Fundamental Issues with Bugs, Customer Service and Testing

Klarick

Umm Revan, have you even read my responses? I have directly replied to each and every point.

Patience and understanding.

Carafina34

I study software development. Apart from that I have a Master's degree in psychology - and frankly said: I do agree with gordonbennett in each and every point.

Yes, it is true that it is an immense task, but that does not in any way excuse the lack of communication which can only be understood as either lacking organization (which I assume is the case) or disrespectfulness towards customers. My intuition (not that this would have to be perceived as reliable by anyone else but myself) says it's both. Why bother about those few hundreds who leave because they feel like they're treated unfairly? Thousands will stay and accept pretty much any treatment they are being given...
[/quote]

Yeah. Im Buzz Aldrin. I did a moon gig a few years ago.



So, you think that they should personally answer every single posts, personally address every single issue. LOL. Ok man you win. That works for a mom and pop store, not so much for an enterprise that just suddenly received a million or more customers.

[/quote]

You seem to know so much about how this all works, I await your LinkedIn profile eagerly.......;)

Jirki88

Klarick wrote: »

Umm Revan, have you even read my responses? I have directly replied to each and every point.

Patience and understanding.

Everyone have seen your responses. They contain:
45% personal attacks
45% irrelevant statements without any backup
10% of what could best be described as "sploshy thing that the alit dragged in from the swamp"

It's quite amazing really that you manage to have such an extravagant lack of selfinstinct that you haven't figured out the above on your own yet.

Tweek

Have they fixed the final assault yet...I can't talk to the person to continue the quest.

Perseas

@ Mr Klarick... Your company communication skills are good, but the result of the issues (solved/unsolved) is beyond -50 degrees. So its not only the communication skills, but if they actually solve the issues they grab to solve.

Or they just mark them as solved and case closed.

Yes.. this is not a thing u find in many mmos.

I speak in a personal experience, NOT from other people's problems. And I could also give you the ticket number to prove it. But thats ok.. It was not a major issue, I missed an item because of zenimax policies.. Zenimax had different policies (after they replied to, about changing email address in the acc), then I complied with their new policies, the thing they asked me to do, then zenimax changed their policies again... And I lost my monkey pet from beta.

And it was not my fault.

Now I experience a fear to log on. The reason is, I never had endless loading screens, since the last patch 2 days ago, I have a huge problem and I have to force quit the game all the time!

My fear is, that many people here in the forums, speak about autobans, if you log off and on many times! And I am scared to log on. Its the first mmo that I am scared to log on!

So lets speak about that.. Is there many mmos, that creating fear to customers, not to get autoban (suspend), because of a bug that u dont fix? And this is bad for me, I tried while ago twice and I force quit it, because I stuck in endless loading screens.. Now I am scared to log on.

I am dyslexic.

And here is a suggestion,

1) instead of giving suspend bots for those who log off and on many times because of the bugs (or those who do bad things).. You should add timer, for when someone can enter a different instanse. Lets say every 10-15 minutes, so if someone logs off and on all the time, logs into the same one for that time. After 10 or 15 minuets he can log into a different one. Thats more legit...

2) each time we kill a boss in a solo/mini dungeon, add 1 hour timer, for no xp and no loot.

aegis156

Lovebone wrote: »

Klarick wrote: »

Ok Mr Bennet. Please point to the other MMOs that have this awesome communication. You say they exist...give me 3.

You said many large corporations have been brought down due to poor CS. Since there are so many, Name 5.

Ill wait...

You have quite the need to go for player and not the ball, to use a football term (the soccer kind of football, not the padded rugby kind)

He used his background to illustrate from where he had formed his opinions, and NOT to validate the quality of his points. Though I dare say having played video games since the mid 80's I agree with him, and understand his concerns-

Please, argue his points and not his person. You seem way too eager to prove that you are smarter than him, while ignoring the substance of his post completely.

You mentioned earlier that this is a large scale project, and I totally agree, it's a fact that no sensible person can really dispute. However, the scale of the project is matched by the scale of the companies behind it, and you would expect experienced developer companies like those in play, to learn from the mistakes of other less communicating game developers and those that emphasize customer relations on just about everything.

