Help with tickets (maybe be a little nicer?)

[SoloPhalanx]

Short story: We go into Crucible, everything going marvelous. We hit the agility test. Monk #1 goes in, doesn't get the horn, Monk #1 and me (Monk #2) go back in. Monk #1 gets the Horn, we get locked inside before we make it back to the door (common bug, listed on wiki). Monk #1 eventually dies in the room and I pick up the Horn. Door still locked, I try dropping the Horn, it is destroyed still nothing happens.

I submit a ticket where I mention we are in the Crucible and that we are stuck in the agility test. After about 5 mins of waiting, I add in the comments that it should be an easy fix, and that just making the horn respawn should fix it.

We wait for a GM for about 30 mins, then people start dropping. Having nothing better to do I figure I'll stay in anyhow (my first ticket, wasn't sure I did it correctly and wanted to make sure). After about 40 mins (more than 40 actually, but meh) the following happens:

[image removed]

The "fix" was kicking me out of the room (door still locked).
I still don't know if we had a new horn. Even if I called someone in to help, I still had no idea if the quest was ruined or not.

I understand nothing else could be done. All I really wanted was a "I understand your frustration, but we're having a busy night! Sorry about that!" or an explanation of what was the "state" of the quest. More than 3 word ansewrs basically.

Being treated as a mindless dummy is what I was really not hoping for.

EDIT: Unsure if this is the right section. If need be, move it to the appropriate location

[Lifespawn]

sadly this is the norm, lesson learned is don't file a ticket just start over

[Feather_of_Sun]

Sorry to hear you didn't have a pleasant interaction with our support staff. As a future precaution, I suggest including all pertinent information in a support ticket description.

Here's the issue you encountered:
You ran the trap gauntlet very quickly, and then picked up the Horn of Agility before the door into the Horn's hallway had closed. Since the horn, when picked up, tells the door to open- that open command goes through, but does nothing since the door was already open. Then the timer on the Agility gauntlet ran out and the door closes.
This is a known issue, and we do apologize for the problems it can cause. As a workaround, in this quest, wait until the door behind you closes before picking up the horn.

As this is a very well documented issue, so too is the fix that our Game Masters implement for it- they saw your ticket saying that you were stuck in the Horn of Agility hallway, so they immediately knew what the problem was, and moved you out of the hallway to fix it.

Your remaining issue was that you had deleted the quest item, thus making it impossible to finish the quest.

It doesn't sound like you told the GM that, though. All I can see is that he moved you out of the hallway, then you told him that it didn't help. So he told you there was nothing more he could do, and to have a good night. From his perspective, he had fixed the problem. The issue in that quest is getting stuck in that hall. He moved you out. There aren't any other documented bugs in the quest.

You probably would have gotten a response much more to your satisfaction if your ticket had read something like this:

"Hello, I am in the Crucible, in the Horn of Agility section. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in the hallway where the horn of agility is. The door closed behind me but did not open when I picked up the horn. In order to see if it would help, I destroyed the horn. Could you please move me out of the hallway and replace the Horn of Agility? Thank you."

We're sorry to hear that you had an unfortunate experience this time. There's always a trend of blaming a Game Master for not reading someone's mind. Give them a hand and fully explain in detail what happened, and do so with courtesy. Hopefully next time it'll work out better!


(And no matter how good of an idea it seems at the time, don't delete quest items while still inside the quest! You've failed the quest the instant you do.)

[ericrd]

uh.. wow .. devs being this helpfull is going to take a min to accept as reality :)

[Lifespawn]

he did mention that the horn needed to be respawned in the tells and apparently in the bug report as a note


i have given explicit details as to what has gone wrong in quests and in 6 years only one time has a gm fixed the problem.

Again the lesson here is unless your at the end it's usually way quicker and less frustrating to just start over.



shameless stab here while your here can u look at the thread about healing amp and other info players would like listed somewhere?

[Rumbaar]

If it's such a known issue, never seen it before, why can't Turbine put in an if command?!

IF Door is Open
{
Close door
Open door
}

I read clearly in a tell that he asked for the horn to be respawned. After 40 mins you would expect a GM to give a few more seconds to ensure things are closed.

[Feather_of_Sun]

I read clearly in a tell that he asked for the horn to be respawned. After 40 mins you would expect a GM to give a few more seconds to ensure things are closed.

He asked for the horn to be respawned, yes. What he didn't do is say that he deleted it. Thus, he never explained the problem.

The GM fixed the problem that he was aware of, which was that the OP was stuck in the hallway with the door closed. The issue he wrote in his ticket was resolved properly.

When you need something more to fix your problem, the correct approach is to explain the problem fully, in detail. That means owning up to it when you destroy the quest item you need to proceed.

Just asking for an item to be spawned will always result in a negative, because it'll be seen as irrelevant to the issue at hand. Game Masters may have a lot of talents, but they can't read your mind.

Hope that helps for any future times you may need quest assistance.

[ZeroTakenaka]

Sorry to hear you didn't have a pleasant interaction with our support staff. As a future precaution, I suggest including all pertinent information in a support ticket description.

Here's the issue you encountered:
You ran the trap gauntlet very quickly, and then picked up the Horn of Agility before the door into the Horn's hallway had closed. Since the horn, when picked up, tells the door to open- that open command goes through, but does nothing since the door was already open. Then the timer on the Agility gauntlet ran out and the door closes.
This is a known issue, and we do apologize for the problems it can cause. As a workaround, in this quest, wait until the door behind you closes before picking up the horn.

As this is a very well documented issue, so too is the fix that our Game Masters implement for it- they saw your ticket saying that you were stuck in the Horn of Agility hallway, so they immediately knew what the problem was, and moved you out of the hallway to fix it.

Your remaining issue was that you had deleted the quest item, thus making it impossible to finish the quest.

It doesn't sound like you told +Ogdred+ that, though. All I can see is that he moved you out of the hallway, then you told him that it didn't help. So he told you there was nothing more he could do, and to have a good night. From his perspective, he had fixed the problem. The issue in that quest is getting stuck in that hall. He moved you out. There aren't any other documented bugs in the quest.

You probably would have gotten a response much more to your satisfaction if your ticket had read something like this:

"Hello, I am in the Crucible, in the Horn of Agility section. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in the hallway where the horn of agility is. The door closed behind me but did not open when I picked up the horn. In order to see if it would help, I destroyed the horn. Could you please move me out of the hallway and replace the Horn of Agility? Thank you."

We're sorry to hear that you had an unfortunate experience this time. There's always a trend of blaming a Game Master for not reading someone's mind. Give them a hand and fully explain in detail what happened, and do so with courtesy. Hopefully next time it'll work out better!


(And no matter how good of an idea it seems at the time, don't delete quest items! You've failed the quest the instant you do.)

Did you also notice that the Game Master took 40 minutes to get a response to this issue? That is an unacceptable amount of time to wait.

I had an issue with another quest where I waited in there for 80 min. and I never got an answer. EIGHTY MINUTES.

[Feather_of_Sun]

Did you also notice that the Game Master took 40 minutes to get a response to this issue? That is an unacceptable amount of time to wait.

