Armorsmith Archive
Thread: Correspondent Position
Fellstaff wrote:
TheCapn2000 wrote:
Tiggs wrote:
There are actually many replies in the CU forum and the correspondent forum from Devs. They do respond when they can.
Now there is some great communication to the player base...2 forums 99.9% of us have no access to.....
Thats why they created a correspondent, to take the information from the players, weed out the non constructive 'stuff' and submit it to the Community Relations/Devs. And then take responses and put together what they see shaping up in the Correspondent/CU forum and get it back out to the players. One Dev/Community Relations post on the CU/Correspondent forum can have information for all the professions, its up to the correspondents to get that info back to the players.
Dev Poster:Forum: Number of Posts
TiggsValcyn 12
Tiggs In Testing - Dev 8
Helios_SOE Commando 8
Tiggs Announcements 7
ShiraOcto SWG Fan Fest 6
**
Tiggs Armorsmith4
**
Thunderheart In Testing - Dev2
BlixtevArmorsmith 1
**
Tiggs Chimaera-European1
Pex Events 1
**
Tiggs In Live 1
Thunderheart Events 1
DarthMinos wrote:
Liamo wrote:
DarthMinos wrote:
FignarKrynn wrote:
lol i can't believe you actually sat there and read through this thread. Any way I think people are miss-directing or venting their anger at Tiggs what i think would have been better is that a dedicated thread which only devs responsible for each profession could post on in the profession forums . So someone like Blix or Even Tiggs could pop on look at the top 5 issues for Armorsmith profession or any profession and just take 5 mins and say "yup i've seen what you have to say and its noted". I think thats where the root problem is pushing aside the issues regarding okaram2k being removed as the correspondent for Armorsmith.
Read the rest of the threads, that is not what people are asking for. Everyone is demanding regular updates with what is being worked on, how it is being worked on, when it will be ready, why the changes are made etc. A simple "we read your issues" thread would never be enough. It would only generate about two dozen pages of "what do you think?" and "thats not enough, give us more!" posts.
Armorsmith has received posts, not as many as you'd all like, but has received posts from Blixtev when many other professions are not getting any responses at all.
The mass mailing of the Devs probably hurt you guys more than it helped. Think about it: I'm betting their boxes were so clogged that they started deleting everything instead of reading it. If there was a constructive or helpful message in there, it probably got overlooked and deleted. Can you imagine what would happen if the rest of the correspondents took this course of action? Everybody's issues would be lost.
Your correspondent sounds like he was a good one, but he knew what his job was and then took action contrary to his responsibilities. I'm sure you all have plenty of good armorsmiths that can get the job done without resorting to such a tactic.
problem is, the Armosmith's answers from Blivex STILL only gives Devspeak. No explanation is given as to why these changes are being made and not ONCE have they said "wow, I didn't realize you guys felt so strongly, I'll not even touch that aspect of it."
I never saw a majority of these crafting professions ask for ANY of these changes so there is no reason in hell they should have them and if the Devs insist on doing it, they damn well better give us a thourough explanation as to why this way is being done as opposed to all the other suggestions, when this was announced.
I support the AS in flooding the boxes and hope all professions do it. You know why? Because all we need them to do is to come here and be accountable to our customers. If they know we aren't going to take it quietly, maybe they will do that. Worse case scenario, they take time away form destroying the game to delete the 1000's of e-mails they are getting.
if they would stop lying and would start explaining the REAL reason we need this version of the CU, that would be a start.
True, we still wouldn't stop but they need to explain to us why this is a must when 3/4 of the players HATE it and why they are lying. then they need to stop both.
It's rather simple to get everyone off their backs.
1.)Start communicatiing with us-notice I said communicating-not posting
2.)Stop Lying
3.) Change the CU based on our feedback.
We all know sacrifices need to be made but people have given them alternatives. We need to know why those aren't being considered.
I'm curious as to what the lying is? What have they lied about in the CU since they started testing?
