.... what? Their ticket support system has been broken since F2P launch ( you know how long ago that was? ), and the only way to get in touch with them is to come to forum and have them tell you ( at a later time after posting ) to send an email to support@ whatever.com... Brilliant support!
That's what I call good customer service, telling customers how to contact them, would you rather the Moderators left you with NO way to contact them?
I also don't really see a problem with what you posted here, because you've also posted the solution to it
If thats the case, I call bs. There was nothing innocent about it
*snorts* You can't have it both ways. The bottom line with that incident is that , gasp, someone said the truth. If you don't like it, then stop doing business with the company.
Which consists of a grand total of zero people. If you have ever traded for so much as 1 zen you have been involved with real money in this game. Period. Don't tell me there are people that have been here any length of time and haven't done so. Don't even try, if you do its bs.
First, I believe the optimal word was PAY, not INVOLVED. In case you can't comprehend the difference, there are people who have not spent cash money on the game. If I get dilithium and use that to buy zen , that is not an expenditure of cash.
Logic chopping and word-twisting to try to make a point is a classic sign of someone trying to argue based on logical fallacies.
Let's get something straight. There are very few victims involved in this entire discussion. What you have is a pack of virulent fanboys who are unwilling or possibly unable to see Cryptic doing any wrong whatsoever, a pack of trolls who refuses to admit Cryptic has done anything right at any time, and a bunch of people who chime in on issues that affect them.
Consider the guy who said there were no dev responses to the thread AFTER a dev had responded three times. I'm not going to bother to listen or consider anything that guy says because he is not bothering to even look at what he's talking about. Why should ANYONE listen to arguments coming from people unwilling to look at the reality of things?
Reality: Cryptic messed up a lot, but the game has gotten a lot better over time.
Reality: Cryptic's communications suck and they have misrepresented things in the past.
Reality: Cryptic has made efforts to improve communications and when the community goes up in flames over something it does get fixed, unlike some other games (I'm looking at you, SWTOR).
Until people are going to bother talking about the reality of the situation, let's leave any histrionics about victims to the side, please.
Blatant lie designed to shut people up. There is no 'vocal minority' the forum is a large cross section of the game, that does represent what people are thinking. Don't even try to claim otherwise. This is not some kind of inverse alternate universe where everything is opposite.
Actually, there have been many, many studies and surveys that show that only a small portion of a game's playerbase ever uses the forums, and smaller still post on them.
However, the point remains moot. People's opinions are, frankly, worthless unless backed up by either fact. As the Dev pointed out earlier, you cannot please everyone. There's no advantage in even trying, so the fact that Cryptic at least monitors the opinions of people on the forums is a positive.
You mean the same dozen questions that are asked over and over again, by the same people and always given a vague, worthless answer to?
People should stop asking the same stupid, open ended questions over and over or bother to ask themselves how feasible it is. Take customizable ship interiors. How much would it cost to implement vs. how much revenue it would bring in? If the answer isn't favorable, then why would Cryptic do it?
Many of the questions that fall into the category you mentioned fall into that range. Cryptic gives vague answers so that , maybe , if a high value feature goes into the game that would help pay for lower value features, they could implement it.
So...you want to see company employees belittle their customers in front of other customers then? I'm sure that will end well for them.
I think the concept that the customer is always right is a sham. After a dozen years in retail and more in consulting, I've come to the belief that the customer is usually a short sighted fool who doesn't even bother to think about how feasible something is.
People screaming invectives at Cryptic , saying how they're quitting because everything sucks, are not a loss of any kind. Unhappy customers that cannot be made happy are a liability, as they will 'poison' the attitudes of those around them. So , truly, when they quit, nothing of value is lost.
A company's responsibilities is to it's shareholders, not it's customers, period, no arguments. The 'customers' are not a defined class, shareholders are. A customer has no INVESTMENT in the company he does business with, a shareholder does. A customer can chose to use the services of that company...or use the service of another company. That's all.
As a PWE shareholder, I couldn't give two cents about some disgruntled kid leaving the game. His revenue loss will be made good in an hour by someone buying fleet modules.
Thats bs. To say nothing of the fact that it works both ways. Better take a look at the number of times we've been lied to and certain other incidents
Except , all too often, the trolls aren't any better than the Cryptic Defense Force when it comes to being objective. When Cryptic gets things right, there's never an acknowledgement. When Cryptic gets things wrong, there's never someone saying "Well they got this and this right but this and this wrong maybe we need to do this or this", it's always just "Kriptyic u lied 2 us and u ar teh sux teh die lolololzor".
The hypocritical hilarity of people calling out fanboys for being unwilling to admit Cryptic messed up when they themselves are just as blind has never failed to amuse me.
Yes, and with good reason. On more than one occasion he has flat out lied to us. That is a proven fact. Behavior like that is going to earn such statements. People do exactly what he himself said to do: judge him by what his track record. I don't think I need to remind you what that track record looks like
Very well.
When I just Dan by his track record, I see a guy who wanted to deliver a lot more to the game than he was able to, and who left because he was frustrated with that, and game back to try to make a difference, and managed to get some things done but not others and , quite frankly, is probably burned out because of the amount of hate he gets.
I , for one, am ecstatic the guy came through with flying colors on a full 1-50 PVE progression for Klingons. It didn't come as fast, or as fully, as we liked. But it means I'll give him more chances to prove himself.