I had an issue with another quest where I waited in there for 80 min. and I never got an answer. EIGHTY MINUTES.

Sorry to hear that. Some times of day can be busier than others. They take all player tickets in the order they're recieved. If anyone would like to help out, we have openings at our office near Boston. Experience playing DDO is a huge plus.

You can go to our website at www.turbine.com and then click the "Jobs" link on the top right of the page.
There's a listing for "Customer Service Representative- GM" up. I promise to personally introduce myself to whoever gets the job, and shake their hand.

It's the hardest job in the game industry.

[JOTMON]

~Your remaining issue was that you had deleted the quest item, thus making it impossible to finish the quest.~


Don't know if this has ever been an eye opener for anyone at DDO.. but isnt this something that should be fixed across the board..

..Any Quest items should not be destroyable..
They should either be dropable or respawn on destruction back in its original place.

or at least have a popup message.. "are you sure you want to destroy this item and completely screw any chance of you have of completing the quest"

[Rumbaar]

He asked for the horn to be respawned, yes. What he didn't do is say that he deleted it. Thus, he never explained the problem.

+Ogdred+ fixed the problem that he was aware of, which was that the OP was stuck in the hallway with the door closed. The issue he wrote in his ticket was resolved properly.I'll bite :) If the GM doesn't read/care what is said by the player they are talking too [ie he said can it be respawned] then why talk to the player and not just warp him out of the room based on their ticketed information.

Then further to that, if the player asked for it to respawn, and the GM didn't know it was deleted why wouldn't the response have been.

"You can now go back in and get the horn."
"But I've deleted it trying to fix Turbine's bugged code"
"Oh I'm sorry this is not known ... "

I figured a little more 'human' interaction.


You can go to our website at www.turbine.com and then click the "Jobs" link on the top right of the page.
There's a listing for "Customer Service Representative- GM" up. I promise to personally introduce myself to whoever gets the job, and shake their hand.
Tarrant is that you?!

Apparently I need to remind you guys that our developers are not required to post on the forums as part of their job. When they do it, they take time out of their day to communicate with you because they want to. They enjoy talking with you and being transparent, but there have been a growing number of responses like some of the above that will encourage them not to post in the future.

Simply put, we won't tolerate this behavior anymore. Drop the sarcasm, the hostility, and the accusations. If we say something is X, it's because it is. If you want to second guess us, feel free to apply for a job. :)

[Falco_Easts]

Did you also notice that the Game Master took 40 minutes to get a response to this issue? That is an unacceptable amount of time to wait.

I had an issue with another quest where I waited in there for 80 min. and I never got an answer. EIGHTY MINUTES.

Do you see how many times on these forums people come to complain about an issue where the GM did not help when in fact the issue was nothing to do with a GM nor something they should help with. That is the reason you get massive wait times.

Out of curiousity, what was your issue you waited 80 minutes for?

[OldCoaly]

.... the timer on the Agility gauntlet ran out and the door closes.

This is a known issue, and we do apologize for the problems it can cause. As a workaround, in this quest, wait until the door behind you closes before picking up the horn.

As this is a very well documented issue, so too is the fix that our Game Masters implement for it- they saw your ticket saying that you were stuck in the Horn of Agility hallway, so they immediately knew what the problem was, and moved you out of the hallway to fix it.
...

This may be a known issue to you, but it is not in the customer-facing known issue list.
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=150534



It's the hardest job in the game industry.
Most of our life pain is self-inflicted.

Turbine makes the task of satisfying customers harder than necessary.


There's always a trend of blaming a Game Master for not reading someone's mind. Give them a hand and fully explain in detail what happened, and do so with courtesy. Hopefully next time it'll work out better!


Forum participants represent a very small percentage of the game population, or so it's been said. Many people will miss your advice.

GMs interact with 100% of the game population that submits tickets.


Feather_of_Sun, thank you for your efforts. You CAN make a difference!

Please remind the GMs that they are not mind readers and that an additional 90 seconds spent interacting with customers to learn helpful details can make a big difference in the perceived outcome of the interaction.

[Puppetian]

Slightly off topic, but during my whole playtime I only ever requested gm assistance twice and in both cases the issues were handled rather swiftly and to my liking.
Now, to make it even more fun, one of the issues was entirely my fault, the GM would be completely justified to tell me to start over and not waste his time (VoN4, I'm pretty sure you can guess what I did), yet he still did reset the part of the dungeon I was having trouble with and I could finish the run without any further problems. Agreeing with Feather here, I'm 100% sure that by far most of the forum posted complaints are player-side.

It is understandable that people can get frustrated, but having played another popular MMO, where I was happy if I got assisted within 24h of posting a ticket, 40 mins doesn't sound like a big deal. If waiting that long is indeed an issue, then the problem you've been ticketing for wasn't a big deal anyway - recall, run back, restart and get over it. In OP's case, rerunning that dungeon to the mentioned point would take what, 10 minutes tops? Food for thought ;)

As for the issue itself, I always worked around it by backing off from the door slightly and having someone pull the gauntlet-starting lever again, did you try that?

[Rhev]

I too have had horrid interaction with support staff. I think this is something that should be addressed, although overall my view of game is very positive.

[Falco_Easts]

Please remind the GMs that they are not mind readers and that an additional 90 seconds spent interacting with customers to learn helpful details can make a big difference in the perceived outcome of the interaction.

If only people submitting tickets thought that, the response time would be a lot faster.

[Havok.cry]

I would almost be willing to lay money on the idea that no one who actively works in the customer service industry has problems with the in game GMs.

[Culver.Civello]

Well... I've been playing this game for about 4 years now and only just recently put in a ticket myself. It actually wasn't for me. Some new guy had bugged Rest for the restless out somehow and was asking for help in general. I popped on a lowbie to help him figure it out, figuring he just did it wrong or something. To my surprise, it was right... but something happened and both gates were down and not opening that lets you proceed on, near the area where someone is suppose to be trapped in. I submitted a ticket. The guy was very helpful, he asked a few questions. I gave him every possible detail I could. It took a few minutes, but gotta realize that bugs and glitches like that aren't suppose to happen... and it sometimes could be new to even the admin. You never know! He checked that we had completed the part and then happily teleported us through warning that if it was bugged due to that somehow, we'd have to restart. Completely understandable, that something like that may just bug it further. But... we finished.

The point, be descriptive in your problem. Even if you think it is just silly and think they SHOULD know it, doesn't mean they do. It would be hard to track down EVERY SINGLE action you took that caused it to take place. They aren't you. They know how the quest SHOULD work, not what it was that caused it to not work. You can't really blame them for not knowing. They are human still.

[Culver.Civello]

You can go to our website at www.turbine.com and then click the "Jobs" link on the top right of the page.
There's a listing for "Customer Service Representative- GM" up. I promise to personally introduce myself to whoever gets the job, and shake their hand.

It's the hardest job in the game industry.

Also, I would totally be interested in that. I have LOTS of experience working with people. :D

Edit*** and totally jumping for it, I submitted an interest.

