Why is Bioware so silent?

[TUXs]

Recently, they have become so silent that even the tracker is almost a week out of date. What gives?

 

Should come as no surprise. This has been how they've acted towards their customers since before launch.

[Vandicus]

I've never seen a dev "destroyed" here, not once.

 

What are you on about?

 

The say stuff that people disagree with certainly (as well as stuff people agree with), but mostly they don't say a lot and never have.

 

By "destroyed" he means verbally attacked, which we've had happen.

 

Mr. Gonzales addressed the absence of many dev posts earlier, if you check the dev track the community team is short-staffed due to vacation time. Doesn't mean they don't have anyone working(1.6 didn't put itself on the PTS nor was that bug regarding space combat on that server fixed by magic), its just the guys who are paid to handle community interaction are spending some time with their families.

 

We're here but a bit short staffed on the community team (on account of the holidays), so please be patient and bear with us as we catch up! It's incredibly important that you use the report function during this time for things that violate any of our forum rules.

 

We just put Game Update 1.6 on PTS, and we're still working to resolve various issues from 1.5 last week, so we're going as fast as we can!

 

Thanks for understanding!

 

 

Here's the quote for those curious.

Edited November 26, 2012 by Vandicus

[Eillack]

Recently, they have become so silent that even the tracker is almost a week out of date. What gives?

 

Hmm Thanksgiving maybe?

 

Sorry that they were with their families. Shame on them.

[ReverendAnderson]

The saddest part is that they actually think people don't realize that it's just canned BS. Whoever is responsible for their PR is delusional and completely removed from reality,

 

My theory is that they don't have a choice. I'll bet EA has regulations and filters that every tweet, post, interview, or response from its employees has to follow and pass through. And I'll bet those regulations and filters don't really relate to any particular game or situation and are just kind of general catch alls that essentially gag community teams like SWTOR's by limiting what they're allowed to say to PR jargon and canned BS, if not an outright script.

That's my theory anyway. I can't think of any other reason for why a community team is so ... not part of the community.

[Jumajin]

IFrom my personal experience with Customer Service, I am guessing that Bioware (like most companies) have Customer Service based out of India. And, when that is the case, they are trained to reply with scripts. When they cannot find a solution in their scripts, they forward the ticket to the U.S. offices. But, since the U.S. offices are busy/closed; either you get the wrong response or you get no response.

 

Which would be an entirely other problem with EA management, as I can point to numerous financial reports that major companies are pulling out of oversea CS in lieu of bringing it back domestically, as it is no longer nearly as cost effective to run it from India and the handful of other countries.

[darthldub]

Hmm Thanksgiving maybe?

 

Sorry that they were with their families. Shame on them.

 

There is no problem with them taking off for holidays.

The problem ensues when you release a major patch, especially since they have a history of bug filled patches, and then take your break. They should have waited until AFTER the holiday break to release this patch. But just seems as if incompetence runs rampant over there.

 

I love this game, but it gets frustratingly harder to stay when they keeping making the simplest of mistakes.

[SturmUndSterne]

Because every time they post they get brutally destroyed by the forum misanthropes. I wouldn't bother posting either. It also doesn't help that I've never seen such PR from a company. They do not say too much that is candid or off-the-cuff. It's generally all corporate PR talk that you can tell had to be vetted before they were allowed to say it.

 

Nice misrepresentation.

 

Here's why they don't make off the cuff remarks: It gets taken by the forums as "YOU PROMISED US THIS" and leads to huge amounts of complaining and whining if it doesn't happen IN THE VERY NEXT PATCH.

 

I use as examples the CONSTANT complaining by the vocal minority wanting more sandbox elements, player housing, SSRO, chat bubbles, armor dyes, and improved space combat.

 

All of these were said to be "things we're working on" with no target date of release - yet there's still daily threads saying "WHEN WHEN WHEN WHEN WHEN WHEN I WANT IT NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW" from the tantrum-throwing whiners.

 

Any time a dev says something "off the cuff" it's immediately confirmed to be Word of God and must therefore be true and the entire dev team is held to it. Because of that, the devs don't communicate with us.

 

Maybe if the majority of the playerbase of this game didn't act like spoiled five year olds all the time, and could converse with the dev team like adults, they would have actual *conversations* with us.

