I think this is clearly the problem. There is no reason why players should be kept out of the process.
But there is.
Each customer has an idea, how something is done best. But:
Some have only their own best in mind. Some don't think their ideas through. Some have clearly no idea how some things work. Some just are completely emotional and not reasonable. But most think, that being included in a process means, that every feedback and every idea will have to be made real.
My work is at direct customer service for a bank, mostly providing direct solutions for problems, and I non-stop get told "good ideas how everything can be made better" and ideas for "things that are very important to every customer", which simply can not be realized, or, at least not be realized without changing another thing that "also is very important". And trying to reason is futile about 70% of the time. Arguments like "It's against the law." are simply ignored.
Most of the time, a big problem is, that most of the customers don't understand the profit-making nature of companies or the problems with complex processes. And employees don't have the time to explain these thing to every one (also many customers don't have the time, too)
After seeing feedback of players on these forums, I don't see much difference between them and said customers, except, perhaps, that my customers seem to be more reasonable. (Though, happily there are some welcome exceptions here ^^)
With that in mind and the "Whatever Cryptic says can and will be used against them" attitude I can understand, why we do not get involved very much and communication is rare.
I also think, that a company can profit from regular customer feedback, especially one that "sells" MMOs. There are many players who spend more time playtesting everything and finding ways to "bend the rules" than any the of developers ever could. But it's no simple thing and has some risks.
This is a really drastic representation though, we are not asking them to give everyone free money or break the law... and we are not asking them to stop putting out payed content, most of us enjoy that, what we don't like is not being informed when they make major game breaking or game fixing changes without even the courtesy of a reach-around. Last week they changed wheel of elements to a mitigatable damage, meaning everyone that spent millions on that artifact would have had to replace it.. and it wasn't mentioned in the preview or patch changes, it just flew under the radar with this "if we don't tell them maybe they won't notice and we won't have to deal with the comments (good or bad)..." attitude. How immature is that for a company to detest positive and negative feedback so much that they hide things that are obviously major changes from their player base. That is just one thing they did this with but the list of "ninja" patches are so long that we actually have a terminology and forum dedicated to representing all the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> they are either too scared or too inconsiderate to put out to the public.
Again we are not asking for a one on one... we don't want them to take every single post as law either, we want them to glance over the forum a couple times a week and see that there are between 10-50 posts a day on broken enchantments, and exactly how they are broken and possible fixes... every... single.. day. When feytouched was broken they took almost a month to fix it posting that they "had no idea how the bug worked"... even when at the time of that post the most commented on feedback thread was about the feytouched and EXACTLY how to reproduce the effect of the bug. That is negligence... even as I post this I know that as valid as my concerns are the odds of them reaching the developers eyes are nearly 200% less than the odds of them being deleted by a moderator who (god bless them) are just trying to keep the forums civil, but sometimes can insight even more animosity about certain very important topics...
So ultimately we don't expect overnight and direct solutions to every issue posted, and for them to impliment every quality of life change ever suggested good or bad over the past 2 years... but it would be nice to know that the most glaring and obvious game breaking and frustrating issues in the game are at the very least acknowledged as a problem. Instead of feeling like when thursday comes around we will get a patch about them doubling the boss health of lostmauth because they felt it was "too easy" instead of fixing the things we are supposed to be using to defeat those bosses. They make this whole process nearly intolerable by not taking into account that the people posting on the forums care about the game, maybe far more than they do... and we play it way more than they could possibly have time to. So while from a developer standpoint we may not always know what is best, we can certainly provide insight into what they could look into and find solutions for. We are not mad because they do the wrong thing trying to fix known issues, we are mad because they do NOTHING in those instances.
you catch more flies with honey than vinager,yeah right.but not here the flies here care more about the money than your honey or vinager
I can see the game is still in bad shape
They have an army of volunteer employees. When a new patch come out everyone floods the preview server to check it out. Listen to them.
Well the preview server is really only used to make sure the server will boot up on live. When was the last time anyone saw them go oh wait there's a huge bug on preview let's hold off. Mod 5 we all reported the stacking SOD to kill bosses in 10 seconds. Next week its on live
I think this is clearly the problem. There is no reason why players should be kept out of the process.
But there is.
Each customer has an idea, how something is done best. But:
Some have only their own best in mind. Some don't think their ideas through. Some have clearly no idea how some things work. Some just are completely emotional and not reasonable. But most think, that being included in a process means, that every feedback and every idea will have to be made real.
My work is at direct customer service for a bank, mostly providing direct solutions for problems, and I non-stop get told "good ideas how everything can be made better" and ideas for "things that are very important to every customer", which simply can not be realized, or, at least not be realized without changing another thing that "also is very important". And trying to reason is futile about 70% of the time. Arguments like "It's against the law." are simply ignored.
Most of the time, a big problem is, that most of the customers don't understand the profit-making nature of companies or the problems with complex processes. And employees don't have the time to explain these thing to every one (also many customers don't have the time, too)
After seeing feedback of players on these forums, I don't see much difference between them and said customers, except, perhaps, that my customers seem to be more reasonable. (Though, happily there are some welcome exceptions here ^^)
With that in mind and the "Whatever Cryptic says can and will be used against them" attitude I can understand, why we do not get involved very much and communication is rare.
I also think, that a company can profit from regular customer feedback, especially one that "sells" MMOs. There are many players who spend more time playtesting everything and finding ways to "bend the rules" than any the of developers ever could. But it's no simple thing and has some risks.
This is a really drastic representation though, we are not asking them to give everyone free money or break the law... and we are not asking them to stop putting out payed content, most of us enjoy that, what we don't like is not being informed when they make major game breaking or game fixing changes without even the courtesy of a reach-around. Last week they changed wheel of elements to a mitigatable damage, meaning everyone that spent millions on that artifact would have had to replace it.. and it wasn't mentioned in the preview or patch changes, it just flew under the radar with this "if we don't tell them maybe they won't notice and we won't have to deal with the comments (good or bad)..." attitude. How immature is that for a company to detest positive and negative feedback so much that they hide things that are obviously major changes from their player base. That is just one thing they did this with but the list of "ninja" patches are so long that we actually have a terminology and forum dedicated to representing all the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> they are either too scared or too inconsiderate to put out to the public.
Again we are not asking for a one on one... we don't want them to take every single post as law either, we want them to glance over the forum a couple times a week and see that there are between 10-50 posts a day on broken enchantments, and exactly how they are broken and possible fixes... every... single.. day. When feytouched was broken they took almost a month to fix it posting that they "had no idea how the bug worked"... even when at the time of that post the most commented on feedback thread was about the feytouched and EXACTLY how to reproduce the effect of the bug. That is negligence... even as I post this I know that as valid as my concerns are the odds of them reaching the developers eyes are nearly 200% less than the odds of them being deleted by a moderator who (god bless them) are just trying to keep the forums civil, but sometimes can insight even more animosity about certain very important topics...
So ultimately we don't expect overnight and direct solutions to every issue posted, and for them to impliment every quality of life change ever suggested good or bad over the past 2 years... but it would be nice to know that the most glaring and obvious game breaking and frustrating issues in the game are at the very least acknowledged as a problem. Instead of feeling like when thursday comes around we will get a patch about them doubling the boss health of lostmauth because they felt it was "too easy" instead of fixing the things we are supposed to be using to defeat those bosses. They make this whole process nearly intolerable by not taking into account that the people posting on the forums care about the game, maybe far more than they do... and we play it way more than they could possibly have time to. So while from a developer standpoint we may not always know what is best, we can certainly provide insight into what they could look into and find solutions for. We are not mad because they do the wrong thing trying to fix known issues, we are mad because they do NOTHING in those instances.
I think, you misinterpreted some parts of my comment a little bit. Let me try to explain:
First, let me say, that "including players into processes" is not the same as "informing players about changes made to the game". Incomplete patchnotes and ninja-nerfs are a bad thing to do. I'm completely on your side with that. (Though I would detain from presuming why they did that, as simple things like someone using copy/paste has been proved as a possible reason for mistakes ^^)
My examples of personal experience are just an examples. Naturally the demands here are not exactly the same.
But still, many player's demands are very narrow-sighted, egoistic, irrational, ridiculous, and from time to time outright stupid. Just take a look at all the "XYZ is OP" posts. So far every class has been covered (except perhaps the Warlock)
That's mostly, because they are posted by people, who are emotional (which is not a bad thing, considering it shows passion for the game), don't have the needed information about internal processes of the company or simply lack experience in life.
Though it's understandable and only human, it still makes much input by players worthless.
Another problem is, that you speak of what YOU expect. And it probably also includes a small number of like-minded individuals who share your experiences and common sense. But we are speaking of players as a whole. And the majority does not react well, when their ideas get rejected. Even when you take the time to explain them. And even without counting them, there still is a score of people, who answer every slight to their fragile ego with as much force as they can muster.
Take all the charges of people, who do something stupid and then try to sue someone else to compensate. Even though many of these charges won't be successful, they generate so much work and negative press, that often companies are forced to forego everything and grant them money so they shut up.
This is, why communication from a company is a difficult thing and often saying something is worse than silence.