The problem with people like you is that you like to use chop-logic , to only take part of the truth and twist it to support what you are saying. A lot of people do this, and I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see it, but it's getting rather boring and you're smart enough to make better arguments than this.
That's what I call good customer service, telling customers how to contact them, would you rather the Moderators left you with NO way to contact them?
I also don't really see a problem with what you posted here, because you've also posted the solution to it
What... not fixing something for over a year? Forcing users to wonder what is wrong with their browser? or if they are doing something wrong? Then they go to bug/support to wait out a response only to be turned to an email address hours/days later and THEN they have to wait for a response 3-7 business days?
I don't know what you call good customer support, but as a computer technician, an ex support staff manager, and a manager in general... that..... is........... ABOMINABLE support.
What... not fixing something for over a year? Forcing users to wonder what is wrong with their browser? or if they are doing something wrong? Then they go to bug/support to wait out a response only to be turned to an email address hours/days later and THEN they have to wait for a response 3-7 business days?
I don't know what you call good customer support, but as a computer technician, an ex support staff manager, and a manager in general... that..... is........... ABOMINABLE support.
Why is it everyone pulls out their job resume to argue something? Unless you're an IT Manager (with emphasys on network infrastructure in a high load environment), Done customer support in a MMO/online field that handles thousands if not tens of thousands of people a day, or been or are a MMO developer for a major corporation your experience is moot.
I'm not trying to be an TRIBBLE and saying people's opinions don't count, but can we PLEASE stop pulling out the job resume's unless you're in the above? It's basically saying that I've done retail work and expect to be able to tell people how to run a business in the industrial field because of that expertise. It's a totally different ballpark.
*HUGE NOTE*: THE ABOVE IS MY PERSONAL OPINION.
Yes, I'm that Askray@Batbayer in game. Yes, I still play. No, I don't care. Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker. Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
What... not fixing something for over a year? Forcing users to wonder what is wrong with their browser? or if they are doing something wrong? Then they go to bug/support to wait out a response only to be turned to an email address hours/days later and THEN they have to wait for a response 3-7 business days?
I don't know what you call good customer support, but as a computer technician, an ex support staff manager, and a manager in general... that..... is........... ABOMINABLE support.
Be proactive, instead of venting frustration on the forums, you can actually do something to get around these problems. You have a way to contact the Moderators/Dev Team, if you feel you're waiting too long then contact Branflakes via Twitter, he might be able to help you on the spot as he's helped a lot of people over there, if not, he can pass it on to the relevant people. This is the best way until whatever browser problems are fixed.
Be proactive, instead of venting frustration on the forums, you can actually do something to get around these problems. You have a way to contact the Moderators/Dev Team, if you feel you're waiting too long then contact Branflakes via Twitter, he might be able to help you on the spot as he's helped a lot of people over there, if not, he can pass it on to the relevant people. This is the best way until whatever browser problems are fixed.
I've brought up this particular issue with them several times since F2P. Telling me to be proactive further about an issue they actively have known has been broken for over a year+ is a waste of time. Furthermore, if they already didn't know it was broken, how can you answer the fact that they tell people to contact them VIA email?
Why is it everyone pulls out their job resume to argue something? Unless you're an IT Manager (with emphasys on network infrastructure in a high load environment), Done customer support in a MMO/online field that handles thousands if not tens of thousands of people a day, or been or are a MMO developer for a major corporation your experience is moot.
I'm not trying to be an TRIBBLE and saying people's opinions don't count, but can we PLEASE stop pulling out the job resume's unless you're in the above? It's basically saying that I've done retail work and expect to be able to tell people how to run a business in the industrial field because of that expertise. It's a totally different ballpark.
*HUGE NOTE*: THE ABOVE IS MY PERSONAL OPINION.
Yeah go figure ...that experience... would equate to someone who actually knows how to judge poor customer support. The customer support you are questioning was handling hardware returns, replacements and warranties with >insert well known online computer hardware store name here< for over five years. Rest assured I'm not submitting a resume, I wouldn't work for this company if my life depended on it, but I do know what I'm talking about.
However, arguing with free labor mods is a waste of time. They didn't pay you to defend them and your views don't reflect that of PWE, but you certainly make an effort to defend them no matter what they do or don't do, personal opinion or otherwise. I personally think your position makes you heavily bias in this matter. I still think free labor for a giant corporation should be illegal, what are you volunteering for? It certainly isn't charity and you are taking paying jobs from experienced people. ( not saying you aren't experienced per se )
Edit: Not blaming you for being a mod, more so blaming Cryptic. Sorry that came out wrong. Of course it is an opinion, you are human it reflects your beliefs, knowledge and experience. As my opinions only reflect my beliefs, knowledge and experience.
"Name calling"? "Moron" seems the proper descriptor for someone who'd throw code onto a live MMO server after having only in-house testing. One of the things I learned as a programmer was that no computer professional will ever think to do some of the silly things an end user would.
Then you need to be getting onto Cryptic, as that is exactly what they have been doing for every single major update since launch.
I work in the industry too, but cryptic are just that silly according to you.
However, arguing with free labor mods is a waste of time. They didn't pay you to defend them and your views don't reflect that of PWE, but you certainly make an effort to defend them no matter what they do or don't do, personal opinion or otherwise. I personally think your position makes you heavily bias in this matter. I still think free labor for a giant corporation should be illegal, what are you volunteering for? It certainly isn't charity and you are taking paying jobs from experienced people.
