DOs and DON'Ts: a plea to Nimhain, Sirrian or the powers that be

[AMT]

@Nimhain

Hello Adventurers,

We wanted to discuss some of the recent issues, keep you updated on what their status is, and give a little insight about what’s been going on for those who are interested.

As many of you may remember, we use the MongoDB database to run Gems of War. Like all technical solutions it has pros and cons, but overall has served the game well. After 7 years, we have many many millions of accounts in MongoDB, and while databases can handle this volume of accounts, it does mean there are some technical issues that we need to solve before they become a larger problem. Some of the tricky technical problems that we’ve faced in the last 2 months have stemmed from optimizations we’re making to MongoDB. Some of our veteran players will remember our MongoDB issues in the past (that lead to the creation of the Troop Mongo & his spell Random Crash at the time). We’ve got it under control, but it’s providing a bit of a bumpy road while we make sure the game is healthy for many years to come.

So with that in mind, I wanted to address some of the recent game issues (some MongoDB related, some not), to give you the latest information on them.

1. Kingdom Pass Battlecrashers - 20 per day instead of 10
This one was a simple bug in the server code. The daily reset for Battlecrashers was happening in 2 separate places. That is now fixed.

2. Guild Wars Defense Team Bonus Score
Our investigation is ongoing here, however this issue is not related to the Daily Reset like what was occurring with the Kingdom Pass Battlecrasher reset above. We think this is probably related to the MongoDB optimizations.

We have been working on a fix for this, however we will be delaying the next Guild Wars until next year. This allows us some time to double check the fix, and look for other issues that may be related to these MongoDB optimizations. Players will notice the schedule change in-game in the next day or so.

3. Missing Campaign Task
With the release of Nexus, we intended to run multiple Nexus weeks to expand it’s story in the campaign, as well as release more content for the new Kingdom. Our early tests found no issues, but we noticed that Campaigns had a limitation that they couldn’t contain the same kingdom twice. We noticed this AFTER the campaign had started though. Turns out it was very tricky to fix with a live campaign, so we’ve sent out missing stars to everyone.

In the short term, we will continue to keep an eye on Campaign Tasks each week for the rest of the current Campaign. If any more missing tasks should appear, we will be able to send out any Stars that would have been earned from them.

Longer term, we’ll ensure this does not happen again in future Campaigns where we may have more than 1 week in a Kingdom.

4. Born of Fire/Nature/etc Traits having problems at the start of turn
With the Born of Fire/Nature/etc traits, we missed this issue. There are some things that our tests don’t always find… and timing-sensitive issues like this are one (basically you have to cast a spell quickly at the start of your turn where a born-of-x trait creates a match). QA often tends to actively look for problems (listed in a test plan) - actually looking for stuff can cause you to miss things that require you to act very quickly. This was such a case. We have a number of different interactions happening within the puzzle game - more now that we have heroic gems, so we’ll be improving our test plans to try and catch more of them.

With this issue we provided a workaround to the players who had contacted Support. (Wait for any Born of X traits to resolve, including Gem matches before casting a spell that targets the board).

While we could have modified the trait to remove the issue, we elected to leave it in for now, as there was a workaround, it was quite a fun unique trait for Nexus, and we had a fix for it coming in the 6.1 Update - releasing soon ™.

vs

@Kafka

Hey, in future we will respond at least once a week for larger issues like this to let you know it’s not forgotten about but if people complain that we are replying with no substance or info or complain we’re replying instead of fixing the issue we will stop doing that and only post when we have new information and next time we won’t revert on that stance.

Without explaining the obvious or the countless additional pieces of evidence over the years: please @Nimhain , @Sirrian , @PowersThatBe

Get this Community a Mod who has the Skills to Communicate in a way that Doesn’t Cause You To Lose Sales!

See how the community feeling shifted so quickly once you had a single Quality Communication Message (and no, it didn’t have to be ‘we solved the bugs’ to be a Quality Communication, see comments on Recent Game Issues for the immediate positive effect): why do you keep allowing customers to go through this frustration, and your Company to keep losing sales over totally avoidable communication shortcomings?

