In my experience as a business owner Objective Feedback often comes after Subjective Feedback, if you're lucky enough to have a chance to examine the problem and not just have a customer leave unhappy. In my previous example, the initial feedback on the improperly prepared burger is "It's awful" (being kind). Now is my chance to ask why they are so unhappy and see if it's correctable. If it's well done and the customer asked for well done and complains they like it rare, well, not our fault, but let me try and help. I still can't put the ball in their court and explain they clearly have no clue, instead I have to make them look good all while making them understand, to themselves, that they made a mistake. If done right, in most cases, the customer admits the mistake and appreciates the respect shown to them.They also become more loyal to us for doing that. When you admit that things went bad the customer appreciates it. When in this case people are outraged over the last few patches, even if it was beyond control, and you explain you need to get the bigger project (CoW) out first; they feel like their problem is not a priority. It's not always what was done, but how it was perceived by the customer.
I guess my earlier questions had more to do with how do we know what is relevant? If we die while flying in a chunk, what would be the relevant pieces of information we need to provide beyond a narrative of what happened. Testing for repeatability on a lower level character while continuing to lose XP is a bit harsh, but high levels should do this for sure. Bottom line, what info helps the team resolve chunk crashes and instadeath while moving or flying.
Wigin's post on bugs along with answering players meant that we knew he was aware of specific things. With players experience of what happens with the /bug command we could do with a summary from the code team of all of the bugs that they are aware of, and if they can replicate them on internal, test or live. We can then add to the ones that are not on the list as well as demonstrating the problems on live if they can't be replicated on internal or test.
My understanding was Cave of Wonders was supposed to be released during Thanksgiving, but it got postponed due to the performance patch. The only target we had issues with was Tharridon back then and that too was due mostly due to the zero speed bug. Otherwise we were able to kill targets quite reliably except that occasional lag here and there during certain burn phases. Now this performance patch is out. It has created more performance issues than solving them. The performance is worse than before. By releasing Cave of Wonders now haven't you already defeated the purpose of postponing it in the first place? Yesterday we tried to kill Mercaius with the Griffon Event going on in Old Targonor. The lag was so bad, we couldn't even counterspell reliably and gave up. Will Cave of Wonders really be able to host multiple raiding guilds raiding at the same time? Apart from the performance issues, we got this crazy refresh haste stacking going on that allows me playing a silly alt sorceror able to dish out Seradon's Fallling Comet every 3.6 seconds from the 14+ seconds it used to be before. Even burst damage class is having a field day getting creative on how they can stack various refresh haste abilities to generate 2-4x dps than they did before. Till now we don't know if this was the intended design from the development team. You've took a system with overpowered gear combined it with overpowered abilities with the BBO patch and even further trivilialized not only the old raid content but possibly the new raid content even before its released. There's still mostly speculation on what should stack and what should not. I have also bugged this and so have my guildies. I have also PM'ed this. I don't know what else I can do. I understand this is a video game and its mostly entertainment for me whereas for SOE staff it is their livelihood. So I am trying to keep my cool to my best and keep my frustration down. But honestly if it weren't for my friends, I am getting tired of this and would gladly hang my sword and shield in my weapon rack and bid adieu. PS: As Alimora pointed out in a different thread, I hope SOE is going to send a cavalry out to look at all outstanding issues from the December patch IMMEDIATELY.