[ZeroTakenaka]

Do you see how many times on these forums people come to complain about an issue where the GM did not help when in fact the issue was nothing to do with a GM nor something they should help with. That is the reason you get massive wait times.

Out of curiousity, what was your issue you waited 80 minutes for?

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=366145

TL;dr: Completed Sleeping Dust. Had to relog once. An objective that should be checked after killing the end-boss wasn't checked. ((it was the spiders one))

[Dolphious]

While I appreciate Feather_of_son's advice on how to submit a useful ticket I do think the moral of this (and many other) stories is that it's best to just reset and start over. It's a game, games have bugs, it sucks, move on. The chances of a ticket resulting in a useful resolution are low (usually because they *can't* do anything about it), while the chance of getting angry while waiting and ruining your night are high.

It doesn't even really bother me anymore, the way I see it is I'd rather have turbine spend money implementing permanent fixes for bugs then have GMs running around fixing individual instances.

[Gadget2775]

Sorry to hear that. Some times of day can be busier than others. They take all player tickets in the order they're recieved. If anyone would like to help out, we have openings at our office near Boston. Experience playing DDO is a huge plus.

You can go to our website at www.turbine.com and then click the "Jobs" link on the top right of the page.
There's a listing for "Customer Service Representative- GM" up. I promise to personally introduce myself to whoever gets the job, and shake their hand.

It's the hardest job in the game industry.

You wouldn't happen to know if they allow telecommuting? I'm quite happy in Hawaii but need new employment due to downsizing

[Falco_Easts]

While I appreciate Feather_of_son's advice on how to submit a useful ticket I do think the moral of this (and many other) stories is that it's best to just reset and start over. It's a game, games have bugs, it sucks, move on. The chances of a ticket resulting in a useful resolution are low (usually because they *can't* do anything about it), while the chance of getting angry while waiting and ruining your night are high.

It doesn't even really bother me anymore, the way I see it is I'd rather have turbine spend money implementing permanent fixes for bugs then have GMs running around fixing individual instances.

I disagree, I think the chances of resolution are good providing you have realistic expectations and communicate well.
Up to the individual as to whether they think the wait is worth it. Admittedly if I took more then 5-10 minutes I would just restart myself.

[Funny_looking_mole]

First off, thank you so much for the responsiveness with the community Feather_of_Sun, I don't know why so many people feel they need to be rude to dev's, or think that once shows up that it's a chance to air their personal issues, but I appreciate your interaction.

The second thing I would say is that there is an odd idea here, in that to increase reaction time GM's should spend more time on each ticket, obviously there is only so many GM's, and if they answer them in the order received the solution would be to spend less time on each ticket, of course the best way to get that to happen would be if people give all pertinent information in their tickets.

The third thing would be that I have worked for a bit in customer service, so I thought I might give my impression of the conversation from the GM perspective:

GM: Hello, Llyire
-A standard greeting, indicating that he is there to solve the issue

Player:Hello ogdred. sort of late unfortunatly, ive been abandoned by the rest of my party
Anyhow, im still at the crucible, stuck in the trapped hallway
can you fix it, perhaps by making the horn respawn
-Response indicating the problem is still pertinent "still in the crucible", and a suggestion for a fix "making the horn respawn" this seems to be the main debate, from the GM's perspective I would imagine that you were suggesting your idea of a fix, however without telling him that you actually destroyed it I doubt he would know that you destroyed it, so there is a couple reasons he didn't just respawn the horn:

1. It wouldn't actually fix the issue (it's possible it's not picking it up but completing that task, which means picking it up again wouldn't do anything) note that if this would have fixed the issue the player could have done this himself by logging out and logging back in since quest items will drop to the ground when you log out.
2. It's easier to teleport the player than to respawn the item (if they are 40 minutes behind on tickets they may want to get through them as quickly and efficiently as possible)
3. It's not policy to respawn items, or that you would need a senior GM to respawn an item (which meant you would have to wait longer)

GM: One moment and I will assist
Player: Sure, Thanks :)
GM: There you go
- Indicating that he will fix the issue, and then letting the player know the issue (that was in the ticket) is fixed, note the GM doesn't just log off

Player: Well, unfortunately not much that can be done as im out of the room, with the door closed, alone in the instance. anything that you can do about it?
GM:No, I'm afraid you will have to start over.
- Player indicates that he will not be able to complete the quest, presumably because of the no party members. This response is where I would diverge with the GM, asking what he wants done (though I imagine they get players asking for free completions, and it's possible he was trying to avoid that) I also wouldn't have said that you had to start over, even though at that point it's probably easier to get a new group to start from the entrance than to have them get to you with at least 40 minutes on the quest timer.

Player:So, over 40 mins of waiting for nothing. sort of unfair, but I understand. thanks anyhow, and have a good night
GM:You, too.
- In this case the player indicates that the problem is resolved, but indicates his dissatisfaction with the wait time (not much the GM can do about that since it is in the past), and the GM closes the ticket.

So while I wouldn't say it is the shining example of customer service, the GM showed up resolved the issue, and made sure the issue was resolved before leaving, the player never indicated that the problem wasn't resolved, or that the horn needed to be replaced, the player did hint about wanting more done, but I don't know what the player could have wanted other than a free completion or free loot (which I doubt they are allowed to do) to compensate for waiting.

[Falco_Easts]

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=366145

TL;dr: Completed Sleeping Dust. Had to relog once. An objective that should be checked after killing the end-boss wasn't checked. ((it was the spiders one))

I remember that thread. You had a legitimate problem.

EDIT : I notice that FotS has been at it again and updated the thread. That really should be added to the objective list.

[Lleren]

I would almost be willing to lay money on the idea that no one who actively works in the customer service industry has problems with the in game GMs.

I have not yet had a problem with an in game GM. I have received fixes in this and other games. Full sentences, short, simple, and complete seem to do the trick.

[SoloPhalanx]

I figured a little more 'human' interaction.


This is sort of where I wanted to aim my thread.

Crucible doesn't take long, nor was I interested in free loot or a free completion. I actually was invited by one of the former party members for another run around 5 mins after I dropped but ended up not joining as I wanted to sleep :P

Maybe I didn't explain my problem, but this is where I think Rumbaar's post delivers. I know there are busy days, and I'm sure Ogdred did his best, but I'm sure that you can understand that after waiting for 40 mins, I expected something more then a simple "You, too" as a goodbye. I realise the quest wouldn't have been finished, for I didn't have enough people for the wheels in the next part (I think they can be soloed perhaps, but im not sure).

My point is, after 40 mins of waiting, a simple "Sorry about the delay, it's been a busy day" would have made me see that the GM actually cared a bit, and wasn't there just to "get it over with"

But maybe I'm just a crybaby attention seeker :)

Feather_of_Sun, I love you in a manly way! (Seriously, wish everyone at Turbine was as responsive as you. I'd take that coupled with your Abbot changes over what we have!)