Then there is another thing to consider. Human psyche is weird. We tend to do instinct-driven irrational things that harm us on a daily base.
One thing, that happens in our mind, is, that we tend to interpret things the way we want to, not the way they are said. And if you say "We are aware, that there is a problem and will investigate, if and how we can solve it as fast as possible" then many people will understand something like "We are aware, that it is our fault, that there is a problem, will solve it in the next 2-3 days and compensate you for your inconvenience". Now imagine, what happens, if the investigation takes more than 3 days (first complaints will come after 24 hours), and if the answer is, that the problem can not be solved?
And at last:
"had no idea how the bug worked" - Reproducing a bug does not mean, that you understand how it works, which is needed, to know where the coding went wrong. (But a good example of us interpreting things, that are not necessarily right ^^)
I hope, you forgive me this small piece of nitpicking, but I just had to. Otherwise I probably would not be able to sleep well. XD
Yes. "including players into processes" is not taking everyone's rage in. It is about telling players from time to time what's on your "to fix" agenda and, if possible, how you plan on fixing. Let me give an example:
About a month ago, the devs could have posted: "Hey, we see that people rush from level 60 to 70 much faster than we have content. We are thinking about either lowering the quest and mob rewards in the elemental evil content to 1 XP per quest/mob or raising the xp needed for a level by 4000%. What do you think?" About 20 pages of dragon-breath-hot discussion later they could have announced to go with "only" a 250% increase. Happy feelings on player side ("devs are talking to us, even listening a bit") and dev side ("took us 10 minutes to do those posts and changed nothing about our plans").
But no. That change was even stealthed through the "day before" patch notes. And the (very expected) opinion on player side was "why change that? there was no problem to fix there?" and "why hide that from us, even in the patch notes?"
Simple communication plan:
(1) Explain the problem
(2) Ask for feedback on a proposed solution
(3) Check if maybe the players see an unexpected problem with the proposal
(4) Say thank you
(5) Put the implemented solution in the patch notes
Takes an hour at most if you're doing it for appearances only; or as long as you like if you do step 3 for real.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
I could imagine how hard it is for a moderator to "look" into a players eyes and say that "We are awere of the bug" and know that dev aint doin' anything 'bout it
Except that is not what I said at all.
I said I wasn't sure if there was a fix coming at that time. All I knew is that Andy did bring it to the developers attention.
Since the time of that post I know that issue is being fixed. I have no problem telling people the most direct information I can unless people decide to say I said something completely different than I said.
I was (key word "was") a NWO junkie. I played every spare moment I had, and put a lot of real money onto it as well. Mod 5 was a turning point for me as WoD was not an easy area to do as a low GS at first, but it made me want to get better, and get the faster mounts, and better enchants and runes. Not to mention that every class was playable in all areas, some had more difficulties then others of cousre, but it was very reasonable to manage, so i created one of each toon, and had a BLAST doing it. Then came Mod 6, and everything changed. I have no idea why they would fix the things that were not an issue/nor broken, and continue to leave the broken/bugged things in place. I am not an IT person, I have no idea what it takes to create or manage an Online game, but, as the owner of a small company, I do know that if you give people something they really like, they will keep coming back for more, and if it works, DON'T FIX IT. Well, they did the exact opposite, they handed us something most of us don't like, and continued to make it even worse. I would only expect it to keep going in this direction with all new content.
IMHO,from what i have read in the past and have played... Cryptic/PW made the changes the way they did for mod 6, to put us back in the real or as real of a D&D experiance as posible....ie Groupingcontent....and i mean Groups. A lot of the old content could be soloed if you had the right gear...Alot of the old zones could be soloed, some had troubles doing that and others had no problem. Also im sure that they noticed over the last 5 mods people were not spending a lot of real money. Well, i am sure that the wales were still spending..The average player was not....Just farm the AD and then turn that into Z. Same goes for these events....How do you get people to spend real money, and <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> them off at the same time. Make things more grindy. Some people when they see that. They are like hell no and either leave the event or what Cryptic and PW really count on are people spending there money or evey AD to get the Z items so they dont have to spend time grinding. Just another way for them to make money.
Personaly im now up in the air about NW......I deleted my toons a while ago and dont know if i really want to start over again if I am not the one that is in charge of how i max out my own toon and have to rely on others for the help.....Dont get me wrong i liked D&D when i was a kid and all and i loved the whole group thing then....Now I have a lot of other things that i have to way into deciding things....ie RL. I like the concept of NW but not really how it have been put together for Mod 6.....Taking control away for the players was a real bad step in my eyes....
But I suppose you would agree, that sorting accounts by date and cleaning the floor before calling the fire department when the building is burning, are some really screwed priorities.
Yes, I would agree, though I can't see the connection. So far, there is no life at risk, so these two examples are difficult to apply.
But even then, please be aware, that every priority is made for reasons, and we possibly don't know at least the half of them, so some of them seem "not right" to us at the moment.
I also am not happy, with how some things go and I myself wish for better communication (at least in the sense of better PR management). But still the most comments in the forums are not fit for being taken seriously by Cryptic and trying to understand them at least a little bit can overall improve our ability to actually make them listen.
I think this is clearly the problem. There is no reason why players should be kept out of the process.
But there is.
Each customer has an idea, how something is done best. But:
Some have only their own best in mind. Some don't think their ideas through. Some have clearly no idea how some things work. Some just are completely emotional and not reasonable. But most think, that being included in a process means, that every feedback and every idea will have to be made real.
My work is at direct customer service for a bank, mostly providing direct solutions for problems, and I non-stop get told "good ideas how everything can be made better" and ideas for "things that are very important to every customer", which simply can not be realized, or, at least not be realized without changing another thing that "also is very important". And trying to reason is futile about 70% of the time. Arguments like "It's against the law." are simply ignored.
Most of the time, a big problem is, that most of the customers don't understand the profit-making nature of companies or the problems with complex processes. And employees don't have the time to explain these thing to every one (also many customers don't have the time, too)
After seeing feedback of players on these forums, I don't see much difference between them and said customers, except, perhaps, that my customers seem to be more reasonable. (Though, happily there are some welcome exceptions here ^^)
With that in mind and the "Whatever Cryptic says can and will be used against them" attitude I can understand, why we do not get involved very much and communication is rare.
I also think, that a company can profit from regular customer feedback, especially one that "sells" MMOs. There are many players who spend more time playtesting everything and finding ways to "bend the rules" than any the of developers ever could. But it's no simple thing and has some risks.
This is a really drastic representation though, we are not asking them to give everyone free money or break the law... and we are not asking them to stop putting out payed content, most of us enjoy that, what we don't like is not being informed when they make major game breaking or game fixing changes without even the courtesy of a reach-around. Last week they changed wheel of elements to a mitigatable damage, meaning everyone that spent millions on that artifact would have had to replace it.. and it wasn't mentioned in the preview or patch changes, it just flew under the radar with this "if we don't tell them maybe they won't notice and we won't have to deal with the comments (good or bad)..." attitude. How immature is that for a company to detest positive and negative feedback so much that they hide things that are obviously major changes from their player base. That is just one thing they did this with but the list of "ninja" patches are so long that we actually have a terminology and forum dedicated to representing all the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> they are either too scared or too inconsiderate to put out to the public.
Again we are not asking for a one on one... we don't want them to take every single post as law either, we want them to glance over the forum a couple times a week and see that there are between 10-50 posts a day on broken enchantments, and exactly how they are broken and possible fixes... every... single.. day. When feytouched was broken they took almost a month to fix it posting that they "had no idea how the bug worked"... even when at the time of that post the most commented on feedback thread was about the feytouched and EXACTLY how to reproduce the effect of the bug. That is negligence... even as I post this I know that as valid as my concerns are the odds of them reaching the developers eyes are nearly 200% less than the odds of them being deleted by a moderator who (god bless them) are just trying to keep the forums civil, but sometimes can insight even more animosity about certain very important topics...
So ultimately we don't expect overnight and direct solutions to every issue posted, and for them to impliment every quality of life change ever suggested good or bad over the past 2 years... but it would be nice to know that the most glaring and obvious game breaking and frustrating issues in the game are at the very least acknowledged as a problem. Instead of feeling like when thursday comes around we will get a patch about them doubling the boss health of lostmauth because they felt it was "too easy" instead of fixing the things we are supposed to be using to defeat those bosses. They make this whole process nearly intolerable by not taking into account that the people posting on the forums care about the game, maybe far more than they do... and we play it way more than they could possibly have time to. So while from a developer standpoint we may not always know what is best, we can certainly provide insight into what they could look into and find solutions for. We are not mad because they do the wrong thing trying to fix known issues, we are mad because they do NOTHING in those instances.
I think, you misinterpreted some parts of my comment a little bit. Let me try to explain:
First, let me say, that "including players into processes" is not the same as "informing players about changes made to the game". Incomplete patchnotes and ninja-nerfs are a bad thing to do. I'm completely on your side with that. (Though I would detain from presuming why they did that, as simple things like someone using copy/paste has been proved as a possible reason for mistakes ^^)
My examples of personal experience are just an examples. Naturally the demands here are not exactly the same.