Edit: Not blaming you for being a mod, more so blaming Cryptic. Sorry that came out wrong. Of course it is an opinion, you are human it reflects your beliefs, knowledge and experience. As my opinions only reflect my beliefs, knowledge and experience.[/color]
Um actually, if you've looked at my past 3 years of being on radio shows, on podcasts, or even posting blogs, twitter or on here, I have not always agreed with every decision they have made and have called them out A LOT on things they fail on.
That said, I defend them in a lot of instances because they are trying their hardest and I know what that's like. I've been where the dev's are, I've done customer service for an online game, it SUCKS when things go bad and you're overloaded and there isn't anything you can do. In the end of the day, to answer the topic of this thread they VERY MUCH CARE about the game, the state of it and how players see things progress. If it looks like TRIBBLE, and people rant, rave etc then yes they won't post as much. Them being on here isn't a requirement that's Brandon's job. He's required to give feedback from here.
As for your edit, I didn't take it as you blaming me And I'm not saying your opinion doesn't matter (I'd NEVER say that to anyone anywhere except as a joke), But ranting about things they can't really help doesn't help anyone.
Yes, I'm that Askray@Batbayer in game. Yes, I still play. No, I don't care. Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker. Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
Um actually, if you've looked at my past 3 years of being on radio shows, on podcasts, or even posting blogs, twitter or on here, I have not always agreed with every decision they have made and have called them out A LOT on things they fail on.
That said, I defend them in a lot of instances because they are trying their hardest and I know what that's like. I've been where the dev's are, I've done customer service for an online game, it SUCKS when things go bad and you're overloaded and there isn't anything you can do. In the end of the day, to answer the topic of this thread they VERY MUCH CARE about the game, the state of it and how players see things progress. If it looks like TRIBBLE, and people rant, rave etc then yes they won't post as much. Them being on here isn't a requirement that's Brandon's job. He's required to give feedback from here.
As for your edit, I didn't take it as you blaming me And I'm not saying your opinion doesn't matter (I'd NEVER say that to anyone anywhere except as a joke), But ranting about things they can't really help doesn't help anyone.
Granted I don't know the inner workings of your life, nor did I claim. I merely go by what I personally observe.
How can they not help fixing their support ticket system? None of the staff ( to my knowledge ) has ever once brought up any facts about the issues the support ticket system has. If it IS an issue with PWE/Cryptic cross platforming, then they should of added a redirect link to available contact information options.
Ontop of this, they also have XMPP chat compatibility, which can easily be supported VIA web support applications. They can go all out here, but my own personal experiences with Cryptic/PWE support shows that they have an absolutely bare bone customer support staff. This tells me they are unwilling to fix it to reduce the amount of work their understaffed staff receives. But the ends don't justify the means, they need to hire more employees.
PS: Not saying you are going to say this, but I have a feeling someone might. I'd like to not hear the "They don't have enough money" argument again please. I mean come on... seriously?
Why is it everyone pulls out their job resume to argue something? Unless you're an IT Manager (with emphasys on network infrastructure in a high load environment), Done customer support in a MMO/online field that handles thousands if not tens of thousands of people a day, or been or are a MMO developer for a major corporation your experience is moot.
I'm not trying to be an TRIBBLE and saying people's opinions don't count, but can we PLEASE stop pulling out the job resume's unless you're in the above? It's basically saying that I've done retail work and expect to be able to tell people how to run a business in the industrial field because of that expertise. It's a totally different ballpark.
*HUGE NOTE*: THE ABOVE IS MY PERSONAL OPINION.
Mind if I chime in here then since you put emphasis on industry specific job types and you obviously want to hear their opinion?
Cryptics support is... lacking. For the main website to suffer a redirect failure to its main support page not only sends out the wrong message to potential new subscribers, it sends out the wrong message to CURRENT subscribers. Not only does it do this, it also then forces the same people to come into these forums, and people like yourself askray and Branflakes know full well that forums are usually full of the vocal minority.
People will come into these forums and see nothing but complaints, it will put potential new subscribers off and dishearten current gold members to cancel... which I have done by the way, i cancelled a couple of weeks ago.
The worst part of this? The support page has been down for MONTHS. Unacceptable. Who is Cryptics internal developer? If he/she still has that job then he/she should be shown the door.
As for my "experiences" in the industry.
1996 - Internship at Interplay UK (left in 1999 before the Titus merge and the collapse of what once was the biggest publisher of its day...)
1999 - Activision Developer (ATVI old UK offices) then on to ATVI Community Manager post for the failed attempt at the first Activision EU/UK community portal...left in 2001
I worked in Interplay during the hey day of Star Trek Gaming on the PC. I seen Star Trek: Starfleet Command being developed, i was there when Star Trek: Armada was on the planning table. The gaming community for Star Trek back then was in the tens of millions. The old ATVI portal idea fell flat on its face due to inconsistent web development and poor back end infrastructure. Back then it was inexcusable, when the portal failed and along with it the community support portal failed, the ENTIRE web dev team and admins was shown the door. I stayed on again as a developer and left not long after due to health reasons.
A competent web developer could have that support page up and running within a day. My question to you askray is why have Cryptic or Perfect World not bothered?
