People post claiming to speak for “the players,” or developers talk about what “the players” want, but there is no single coherent bloc of “the players” (see also “the people” in voting blocs). There may be a majority, or a vocal minority, but “the players” are a diverse group with conflicting interests, even if you have a highly self-selecting group of players organized around a single niche.
floon
The Lord of the Rings Online Team
Re: Minstrel IconsOriginally Posted by Sirus05
/rant onCan we please, please, please stop changing the minstrel icons? I absolutely hate logging in to a new patch, and find the icons are all changed around again. I can appreciate that the icons look pretty, and that this latest change of icons on the test realm is in response to the last time they changed the icons, but it’s getting really confusing having to relearn what the icons mean every single patch.
/rant off
So what part of the icon thread the last time confused you? That you guys had valid criticisms of the icons, and that we changed them based on the very passionate response of the minstrels?
Can we please, please, please remember what you guys asked for just a month or so ago?
Why does this particular example bother me? First, the quoted poster preempted the developer’s response by saying he understood exactly what the developer went on to say. Second, the response is an incoherent, “Some players, possibly including you but who knows, complained about change x, which we are changing again, so why are you complaining about changing x again?” Third, a complaint about procedure (changing something every update) is a separate matter from the content (is this one a good change?). Fourth, as a developer, you do not get to mock your players for providing feedback, particularly when it is legitimate for the previous three reasons. If you are supposed to be one of the professionals here, you must act like a grown-up, and you do not get to abuse your paying customers just because you cannot please everyone.
: Zubon
Or maybe I’m just annoyed at the people who keep changing our forms at work, so I need to get a new one every time I go through the process. Yes, I get that the new form is easier to use. It has gotten a little better each of the five times you have changed it in the past two years. Unfortunately, dealing with a new form every time takes me longer than the hassles in the old ones.
I read this on the forums too, and i got a different reaction :
1. Original poster was whining(imho) about changes that did not adversely affect his ability to play his character unless he had a perception defect(eg colour blindness) which he failed to state.
2. MMOs have to change. Its their nature, be it in broad game mechanics or in minute details. Whether it was a needed change is up to the developer, but i don’t think anyone makes a new set of icons just for fun ^_^
3. The developer sounded exasperated. At his wit’s end etc, etc.
4. I honestly don’t see the dev’s response as mocking at all, rather it was a response to someone who seemed to be looking out for his self-interest, or those of a “vocal minority” Most of us EU players don’t even get such a dev response.
I’m a project manager, by trade, and so I have a pretty strong grasp on what constitutes professional behavior. Speaking in a frank and unprofessional manner – I would have this developers balls (or breasts) in a sling for that post. It was clearly unprofessional.
Public figures do not have the luxury of having a bad day. You don’t get to make mistakes like this.
But I’d take it a step further and look a bit deeper on this – clearly this company has a bad process in place which allows developers to make these posts in the first place. Any communication should be thoroughly vetted and cleaned up before it is put out on the web. Either that happened, and the proofer sucks, or it didn’t and this company is not a mature one.
That said, I entirely agree with Zubon. I recall reading a study a while back (but I’ll be damned if I can remember its name) that said a vast majority of MMORPG players never set foot into that game’s official forums. Let alone do it on a regular basis. Let alone read every post. Let alone respond to every post.
So basing changes on FORUM feedback is like giving .1% of your customers say over your product. Which is, to speak in a juvenile manner, retarded.
But, see I’m not surprised – if you have an immature company that allows these sorts of posts, then your company is also immature in other respects, like acquiring user feedback and implementing changes. There probably isn’t a defined process for it – it’s all based on perception and emotion, not on cost analysis best practices.
Processes make a company, and I highly doubt that this company is using good processes. Anyone ever heard of CMMI? I bet these guys haven’t.
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/general/
Get a clue, developers.
Oh, and right on Bhagpuss. Well said.
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Agent EVE, AFK Gamer
http://eveagent.blogspot.com
Just wanted to remind you that we are putting new cover sheets on the TPS reports now. I’ll get you a copy of that memo…
@Agent Eve
Could you lay out your guidelines for what constitutes responsible behaviour ? I am interested to know.
What I do think is that the relationship between the players and developers are not as formal as one between a lawyer and his client for example. That would mean certain liberties can on occasion be taken, which are well within the bounds of civilised behaviour. I see no personal insults in the developer’s response, so why should there be such a discussion over what appears to be the style in which he phrased his argument?
And as Bhagpuss has pointed out, MMOs are not a purely customer/supplier relationship. TBH I’d rather not have “professional” communicators to represent the company, as they are not only an added cost which an mmo company doesn’t need, and an additional layer of management involved, they often do not have direct access to the information available. I’d rather have an honest and direct conversation to a developer who is slightly stressed rather a communicator whose passion may not even be in games.