I have one minor note to all of this discussion though. Easter vacation work both ways, so while there's certainly a lot of players on vacation, there's certainly a lot of developers on vacation too.

I find it amusing that everyone points at the scope of what ZOS is trying to do. Honestly when broken down into individual systems its really not that hard.

It all breaks down to quality control and having someone take responsibility for the end product.

Klarick

Perseas wrote: »

@ Mr Klarick... Your company communication skills are good, but the result of the issues (solved/unsolved) is beyond -50 degrees. So its not only the communication skills, but if they actually solve the issues they grab to solve.

Or they just mark them as solved and case closed.

Yes.. this is not a thing u find in many mmos.

I speak in a personal experience, NOT from other people's problems. And I could also give you the ticket number to prove it. But thats ok.. It was not a major issue, I missed an item because of zenimax policies.. Zenimax had different policies (after they replied to, about changing email address in the acc), then I complied with their new policies, the thing they asked me to do, then zenimax changed their policies again... And I lost my monkey pet from beta.

And it was not my fault.

Im sorry to hear of your monkey pet and am also surprised they just didnt get you another. However, just understand that they are SWAMPED right now. Really really swamped. It doesnt excuse anything, but it does provide a reason of why you were treated unfairly at this time. I would suggest waiting another 30 days and resubmitting for your pet. I really dont know how to resolve it unfortunatly.

I do know, that because this is a popular game, TESO is being heavily attacked by Bots, Gold sellers, Dupers, Exploits...etc...etc.... These attacks are coming in at a rapid rate, im sure. Not only that they are coming in from all over the world. A this time, I would bet they have everyone busting booty, to try and solve these issues. It only makes sense and is logical to believe they would be.

It would appear they had a tool for catching cheaters, but it overstepped what they would logically want it to do. Some innocents were banned unfairly. To what I understand they are releasing banned accounts and have found and have fixed the issue that created the problem.

The good news, is that Zeni appears to be very active on the cheating front. This is positive news. It took GW2 about 3 months to finally get a handle on the bot prob. The bot prob is still there, but not like it was the first 3 months.

The attacks we are seeing takes time for a company to chase down, and create or fix the code so it cant happen again.

I really do hope you get the pet back. Have you called them?

Happy Easter

RitualSmoke

it's interesting how people say its not as bad as this launch or that launch, I should hope not this is 10 years later and x amount of a million dollars larger budget than many games. sure it could be worse, but there is also not any real good reason why it couldn't be better. I for one hope things get better and continue into a very productive and enjoyable game and there is no reason to think it wont - it is fully capable but if it is managed poorly it is also fully capable of crashing and burning, I'd prefer success. I have played many games and understand about launch issues and unforeseen circumstances wreaking havoc. but its the simple and easily controllable things being handled poorly that really get at me in this game. I put in a call back for a technical issue with the game and 6 hours later put one in my wifes name asking for help with billing, 2 hours later got a call for her problem 2 weeks later waiting for my call.... I can understand a lot of time and money was invested and the game probably took much longer and cost much more than anticipated but if you handle it incorrectly now and rush and try to turn as much profit as possible while spending the least amount more, you are going to make less money in the long run.

otomodachi

Klarick wrote: »

Perseas wrote: »

@ Mr Klarick... Your company communication skills are good, but the result of the issues (solved/unsolved) is beyond -50 degrees. So its not only the communication skills, but if they actually solve the issues they grab to solve.

Or they just mark them as solved and case closed.

Yes.. this is not a thing u find in many mmos.

I speak in a personal experience, NOT from other people's problems. And I could also give you the ticket number to prove it. But thats ok.. It was not a major issue, I missed an item because of zenimax policies.. Zenimax had different policies (after they replied to, about changing email address in the acc), then I complied with their new policies, the thing they asked me to do, then zenimax changed their policies again... And I lost my monkey pet from beta.

And it was not my fault.

Im sorry to hear of your monkey pet and am also surprised they just didnt get you another. However, just understand that they are SWAMPED right now. Really really swamped. It doesnt excuse anything, but it does provide a reason of why you were treated unfairly at this time. I would suggest waiting another 30 days and resubmitting for your pet. I really dont know how to resolve it unfortunatly.

