The importance of being earnest... er honest

[Puppet]

Awarkle - thanks for the SWG examples. Its a good model of a game that has lots of bigger problems. There are others WoW had worse servers than this game when I was online there.

Both you and Puppet have an extremely selective style in discussing and I wish you would both just slow down a minute. After all you are E&E volunteers and have a certain responsibility to like be the eyes and ears for GOA?

First from what I see you both chose to ignore the post I gave you from CCP who run Eve. They have a 100% better record of informing and debating with their community. I gave you it as a good example of what we would like but you decided to ignore that model no comment was made and it would have been nice if our E&E representatives would have acknwoeldged that they even saw it and that they might bring that style of communication to their (GOA's) attention. But all you do is act for GOA and not the community. From what I can see - now I can be corrected on that of course and please feel free to do so.

Go back a few pages and read it and then please come here and tell me is there not a clear example of how GOA could proceed? You are Eyes and Ears you have a responsibility to us as much as them. Show them CCP and how they work in their communications - if GOA (and Mythic?) adopted a similar style I promise I for one would be much happier with them.

Above Puppet you ignored that I use a different model of the relationship. You can go on about wrongs and rights. In fact this has been a constructive thread, except for the more heated exchanges you have instigated with your particular style of posting. Takits and others need to not allow you to bait them because this has been productive despite all of the nay sayers we have had a good discussion and it has actually been constructive. I find it remarkable that it is some of the GOA 'reps' that are causing the most flames.

Lets go back again - if they had resigned and censored themselves as you would recommend - we would not have had the opportunity to put to you that GOA's communications are shit. We would not have had a chance to explain to you that they have bad relationships with the community and it is basically a communication problem. We would not have had the chance to ask you both as E&E representatives to please act on our behalf and tell them.

I get the suspicion that both you and awarkle getting away with crying about individuals breaching ethical duty is kind of a way to absolve yourselves of some responsibility to try and pass on the more constructive side of the discussion on. Of course I don't know if you have but please let me know if these discussions are ever passed back to GOA by the E&E people?

Regards

Sharkith

I won't quote the Internal Boards or grab logs from chatting-sessions with any of the GM's (or Erivoss) but believe me when I say that Ive asked for more communications from GOA on various occassions.

Im not here defending GOA, but to give my opinion on what seemed to be the focus on the discussion lately.

I dont think anyone of the community, be it an E&E or not can say he's happy about the communication of GOA towards us. Neither I am. But 'leaking' out internal boards and the trend set in this thread if you consider the title of this topic isnt the way to go to improve communications. And for the record I find the topic-title more of having a rant-and-go towards GOA then anything else.

[Selenia]

Obviously the E and E programme isn't working for the community. Therefore, I think and E and E's should stop posting. If the community wants to tear itself apart ; let it

[Puppet]

With all this arselicking and ex-E&E bashing that Puppet has been doing... he has failed to mention that on the internals he posted if the item deletion bug had happened to him he would have packed up shop and quit... yet it didnt, he hasnt.

No, that's not what I posted. I said:

Been a good 5 weeks now since the crash, and obviously quite some people still have not been restored.

I know for a fact that if I would been one of those people, I would have cancelled all together. However, some people seem to have more patience then me, and are still paying. Paying for a game which they can't play in some specific cases due to multiple level 50's wiped or for any other reason.

I know you guys been busy alot with it, I dont doubt that. But it would go a long way to keep the community posted. Been over a week now since the last post about it by any of the English GM's - on Freddyshouse

My chars where restored BEFORE I posted that (good 1,5 month ago). What I ment was that if I hadnt been restored at THAT TIME, I would have quit game.

I didn't mean this to be a flame thread (which it hasn't in my opinion) but a calm disscussion thread as stated...

Im sure you did, thats why you started with a topic-title 'The importance of being earnest... ehh honest' and you state that 'Flame me if you wish' twice in the opening-post. Surely you KNEW it wasnt something which would start as a sensible calm discussion, otherwise you would not have mentioned that.