"You know when that shark bites, with its teeth dear... scarlet billows start to spread..."
Be proactive, instead of venting frustration on the forums, you can actually do something to get around these problems. You have a way to contact the Moderators/Dev Team, if you feel you're waiting too long then contact Branflakes via Twitter, he might be able to help you on the spot as he's helped a lot of people over there, if not, he can pass it on to the relevant people. This is the best way until whatever browser problems are fixed.
Unfortunately, the truth is that there are several important ongoing problems where more than a few people have been very proactive and gone through multiple channels, and we haven't seen any fixes.
That's not to say Cryptic is 'unresponsive' -- but that they are inconsistent in their responsiveness. That inconsistency is what drives people to ignore when they get it right and rage about when they get it wrong.
Yes, armchair nitpicking about their QA and CS systems is probably off target sometimes, but the ugly reality is that it doesn't matter if you have 'industry experience' in what makes good or bad QA or CS -- if the popular impression is that the CS is bad, then the CS team is working against a penalty already. If the systems just don't work right or are hard to use and make it hard to find answers, then they again hinder the purpose of CS in the first place.
We can all argue this until we are interesting shades of blue in the face, but the bottom line remains that perception is reality for a lot of people. I, personally, have never had a bad CS interaction. I , personally, have seen two of my friends have horrific CS reactions.
Inconsistency means some people have nothing but good things to say, some have nothing but bad things to say, and 'being proactive' only works when there are people there to take action on pro-activity. It's great that they read the forums and take things into account, but that doesn't amount to a hill of beans when big pieces of the CS interface don't work!
Then you need to be getting onto Cryptic, as that is exactly what they have been doing for every single major update since launch.
I work in the industry too, but cryptic are just that silly according to you.
Your statement is inaccurate. In fact, the person who started this particular diversion was upset because Cryptic did not do this - they instead permitted players to test their software on the Tribble server. (I participated in this, and wrote a few bug reports.)
Similarly, over in CO, they're testing a few new powers - so far, they seem to work as intended, so they've been put into the Public Test Server (PTS), CO's equivalent of Tribble, to be playtested and more thoroughly debugged before going Live. (Rimefire sounds like a good one - if it works as described, I might have to resurrect one of my old PnP Champions characters, Frostfire, a fire/ice hero...)
I have no idea whether there's a similar test server for Neverwinter - but I'd be surprised if there isn't, because public playtests are Cryptic's style.
I have no idea whether there's a similar test server for Neverwinter - but I'd be surprised if there isn't, because public playtests are Cryptic's style.
I have no idea whether there's a similar test server for Neverwinter - but I'd be surprised if there isn't, because public playtests are Cryptic's style.
Its called Preview and it was launched today. Says something about Select Players, but it seems as select as STO where you just need to register for it.
what are you volunteering for? It certainly isn't charity and you are taking paying jobs from experienced people. ( not saying you aren't experienced per se )
Can't speak for askray, but here are my thoughts:
I volunteer to moderate these forums for roughly the same reasons I pick up trash on the sidewalk and throw it away; so the sidewalk will be nicer to walk on next time, and because I'm walking past a problem and have the ability to solve it, and it costs me little to do so, so why not solve it?
As for experience; I've got a ton of moderation experience in many venues, but PWE couldn't afford me for this gig. Not even close; especially if they expected me to live in that ridiculously-high-cost-of-living place their offices are in.
It pretty much is charity; I'm here anyway, might as well improve the place. We don't do anywhere NEAR as much as a paid employee would, but we do pick up a piece of trash from time to time.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
I personally think your position makes you heavily bias in this matter. I still think free labor for a giant corporation should be illegal, what are you volunteering for? It certainly isn't charity and you are taking paying jobs from experienced people.
How utterly naive.
If the choice in forum moderation comes down to
a) paid morons reading out of a binder who can't think and are going to follow the rules rather than do the right thing since it's their paycheck, not to mention can't say or do anything that might reflect badly on their bosses so they end up locking any and everything they can or
b) volunteers who want to see the forums work well and will have a bit of separation from the company to actually use judgment and who have no real loss in not being in lockstep with Cryptic
I chose b) every time.
No matter what forum you look at, anytime it's controlled by the company and all the mods are paid, what you will tend to get is mods that are known more for their banhammers than anything else. You pull a thread like this on SWTOR forums and watch it get locked or deleted faster than you can blink.
This concept that, somehow, that ALL of the volunteer mods must be biased because they are volunteers is pretty silly, to me. None of the volunteer mods has been shy in the past about disagreeing with Cryptic when they felt there was something to disagree with.
As I said in an earlier post, however, everyone wants to slather people with one brush, i.e., if you don't agree with me in my criticism of Cryptic then you must be a fanboy.
Now...granted. What the moderator said was, perhaps, one of the most sycophantic, asinine, and logically convoluted statements I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Your point remains -- what we have is not good CS, from anyone's standard , if the tools set up for CS don't work. Him tossing out a line about "bringing up your resume" is akin to the argument that one can't criticize a game unless they make games of their own.
It's the sort of apologist thinking that runs rampant in the Cryptic Defense Force, the line of thought that says since Cryptic has done some good things then we should just ignore all the bad things and assume they will get fixed. Maybe. YEARS from now. Am I happy things get fixed, yes, but it shouldn't take till 2013 to get some things fixed when they were promised when the game launched.
