Guild Wars 2

I came back to the game just at the end of when Scarlet dropped her crazy death puppet of doom on the world. By the time I got my main leveled up enough to get into the festivities, Lion’s Arch was under attack. I’d happily pay a little bit to be able to play those stories. I think it’s a great alternative to missing out on stuff like that forever.

Kal Spiro.9745:

paynesgrey.8932:

What would it cost you, or any other player, for them to correct this?

Irrelevant. Policy is policy.

I’m not even getting into the rest of this. That is their policy, that is what they’re working with. It is their chosen direction. It doesn’t matter how easy or hard it would be. It doesn’t matter if it hurts or helps anyone. They made the decision and you don’t like it, but you don’t make their policy, so that really doesn’t matter.

So your saying that folks should meekly swallow any policy that comes along, rather than point out that the policy is flawed.

The Policy is Eternal! The Policy must never be questioned!

Corpse runs and huge time travel times were Sony Policy, and Policy is not to be addressed or corrected.

That worked out pretty well… until WoW came along and said “Hey, our Policy isn’t to make you waste all that time.” How’d that work out for EQ?

Companies that don’t adapt their policy when they see that it is needlessly aggravating customers end up on the Darwin Express sooner or later.

I notice you still haven’t explained how amending this policy would impact your… or anyone else’s game experience, save perhaps for those who feel some sort of distress at seeing Policy amended to suit the needs of as many players as possible.

What would it cost you, or any other player, for them to correct this? How would it diminish your gameplay experience? How would it hurt their profit margin? It’s not like they’d have to write new code for it. Stick a merchant or two back in, throw out an in-game letter to everyone, and BOOM! Happy customers who don’t feel they got cheated.

Refusing to acknowledge and correct a problem with policy… well, that is in fact bad customer service. Taking the opportunity to accommodate customers in a way that doesn’t harm the rest is good customer service. Shambling about saying “The Policy chooses! The Policy must be obeyed! The Policy is the Policy!” Well, that pretty much infuriates any customer who comes up against it.

Failure to make such announcements in a way that will reach impacted customers, rather than just those who religiously haunt the company’s “comments” section is, in fact, bad customer service.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Good customer service is to be nice courteous and helpful. It is to try to get customers what they want within policy. It is not to just give customers whatever they want whenever they want. If something is discontinued it is discontinued. It is not bad customer service to not announce it, which this was anyway, nor to not make it available anyway after the fact. It would be bad customer service to not let anyone know if they happened to ask, but since they did that’s covered.

It may be a nuisance, but it is not a mistake, nor bad customer service.

A single post in a forum counts as fair warning? Really?

As for the slippery slope, “What if other demands conflict…”

Totally irrelevant to this case. Slapping a merchant or two back in for a week or two doesn’t take away anything from other players. It doesn’t diminish their playing experience, except maybe the odd fanboi who wants to see people who don’t pore over every announcement, update or post punished for “not taking their game playing seriously enough.”

If this somehow impacted the play of the folks who were able to sell their heirlooms and such before the InstaDeath Merchant Kill, you’d have a point. But it doesn’t, so there’s no reason for them to refrain from acknowledging and correcting the mistake, thus ending up with more happy customers, instead of less happy customers.

CrossedHorse.4261:

paynesgrey.8932:

CrossedHorse.4261:

Ponku.7925:

CrossedHorse.4261:

OK, so some people missed the announcement, even though there WAS an announcement giving at least 6 days’ notice. That’s fine – we can’t catch everything that goes up on the forums, and we don’t always read the launcher text screen stuff.

BUT, that doesn’t take away from the fact that ANet did give us fair warning.

Now, as to the matter of whether it would harm anyone to bring the merchants back for a couple of days. Of course it wouldn’t. Makes no difference to the people who did turn in their stuff on time, and does make a difference to those who didn’t. But it’s a slippery slope. How many people will miss the extra two days of these merchants, for instance? Quite a few? And then how many of them will complain “but you brought it back for some, but I missed the announcement, bring them back again!” It will get ridiculous. And while they’re at it, we may as well ask them to bring back every limited time item ever and just make them all permanent because that way nobody ever has to miss out on anything ever again.