Yes i breached a form of trust (which imo vanished when Kemor left but thats my perogative) but my trust isn't the only one that has been broken... reason i posted this thread was to show what was being witheld, basically trust breaking as they have been decieving... no matter how big or small you see it and i just felt that people should know...


E&E stands for being a communicator between GoA and the community... now doesn't that mean the community should be allowed to know this? else if not then why class it that... why not just class it as 'testers + abuser reporters'?

Aye, form of trust between you and Kemor, then an alinea further on its between GOA and the community (you, us). Riiiight..... a typical case of 'If you say it often enough you might believe it yourselves in the end'.

About the arse-licking part... Since you seem to know so well on what I post, Im quite sure you can vouche for the fact I was pretty much the only E&E of Prydwen who kept hammering on item-restoration on the mentioned boards and asking for more communication towards the community who suffered.

//edit: And for the record, I never made it a secret I found GOA's communication very below standards. Ive said that on the Internal Boards, on these boards, on FH and during chats with GOA-employees. I just think dumping forums which are ment to be private is the way to go to improve communications. If it does anything, its only counterproductive.

[Takitothemacs]

[quote="Selenia"]Obviously the E and E programme isn't working for the community. Therefore, I think and E and E's should stop posting. If the community wants to tear itself apart ]

So essentially you're saying its pants?!

[Sharkith]

I won't quote the Internal Boards or grab logs from chatting-sessions with any of the GM's (or Erivoss) but believe me when I say that Ive asked for more communications from GOA on various occassions.

Im not here defending GOA, but to give my opinion on what seemed to be the focus on the discussion lately.

I dont think anyone of the community, be it an E&E or not can say he's happy about the communication of GOA towards us. Neither I am. But 'leaking' out internal boards and the trend set in this thread if you consider the title of this topic isnt the way to go to improve communications. And for the record I find the topic-title more of having a rant-and-go towards GOA then anything else.

Thanks Puppet,

just to let you know I do trust you I just felt it strange that both E&E volunteers had adopted a very defensive stance. I trust you to know that you will be having robust discussions with them on how to communicate better. I said it ages ago (just to let you know) its why I have been so angry over the last week I wanted nothing more than an official explanation and apoloigy from GOA on their official English server homepage over the curruption and restoration. An official apology and detailed explanation over the mess with the restoration would have made me have a hell of a lot of sympathy for them. Why they just don't do it I guess I will never know. It all seems so arragont. Having that explanation and apology would help me forgive and get over it and perhaps then I would feel that clicking on that 'I agree' button was OK.

For the record I said at the start I personally would never have broached confidentiality all I was trying to do was study the positive and negative sides of doing so. We have kept it relatively civilised - if someone makes a personal flame I think everyone would be better off ignoring it rather than responding.

Awarkle - I never thought about how the model of funding the game could directly impact on customer relations. Could anyone in the industry explain more of these dynamics - it would help? For the record I also agree there are an awful lot of games out there where things are an awful lot worse. CCP however are superb - they discuss patch changes in advance openly.

Aran <wave> we are still here. For the record what the community is would be one for another thread. Maybe we could talk about it elsewhere as a way of sharing our views and ironing out some of the more unfavourable bits? <puts dummy back in his mouth>

kind regards

Sharkith

p.s. Keri please do not refer to information we have not seen on the internal boards anymore, I still trust and respect Puppet and Awarkle even if I felt they had started taking a line in this thread.

[Lieva]

[quote="Selenia"]Obviously the E and E programme isn't working for the community. Therefore, I think and E and E's should stop posting. If the community wants to tear itself apart ]

The e&e are working however defending goa constanly will only create flames. Yes defend them if you feel that people have been overly harsh but dont defend them over facts.
Also disbanding the e&e programe will in effect close the server down.
The only way to get any information regarding anything these days is from either something a GM has posted to FH or here or from an E&E. And i spect the GMs post more than they would due to bugging from the E&E

[Puppet]

Thanks Puppet,

just to let you know I do trust you I just felt it strange that both E&E volunteers had adopted a very defensive stance.

Which is induced on us by the trend set in the topic. And its not necessarily a defensive stance, but more or less showing the 'other side'.

