to get rid of this mysterious arrears amount. They call me daily about payment, while a plan is in place to sort out their mess, but they punish me for it.
If I had known that MFC has an antiquated silo system and does not stick to their own system, I would have avoided them completely.
Update 15 January 2018:
The call center people have yet again started calling me weekly. Nobody seems to tell them about the consent form that I filled in and sent.
Original publish date: 23 November 2017
The problems started in the very first month after initial payment where MFC messed up the date of the debit order and tried to withdraw money on a date when there was no money on the account. This had repercussions down the line because of being behind with payments according to MFC when in the meantime, the debit order happened before salary was paid into the account. Multiple attempts to correct this debit order date have failed. Payments are done manually every month since then.
Another major annoyance is when asking at the bank, the bank says that payments are up to date, but MFC calls me about payments being in arrears. This is a timing issue as far as I can tell. The arrears amount suddenly showed up even when the statement shows payments were done.
Lately, MFC has decided to call me daily, always a different person on the phone. After a verification process, I end up having to tell that person the long saga. A few times I have been told to send an email to a particular email address to get a consent form. I tried that four times over months with no response while the calls keep on coming. The consent form is needed to allow MFC calling the person who does the payments.
Recently, I started sending complaints, sent inquiries and emailed the specified email address daily. After three days, I suddenly had three people responding by email. Even after sending the third party details, I still end up getting daily calls.
All that MFC seems to see is that payments are in arrears. That monthly payments happen, seems to be ignored. They also do not seem to be happy with the plan to pay more monthly in order to get rid of this mysterious arrears amount. They call me daily about payment, while a plan is in place to sort out their mess, but they punish me for it.
If I had known that MFC has an antiquated silo system and does not stick to their own system, I would have avoided them completely.
Update 15 January 2018:
The call center people have yet again started calling me weekly. Nobody seems to tell them about the consent form that I filled in and sent.
Original publish date: 23 November 2017
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Linux live DVD screen resolution too high
Recently I got hold of a new graphics card after my old card died from overheating. The new card is a NVidia 1060GT with 6GB RAM. It can handle 4K, but my screen cannot.
My big problem is now that the live CDs/DVDs of different Linux distributions all switch to a resolution that is far too high for the screen. Nouveau also complains about an unknown chipset.
A text only distribution like Arch Linux does not have this issue since it does not switch out of text mode.
I have tried various options like modeset=0, nouveau.modeset=0, nvidia.modeset=0 and others, nothing worked.
The following Ubuntu bug report mentions NVidia Pascal chipsets. It looks like I need to get yet again the latest distro to get past this issue.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1602340
Hopefully the latest distro will work. I have used Mint lately which is based on Ubuntu. As long as I can get access to my data, it does not matter what distro is in use.
My big problem is now that the live CDs/DVDs of different Linux distributions all switch to a resolution that is far too high for the screen. Nouveau also complains about an unknown chipset.
A text only distribution like Arch Linux does not have this issue since it does not switch out of text mode.
I have tried various options like modeset=0, nouveau.modeset=0, nvidia.modeset=0 and others, nothing worked.
The following Ubuntu bug report mentions NVidia Pascal chipsets. It looks like I need to get yet again the latest distro to get past this issue.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1602340
Hopefully the latest distro will work. I have used Mint lately which is based on Ubuntu. As long as I can get access to my data, it does not matter what distro is in use.
Friday, January 13, 2017
Regular fitness levels
As I am getting older, I realise that staying fit is quite important. Fortunately, I travel on foot daily between home, train station and work. This forces me to travel close to 5km daily. In the evenings I usually also cycle a bit just to train other muscles.
Recently I was on a two-week vacation. This week I got to see just how unfit I have become. Today I finally have several sore leg and back muscles. With time, this will not be a problem anymore.
Lesson learned: Do regular exercise, especially while waiting for something else to finish.
Recently I was on a two-week vacation. This week I got to see just how unfit I have become. Today I finally have several sore leg and back muscles. With time, this will not be a problem anymore.
Lesson learned: Do regular exercise, especially while waiting for something else to finish.
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