But still, many player's demands are very narrow-sighted, egoistic, irrational, ridiculous, and from time to time outright stupid. Just take a look at all the "XYZ is OP" posts. So far every class has been covered (except perhaps the Warlock)
That's mostly, because they are posted by people, who are emotional (which is not a bad thing, considering it shows passion for the game), don't have the needed information about internal processes of the company or simply lack experience in life.
Though it's understandable and only human, it still makes much input by players worthless.
Another problem is, that you speak of what YOU expect. And it probably also includes a small number of like-minded individuals who share your experiences and common sense. But we are speaking of players as a whole. And the majority does not react well, when their ideas get rejected. Even when you take the time to explain them. And even without counting them, there still is a score of people, who answer every slight to their fragile ego with as much force as they can muster.
Take all the charges of people, who do something stupid and then try to sue someone else to compensate. Even though many of these charges won't be successful, they generate so much work and negative press, that often companies are forced to forego everything and grant them money so they shut up.
This is, why communication from a company is a difficult thing and often saying something is worse than silence.
Then there is another thing to consider. Human psyche is weird. We tend to do instinct-driven irrational things that harm us on a daily base.
One thing, that happens in our mind, is, that we tend to interpret things the way we want to, not the way they are said. And if you say "We are aware, that there is a problem and will investigate, if and how we can solve it as fast as possible" then many people will understand something like "We are aware, that it is our fault, that there is a problem, will solve it in the next 2-3 days and compensate you for your inconvenience". Now imagine, what happens, if the investigation takes more than 3 days (first complaints will come after 24 hours), and if the answer is, that the problem can not be solved?
And at last:
"had no idea how the bug worked" - Reproducing a bug does not mean, that you understand how it works, which is needed, to know where the coding went wrong. (But a good example of us interpreting things, that are not necessarily right ^^)
I hope, you forgive me this small piece of nitpicking, but I just had to. Otherwise I probably would not be able to sleep well. XD
Responding, they wanted to know how to re-create the bug in game, so they could test it. It was not a mis-interpretation they just did not read the forums ^^. When somebody made an effort to contact them outside of support in response to the comment about not being able to reproduce the bug, they were able to fix it quickly and thanked the user, so nit-picking or not this would be a better example of why them reading the forums is a necessary evil.
As for the rest of the post, I am well aware that humans are an unreliable source, however they are often a good source of navigational data. Choosing what to do about bugs is up to the developers, finding them is something else. We could in fact help them accurately identify many issues in the game that are unknown to them because they don't read the forums often, if ever.
They used to have a "class advocate" group that specifically targeted and made cases for their class, and while this may have looked good on paper, in essence it was the wrong way to go, because whoever was more charismatic, or political could shift things towards their favorite class. That being said, they should have community managers, not just forum moderators, who are in DIRECT contact with the developers and can note to them very serious issues in an instant, if they have them, they are not using the data provided properly. If they don't have them they need them, simple as that.
This sort of data given to the devs is important, and providing some sort of validation to a rather dis-enfranchised community would seek to help with some of the animosity that people feel towards the devs that to us are currently a mystery team of random change making gnomes that nobody knows...
Ultimately I think we have similar ideas, but not exactly, I believe that players misinterpreting information is part of the process, it will always happen... but the ability to make a great game relies on them being able to use the information given without having an emotional response to particularly bashing posts.
If a user says something angry like for example "TRS are so <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> dumb piercing damage out the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> kills everyone in an instant and the developers are too stupid to see it"
This sounds bad, but it does provide some data they might have needed to know and could use to help create a better game. They could have seen the shadowy opportunity damage issues long before, and maybe even seen a larger problem with a type of damage that negates an entire stat tree, but instead they would write this off as raging... so what you need is someone who can skim through this stuff with an objective eye, and provide feedback to the developers without the riff raff.
A possible solution to this might be a team of forum junkies, whatever they want to name them, who have a decent track record, putting "bites" of information into a google repository of ideas. Simple things like.
Negation Transcendant Effect does not function
Transcendant vorpal is applying a 4% debuff in damage, rather than a 2% buff
These simple lines of information would then be marked by the developers as:
Unread
Read
Currently In Progress
High Priority
Low Priorty
Requires More Information
Tested and Intended
Then a small line for developer comments, like "we need to know how to reproduce this" so the team could go gather this information and update the section.
This is just an idea, but I know of many loyal neverwinter fans who spend a lot of their time theory crafting and testing that would be happy to provide some of this information to the developer.
Sometimes it's the small details that make you shake your head. For example, a couple of weeks ago there was a nice long downtime. Now, without knowing any numbers, I'd still guess that Germany is the first or second biggest non english speaking player base. That downtime was on a German public holiday. Prime time, starting 4 pm going through the whole evening.
If I was running a game, I'd have a calendar with all the public holidays of my top10 areas...and I'd avoid doing any maintenance on those days like the plague.
If I told you "hey, I smell smoke" , would you investigate a little? If I later said, "hey, I SEE smoke over there" *pointing* would you look were I was pointing and if confirmed take preventive action? If I, a short time later said " OMG the buildings on FIRE! Evacuate everyone, I'll call the fire dept." Would you, seeing the flames, do just that, gather everyone up and get out?
That would be a REASONABLE reaction right? Smell smoke, investigate, see it, get a extinguisher, see flames licking the walls evacuate and call the fire dept.
If you weren't prone to simply believing me, at a minimum you would INVESTIGATE, CONFIRM, TAKE ACTION. You need not believe I was a "boy-cries-wolf" type of person if you saw it yourself.
So mass amounts of players have reported stability issues and bugs, not just one, tons! What should be the appropriate response? Mass amounts of players have informed the Devs that they smell and see smoke, that they actually see the building on fire. Should they call in the fire squad to fight the fire?
That's not what they do here, they are aware that the game is burning and they announce future content that they are oh-so-excited about. They announce "balancing" and "tweaks" to class mechanics and economics. They gleefully announce one holiday event after another, and CTA etc. They introduce stealth nerfs etc. that enrages the witnesses further.
They are in effect doing like the old expression goes:
NERO played his fiddle as ROME BURNED.
They brag about their musical prowess as they watch everything go the hell.
They do little to nothing to mitigate the glaring problems reported to them and continue on with the party.
So at what point do they get to the realization, that they understand that the STABILITY ISSUES AND THE BUGS is the building on fire? That they quit with the oh-so-gushy-look-what-new-shiny-we-just-done! stuff and actually knuckle down and devote the "content" time to "fix it" time?
Does the emperor have to actually be dragged out into the streets and the mob beat him to a bloody pulp for them to get it?
I'm polishing my club NW Devs, it's almost mob time, get your sensory rich collective protuberances (heads) out of your posteriors (butts).
IDEA:
I got an idea, another game I play had an idea that seems to at least work a tad. They have a player advocate system, the advocate is a player in good standing that is elected for a 3 month term. The advocate is the intermediary for the player base and the Devs. He/She scans the forums to see current trends in problems or ideas. Takes note of player problems and bugs etc. If there is something specific of urgent nature, they through their office "elevate" the information to the Devs.
The advocate attends (via team speak, ventrilo etc.) weekly meetings with the Devs to bring to their attention game breaking things or trending problems etc. They sort of distill all the info from forums etc. to bullet point it to the Devs. Then after meeting with the Devs, they disseminate the info back from the Devs to the players. Keeping the players in touch and informed. So like this weeks problems are presented to the Devs, and last weeks problems are acted on or at least confirmed that they are aware and working on it back to the Advocate. The Advocate then distills that info and passes it on to the players.
One of the big complaints that I see again and again, besides the stability stuff is the communication problems, they keep people in the dark all the time frustrating people and pissing them off. While a Advocate isn't a perfect solution, it would go a long way to address at least that problem, communication between the players and Devs, prioritizing the truely biggies and getting a response.
Responding, they wanted to know how to re-create the bug in game, so they could test it. It was not a mis-interpretation they just did not read the forums ^^. When somebody made an effort to contact them outside of support in response to the comment about not being able to reproduce the bug, they were able to fix it quickly and thanked the user, so nit-picking or not this would be a better example of why them reading the forums is a necessary evil.
I was not aware of that, so I have to apologise.
That, indeed is not very professional and could have been prevented (they even would have saved some time and work).
As for the rest of the post, I am well aware that humans are an unreliable source, however they are often a good source of navigational data. Choosing what to do about bugs is up to the developers, finding them is something else. We could in fact help them accurately identify many issues in the game that are unknown to them because they don't read the forums often, if ever.
They used to have a "class advocate" group that specifically targeted and made cases for their class, and while this may have looked good on paper, in essence it was the wrong way to go, because whoever was more charismatic, or political could shift things towards their favorite class. That being said, they should have community managers, not just forum moderators, who are in DIRECT contact with the developers and can note to them very serious issues in an instant, if they have them, they are not using the data provided properly. If they don't have them they need them, simple as that.
This sort of data given to the devs is important, and providing some sort of validation to a rather dis-enfranchised community would seek to help with some of the animosity that people feel towards the devs that to us are currently a mystery team of random change making gnomes that nobody knows...
