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Customer Service Would Rather Advertise Neverwinter than Solve Issues
I know I shouldn't be surprised by bad GM service, but the advertising for Neverwinter (bolded below) kind of puts the icing on the cake.
This post isn't really directed at the community so much as it is at Cryptic. Lacking any other obvious feedback mechanism, I decided to drop a note on the forum.
The quest had bugged out on me. This was made very clear in the bug report. I listed every step of completion to make sure that it was obvious that the quest was bugged.
Here's a hint for any GMs reading this: If a player can complete the last step of a quest, that requires completing a prior step, but that prior step does not show as complete, THE QUEST IS BUGGED.
Not only did I get boiler plate saying GMs don't give hints, I got an advertisement for Neverwinter tagged on to it.
The three day response time is also ridiculous for a game play issue. Remember your first supers MMO, Cryptic? You actually had good GMs on that one. Try duplicating that effort here.
Note that I'm fine with a GM giving a reply that they've checked things out and the quest is NOT bugged, then giving the no hints spiel. Not that that's the case here, as the quest is very clearly bugged and it's one I've done many, many times. But I'm fine with a response that shows the GM actually read the ticket.
I'm also fine with a response that hey, the quest is bugged, but the GM doesn't have the power to fix it, so you should either drop it and retry it or skip it for now. That's fine.
BUT AT LEAST GIVE A RESPONSE THAT SHOWS YOU READ AND UNDERSTOOD THE TICKET!
That's part of "treating customers better" Jack mentioned in the interview on Cryptic North.
Less words, more action, Jack.
==============
Recently you requested personal assistance from our on-line support center. Below is a summary of your request and our response.
We appreciate your patience as we worked to resolve this issue.
Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.
To access your question from our support site, click here.
Subject
Biotechnical Difficulties: Can't complete antidote step even though made antidote and used it
Discussion Thread
Response Via Email (Name Redacted) 06/10/2013 09:31 AM
Hello, and thank you for contacting customer support!
The GMs cannot offer hints or directions for completing quests. If you have a problem acquiring or completing a quest, you can ask other players in-game or search the game forums for threads related to the issue.
If you can't find anything on the forums, feel free to make a new thread with your question. There are many helpful players in all of our game communities that can offer assistance.
Thank you for playing!
Perfect World Support
Check out our latest game, Neverwinter!
[bolding added for emphasis by me]
Customer By Web Form 06/07/2013 07:56 PM
The mission Biotechnical Difficulties will not complete the "Create Antidote" step. I collected ingredients, MADE THE ANTIDOTE, recieved the item in inventory, equipped it as a Device, and used it to complete the "Save the Mutated Scientists" step. But the mission won't show the task as complete.
Question Reference #Number Redacted
Product Level 1: Champions Online
Category Level 1: Customer Support
Date Created: 06/07/2013 07:56 PM
Last Updated: 06/10/2013 09:31 AM
Status: Solved
Connection Type:
Date/Time of Problem:
Character: Name Redacted
Server: Live
Operating System
Internet Service Provider
Computer Manufacturer
Transaction ID
N/A
=============
This post isn't really directed at the community so much as it is at Cryptic. Lacking any other obvious feedback mechanism, I decided to drop a note on the forum.
The quest had bugged out on me. This was made very clear in the bug report. I listed every step of completion to make sure that it was obvious that the quest was bugged.
Here's a hint for any GMs reading this: If a player can complete the last step of a quest, that requires completing a prior step, but that prior step does not show as complete, THE QUEST IS BUGGED.
Not only did I get boiler plate saying GMs don't give hints, I got an advertisement for Neverwinter tagged on to it.
The three day response time is also ridiculous for a game play issue. Remember your first supers MMO, Cryptic? You actually had good GMs on that one. Try duplicating that effort here.
Note that I'm fine with a GM giving a reply that they've checked things out and the quest is NOT bugged, then giving the no hints spiel. Not that that's the case here, as the quest is very clearly bugged and it's one I've done many, many times. But I'm fine with a response that shows the GM actually read the ticket.
I'm also fine with a response that hey, the quest is bugged, but the GM doesn't have the power to fix it, so you should either drop it and retry it or skip it for now. That's fine.
BUT AT LEAST GIVE A RESPONSE THAT SHOWS YOU READ AND UNDERSTOOD THE TICKET!
That's part of "treating customers better" Jack mentioned in the interview on Cryptic North.
Less words, more action, Jack.
==============
Recently you requested personal assistance from our on-line support center. Below is a summary of your request and our response.
We appreciate your patience as we worked to resolve this issue.
Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.
To access your question from our support site, click here.
Subject
Biotechnical Difficulties: Can't complete antidote step even though made antidote and used it
Discussion Thread
Response Via Email (Name Redacted) 06/10/2013 09:31 AM
Hello, and thank you for contacting customer support!
