Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Community Relations Follow-up
Eightaces wrote:
This does NOT fill me with good cheer. I think you had best re-think this a little bit. To hold an axe over people's heads, and make no mistake, that's precisely what this is, in response to their attitudes or opinions on these forums.
Who will be making the decisions on the "marks" on people's accounts.
What accountability will they have to your PAYING customers.
Will people be notified on any "mark" on their account.
Will people have any recourse to challenge extremely poor decisions on the person who placed the mark on their account (if you think there won't be any, think again).
It is very much sounding to me like you only are going to be wanting people to say what you want to hear. Customer Service (Community Relations is part of that, like it or not) that does not show some empathy and understanding with it's customers (ALL of them) is simply telling them they aren't important to them and go somewhere else. With the horrendous performance of Customer Service in the past, what's going to make that different going forward? You realize you have an almost unanimous low opinion of SWG's CS dept.
Your competition in game playability is FAR superior to you right now. You have more competition on the horizon that is poised to take even moreof your playerbase away. This isn't the time to be telling more of them they aren't important and go away.
These forums are your customers way of expressing themselves, frustrations, ideas, whatever. Start listening to them. Good, bad and Ugly. Right now you're not, and this statement tells me you have no intention of doing so if it's not something you want to hear. Some people are not eloquent in the words they use to describe what they're trying to tell you. Their opinions are still important.
And remember, I've run large CS operations. I do have some idea what I'm talking about.
I appreciate your candor, excellent questions.
Who will be making the decisions on the "marks" on people's accounts.
-For now, in order to help with consistency that person will be me. I’ll be reviewing all requests for marking an account for message board misconduct before an account is marked. This will also help me examine moderator consistency. In addition to that, see below…
What accountability will they have to your PAYING customers.
-The same accountability we have when an account is marked for in-game conduct. Senior CS people will review the marks made for message board misconduct. If they feel we marked an account that should not have been marked, they will recommend removing the mark and let us know. The main thing is that moderators will never make a determination on whether an account is banned. Again, that stays with the CS folks, same as it is now.
Will people be notified on any "mark" on their account.
-Yes. We will notify players whether board misconduct resulted in an account mark or not. We aren’t going to mark someone’s account every time we moderate a post, rather only in extreme circumstances.
Will people have any recourse to challenge extremely poor decisions on the person who placed the mark on their account (if you think there won't be any, think again).
-Again, the senior CS people who review account marks will also be reviewing the marks placed for board conduct. Having the review will help eliminate a lot of the subjective nature. If someone gets a mark and they feel they should not have, they can contact me about it and I will re-review it with the CS people. However, the vast majority of marks will come as a result of clear violation of our ToS (racial slurs, attacking others, etc.) or repeated offenses after receiving a warning. If something is in a “gray” area, my general inclination is to just give that person a warning the first time.
It is very much sounding to me like you only are going to be wanting people to say what you want to hear. Customer Service (Community Relations is part of that, like it or not) that does not show some empathy and understanding with it's customers (ALL of them) is simply telling them they aren't important to them and go somewhere else. With the horrendous performance of Customer Service in the past, what's going to make that different going forward? You realize you have an almost unanimous low opinion of SWG's CS dept.
Your competition in game playability is FAR superior to you right now. You have more competition on the horizon that is poised to take even more of your playerbase away. This isn't the time to be telling more of them they aren't important and go away.
These forums are your customers way of expressing themselves, frustrations, ideas, whatever. Start listening to them. Good, bad and Ugly. Right now you're not, and this statement tells me you have no intention of doing so if it's not something you want to hear. Some people are not eloquent in the words they use to describe what they're trying to tell you. Their opinions are still important.
-This is actually the part of this post I wanted to respond to the most. Before I do, let me quote some parts of the original post. “That doesn’t mean you can’t post constructive criticism”, “To be clear, NOBODY is going to get a mark just for writing criticisms or posting negative feedback.”, “Understand that we are not out to “get” anyone.”, “We WANT your constructive feedback, positive or negative…”.
This is in no way a desire on our part to stop players from posting feedback. This policy is not about stifling player comments. It’s about making sure the boards remain civil and making it easier to find that feedback. It is possible for someone to post negative feedback in a constructive manner and that’s all we’re asking. Keeping the boards civil and constructive will make them a better tool for gathering feedback which benefits everyone involved.