” if you have an immature company that allows these sorts of posts, then your company is also immature in other respects, like acquiring user feedback and implementing changes ”
Is that a scientific fact or more of a generalisation? It may very well be that the opinions of the developer may be of his own, and he has no direct control over the process used for collecting feedback and data, which may be the industry standard for all we know, since Turbine is a privately held company.
“There probably isn’t a defined process for it – it’s all based on perception and emotion, not on cost analysis best practices.”
And Agent Eve, you have hit the nail on the head. It is rather dependent on what type of game you are running, what your server logs record and what sources of information you have at your disposal. I don’t recall an industry standard process for game balance ^_^ I honestly don’t think Turbine actually bases it changes purely on forum feedback, if it had, the runekeeper would not even be around (i consider it a lore break as well, but that is another topic for another time), champions would still be able to tank in fervour and captains would have 3 different stances for healing, dpsing and tanking. (I have misgivings on Turbine’s recent levelling contest, and their rather bugged recent releases, but i doubt a single “unprofessional” post from a developer would drive the outraged customers away from lotro.)
“Public figures do not have the luxury of having a bad day. You don’t get to make mistakes like this.”
Several public figures in offices of the highest importance spring to mind… George W. Bush ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHjIb6trxBI
Even Obama has his moments of weakness in public.
That said, i do understand that different people have different points of view, especially with different cultures and authority figures. What may seem unprofessional to some may be acceptable to others, however alien the concept might be. Broad generalisations are to me what cause misunderstandings; we can very much state our own opinions and views which is up to the reader to ascertain and believe, but it could very well be that outside our area of expertise, the world plays by a very different set of rules.
Because his style reflects on the company.
“So what part of the icon thread the last time confused you? ”
That’s not an insult? It seems to be an insult to me. It seems to be calling the poster stupid for not reading every thread, and remembering it. It seems to address the user as if he speaks for everyone. It’s wrong on more levels than I care to get into – either you understand why TPS reports are necessary and important, or you don’t.
I’m joking about the TPS reports, but the point is valid – just because it sounds like manager-ease doesn’t immediately invalidate it. There’s nothing wrong with informal communication, but it still needs to be vetted to make sure it isn’t insulting. How would you feel if you were this poster – like a valued customer or a pain in the ass?
Please don’t stand George W. Bush, or Barak Obama up as shining examples of clear communication. If we ran companies like we ran government we’d be in a LOT more trouble than we are now. The truth is that large companies are MUCH better at politics than the Presidents or leaders of our countries are. Powerful lobbies run this show, and they use processes to make sure they never gaffe.
Are you a manager, by profession? Do you get paid to worry about public image, profitability and the like? What do experience do you have in such matters?
“Could you lay out your guidelines for what constitutes responsible behaviour ? I am interested to know. ”
I’d start off with “Don’t insult the customer. Any of them.”
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Agent EVE, AFK Gamer
http://eveagent.blogspot.com
“So what part of the icon thread the last time confused you? â€
How else would you ask how a certain forum thread confused him? Could you give an example that does not come across as condescending or sarcastic?
“The truth is that large companies are MUCH better at politics than the Presidents or leaders of our countries are. Powerful lobbies run this show, and they use processes to make sure they never gaffe.”
Proof please. Even powerful lobbies like the Israel lobby can’t cover up all its mistakes.( eg paying a senator to cover up the actions of 2 spies) By your reckoning “processes” are the be all and end all.
“I’d start off with “Don’t insult the customer. Any of them.†”
That’s a start, what about the rest?
Zubon, I completely agree with the spirit and essence of your post. People on the internet forget that “the internet” is not an entity, nor is it the only other participant in the conversation. It is a phenomenon that persists on internet forums that completely sucks. However, this is not a good example at all.
The post that the dev responded to can be summarized as: “I know this needed to be changed but JEEZ WHY DO YOU KEEP CHANGING THINGS!”
The technical term for such a statement is “retarded”. The dev responded with the correct answer: they changed it because the community pointed out that it needed to be changed.
Now as to the tone of the post, yeah, it’s quite curt! But that’s floon.
FLOON IS LEGEND. Why? Because floon is a developer who communicates honestly with the players via the forum in an actual informative fashion. Part of productive communication is to neither pander to nor facilitate stupid shit. We all know that MMO forums are chock full of stupid shit (as evidenced above). This dev gives lots of legitimate informative answers to lots of legitimate insightful questions. He also does his part to discourage stupid shit questions and entertain us all. “floon” is now a verb on the LotRO boards for describing the infliction of such righteous wrath. ;-}
To be noted, floon is the only “grumpy old man” dev who posts like this. Other devs either refrain from posting on the forums or post with information without the tude. They just ignore the stupid rather than address it honestly. That’s ok too. There are also two designated community managers, Sapience and Patience, who go around and actually do the non-technical PR type interactions with the community on the boards.
