Michael Brookes
Game Director
All your tickets are being closed whether they are active or not
- Thread starter catanonia
- Start date
What a joke
I've been waiting 13 days for a response to my ticket, as my game is broken
It crashes when starting the game, didn't do this at all throughout the first few weeks
Followed all the ways to fix it, updated drivers, reinstalled, validated files
Nothing
I wanted them to roll back my save as I think it's corrupted and I'm not starting again by clearing it as I have millions in the bank
How hard is that? Now I have an email and ticket is closed?
No thanks, not waiting another 2 weeks for the same to happen again
Leaving game, and anyone who I know wants to buy this will be warned not to
Great game, worst support I've ever encountered
Would have been simpler to stop new tickets and catch up, then leave people in this mess
I've been waiting 13 days for a response to my ticket, as my game is broken
It crashes when starting the game, didn't do this at all throughout the first few weeks
Followed all the ways to fix it, updated drivers, reinstalled, validated files
Nothing
I wanted them to roll back my save as I think it's corrupted and I'm not starting again by clearing it as I have millions in the bank
How hard is that? Now I have an email and ticket is closed?
No thanks, not waiting another 2 weeks for the same to happen again
Leaving game, and anyone who I know wants to buy this will be warned not to
Great game, worst support I've ever encountered
Would have been simpler to stop new tickets and catch up, then leave people in this mess
It's a very customer unfriendly way of dealing with issues.
Also, since apparantly this has happened to a lot of old tickets, I wonder if my tickets are even in the system! Since I've had none of them closed and they are dated from 14/12 'till yesterday.
I work in support and we have the highest levels of support available in our industry. Our team had an 88% NPS-T score last month. Rivals are lucky if they get above 0. Putting tickets to the back of the Q when receiving a new comment is the worst thing you could do. Punishing customers for communicating is such shockingly bad practice it is ridiculous.
What decade are we in or century I should really say?
Resolving issues and getting them closed down ASAP is the only way to go to give good customer support delaying tickets and drawing them out just burns everyone's time and is counter productive.
What decade are we in or century I should really say?
Resolving issues and getting them closed down ASAP is the only way to go to give good customer support delaying tickets and drawing them out just burns everyone's time and is counter productive.
But not to the extent that it does now. There's inertia, a mass (admittedly very small) and an atmosphere. Right now you can roll the smoke right off the screen then bring it back in exactly the same configuration. At the very least it should be perturbed more by the air getting pushed around. It's probably a very difficult effect to pull off but the current implementation is not right. Fly near some stars and check it out. No physics should allow smoke to move like that.
Still no excuse to close the ticket with a generic comment anyway. If it is by design then the support message should have said that. My feeling is that the ticket was closed simply because of its age, which is backed up by subsequent posts in this thread.
Is there/ has there been a set response window to tickets, in particular those created after the update/ flush.
I only ask as I have created a ticket this morning about a bug which has destroyed my ship carrying all of my money invested in goods, so now I am broke because of a bug and not a game mechanic. Knowing an estimate on a human response to my problem would certainly stop me from checking my e-mail every 5 mins to see if the issue has been resolved.
I just want to play this awesome game and not feel so frustrated
I only ask as I have created a ticket this morning about a bug which has destroyed my ship carrying all of my money invested in goods, so now I am broke because of a bug and not a game mechanic. Knowing an estimate on a human response to my problem would certainly stop me from checking my e-mail every 5 mins to see if the issue has been resolved.
I just want to play this awesome game and not feel so frustrated
In the email there is a link on the bottom right where you can click on and be taken to the ticket. It's a bit obscure but you only have to type "still there" and it will be active.
That it goes back to the queue is of course <unable to use word that commonly describes this>
The problem with this approach is that it assumes users have a recurring bug that is reproducible, when that's not always the case.
For example, I logged an issue that was due to some mission text displaying an object/variable instead of the object/variable's value. Only happened once and didn't cause me a problem, but is definitely a bug. Similarly, I had an encounter on a mission where I was asked to drop working for faction "A" and work instead for faction "A" (i.e., the bug is that the existing and new faction are the same). Again, only happened once, didn't affect me as a player, is not reproducible, but is definitely a bug.
By flushing the system, I (and presumable FD) have no idea if the bug is still outstanding...?
And this is why Frontier really needs to pull out their finger & actually fix the customer support system. How hard is it to double/triple the number of people working in customer support? They've had at least 2 months (since the offline-mode debacle) to see there is a problem & do something about it. Yeah, it costs money, but they will LOOSE much money in the long term if they have many unhappy customers (and bad word-of-mouth, bad user reviews, etc).
Although in reality customer support has been overwhelmed since Standard Beta, and has just gone from bad to worse since then. It boggles my mind that they've not done anything (useful) about it. There are TONS of bugs in Elite Dangerous, but I don't bother to ticket them anymore, since I know there is a high chance they won't even respond to it, but instead just close them a month or two later without doing anything.
