I don't have a position in the debate, I just really wish society would stop attaching the word "gate" to everything they consider a scandal. Does nobody realize Watergate was a hotel?
I don't think it means people don't know it was a hotel by using that suffix.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I don't have a position in the debate, I just really wish society would stop attaching the word "gate" to everything they consider a scandal. Does nobody realize Watergate was a hotel?
Yes we do, but I think a far more important question is, if there was a scandal involving water at somewhere called Watergate, would that make it waterwatergate, or watergategate?
I am more than willing to move on from this. Moreso because I did not have a dog in this fight. I did not "Exploit" anything. Nor do I "know someone who did so." But standing with someone who has been unfairly treated and making that stand public and loud is something we all should do more often. Admittedly, we may have gone to excess here but it got the job done and in the end results are what matters in a case like this.
This incident has wiped out years of positive feelings and trust some people have towards pwe/cryptic. Who need to be reminded of this. Regularly, loudly and often. It does not have to have the stridency of some of the posts over the past two weeks. But it does require people to be vocal and upfront about their concerns. The Dev Team hopefully has been reminded they do not exist in an untouchable state. They need to keep on being reminded by their customers. The F2pers as well as the whales. Why? Because an untarnished reputation for good customer service converts F2Pers into whales.
The Dev team has allowed themselves to forget something important. People who play Star Trek Online want the Dev team to be successful. But if the Dev Team falls into an 'us vs. them' menatality, as evidenced by Mr D'Angelo's second post, then ultimately pwe/cryptic will fail.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
This incident has wiped out years of positive feelings and trust some people have towards pwe/cryptic. Who need to be reminded of this. Regularly, loudly and often. It does not have to have the stridency of some of the posts over the past two weeks. But it does require people to be vocal and upfront about their concerns.
Actually, I kinda disagree. I was pretty vocal during Specgate. But I also believe the flipside of an outcry over injustice must, inevitably, culminate in an acknowledgement, on our side, by no longer posting in harsh terms, that they finally did right by us. I, for one, have no intention to keep yanking their chain about it, 'loudly and often,' or otherwise.
Being vocal and upfront about our concerns is, of course, something I can get behind: I just plan to do it in a lower voice.
although I was unconnected to this event I hope theres a way to tell anyone who may have left the game as a result, they may forgive and forget if they know they got their points back.
I know the player base of sto is fairly solid but we don't want to be loosing players if we can help it.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Here, here. But I don't trust any of the mod's, CM's or dev's, mainly that certain one who constantly leave's a bad taste in that certain name of a fellow kin of reptilian species.....:mad:
I think that's a given fact that no one likes that guy, but I share your feelings about the various people, I don't trust any of them either. I frankly lost faith in them quite a long time ago, recent events have just intensified it.
It's not like this is done yet anyway, xp and dil rewards still need a boost. The upgrade system is still in need of a pricing pass and as for things like the 300 second timer and silencing people for no good reason needs to be sorted out as well.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
Actually, I kinda disagree. I was pretty vocal during Specgate. But I also believe the flipside of an outcry over injustice must, inevitably, culminate in an acknowledgement, on our side, by no longer posting in harsh terms, that they finally did right by us. I, for one, have no intention to keep yanking their chain about it, 'loudly and often,' or otherwise.
Being vocal and upfront about our concerns is, of course, something I can get behind: I just plan to do it in a lower voice.
I have no intention of reminding pwe/cryptic of this incident further down the road. They made amends and for this they should be acknowledged. With that it is over and done.
pwe/cryptic does need to remember what they have lost from this incident. Namely, some members of the playerbase no longer trust them unreservedly and without question. It may be impossible for them to completely repair the damage. Which would be a shame, really. When all is said and done, STO is a very enjoyable experience.
As to shouting at them. Volume and stridency are not the best tools to get someone's attention. All most people tend to do is just enough to get the shouting to stop. My preferred method for pointing out errors is humor. No one enjoys being the object of a joke or living life as a punchline. And the more seriously they take themselves, the more devastating the effect is. When you can say someone's name and everyone within earshot bursts into laughter, this tends to leave a mark which is bone deep and the lesson does not have to be repeated.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
While the apology was a "step" in the right direction, it is just a "step".
Anytime a company berates it's own customers and it takes a week of rage by the customers for the "company" to apologize, then someone in-charge needs to re-evaluate several things.
1) The "company" exists to provide goods or services that it's customers want and in return it profits and grows.
2) Satisfied customers are the only way to make the "company" grow and profit.
3) Employees of the "company" represent the "company" when they communicate with the "company's" customers at ALL TIMES!
4) Fail to listen to customers and the "company" fails.
5) Not all customers in the world are the same. What sells in one part of the world does not mean it will sell everywhere. The "company" needs to have several different models of goods and services to reach a world wide customer base.