EDIT: No idea why I have the neg rep for my first post, but thanks :)

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Here's the issue you encountered:
You ran the trap gauntlet very quickly, and then picked up the Horn of Agility before the door into the Horn's hallway had closed. Since the horn, when picked up, tells the door to open- that open command goes through, but does nothing since the door was already open. Then the timer on the Agility gauntlet ran out and the door closes.

Sounds like the results of extreme zerging to me.


(And no matter how good of an idea it seems at the time, don't delete quest items! You've failed the quest the instant you do.)


Some quests items don't get removed, though.

I deleted manually the evil shaman's notes from my inventory after a few weeks after finishing the Tangleroot Gorge quest chain.
It as still there, the whole quest chain was solved, but the "hints book" of him still was there.

Plus, I'll never understand why "The Smuggler's Warehouse" *always* ends up with me having 10+1 gems ?



If anyone would like to help out, we have openings at our office near Boston.

Imho there should be people living in different time zones, too.
Partly because I believe that doing ight shifts has a negative impact on one's intelligence (this is my personal opinion),
partly because even the WHO has come to the conclusion that night hifts are unhealthy and can lead to illnesses.
I write that because I'm from Europe, but thre are other parts in the world with different time zones, too (Australia comes to mind).


Most of our life pain is self-inflicted.

Mine, too. Right now I'm having real, serious depressions from an incident that was several days ago.
Talk about real life lag.


Please remind the GMs that they are not mind readers and that an additional 90 seconds spent interacting with customers to learn helpful details can make a big difference in the perceived outcome of the interaction.

I have always had the opinion that too many people act "after ther book", read : Sticking too much on certain rules.
If it isn't in the book, it doesn't exit.

I personally strongly believe that we needLOTS and LOTS and LOTS of leteral thinkers in both play testing (yes, even in programming !) and in the support.

Regarding "mind reading" I *trongly* suggest (out of own experience) the use of HSPs as supporters, but unfortunately it lies in the nature of HSPs that they can't work more than a few hours fully concentrated.
Their immense plus is, however, that they can actually perceive so many more details - yes, even unspoken wods. They are the people who usually have "a bad feeling about this" when something isn't working correctly. And yes, believe it or not, I'm actually serious about that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_sensitive_person

[Izzban]

It looks to me like the OP didn't communicate effectively with the GM.

Every time I have had interaction with a GM, in any game, it has been a pleasant experience. I fully explain the problem, everything I or my party have tried to solve the issue, and my thoughts on what might fix the problem. I sometimes even write it all out in tells to myself, or in notepad so I can copy/paste, so I have plenty of time to organize my thoughts, and think back upon what has happened as I wait. Then I can quickly resend the information to the GM when he/she arrives.

I have read a lot of forum posts about poor GM service (in various games) and almost every one comes down to the player not providing the GM with pertinent information. This assumes that what the player wants done is empowered to the GMs.

So in the future, everyone reading this: remember to explain fully not only in the ticket, which the GM might have read several minutes ago and forgot an important part of, but also as soon as the GM contacts you.

[SoloPhalanx]

Sounds like the results of extreme zerging to me.


Regarding this, I can say for sure that wasn't the case. We were going at a nice pace, though not even close to zerging, and probably not even "fast".
However, there are traps in that specific gauntlet. You're not supposed to stop there and watch the beautiful nature all around you.

[Ziindarax]

I agree about more details being needed. When I played SW:TOR, I often found the GM's responded rather quickly when I formatted my tickets with the following:

<Description of the problem I am having in a paragraph or two>

<Location (In that game, I used Planet name, followed by the area/instance I was in, in this game's case, you can both state what your location is and copy/paste the resulting text that shows up from typing "/loc" without the quotation marks into your text/chat bar)>

<Time of the problem's occurrence>

<My character's name, level, and class, as well as those of my party members if applicable [yes, I even included my npc companions]>

<If necessary, I also state what else I might have been doing just prior to the incident occurring>


By using something like the above, GM's can be respond to matters more quickly and expediently (I've also found that GM's are more likely to outright close/delete a rudely written/toned ticket rather than respond to it, so being polite is also key).

[Uska]

uh.. wow .. devs being this helpfull is going to take a min to accept as reality :)

well he was posting on the first so maybe........:D

[twiliteslayer02]

Had a REALLY bad hard shroud a few weeks ago, and an extremely dissappointing encounter with a gm who will remain nameless atm, my post as well as severeal others misteriously dissappeared, but meh, oh well I expected as much when it comes to the blatant incompetance we encountered.

I wonder if maybe that gm was the one whos position is open??(wishful thinking)

I can say that from day one, there have been some good, some ok, and alot of REALLY bad gm experiences, by many people. and the problem as I see it is inconsistancy more than mis/lack of information.

Maybe it is tru that we dont put all of the info needed, but then again, if we are chatting with a gm, why cant THEY do their jobs and investigate like they say they are?

the specifics of my most recent encounter:

VERY experienced group battled thru nearly 40 minutes of a hard shroud, the time was not due to the skill of the players, or rather maybe it was, we dealt with near crippling lagg throughout all of the first four parts, even having a full party freeze for over fifteen seconds in the (thankfully) puzzles in part 3.

We entered part 5 and went to town still batling lagg, did very well too i must say got Arra to something in the neighborhood of 5% and then had a nearly 20 second full party laggout, prior to that, but after the fact I learned that in order for the lead healer to move she had to actually tumble because it wouldnt let her do anything else.

needless to say, lots of resources used, a ton of time put in to get a hard completion, and very very close to the end, we sent in a ticket( the group leader anyhow) and after something like 40 minutes(now at almost an hour and a half of time in quest) she got a response wich was basically nothing except a restart and go advizement.

an aside here:
I have as many have in the semi recent past seen res shrines spawned, monsters paused, and in one case a complete instance reset in that part of the shroud. with that said it was expected that that would be the case here, a res shrine, and a fifteen second pause and we are off.

what actually happened... see above, four of us ended up putting in tickets. after the first few with that same Ber... gm, giving what actually seemed like copy/paste responses, we all gave up, and i know for a fact that one of those people is now leaving the game for good, the final straw was this nights lack of gm help in something that had been helped with before.

If you want to get the info, have them ask the right questions, its not our jobs as players to tell your techs and gms what the problem is, we arent payed, we do the paying, its time you put OUR money where YOUR mouths are.

[Battlehawke]

Maybe I'm mistaken but didn't the OP state that BOTH monks were stuck in the Horn room? Also remind me, isn't that the issue? Only one person is allowed in the room to get the Horn? Somehow they bugged it out by bypassing that filter/objective?

If only one person had gone in.......

[Eleia]

If you want to get the info, have them ask the right questions, its not our jobs as players to tell your techs and gms what the problem is, we arent payed, we do the paying, its time you put OUR money where YOUR mouths are.

This is why some are having bad gm experiences right here. The days of treating cs people like garbage are over.

The customer is not always right . . . most companys tell their cs employees to not take our garbage anymore and if they're rude to not help. I can't put here exactly what my manager told me to do when I had my last cs job years ago, but it was an eye opener.

You have to be polite, to the point, and brief but quick. they go through mountains of petitions and player junk all day. You get numb and just don't care quick.