Ultimately I think we have similar ideas, but not exactly, I believe that players misinterpreting information is part of the process, it will always happen... but the ability to make a great game relies on them being able to use the information given without having an emotional response to particularly bashing posts.
If a user says something angry like for example "TRS are so <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> dumb piercing damage out the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> kills everyone in an instant and the developers are too stupid to see it"
This sounds bad, but it does provide some data they might have needed to know and could use to help create a better game. They could have seen the shadowy opportunity damage issues long before, and maybe even seen a larger problem with a type of damage that negates an entire stat tree, but instead they would write this off as raging... so what you need is someone who can skim through this stuff with an objective eye, and provide feedback to the developers without the riff raff.
A possible solution to this might be a team of forum junkies, whatever they want to name them, who have a decent track record, putting "bites" of information into a google repository of ideas. Simple things like.
Negation Transcendant Effect does not function
Transcendant vorpal is applying a 4% debuff in damage, rather than a 2% buff
These simple lines of information would then be marked by the developers as:
Unread
Read
Currently In Progress
High Priority
Low Priorty
Requires More Information
Tested and Intended
Then a small line for developer comments, like "we need to know how to reproduce this" so the team could go gather this information and update the section.
This is just an idea, but I know of many loyal neverwinter fans who spend a lot of their time theory crafting and testing that would be happy to provide some of this information to the developer.
Regarding the positives of taking customers feedback seriously and direct communication with the customer we have nearly the same ideas. Both is very important to be a successful company nowadays. We have many different ways to communicate and the building of communities with these is very easy.
Still there is the problem, that communicating with customers is a risky thing. It's possible, but I understand, why so many are a bit shy on this.
Regardin player's feedback:
I was under the impression, that they already browse the forums, have bug lists and also get supported by the Community Managers. It seems, the problem is not being aware of the wishes and bugs, but having the time and capacities to address all problems as fast as we like. I think, I remember a thread, where a spokesperson of the company already said, that they were aware of many bugs but still had to release the mod because strategic management wanted them to.
The priorities and us not able to understand them, this is a big part of the problem and I think the one, which has the best chances to be solved.
For that, better communication could be helpful and with that we both definitiley agree
But the question is: Are they willing to take the risks? And do they have the manpower for all the additional work?
I like your idea, though it seems to involve a lot of work....
1. There is no fire and there are no lives at risk. So the priorities aren't the same.
2. There is no fire department or any other external source of guaranteed help
3. It is possible, that they already investigated and are trying to put out the fire for some time now, but do not have the resources needed, to extinguish it / are not able to extinguish it because it is not possible at the moment
I, for example was freed of many lagging issues by first finding a mistake on my side (the settings on my laptop had been changed) and more of that vanished after they announced solving some issues that generated lag some patches ago. Since then I had no real problems with lag (except sometimes at Lostmauth, where the group had to wipe, the everpresent lag at Malabog's Castle and sometimes at Tiamat).
So they clearly addressed and solved some of the more crucial issues and I would say, they already understood.
But do you understand, how many players have left the game, not due to lags but due to other problems, which perhaps are not as important to you?
I completely understand how many left etc. I even am happy, that for you, with the exception of the few instances you mention the game got better for you.
And yes I have a certain self interest...don't we all?
But in my defense, as to the importance to me, I'm not alone, peruse the forums a tad and you will see multiple accounts of not just me but large multiples of players experiencing stability issues. Not just I, but many, many "I";s wish this addressed as a priority not as a "to-be-ignored-as-a-lone-griper fashion"
As to my fire dept. comments, it's called an analogy. Not to be taken literal but as an example.
In my example, when you observed a threat you would take measures, "appropriate" behaviour. I was highlighting the proper train of response, you would:
1.OBSERVE (hey PW/Cryptic, I seem to be getting ever increasing lag from each patch).
2.CONFIRM ( hey Devs, it's not just him, I too am having these issues (x1000s) @ this stage Devs are suppost to check into it and CONFIRM the issues or DISPROVE (false alarm folks..some joker just pulled the alarm, sorry for the racket, carry on).
3.ACT (We at PW/Cryptic have found X.Y. and Z problem, we are currently working on the fix and will announce when we have it under control) (WE at PW/Cryptic have found the answer to the problem and will be deploying that fix on n date and times patch, sorry for the inconvenience.)
As to the analogy of the game burning, it does fit (sort of). If their only product being sold to me isn't functioning correctly, and I'm not the only one getting the product shipped to be un-assembled and nonfunctional, one could argue that the business is in trouble. What you are selling isn't working, as more and more people don't buy it, your company is going to get in bad financial shape, at some point they either go under and have to vacate their 'warehouse" or if they are unscupulous (as they have been shown to be at times) they might hire a arsonist to burn it all down to collect on the insurance. I'm smelling smoke.....anyone else?
Yes, there are no lives at risk, but there are certain levels of priority to products/goods when you are in the service industry.
There is acceptable and there is unacceptable behavior.
If I took your money for a plate of food, ACCEPTABLE would be a plate of what you ordered,wholesome and in a palatable condition (temp, consistancy, flavor, display etc.), you would also EXPECT the food to be in or on a dish to be presented to you, the utensils to consume the food with and a libation that is also palatable to wash it down with. Also, as a good businessman, I would strive to have pleasing surroundings in which you consumed that food in, and would also provide facilities that catered to any companion you might have with you also consuming food. A wise businessperson might include incentives to entice you to return on other occasions, thus generating a continued revenue stream. It's also a real good idea to inquire into what could be improved to make the guest even more satisfied. And strive to incorporate those suggestions in a timely fashion.
What would be UNACCEPTABLE would be food that was rotten, food that was unpalatable (cold, wrong consistancy, bland, over spiced, sloppy and poorly displayed). As you were expecting a plate of food, it would be unacceptable if I just scooped it up and plopped it in your cupped hands. You wouldn't want to come back if I screamed at you, or the establishment had <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> soaked drunkards stumbling into you and coughing in your food. I might expect you not to return and continue my revenue stream if when you complained about any of these lacks in service, I got in your face and with spittle flying told you to <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> off wanker!
So far, Cryptic hasn't plopped food into my hands, the food hasn't been actually rotten per se . But the flavor has been a bit off, so too the consistency has been decidedly INconsistent. While they haven't actually screamed in my face to pissoff! I could have sworn I heard them whisper *wanker* when my back was turned...at least they have ignored the players with they stability issues as if they thought of them as wankers
I know, that it was meant as an analogy. But it still doesn't work very good, because the sense of urgency it convey is not appropriate for our actual situation. Which means, that PWE / Cryptic (which one is responsible?) can afford to set other priorities.
You could say, that the game is burning, but if it fails, then the victims are not the same as in an actual fire, the kind of harm is not the same and the consequences are very different.
What you need is another, more appropriate analogy, but I'm not sure if there is one, that would work and still prove the sense of urgency, that you seem to feel.
But let us leave the analogy behind and set the focus on another thing I mentioned in my last post: "Solving Lags"
There have been horrible performance issues after the launch of Mod 6 and there were many posts in the forums on that topic. Then, some weeks ago they addressed these problems and mentioned some solutions in the patchnotes. Since then the number of posts on that topic has receded.
This shows, that the problem does NOT have a low priority.
Yes, you are right, there are still performance issues. But that is not a sign of low priorities, but just of not being able to solve that yet. It could be connected to something, that needs much time (for example because it has to be implemented without disconnecting the servers for several days) or it could be, that they already work on a solution, or that the number, who have performance problems RELATED to something that the company can influence (because I bet you, that a good number of lag complaints on the forums are an issue with hardware / internet connection of the players) is now smaller than those, that want other problems solved first.
There is many information involved in setting priorities, that we do not have, so it is difficult for us to understand the decisions and priorities of the devs.
My only comment.. is that lag is not on the players end. It is a server based issue. Latency is an issue with client side and the equipment we use. The amount of lag and dc's is equivalent to playing in a 1st beta, and at this point should not be such an issue. Forget content.. fix the platform on which the whole runs it needs a good foundatio before you build on it..Some times it does really seem that the logic used when it comes to this game is ( quoting MP&THG)
"All the kings said I was daft to build a castle in a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em.
It sank into the swamp.
So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp.
So I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp.
But the fourth one stayed up. An' that's what your gonna
get, lad -- the strongest castle in these islands. "
Lag issues are on both ends. On the Cryptics AND the player's.
But since the heavy performance issues right after the launch of Mod 6, many players just began blaming Cryptic instead of looking for a solution on their side, as that was more convenient.
Lag issues are on both ends. On the Cryptics AND the player's.
But since the heavy performance issues right after the launch of Mod 6, many players just began blaming Cryptic instead of looking for a solution on their side, as that was more convenient.
Not everything is Cryptics / PWEs fault.