I understand peoples' reservations about this, I truly do. But, we aren’t monsters looking for any excuse to ban people. Personally I never enjoy marking someone’s account or banning them from the forums. But it is a necessary component of running a service because even a small number of "bad" posters can make it very difficult for the majority of people here to get their ideas and concerns heard. That said, we also understand that sometimes an otherwise “good” poster might lose his/her cool and post something they otherwise normally wouldn’t. That person might get a warning, but it would not be our intent for someone like that to get a mark on their account in that case unless it was way over the line. Account marks are normally going to be reserved for excessive repeated offenses and/or posts with exceptionally inappropriate content (such as racial slurs).
Gullefjun wrote:
I have to say though, thecurrent state of Customer Service is terrible. I've never ever experienced worse, and I'm not trying to be rude or point the finger at anyone but this is my opinion.
I mean, when a CSRs closes my account by mistake, when my problem was way off the subscription, you think he will just press the "reactivate button". But no, it has to go through superior chiefs.
The process was promised to take 30 minutes, 6 hours later NOTHING had happend. I got tired of it and contacted CS via instant chat again, but this time he REDIRECTS me to the Everquest 2 Department !?!?. Even though at the wrong department and 20 minutes of explanation for the CS Agent, Why i was there regarding Star wars galaxies, he opened my account again.
Fix the CS Service, make the CSRs more involved in the game, add game masters for each server. That have CSR powers but actually Plays with the community on the server.
I've been playing since august 2003, I'm no power player and had little experience with MMOGs before that point, but I do enjoy the game. Of course everything isn't perfect, far from it, but please try and come up with a game that actually is perfect. And even better a perfect MMOG. The nature of the genre makes it in my opinion impossible to satisfy the entire playerbase at the moment.
As for the issues in this thread, specially the part about linking forum behaviour to in-game behaviour, I can't see what's worth whining about. If some guy spend his entire morning spamming, let's say the Farstar Galaxy forum, I hope and want that to have consequences for his game acccount as well. If that person can't behave in a message board, he/she probably won't behave very good in the game either. As for verifying who actually did it, both message boards and game is equiped with a nifty feature called "Username and Password". If you can't trust the people around you, use that feature...
As for the competition: The loudest people here who actually leave for Eq2 or WoW or any other competitor will probably end up in pretty much the same situation with the next game. We've seen it before. People believe the next game will be so much better. It will have it all. It'll revolutionize the genre! People get disappointed.
I give my trust to the new guy for now. He seems to be starting off in the right direction. Can't blame him for that, now can you. I'd like to hear your complaints if the moderators started to judge the forum users based on former members...
Swashbuckler wrote:
I'm not sure if it's how I play this game or how I am as a person, but most of the time I haven't got a clue what you all are complaining about.
I've been playing since august 2003, I'm no power player and had little experience with MMOGs before that point, but I do enjoy the game. Of course everything isn't perfect, far from it, but please try and come up with a game that actually is perfect. And even better a perfect MMOG. The nature of the genre makes it in my opinion impossible to satisfy the entire playerbase at the moment.
As for the issues in this thread, specially the part about linking forum behaviour to in-game behaviour, I can't see what's worth whining about. If some guy spend his entire morning spamming, let's say the Farstar Galaxy forum, I hope and want that to have consequences for his game acccount as well. If that person can't behave in a message board, he/she probably won't behave very good in the game either. As for verifying who actually did it, both message boards and game is equiped with a nifty feature called "Username and Password". If you can't trust the people around you, use that feature...
As for the competition: The loudest people here who actually leave for Eq2 or WoW or any other competitor will probably end up in pretty much the same situation with the next game. We've seen it before. People believe the next game will be so much better. It will have it all. It'll revolutionize the genre! People get disappointed.
I give my trust to the new guy for now. He seems to be starting off in the right direction. Can't blame him for that, now can you. I'd like to hear your complaints if the moderators started to judge the forum users based on former members...
I couldn't agree more...give them a chance to become better.
You don't wanna link your forum account with ingame account, why? you do something you shouldn't? Is it cause yer scared to be banned?
I know I have nothing to fear from this new system because I can behave, and if a Mod thinks my post has to be moderated, then it has to be.
This system will maybe force some people to start thinking before they tell crap, which is good to me. I'm kinda tired to hear people flame SOE, Dev or CSR...Yes it can be better, but hey, are you perfect? Can you always satisfy all people around you? You all say the system is bad, and when they do an annoncement to improve it, you yell again...I think you don't even know what you want...let the things change, and complain when it's done if you don't like it, but always with CONSTRUCTIVE critics, no flame, because all you will get from that is a moderation....
Message Edited by BountyGreg on 01-13-2005 11:31 AM
I couldn't agree more...give them a chance to become better.