6) Forcing customers to buy what the "company" wants is a plan for failure.
7) Providing what customers want is a plan for success.
8) In a crisis, lack of communication turns a crisis into a disaster for the "company".
9) When customers stop using the "company's" goods or services the "company" starts to fail.
10) Not learning from past "company" mistakes causes the "company" to repeat mistakes and lose customers.
11) Customer trust and loyalty should be the one of the highest priorities of the "company".
12) Quality of the "company's" goods or services should never be compromised. A rush to market has the potential to fail as much as succeed.
I would suggest that the people in-charge at Cryptic and PWE take some time and look at the path Star Trek Online is headed and ask themselves one question,
Would I, as a customer, want to buy the "company's" goods and services in it's current state?
Speaking as one of your "whales", I am trying to answer that question for myself right now and so far the answer "Does not bode well".
Anybody can search your posting history and decide for themselves if you're neutral
I have
As someone who only followed the forums to try and keep an eye on what was a known issue, what was bugged or broken, and what changes were made to a game I was considering getting back into a game but wasn't sure I really wanted to...
Let me agree with this quote that yes, that particular poster was staggeringly offensive in their abuse of those complaining about bugs and issues that I'd already noticed in game. They even made a thread calling out all the criticism and being abusive in it.
So to now be posting in this thread claiming to be neutral, and simultaneously trying to clamp down on any satisfaction gained from people defending their rights as a customer is just illustrative of the disease too much positive support can lead too; you end up turning the thing you love into something repellent for everyone else without that level of personal association.
Let me be quite clear about this; I work in the MMO industry too. Can't say where, it's covered by a nasty NDA. So I know that most of Cryptic's individual staff, behind the scenes, probably despise quite a bit of the top down demands made upon them. No designer or artist wants to create badly liked work, but to even have the chance at it you need to wade through enormous piles of business and personal bull****. I don't blame them personally. But the only time change can really be made is if the anger is so, so great that it can sink into the awareness of even the most heartless, faceless business suit. The players who get angry are actually the artists true friend.
You're not. In fact you're the games industries true enemy, because as long as people are just accepting every single erosion of their experience of quality, or even defending them, the suits don't feel they need to change course. The devs will be locked down by workload and fear of unemployment, but Public Relations and market trends will terrify even their masters.
Once upon a time companies had to release a complete, or at least working product for $15-$30 dollars; too many lemons and not just the company but the entire industry would collapse. The programmers of ET for the Atari didn't want to write rubbish, and they didn't want to let their business implode. It did because the public recognised the industry as a whole for what it was, and ran from it en-mass.
Now we have games that are never officially completed, that you can pay $10,000 or even more on and still be feature incomplete... and people have become so addicted they will defend that as if it were a blessing. And tear apart their own community in doing so, then claim sanctimonious superiority when the alternative is finally proven. The evil within our industry has finally triumphed, because good men aren't allowed to do anything.
Let me repeat this again; the suits don't even notice when you're happy. They're too up their own behinds to care. The Devs do, but are powerless. Unless you get angry. Anger is a gift. Use it. Yes it's frustrating to take criticism for which you're not to blame; god the stories I want to tell my own players, about how I've protested exactly what they complain about, and can't explain the exact details of yet. But blindly claiming you're defending goodness and attacking your upset fellow players does. NOT. HELP.
A Company shouldn't give the "Customer" what they want... mainly because the "Customer" NEVER knows what they want.
Ask people what kind of Coffee they prefer... most probably say something like "Dark, Rich Roast", give them exactly that and most of these people wouldn't like it and when instructed to do it for themselves they get a mild roast or something like that.
And now try to do it for thousands of people who all say thousands of different things... but actually want thousands of other things that they can't grasp.
The customer may not always know 100% what he or she wants--and I have worked in a type of retail that did require me to do a lot of education and consulting with my customers to help them get a clearer understanding of their options and what would best fit their needs.
But do you know what my team's greatest assets were to function in that environment? First, to have a meaningful array of options because one size truly does not fit all. And secondly--but most importantly--communication, both being able to explain the benefits of a product offering and being able to LISTEN to the customer to make sure we really understood their needs and preferences. In certain cases as much as we wanted to upsell...and not even just for profit but sometimes because we honestly knew what the superior product offering was, there were times where it was not productive to stand there and debate with the customer when they were certain that they wanted something else after hearing all of their options.
I think that communication and consulting are key. There are definitely customers with differing objectives here on STO so the key is to understand and communicate in a two-way conversation with those different constituencies to try to build in meaningful features and options.
One import principle of quality management is that quality is not actually defined by the company. It is defined by the customers, who determine the quality of product they are willing to accept and what features and behaviors are a part of quality and which are merely extraneous. A company that defines quality without any understanding of the definition its customer base uses will eventually experience a financially fatal disconnect and go under or at the very least be forced to take a serious write-off on a failed business unit and the hit to the reputation to go with it.