Sure, the crafting professions didn't ask for the changes, but some changes have to be made for the greater good of the game and so that new items will work in the new combat system. You really can't say "we didn't ask for the change, so it shouldn't be in the game." If you went along thoselines, creature handlers would still be the dominant profession in the game (remember what it was like when creatures, not players determined the outcome of every battle?), andcombat medics would still be the king of the PvP battlefields. Neither one of those professions asked to be changed either, but they still got their changes.
So, even though the Devs have said this flooding isn't going to change anything, you're advocating it anyway? You realize this will just lead to suspensions and not more communication. Your correspondent needs to be an advocate for your profession, needs to go after the Tiggs and Thunderheart and get answers and needs to report back with what they can when they can and when they don' thave concrete information, they need to reassure you guys that they are still working. Sounds like your advocate just got frustrated and gave up. Without access to the correspondents' forum, I guess we'll never know exactly what was done or communicated, will we?
I don't disagree that there could be more communication, but the way you are going about getting it is not productive. Notice that it hasn't gotten any more Devs to come to the boards and spill the beans.
Well, the lying wasn't specifically about the Armosmtihs. DId you read the Dev chat? Did you read Smedley's letter? To say player response is positive is a lie.
Did you remember that the CU wasn't going to come out until it was ready but now there is a rush for May 5th-ready or not-that was a lie. Do you need more examples?
Crafters can hiring bodyguards so they can go out and sample and go to their harvesters (semi-lie) only answers the question if it were asked "how can crafters protect themselves if they want to walk everywhere.)
Also, CH and CM were changed for balance to the game and it was explanied why the change happened. People knew why? Can you honestly explain why Medical Xp is only for fighting and not in Medical Centers-where it is SUPPOSED to be? Can you explain why experimentation on armor is being "dumbed down"? I sure and the hell can't. (stats could have changed for the output-tumbling could've been stopped-there were plent of suggestions as to how)
As to flooding them with e-mails-whjat else do you suggest. Polls aren't working. Cancellations aren't working. Corresponsdents aren't working. This probably won't work either but the 5 minutes it takes to delete all our e-mails is 5 mintues less they'll have to do changes that make no sense and are unexplained.
Here's a bigger question; Why is stuff in this game's develpoment so "top secret" It's because they know what they are doing is WRONG! That's why.
Whether or not a correspondent is being a pain to the devs or a fan boi, nothing should impede a paying customer's right to make suggestions or log a complaint with the company's customer relations wing. That is what they are paid to do!
It is more than disheartening to hear our current and former correspondents equating a deluge of e-mail to the company as "a riot". I agree that mass protests on live servers are rightly taboo, but a community relations rep complaining about too much to read should go with the turf. Instead of banning correspondents and deleting threads, perhaps they should hire an assistant or intern to read and log these complaints.
I've been a business leader for 20 years, and particularly in the last 10 years as we continue out of the dark ages of management, you can never sit back as a leader and just shoot someone for reacting or escalating matters out of the little boxes (like SOE's so-called rules for correspondents) that management legitimately or otherwise tries to box people into. As a leader, it is expected that you discuss why the reaction is as it is, why the box may not be appropriate anymore, and what's wrong with the culture or environment that causes someone to react.
In other words, when someone reacts, blows up, or elevates outside the box, they are not solely responsible, and in fact, upon evaluation, may end upbeing praised as a whistle-blower, or just praised as someone who had the ethical leadership to raise issues rather than continue to suffer a broken system of rules, and further that its often the leaders these days who are acted upon in the end, rather than the person who raised hell. That is the nature of business today, and rightfully so.
So this was SOE's first failing in just this situation, creating a business environment and ruleset in which people are forced to devalue their role, or act in an adverse manner to the success of the venture. SOE created this ruleset and this environment. Look to the leadership, not the response. Again, SOE's first failure (in this situation - there have been many, many other situations leading to the SWG project's downfall.)