While I can agree to this in some cases, it becomes obvious that if one has not changed settings on their pc and cryptic releases a new mod that all of a sudden causes more lag than normal, then it is safe to say it has something to do with Cryptic's end and not the users.... especially when a lot of users are reporting zero lag in some areas and ton's in others. I play a few different games and have NO lag in all of them except NW and that is with the graphics tuned down since NW has poorly designed/optimized gfx. All other games (latest/greatest) I can have my gfx turned right up with no issues. It's the core engine and network on Cryptics end that needs to be revamped. I't's rediculous to blame the end users for these issues. There has been consistent lag on the release of every mod since beta so how does that make it the end users issue? Granted, some users do have performance issues on their end, most of it lies with Cryptic's combination of programming and hardware and the ability to maintain it.
Take the extra time to do the job right and it will never come back to bite you in the A**
Not changing the settings does not mean, that the settings are not changed.
I had some lagging problems, because the energy options on my laptop were changed. Don't know how. (It definitely wasn't me)
In another case a guild member had some problems because of a software, that got installed with another game, which influencd the performance of his graphic card.
And in just another case a player suddenly had severe connectivity problems with sudden DCs, even while using a cable. The reason was his neighbour changing his internet provider and then using the same pool of dataflows than him, resulting in less volume at some times.
Sure, its possible that it's the game, but it's also possible that not. And if that is the case and you do nothing except complaining and blaming Cryptic, then it won't get better, regardless of what they do.
Lag issues are on both ends. On the Cryptics AND the player's.
But since the heavy performance issues right after the launch of Mod 6, many players just began blaming Cryptic instead of looking for a solution on their side, as that was more convenient.
Not everything is Cryptics / PWEs fault.
I disagree as rubber banding is not , nor are disconnects caused at the client end, those are directly server issues. If my system can run much higher end graphics heavy mmo type games without a bit of lag or latency.. guess where the problem is?
Not changing the settings does not mean, that the settings are not changed.
I had some lagging problems, because the energy options on my laptop were changed. Don't know how. (It definitely wasn't me)
In another case a guild member had some problems because of a software, that got installed with another game, which influencd the performance of his graphic card.
And in just another case a player suddenly had severe connectivity problems with sudden DCs, even while using a cable. The reason was his neighbour changing his internet provider and then using the same pool of dataflows than him, resulting in less volume at some times.
Sure, its possible that it's the game, but it's also possible that not. And if that is the case and you do nothing except complaining and blaming Cryptic, then it won't get better, regardless of what they do.
KK I get you, not EVERYTHING is their fault. There may be a FEW instances of the customer being wrong, damn few as far as I have seen. But consider this..is is SMART to dismiss your customers problems with a blanket "it's your fault" statement? Or is is WISE to not respond and keep your customer in the dark when they report a problem they are having?
How about this? Dear Sir/Miss/Mrs. <insert name> , we have received your complaint and are sorry that you are having some issues with our product. We are taking your information provided and hope to find a solution to your issues expeditiously. As I <insert devs name> hope to find a fix for the problem soon, we hope to be in contact with you shortly. I may in the future need more information and possibly will contact you for more. Once again, sorry for the inconvenience. <devs name> *time stamp*
Then above all else, even if a fix isn't found in say a week , RECONTACT the customer with a update, either with a " good news..here is the fix..and here is what to do" or a " sorry haven't found a fix yet, we are still looking...we will get this thing!"
THATS customer service, even if you can't solve their problem with just a flick of a switch, acknowledge that they have been heard and you are attempting a fix....even if you ultimately can't fix it for them and have to say "sorry can't get you right" at least let them hear you are ATTEMPTING to solve their problem.
Not only is that good business to ACKNOWLEDGE your customer, SERVICE their needs, ADDRESS them respectfully, it's just plain common (and all to often not so common) etiquette. Please and thank you, go a long way even if you fail ultimately solve a issue. Etiquette is the grease that keeps the wheels of civilization functioning smoothly.
Lag issues are on both ends. On the Cryptics AND the player's.
But since the heavy performance issues right after the launch of Mod 6, many players just began blaming Cryptic instead of looking for a solution on their side, as that was more convenient.
Not everything is Cryptics / PWEs fault.
I disagree as rubber banding is not , nor are disconnects caused at the client end, those are directly server issues. If my system can run much higher end graphics heavy mmo type games without a bit of lag or latency.. guess where the problem is?
If these were the only connectivity problems, you would be right. But the complaints in these forums alone show us, that there also seems to be a good amount of lag. Actually I see these more often than complaints about rubberbanding. As to the Disconnects ... not all are caused in the client end. (While playing, I encounter different numbers of lags depending on the internet connection I use)
So my claim, that it's on both ends still is valid.
But this argument is a quite obvious one, which you should have been able to consider before posting. That makes me believe, that at the moment you are more trying to prove, that you are right, than really participating in a discussion with me.
Possibly that's because you seem to be very emotional about that issue. That is not a bad thing in itself, but it's really difficult to talk to someone, who interprets "customers" and "players" as a synonym for "you" and "feileacan1967". Speaking the same language really is a basic requirement for understanding. So I propose we postpone that conversation until you were able to come down a little bit.
I already said, that I agree with your position on communication, and your suggestions are very good and logical. You clearly have a good sense for these things from the point of view of a company.
I really hope, the ones responsible for this get it and take some action. There already was a thread about the plans and some adressing of issues. It's a pity that they were not able to continue this.
Lag issues are on both ends. On the Cryptics AND the player's.
But since the heavy performance issues right after the launch of Mod 6, many players just began blaming Cryptic instead of looking for a solution on their side, as that was more convenient.
Not everything is Cryptics / PWEs fault.
I disagree as rubber banding is not , nor are disconnects caused at the client end, those are directly server issues. If my system can run much higher end graphics heavy mmo type games without a bit of lag or latency.. guess where the problem is?
I would suggest reading our lag and rubberbanding sticky in bug reports before posting such a statement. Latency is a network issue, not a graphics issue. It doesn't matter how good your system is--your connection is only as good as its weakest link, and there are many links between your PC and the game servers.
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Latency is a network issue that lies somewhere within that huge conglomeration of nodes between your network bridge and the company's network bridge. All that telecom infrastructure is not created equal and way beyond the scope of anyone here.
If you are able, you can try establishing rules on your router to grant a higher priority to the game launcher for ports 7000-7500 and 80. Beyond that, you can price out the higher bandwidth options with your ISP, but that varies with vendor and with some, has little noticeable change.
1. Stop game producing game breakers in the game. I.E. the new mounts. Pretty much enough said there.
2. If you are going to introduce these game breakers, don't hide it behind luck based cash grabs. It separates players
3. Lag has got to be fixed. Can't really say go back and recode the game. There's no reason why this game should be playing like BF4 in terms of resource hogging.
4. I brought this up in a thread before but there needs to be more communication between the players and devs. More of a direct conversation. If there can be a live stream, there should be a live Q/A, that does answer questions that need to be answered.
5. Clear roadmap. Again can't express this enough.
6. Test, test, test the content before it's launching. Even when we look at big Triple A companies like Battlefield, releasing new games or content that is broken on launch is unacceptable.
On another game I play they had stability issues as well, the game servers were at the time in germany. They actually wanted to get to the bottom of what the customer experience was and if there was a way they could extend a hand into figuring out what was happening..even though they had did an extensive investigation and had determined that it wasn't on their end (this game is a EMU that is over a decade stable, it wasn't them )
So they started a thread for people to post their pings at any time they started getting excessive lag or disconnects. A trend started to appear through this process. At set times of day in the USA they noticed at or around 10 pm PST it started to get more unstable with enough consistancy that it was traceable. Certain regions of the country started a bit earlier and others later..but enough close enough to 10 pm that it was all too suspicious.
After analyzing the data a pattern emerged and certain nodes seemed to be more prevaliantly bad. It turns out there was actually 3 culprits going on, but the most glaring was the company (1to1 a company at the time that had a high advertisment rotation going on) was ingaging in a deliberate choking back of data streams of content they didn't deem "priority" I.E. their major corporate accounts. They were diliberately giving poorer service to smaller clients to increase what they gave to bigger clients.
This practice is actually in a grey area of the law, but it's discovery led to another. They through their ads were "over selling" services. It's the equivilent of like a airline carrier actually selling 150 seats when they actually have 120, figuring some people will cancel or not show up, and not caring how they may inconvenience customers, if 150 actually showed up they would say sorry, we over booked you have to take the next flight (i.e. get stuffed peon!)
With this being exposed, 1to1 and several of the other culprits engaging in this had a massive loss of clients (for some reason they didn't like the idea of getting only 1/2 of what they were paying for...odd attitude go figure )
Another culprit of the 3 was an actual node routing problem, at set times of day several of the IPS in a given region (southwest and south mostly at 10pmish) were switching traffic another route while they rebooted equipment on one set, then doing it in sequence, the traffic was deemed "unimportant" since it was primarily gaming dedicated traffic.
One of the long time players of the EMU I play, had his own business with a T3 line, but in non-business hours he hosted local area LAN groups/parties, he was a bit peeved to find out his line was a "unimportant" traffic system. Let's say he had a "serious" talk with his provider and what was deemed serious and non-serious and what a 'dedicated" line meant, and what monthly charges for it should be and what the expected level of service should entail.