I would like to point out that we've never said that players don't have a right to be frustrated nor that we do not welcome negative feedback. Truly we want to know what works and what doesn't work so that we adjust our processes and plans accordingly. However Zarrian, would you allow someone into your cafe who was yelling at you and your family about how terrible you are to the point that whatever that person was mad about gets completely lost because there is only anger? What is the point in that? We're not simply looking to make ourselves feel better with fake praise. That doesn't help us make a better game. But what we do need to do is tone down the outright anger and trolling. We need to be able to clearly understand what it is you're frustrated with. We can then bring that to the dev team and our bosses to make decisions from there and then we communicate what they tell us we can say. We can't do anything with "we're frustrated." Many of you have brought up concerns with chunk/crashing/lagging, etc. We brought those concerns to the dev team who had some short term solutions while they plug away at the long-term issue. We hear that you are upset that the first wing of Cave of Wonders was released when some feel that it is not in a ready state. However keep in mind that when I started as Community Manager less than two weeks ago, most of the threads I read about were "we want more content and we want it now!" This is an example of what happens when we don't get clear information of what you want and what your issues truly are. Again, we're not asking you to not be upset. Your concerns are valid! We want to help you communicate those concerns to the dev team and to SOE at large. What we need from you is clear information pertaining to what exactly is making you upset and what you want from us to fix it. And admittedly you may not always like our responses (some things are just out of our control) but we ARE listening and we ARE trying to help.
clear information about what is making us upset is that we cannot reliably move from one chunk to the next without the risk of being suddenly sent to desktop or character select and coming back to find we are dead. I think that message has been very clear. but we cant seem to get a good answer on what we need to provide to help the team resolve the problem. chunk crashing has been an issue for months now, so that is fairly clear as well, but with the recent patch chunk crashing occurs frequently (defined as sometimes 5 times in 20 mins) specific chunks have been identified many times , again, what more can we do ? lag has been with us since the server maintenance of april 2012. many things have been done to try to fix this including removing civic buffs, ( alagon , still laggiest fight in the game other than tharridon) and making most of our clickie items useless. you asked what is making us angry, lag is worse today than ever and more widespread than ever but we never got our clickies back and diplomacy is not even a part of new content. I hope that answers your questions . Again, what can we do to give the team more specific information to resolve issues. generic terms like relevant or useful don't mean anything in the context of a chunk crash. Tell us what is relevant and useful so we can report it.
I have been a current player here for roughly 18 months after returning from a few years' hiatus. I've only been relatively active on the forums here for a couple months even though I've been reading silently for a bit more than that. Yes, there is a base undercurrent of wishes for more content but the overwhelming outcry has been for stability since the December patch. This is the kind of missed communications being addressed here. It's almost too easy to read a few recent threads and make an "informed" decision while completely missing what this 'family' (used your word here) has been dealing with for years. Yes, many of the issues that sent me packing years ago are fixed to one degree or another but alas, several of the problems then are still an ongoing issue. This after multiple changes in the staffing positions delegated to the remedy. I for one will continue doing what I can to help improve this entertainment venue. I'll also do the best I can to avoid any distempered outbursts here or in-game for that matter. However, do not expect me to remain silent and docile while feeling ignored. Nietzche and Murphy were both optimists. Which one's rules are most remembered?
You can't say anyone was trolling. That's a violation. I violated it recently against a new poster who told us to shut the game down. People have wanted new content for the game ever since APW, and they really haven't got much. Mostly a hamster wheel called PotA. This is an unwieldy scrap heap that will prevent most newer or casual players from ever seeing CoB or CoW; that's content almost exclusively reserved for those who completed PotA and had the grit to stick around for a bunch of nothing, minus performance issues and the trivialization of the leveling path. I'm fairly tolerant. If I figure out that the chunk line from Tursh to Three Rivers is going to dismount me with no parachute half the time, I can learn to fly low across it. When I'm told it's a code issue that's not going to be fixed any time soon, if ever, I can just deal with that. To my memory, Leavwiz is pretty accurate, April 2012 did something horrible that lasted a long time. In the wider realm, things actually have been optimized fairly well, and it's mostly certain raid targets that have chronic issues. Unfortunately, many of the updates we get, throw out some pretty disastrous consequences all across the board that take a long time to fix. December 10 to January 17: progress? We really just want better testing. It's a "minor unrelated thing" like a movement speed change or a buff change that sets off a chain reaction of unpleasantries. Most people can't experience top end content therefor can't test it, but most of these other issues I could have spotted in five minutes from any kind of character. The combined lack of content and performance issues drives off a significant population, and that lack of population drives away even more, and this cycle does more damage than the existence of competitors' titles. You really want accurate feedback? Start an "issues" sub-forum with every chunk as a thread. Yes, it might get a bunch of "omg i died need xp back" but it would allow the relative ease of thumbing through and seeing APW shard 3 11.30 pm, entire raid crashed to character select when engaging Pyreguard. At least it would be semi-organized. By the time I skim a few posts with a large variety of different information crammed together, it makes my head swim from the overload; can't imagine it's much different for anyone on the receiving end.