I used to do a volunteer thing with a few games back in the day before it was stopped. Some players are nasty, rude, and down right stupid when they peition and wouldn't get much help from me or the gms.

The ones that got helped were the one's who were polite and petitioned like the poster above mentioned with the tons of information.

A little bit of kindness goes a long way to cs. You are trying to talk them into helping you. "You can catch more bees with honey then vinegar."

Just saying.

[Cyr]

The OP clearly stated that they were not happy with the resolution. Instead of the GM following up they closed the ticket. They took 40 minutes to respond to a ticket and then had an unhappy customer telling them they didn't fix their problem and closed the ticket.

Nothing about that scenario is okay.

[Koowluh]

I would almost be willing to lay money on the idea that no one who actively works in the customer service industry has problems with the in game GMs.

Both you and Eleia hit the jackpot. I am in customer services myself (2nd line support now, moving to system administration, phew) and trust me, anyone who treats me like dirt suddenly has his/her ticket gone missing, abruptly transferred to another department or otherwise treated at the same level as I am treated.

I can understand some user frustration as I am a user myself. But when I call or mail a servicedesk I know what to expect there; (usually) skilled and friendly personnel, sometimes bound by the rules of their own organisation. There is no need to bring this to a personal level, as this employee speaks with hundreds of people each week and that one unfriendly encounter is easily shrugged off (if they do their job right).

It helps to be descriptive in your requests; "I'm stuck, help me." Not gonna help. "I'm stuck in this long tunnel after I dropped the horn." Better.

Are you expecting a timely response? I'm not. I know that, in this matter, the organisation is located in the US. I don't expect a GM on when it's 10 in the morning on a saturday at my place (that's saturday 2 a.m. there). I don't expect them to have representatives all over the globe, much too resource intensive. Perhaps some volunteer GMs in key locations may help here? Plenty experienced people around here.

In case I would get stuck in a quest, I'd rather restart than to submit a ticket. I know what to expect from the tickets (most GMs are in their own dream lands by the time I report it).

Don't expect to be treated like a god. Expect to be treated like a king. And even kings may have to wait sometimes.

[In_Like_Flynn]

I've always overcome this by running back down to where the horn was, and have someone in the party pull the lever again. The door opens as part of its regular timed cycle.

[Phemt81]

You can go to our website at www.turbine.com and then click the "Jobs" link on the top right of the page.
There's a listing for "Customer Service Representative- GM" up. I promise to personally introduce myself to whoever gets the job, and shake their hand.

It's the hardest job in the game industry.

The only missing profile is forum moderator :D

[Beethoven]

Nothing about that scenario is okay.

Nothing about the scenario is surprising or unusual for the service industries.
Sure, we all want a /prompt/ response.
We also want for GMs to be patient and thorough (both of which requires time) in handling our issues.

Right now we have GMs rushing tickets which often makes them come over being impolite and negligent in solving the problem. We also have thirty minutes+ wait times. Odds are we have a situation were ten agents deal with hundred tickets an hour (or five agents with fifty, significantly more tickets per hour than agents anyway). It's not about kindness here but the simple fact that each agent can only take 5 minutes per ticket or they start to add up to unacceptable wait times (ie: hours).

The only way to make sure GMs are more thorough is making sure they have the time to collect all the information potentially necessary, analyze and research the situation in depth and perhaps even discuss it amongst themselves to make sure they come up with the best solution.

They'd be to do that they likely spend twice (or more) time per ticket. They start spending a lot more time per ticket, we won't be waiting thirty minutes for a response but a couple of hours. Obviously, having /average/ wait of a few hours for customer support is not feasible either.

What leaves as only other solution hire and train more customer service agents (GMs). Now, leaving aside for a moment the fact that customer service usually has among the highest turn around in any business, who is going to pay for it?

Businesses today in general are more concerned about cutting the overhead because nobody is willing to pay a single cent more for a better customer service support. It's not like companies never tried, but - for the most part - companies who emphasized on customer service (and consequently incurred additional expanses) didn't do so well. Meanwhile companies who don't even have an own customer support (but outsourced it to a cheap service provider / call center) are strong in business because for the money they save here they can sell their product cheaper and the end of the day people will buy wherever it is cheap.

I used to work in the customer service industries in a management position. I was involved enough in corporate decision making to understand why the cuts to my department but it still meant that in the course of less than a year the number of customer service agents was cut into less than half. Consequently the quality of customer service also became only half as good as it used to be. That's not an exception either, but (cutting customer service to the bare minimum or worse) pretty much became a standard across the industries.

Now, MMORPGs are not even rated for customer service (go to MMORPG.com or any other webpage who deals with reviewing/play testing MMORPGs and you will not find a single one who uses a score/rating for Quality of Costumer Service or lists Customer Service in either pro or con for calculating their scores). You will frequently find subscription costs being considered in the rating (high monthly costs being considered a con, free to play a pro). So, unless that changes companies will keep costs for customer service at a minimum and we will have to deal with overworked GMs who rush through tickets because by the time they said hi they already got two more new tickets in.

So, what's Turbine to do? I suppose they could start sell customer service minutes and priority in the DDO store (or raise the costs for subscription), use the proceeds from that to hire (and train) new GMs and then assign the additional manpower to only deal with tickets from those who paid extra. However, I somehow doubt selling customer service over the store or raising the cost of subscription is going to go over very well and is actually likely to cause more harm than good.

[SoloPhalanx]

Don't expect to be treated like a god. Expect to be treated like a king. And even kings may have to wait sometimes.

Where did I expect to be treated as a god? or even a king? or even a knight or so?

I'm ok with waiting. Hell, it could have even been 2 hours. That would be too long, but I'm sure there were reasons for it.

All I'm saying, is that if you make someone wait 40 minutes, don't you say "sorry"?

[Havok.cry]

If you want to get the info, have them ask the right questions, its not our jobs as players to tell your techs and gms what the problem is, we arent payed, we do the paying, its time you put OUR money where YOUR mouths are.

Now here is the opposing view from someone who does work in customer service:

Customer does not give me the info I need to help them I move on. Simple as that. Customer is rude to me I politely ask them to leave, and when they inevitably refuse, I call the police and have them trespassed off the property. I don't even hesitate. Those customer service people have a right to not be harassed and abused. They are the only people who can help you and if you don't work with them the way they need you too, then your poor experience is your own fault.

It is the job of whoever wants the problem solved to tell the people who can solve it what is happening, because frankly, a customer service rep does not care about you, ever. They care about trying to help people have a better experience, and uncooperative people are a lost cause in that endeavor.

Discalimer: All instances and variations of the word you in my post are used in the general sense not the personal

[twiliteslayer02]

This is why some are having bad gm experiences right here. The days of treating cs people like garbage are over.

The customer is not always right . . . most companys tell their cs employees to not take our garbage anymore and if they're rude to not help. I can't put here exactly what my manager told me to do when I had my last cs job years ago, but it was an eye opener.

You have to be polite, to the point, and brief but quick. they go through mountains of petitions and player junk all day. You get numb and just don't care quick.

