Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Player Correspondent Opening: Bio Engineer
JayceMilam wrote:
sorry about the multiple post ... my computer seems to be wigging out
ROFLMAO
First off well done JayceMiliam
It rare to see someone present an argument with such greatform and style... Not only did you make your points you provided logical counterpoints (the latter being oh so rare to see).
Anyhow, I couldnt stop laughing when I saw you posted it in multiples... I thought, "Wow, he must really want to make sure his point got through"
Off topic:
I have my keyboard mapped so that, in-game,when I use the directional arrows up or down it cycles through my previous text in my chat box...
Anyhow I was out sampling for DNA and talking to a new friend... We got to talking about the game in a friendly argumentative way when I got aggroed...
Anyhow, I got KD/Dizzy and fell to the ground. I quicky typed, "stand" to which I fell down.. waited a sec...typed it again,fell down again... this happened a few times... I got ticked so I started spamming "stand" with my directional arrow hitting enter simultaneously.. Eventually I was pounding on my keyboard as I was kd before I hit my armor macro and my health was low and I didnt want to loose my buff.
Well, in my fevor in hitting the keyboard I hit the arrow up to many times before I hit enter... Instead I was sending my previous reply to my new friend (which was a friendly retort to what he last sent me).
I didnt realize it until I sent it to him about 15 times ROFL
He was like, "ok ok ok, I got itYou have a good point"
Anyhow, the multiple posts you did reminded me of that
Vezek Good customer service implies an adequate number of responders to handle the issues and concerns acceptably in a resaonable period of time. Comparing restaurants where the involvement of the server is very high, to the online service industry is far from an "apples to oranges" comparison; it is essentially the same thing. The capacity of the CSR to handle a larger number of customer concerns in an online environment than one dealing with the direct service in a restaurant or store is not the issue. The time and acceptability of the response is the salient point, and that is where SOE is failing in this instance; they simply are not providing the staffing and leeway necessary to address the customer service needs adequately.
I'm in a management position in a very highly service-oriented industry and "doing more with less" is everyone's goal, but "doing less than enough with less" is a clear failure, and that is the important point here. I do not fault the quality of the CSR Staff in the least; to a one, every CSR I have dealt with has been ready to assist to whatever level is required and within their authority, and has been good to deal with, even in those instances where my own frustrations with the issue at hand made me less than easy to appease. The CSR staff is in general very good; they simply have three problems that hamstring them. First: they are not given the leeway to do what they think is reasonable much of the time; they have to deal within some VERY tight restrictions on their ability to act. Second, they are severly understaffed. This makes it difficult to respond in what most players consider a timely manner, and when they do respond, are too often late enough to be beyond relevance and merely end up sounding boards for the customer's dissatisfaction. If they were able to respond more quickly, they might be better able to assist, and the overall satisfaction with the CSR's performance among the customers would rise significantly.
Third, and most important, the CSR's must deal with an immature and often badly bugged system, under policies and attitudes from SOE that for the most part assume the customer is adversary in the business relationship. The stated goals of the developers and execs notwithstanding, the approach to the player from SOE is rarely supportive, and it shows in the limits placed on the CSR's actions as well as the staffing levels. Those apparent attitudes are much more the issue than the promises of new expansions or bugfixes or anything else applied to the game environment, and those are the things the player sees on a day-to-day basis that the CSR's feel the weight of each time they interact with a player.
Anything that contributes to that isolation and division between player and SOE needs to be considered very carefully. The Correspondent may be a great adjunct to the understanding of the profession and it's problems and needs from the player side, but they are a poor replacement for direct involvement otherwise.
Oh, and to rebut one point suggested by a previous poster. The best editor is NOT a "disinterested third party". Having both published and edited for years, the best editor is someone intimately involved and interested in the work, other than the author themselves, who has the understanding to see where the author is heading and help refine the language and imagery, not one that attempts to apply their own brush to the canvas after the fact. The best editor is quite often another author in the same field, with the experience to see how things "work", but the appreciation of the art to help clarify, not mute, its expression. To have a developer play the game, either as a peer review or to test how the class they are responsible for works is the most effective way of deepening the understanding needed to see the overall character/class rather than today's detail.
LLan
Albion_DeCrappa wrote:
However I think that the Devs in charge of a certina profession being required to play that profession should be a no-brainer.
Wrong wrong wrong!!!
In the same respect, a developer/programmer should never test or proof his own code. More problems will be found by people who are unbias toward the code and it's functionality. This is why game companies open their games to public beta testing, to find all the bugs and non-functionality in the code that the developers would have never found because of their bias toward it.