SOE's 2nd failure in this situation, also which would lead to action against the leaders in any other organization, was in their dereliction in communicating it with respect to the correspondent. Instead of communicating that, "we apprecaite the work you have done, however we must enforce our rules (plus whatever explanation they may want to add to address the failings of the environment that led to the "outburst") and we must remove your role as Correspondent at this time." That message should have been delivered, probably not by email either, before any action was taken to remove his rights as Correspondent. What did SOE do? They just poofed his rights and let him show up and discover he didn't have the Correspondent bells and whistles anymore. They failed to communicate respectfully, failed to recognize his efforts and showing him the door with dignity, failed to be leaders. That was their second error. Any one of these errors would have led to serious repurcussions in any organization I've been a leader with.
Their third failure in this situation, again demonstrating their lack of leadership which has led to the community being disenfranchised with this SOE SWG regime and their ultimate failure, is that when the community spoke up and recognized that this Correspondent had been stripped, and mentioned it, the SOE rep (Tiggs) comes in with a turt reply basically, publically, saying, "you were bad, you got what you deserved," rather than doing what any business would expect their professionals to do, which would be to apologize for the manner in which it was communicated, and that, "we erred and should have communicated with you directly before we took action on your Correspondent status."
Their fourth failure in this situation, is Garva coming in here pathetically chasing after a SOE-hostile community, by their own doing, and attempting to erradicate customer feedback rather than extending beyond the apology to the Correspondent by the way this was communicated, and further apologizing to the community forupseting it with their poor communication, coming clean, and saying, "we goofed." Instead we got the Garvinator running around with the big stick. Good job.
4 strikes, demonstrating dismal leadership, all in one situation. And I can chronical their lack of leadership, project management, manipulation of the community and customers, and lack of communication skills all the way back to the hologrind. I've watched it daily and weekly, and have been amazed that they continue to get any support from the community, and it is dying. They need to go, they are incompetent and will lead to the death of our game, or their firing, whichever comes first.
All we can do is help them along to be fired by cancelling our accounts, and speed the process along to recovery with a new regime. And if the new regime looks to keep anyone onboard from the old regime, they'll look to their individual performance and credibility with the community, and those who just walked around with big sticks need not apply.
Tiggs wrote:
lwwrestler wrote:
Thanks for the info Tiggs, but would it hurt for us to hear anything about our issues?
The devs working on combat upgrade can either hit the forums and respond all day to your questions or work on CU. I am sure we are all in agreement with having them bang away at issues and bugs with CU rather then post all day.
RedDestinyCC wrote:I've been a business leader for 20 years, and particularly in the last 10 years as we continue out of the dark ages of management, you can never sit back as a leader and just shoot someone for reacting or escalating matters out of the little boxes (like SOE's so-called rules for correspondents) that management legitimately or otherwise tries to box people into. As a leader, it is expected that you discuss why the reaction is as it is, why the box may not be appropriate anymore, and what's wrong with the culture or environment that causes someone to react.
In other words, when someone reacts, blows up, or elevates outside the box, they are not solely responsible, and in fact, upon evaluation, may end up being praised as a whistle-blower, or just praised as someone who had the ethical leadership to raise issues rather than continue to suffer a broken system of rules, and further that its often the leaders these days who are acted upon in the end, rather than the person who raised hell. That is the nature of business today, and rightfully so.
So this was SOE's first failing in just this situation, creating a business environment and ruleset in which people are forced to devalue their role, or act in an adverse manner to the success of the venture. SOE created this ruleset and this environment. Look to the leadership, not the response. Again, SOE's first failure (in this situation - there have been many, many other situations leading to the SWG project's downfall.)
SOE's 2nd failure in this situation, also which would lead to action against the leaders in any other organization, was in their dereliction in communicating it with respect to the correspondent. Instead of communicating that, "we apprecaite the work you have done, however we must enforce our rules (plus whatever explanation they may want to add to address the failings of the environment that led to the "outburst") and we must remove your role as Correspondent at this time." That message should have been delivered, probably not by email either, before any action was taken to remove his rights as Correspondent. What did SOE do? They just poofed his rights and let him show up and discover he didn't have the Correspondent bells and whistles anymore. They failed to communicate respectfully, failed to recognize his efforts and showing him the door with dignity, failed to be leaders. That was their second error. Any one of these errors would have led to serious repurcussions in any organization I've been a leader with.