I used to do a volunteer thing with a few games back in the day before it was stopped. Some players are nasty, rude, and down right stupid when they peition and wouldn't get much help from me or the gms.

The ones that got helped were the one's who were polite and petitioned like the poster above mentioned with the tons of information.

A little bit of kindness goes a long way to cs. You are trying to talk them into helping you. "You can catch more bees with honey then vinegar."

Just saying.


*edited to remove inflammatory matl.


The GM ramained unnamed, to you, and the total inconsistancy of the ENTIRE system they seem to be using is very very very well known, I stand by my convictions that it is NOT our job to get them to a point where they can solve a problem like I posted. IF we say lagg caused a wipe at 5% in hard shroud, pls fix. its kinda **** easy to see how to fix that perticular issue, and it HAS been done before, on the simple side, spawns a shrine, give us one person or fifteen seconds and go! :)
I dont care about their feelings when I've already waited for them to catch up, I will be civil at the very least, up to the point where the BS starts flying and i can tell they are simply "waiting for the nice one"

Feel how you may, I for one know what I expect, and have been in customer service for over twenty years, the PAYING customer HAS the right to always get what they PAY for, and in this case and the OP's, it was clear we/he/she/I did not.

To expedite ANY ticket, or in my case acct, simply use a checkdown, and install systems to autosort so that the time is minimized.Maa Bell had that one figured out, its not that hard to sort key words and would go a long long way to helping specific gms with expertice, to get to the problems much much faster and thus more efficiently.

It's inevitable that they will have a huge plate to deal with, but in a game where some quests are timed at 8 minutes, a 40+ minute wait to get no help is, and never will be, good service.

I am sure that theres going to be issues when its simply overwhelming, so put in a min wage person to give us a "hold please" and then autosort and get us in the right line to have our problem handled.

I agree that the customer is not always right, but even in those situations, if they have payed for a service or product, theres either a refund or a cpmletion of contract involved to make the deal right, whether it makes them come back or stay with is always and always has been the driving force behind customer service. be smart enough to actually treat everyone the same is a good start, but when the reports are that your employees are NOT being timely and helpful, its time to retrain or replace them and keep your customers happy.

[Havok.cry]

it is NOT our job to get them to a point where they can solve a problem like I posted.

This is where I disagree. Anyone who wants help should facilitate that help to the best of their abilities. If they don't IMHO they are asking for poor service. I agree with most of the rest of your post, just not this point.

Edit: one thing I do when submitting a ticket is list possible solution I would find reasonable and why. This is one way you can facilitate good service.

At my work I get customers coming in all the time who just come up to me and say "x isnt working" my reply is always "sure isn't." Until the customer actually deigns to communicate with me there isn't much I'm going to be able to do for them.

[Zeruell]

This is where I disagree. Anyone who wants help should facilitate that help to the best of their abilities. If they don't IMHO they are asking for poor service. I agree with most of the rest of your post, just not this point.

Agreed. Trash in, trash out.

You need to be prepared to feed the GM/CS rep/QA department as much pertinent detail as you can muster if you want a solution anything at all similar to the one in your imagination.

This extends from department stores to debugging teams. Having worked in both, I will always appreciate a thorough customer or well-thought-out bug report, and that appreciation tends to manifest in happy faces all around.

The other way involves much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

[Zinruko]

Sorry to hear you didn't have a pleasant interaction with our support staff. As a future precaution, I suggest including all pertinent information in a support ticket description.

Here's the issue you encountered:
You ran the trap gauntlet very quickly, and then picked up the Horn of Agility before the door into the Horn's hallway had closed. Since the horn, when picked up, tells the door to open- that open command goes through, but does nothing since the door was already open. Then the timer on the Agility gauntlet ran out and the door closes.
This is a known issue, and we do apologize for the problems it can cause. As a workaround, in this quest, wait until the door behind you closes before picking up the horn.

As this is a very well documented issue, so too is the fix that our Game Masters implement for it- they saw your ticket saying that you were stuck in the Horn of Agility hallway, so they immediately knew what the problem was, and moved you out of the hallway to fix it.

Your remaining issue was that you had deleted the quest item, thus making it impossible to finish the quest.

It doesn't sound like you told the GM that, though. All I can see is that he moved you out of the hallway, then you told him that it didn't help. So he told you there was nothing more he could do, and to have a good night. From his perspective, he had fixed the problem. The issue in that quest is getting stuck in that hall. He moved you out. There aren't any other documented bugs in the quest.

You probably would have gotten a response much more to your satisfaction if your ticket had read something like this:

"Hello, I am in the Crucible, in the Horn of Agility section. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in the hallway where the horn of agility is. The door closed behind me but did not open when I picked up the horn. In order to see if it would help, I destroyed the horn. Could you please move me out of the hallway and replace the Horn of Agility? Thank you."

We're sorry to hear that you had an unfortunate experience this time. There's always a trend of blaming a Game Master for not reading someone's mind. Give them a hand and fully explain in detail what happened, and do so with courtesy. Hopefully next time it'll work out better!


(And no matter how good of an idea it seems at the time, don't delete quest items while still inside the quest! You've failed the quest the instant you do.)

Feather you are my new favorite dev.

[Battlehawke]

I believe Turbines ingame support are severely crippled as to what they CAN do to help. I also believe that whatever they are doing at that momment is sometimes better than paying close attention to our needs. But it should also be noted that they have some great GM's who are very helpful.

But again I stress, isn't there something severely wrong with the op's statement?

Have you ever had two people go through the door with the horn? ....it doesn't work. How did two monks get in at the same time?

[twiliteslayer02]

Granted, and agreed with to both , the crux of this problem isnt going to be a one step thing to deal with, and My point is, that when a ticket goes in, as I have personally experienced, no matter how its given, the info matters less by a longshot than the willingness of the gm you get to deal with your issue.

One thing I CAN do on my part is give give give, all of the info about the problem we can, and I know for a fact that several of those in this thread , and alot of my guild have gotten into the habit of putting into our reports the entire line of /loc info, and a few specifics.

And still theres a ton of inconsistancy in how its handled.

At my age, I've seen a bit of the lower end of quality and some of the better, and one thing i know above all is that people are selfish, and greedy and cannot be trusted, until you make them want to be.

Be that thru teaching, paying, coercing or whatever, its all the same.
The Gm's at turbine have a job, they are paid to do that job.We are the customers, and we expect a service from them to coincide with a product that the company they work as representatives to, supplies to us for our monies.

no matter how you look at it, the idea of long waits and inconsistant problem solving makes for a legitamate problem, and being nice, although what we are all taught to do is the preferred way to proceed, it is not always the way to teach , afterall, the child who never knows a spanking, will most assuredly know handcuffs at some point, and its our jobs to help them along.

[Havok.cry]

The long wait times are a separate issue IMO, one that could be solved by people applying to work as a GM as per feathers advice. If the have positions open they likely are short staffed in that department.

[Ravoc-DDO]

Sorry Feather of Sun, but from past experiences with GMs in DDO, I would say your perception is too optimistic.