All of this ^^^^ is to say, yes, there can be lot's of problems with all the information highway( some of it more like dirt game trails) between your house and were ever cryptics servers are. But it is rather telling that it ISN'T between you and them when you get huge lag spikes or rubberbanding when all that has changed is you took a character to a different game zone/instance. You have the same speeds etc. nothing changed in 30 sec. between you and NW other than your character walked out of PE and somewhere else and suddenly you are trapped in some 70's version of a relatives enforced after vacation slide show. All you want to do is duck out and not have to experience that pain, thats what you wind up having to do,on NW, duck out or relog.
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This is a really drastic representation though, we are not asking them to give everyone free money or break the law... and we are not asking them to stop putting out payed content, most of us enjoy that, what we don't like is not being informed when they make major game breaking or game fixing changes without even the courtesy of a reach-around. Last week they changed wheel of elements to a mitigatable damage, meaning everyone that spent millions on that artifact would have had to replace it.. and it wasn't mentioned in the preview or patch changes, it just flew under the radar with this "if we don't tell them maybe they won't notice and we won't have to deal with the comments (good or bad)..." attitude. How immature is that for a company to detest positive and negative feedback so much that they hide things that are obviously major changes from their player base. That is just one thing they did this with but the list of "ninja" patches are so long that we actually have a terminology and forum dedicated to representing all the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> they are either too scared or too inconsiderate to put out to the public.
Again we are not asking for a one on one... we don't want them to take every single post as law either, we want them to glance over the forum a couple times a week and see that there are between 10-50 posts a day on broken enchantments, and exactly how they are broken and possible fixes... every... single.. day. When feytouched was broken they took almost a month to fix it posting that they "had no idea how the bug worked"... even when at the time of that post the most commented on feedback thread was about the feytouched and EXACTLY how to reproduce the effect of the bug. That is negligence... even as I post this I know that as valid as my concerns are the odds of them reaching the developers eyes are nearly 200% less than the odds of them being deleted by a moderator who (god bless them) are just trying to keep the forums civil, but sometimes can insight even more animosity about certain very important topics...
So ultimately we don't expect overnight and direct solutions to every issue posted, and for them to impliment every quality of life change ever suggested good or bad over the past 2 years... but it would be nice to know that the most glaring and obvious game breaking and frustrating issues in the game are at the very least acknowledged as a problem. Instead of feeling like when thursday comes around we will get a patch about them doubling the boss health of lostmauth because they felt it was "too easy" instead of fixing the things we are supposed to be using to defeat those bosses. They make this whole process nearly intolerable by not taking into account that the people posting on the forums care about the game, maybe far more than they do... and we play it way more than they could possibly have time to. So while from a developer standpoint we may not always know what is best, we can certainly provide insight into what they could look into and find solutions for. We are not mad because they do the wrong thing trying to fix known issues, we are mad because they do NOTHING in those instances.
I can see the game is still in bad shape
Well the preview server is really only used to make sure the server will boot up on live. When was the last time anyone saw them go oh wait there's a huge bug on preview let's hold off. Mod 5 we all reported the stacking SOD to kill bosses in 10 seconds. Next week its on live
I think, you misinterpreted some parts of my comment a little bit. Let me try to explain:
First, let me say, that "including players into processes" is not the same as "informing players about changes made to the game". Incomplete patchnotes and ninja-nerfs are a bad thing to do. I'm completely on your side with that. (Though I would detain from presuming why they did that, as simple things like someone using copy/paste has been proved as a possible reason for mistakes ^^)
My examples of personal experience are just an examples. Naturally the demands here are not exactly the same.
But still, many player's demands are very narrow-sighted, egoistic, irrational, ridiculous, and from time to time outright stupid. Just take a look at all the "XYZ is OP" posts. So far every class has been covered (except perhaps the Warlock)
That's mostly, because they are posted by people, who are emotional (which is not a bad thing, considering it shows passion for the game), don't have the needed information about internal processes of the company or simply lack experience in life.
Though it's understandable and only human, it still makes much input by players worthless.
Another problem is, that you speak of what YOU expect. And it probably also includes a small number of like-minded individuals who share your experiences and common sense. But we are speaking of players as a whole. And the majority does not react well, when their ideas get rejected. Even when you take the time to explain them. And even without counting them, there still is a score of people, who answer every slight to their fragile ego with as much force as they can muster.
Take all the charges of people, who do something stupid and then try to sue someone else to compensate. Even though many of these charges won't be successful, they generate so much work and negative press, that often companies are forced to forego everything and grant them money so they shut up.
This is, why communication from a company is a difficult thing and often saying something is worse than silence.
Then there is another thing to consider. Human psyche is weird. We tend to do instinct-driven irrational things that harm us on a daily base.
One thing, that happens in our mind, is, that we tend to interpret things the way we want to, not the way they are said. And if you say "We are aware, that there is a problem and will investigate, if and how we can solve it as fast as possible" then many people will understand something like "We are aware, that it is our fault, that there is a problem, will solve it in the next 2-3 days and compensate you for your inconvenience". Now imagine, what happens, if the investigation takes more than 3 days (first complaints will come after 24 hours), and if the answer is, that the problem can not be solved?
And at last:
"had no idea how the bug worked" - Reproducing a bug does not mean, that you understand how it works, which is needed, to know where the coding went wrong. (But a good example of us interpreting things, that are not necessarily right ^^)
I hope, you forgive me this small piece of nitpicking, but I just had to. Otherwise I probably would not be able to sleep well. XD
About a month ago, the devs could have posted: "Hey, we see that people rush from level 60 to 70 much faster than we have content. We are thinking about either lowering the quest and mob rewards in the elemental evil content to 1 XP per quest/mob or raising the xp needed for a level by 4000%. What do you think?" About 20 pages of dragon-breath-hot discussion later they could have announced to go with "only" a 250% increase. Happy feelings on player side ("devs are talking to us, even listening a bit") and dev side ("took us 10 minutes to do those posts and changed nothing about our plans").
But no. That change was even stealthed through the "day before" patch notes. And the (very expected) opinion on player side was "why change that? there was no problem to fix there?" and "why hide that from us, even in the patch notes?"
Simple communication plan:
(1) Explain the problem
(2) Ask for feedback on a proposed solution
(3) Check if maybe the players see an unexpected problem with the proposal
(4) Say thank you
(5) Put the implemented solution in the patch notes
Takes an hour at most if you're doing it for appearances only; or as long as you like if you do step 3 for real.
Except that is not what I said at all.
I said I wasn't sure if there was a fix coming at that time. All I knew is that Andy did bring it to the developers attention.
Since the time of that post I know that issue is being fixed. I have no problem telling people the most direct information I can unless people decide to say I said something completely different than I said.
Personaly im now up in the air about NW......I deleted my toons a while ago and dont know if i really want to start over again if I am not the one that is in charge of how i max out my own toon and have to rely on others for the help.....Dont get me wrong i liked D&D when i was a kid and all and i loved the whole group thing then....Now I have a lot of other things that i have to way into deciding things....ie RL. I like the concept of NW but not really how it have been put together for Mod 6.....Taking control away for the players was a real bad step in my eyes....
Well enought of the wall...
Yes, I would agree, though I can't see the connection. So far, there is no life at risk, so these two examples are difficult to apply.
But even then, please be aware, that every priority is made for reasons, and we possibly don't know at least the half of them, so some of them seem "not right" to us at the moment.
I also am not happy, with how some things go and I myself wish for better communication (at least in the sense of better PR management). But still the most comments in the forums are not fit for being taken seriously by Cryptic and trying to understand them at least a little bit can overall improve our ability to actually make them listen.
Responding, they wanted to know how to re-create the bug in game, so they could test it. It was not a mis-interpretation they just did not read the forums ^^. When somebody made an effort to contact them outside of support in response to the comment about not being able to reproduce the bug, they were able to fix it quickly and thanked the user, so nit-picking or not this would be a better example of why them reading the forums is a necessary evil.
As for the rest of the post, I am well aware that humans are an unreliable source, however they are often a good source of navigational data. Choosing what to do about bugs is up to the developers, finding them is something else. We could in fact help them accurately identify many issues in the game that are unknown to them because they don't read the forums often, if ever.
They used to have a "class advocate" group that specifically targeted and made cases for their class, and while this may have looked good on paper, in essence it was the wrong way to go, because whoever was more charismatic, or political could shift things towards their favorite class. That being said, they should have community managers, not just forum moderators, who are in DIRECT contact with the developers and can note to them very serious issues in an instant, if they have them, they are not using the data provided properly. If they don't have them they need them, simple as that.
This sort of data given to the devs is important, and providing some sort of validation to a rather dis-enfranchised community would seek to help with some of the animosity that people feel towards the devs that to us are currently a mystery team of random change making gnomes that nobody knows...
Ultimately I think we have similar ideas, but not exactly, I believe that players misinterpreting information is part of the process, it will always happen... but the ability to make a great game relies on them being able to use the information given without having an emotional response to particularly bashing posts.