The GMs cannot offer hints or directions for completing quests. If you have a problem acquiring or completing a quest, you can ask other players in-game or search the game forums for threads related to the issue.
If you can't find anything on the forums, feel free to make a new thread with your question. There are many helpful players in all of our game communities that can offer assistance.
Thank you for playing!
Perfect World Support
Check out our latest game, Neverwinter!
[bolding added for emphasis by me]
Customer By Web Form 06/07/2013 07:56 PM
The mission Biotechnical Difficulties will not complete the "Create Antidote" step. I collected ingredients, MADE THE ANTIDOTE, recieved the item in inventory, equipped it as a Device, and used it to complete the "Save the Mutated Scientists" step. But the mission won't show the task as complete.
Question Reference #Number Redacted
Product Level 1: Champions Online
Category Level 1: Customer Support
Date Created: 06/07/2013 07:56 PM
Last Updated: 06/10/2013 09:31 AM
Status: Solved
Connection Type:
Date/Time of Problem:
Character: Name Redacted
Server: Live
Operating System
Internet Service Provider
Computer Manufacturer
Transaction ID
N/A
=============
Post edited by narf#9213 on
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
And they're right - the problem you presented them in that mail makes it sound like you're looking for hints, not reporting a bug. So they fired off the boilerplate response to people looking for hints.
Such angst over a sig line!
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
" and used it to complete the 'Save the Mutated Scientists' step"
Or is "complete the "Save the Mutated Scientists' step" not clear?
That's pretty clear.
I listed the steps.
I noted that I completed steps one and three.
But that the quest would not show step two as completed.
How much more clear can you be?
I completely disagree. They state in the first paragraph that they have created the antidote, and have even used it, but the "Create Antidote" step won't complete. You'd think that when you create the antidote, that it would satisfy the requirements of a mission objective named Create Antidote. And they clearly said that they completed the "Save the Mutated Scientists" step.
The problem is that this person has completed steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the mission, but it won't recognize that step 3 has been completed. Which is strange, because in this mission, you cannot get to step 4 without completing step 3.
(These are not accurate numbers, just using them to illustrate the point.)
You might wanna try re-reading that email. Not one bit of that even remotely sounds like it's asking for hints. It's clearly spelling out a problem and wondering why the mission won't complete properly.
Each of those tickets, I got a good response next day. Guess I'm just lucky?
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Which is perfectly understandable.
My only complaint here is that if you reply to a ticket, that reply should show some indication that the ticket was read and the issue was understood by the GM responding.
In the argument that people are having above (with jonsills), people are only viewing one side of the coin, their side, rather than both. You've got to think from the CS angle here. Yes, your ticket is well-written, but you're writing to--from all accounts that I've heard--an underpaid, overworked support staff. How many tickets do you think a single rep handles per day? Hundreds? Thousands? How many hours do you think they work? Do you think they have quotas?
Why on earth didn't you just type the word "bug" at ANY point in the first sentence of your ticket? Or for that matter, at ANY point in your ticket? The term "bug" or "bugged" appears SEVEN times in your forum complaint to us. You didn't think to use those terms even once with support staff???
Look, I'm not busting your chops because I think CS is great and sunshiny. I'm busting your chops because PWE's CS is infamously terrible throughout the industry. You've got to go above and beyond in clarifying your problem right up front. Don't assume they've got ANY knowledge of the game you're playing at all, during a time when they're triaging issues and practically pulling new hires off the streets.
Bear in mind, too, that if the same CS department is handling PWE's complete stable of games, we're not just talking about Cryptic's games here. We're talking TEN massive online games.
Allow me to fix this for you! :biggrin:
"The mission Biotechnical Difficulties in Champions Online is BUGGED. This bug is preventing the mission from completing the "Create Antidote" step. I collected ingredients, MADE THE ANTIDOTE, recieved the item in inventory, equipped it as a Device, and used it to complete the previous "Save the Mutated Scientists" step. But the bugged portion of the mission won't show the task as complete and this is preventing progress within the game.
[SIGPIC]Captain Electric and the Sapien Spider[/SIGPIC]
"YES, PLEASE"
Vote YES for the Foundry in Champions Online.
@Captain-Electric | CoH/Virtue veteran | Proud new Champion
This doesn't entirely excuse the GM, though.
I'm also not convinced that this would have helped. I would have probably been directed to use the bug reporting option instead of opening a ticket.
That wouldn't have actually been a solution to the problem. In many games, GMs have the tools to simply mark the quest completed after verifying you've met the objectives. In some games, GMs have a database of known bugs with workarounds if they're available. Those sorts of things are solution-oriented, customer-oriented policies. I'm not sure if they exist in CO, though. All games are different.