Yes, I’m exaggerating the end point, but it’s a slippery slope in that direction. And if it’s unfair that people missed out once, then it’s unfair people missed out twice etc. I missed Kasmeer’s staff skin in the gem store and waited and WAITED for it to come back. It did, one sale day in the gem store this month. Guess what? I didn’t play for two days that week and totally missed it. There wasn’t an official announcement, etc. So, I missed it again. Was I annoyed? For sure. But do I blame ANet? Of course not.

ANet shouldn’t bring back vendors because ppl are complaining, but because removing them as soon as event ended was a mistake on their side. And by that i dont think it qualifies for slippery slope you described.

No, it wouldn’t, if they left them there a few days after the event ended. But that isn’t actually what this thread is about. This is about bringing them back once they’ve gone because people missed the announcement. If they did this, yes, it would be the beginning of a slippery slope.

A slippery slope to correcting mistakes and providing good customer service? Might as well never patch or re-balance anything in response to players pointing out that it was screwed up.

It’s only a mistake in this case if they also made it a million other times for every other patch update. I think they seem pretty good at admitting a big mistake (like with the removal of the boxes in the Secret Lair). So we’ll see what they think – if they do nothing, clearly they don’t consider it a mistake.

And letting everyone just have access to everything the whole time isn’t necessarily good customer service. Giving in to every little demand from every single customer isn’t necessarily good customer service. What if some of those demands conflict with each other? What if giving in meant you ended up not having resources for some other aspect which meant that the game folded? That’s not good customer services. Bringing back the vendors this once won’t lead to that necessarily, but it WILL start off a landslide of people saying “hey, but I missed X item at X event and you didn’t bring it back” and they’ll have to. Then someone else will start up … so yes, it’s a slippery slope and that’s not good customer service.

Your analogy doesn’t quite fly. This isn’t “missing out a sale” so much as it is something like discontinuing a popular exchange or warranty policy, with the only notice being a single obscure blurb in a corner of the store’s webpage.

As for “It’s not good policy” to satisfy customers, I call bunk. They have an opportunity to recognize and fix a mistake in a way which takes absolutely nothing from the other customers who happened to check that obscure post on an obscure page to find out the was going to be suddenly and unexpectedly ended for no good reason.

Honestly, your argument reminds me of those Sony fans back in the old EQ days who got upset whenever people complained on the forums. “Don’t give in to the complainers! People like corpse runs and level-losses!”

Kal Spiro.9745:

paynesgrey.8932:

CrossedHorse.4261:

Ponku.7925:

CrossedHorse.4261:

OK, so some people missed the announcement, even though there WAS an announcement giving at least 6 days’ notice. That’s fine – we can’t catch everything that goes up on the forums, and we don’t always read the launcher text screen stuff.

BUT, that doesn’t take away from the fact that ANet did give us fair warning.

Now, as to the matter of whether it would harm anyone to bring the merchants back for a couple of days. Of course it wouldn’t. Makes no difference to the people who did turn in their stuff on time, and does make a difference to those who didn’t. But it’s a slippery slope. How many people will miss the extra two days of these merchants, for instance? Quite a few? And then how many of them will complain “but you brought it back for some, but I missed the announcement, bring them back again!” It will get ridiculous. And while they’re at it, we may as well ask them to bring back every limited time item ever and just make them all permanent because that way nobody ever has to miss out on anything ever again.

Yes, I’m exaggerating the end point, but it’s a slippery slope in that direction. And if it’s unfair that people missed out once, then it’s unfair people missed out twice etc. I missed Kasmeer’s staff skin in the gem store and waited and WAITED for it to come back. It did, one sale day in the gem store this month. Guess what? I didn’t play for two days that week and totally missed it. There wasn’t an official announcement, etc. So, I missed it again. Was I annoyed? For sure. But do I blame ANet? Of course not.

ANet shouldn’t bring back vendors because ppl are complaining, but because removing them as soon as event ended was a mistake on their side. And by that i dont think it qualifies for slippery slope you described.

No, it wouldn’t, if they left them there a few days after the event ended. But that isn’t actually what this thread is about. This is about bringing them back once they’ve gone because people missed the announcement. If they did this, yes, it would be the beginning of a slippery slope.

A slippery slope to correcting mistakes and providing good customer service? Might as well never patch or re-balance anything in response to players pointing out that it was screwed up.