I have one request to make. Please NEVER EVER release a raid dungeon when the server is broken and the raid content itself isn't well tested. Group content is different, people roll with the punches. Raiding is a different ball game. It is NOT fun to go to a raid dungeon with 24 people, trying to identity between what's broken and what is a part of the strat. Ultimately all you've accomplished is destroyed the morale of the players and make it harder for me and my team to keep our guild running. Given the fact we play Vanguard, quantity of content is barely an option. Please atleast pay more attention to the Quality to make up for the lack of quantity. Next time if the feedback is "it ain't ready" .. listen to it please. Thank you.
Personally I'm most frustrated with issues and feedback that we reported while it was on test that got pushed live anyway. Testing felt haphazard for cow we had general days that the server was invited to come and I know a good number in my guild showed up when they could, but it wasn't our regular raid nights where we would be able to bring closer to a full raid force (like we have for testing other raid mobs). Non raid night + short notice I know I couldn't make both tests but I went to the one I could. We want to help get it ready for live, but sometimes I wonder why we bother when they do a couple tests with the last version we see being buggy or broken on test and it is still buggy/broken when it gets to live. Like merc a lot of cool abilities he was supposed to have weren't working, and he went live and they weren't fixed so he was easier than we believed was intended, but then everyone killed him and they decided to leave him in his current state (which is pretty easy when the game doesn't lock up for 30+sec at a time). That and so many chunks being unstable and random crashing making areas of the game unplayable. I just got an alt pota cords but couldn't do named runs the way I would have liked to because all kdq chunks were never all stable at the same time. People are getting frustrated and not logging in which leaves fewer options of things to do, and more people logging out... Honestly people deserve more compensation for the state of the game the past couple months. Another double exp/faction weekend (or week since not everyone plays weekends) or spread it out one sphere at a time. Maybe the aug give away that people so fondly talk about happening a couple years back could be turned back on? Or some other in game reward? Or a free month for anyone who logged in after the patch since it was hardly playable. I know of several people who stopped by thinking of resubscribing... I can't imagine what they must have thought after seeing how things were. So fix the crashes then tempt them back with a free month of gold.
Whatever QA they did for CoW before inviting the population to test it and BBO was non-existent or a complete failure. If I had to guess, Vanguard does not have an asset available to the team to test their patches by emulating the population. That's a shame. edited to add the following: since non-constructive posts are deleted or labeled as trolling ... the constructive bit of this one is to create said asset so we don't keep running into crap like this all of the time. Oh and LOL.
I completely agree with Dravid's statement here. Please don't release new content on top of broke content. I am having a very tough time keeping our guild engaged. The current content we were previously able to do is now broke even more. Our guild-mates don't even want to log in to play. Someone in SOE leadership is suffering greatly from 'cranial rectal entrapment'. This is a very poor marketing move imo.
My family have not been able to play VG lately. Made my wife and I actually interact with each other, lawyers were involved. Daughter also found some other sites online and wound up blowing up a large part of my rather large farmhouse. Please fix VG so I can survive long enough for the kid to go to college and get married.
At the very least please let us know what and when the plans are to fix it - or if it is irreparably broken.