And to Agent EVE… the customer is, in fact, NOT always right. Sometimes the customer is a complete dipshit and it makes good business sense not to submit yourself to idiotic demands.
I did company-to-company customer service (as opposed to company-to-end user customer service), so I admit it is somewhat different than this. Over nine years I worked as a rep, a lead, and then as a supervisor.
First, it doesn’t matter if the customer was right or wrong and it certainly doesn’t matter if you usually handled yourself professionally. What the customer will remember is the one time you were rude, not the 99 times you weren’t (especially in a case like this where that customer may not even know that you were usually professional).
Here’s what he said: “So what part of the icon thread the last time confused you? That you guys had valid criticisms of the icons, and that we changed them based on the very passionate response of the minstrels?
Can we please, please, please remember what you guys asked for just a month or so ago?”
I would have said something like: “I understand that having your icons changed has been frustrating. We changed the icons based on input from the minstrel player base with the intention of enhancing your gaming experience. We hope that you will like the changes once they are complete and you have had a chance to get used to them. Once we roll out the last of these new icons, we do not plan to change them again. If you have any input on the new icons or how we could better handle situations like this in the future we would like to hear from you. We apologize for not getting the icons right the first time around.”
I am assuming here that the icons were released over time due to the wording of the complaint form the customer.
I think it’s possible to have honest, direct, unfiltered, un-PR’d communication without having an attitude or sounding irritated or condescending to your players.
I don’t know about the rest of floon’s posts, I don’t track him, but at least on this one while his heart might be in the right place, he misjudged the tone completely. And tone, even via text, is important. He could have been merely factual, but instead chose to wrap those facts with an unprofessional and condescending tone.
If I were to guide myself by this example, and this example alone, all I’d see is a dev being smarmy and irritated at the fact that a customer dared to pose a question and a suggestion he should’ve known better about. It’s not the customer’s job to research every minutia about the game and the forums to see if a question or an issue has been raised before, but if a dev is going to engage the playerbase directly, it is his job to choose when to post and what about, making sure to remain professional at all times.
I’m sure floon is a valued dev so perhaps I wouldn’t go as far as fire him, but I would keep him from posting directly for long while because of this.
“I’m sure floon is a valued dev so perhaps I wouldn’t go as far as fire him, but I would keep him from posting directly for long while because of this.”
Agreed.
“And to Agent EVE… the customer is, in fact, NOT always right. Sometimes the customer is a complete dipshit and it makes good business sense not to submit yourself to idiotic demands.”
Ya know, I even agree with this. But being right or wrong is irrelevant. You have to treat each customer contact as if that’s the one he’s going to tell his friend about. It’s entirely possible that this was going to be Floon’s only shot at impacting this customer, and he clearly took a condescending tone with him.
Computer games outsold movies last year – it’s time to stop pretending that it’s neat and quirky-cool to be unprofessional. It isn’t. It’s immature, harmful, and unacceptable.
Except that it’s not because floon is a very popular dev due to his entertaining and insightful posting style.
Anyone he pisses off was already pissed off, or on their way to being pissed off, for reasons that Turbine generally cannot help.
I’m not saying that as a general blanket business pontification either like you yahoos (;-}). I’m describing THIS particular situation and trying to explain why y’all are barking up the wrong tree.
As I said to start with. Zubon’s point is spot on. It’s just a bad example.
This sounds like a robot:
“I understand that having your icons changed has been frustrating. We changed the icons based on input from the minstrel player base with the intention of enhancing your gaming experience. We hope that you will like the changes once they are complete and you have had a chance to get used to them. Once we roll out the last of these new icons, we do not plan to change them again. If you have any input on the new icons or how we could better handle situations like this in the future we would like to hear from you. We apologize for not getting the icons right the first time around.†(no offence falstep)
This sounds like a human being:
“So what part of the icon thread the last time confused you? That you guys had valid criticisms of the icons, and that we changed them based on the very passionate response of the minstrels?
Can we please, please, please remember what you guys asked for just a month or so ago?â€
Personally I’d much rather get a response froma human being than a “Your call/interest/patronage is important to us” spamming answering machine. I haven’t seen anything else this Floon has posted but after reading the forum thread in question I immediately took a liking to him, and from the looks of it, most if not all of the responses on that thread agreed with Floon. The OP was whining. If you’re going to whine on the forums, you have to expect to receive some flak at least. If they didn’t want a negative response to their “rant” then they shouldn’t have posted. Yes, it wasn’t the most professional of responses and perhaps not a great idea to give a somewhat snarky response to a paying customer, but as I said, I’d much prefer his response to a generic ‘kiss-your-ass’ CS response and I don’t think I’m alone in that preference.