That is pure nonsense. I've been a dev for 20 years and I learned about 19 years ago never to release code you haven't tested and worked with first. Unless it is your intention to look foolish to either your co-workers or your customers.
The purpose of a 'beta' is to find bugs, based on the fact that devs often have problems creating those bugs due to their knowledge of how the program functions. Functionality is a pre-beta function.
Having put myself through college and now grad school in the service industry, I can say that the quality of service from SOE is not ideal.
I am assuming that you are talking about the hospitality industry (Hotels, Restaraunts)? If so you are, you're comparing apples to oranges. Do you know that in a hotel there is usually one employee to every 2 to 3 guests on any given day? At least in a good hotel anyway. Even at a restaraunt that can seat 100 people you have at least 5 to 1 customers to employees. At SOE you are talking about 250,000 subscribers as compared to what, maybe 50 to 100 developers. That's 2500 to 1, not even close to the 3 to 1 in the hospitality business. And we're only paying $15/month as compared to the $100-$200 / night in a hotel, or $25-$35 / plate in a restaraunt. There is no comparison... It would be like a restaraunt or hotel with 20 employees tackling a 10,000 person banquet and only making $50. It's just not possible.
In my opinion corrispondants are a necessity in a system this large.
Great argument that they are understaffed, perhaps? Based on your numbers, on $3.75M per month, they can do better. Your $25/plate restaurant would have to serve 5000 meals per day, at 5 turns (really not likely on $25/plate), that would be 1000 seats which would, on your numbers, be 200 employees.
I think correspondents are very much necessary, however. But relying on them too much is unhealthy. There needs to be more interaction between the devs and the community. You will see a lot of responses from devs on software forums for companies both large (even MS) and small. 34 professions may be challenging but if you divvy that up between 17 devs, it would be easy for them to glance at 2 forums and throw some occasional comments in. It would go a long way to show a higher level of customer service.
Both play-testing and forum watching are 'break' functions, cause you just can't sit and code continuously for 50 hours a week.
Hi all, was skimming through and wanted to make a comment. First off, thanks for all the wonderful replies in my resignation thread. It's nice to feel appreciated. 
While reading through the thread this comment caught my eye: You are right we doneed someone who can distill the communities concerns into questions that do not have a lot of wiggle room so that we can get the anwers we are after. On the surface it looks like getting the answers to the important questions. Add in human nature and what it really means is that the only good answer isthe onewe want to hear.
Take the recent Guide and the first Profession answer. Most of us have been after the inner workings of the cloning system. At first I was against this, but it soon became apparent that it was something the Community wanted and I've been trying to get it since the revamp. A lot of time passed between my announcement and the actual Guide, not due to the Devs, but due to my lack of involvement so I have to take the blame for how long it took to get it out there.
I continued to ask for more info on how the cloning process even up to and during helping to write the Guide (fwiw I think is a good guide although maybe that's a bit of ego talking.) Perhaps that's why TH included Mirrl's guide. When it was posted there was much moaning, gnashing of teeth and "broken promises" that were never actually made - it just wasn't what we wanted to hear. When TH asked for the Profession Questions, I went to the Top 10 Questions that were submitted some time ago. #1 was the question up for answering in the next round. #2, howevfer was the question of documentation and had suddenly earned a #1 spot so I passed it on to TH.
When we got our answer, there was again much dismay, gnashing of teeth and absurd claims that the devs gave a cop out answer because they just don't know the answer anymore - again, it wasn't what we wanted to hear. The reality is that we got exactly the answer I asked TH for - though I might have worded itdifferently myself, what we got wasthe Dev vision for BE cloning that explains why there are no formulas. I've been hearing some version of this since the revamp but I continued hoping that I could get that changed. The Devs, however seem firm on this. Cloning is supposed to be unique among crafts. We're supposed to be like real scientists - we perform experiments, measure our results and strive to improve the process.
I know people wanted comment on these things and I wasn't around to give it. They may not help even now as I'm sure some still won't be happy withthese answers. But, fwiw, I hope they shed some light on these subjects.
...never mind...
Message Edited by AnakinsClone on 05-13-2004 10:46 PM
hehe. Hey Tal. I respect what you have to say, but.....In my opinion, it wasn't so much the fact that we didn't hear what we wanted to hear, it was more the fact that what we got, we had already heard before. From you and other active BE's here on the boards. There was no NEW info in the guide that would help us understand the complexities of creating creatures and how those stacked up against the hastily implemented pet check system.