I trust you to know that you will be having robust discussions with them on how to communicate better. I said it ages ago (just to let you know) its why I have been so angry over the last week I wanted nothing more than an official explanation and apoloigy from GOA on their official English server homepage over the curruption and restoration. An official apology and detailed explanation over the mess with the restoration would have made me have a hell of a lot of sympathy for them. Why they just don't do it I guess I will never know. It all seems so arragont.

Read the quote from me in my previous postings. I typed that as of 13 October iirc, and asking at that time already for more information. That's all I can do really, try to 'tell GOA' what 'the community expects'. I agree with you fullhearthy here. More communications and explainantions would have been much much better. And more relieving to alot of worried customers.

I got little troubles with quoting myselves from the internal boards, most stuff Ive said on these forums or on FH aswell. It becomes a matter of principle aswell. Only *I* can decide if my words on the Internal Boards are ment for Prydwen.NET aswell.

Anyhow final words from me in this topic, as I dont think I will achieve anything in this topic except creating enemies. It's not my intention to do so. If you got any questions left for me, PM me.

Regards,
Puppethealer.

[Ovi]

Sharkith,

I believe that the reason you haven't got, and probably won't get, an offical response is that no one wants to "officially" say it.

This is a case where CCP are at an immense advantage over Goa.... They don't have Big Brother (Wanadoo), BIG Big Brother (France Telecom), and Uncle Sidney (Mythic) to answer too.

Goa and their employees have to be very careful not to upset any of the third parties, stuck between a rock and a hard place comes to mind.

[Belisar]

The one thing I am sure we all agree on is that communication is the key.

I have been one of those posting frequently about the lack of communication - the GOA home page is the only "official" channel for communicating with masses of players with first hand and proactive information. I imagine that gives GOA a problem...

Imagine a prospective new player logging onto that web site and seeing a series of posts about server shut downs, database corruption, restoration, how 2 months later the restoration process is merely treading water, lag issues etc etc Not exactly a good advertisement for the game.

To me that made the GM input here and on FH especially important. Sadly Requiel has decided not to post here anymore (not intending to go over that one again) but it does leave many of us asking questions and not getting answers.

Not sure how GOA improve it's communication. Req coming back would be a good start as there are a number of poeple like me who cannot stand FH. We have a few flames here but many are in jest and most flare up and die down quickly with acknowledgments and apologies all round. That is not the case with FH where you get pointless flame and counterflame.

But that on it's own is not enough. They ned to be faster at acknowledging issues (maybe faster at recognising them), faster at telling us what is going on and more honest when it comes to timescales or numbers (XML will "soon" be working is a good example).

Even a weekly list of priorities would be nice (subject to major issues blowing up and causing a change). 'This week we are working on XML, restoration' etc etc would save a lot of us wondering if our particular issues are on their to do list and perhaps then save a lot of the negative or questioning posts which have been made recently.

PS I do not regard RN as proactive and it is a reactive answer service aimed at individual issues and not a mass communication tool.

[Cryn]

Good communication is about culture and strategy. There's plenty of channels available if a company is committed to a communicative approach. If they don't want to put it on a public website they could use a customer-only channel, such as an extranet or direct email. And there's always the option of putting something inside the game to foster communication.

GOA won't get there until their culture changes. Currently they are led by caution ("we better not say anything in case we end up being wrong") a desire to save face (e.g. very ambiguous phrasing on some subjects, glossing over truths we are all aware of, refusal to acknowledge some problems, etc), and general attitude that the bulk of their player-base would have nothing worthwhile to say, so why attempt dialogue. There's no way a company led by those lights will ever achieve good communication with its user-base.

Companies with good communication are led by openness and honesty and a view that their customers have some kinda decent judgement (after all they chose our product, right?). Once you've got those rooted in your corporate culture, you just need a bit of forward planning to give you a strategic approach instead of a reactive one and your customer relations should flourish.

Unless your service is completely worthless, of course. Despite what some people think, nothing can save you long term if you've got nothing worthwhile to give. I'm not suggesting GOA are worthless, btw, I am just making the point that a good customer relationship also relies on a reasonable product.