All roads go to "Cryptic needs to have good two-way communication." I also think that most players define quality an additional measure of quality as the absence of gameplay-impacting bugs and making sure that risk/reward ratios are *sensibly* calculated.
Once I finish the DR storyline I will be in a better position to address that aspect as a comprehensive whole, but for now I prefer to keep my focus on what's above.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I almost forgot in my happiness the multitude of posters who laughed at me and called me an exploiter when I was one of the people afflicted by the bug and was receiving vitriol instead of support.
To those people I say nothing except: told you so. Maybe you'll learn something about empathy from this.
To those who gave support and actually believed those of us who had done no wrong and were unjustly accused and punished I say: thank you. You are what it means to be a good human.
Comments
I don't think it means people don't know it was a hotel by using that suffix.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
You're right, I think it means something worse...
Yes we do, but I think a far more important question is, if there was a scandal involving water at somewhere called Watergate, would that make it waterwatergate, or watergategate?
This incident has wiped out years of positive feelings and trust some people have towards pwe/cryptic. Who need to be reminded of this. Regularly, loudly and often. It does not have to have the stridency of some of the posts over the past two weeks. But it does require people to be vocal and upfront about their concerns. The Dev Team hopefully has been reminded they do not exist in an untouchable state. They need to keep on being reminded by their customers. The F2pers as well as the whales. Why? Because an untarnished reputation for good customer service converts F2Pers into whales.
The Dev team has allowed themselves to forget something important. People who play Star Trek Online want the Dev team to be successful. But if the Dev Team falls into an 'us vs. them' menatality, as evidenced by Mr D'Angelo's second post, then ultimately pwe/cryptic will fail.
Actually, I kinda disagree. I was pretty vocal during Specgate. But I also believe the flipside of an outcry over injustice must, inevitably, culminate in an acknowledgement, on our side, by no longer posting in harsh terms, that they finally did right by us. I, for one, have no intention to keep yanking their chain about it, 'loudly and often,' or otherwise.
Being vocal and upfront about our concerns is, of course, something I can get behind: I just plan to do it in a lower voice.
I know the player base of sto is fairly solid but we don't want to be loosing players if we can help it.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
I think that's a given fact that no one likes that guy, but I share your feelings about the various people, I don't trust any of them either. I frankly lost faith in them quite a long time ago, recent events have just intensified it.
It's not like this is done yet anyway, xp and dil rewards still need a boost. The upgrade system is still in need of a pricing pass and as for things like the 300 second timer and silencing people for no good reason needs to be sorted out as well.
pwe/cryptic does need to remember what they have lost from this incident. Namely, some members of the playerbase no longer trust them unreservedly and without question. It may be impossible for them to completely repair the damage. Which would be a shame, really. When all is said and done, STO is a very enjoyable experience.
As to shouting at them. Volume and stridency are not the best tools to get someone's attention. All most people tend to do is just enough to get the shouting to stop. My preferred method for pointing out errors is humor. No one enjoys being the object of a joke or living life as a punchline. And the more seriously they take themselves, the more devastating the effect is. When you can say someone's name and everyone within earshot bursts into laughter, this tends to leave a mark which is bone deep and the lesson does not have to be repeated.
I mean it would only be fair since we followed the rules, yet appear to be penalized by those that didn't receiving "their" points "back."
Maybe a commemorative Tribble that has a chance to cough up a Spec Point?
The Nerf tribble. Whenever you pet it, it decreases your XP by 17 times.
Anytime a company berates it's own customers and it takes a week of rage by the customers for the "company" to apologize, then someone in-charge needs to re-evaluate several things.
1) The "company" exists to provide goods or services that it's customers want and in return it profits and grows.
2) Satisfied customers are the only way to make the "company" grow and profit.
3) Employees of the "company" represent the "company" when they communicate with the "company's" customers at ALL TIMES!
4) Fail to listen to customers and the "company" fails.
5) Not all customers in the world are the same. What sells in one part of the world does not mean it will sell everywhere. The "company" needs to have several different models of goods and services to reach a world wide customer base.
6) Forcing customers to buy what the "company" wants is a plan for failure.
7) Providing what customers want is a plan for success.
8) In a crisis, lack of communication turns a crisis into a disaster for the "company".
9) When customers stop using the "company's" goods or services the "company" starts to fail.
10) Not learning from past "company" mistakes causes the "company" to repeat mistakes and lose customers.
11) Customer trust and loyalty should be the one of the highest priorities of the "company".
12) Quality of the "company's" goods or services should never be compromised. A rush to market has the potential to fail as much as succeed.
I would suggest that the people in-charge at Cryptic and PWE take some time and look at the path Star Trek Online is headed and ask themselves one question,
Would I, as a customer, want to buy the "company's" goods and services in it's current state?