Lastly, I want to re-emphasize patience. Right now, MANY Neverwinter players are simply having their tickets closed with no answers whatsoever, regardless of the severity of their issue. The players who stay patient, clear, and respectful are resubmitting tickets and eventually getting their problems solved.
Eventually.
Yeah, I know, this whole thing sucks. Unless you're rich enough to buy out the publisher and change things, it's best to accept that it is how it is, and work with the system. That's all we got. I exited the anger stage regarding CS for MMOs in general about ten years ago. :biggrin:
Well, maybe I should say "denial stage". I still get angry sometimes. :mad:
[SIGPIC]Captain Electric and the Sapien Spider[/SIGPIC]
"YES, PLEASE"
Vote YES for the Foundry in Champions Online.
@Captain-Electric | CoH/Virtue veteran | Proud new Champion
It's perfectly acceptable for customer service to be overwhelmed during a growth period, which the launch of Neverwinter (hopefully) is. It's how you handle your customers when you can't give them proper service that's important.
If they're too swamped to deal, then they should say so. Every game affected should have a sticky on its home page and forums explaining the situation.
But if you're going to service a ticket, you need to do it competently. (I've worked in tech support since 93, so I know just how rare that is. It's still bad business.)
Very lucky. Dealing with them is like pulling teeth. I generally have to get indignant before they begin to listen to me.
Maybe Jonsills is Customer Support. It sure would explain a few things. *snrk!*
But yeah, PWE Customer Support is absolutely terrible. Atrocious. Some of you may have read my billing error chronicle in "What kinda shady crap is this?" and it's far from resolved. PWE still has only taken a dollar out of my account, I still have no Zen stipend, and that international transfer from last month is still unexplained.
And yet PWE has listed my ticket as "solved."
None of that really matters. Will it help? Possibly. But does it matter? No.
It's not the job of the customer to know how to meticulously word a complaint. It's the job of the customer service guy to actually read the complaint, and if he doesn't understand because he's never even heard of the game that's being talked about, it's his job to write a followup ticket to clarify.
"I'm underpaid," is never an excuse to do your job poorly.
"I'm overworked," is never an excuse to do your job poorly, either. You're getting paid overtime. If you can't hang, find another job.
There's never an excuse to give a cursory glance to a ticket, assume the customer is looking for handouts, and fire off a dismissive reply.
Hell I put more effort than that in moderating, when I was overworked, doing everything solo, spending my lunch hours going through dozens of pages of complaints, and I didn't even get paid for doing that.
I'm talking about how best to approach getting your problem solved. Those problems I mentioned are likely going to be obstacles for customers for as long as PWE exists. Rather than dismiss them, you should factor them into every communication you have with CS.
Coming from CoH, I know what good customer service looks and sounds like (before your game gets shut down anyway). But, there is the way things ought to be, and then there is reality. We're all better off interfacing with the latter in PWE's case.
[SIGPIC]Captain Electric and the Sapien Spider[/SIGPIC]
"YES, PLEASE"
Vote YES for the Foundry in Champions Online.
@Captain-Electric | CoH/Virtue veteran | Proud new Champion
Yes, and I acknowledged that. I'm just saying that the fault is purely on customer service side.
Jon had stated that the ticket wasn't clear, and I replied that it was crystal clear. And I stand by that it was. The player did nothing wrong.
... Really? Wow. Not only are you wearing rose-colored glasses, but.... They're significantly opaque. You =really= missed 'reading comprehension' or something, at least when it came to the above mail. Please, don't try so hard to "help" Cryptic World look like they're doing the right thing in this case. :rolleyes:
No argument there, technically speaking.
I hear you loud and clear, but this isn't about right and wrong. Well partly it is--I do think part of the OP is Belwen letting off steam. But it's also about communicating efficiently in order to get satisfactory results. That's a game that you play in every communication you make in every medium you employ. I don't think we'd be discussing this if Belwen had gotten the right results.
I'd be doing "nothing wrong" to walk alone in a bad part of town, but it wouldn't serve my goals in life, which include staying alive and not getting mugged.
If you read all of mine and Belwen's posts, then you know that neither of us thinks he/she did something "wrong". What we both agreed on was that he/she could have gamed the system more skillfully.
[SIGPIC]Captain Electric and the Sapien Spider[/SIGPIC]
"YES, PLEASE"
Vote YES for the Foundry in Champions Online.
@Captain-Electric | CoH/Virtue veteran | Proud new Champion
I only replied since you addressed my argument specifically. There's no "viewing one side of the coin" when someone says that the ticket looks like they're asking for tips, when it was extremely clear exactly what the player was looking for. Yes, there's a million ways to submit a better ticket. But anyone that mistakes that ticket for a handout clearly hasn't read the ticket. I don't think that putting "BUG" anywhere in the ticket is going to attract the interest of a crappy employee. I mean, do you really think that the guy is totally ambivalent of his job up until the point that he sees "BUG" in the title?