The evidence continues to speak for itself over the years, and it really seems like a lose-lose situation that only someone among the tagged could resolve, into an obvious win-win.

Here’s to hoping the playerbase doesn’t have to keep going through this periodically anymore.
Thanks for your consideration.

[canadademon]

To be fair to everyone, this is a typical business management problem (esp for software).

Do you have one of your main devs spend the time to come out and explain in the detail required to satisfy customers (taking away time from development),

or

Do you hire someone to manage the communication - someone that may or may not understand the technicalities and know how to explain effectively but might not know what they can share publicly.

Most game companies seem to be okay with taking the temporary hit resulting from poor communication than to have their top people come out and explain. There are a few exceptions that I’ve seen (ie. the Path of Exile lead and Warframe leads) but it is rare.

[NerdieBirdie]

@AMT

See how the community feeling shifted so quickly once you had a single Quality Communication Message (and no, it didn’t have to be ‘we solved the bugs’ to be a Quality Communication, see comments on Recent Game Issues for the immediate positive effect)

This is super important! We (yes, there are those who act entitled and childish, but when I say “we” I mean the forums community at large) don’t expect bugs to be fixed instantly. We don’t expect all the answers to be given instantly. We just want to know what’s up, and why there have been so many issues lately.

@canadademon

Do you hire someone to manage the communication - someone that may or may not understand the technicalities and know how to explain effectively but might not know what they can share publicly.

This is a good point to make, because people were often really unhappy with Salty too. It’s hard to communicate with a community, thus the need for a solid community manager.

[AMT]

Neither of the mentioned categories includes what we have: mods who don’t care to fix a wrong World Event score in a forum post throughout a whole week, mods who are patronizing and threaten with less communication if customers don’t ‘behave’…

If we at least had someone who knows how to communicate but is out of the main loop (your alleged category B), we’d be light years ahead of the currently situation, and the forums would never feel abandoned, insulted, or betrayed.

[canadademon]

If the problem is the attitude then, well, I just have to point out that they are in Australia… Not really known for their charisma

[NerdieBirdie]

Not exactly… Miscommunication and lack of communication are probably the main ones

[AMT]

Nimhain is in Australia too though, AFAIK

[Wow]

I am not Australian. But their priority is safety over friendliness, I believe. It is more efficient and safe for the mental health of the staff to employ a bot to auto update players what’s going on with each bug report. The customer support managers should just be overseeing the bots.

It is nice to see @Nimhain posting, of course. She knows more about the game over the customer service staff. We will always appreciate her more than the normal staff.

@Kafka and her team might just need more training about how to handle frustrated international customers. Especially the ones from US which is more on friendliness than safety in customer service aspect.

[kamosloki]

Because US tech giants are renowned for their customer service? Er… no. Let’s not drag nationality into this

[Tabu]

In the US court system, the defense can only ask questions based on what the prosecution has asked.

I overrule the objection to discussing Australian tendencies.

Kafka once stated she commented on something based on “The Australian sense of humor.”

The prosecution opened the door, the line of questioning is valid.

Carry on.

Obviously I am being sarcastic, but it is true, that is how the court works here.

[Wow]

If 505 cares they should support and train their customer service support staff. If they just fire all the time. Screw 505. I agree with @NerdieBirdie that some players are not happy with Salty too.

The plea should be to 505.

[turintuor]

Devs said clearly why they stop posting here: taking too much of their time and death threats.

[AMT]

The community doesn’t need a Dev to post for the vast majority of the instances: it needs a Mod who Wants and Knows How To mod. Those types of mods get less heat/threats (because of their ability to not trigger the playerbase unnecessarily nearly as much), and can better handle the temperature when it rises, to bring it back down instead of worsen things with unprofessional/patronising interactions…

…and if that means they check forums after office hours because they want to, bonus for all parties.

[Wow]

Some mods are tyrant. Just banned you if you say something bad. Less heat and threats too. I support educating people and not firing people.

[AMT]

Definitely not about firing: reallocate to other tasks where they can surely excel, and give the forums a mod that facilitates a win-win scenario.