Their third failure in this situation, again demonstrating their lack of leadership which has led to the community being disenfranchised with this SOE SWG regime and their ultimate failure, is that when the community spoke up and recognized that this Correspondent had been stripped, and mentioned it, the SOE rep (Tiggs) comes in with a turt reply basically, publically, saying, "you were bad, you got what you deserved," rather than doing what any business would expect their professionals to do, which would be to apologize for the manner in which it was communicated, and that, "we erred and should have communicated with you directly before we took action on your Correspondent status."
Their fourth failure in this situation, is Garva coming in here pathetically chasing after a SOE-hostile community, by their own doing, and attempting to erradicate customer feedback rather than extending beyond the apology to the Correspondent by the way this was communicated, and further apologizing to the community for upseting it with their poor communication, coming clean, and saying, "we goofed." Instead we got the Garvinator running around with the big stick. Good job.
4 strikes, demonstrating dismal leadership, all in one situation. And I can chronical their lack of leadership, project management, manipulation of the community and customers, and lack of communication skills all the way back to the hologrind. I've watched it daily and weekly, and have been amazed that they continue to get any support from the community, and it is dying. They need to go, they are incompetent and will lead to the death of our game, or their firing, whichever comes first.
All we can do is help them along to be fired by cancelling our accounts, and speed the process along to recovery with a new regime. And if the new regime looks to keep anyone onboard from the old regime, they'll look to their individual performance and credibility with the community, and those who just walked around with big sticks need not apply.
Eloquently put, and I think it highlights a core, fundamental problem with the Forums that all longtime SWG subscribers appreciate, if they are not consciously aware of it. The purpose of the Forums is not to either gather customer opinion, distribute useful information to customers, or allow customers to communicate useful information to each other. If the Forums ever had that purpose, it was eliminated when a General Discussion forum that all customers could initiate discussion in was eliminated and customers were Balkanized into a hundred fractured forums to sift through for useful information.
The Forums serve a Public Relations purpose, allowing the marketeers at the front office to spin decisions that have been made, sell us new product, and tell us how 'valuable' our opinions are. The problem is that, despite the obvious conclusion that any longtime customer can come to ... that the Forums have no actual informative purpose ... the CR team continues to sell the company line that the Forums have anything but a P.R. purpose. The obvious disconnect between reality and this message is the source of a lot of customer frustration.
You can get over this frustration very simply, by remember that whatever your opinion is about the current state of the game, the past decisions about the game, and the proposed changes to the game, nobody employed at SOE could care less about that opinion, and certainly doesn't look at this Forum to gather relevant information that impacts project decisions. The Forums are to sell you product and sell you the decisions that have been made in a meeting room far, far away from the Forums. Once you accept that, you can stop bashing Tiggs and Garva and whoever else is trotted out here as a sacrificial lamb to pay lip service to the valid concerns of paying customers. I don't envy their job, I wouldn't do it for anything in the world. They're the Baghdad Bobs for SOE, and their troops will always be marching to glorious victory, regardless of what's actually happening outside their cubicle walls.
KzinKiller wrote:
RedDestinyCC wrote:
Eloquently put, and I think it highlights a core, fundamental problem with the Forums that all longtime SWG subscribers appreciate, if they are not consciously aware of it. The purpose of the Forums is not to either gather customer opinion, distribute useful information to customers, or allow customers to communicate useful information to each other. If the Forums ever had that purpose, it was eliminated when a General Discussion forum that all customers could initiate discussion in was eliminated and customers were Balkanized into a hundred fractured forums to sift through for useful information.
The Forums serve a Public Relations purpose, allowing the marketeers at the front office to spin decisions that have been made, sell us new product, and tell us how 'valuable' our opinions are. The problem is that, despite the obvious conclusion that any longtime customer can come to ... that the Forums have no actual informative purpose ... the CR team continues to sell the company line that the Forums have anything but a P.R. purpose. The obvious disconnect between reality and this message is the source of a lot of customer frustration.