It probably sounds like I'm saying "the mods aren't biased, but they are biased", but it should be closer to "the mods aren't biased because of their jobs, but probably because only strong believers in Cryptic would volunteer in the first place". I doubt they'd offer Peregrine Falcon a job as a mod, even though his criticisms of Cryptic are factual and logical, simply because he does criticize them.
TLDR: I prefer volunteers to paid robots, because volunteers at least can think for themselves, and I don't think they're all useless or biased. That being said, too many of them are willing to overlook glaring problems with the game and, thus, aren't much better than the CDF.
you folks should direct your rage towards project lead, project managers and stakeholders instead of developers. Developers are like working bees, and they do what they are told to do even they don't like it.
Grinding for MkIV epic gear?
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
Hardly naive, it is called human rights and not exploiting the good will of others. This is why the lax on corporate regulation has been a huge issue with the world economy the past 30 years.
And the exploitation of interns as a means of free labor has climbed significantly.
Despite this, Moderator is an official job title, whether you want to believe that or not. There are differences between volunteer moderator and moderator however. One has extremely limited powers and little influence and isn't compensated for their efforts, whereas the other has at least some influence as a paid employee.
It pretty much is charity; I'm here anyway, might as well improve the place. We don't do anywhere NEAR as much as a paid employee would, but we do pick up a piece of trash from time to time.
It shouldn't be charity, this company you do charity for, has plenty of cash to throw around. They should be paying you.
Closing "I Quit" threads has been the policy since launch. Of City of Heroes. In 2004.
I share your wish that the devs would post here more, but "I Quit" threads have always been forbidden. I assure you, however, that the Community Team does read these forums, and pass information along to the developers; further, many devs read relevant threads here, and even have them bookmarked to check daily, who may never post.
It is all nice and well to wish they would post more, but it does not make it so. What is the point of telling us that they read and even bookmark posts, if we see no proof of their interest / concern / general decency in any replies?
When I started playing the game 6 months ago it was fantastic fun since, however, it has become more of a chore to get things done to get to enjoying the game. I won't quit mind you. I have hope that they will see that they are not just responsible for the game, but it's players and the legacy of the Trek and as such will be more pro-active in discussion and resolving of issues that are of minor/major concern to their customers.
In general people do not complain for no reason - "Where there is smoke, there is fire."
Pay to win game now anyways. All they care about is you buying Zen and opening those lock boxes. All you have to do is click on any menu and see the buy Zen icon everywhere in this game. Even with this new expansion the game has not grown much. Just alot of old players coming back to check it out. And the worse part is if your a sub player like i was you get nothing for it. Yeah they give you a monthly lame amount of zen to buy keys to open lock boxes. The game is a joke now. Its all about you spending your money even if your a sub.player.
Thanks to the enormous grind that this game is becoming.. my guess is more and more people have stopped caring.
The reputation system alone is reason enough to drive people away when they realise that they have to grind rep all the way to level 5 on each and every single of their alts.
People have been constantly complaining and begging for changes in the game. You NEVER respond in the forums. I go through the DEV tracker and the only responses I see are either being smart or just "we are bringing the server down for maintenance."
Or when a person says they are quitting you say "sorry to see you go closing thread" Do you even care to say "is there anything we can do to make your STO experience better?
That is not an attitude you should put toward your fans and customers.
Before PWE took over, Cryptic devs were constantly on this forum responding to people. The DEV tracker was full of that. Now it's all closing threads, and maintenance responses.
People having been begging for changes to several things over the past few months, and even in the past few weeks, and I am not even talking about bugs.
What is going on over there? Do you care OR NOT. The minute a mod sees a thread about someone quitting it's closed. The minute a feedback comes in, nothing. YOu just let the thread go and do nothing about it. It's creating anger with me.
I mean look at the reputation feedback thread, there is a 7 page thread on how you should make the Reputation account wide, NO response. Nothing. Show us you actually still care.
are you even serious? try playing champions online. sto gets jack to reply time to time, co gets no visit. sto has a much bigger dev team, co has less. sto gets consent updates, co gets lock boxes and temp missions.
it is obvious cryptic cares more about sto and now then it ever did with champions. im not trying to flame just trying to logic into this.
Comments
That's what I call good customer service, telling customers how to contact them, would you rather the Moderators left you with NO way to contact them?
I also don't really see a problem with what you posted here, because you've also posted the solution to it
*snorts* You can't have it both ways. The bottom line with that incident is that , gasp, someone said the truth. If you don't like it, then stop doing business with the company.
First, I believe the optimal word was PAY, not INVOLVED. In case you can't comprehend the difference, there are people who have not spent cash money on the game. If I get dilithium and use that to buy zen , that is not an expenditure of cash.
Logic chopping and word-twisting to try to make a point is a classic sign of someone trying to argue based on logical fallacies.
Victims?
Let's get something straight. There are very few victims involved in this entire discussion. What you have is a pack of virulent fanboys who are unwilling or possibly unable to see Cryptic doing any wrong whatsoever, a pack of trolls who refuses to admit Cryptic has done anything right at any time, and a bunch of people who chime in on issues that affect them.
Consider the guy who said there were no dev responses to the thread AFTER a dev had responded three times. I'm not going to bother to listen or consider anything that guy says because he is not bothering to even look at what he's talking about. Why should ANYONE listen to arguments coming from people unwilling to look at the reality of things?