[ANGI]

i agree with you and i also wasn’t always happy with Salty, too.
but i don’t get why we have now three community managers @Kafka @Jeto @OminousGMan instead of one (i know Kafka was also involved in the past, wasn’t only Salty) showing that they obviously don’t have the soft skills to communicate, communication is worse now than before and then @Nimhain and @Sirrian jump in to cool down the community by showing they obviously have the soft skills…
what does that say about a company when the devs can communicate way better than the community managers?
idk what is going on there behind the curtain, maybe bad internal communication, but my company would fire them and hire new ones…not a fan of this, but that’s reality.

[Magnusimus]

I think Jeto and G-man are doing a pretty good job.

They’re just not doing much of one.

Maybe they’re part-time, maybe the forums are just a small portion of their responsibilities, I dunno

But when they post, thus far, said have been fairly informative, prompt, and (mostly) without the monkey’s-paw-phrasings

[AMT]

Agreed that the new mods haven’t crossed the lines that other mods have.

@Magnusimus

They’re just not doing much of one.

Indeed, the early signs of low forum dedication/game awareness are regrettably there with e.g. not bothering fixing World Event score despite repeated customer alerts, or claiming that only ‘some players’ were missing a bronze task ( Tasks Issue - #7 by AMT )

Potential reasons/excuses aside, it looks increasingly like the lackadaisical mod approach that has been the norm in these forums for years now.

[AMT]

This issue has been ongoing for years, so it would of course be naive to expect a resolution within 4 days of the latest iteration (especially with a weekend in between, during which forums are virtually inaccessible by staff), but it is important to highlight how your customers continue to receive this form of treatment: (from Missing Campaign Stars )

@Aelthwyn

I am going to tell you what I already told to Salty in similar circumstances a few years ago.
We are not kids that you should patronise and punish when they don’t behave.

@beeflog

I hope this was written in anger, that you retract it and apologize. The alternative (that it is official policy) is an incredibly bad look for a communications professional.

@Shimrra

suggesting cutting back on communication even further because “we” have a bad attitude about how the staff aren’t doing their jobs is the exact opposite of what needs to be done. We have a bad attitude for a reason. Your suggestion and delivery of it are unjustified.

@Fleg

This game needs a full time community manager more than a fish needs water.

@Wow

Your latest comment as a Manager is actually not acceptable. Nothing personal. Just do your job.

@CyberZ

So, basically, if we keep complaining about the lack (and it’s an euphemism) of communication, we’ll have less communication … what a strange community management …it’s childish …
(and btw, CM is a daily work, one reaction per week is not community management, it’s laziness).

@Julli-of-North

I think i just read some parenting guide that said even kids shouldnt be raised like this. Making threats if they dont behave.

@Samyaza

How to ruin a long-awaited info thread.
Sorry to say but this petty attitude it’s (good) part of reason why community is often upset.

@Aragorn1

I don’t know if I have seen such an egregious abuse of power from someone representing a game

@Tresk

I have to honestly say that this is THE most unprofessional public response to customers that I have ever seen, and I really thought that I had seen everything.

@Shaylynn

I was being hopeful because of Nimhain’s post on recent issues- you completely smashed that hope

All of which are stepping stones towards an eventual breaking point:

@Tresk

I commit to never spending another dime on GoW.

This is not new, this has been ongoing for years: I personally stopped spending a couple of years back because of how mods in this forum treat the customers, there is little doubt many others have had a less-vocal similar trajectory, and while it is unclear whether they can be brought back into spending, you surely can prevent future customers from closing their wallets because of this.

We know some of you at least bother trying a faction when it launches:

So hopefully @Nimhain you can at least let us know that this is within your radar, so if it is a company-endorsed way to treat its customers, we can stop hoping for an improvement and set our expectations accordingly (as well as continue to warn newcomers about it to avoid frustrations by all parties).

Of course, it would be preferable for all parties if you could implement the obvious solution to this years-long issue that keeps costing you paying customers, once and for all.

#inNimhainWeStillTrust