You can get over this frustration very simply, by remember that whatever your opinion is about the current state of the game, the past decisions about the game, and the proposed changes to the game, nobody employed at SOE could care less about that opinion, and certainly doesn't look at this Forum to gather relevant information that impacts project decisions. The Forums are to sell you product and sell you the decisions that have been made in a meeting room far, far away from the Forums. Once you accept that, you can stop bashing Tiggs and Garva and whoever else is trotted out here as a sacrificial lamb to pay lip service to the valid concerns of paying customers. I don't envy their job, I wouldn't do it for anything in the world. They're the Baghdad Bobs for SOE, and their troops will always be marching to glorious victory, regardless of what's actually happening outside their cubicle walls.
Can't disagree with most of your points, but its rather apathetic and does not take ownership or leadership of SWG and we as its customers. If you want to fold tent and bend over, to continue being SOE's sheep, continue to allow SOE to destroy our game and our community, pitting players against players, players against correspondents, continued erosion of the playerbase, and positive player perception and active participation towards improving the game and playerbase, and let things continue to slide (dropped below 50k active accounts... still dropping), well then you're doing the right thing.
However, if you want to stop this cycle of decay, close accounts/subscriptions, until it becomes unpaletable (they've already been in crisis mode for about 4 months now at least, red lights and sirens are flashing at SOE SWG) for the powers and the SOE SWG team is fired. Then, we can have our game back and operate with a new team, that if only 50% better, is night and day from what we suffer with now.
RedDestinyCC wrote:
However, if you want to stop this cycle of decay, close accounts/subscriptions, until it becomes unpaletable (they've already been in crisis mode for about 4 months now at least, red lights and sirens are flashing at SOE SWG) for the powers and the SOE SWG team is fired. Then, we can have our game back and operate with a new team, that if only 50% better, is night and day from what we suffer with now.
You really think that is what would happen? If that many players left the game, they'd just pull the plug.
I don't play any other MMORPG's. I play this one because it is Star Wars. The CU doesn't bother me the way it bothers some people. So, I'll continue to be a "sheep," act my age, and resist name calling against those that disagree with me.
DarthMinos wrote:
RedDestinyCC wrote:
However, if you want to stop this cycle of decay, close accounts/subscriptions, until it becomes unpaletable (they've already been in crisis mode for about 4 months now at least, red lights and sirens are flashing at SOE SWG) for the powers and the SOE SWG team is fired. Then, we can have our game back and operate with a new team, that if only 50% better, is night and day from what we suffer with now.
You really think that is what would happen? If that many players left the game, they'd just pull the plug.
I don't play any other MMORPG's. I play this one because it is Star Wars. The CU doesn't bother me the way it bothers some people. So, I'll continue to be a "sheep," act my age, and resist name calling against those that disagree with me.
RedDestinyCC wrote:
However, if you want to stop this cycle of decay, close accounts/subscriptions, until it becomes unpaletable (they've already been in crisis mode for about 4 months now at least, red lights and sirens are flashing at SOE SWG) for the powers and the SOE SWG team is fired. Then, we can have our game back and operate with a new team, that if only 50% better, is night and day from what we suffer with now.
You might want to re-read the terms and agreements for your license to the game. It's in that box above that button you click, that says "ACCEPT", every time you enter the game. From what I can gather, it's not our game, it's SOE's game. We just pay for access to their content.
Tiggs wrote:
lwwrestler wrote:Thanks for the info Tiggs, but would it hurt for us to hear anything about our issues?
The devs working on combat upgrade can either hit the forums and respond all day to your questions or work on CU. I am sure we are all in agreement with having them bang away at issues and bugs with CU rather then post all day.
LOL actually no, I'm not in agreemnet.... lets have a poll and see who wants them to continue working on the CU and who wants it postponed..perhaps indefinately
nobody that I know asked for a combat UPGRADE....all we asked for was some BALANCE and BUG FIXES ! ! !
QFE
...
Message Edited by Shikkari on 04-15-2005 02:23 PM
Message Edited by Shikkari on 04-15-2005 02:23 PM