Reality: Cryptic messed up a lot, but the game has gotten a lot better over time.
Reality: Cryptic's communications suck and they have misrepresented things in the past.
Reality: Cryptic has made efforts to improve communications and when the community goes up in flames over something it does get fixed, unlike some other games (I'm looking at you, SWTOR).
Until people are going to bother talking about the reality of the situation, let's leave any histrionics about victims to the side, please.
Actually, there have been many, many studies and surveys that show that only a small portion of a game's playerbase ever uses the forums, and smaller still post on them.
However, the point remains moot. People's opinions are, frankly, worthless unless backed up by either fact. As the Dev pointed out earlier, you cannot please everyone. There's no advantage in even trying, so the fact that Cryptic at least monitors the opinions of people on the forums is a positive.
People should stop asking the same stupid, open ended questions over and over or bother to ask themselves how feasible it is. Take customizable ship interiors. How much would it cost to implement vs. how much revenue it would bring in? If the answer isn't favorable, then why would Cryptic do it?
Many of the questions that fall into the category you mentioned fall into that range. Cryptic gives vague answers so that , maybe , if a high value feature goes into the game that would help pay for lower value features, they could implement it.
I think the concept that the customer is always right is a sham. After a dozen years in retail and more in consulting, I've come to the belief that the customer is usually a short sighted fool who doesn't even bother to think about how feasible something is.
People screaming invectives at Cryptic , saying how they're quitting because everything sucks, are not a loss of any kind. Unhappy customers that cannot be made happy are a liability, as they will 'poison' the attitudes of those around them. So , truly, when they quit, nothing of value is lost.
A company's responsibilities is to it's shareholders, not it's customers, period, no arguments. The 'customers' are not a defined class, shareholders are. A customer has no INVESTMENT in the company he does business with, a shareholder does. A customer can chose to use the services of that company...or use the service of another company. That's all.
As a PWE shareholder, I couldn't give two cents about some disgruntled kid leaving the game. His revenue loss will be made good in an hour by someone buying fleet modules.
Except , all too often, the trolls aren't any better than the Cryptic Defense Force when it comes to being objective. When Cryptic gets things right, there's never an acknowledgement. When Cryptic gets things wrong, there's never someone saying "Well they got this and this right but this and this wrong maybe we need to do this or this", it's always just "Kriptyic u lied 2 us and u ar teh sux teh die lolololzor".
The hypocritical hilarity of people calling out fanboys for being unwilling to admit Cryptic messed up when they themselves are just as blind has never failed to amuse me.
Very well.
When I just Dan by his track record, I see a guy who wanted to deliver a lot more to the game than he was able to, and who left because he was frustrated with that, and game back to try to make a difference, and managed to get some things done but not others and , quite frankly, is probably burned out because of the amount of hate he gets.
I , for one, am ecstatic the guy came through with flying colors on a full 1-50 PVE progression for Klingons. It didn't come as fast, or as fully, as we liked. But it means I'll give him more chances to prove himself.
The problem with people like you is that you like to use chop-logic , to only take part of the truth and twist it to support what you are saying. A lot of people do this, and I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see it, but it's getting rather boring and you're smart enough to make better arguments than this.
What... not fixing something for over a year? Forcing users to wonder what is wrong with their browser? or if they are doing something wrong? Then they go to bug/support to wait out a response only to be turned to an email address hours/days later and THEN they have to wait for a response 3-7 business days?
I don't know what you call good customer support, but as a computer technician, an ex support staff manager, and a manager in general... that..... is........... ABOMINABLE support.
| Join Date: January 2009 | Computer | Fleet: Broken Wings |
Why is it everyone pulls out their job resume to argue something? Unless you're an IT Manager (with emphasys on network infrastructure in a high load environment), Done customer support in a MMO/online field that handles thousands if not tens of thousands of people a day, or been or are a MMO developer for a major corporation your experience is moot.
I'm not trying to be an TRIBBLE and saying people's opinions don't count, but can we PLEASE stop pulling out the job resume's unless you're in the above? It's basically saying that I've done retail work and expect to be able to tell people how to run a business in the industrial field because of that expertise. It's a totally different ballpark.
*HUGE NOTE*: THE ABOVE IS MY PERSONAL OPINION.
Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker.
Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
Be proactive, instead of venting frustration on the forums, you can actually do something to get around these problems. You have a way to contact the Moderators/Dev Team, if you feel you're waiting too long then contact Branflakes via Twitter, he might be able to help you on the spot as he's helped a lot of people over there, if not, he can pass it on to the relevant people. This is the best way until whatever browser problems are fixed.
I've brought up this particular issue with them several times since F2P. Telling me to be proactive further about an issue they actively have known has been broken for over a year+ is a waste of time. Furthermore, if they already didn't know it was broken, how can you answer the fact that they tell people to contact them VIA email?
Yeah go figure ...that experience... would equate to someone who actually knows how to judge poor customer support. The customer support you are questioning was handling hardware returns, replacements and warranties with >insert well known online computer hardware store name here< for over five years. Rest assured I'm not submitting a resume, I wouldn't work for this company if my life depended on it, but I do know what I'm talking about.