If a user says something angry like for example "TRS are so <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> dumb piercing damage out the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> kills everyone in an instant and the developers are too stupid to see it"
This sounds bad, but it does provide some data they might have needed to know and could use to help create a better game. They could have seen the shadowy opportunity damage issues long before, and maybe even seen a larger problem with a type of damage that negates an entire stat tree, but instead they would write this off as raging... so what you need is someone who can skim through this stuff with an objective eye, and provide feedback to the developers without the riff raff.
A possible solution to this might be a team of forum junkies, whatever they want to name them, who have a decent track record, putting "bites" of information into a google repository of ideas. Simple things like.
Negation Transcendant Effect does not function
Transcendant vorpal is applying a 4% debuff in damage, rather than a 2% buff
These simple lines of information would then be marked by the developers as:
Unread
Read
Currently In Progress
High Priority
Low Priorty
Requires More Information
Tested and Intended
Then a small line for developer comments, like "we need to know how to reproduce this" so the team could go gather this information and update the section.
This is just an idea, but I know of many loyal neverwinter fans who spend a lot of their time theory crafting and testing that would be happy to provide some of this information to the developer.
If I was running a game, I'd have a calendar with all the public holidays of my top10 areas...and I'd avoid doing any maintenance on those days like the plague.
That would be a REASONABLE reaction right? Smell smoke, investigate, see it, get a extinguisher, see flames licking the walls evacuate and call the fire dept.
If you weren't prone to simply believing me, at a minimum you would INVESTIGATE, CONFIRM, TAKE ACTION. You need not believe I was a "boy-cries-wolf" type of person if you saw it yourself.
So mass amounts of players have reported stability issues and bugs, not just one, tons! What should be the appropriate response? Mass amounts of players have informed the Devs that they smell and see smoke, that they actually see the building on fire. Should they call in the fire squad to fight the fire?
That's not what they do here, they are aware that the game is burning and they announce future content that they are oh-so-excited about. They announce "balancing" and "tweaks" to class mechanics and economics. They gleefully announce one holiday event after another, and CTA etc. They introduce stealth nerfs etc. that enrages the witnesses further.
They are in effect doing like the old expression goes:
NERO played his fiddle as ROME BURNED.
They brag about their musical prowess as they watch everything go the hell.
They do little to nothing to mitigate the glaring problems reported to them and continue on with the party.
So at what point do they get to the realization, that they understand that the STABILITY ISSUES AND THE BUGS is the building on fire? That they quit with the oh-so-gushy-look-what-new-shiny-we-just-done! stuff and actually knuckle down and devote the "content" time to "fix it" time?
Does the emperor have to actually be dragged out into the streets and the mob beat him to a bloody pulp for them to get it?
I'm polishing my club NW Devs, it's almost mob time, get your sensory rich collective protuberances (heads) out of your posteriors (butts).
IDEA:
I got an idea, another game I play had an idea that seems to at least work a tad. They have a player advocate system, the advocate is a player in good standing that is elected for a 3 month term. The advocate is the intermediary for the player base and the Devs. He/She scans the forums to see current trends in problems or ideas. Takes note of player problems and bugs etc. If there is something specific of urgent nature, they through their office "elevate" the information to the Devs.
The advocate attends (via team speak, ventrilo etc.) weekly meetings with the Devs to bring to their attention game breaking things or trending problems etc. They sort of distill all the info from forums etc. to bullet point it to the Devs. Then after meeting with the Devs, they disseminate the info back from the Devs to the players. Keeping the players in touch and informed. So like this weeks problems are presented to the Devs, and last weeks problems are acted on or at least confirmed that they are aware and working on it back to the Advocate. The Advocate then distills that info and passes it on to the players.
One of the big complaints that I see again and again, besides the stability stuff is the communication problems, they keep people in the dark all the time frustrating people and pissing them off. While a Advocate isn't a perfect solution, it would go a long way to address at least that problem, communication between the players and Devs, prioritizing the truely biggies and getting a response.
I was not aware of that, so I have to apologise.
That, indeed is not very professional and could have been prevented (they even would have saved some time and work).
Regarding the positives of taking customers feedback seriously and direct communication with the customer we have nearly the same ideas. Both is very important to be a successful company nowadays. We have many different ways to communicate and the building of communities with these is very easy.
Still there is the problem, that communicating with customers is a risky thing. It's possible, but I understand, why so many are a bit shy on this.
Regardin player's feedback:
I was under the impression, that they already browse the forums, have bug lists and also get supported by the Community Managers. It seems, the problem is not being aware of the wishes and bugs, but having the time and capacities to address all problems as fast as we like. I think, I remember a thread, where a spokesperson of the company already said, that they were aware of many bugs but still had to release the mod because strategic management wanted them to.
The priorities and us not able to understand them, this is a big part of the problem and I think the one, which has the best chances to be solved.
For that, better communication could be helpful and with that we both definitiley agree
But the question is: Are they willing to take the risks? And do they have the manpower for all the additional work?
I like your idea, though it seems to involve a lot of work....
The comparison does not work.
1. There is no fire and there are no lives at risk. So the priorities aren't the same.
2. There is no fire department or any other external source of guaranteed help
3. It is possible, that they already investigated and are trying to put out the fire for some time now, but do not have the resources needed, to extinguish it / are not able to extinguish it because it is not possible at the moment
I, for example was freed of many lagging issues by first finding a mistake on my side (the settings on my laptop had been changed) and more of that vanished after they announced solving some issues that generated lag some patches ago. Since then I had no real problems with lag (except sometimes at Lostmauth, where the group had to wipe, the everpresent lag at Malabog's Castle and sometimes at Tiamat).
So they clearly addressed and solved some of the more crucial issues and I would say, they already understood.
But do you understand, how many players have left the game, not due to lags but due to other problems, which perhaps are not as important to you?
And yes I have a certain self interest...don't we all?
But in my defense, as to the importance to me, I'm not alone, peruse the forums a tad and you will see multiple accounts of not just me but large multiples of players experiencing stability issues. Not just I, but many, many "I";s wish this addressed as a priority not as a "to-be-ignored-as-a-lone-griper fashion"
As to my fire dept. comments, it's called an analogy. Not to be taken literal but as an example.
In my example, when you observed a threat you would take measures, "appropriate" behaviour. I was highlighting the proper train of response, you would:
1.OBSERVE (hey PW/Cryptic, I seem to be getting ever increasing lag from each patch).
2.CONFIRM ( hey Devs, it's not just him, I too am having these issues (x1000s) @ this stage Devs are suppost to check into it and CONFIRM the issues or DISPROVE (false alarm folks..some joker just pulled the alarm, sorry for the racket, carry on).
3.ACT (We at PW/Cryptic have found X.Y. and Z problem, we are currently working on the fix and will announce when we have it under control) (WE at PW/Cryptic have found the answer to the problem and will be deploying that fix on n date and times patch, sorry for the inconvenience.)
As to the analogy of the game burning, it does fit (sort of). If their only product being sold to me isn't functioning correctly, and I'm not the only one getting the product shipped to be un-assembled and nonfunctional, one could argue that the business is in trouble. What you are selling isn't working, as more and more people don't buy it, your company is going to get in bad financial shape, at some point they either go under and have to vacate their 'warehouse" or if they are unscupulous (as they have been shown to be at times) they might hire a arsonist to burn it all down to collect on the insurance. I'm smelling smoke.....anyone else?
Yes, there are no lives at risk, but there are certain levels of priority to products/goods when you are in the service industry.
There is acceptable and there is unacceptable behavior.
If I took your money for a plate of food, ACCEPTABLE would be a plate of what you ordered,wholesome and in a palatable condition (temp, consistancy, flavor, display etc.), you would also EXPECT the food to be in or on a dish to be presented to you, the utensils to consume the food with and a libation that is also palatable to wash it down with. Also, as a good businessman, I would strive to have pleasing surroundings in which you consumed that food in, and would also provide facilities that catered to any companion you might have with you also consuming food. A wise businessperson might include incentives to entice you to return on other occasions, thus generating a continued revenue stream. It's also a real good idea to inquire into what could be improved to make the guest even more satisfied. And strive to incorporate those suggestions in a timely fashion.
What would be UNACCEPTABLE would be food that was rotten, food that was unpalatable (cold, wrong consistancy, bland, over spiced, sloppy and poorly displayed). As you were expecting a plate of food, it would be unacceptable if I just scooped it up and plopped it in your cupped hands. You wouldn't want to come back if I screamed at you, or the establishment had <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> soaked drunkards stumbling into you and coughing in your food. I might expect you not to return and continue my revenue stream if when you complained about any of these lacks in service, I got in your face and with spittle flying told you to <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> off wanker!
So far, Cryptic hasn't plopped food into my hands, the food hasn't been actually rotten per se . But the flavor has been a bit off, so too the consistency has been decidedly INconsistent. While they haven't actually screamed in my face to pissoff! I could have sworn I heard them whisper *wanker* when my back was turned...at least they have ignored the players with they stability issues as if they thought of them as wankers
I know, that it was meant as an analogy. But it still doesn't work very good, because the sense of urgency it convey is not appropriate for our actual situation. Which means, that PWE / Cryptic (which one is responsible?) can afford to set other priorities.
You could say, that the game is burning, but if it fails, then the victims are not the same as in an actual fire, the kind of harm is not the same and the consequences are very different.