It is neither a mistake, nor bad customer service to do what they did. It is their design policy. Nothing more. Whether you like it or not is irrelevant. Whether anyone lost anything as a result is irrelevant.

If a store is having a sale for a week and only announced it in one flier, which incidentally is readily available at the stores website which can also be accessed at a kiosk in the store itself, but you didn’t see it and missed it, so you couldn’t get the thing you wanted, would you demand they give you the sale price after the end of the sale? Would you continue to demand it after the cashier explained that it was over? Would you only be satisfied when you’ve bullied a manager into giving you the sale price even though you really don’t deserve it because it’s no longer running?

Do you know why he gives in? It’s not good customer service. It’s store policy to acquiesce to belligerent customers.

CrossedHorse.4261:

Ponku.7925:

CrossedHorse.4261:

OK, so some people missed the announcement, even though there WAS an announcement giving at least 6 days’ notice. That’s fine – we can’t catch everything that goes up on the forums, and we don’t always read the launcher text screen stuff.

BUT, that doesn’t take away from the fact that ANet did give us fair warning.

Now, as to the matter of whether it would harm anyone to bring the merchants back for a couple of days. Of course it wouldn’t. Makes no difference to the people who did turn in their stuff on time, and does make a difference to those who didn’t. But it’s a slippery slope. How many people will miss the extra two days of these merchants, for instance? Quite a few? And then how many of them will complain “but you brought it back for some, but I missed the announcement, bring them back again!” It will get ridiculous. And while they’re at it, we may as well ask them to bring back every limited time item ever and just make them all permanent because that way nobody ever has to miss out on anything ever again.

Yes, I’m exaggerating the end point, but it’s a slippery slope in that direction. And if it’s unfair that people missed out once, then it’s unfair people missed out twice etc. I missed Kasmeer’s staff skin in the gem store and waited and WAITED for it to come back. It did, one sale day in the gem store this month. Guess what? I didn’t play for two days that week and totally missed it. There wasn’t an official announcement, etc. So, I missed it again. Was I annoyed? For sure. But do I blame ANet? Of course not.

ANet shouldn’t bring back vendors because ppl are complaining, but because removing them as soon as event ended was a mistake on their side. And by that i dont think it qualifies for slippery slope you described.

No, it wouldn’t, if they left them there a few days after the event ended. But that isn’t actually what this thread is about. This is about bringing them back once they’ve gone because people missed the announcement. If they did this, yes, it would be the beginning of a slippery slope.

A slippery slope to correcting mistakes and providing good customer service? Might as well never patch or re-balance anything in response to players pointing out that it was screwed up.

They screwed up by eliminating those merchants in the first place, so it’s perfectly fair to blame ANet. They also screwed up by relying on a single lousy post in a forum to inform folks of their rather draconian and utterly pointless intention to eliminate the vendors and heirlooms the very moment the event ended. In pretty much every game I’ve played, such vendors usually stay around for a while to let people collect their rewards.

There was no reason, on the story-side or technical side to simply gank those vendors, other than some body screwed up and didn’t bother to think it through.

It would have cost them nothing to leave the merchants in place for a week or two. It would cost them nothing to acknowledge that they’ve screwed up and to put them back in for a couple weeks.

A small effort to provide customer service, and it would please a great many people who didn’t know.

This is like waiting in line at the DMV and having some smug, sneering clerk say I’ve wasted my time.

“Applications signed in blue ink instead of black ink are rejected,” says the smug, sneering clerk.

“WHAT?”

“I announced that over the PA system a week ago. Tuesday, at 0800 hours.”

“I wasn’t here then!”

“Well, it was also on page 6 of the bulletin, posted over there on that wall.”

“There are SIX bulletin boards over there, and they’re all completely covered in all sorts of random stuff.”

“WELL, while you were filling out you application, you could have simply stopped and asked the people around you if we’d decided to stop accepting applications using blue ink.”

“Your saying it’s my responsibility to have just jumped up and asked random people if you were going too suddenly start rejecting any application done in blue ink?”

“Exactly.”

Seriously… for one thing, just vaporizing the heirlooms is bad storytelling. “Oh, the survivors just all decided they don’t want their heirlooms back, pitch ’em into the bay or something…”

The second thing, it’s lousy customer service.