However, arguing with free labor mods is a waste of time. They didn't pay you to defend them and your views don't reflect that of PWE, but you certainly make an effort to defend them no matter what they do or don't do, personal opinion or otherwise. I personally think your position makes you heavily bias in this matter. I still think free labor for a giant corporation should be illegal, what are you volunteering for? It certainly isn't charity and you are taking paying jobs from experienced people. ( not saying you aren't experienced per se )
Edit: Not blaming you for being a mod, more so blaming Cryptic. Sorry that came out wrong. Of course it is an opinion, you are human it reflects your beliefs, knowledge and experience. As my opinions only reflect my beliefs, knowledge and experience.
| Join Date: January 2009 | Computer | Fleet: Broken Wings |
Then you need to be getting onto Cryptic, as that is exactly what they have been doing for every single major update since launch.
I work in the industry too, but cryptic are just that silly according to you.
That said, I defend them in a lot of instances because they are trying their hardest and I know what that's like. I've been where the dev's are, I've done customer service for an online game, it SUCKS when things go bad and you're overloaded and there isn't anything you can do. In the end of the day, to answer the topic of this thread they VERY MUCH CARE about the game, the state of it and how players see things progress. If it looks like TRIBBLE, and people rant, rave etc then yes they won't post as much. Them being on here isn't a requirement that's Brandon's job. He's required to give feedback from here.
As for your edit, I didn't take it as you blaming me
Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker.
Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
Granted I don't know the inner workings of your life, nor did I claim. I merely go by what I personally observe.
How can they not help fixing their support ticket system? None of the staff ( to my knowledge ) has ever once brought up any facts about the issues the support ticket system has. If it IS an issue with PWE/Cryptic cross platforming, then they should of added a redirect link to available contact information options.
Ontop of this, they also have XMPP chat compatibility, which can easily be supported VIA web support applications. They can go all out here, but my own personal experiences with Cryptic/PWE support shows that they have an absolutely bare bone customer support staff. This tells me they are unwilling to fix it to reduce the amount of work their understaffed staff receives. But the ends don't justify the means, they need to hire more employees.
PS: Not saying you are going to say this, but I have a feeling someone might. I'd like to not hear the "They don't have enough money" argument again please. I mean come on... seriously?
| Join Date: January 2009 | Computer | Fleet: Broken Wings |
Makes me hot.
Mind if I chime in here then since you put emphasis on industry specific job types and you obviously want to hear their opinion?
Cryptics support is... lacking. For the main website to suffer a redirect failure to its main support page not only sends out the wrong message to potential new subscribers, it sends out the wrong message to CURRENT subscribers. Not only does it do this, it also then forces the same people to come into these forums, and people like yourself askray and Branflakes know full well that forums are usually full of the vocal minority.
People will come into these forums and see nothing but complaints, it will put potential new subscribers off and dishearten current gold members to cancel... which I have done by the way, i cancelled a couple of weeks ago.
The worst part of this? The support page has been down for MONTHS. Unacceptable. Who is Cryptics internal developer? If he/she still has that job then he/she should be shown the door.
As for my "experiences" in the industry.
1996 - Internship at Interplay UK (left in 1999 before the Titus merge and the collapse of what once was the biggest publisher of its day...)
1999 - Activision Developer (ATVI old UK offices) then on to ATVI Community Manager post for the failed attempt at the first Activision EU/UK community portal...left in 2001
I worked in Interplay during the hey day of Star Trek Gaming on the PC. I seen Star Trek: Starfleet Command being developed, i was there when Star Trek: Armada was on the planning table. The gaming community for Star Trek back then was in the tens of millions. The old ATVI portal idea fell flat on its face due to inconsistent web development and poor back end infrastructure. Back then it was inexcusable, when the portal failed and along with it the community support portal failed, the ENTIRE web dev team and admins was shown the door. I stayed on again as a developer and left not long after due to health reasons.
A competent web developer could have that support page up and running within a day. My question to you askray is why have Cryptic or Perfect World not bothered?
Raaaaaaaage :P
Unfortunately, the truth is that there are several important ongoing problems where more than a few people have been very proactive and gone through multiple channels, and we haven't seen any fixes.
That's not to say Cryptic is 'unresponsive' -- but that they are inconsistent in their responsiveness. That inconsistency is what drives people to ignore when they get it right and rage about when they get it wrong.
Yes, armchair nitpicking about their QA and CS systems is probably off target sometimes, but the ugly reality is that it doesn't matter if you have 'industry experience' in what makes good or bad QA or CS -- if the popular impression is that the CS is bad, then the CS team is working against a penalty already. If the systems just don't work right or are hard to use and make it hard to find answers, then they again hinder the purpose of CS in the first place.
We can all argue this until we are interesting shades of blue in the face, but the bottom line remains that perception is reality for a lot of people. I, personally, have never had a bad CS interaction. I , personally, have seen two of my friends have horrific CS reactions.
Inconsistency means some people have nothing but good things to say, some have nothing but bad things to say, and 'being proactive' only works when there are people there to take action on pro-activity. It's great that they read the forums and take things into account, but that doesn't amount to a hill of beans when big pieces of the CS interface don't work!
Similarly, over in CO, they're testing a few new powers - so far, they seem to work as intended, so they've been put into the Public Test Server (PTS), CO's equivalent of Tribble, to be playtested and more thoroughly debugged before going Live. (Rimefire sounds like a good one - if it works as described, I might have to resurrect one of my old PnP Champions characters, Frostfire, a fire/ice hero...)