I do know, that because this is a popular game, TESO is being heavily attacked by Bots, Gold sellers, Dupers, Exploits...etc...etc.... These attacks are coming in at a rapid rate, im sure. Not only that they are coming in from all over the world. A this time, I would bet they have everyone busting booty, to try and solve these issues. It only makes sense and is logical to believe they would be.

It would appear they had a tool for catching cheaters, but it overstepped what they would logically want it to do. Some innocents were banned unfairly. To what I understand they are releasing banned accounts and have found and have fixed the issue that created the problem.

The good news, is that Zeni appears to be very active on the cheating front. This is positive news. It took GW2 about 3 months to finally get a handle on the bot prob. The bot prob is still there, but not like it was the first 3 months.

The attacks we are seeing takes time for a company to chase down, and create or fix the code so it cant happen again.

I really do hope you get the pet back. Have you called them?

Happy Easter

When it's a holiday weekend, you hire staff for your motel. When you launch a game that costs 60 bucks a pop, you hire a buttload of CS staff. Your arguments are worthless because they all revolve around ZO somehow undertaking a huge task while not knowing the scope of what they were getting into to.

The ENTIRE IMAGE ZO has been projecting is "everything's great!". This does not reconcile with the story you are telling. The way ZO is handling all of the problems the customer base has had is what we are complaining about, and your defense is that they didn't staff enough.

That is part of the complaint.

EDIT: Also, DAoC was another MMO that had a crappy launch but made a fantastic effort IMO to keep in touch with it's players. The community director IIRC went by the handle Sankya, something like that, and she must have HATED her job because it consisted of being called the worst things imaginable every day for months, but she did it and it worked.

EDIT2: removed allcaps

Gillysan

It's an uphill battle, especially where kids are concerned. Some good suggestions here, like the weekly or bi-weekly podcast. The customers have to be made aware of it too. Like if a podcast goes up, well hell, put out a system message every 4 hours for that day that a new dev podcast is up. No guarantee that customers will go look, but at least they know that it is there.

Even more daring would be a live Q&A once a month or so.

alluringsumo

Klarick wrote: »

It would appear they had a tool for catching cheaters, but it overstepped what they would logically want it to do. Some innocents were banned unfairly. To what I understand they are releasing banned accounts and have found and have fixed the issue that created the problem.

Understand the bans were done without notice. When you tried to log in it said your info was wrong. Your then spent a couple hours to even figure out you were banned. Then a 12 hour wait for a callback. Callback was no apology just a 'hey it works now'....no explanation of why you were banned....not even a sorry.

A great deal of my problem comes from their staff taking to the forums yesterday to explain how these bans were in fact valid and based on manual reviews thus making those complaining appear to be cheats. If their customer service has the balls to imply the complainers are cheaters then they need to make some major apologies and reparations when they find out they didn't know what they were talking about. Clearly what happened wasn't the manual review process they were claiming yesterday but they sure made a lot of people look like cheating jerks and don't seem to care.

Worse yet they released a blip apology and said you could resume using the rest of your time. No compensation for paid time lost due to their screw up. I know it only comes out to like $.50 but the point isn't the money....its pure principle. If we as a community don't hold developers to a certain standard of service they will never provide it. Problem was fixed last night but I refuse to log in. This was a MAJOR screw up. Not a little error. You don't insult your customers. We speak with our gaming dollars and I have chosen to speak.

PF1901

[
And there I thought you'd be the "old wise one".
Have a go at this maybe:
http://www.amazon.com/Communication-Skills-Dummies-Elizabeth-Kuhnke/dp/1118401247/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397946770&sr=1-7&keywords=communication+skills

Colonel_Brandon

May I contradict you on that point, my ISP a quite well known British ISP does in fact do this. They have a very sophisticated auto email system that not only informs customers of service outages but of any backend work about to take place with date’s times and expected durations. The service also gives updates of long term carrier work that will be carried out on infrastructure hubs throughout the country that may impact on a customer’s local connection.

