Guild Wars 2

Dear Gaile,

I recently raised an issue about me not recieving the mini krait nimross for an achievement; I posted here and 2 very helpful souls helped me work out what happened and the enquiry was rightfully closed.

Today after over a week of waiting for a response from customer support, I received the following response:

Hello (name redacted),

Thanks very much for letting us know about the issue that you noted in Guild Wars 2.

I understand you did not receive the achievement for the toxic Hybrid. The next time that you’re in the game and you find a bug, you can do us a favor by submitting an in-game bug report. This will send detailed information about your character and your position directly to our Quality Assurance Team and will help us kitten the issue as promptly as possible. To submit a bug report in the game, simply click on the “Game Menu” button in the upper left-hand corner of the game interface, then choose the “Support” option on the Game Menu. That option will allow you to review known issues, report a bug, or contact Customer Support.

You’re also welcome to report a game issue in the Game Bugs sub-forum of the Guild Wars 2 Forums ( http://support.guildwars2.com/forum/support/bugs ). You may include screenshots with your forum report, if you wish to do so. While we are unable to respond directly to each bug report that we receive on the forums or through the game interface, each report is reviewed and escalated, when appropriate.

Thank you again for taking the time to let us know about this issue.

Regards,
(name redacted)
Guild Wars 2 Support Team
http://support.guildwars2.com/

Now I am bringing this to your attention as at no point did the customer services representative try and explain the issue I had. Within minutes of posting here, I received 2 incredibly helpful posts from users of the game, after over a week of waiting, support responded with a generic “heres how to submit a bug” response.

I am well aware how to submit a bug, however I did not wish to submit a bug as at the time of submission, I wanted some direct help with what had happened, with either some advice (like I gained in my previous post on this forum) or a reinstatement of the pet if it had of been a genuine bug. (which it turned out not to be).

The above response however was dismissive, trite and not of the standard, I have come to expect from anet.

For note I have been part of the Test Krewe since it’s inception in GW1, I continued to test in GW2 and I’ve been fortunate enough to be in direct contact with many anet people and I have found your staff to be nothing but diligent, committed and passionate people, who care about the game and their player base. This post is in no way an attack on Anet, who as a company, I have nothing but the deepest respect for but as Support Liason, I thought you may be interested to learn that the direct support team do not always show the same diligence you continue to display on this forum and the kind of response I received above does not leave a player feeling appreciated and assisted, but rather dismissed.

As said I have nothing but respect for how much effort and work you put into the community, gaile.

Kind Regards,

Salome

I think that I wouldn’t mind receiving pointers to additional resources, as long as the response also clearly distinguishes whether or not the support staff has reached a firm conclusion on the nature of the issue, and whether or not they are continuing to work on it. “We’re still checking into this, but you should consider using X because it might get you an answer faster” is importantly different from “sorry, we’re giving up, but you might try X”, which is also different from “this is definitely a bug, so the correct procedure is X”.

(Also keeping in mind that including wiki/forum links will not necessarily prevent a negative response that would have occured in their absence.)

The response quoted above sounds like they have concluded it was a bug. If the actual situation was that they weren’t sure one way or the other, then I’d say there’s a communications issue. (I also realize you’re only human and it’s possible to be both sure and wrong.)

As a suggestion, a perusal of the release page, and the corresponding patch note Highlights, might serve the Support team in good stead. This particular issue was addressed there, and wasn’t really that obscure. It only takes maybe 5 minutes every two weeks to become slightly familiar with the current patch, and could be helpful in addressing concerns players send in.

Thank you Gaile for your response.

I agree wholeheartedly that it is impossible for a support team member to know everything about a game of this size and scope.

In response to your post, I would say that a message from customer support that was more upfront, more tailored and less pro-forma would have been appreciated by me personally. If the support member had of said something along the lines of:

“Dear sir, from what you have reported this sounds very much like a bug and we have forwarded this report to the appropriate team. Unfortunately we cannot generate an achievement for a player even if due to a bug and you will need to reattempt the achievement manually, but we thank you for your time in reporting it and we apologise for any inconvenience this causes you. Additionally although not a known issue to us, we do have a thriving and helpful community and other players may have encountered the same issue; you may be able to gain further guidance and insight from them, the following sites may be particularly helpful: (Insert web addresses). Many thanks for contacting and we hope you regain your achievement. Best of luck. (support)”

Obviously the above is more my personal communication style, as I tend to opt for a more personal prose, however I am aware Anet prefers a more formal style from its support team, but the above could be adapted to it.

The reason I would have preferred the above answer is that to me, as a customer, it inherently suggests “I honestly want to help and it really does look like a bug to me. I can see you want the pet, but I can’t get it for you and you will have to redo the achievement but really very best of luck with it and I am sorry I couldn’t help. I can’t help any further but maybe these other people can help you, as at the moment I’ve done everything I can do, so here’s the links to go and contact them”. It immediately makes you feel empathised with, understood and appreciated and not like someone has copy pasted an answer in a few minutes. You feel like the person really would do whatever he could for you and mostly that’s what I want as a player. I understand sometimes things can’t be fixed, but knowing someone has spent some time trying to sort out my issue and if they can’t, they at least understand my issue, makes me feel much more appreciated.