I have no idea whether there's a similar test server for Neverwinter - but I'd be surprised if there isn't, because public playtests are Cryptic's style.
I don't think it's up yet, but there will be one.
edit: corrected by Starkaos, it went live today
R.I.P
Its called Preview and it was launched today. Says something about Select Players, but it seems as select as STO where you just need to register for it.
WUT? THEY PISTOLWHIPPED A BABEH!? PITCHFORKS, PITCHFORKS!!!!
You, of all people, should know that dead horses must be beaten, my KDF friend.
I don't care who you areee dat was funny right there
Can't speak for askray, but here are my thoughts:
I volunteer to moderate these forums for roughly the same reasons I pick up trash on the sidewalk and throw it away; so the sidewalk will be nicer to walk on next time, and because I'm walking past a problem and have the ability to solve it, and it costs me little to do so, so why not solve it?
As for experience; I've got a ton of moderation experience in many venues, but PWE couldn't afford me for this gig. Not even close; especially if they expected me to live in that ridiculously-high-cost-of-living place their offices are in.
It pretty much is charity; I'm here anyway, might as well improve the place. We don't do anywhere NEAR as much as a paid employee would, but we do pick up a piece of trash from time to time.
How utterly naive.
If the choice in forum moderation comes down to
a) paid morons reading out of a binder who can't think and are going to follow the rules rather than do the right thing since it's their paycheck, not to mention can't say or do anything that might reflect badly on their bosses so they end up locking any and everything they can or
b) volunteers who want to see the forums work well and will have a bit of separation from the company to actually use judgment and who have no real loss in not being in lockstep with Cryptic
I chose b) every time.
No matter what forum you look at, anytime it's controlled by the company and all the mods are paid, what you will tend to get is mods that are known more for their banhammers than anything else. You pull a thread like this on SWTOR forums and watch it get locked or deleted faster than you can blink.
This concept that, somehow, that ALL of the volunteer mods must be biased because they are volunteers is pretty silly, to me. None of the volunteer mods has been shy in the past about disagreeing with Cryptic when they felt there was something to disagree with.
As I said in an earlier post, however, everyone wants to slather people with one brush, i.e., if you don't agree with me in my criticism of Cryptic then you must be a fanboy.
Now...granted. What the moderator said was, perhaps, one of the most sycophantic, asinine, and logically convoluted statements I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Your point remains -- what we have is not good CS, from anyone's standard , if the tools set up for CS don't work. Him tossing out a line about "bringing up your resume" is akin to the argument that one can't criticize a game unless they make games of their own.
It's the sort of apologist thinking that runs rampant in the Cryptic Defense Force, the line of thought that says since Cryptic has done some good things then we should just ignore all the bad things and assume they will get fixed. Maybe. YEARS from now. Am I happy things get fixed, yes, but it shouldn't take till 2013 to get some things fixed when they were promised when the game launched.
It probably sounds like I'm saying "the mods aren't biased, but they are biased", but it should be closer to "the mods aren't biased because of their jobs, but probably because only strong believers in Cryptic would volunteer in the first place". I doubt they'd offer Peregrine Falcon a job as a mod, even though his criticisms of Cryptic are factual and logical, simply because he does criticize them.
TLDR: I prefer volunteers to paid robots, because volunteers at least can think for themselves, and I don't think they're all useless or biased. That being said, too many of them are willing to overlook glaring problems with the game and, thus, aren't much better than the CDF.
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Hardly naive, it is called human rights and not exploiting the good will of others. This is why the lax on corporate regulation has been a huge issue with the world economy the past 30 years.
And the exploitation of interns as a means of free labor has climbed significantly.
Despite this, Moderator is an official job title, whether you want to believe that or not. There are differences between volunteer moderator and moderator however. One has extremely limited powers and little influence and isn't compensated for their efforts, whereas the other has at least some influence as a paid employee.
It shouldn't be charity, this company you do charity for, has plenty of cash to throw around. They should be paying you.
| Join Date: January 2009 | Computer | Fleet: Broken Wings |
It is all nice and well to wish they would post more, but it does not make it so. What is the point of telling us that they read and even bookmark posts, if we see no proof of their interest / concern / general decency in any replies?
When I started playing the game 6 months ago it was fantastic fun since, however, it has become more of a chore to get things done to get to enjoying the game. I won't quit mind you. I have hope that they will see that they are not just responsible for the game, but it's players and the legacy of the Trek and as such will be more pro-active in discussion and resolving of issues that are of minor/major concern to their customers.
In general people do not complain for no reason - "Where there is smoke, there is fire."
See what I did there?
Thanks to the enormous grind that this game is becoming.. my guess is more and more people have stopped caring.
The reputation system alone is reason enough to drive people away when they realise that they have to grind rep all the way to level 5 on each and every single of their alts.
are you even serious? try playing champions online. sto gets jack to reply time to time, co gets no visit. sto has a much bigger dev team, co has less. sto gets consent updates, co gets lock boxes and temp missions.
it is obvious cryptic cares more about sto and now then it ever did with champions. im not trying to flame just trying to logic into this.
Thank you! A response from a DEV!
Thank you!
Thanks for letting us know you are actually listening.
Um. . . wut?
Post #71
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Post #64
There have been nearly 100 posts between my first, and this one. . . ?