Hello 
The point many are making here is simpily this: we have given them a chance - an 18 month chance. These same developer sentiments have been expressed a multitude of times. It's entirely reasonable for people to /yawn and have a measure of /skeptisim. Couple this with a stated goal of *more* censorship ("moderation") and that's throwing a gallon of gas onto an already raging fire.
Truely, the only reason the game hasn't failed at this point is a hard core following of people who love Star Wars and are willing to take the current state of the game, warts and all, as is. Sadly (myself included) aren't but continue to hold out hope that someday it might be worth returning. The bad thing is (no proof on this, just my opnion) my experience - mine and my friends - tells me that when most people leave an MMOG they never come back.
I am a user that is not banned, I have never grieved any player. When I do PVP (and its very rare) I do it with honor. I once got an e-mail warning me not to use profanity. I have sent in numerous tickets and I think since June 03 I only had 2 issues resolved.
I love the game and I hate the support and development. I own 2 accounts now that my wife went to play WOW. I do not think any of what I write, regardless of my professionalism, will ever be taken seriously. I have had enormous issues with CSR's not responding with anything except a cookie cutter reply to the tickets I have sent. Not addressing my problems or even bothering to work with me before they close the ticket.
I worked at a helpdesk for 4 years in the beginning of my IT career and one of the things that was enforced was to make sure a problem was RESOLVED before closing the ticket. I took it one step further, I called the user the next day to make sure it was taken care of.
This is a philosophy that is completely aberrant in SOE's customer service. How they handle THEIR PAYING CUSTOMERS is well beyond absurd.
I love the game and I hate the support.
Sewoo wrote:I spend hours in General Chat talking with CSRs________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________I have to ask.....why? Why on earth are you spending hours in General Chat talking with CSRs?
Hehe was wondering the same thing...
Whatever it takes to smite the forum trolls to extinction, stop flaming and dumb postings. I vote for: yes.
I really don't bother if some "negative feedback" disappears during the form cleansing. You just have to monitor a forum (especially BH and Jedi forums) for a mnoth and you'll see the same problem (mostly the ones considered annoying by the average joe) every day freshly posted in a thread. Sometimes more, somteimes less well written.
Still everyone get's very pissed and thinks about complaining to amnesty international that "FROM ALL POSTS MINE GOT DELETED!!!". YOU ARE JUST SCARED ABOUT NEGATIVE FEEDBACK, THERE IS NO OTHER EXPLANATION!!!"
Maybe you just posted a well known then the millionist time.
"SO WHY DON'T THEY FIX IT?!?!?!"
Because computer related problems tend to pull more tricks than all Star Wars heros pulled during all the movies!
I am not afraid that a wrong guy might get hit by this new rules. I assure you that you'll never have problems if you jus thinkt twice about how you should put your opinion/thing/matter, if it is necessary and check if someone posted that opinion/thing/matter already.
To be honest, i am pretty sure that most people that experience problem with customer support are part of the problem. Now before you reply this and tell me how many diploma, life experience, wifes and kids you have or whyever else you "CAN IMPOSSIBLY BE A PART OF THE PROBLEM !!!" think twice if this is of any use to this thread.
Swashbuckler wrote:
I'm not sure if it's how I play this game or how I am as a person, but most of the time I haven't got a clue what you all are complaining about.
I've been playing since august 2003, I'm no power player and had little experience with MMOGs before that point, but I do enjoy the game. Of course everything isn't perfect, far from it, but please try and come up with a game that actually is perfect. And even better a perfect MMOG. The nature of the genre makes it in my opinion impossible to satisfy the entire playerbase at the moment.
As for the issues in this thread, specially the part about linking forum behaviour to in-game behaviour, I can't see what's worth whining about. If some guy spend his entire morning spamming, let's say the Farstar Galaxy forum, I hope and want that to have consequences for his game acccount as well. If that person can't behave in a message board, he/she probably won't behave very good in the game either. As for verifying who actually did it, both message boards and game is equiped with a nifty feature called "Username and Password". If you can't trust the people around you, use that feature...
As for the competition: The loudest people here who actually leave for Eq2 or WoW or any other competitor will probably end up in pretty much the same situation with the next game. We've seen it before. People believe the next game will be so much better. It will have it all. It'll revolutionize the genre! People get disappointed.
I give my trust to the new guy for now. He seems to be starting off in the right direction. Can't blame him for that, now can you. I'd like to hear your complaints if the moderators started to judge the forum users based on former members...
QFE. (quoted for emphasis)
/agree absolutely