[Impaqt]

Short story: We go into Crucible, everything going marvelous. We hit the agility test. Monk #1 goes in, doesn't get the horn, Monk #1 and me (Monk #2) go back in. Monk #1 gets the Horn, we get locked inside before we make it back to the door (common bug, listed on wiki). Monk #1 eventually dies in the room and I pick up the Horn. Door still locked, I try dropping the Horn, it is destroyed still nothing happens.

I submit a ticket where I mention we are in the Crucible and that we are stuck in the agility test. After about 5 mins of waiting, I add in the comments that it should be an easy fix, and that just making the horn respawn should fix it.

We wait for a GM for about 30 mins, then people start dropping. Having nothing better to do I figure I'll stay in anyhow (my first ticket, wasn't sure I did it correctly and wanted to make sure). After about 40 mins (more than 40 actually, but meh) the following happens:

[image removed]

The "fix" was kicking me out of the room (door still locked).
I still don't know if we had a new horn. Even if I called someone in to help, I still had no idea if the quest was ruined or not.

I understand nothing else could be done. All I really wanted was a "I understand your frustration, but we're having a busy night! Sorry about that!" or an explanation of what was the "state" of the quest. More than 3 word ansewrs basically.

Being treated as a mindless dummy is what I was really not hoping for.

EDIT: Unsure if this is the right section. If need be, move it to the appropriate location

um.. did you try to rerun the room? If he booted you out, maybe he did respawn the horn back in its original location...

[Kinerd]

We're sorry to hear that you had an unfortunate experience this time. There's always a trend of blaming a Game Master for not reading someone's mind. Give them a hand and fully explain in detail what happened, and do so with courtesy. Hopefully next time it'll work out better!GMs don't have to be mind readers. Here is all they ever have to do once they believe they have fixed the problem:
1. Ask "is the problem fixed?"
2. If the answer is "no", ask "what is the problem?"
I would almost be willing to lay money on the idea that no one who actively works in the customer service industry has problems with the in game GMs.I worked in a university bookstore for years as a front line customer person, so I had to deal with not only customers but their frequently pushy/overprotective/know-it-all parents. 100% of the problems I have had with the in-game GMs came about when I did nothing discourteous or otherwise offensive. How do I know this? I never had a chance to.

I simply will not tolerate these claims that everything is the submitter's fault. Yes, some people make it hard to help them. They don't call it work because it's easy.
Customer does not give me the info I need to help them I move on. Simple as that.Don't take this the wrong way, but it's astonishing to me that you still have a job. I wouldn't have lasted a week if I pulled that where I worked. I couldn't count how many clueless freshmen came up to me and said "can you tell me where my books are? I'm taking Math." I can absolutely count how many people were visibly upset when our interaction was complete: 0. I'm not trying to talk myself up as CS Superman or anything, all it took was a little courtesy and effort, and that's all anyone is really asking for from DDO CS.

[Izzban]

Kinerd, the CS reps that have chimed in here worked for large companies for many years and watched the decline in support from that company for the customer service division. They fought for funds, lost the battle, then watched staff dwindle. They searched for new opportunities in CS in other companies only to find that CS was declining everywhere. Finally, they dug in, put up the shields, and held on to whatever bit their company allowed. Finally, they continued to deal with the pushy/know-it-all public and did the best they could with what they had left. (not literally, but a fun summary I just made up)

Your experience was very different and not typical. I hope you can understand that everywhere in the US customer service has been in a steep decline for many years (many years to me means 10-15+ years). However, none of that is relevant, including your bookstore story because MMOs are in a league of their own.

The problem with MMO CS is that the customer has NO OTHER OPTIONS. (unlike your bookstore, Kinerd)

See, if you don't like the way DDO CS handled your issue, you have no recourse. You can't go to another DDO provider.

If you want DDO, you will get Turbine DDO CS.

[Falco_Easts]

/SNIP
the specifics of my most recent encounter:

VERY experienced group battled thru nearly 40 minutes of a hard shroud, the time was not due to the skill of the players, or rather maybe it was, we dealt with near crippling lagg throughout all of the first four parts, even having a full party freeze for over fifteen seconds in the (thankfully) puzzles in part 3.

We entered part 5 and went to town still batling lagg, did very well too i must say got Arra to something in the neighborhood of 5% and then had a nearly 20 second full party laggout, prior to that, but after the fact I learned that in order for the lead healer to move she had to actually tumble because it wouldnt let her do anything else.

needless to say, lots of resources used, a ton of time put in to get a hard completion, and very very close to the end, we sent in a ticket( the group leader anyhow) and after something like 40 minutes(now at almost an hour and a half of time in quest) she got a response wich was basically nothing except a restart and go advizement.

an aside here:
I have as many have in the semi recent past seen res shrines spawned, monsters paused, and in one case a complete instance reset in that part of the shroud. with that said it was expected that that would be the case here, a res shrine, and a fifteen second pause and we are off.

what actually happened... see above, four of us ended up putting in tickets. after the first few with that same Ber... gm, giving what actually seemed like copy/paste responses, we all gave up, and i know for a fact that one of those people is now leaving the game for good, the final straw was this nights lack of gm help in something that had been helped with before.
So you put in multiple tickets about an issue the GM's shouldn't help with? And you wonder why it takes so long to get a GM.


If you want to get the info, have them ask the right questions, its not our jobs as players to tell your techs and gms what the problem is, we arent payed, we do the paying, its time you put OUR money where YOUR mouths are.
YOU are the one with the problem, not them. If YOU want the problem solved, YOU give them the information. CS are not you mind reading lackey's, they are trying to help you. If you want help, then share the responsibilty and give them the information they need.


The OP clearly stated that they were not happy with the resolution. Instead of the GM following up they closed the ticket. They took 40 minutes to respond to a ticket and then had an unhappy customer telling them they didn't fix their problem and closed the ticket.

Nothing about that scenario is okay.

Despite the name, Customer Service isn't always about making a happy customer, it's about problem resolution. Sometimes you are not going to have customers that are happy with the resolution. At no stage did the OP say "I destroyed the horn trying to solve my own problem, can you respawn it?" Sure, he asked for it to be respawned but at no stage did he say why he requested that. Without a **** good reason, GM's are not going to respawn quest items for obvious reasons.

[Koowluh]

Kinerd, the CS reps that have chimed in here worked for large companies for many years and watched the decline in support from that company for the customer service division. They fought for funds, lost the battle, then watched staff dwindle. They searched for new opportunities in CS in other companies only to find that CS was declining everywhere. Finally, they dug in, put up the shields, and held on to whatever bit their company allowed. Finally, they continued to deal with the pushy/know-it-all public and did the best they could with what they had left. (not literally, but a fun summary I just made up)


This is pretty much true. At one point, your customer service was your front, your most valuable asset for customer interaction. Anything going wrong there and you noticed that in your next meeting with your customer.