If for any reason the auto-mailing system cannot operate because of a major outage or because your local connection is down then they will notify you by text message as required. If all else fails then they have one of the most excellent customer support helpdesks with all agents based in the UK.

I’ve been with this company many years through thick and thin and believe me they did have one very thin patch when a new management team took control of the company who did not understand the concept of ‘customer relations’. The company just survived but only with a major change of management and understanding of how customers should be treated.

Now it’s one of the top rated ISP in the UK, think about that.

silvestru_liviueb17_ESO

Sorry, just saw this and it needs a response.
So, youre telling me that when your internet goes down for whatever reason, your ISP notifies you? Really?

No. No they dont. Youre lying. Plain and simple. No, they dont contact you if it is only going to be down for 2 hours. You guys need to quit making crap up.

Seriously just stop already.[/quote]

Well, i don't know about your ISP but in my case is like this: if i don't have access to internet due to whatever reasons, i call to see what is happening and guess what? They tell me in that moment what is happening. Excuses if there are technical problems, WITH an estimated time to restore access, or if not, they send the guys to my home to check things out. Or whatever is necessary to make me understand what is the situation.
What i wanna say is that THEY COMMUNICATE! And quite in a way! Comparing to other BIG COMPANIES!...This ZOS is more and more like the old ea/bioware... same "shhh, keep mouth shut" politic...

MissyJ

Squishy wrote: »

Last post from me on this one, as this is getting completly pointless.

What we've been saying, or I've been saying anyway, is that the communication problem is mostly internal to Zeni. Yes they communicate with us, however, the way things are said or announced are not always what they should be.

In tonight's downtime, we could not ask for an ETA, as it was unplanned, over a holiday period, so this one, is fine.

But the massive banning that happened, was an example of a massive communication failure. A lot of people were wrongfully banned, and apparently, received 0 communication about it. That to me, is incredibly bad. Banning someone that deserves it, that is fine. Not telling them why, or even telling them they have been banned, other than when they try to login, that is terrible practice.

Many of the now exposed bugs, allowing people to dupe for example, were supposedly reported during beta. Something THAT bad, should have been adressed, and since they found a workaround pretty quickly now, why was it not implemented and tested in beta?

I read quite a few posts about bad support, where the support did not know there were bans in progress, or that there was a maintenance happening. This, if correct, is the sign of a massive internal communication issue. Even ITIL has guidelines for that, with banners, voice messages, alerts etc. Letting your frontlines know about what's currently happening is helpdesk 101 stuff.

Yes, there are communications from Zeni with the playerbase, that can not be denied, but the informations given, or the delay/method of getting them sometimes are not really what you'd expect from a MMO environment.

An example tonight, they shutdown the servers without telling the people logged in about it. Granted, it was an emergency, but they should have at least send a message to everyone online, that the servers were coming down in 1 minute. The board was litterally flooded with people asking what was happening, and most were very angry, which I can understand.

I completely agree to all of this!

james_edwards1979b16_ESO

Actually it's about 7 years old! You don't think they programmed it overnight do you? Hell, it's been in beta testing for what?... a year? But I'm probably telling an educated adult something he already knew.

twenty5six

Whats with the CM editing posts but not actually posting anything in this thread?? I would expect that if you're editing posts then surely you can post a simple explanation as to why or even better perhaps address the initial concern if you can.

I only came to this thread as I could see they've updated the forums to show when a CM posts now but it appears that if they edit someone else's post then that shows as a staff post. Perhaps that's something that can be changed?

SteveCampsOut

james_edwards1979b16_ESO wrote: »

Klarick wrote: »

Im really not attempting to talk smack as you say. But, as an educated adult, I do have the ability to understand and have patience for an enterprise that is barely 3 weeks old.

Actually it's about 7 years old! You don't think they programmed it overnight do you? Hell, it's been in beta testing for what?... a year? But I'm probably telling an educated adult something he already knew.