What you need is another, more appropriate analogy, but I'm not sure if there is one, that would work and still prove the sense of urgency, that you seem to feel.
But let us leave the analogy behind and set the focus on another thing I mentioned in my last post: "Solving Lags"
There have been horrible performance issues after the launch of Mod 6 and there were many posts in the forums on that topic. Then, some weeks ago they addressed these problems and mentioned some solutions in the patchnotes. Since then the number of posts on that topic has receded.
This shows, that the problem does NOT have a low priority.
Yes, you are right, there are still performance issues. But that is not a sign of low priorities, but just of not being able to solve that yet. It could be connected to something, that needs much time (for example because it has to be implemented without disconnecting the servers for several days) or it could be, that they already work on a solution, or that the number, who have performance problems RELATED to something that the company can influence (because I bet you, that a good number of lag complaints on the forums are an issue with hardware / internet connection of the players) is now smaller than those, that want other problems solved first.
There is many information involved in setting priorities, that we do not have, so it is difficult for us to understand the decisions and priorities of the devs.
"All the kings said I was daft to build a castle in a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em.
It sank into the swamp.
So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp.
So I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp.
But the fourth one stayed up. An' that's what your gonna
get, lad -- the strongest castle in these islands. "
How about fill in the swamp first?
Lag issues are on both ends. On the Cryptics AND the player's.
But since the heavy performance issues right after the launch of Mod 6, many players just began blaming Cryptic instead of looking for a solution on their side, as that was more convenient.
Not everything is Cryptics / PWEs fault.
While I can agree to this in some cases, it becomes obvious that if one has not changed settings on their pc and cryptic releases a new mod that all of a sudden causes more lag than normal, then it is safe to say it has something to do with Cryptic's end and not the users.... especially when a lot of users are reporting zero lag in some areas and ton's in others. I play a few different games and have NO lag in all of them except NW and that is with the graphics tuned down since NW has poorly designed/optimized gfx. All other games (latest/greatest) I can have my gfx turned right up with no issues. It's the core engine and network on Cryptics end that needs to be revamped. I't's rediculous to blame the end users for these issues. There has been consistent lag on the release of every mod since beta so how does that make it the end users issue? Granted, some users do have performance issues on their end, most of it lies with Cryptic's combination of programming and hardware and the ability to maintain it.
Not changing the settings does not mean, that the settings are not changed.
I had some lagging problems, because the energy options on my laptop were changed. Don't know how. (It definitely wasn't me)
In another case a guild member had some problems because of a software, that got installed with another game, which influencd the performance of his graphic card.
And in just another case a player suddenly had severe connectivity problems with sudden DCs, even while using a cable. The reason was his neighbour changing his internet provider and then using the same pool of dataflows than him, resulting in less volume at some times.
Sure, its possible that it's the game, but it's also possible that not. And if that is the case and you do nothing except complaining and blaming Cryptic, then it won't get better, regardless of what they do.
I disagree as rubber banding is not , nor are disconnects caused at the client end, those are directly server issues. If my system can run much higher end graphics heavy mmo type games without a bit of lag or latency.. guess where the problem is?
KK I get you, not EVERYTHING is their fault. There may be a FEW instances of the customer being wrong, damn few as far as I have seen. But consider this..is is SMART to dismiss your customers problems with a blanket "it's your fault" statement? Or is is WISE to not respond and keep your customer in the dark when they report a problem they are having?
How about this? Dear Sir/Miss/Mrs. <insert name> , we have received your complaint and are sorry that you are having some issues with our product. We are taking your information provided and hope to find a solution to your issues expeditiously. As I <insert devs name> hope to find a fix for the problem soon, we hope to be in contact with you shortly. I may in the future need more information and possibly will contact you for more. Once again, sorry for the inconvenience. <devs name> *time stamp*
Then above all else, even if a fix isn't found in say a week , RECONTACT the customer with a update, either with a " good news..here is the fix..and here is what to do" or a " sorry haven't found a fix yet, we are still looking...we will get this thing!"
THATS customer service, even if you can't solve their problem with just a flick of a switch, acknowledge that they have been heard and you are attempting a fix....even if you ultimately can't fix it for them and have to say "sorry can't get you right" at least let them hear you are ATTEMPTING to solve their problem.
Not only is that good business to ACKNOWLEDGE your customer, SERVICE their needs, ADDRESS them respectfully, it's just plain common (and all to often not so common) etiquette. Please and thank you, go a long way even if you fail ultimately solve a issue. Etiquette is the grease that keeps the wheels of civilization functioning smoothly.
If these were the only connectivity problems, you would be right. But the complaints in these forums alone show us, that there also seems to be a good amount of lag. Actually I see these more often than complaints about rubberbanding. As to the Disconnects ... not all are caused in the client end. (While playing, I encounter different numbers of lags depending on the internet connection I use)
So my claim, that it's on both ends still is valid.
But this argument is a quite obvious one, which you should have been able to consider before posting. That makes me believe, that at the moment you are more trying to prove, that you are right, than really participating in a discussion with me.
Possibly that's because you seem to be very emotional about that issue. That is not a bad thing in itself, but it's really difficult to talk to someone, who interprets "customers" and "players" as a synonym for "you" and "feileacan1967". Speaking the same language really is a basic requirement for understanding. So I propose we postpone that conversation until you were able to come down a little bit.
@mattsacre
I already said, that I agree with your position on communication, and your suggestions are very good and logical. You clearly have a good sense for these things from the point of view of a company.
I really hope, the ones responsible for this get it and take some action. There already was a thread about the plans and some adressing of issues. It's a pity that they were not able to continue this.
I would suggest reading our lag and rubberbanding sticky in bug reports before posting such a statement. Latency is a network issue, not a graphics issue. It doesn't matter how good your system is--your connection is only as good as its weakest link, and there are many links between your PC and the game servers.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
If you are able, you can try establishing rules on your router to grant a higher priority to the game launcher for ports 7000-7500 and 80. Beyond that, you can price out the higher bandwidth options with your ISP, but that varies with vendor and with some, has little noticeable change.
glassdoor.com - Cryptic Studios Review
2. If you are going to introduce these game breakers, don't hide it behind luck based cash grabs. It separates players
3. Lag has got to be fixed. Can't really say go back and recode the game. There's no reason why this game should be playing like BF4 in terms of resource hogging.
4. I brought this up in a thread before but there needs to be more communication between the players and devs. More of a direct conversation. If there can be a live stream, there should be a live Q/A, that does answer questions that need to be answered.
5. Clear roadmap. Again can't express this enough.
6. Test, test, test the content before it's launching. Even when we look at big Triple A companies like Battlefield, releasing new games or content that is broken on launch is unacceptable.
So they started a thread for people to post their pings at any time they started getting excessive lag or disconnects. A trend started to appear through this process. At set times of day in the USA they noticed at or around 10 pm PST it started to get more unstable with enough consistancy that it was traceable. Certain regions of the country started a bit earlier and others later..but enough close enough to 10 pm that it was all too suspicious.
After analyzing the data a pattern emerged and certain nodes seemed to be more prevaliantly bad. It turns out there was actually 3 culprits going on, but the most glaring was the company (1to1 a company at the time that had a high advertisment rotation going on) was ingaging in a deliberate choking back of data streams of content they didn't deem "priority" I.E. their major corporate accounts. They were diliberately giving poorer service to smaller clients to increase what they gave to bigger clients.
This practice is actually in a grey area of the law, but it's discovery led to another. They through their ads were "over selling" services. It's the equivilent of like a airline carrier actually selling 150 seats when they actually have 120, figuring some people will cancel or not show up, and not caring how they may inconvenience customers, if 150 actually showed up they would say sorry, we over booked you have to take the next flight (i.e. get stuffed peon!)
With this being exposed, 1to1 and several of the other culprits engaging in this had a massive loss of clients (for some reason they didn't like the idea of getting only 1/2 of what they were paying for...odd attitude go figure
Another culprit of the 3 was an actual node routing problem, at set times of day several of the IPS in a given region (southwest and south mostly at 10pmish) were switching traffic another route while they rebooted equipment on one set, then doing it in sequence, the traffic was deemed "unimportant" since it was primarily gaming dedicated traffic.
One of the long time players of the EMU I play, had his own business with a T3 line, but in non-business hours he hosted local area LAN groups/parties, he was a bit peeved to find out his line was a "unimportant" traffic system. Let's say he had a "serious" talk with his provider and what was deemed serious and non-serious and what a 'dedicated" line meant, and what monthly charges for it should be and what the expected level of service should entail.
All of this ^^^^ is to say, yes, there can be lot's of problems with all the information highway( some of it more like dirt game trails) between your house and were ever cryptics servers are. But it is rather telling that it ISN'T between you and them when you get huge lag spikes or rubberbanding when all that has changed is you took a character to a different game zone/instance. You have the same speeds etc. nothing changed in 30 sec. between you and NW other than your character walked out of PE and somewhere else and suddenly you are trapped in some 70's version of a relatives enforced after vacation slide show. All you want to do is duck out and not have to experience that pain, thats what you wind up having to do,on NW, duck out or relog.