I play WoW in addition to GW2 (don’t judge me, I needed something to do between GW:EN and GW2) however I would say that the ethos of Anet is something that sits more comfortably with how I feel a company should aim to conduct itself and what it gives to its players, but I would say that Blizzard have great customer support. They have an ingame support chat system, serviced by people who play the game where even if the person can’t help you, you know they’ve tried as its direct human communication and for many that’s what matters. GW2 is constrained by its email report system to some degree (which is unavoidable) just due to the lack of immediacy in emails, however more tailored responses that actually respond to the player as an individual is something that most people really appreciate. This is probably why so many players come to this forum Gaile, as you are nothing but professional, but you also aren’t as formal and with that you talk to players in the same way as someone truly wanting to help. When you can’t help, it still feels like you’ve tried.

Anyway I’ve rambled abit there.

Thanks once again for your response.

Warm Regards,

Salome

Gaile Gray.6029:

~prepare for potential Wall O’ Text as I write to think~

Thank you for sharing this, Salome, and that’s not a generic “Gee, thanks” but one offered with real gratitude. Your comments are an obvious attempt to help us improve and that’s always a good thing. Let me share a couple of thoughts:

It’s not possible for a support agent to know the answer to every potential question about the game. It’s simple not possible. The game world is huge and the content offers millions of elements. No agent, not even a team of agents, can know every detail about GW2. So, if an agent cannot answer a question, and if his/her teammates also are unsure of how best to answer, and if it seems bug-like, getting a potential bug into the bug system is a good idea.

But because this wasn’t a bug, and other non-bugs may get the same bug answer. So what if the agent had said something like “This could be a bug, so report it this way (with the info s/he gave” but included, “This also could be something that your fellow players have run into but which we don’t have documented yet.” What if the agent suggested that you post on the Player-Helping-Player Sub-Forum, decidedly not to avoid answering the question, but simply because our millions of players know more than we do? And what if the agent also suggested that there might be information on that Gold Mine of Amazingness™: The Guild Wars 2 Wiki?

As a player, I would welcome that. “Hey, cool, resources that might help me!” But someone else may say, “No, you’re passing the buck, you should answer me explicitly and in detail!” Face it, we don’t have enough people to create a character, play to a certain level, and try to reproduce every potential situation a player may encounter.

So — anyone is welcome to share an opinion — Where CS simply doesn’t have an explicit answer to a gameplay question, how would you feel about being given additional potential resources in your ticket response?

Being completely honest and straight-forward here, and speaking as one who is the customer service manager at an international company… I would definitely consider this a brush off and a way that support was pushing their job back at the player. I would consider receiving a link to the wiki or to the forums as not helpful, and insulting to boot.

If a player reports something that is a known bug then support asking them to file a bug report is certainly reasonable. If a player reports something that isn’t a known bug is there a quick and easy method (such as these forums) that an agent could use to find an answer to the problem? Do you allow your agents access to the forums? The wiki? An inside database of issues and their resolutions? Instead of sending the link to the player would it be feasible for the agent to use it themselves?

I have to agree with Salome and Aye on this one. I have worked in the gaming world, and I’m a player so I see both sides here, but that was a total brush off.

Sharing resources with customers is a good thing, but using them as an answer/solution to a CS ticket is not.

I understand Salome’s frustration as I had the same thing happen to me last week while dealing with an iOS game support. I encountered a bug that stopped progression, so I took screen shots and wrote a bug report (expected result, actual result, steps to repro, etc…). I asked them to either fix the bug, or skip me past it. The reply was basically, “Sorry your game is broken, get help on the forums.” I was so mad I almost threw my phone. I replied and stated exactly how that was unacceptable CS. Their reply? “Sorry, we’ll let our superiors know you weren’t satisfied. This ticket is now closed.”

Arenanet’s response was much more eloquent and professional than the one I encountered, but the bottom line is the same. I love Arenanet and sincerely hope that the reply Salome received is not a standard reply.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Salome — so that I can best understand this: Was what you experienced an actual game bug? Or did you have a gameplay question that players were able to answer through forum posts?

Just to assist Salome:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/support-request-Mini-Toxic-Nimross-71572

It was related to the achievement unlock hierarchy to where, despite the conditions having been met to receive the mini reward, the achievement was not unlocked yet due to it remaining unjustifiably locked until its prerequisite achievement was completed.
(I say ‘unjustifiably’ as it seems that it is not initially unlocked simply for the sake of forcing all players to repeat the encounter just to encourage additional anti-toxin to be injected to advance the anti-toxin meter)

Had the Support Representative familiarized themselves with the most recent update then it would have been obvious to them that it was not a bug. They would have then been able to offer the same responses given by players in that thread and in a timely manner instead of also taking a week and still not being appropriately responded to. It does appear to me as if the ticket was not even reviewed to see if the issue could be diagnosed and resolved, but was instead dismissed with a copy/paste response that did not even attempt to offer Salome with the appropriate support.

As this particular issue was reported and discussed enough on the forums in the first days of the game update being released, I feel that Support should have easily been able to recognize the issue in the first reading of the ticket and then give an appropriate response to resolve the misunderstanding.

As you mentioned, Gaile, ensuring Support Representatives familiarize themselves with the latest game update would be ideal for issue recognition. Familiarization with frequently reported issues on the forums following a new game update would also help with appropriate issue resolutions for players contacting support.

I got the same “submit a bug report” reply when I was having issues with whisper/party chat not functioning in game for a week. Other players posted here in the forum at least got a “we know of this issue and are working on it” reply to their tickets. This response on a basic functionality in game made me feel like I had to solve the issue myself, when I had no way of doing that. And the chat system not working in game is not something I think another player could resolve. It’s not a good feeling (and you know I adore you Gaile, just suggesting this CS response is off putting and makes you feel like you’re stuck without help).