Nowadays, it needs to be as cheap as possible with as little as possible. I always sketched it as a grade. Here in the Netherlands, our grades go from 1 to 10, 1 being the worst, 10 being the best. A 6 is sufficient, but barely. In ye ole' days, customer satisfaction was your top priority, as a big company you wouldn't settle for less than an 8. Your customer wouldn't want anything less, quality mattered.

Nowadays, you can easily settle for a 6, as long as the customer pays and give you that 6, you're in the clear. It's really sour for the man in the middle, the CS representative. He gets an unhappy customer, an unhappy teamleader, an unhappy manager and basically the worst job ever (the s..t hits the fan from everwhere and you're supposed to keep that fan clean).

So yes, dig in, shields up and salvage what you can. If that means dropping the fuming/indesicive/incoherent customer that you would have helped earlier, so be it. You're not being paid for getting that 8 again and pushing yourself to that leaves you on the sidewalk, burned out and replaced by one of the 100 clamoring at the gate for a job. One that doesn't bother with that 8 and gets paid a lot less.

Sorry, it's a tough world out there.



The problem with MMO CS is that the customer has NO OTHER OPTIONS. (unlike your bookstore, Kinerd)


You can quit and head for a game with better support, but good luck finding one. You will probably end up with one of these Chinese MMOs that are cranked out en-masse without any valuable customer support at all.

I am really not bothering with any customer support ingame for this reason. I'm happy playing my game. If there's a bug, meh. I crashed again in the sands two days ago. I wasn't grouped so I didn't bother logging back in. There's more imporant stuff out there to worry about. If enough people do that, Turbine will start worrying about that dwindling playerbase. If not, it's their funeral, not mine. It is with online games as it is with employment these days; plenty of other fish in the sea. If I get too frustrated with bugs, I'll take my money elsewhere.

[Havok.cry]

I simply will not tolerate these claims that everything is the submitter's fault. Yes, some people make it hard to help them. They don't call it work because it's easy.
Lol I wouldn't have made the bet because I know that sometimes it isn't the submitters fault. But I do think it is their fault alot more often than people are willing to admit.


Don't take this the wrong way, but it's astonishing to me that you still have a job. I wouldn't have lasted a week if I pulled that where I worked. I couldn't count how many clueless freshmen came up to me and said "can you tell me where my books are? I'm taking Math." I can absolutely count how many people were visibly upset when our interaction was complete: 0. I'm not trying to talk myself up as CS Superman or anything, all it took was a little courtesy and effort, and that's all anyone is really asking for from DDO CS.

Well my story was a little bare of details. The freshman you have there I would happily help as he gave me something to work with. He DID give me the information I needed to help him. He gave me the area I can look in for his book and the material for a follow up question of "cool, whats the course name?" I could have likely looked up the course and the corresponding text needed by the freshman.

The person I mentioned who had a broken item:
1 didn't have the item
2 didn't know what it was called
3 didn't have any proof of purchase (IE receipt)
Can you see where I am going with this. I get people like this by the hundreds and there is nothing I can do to help them. I get them out of the way as fast as possible so I can help the next person in line. Those hundred people behind the guy I sent away very much appreciate the time I didn't waste accomplishing nothing.

And If you have never had a customer upset with you after your business was complete, then you are extremely lucky. Just a couple weeks ago a customer came in. I recognized him as he comes in about once a month. He came to the counter and said:
Him: I want a pack of smokes
Me: Okay, which type?
Him: blank stare
Me: I can get them, sir, I just need to know what type?
Him: You should Know, I'm always here!
Me: I'm sorry sir, but I don't recall what type you like, If you tell me I can get them for you.
Him: Vulgarly insults my intelligence and tells me what type
Me: Here they are, that will be $X.
Him: You know what, I'm not giving you my money, Your a..

This is where the man devolved into yelling vulgar insults in a store full of families. They were all staring at him. I had to call the police to get him to leave. After I called my manager and reported the situation. She reviewed the video and audio and told me I needn't worry about it, because I did everything correctly and couldn't do anything else for the man.

When I first started in this job I had a man come in the store and literally shove the person at the counter away and demand my attention. After demanding I do something I had no authority to do, I put him into contact with my manager. My manager had to pass him off to her market manager, because he was so offensive that she could not help him and saw that as the only possible way to not just blow the guy off. The market manager, after being told by the man what her company policies had better change to, told him to never return to any property owned by the company. Then she called the police to have him removed from the store.

In both situations the only reason the customer didn't get what they want is because the refused to let me help them in a way that I could. If you have never had any situation that involved a customer that simply refused to be helped you have had a sheltered experience in customer service.

[Delssar]

Sorry to hear that. Some times of day can be busier than others. They take all player tickets in the order they're recieved. If anyone would like to help out, we have openings at our office near Boston. Experience playing DDO is a huge plus.

You can go to our website at www.turbine.com and then click the "Jobs" link on the top right of the page.
There's a listing for "Customer Service Representative- GM" up. I promise to personally introduce myself to whoever gets the job, and shake their hand.

It's the hardest job in the game industry.

Its to bad you guys dont have these sorts of jobs online (by which I mean someone can work from home to do something like this / because Im sure ingame customer service could be done at home) because I'd love to do this but I live in Canada lol.

[Nyxianne]

*snip*

We're sorry to hear that you had an unfortunate experience this time. There's always a trend of blaming a Game Master for not reading someone's mind. Give them a hand and fully explain in detail what happened, and do so with courtesy. Hopefully next time it'll work out better!


(And no matter how good of an idea it seems at the time, don't delete quest items while still inside the quest! You've failed the quest the instant you do.)


And with this you're back on the books for favorite dev. Not that it matters, I'm sure, but I do like seeing the devs tell people that they can't do what you don't ask for, and that they can't read minds :). And I like the little bit about not destroying quest items... wish we'd thought to tell the new person we dragged into a hox that once. Instead after picking up the xoriat stone they destroyed it :(. But that's a whole 'nother story.


Edit: Also there's an inherent problem with complaining about the time spent waiting and the dm/gm/cs agent not digging deep enough to resolve the customer's issue. This problem is that it takes time to do that full on digging, which means the next person in line is waiting even longer to get their answer. So it comes down to, would you rather wait a long time but get that person that comes on and solves every problem in the world? OR have a person respond within the first 10 minutes of your bug report? Very rarely in the Customer Service field can both be accomplished - quite simply because often times the customer is unsure of what they want or how to word what they want.

[Kinerd]

Your experience was very different and not typical.Story of my life.
Well my story was a little bare of details. The freshman you have there I would happily help as he gave me something to work with. He DID give me the information I needed to help him. He gave me the area I can look in for his book and the material for a follow up question of "cool, whats the course name?" I could have likely looked up the course and the corresponding text needed by the freshman.You want to know what's really sad? All that information was written(/typed) on the shelves. Course name, course number, section number, professor, even when the class met. And yet, every rush, hordes of freaking out freshmen... "I'm taking math, can you tell me where my books are?"
And If you have never had a customer upset with you after your business was complete, then you are extremely lucky.Also the story of my life. :D It could also be a cultural thing, I've never even heard of someone getting policed out of a retail environment around these parts, outside of actual criminal behavior of course.