I love playing the Mad Scientist part of BE. I'vebuilt a DNA kiln in my office and have a hidden laboratory in my Riverside Spa. I love going out and digging up combos of creatures that will provide a creature that I am proud to show off or sell. I spend many hours out sampling and have 5 lots used in the storage of various DNA from all sorts of critters. My current goal is a light armored critter with High Kinetic, Energy and Blast resists that is level 25 or lower. It's not going so well, but that's not the point 
The point is that the pet check doesn't coincide with the pet creation system as far as legal Class level. Add to the fact that we can't tell that level until creation of the final creature, and we are often hit with a VERY frustrating double whammy. EX: Just got 3 class 11s in a row and a crit fail, but finally got something I was working on to hit the Class 10 threshhold. Now I resample the 3 11s to make higher level pets and sell or trainthe Class 10I finally made. Then when it is at level 8/10 (or even 10/10) it goes invalid and is flipped up to a level 14.
Now, I know I am not telling you anything new. People have been complaining about this for a while now. But the way I understood it, the new BE guide was offered in a response to all of that complaining. Am I (are we) wrong here? Dealing with large groups of people is often like dealing with a 4 year old. We were screaming "I want some chocolate. I need some chocolate! If you loved me you would give me some chocolate!" until finally someone said "Alright! Shutup and I will get you some candy when we get home!" at which point we started the "Are we home yet? How much chocolate do we get? Has Talthazar tasted the chocolate? Does he like it?" until we got the BE guide. Which was like giving us someold Easter marshmallow peeps from our own basket when we finally got home. Not exactly the Chocolate we had asked for, we already had access to it, and it was stale. Not that Peeps aren't good, it's just, well, we already had the peeps and we thought we were getting chocolate.
Man that was a long analogy. Maybe I am enjoying the Mad, rambling scientist thing too much! /cackle.
But anyway, as a result it has led myself (and others) into the whole realm of "Do it if you can" and "If it works, keep doing it" as opposed to the general concensus of experimentation and self-policing that the communityin general was attemptingbefore the guide was dropped. I now view the pet checks in game as a sort of Imperial legality check. If the Imperial Pet Scan doesn't catch my pet, then it is legal, just like my sliced composite is legal as long as the Imp scans don't find it. Just if they catch me with a pet, they steal it as opposed to fining me for it.
If the BE Guide as it stands is all we are getting, then I won't be mad at SWG or you or the new correspondant for that. So long as you guys don't get mad at me for making the strongest pets I can make that don't get caught by the fuzz
Message Edited by Talthazar on 05-14-2004 02:56 PM
I am not sure how viable that is Arthur. I have 7 formulas (with 2 more almost there) that work to varied degrees in creating these monster CL 10s. I also have 50 pages or so of test results. I have distinctly noticed how I can have one set of stats VERY similar to another set of stats made from different DNA combos. We are talking all of the 10 substats are very similar, and one might come out level 9, while the other is level 18. I definitely think that there are some substats that we do not have access to that play into the level.
However, should the devs ask, I would be happy to give every recipe I have to them to help break down the cause and get it fixed. I would rather have free reign to sample and create unfettered, knowing that anything I make will be as the deed says and usable as such, than the ability to create Ubers in an atmosphere of finger pointing and uncertainty.
Still, that said, when I quit BE I think I will put up pics of a few of my most successful Uber CL10 experiments to give you guys a real idea of how big the loophole on CL10s is. I like making the best, and I have made some MEAN Non-CH mofo's that are more evil than anything I have seen posted, as have some of the other, less vocal Mad Scientists, I am sure....
Well, that's exactly what I'm saying GotharMarath. Once you've demonstrated that two different combines lead to near-identical stats on the template, and wildly different CL, and one CL is reasonable and the other is not, you're 90% of the way to fixing the bug are you not?
GotharMarath wrote:
I am not sure how viable that is Arthur. I have 7 formulas (with 2 more almost there) that work to varied degrees in creating these monster CL 10s. I also have 50 pages or so of test results. I have distinctly noticed how I can have one set of stats VERY similar to another set of stats made from different DNA combos. We are talking all of the 10 substats are very similar, and one might come out level 9, while the other is level 18. I definitely think that there are some substats that we do not have access to that play into the level.
That is exactly the sort of data I'm talking about that should be collected and compared with other BE's and delivered to the Devs in a clear, calm, "clinical" fashion. It is very possible that it is something you can't see that makes the change. I'm curious though about what the pet check wants to change about those pets to make them valid....does it make no visible changes? Does it change diffrent things for different pets? Perhaps it would be useful to start a post to talk about the experiences and share data about when this happens and what you've seen.