Great job, ANet, you took a great event and soured it by choosing to be the smug, sneering clerk who gets to punish me for not reading page 6 of one bulletin on a whole wall full of random notes.

That’s the way to build and maintain player loyalty. Oh, I’m not deleting my characters and ragequitting, but you’ve changed GW2 from something I really looked forward to coming home and playing to something I’ll probably play when I’m bored with all the other new games coming out.

I think that 2 is the explanation as to why some folks are hitting every thread posted on this saying “Why didn’t you stop playing to randomly ask in chat if your loot was going to spoil?”

Part “I got mine, screw you for not taking your gaming seriously enough to read every dev post” and part “If you lose all that loot, you’ll have to buy my stuff in auction…”

Bramble.6501:

People will tell you:
1. “it’s part of the story…it would make no sense for them to stick around.”
2. Because anet said so, and it would somehow hurt the value of my items if you were able to spend the things you earned.

I get that the LA event is over, but in a real world, a lot of things would still be missing after a huge disaster like what happened in LA. There is a missing persons bulletin board as of the new patch….people are still missing, but no one’s belongings are? Unlikely.

Yeah, it seems that a bunch of the Serious Gamers are delighted that those of us mere hobbyists who don’t check the dev posts daily got hosed. “BUT YOU CAN ASK IN MAP CHAT” doesn’t fly. I’m too busy playing to stop and yell “HEY! Is my stuff all going to spoil all of a sudden?”

“Oh, but we mentioned it in one post on a forum…” Really. That’s simply ridiculous. Normally, when an MMO event ends, there’res a straggler merchant left around to cash in those leftovers with for those players who can’t take time every day to read every dev post.

But at least the Serious Gamers can gloat, and I guess that’s what’s important.

It would harm no one, it would not stress the system or break the game economy to leave a Found Belongings merchant hanging around for those of us who don’t read every Dev update to find out if our loot is suddenly going to be ganked, as opposed to that candy corn piled up in the bank…

Yeah, the Devs have shown me how clever they are and punished me for not reading each and every post they make. I hadn’t played GW2 for several months, and really got into it again as this event started. Got enthusiastic, even. Encouraging friends to have a go at it. Come home from work today, and the vendors are gone. I had to search around to find one brief post from a week ago saying the items would be useless the instant the event ended.

Well, guess what game I’m well and truly soured on now?

So all those folks decided “Hey, my city is destroyed, most of my loved ones dead… I don’t want those found belongings back…”

I work 10 hour days, I don’t have time to read every update to see if my loot is going to be suddenly junked. Maybe I’m just spoiled by games that have a grace period to use obsolete event items. Maybe I just didn’t realize it would break their system to leave one lousy vendor standing around somewhere to turn those in to.

Great jobs, Devs, you really showed me what comes of not catching an obscure post on the forum.

Great way to sour me on the whole event.

Thanks, I greatly appreciate the info. I was half expecting an auto-reject because I couldn’t remember what color the hobo’s eyes were. I’ll let the other ones go now.

So I’m trying to log into my NCsoft main account. No joy. I try resetting my password, answer my security questions, and am rejected repeatedly. I eventually find a screen that lets me contact customer service, but it wants me to provide things like the credit card I used for the purchase God only knows when, the serial number which is on “The email,” which I can’t find. I’ve fired off the form with the info I DID actually have, but Lord knows if that’ll actually do anything. Some questions I couldn’t answer.

To get some help and reset my stinking NCsoft account password, do I have to remember what I ate for breakfast on June 3, 1996? Is there a lousy phone number I can call? I have never, ever dealt with a gaming company that has worked so very, very, hard to ensure that players cannot actually locate, much less contact, customer support. The funny thing is, I just wanted to sign up for the Wild Star beta. Which, if I liked it, I might preorder or buy when it comes out.

Guys, if I can’t reach you, I CAN’T BUY THINGS FROM YOU.

Seriously. Is this some new marketing strategy? Is it a puzzle? Do I need to learn witchcraft, sacrifice a hobo and examine his entrails to learn the secret code to actually get some help here? I mean, I’m interested in Wildstar and maybe some other NCSoft Games, but I’m not hobo-killing interested. Hobos are sad and harmless, and I wouldn’t be able play games in jail anyway. So if there’s a way to get some help without remembering random details from years past and hurting innocent panhandlers, I’d really like to hear about it.