Actually when you consider the fact that some of the developers and staff on this project were from the creators of DAoC they have well over 14 years of experience to draw from. You have to ask yourself, why aren't they showing it?

wrlifeboil

The thing that people on these forums have problems grokking is that CS is something discrete from the devs. I'd be surprised if the devs had much if any say about CS. That's more on the publisher. They've never had to deal with CS in an mmo setting before so realistically it was going to be a rough ride. Like someone one of the fan sites or forums presciently mentioned months ago, this is their first rodeo.

Dark_Maiden

I would label this a bit snarky and snide. And dismissive of other's issues and needs. assuming all who have raised their voice in complaint are just 'immature children' who have no concept of patience. For the record, I am not a child. I am not immature, and I find waiting 2 wks for a response to an issue that is associated to my more then '.50 cent a day' contribution to this game, deserves, at least, the respect of acknowledging that I have voiced an issue.

ZOE has made a policy of ignoring complaints from their massed clientele while pretending they are making efforts to address them. Like dealing with gold sellers. Missing items in banks. Missing skill points. Bugs that existed from before open beta. Issues that have nothing to do with in-game play. They seem to show no impetus in dealing with issues then to send out emails, stating they 'Thank you for informing them of the issues, but they will not get back to you about when/how or if, they do something about it'.

That is not how you deal with your costumers; not if you want them to continue to give you their hard earned '.50 cent'.[/b]

MissyJ

twenty5six wrote: »

Whats with the CM editing posts but not actually posting anything in this thread?? I would expect that if you're editing posts then surely you can post a simple explanation as to why or even better perhaps address the initial concern if you can.

I only came to this thread as I could see they've updated the forums to show when a CM posts now but it appears that if they edit someone else's post then that shows as a staff post. Perhaps that's something that can be changed?

Yeah I am a very confused about the "staff posts" too.... It makes it look like it's a staff member speaking on behalf of Zenimax, but from what i can see, it's just players commenting.....

wrlifeboil

Looks like they may be continuing that bad practice of editing a person's forum post. Not really comfortable with that except maybe in specific instances to protect privacy like credit card numbers or something like that. It looks like that practice is being carried over from the bethsoft forums.

Don't edit a message poster's content. If the message is not acceptable based on forum rules, just delete it.

Jirki88

It's especially bad to edit someones' post if it means it get marked as a staff post. And confusing.

WilliamTee

Yeah... after reading the initial post i wanted to see how the conversation in this thread developed... But it reads as though certain posts are missing entirely, and many early in the thread have been edited by admins with no explanation...

that looks all kinds of wrong in a community forum...

Reavan

I agree with you mostly OP apart from its not the same everywhere.
On other mmos i played they would be more communitive and understanding, here you are lucky if they tell you their is a maint.

ESObtst_Grig

Jirki88 wrote: »

It's especially bad to edit someones' post if it means it get marked as a staff post. And confusing.

I thought Klarick was an official staff member when i read his first post .. i REALLY thought that he represented Zenimax

And you are trying to tell me Zenimax has no problems with communications ...

Shaie

SintNicolaas wrote: »

Klarick, how come everyone else here gets their posts marked as 'awesome', 'insightfull', 'agree' and you are getting just 'lol'?

Because the only other way to deal with his inflammatory, name-calling, personal-information-demanding trolling is to report him. I guess it's not really pc to offer an "a******e" button though...

edited because I didn't realize quotation marks would turn off the language filter!

SteveCampsOut

ESObtst_Grig wrote: »

Jirki88 wrote: »

It's especially bad to edit someones' post if it means it get marked as a staff post. And confusing.

I thought Klarick was an official staff member when i read his first post .. i REALLY thought that he represented Zenimax

And you are trying to tell me Zenimax has no problems with communications ...

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
THIS!!!

Soliduparrow

This is no way to speak to customers Klarick. Let me speak with your boss.

ViviDalia

WilliamTee wrote: »

Yeah... after reading the initial post i wanted to see how the conversation in this thread developed... But it reads as though certain posts are missing entirely, and many early in the thread have been edited by admins with no explanation...

that looks all kinds of wrong in a community forum...

It started with Klarick being extremely rude to what looked to me like a well thought out post from the op. Agree or disagree with the op but at least be constructive in criticism. His criticism of the op was over the top. If you click on his name, it looks like he was banned for inappropriate behavior.