Thought I stop by the forums, as I made it a rule this time not to read them for this winter. I play the game heavy in the winter time, as for me being on the west coast, and work schedule doesn't match most raiding or higher ended content guilds. That being said, with the release of the patch in December, pretty much breaking the knees of the game. Lag / Chunk / Buff / De Buff / Stacking issue being born into the world of ah its a VG Feature I live with. Changing so much of my play style, tho not knowing if its a bug or a update. Not seeing on the patcher that hey we did this to the game. I find out more information in the game then I do from the Dev's, I find out more able the new features from the players then the dev's. Been playing some alpha's and beta's of other games that are currently under development. Seeing what they have us do, and try and what they tell us they are doing and trying to do. Hmm ? Think we can have that here.? I have also noticed since last April, A lot more Ninja patching going on in the game, log a character on to find that a item has no stats that did before, a encounter was fixed three patches ago tho no patch not to tell us this happened. Today to read that stacking more refresh hates is going to help get my dps up. Another thing I have noticed that, it seems there is too much lack of information coming from our GM's / SoE Rep's / Dev's on what is a feature and what is a bug that is suppose to be getting fixed, and when they hope to have a fix for it. And hey, if you can't make it in that time frame, just let the players know. We can handle a wait time on a bug that is in the world. We just get to call them VG Features .. In the current world of trying to play, a game that has kept me coming back year after year. Even thinking and planning on what I want to get done when I get a chance to play again for so many years. I ask for a couple thing imo STOP releasing new content, put them away. Turn off that part of the dev team. Start : Full and detail patch notes, we can tell when you are doing thing to the game, when we see a chunk get a update, tho no note about it getting updated.. Announce the Changes, Bard is always going to be able to stack the War's from now on, I can wear all these refresh haste and it going to stay this way ? Dev Bug blog, or love the idea I just read with a different part of the forum ( would make it active in game player only ) bug area, tho make it so we have chunks and classes. SoE Staff time to start talking to us, the players that have come to enjoy and grow with you as you take what we know and have heard about for many years a strap together game with a patch to fix a patch to fix a patch issues that you are trying to de patch the patch that patch the patch.
I want to LOL at this, but worried it might be real, and then I would be a dink if I LOL'd. If it's a joke, ROFL ... if not ... my condolences bro.
I believe that depending on the game, forums are read more often than people think. I've spent hours on the forum learning my class or alts, learning other mechanics and such, and for the most part I found them very useful. That being said, I didn't beta this game. I played about 3 years ago and quit after a good 2 1/2 year run. But my personal experience was to avoid as much as possible the general thread on the forums. I understood that people had been playing years before me. I understood their frustration. But I found when I did venture into certain negative topics, and the majority were at that time, I lost hope in playing as it was a dead end street. Turns out you were right, but I did have a blast before I read the dead end sign. I DO think a forum has a major impact on whether or not to choose a game. Well, it does for me. I check the forums more to see the maturity level of the players. Here at least most of the criticisms and complaints were well thought out and not personal attacks. I think they should have a topic called, "hard core, oldtimer, end game vets." And another titled "haven't found out the game sucks or will at higher levels yet and I'm having a blast." Maybe shorten it to "ignorance is bliss". All MMORPGS suffer from this vocal minority but in my case it DOES have an effect on whether or not I chose to invest my time even starting a character up. LOTRO, I started and played for awhile. EQ, I was in beta in the original. And perhaps that's part of it. When I started online games, I was playing Gemstone 2 or 3, or Kesmai or Drakkar, and was doing beta for them, where it was all so new the expectations and the sense of entitlement were much lower. I mean I spend less than I do on going to a movie once a month for two hours. I know I've put way more than two hours a month in on Vanguard. I hope I haven't offended anyone with this wall of text. My theory is few will make it through so I'm safe. Kenny P.S. Hemorhage, I agree with much of what you say. It's your only outlet and it's being ignored. I think the solution is to have special topics, perhaps even with requirements on play time, to vent, complain, or otherwise change what you have said is a great game. But I disagree personally that forums are not a marketing tool. I get a sense of the community if not the game from these forums. I think it's counterproductive for the people that feel a need to spam all topics with negative posts because theirs we're ignored. Doesn't change a thing except to possibly drive off players that may get at least a little time in what I think is the best game out there. Kind of like shooting yourself in the foot. The decision to shut this game down was made months ago in boardroom full of people with no vested interest in it other than the bottom line.