Speaking as one of your "whales", I am trying to answer that question for myself right now and so far the answer "Does not bode well".
Zeus
That's the current leveling scheme.
We need something new.
As someone who only followed the forums to try and keep an eye on what was a known issue, what was bugged or broken, and what changes were made to a game I was considering getting back into a game but wasn't sure I really wanted to...
Let me agree with this quote that yes, that particular poster was staggeringly offensive in their abuse of those complaining about bugs and issues that I'd already noticed in game. They even made a thread calling out all the criticism and being abusive in it.
So to now be posting in this thread claiming to be neutral, and simultaneously trying to clamp down on any satisfaction gained from people defending their rights as a customer is just illustrative of the disease too much positive support can lead too; you end up turning the thing you love into something repellent for everyone else without that level of personal association.
Let me be quite clear about this; I work in the MMO industry too. Can't say where, it's covered by a nasty NDA. So I know that most of Cryptic's individual staff, behind the scenes, probably despise quite a bit of the top down demands made upon them. No designer or artist wants to create badly liked work, but to even have the chance at it you need to wade through enormous piles of business and personal bull****. I don't blame them personally. But the only time change can really be made is if the anger is so, so great that it can sink into the awareness of even the most heartless, faceless business suit. The players who get angry are actually the artists true friend.
You're not. In fact you're the games industries true enemy, because as long as people are just accepting every single erosion of their experience of quality, or even defending them, the suits don't feel they need to change course. The devs will be locked down by workload and fear of unemployment, but Public Relations and market trends will terrify even their masters.
Once upon a time companies had to release a complete, or at least working product for $15-$30 dollars; too many lemons and not just the company but the entire industry would collapse. The programmers of ET for the Atari didn't want to write rubbish, and they didn't want to let their business implode. It did because the public recognised the industry as a whole for what it was, and ran from it en-mass.
Now we have games that are never officially completed, that you can pay $10,000 or even more on and still be feature incomplete... and people have become so addicted they will defend that as if it were a blessing. And tear apart their own community in doing so, then claim sanctimonious superiority when the alternative is finally proven. The evil within our industry has finally triumphed, because good men aren't allowed to do anything.
Let me repeat this again; the suits don't even notice when you're happy. They're too up their own behinds to care. The Devs do, but are powerless. Unless you get angry. Anger is a gift. Use it. Yes it's frustrating to take criticism for which you're not to blame; god the stories I want to tell my own players, about how I've protested exactly what they complain about, and can't explain the exact details of yet. But blindly claiming you're defending goodness and attacking your upset fellow players does. NOT. HELP.
That would be the idealistic Version...
A Company shouldn't give the "Customer" what they want... mainly because the "Customer" NEVER knows what they want.
Ask people what kind of Coffee they prefer... most probably say something like "Dark, Rich Roast", give them exactly that and most of these people wouldn't like it and when instructed to do it for themselves they get a mild roast or something like that.
And now try to do it for thousands of people who all say thousands of different things... but actually want thousands of other things that they can't grasp.
But do you know what my team's greatest assets were to function in that environment? First, to have a meaningful array of options because one size truly does not fit all. And secondly--but most importantly--communication, both being able to explain the benefits of a product offering and being able to LISTEN to the customer to make sure we really understood their needs and preferences. In certain cases as much as we wanted to upsell...and not even just for profit but sometimes because we honestly knew what the superior product offering was, there were times where it was not productive to stand there and debate with the customer when they were certain that they wanted something else after hearing all of their options.
I think that communication and consulting are key. There are definitely customers with differing objectives here on STO so the key is to understand and communicate in a two-way conversation with those different constituencies to try to build in meaningful features and options.
One import principle of quality management is that quality is not actually defined by the company. It is defined by the customers, who determine the quality of product they are willing to accept and what features and behaviors are a part of quality and which are merely extraneous. A company that defines quality without any understanding of the definition its customer base uses will eventually experience a financially fatal disconnect and go under or at the very least be forced to take a serious write-off on a failed business unit and the hit to the reputation to go with it.
All roads go to "Cryptic needs to have good two-way communication." I also think that most players define quality an additional measure of quality as the absence of gameplay-impacting bugs and making sure that risk/reward ratios are *sensibly* calculated.
Once I finish the DR storyline I will be in a better position to address that aspect as a comprehensive whole, but for now I prefer to keep my focus on what's above.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I almost forgot in my happiness the multitude of posters who laughed at me and called me an exploiter when I was one of the people afflicted by the bug and was receiving vitriol instead of support.
To those people I say nothing except: told you so. Maybe you'll learn something about empathy from this.
To those who gave support and actually believed those of us who had done no wrong and were unjustly accused and punished I say: thank you. You are what it means to be a good human.