such as more character states, i.e., inventory with all flags (missions find item), has missions, what kind of missions, flying, view chat streams, etc.
Also allow them to posess the character in real-time and remoting it from the AO offices.
Maybe the some of the cheap-way-out policies about not reimbursing for bugs, etc. can be lessened with more CS tools for faster more accurate investigation that will allow some reimbursals situations.
Also allow them to posess the character in real-time and remoting it from the AO offices.
bad idea. gives the Gm too much power over my character.
Official paid employees can do whatever the company allows as they are the ones that own it all so I don't mind - offical GMs mind you, not the vounteer ARKs.
I just want them provided more tools to get rid of the lame CS excuses. I want to be able to have an official CS have enough tools to be able to say well here's your item that you lost since it was there was not given to anyone or anything and has not been deleted. Hell, make item objects with an extra field for 20 numeric player ids to track a history. There are tons of resource un-intensive ways to make CS better.
I am a programmer and it irks me to hear the same tired explainations when solutions can be made. My customers want solutions and not excuses. Without providing the solutions I wouldn't have customers.
I have been to conventions etc. Many times I've been taken aback by the complete lack of regard for customers. I've heard countless times how companies think of customers as nothing but cattle to milk. Cash Cows as slick sales types put it. That is wrong on many levels. This may honestly not what FC wants to be presented as and is trying not to but that's how they are starting to be to me. Companies that milk the cash cow junky gamers who can't control their addictions and will pay to play buggy software with crappy CS policies because they can.
If this is not what they want to appear as then they need to provide the actions of a customer consious company. Actions not the words. Need deeds here. Once again, FC may be full of well intentioned people with not a negative bone in their bodies, but that is not what it is felt like on the recieving end.
For the record, I have had nothing but good CS when I've needed it - people skill wise. Polite and reasonably quick. The standard answers of cannot refund or do this or that is because of cheaters trying to get freebies. So, make better tools for better tracking and investigations. I work with people who are better programmers than I whom I know can provide enterprise solutions. If FC can't do it, hire someone who can and provide customer solutions.
" Hell, make item objects with an extra field for 20 numeric player ids to track a history. There are tons of resource un-intensive ways to make CS better. "
Woohoo. Change the data structure of every single item in the game. Make sure that every bit of relevant code understands the change, and the relevant portions properly process the owner history. Update the entire database of item "templates" and inventories on all servers, without corrupting anything anywhere.
Yeah, that's certainly resource "un-intensive".
I'm all for their having better tools, at all levels of the company, but tossing out the above and then following up with gibberish like "I am a programmer and it irks me to hear the same tired explainations when solutions can be made"...
I am reminded of the customer who demanded a new feature in a product we were developing over the last few years. We pointed out that it would take about three months, a very large number of man hours, a ludicrous amount of testing, a nearly complete halt to development and testing of new features that the vast majority of the clients wanted, etc., all to appease her one wish.
Her response? All she had to do was hit F5 in a competing program and it worked so how hard could it be?
... Your work experience and your opinion are largely irrelevent. There are matters of scale here that the "I am a programmer and I think..." type of responses miss.
Perhaps you are accustomed to projects of this scope. From the comments quoted above, I tend to doubt it. As bad the "F5 Lady"? No.
But the point remains the same: unless you are intimately familiar with the way AO is built, your opinion on the resources required to implement Feature X are incredibly likely to be gibberish, whether or not you even have any experience with projects as complex as MMORPGs.
Just my 2 credits.
...you live, you learn
...you die, you learn faster
Therion, not to flame you, but what makes you so qualified as to bash his point of view? You ask him if he is intimiately familiar with the AO engine and large scale projects such as this.....but are you?
Nearly every good suggestion I see on these boards gets shot down because "it's too hard, it would take too much work" etc etc. But I ask you, would implementing something like this be any more difficult than creating an entire virtual world, complete with its own economy, chat channels, thousands of creatures, a dynamic weather system, thousands of items, quests, missions, etc?
Seems that in the video game world, cheap workarounds become acceptable. It just doesn't work that way in other aspects of programming or IT. If a customer discovers that he cannot obtain a dynamic IP address from a server I installed at his location, or cannot browse the network using DNS namesr, I have a couple of options....
I can stop what I'm doing, fix my own poor implementations and get that customer rolling the way he should have been from day 1, and also add a remote administration feature to solve future connectivity problems faster
or I can feed him the line "poor me, it's too hard, it would take too many man hours to figure it out" and then tell him to manually configure his ip address and use IP addresses to browse the network instead of DNS names.
Route 2 *IS* the funcom way of doing things. The cheap, easy way out. The quickest fix, badda bing badda bang.
Things need to be fixed in AO. Yes, this takes alot of work, but yes most of them should not take a year to implement. That's just being half a**ed and doesn't fly. Try pulling that lazy crap while working as a network administrator for the military.
Your response to his post was harsh and full of self pride "know it all" attitude. give it up man. Join the military and see how far that kind of attitude gets you. I'm d***ed sure you'd end up going the long "hard" route. It's called "accountability".
Hehe, the military has absolutely nothing to do with the financial constraints of a company like Funcom and is a truly terrible comparison. Try joining the commercial world were the terms profit, loss, shareholder accountability, bankruptcy and redundancy have real meaning.Originally posted by TheDeacon
Things need to be fixed in AO. Yes, this takes alot of work, but yes most of them should not take a year to implement. That's just being half a**ed and doesn't fly. Try pulling that lazy crap while working as a network administrator for the military.
Your response to his post was harsh and full of self pride "know it all" attitude. give it up man. Join the military and see how far that kind of attitude gets you. I'm d***ed sure you'd end up going the long "hard" route. It's called "accountability".
Product development and maintenance (like AO) is a continual balance of what you can afford to invest, what generates most new customers, what keeps most existing customers and what your vision is for the product. In many cases it's working with nebulous future predicitions of market share and revenue. Do everything the way you suggest and you'll be out of business in no time.
All three of you are absolutely right
Whether military, comercial or private it all boils down to doing what it takes to keep the customer happy and redefinnig boundries of happiness on the fly as their requirements change. The customer being in the three examples; the chain of command, the consumer, yourself. In my case the defining boundry of poor service is where I lose real life time and real money in expecting proper service as I would like and not getting it.
Point taken about not presenitng resumes on my vast (sarcasm - not a guru but not slacking either) experience programming MMORPGs. I don't plan on it. In my opinion, the enterprise known as Anarchy Online is lacking in customer service options. This being the Suggestion Board, I put forth one.
With the suggestion being feasible or not, there is a chance someone somewhere will read it, as any other post here, and go, "Oh, well sure that's not hard to do." or "/me choke with laughter". That doesn't bother me at all. The point being a suggestion was made and maybe it will be looked into. I do this knowing the chance is slight but worthy as, in my experience writing, managing, and teaching programming, I've never run across any single programmer who was an actual perfect being that could handle all aspects and not leave anything uninvestigated no matter how silly it may seem. (/me remembers a certain $300/hour specialist (considered a network god) who took four days to fix a network issue that cost the company $2.4M in downtime...well I should say a secretary did when she plugged a server's power supply in.)
So, easy there big guyJust putting out a suggestion.
(edit: - recent post has reimbursement tools being #1 on the list and pet pathing #2)
Last edited by Psionx; Jul 11th, 2002 at 01:11:20.
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