Further, we've been told time and again that bug reports go to the developers, and don't get responses from GMs. Customer Service I also imagine can't go out and fix bugs. Also, I could be totally wrong here, but I don't think they do anything that's not on an account level.
I've personally had showstoppers on missions before, and in-game GMs, the ones who can actually do something about it, have always told me to drop the mission and try it again. I doubt Customer Service is going to do much better. Again, could be wrong.
Anyway, went off on a tangent there. But I disagree with you. The ticket was perfectly clear, and you shouldn't need to know a secret menu of keywords to possibly maybe get a response. At the very worst, they should have sent a reply to clarify. The fact that they said "Sorry, we don't do handouts," means that they glanced at the ticket, thought "This person just doesn't get the mission," and moved on. I've seen people misunderstand things and label them as bugs and glitches plenty of times (not in this game, but in my years of working QA).
To me this just means that there's a bottom line, and that line is "incompetence."
I give you the etymology of Belwen:
Etymology
Old English bylgian, cognate with belg "leather bag," bellan "to roar," blāwan "to blow"
Verb
belwen
to cry out in anger, rage, roar (of animals)
to bellow, roar (of the wind, the sea)
But, hey, their e-mail told me to take it to the forums, so here it is. :cool:
Nobody reported it before because it's quirky bug and very hard to duplicate (unless you know how) - in this quest it's possible to make stages not in the right succession, like using machine to create antidote not having all components, then gather rest of components afterwards. And then it glitches and doesn't count create antidote.
And since you have many components to gather, they all look very similar, and containers are also very similar and standing very close one to each other - it's easy to make this mistake, like thinking that you do have all components when creating antidote.
Had this bug before and resolved it on my own. No point in waiting for CS here.
Only way is to drop quest and do it again but this time paying attention to every quest stage and its succession.
Should be at the end of EVERY response from customer Service.
Right, that's gonna bring the truckloads of money! :biggrin:
Received response to my response to the ticket today from the same GM.
"Hello
Please accept my sincerest apologies. Traditionally, bugs are reported using the "Report a Bug" feature (Bug Reports are sent to the QA Team, who can investigate and issue any necessary fixes.)
In any case, please log out and log back in. You should then see "Biotechnical Difficulties" as complete in your Quest Log.
Thank you for your kind and gracious patience, and I hope very much that you enjoy the game and have a beautiful day."
This was in response to the reply I made to the first ticket response shortly before posting here:
"I'm not asking for a hint. THE QUEST IS BUGGED.
I HAVE COMPLETED ALL OF THE QUEST OBJECTIVES BUT THE QUEST WILL NOT COMPLETE.
I've done this quest MANY TIMES.
Try READING THE TICKET AND NOT BRUSHING OFF YOUR CUSTOMERS. "
So, I did mention that the quest was bugged in my follow up, which did serve the purpose of getting the GM to look at it in the right light.
As predicted, I was told about the bug report feature. Which would not have gotten the problem solved, because it wouldn't have gone to a GM. Of course, this bug should already be in their known issues list. Apparently, according to another poster in the thread, it's been around for a while. (I haven't played in about six months, and on higher level characters then, so it's been a while since I've done it.)
The GM did turn out to have the ability to solve the problem by marking the quest as completed. Most games I've played, the GMs have had the ability to investigate stuff like this and complete the bugged quest for a player.
I'm pretty sure given the tone of my response to the GM first time around that that last line is just a *little* tongue in cheek, but I'm glad the GM fixed the issue. Not a huge issue, as I could level past Westside via alerts, but I prefer not to do them at too low a level, so it's good I won't have to.
This sounds like a very likely possibility. I may have clicked on the antidote making machine while collecting boxes around it, as I was just using the Z button when I got near the boxes to collect them, and wasn't paying a great deal of attention to the text.
I'll definitely pay attention next time around, as I'm leveling a fresh batch of characters at the moment. Thanks for the info.
This is exactly the sort of info that should be in the GM knowledge base. (If they use one. Maintaining a knowledge base of known issues would seem like a no-brainer, but a lot of folks don't bother to keep one up to date.)
Color me impressed.
I was under the assumption that this was a customer service ticket, not a GM ticket. My fault for assuming.
And damn them for not fixing my missions when I was stuck! :P (And no, they didn't tell me that they can't give hints, they literally told me to start the mission over. Poo!)
Some things -- probably like this -- don't happen enough to get added to that database, is my guess.
Glad your problem was resolved, man! Closing thread.