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Some issues are disappearing, because people having them are disappearing. This is shockingly bad, and will be remembered if FD try to launch another game. They'd be much better cataloguing what problems people have had and emailing them when they are fixed with an apology for the amount of time taken and asking them to try the game again.
@Dave Lave
I've read that they've made changes which will eventually result in the customer support queue being reduced to a manageable level & then stay there... but "eventually" isn't good enough. It needed fixing yesterday, not months from now. And then a very public apology for messing-up so bad, such that some people might actually forgive them. The longer they take to fix it, the less people will forgive them, and more people run into problems in the first place.
Unfortunately Frontier's general approach to PR (shoot their PR guy now) is to publically ignore bad stuff (at least until it's resolved), in the hope it will go away, or at least not blow-up in their face. But that only works when the situation isn't so bad that it isn't blatantly obvious there is a problem, or it works if your name is Apple. Or worse, they try to frame bad things (no offline mode) as a good thing (minor benefits that felt like they were trying to bribe us). The alternative (which they've shown no sign of doing since the Kickstarter) is to actually be honest with their players, admit ASAP to known problems that affect a lot of people, and give frequent updates to say what they're doing to try to resolve the problem(s).
Maybe they have some over-the-top lawyer stopping them being honest, but if so I think it's rather misguided, as it will tend to result in the opposite of the desired result: It's human nature to be suspicious that other people might be lying & trying to take advantage of you... So if you aren't honest about issues (e.g. fob them off or ignore them) then sooner or later people will assume you are doing bad things intentionally, and so consider taking legal action (as well as telling other people how terrible you are). OTOH, if you explain the problems you are having as early as possible, and give on-going updates explaining why you're having issues resolving the problems, then people tend to believe you, and most will be willing to accept problems for a long time, as long as they think you are honestly trying to resolve it. I'm pretty sure the lack of offline mode would have been almost a non-issue if they've raised the prospect of it's loss 6 months earlier, rather than dropping a bombshell disguised as a bonus at the last minute.
Many Kickstarters show exactly these issues being played out - most Kickstarters stay silent about delays & problems, which results in the majority of backers being really unhappy & swearing never again to believe a word that comes out of their mouths... but a few Kickstarters publically discuss problems as soon as they run into them, which results in most backers being understanding & willing to accept delays & other issues. I've also seen the same happen outside of Kickstarter.
Maybe there is a misguided view that being silent about your problems & mistakes is being "professional", but IMHO that is a wildly outmoded view, which has been made irrelevant by the internet (everyone can see that they aren't alone in having a problem), unless you are one of a very few very large companies. Frontier isn't.
I've read that they've made changes which will eventually result in the customer support queue being reduced to a manageable level & then stay there... but "eventually" isn't good enough. It needed fixing yesterday, not months from now. And then a very public apology for messing-up so bad, such that some people might actually forgive them. The longer they take to fix it, the less people will forgive them, and more people run into problems in the first place.
Unfortunately Frontier's general approach to PR (shoot their PR guy now) is to publically ignore bad stuff (at least until it's resolved), in the hope it will go away, or at least not blow-up in their face. But that only works when the situation isn't so bad that it isn't blatantly obvious there is a problem, or it works if your name is Apple. Or worse, they try to frame bad things (no offline mode) as a good thing (minor benefits that felt like they were trying to bribe us). The alternative (which they've shown no sign of doing since the Kickstarter) is to actually be honest with their players, admit ASAP to known problems that affect a lot of people, and give frequent updates to say what they're doing to try to resolve the problem(s).
Maybe they have some over-the-top lawyer stopping them being honest, but if so I think it's rather misguided, as it will tend to result in the opposite of the desired result: It's human nature to be suspicious that other people might be lying & trying to take advantage of you... So if you aren't honest about issues (e.g. fob them off or ignore them) then sooner or later people will assume you are doing bad things intentionally, and so consider taking legal action (as well as telling other people how terrible you are). OTOH, if you explain the problems you are having as early as possible, and give on-going updates explaining why you're having issues resolving the problems, then people tend to believe you, and most will be willing to accept problems for a long time, as long as they think you are honestly trying to resolve it. I'm pretty sure the lack of offline mode would have been almost a non-issue if they've raised the prospect of it's loss 6 months earlier, rather than dropping a bombshell disguised as a bonus at the last minute.
Many Kickstarters show exactly these issues being played out - most Kickstarters stay silent about delays & problems, which results in the majority of backers being really unhappy & swearing never again to believe a word that comes out of their mouths... but a few Kickstarters publically discuss problems as soon as they run into them, which results in most backers being understanding & willing to accept delays & other issues. I've also seen the same happen outside of Kickstarter.
Maybe there is a misguided view that being silent about your problems & mistakes is being "professional", but IMHO that is a wildly outmoded view, which has been made irrelevant by the internet (everyone can see that they aren't alone in having a problem), unless you are one of a very few very large companies. Frontier isn't.
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