[TUXs]

aww are the poor devs that thin skinned?

 

if they can't take the criticism, they need to find a different career

 

EXACTLY! They have the ability and finances to hire their own cheerleaders.

[Temad]

Game bleeding subscribers...Check.

Game releasing major new way to get back lost revenue...Check.

Release Major patch which inludes a Cash Shop which includes a "No refunds, bugged or not" policy and go on vacation for entire week...2 days after release....Check.

 

 

Sorry, not a single employee working on this game should feel safe in their job and they should have been all hands on deck to show possible new customers top notch service and "bug maintence". There is plenty of time for breaks, 2 days after major release? Worst time ever.

 

You don't have to look any further than a message about a cash shop item being mislabeled for 8 days on the logon screen after a major release to know how dire it has become.

[LordDakir]

Game bleeding subscribers...Check.

Game releasing major new way to get back lost revenue...Check.

Release Major patch which inludes a Cash Shop which includes a "No refunds, bugged or not" policy and go on vacation for entire week...2 days after release....Check.

 

 

Sorry, not a single employee working on this game should feel safe in their job and they should have been all hands on deck to show possible new customers top notch service and "bug maintence". There is plenty of time for breaks, 2 days after major release? Worst time ever.

 

You don't have to look any further than a message about a cash shop item being mislabeled for 8 days on the logon screen after a major release to know how dire it has become.

 

What part of thanksgiving weekend is hard to understand?

[Korusus]

What part of thanksgiving weekend is hard to understand?

 

Don't release a major (and incredibly critical to the future success or failure of the game) patch just before a major American holiday?

[Eillack]

Don't release a major (and incredibly critical to the future success or failure of the game) patch just before a major American holiday?

 

Get *****ed by QQ'ers on the "every 6 weeks" comment all over again if they didn't?

[TUXs]

Get *****ed by QQ'ers on the "every 6 weeks" comment all over again if they didn't?

 

That's not what people were asking. Thanksgiving was ONE day...Thursday. Closing your office all week for a one day holiday seems quite excessive, especially given the release of something as major as 1.5. Staffing themselves the days before and AFTER Thanksgiving is certainly not asking too much with the scope of change they introduced.

[LordDakir]

Its their *********** game they can release whatever they want. You on the other hand get no say in when or what they should be allowed to do. You can suggest fixes, recommendations, but they own the game.

[Trenter]

That's not what people were asking. Thanksgiving was ONE day...Thursday. Closing your office all week for a one day holiday seems quite excessive, especially given the release of something as major as 1.5. Staffing themselves the days before and AFTER Thanksgiving is certainly not asking too much with the scope of change they introduced.

 

Uh, where did you get the idea that they closed down the office for a week? Have they said that or did you just make it up? Aren't like most offices ran on skeleton crews during holidays? Is this something new?

[sithgreyguard]

its simple they dont want to give out half baked answers.

[TUXs]

Uh, where did you get the idea that they closed down the office for a week? Have they said that or did you just make it up? Aren't like most offices ran on skeleton crews during holidays? Is this something new?

Joveth commented last week that they had a reduced staff. And no, "most" offices don't take the week off. In fact, quite a few were open again on Friday.

[Blarpped]

I've never seen a dev "destroyed" here, not once.

 

What are you on about?

 

The say stuff that people disagree with certainly (as well as stuff people agree with), but mostly they don't say a lot and never have.

 

You don't remember the megathread when ranked WZ's got delayed at the last second? How about when one of the responded to performance issues only to say it was probably just people with low spec PC's? Or how about when Ilum got all screwed up (1.2?)

[symke]

Nice misrepresentation.

 

Here's why they don't make off the cuff remarks: It gets taken by the forums as "YOU PROMISED US THIS" and leads to huge amounts of complaining and whining if it doesn't happen IN THE VERY NEXT PATCH.

 

I use as examples the CONSTANT complaining by the vocal minority wanting more sandbox elements, player housing, SSRO, chat bubbles, armor dyes, and improved space combat.

 

All of these were said to be "things we're working on" with no target date of release - yet there's still daily threads saying "WHEN WHEN WHEN WHEN WHEN WHEN I WANT IT NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW" from the tantrum-throwing whiners.

 

Any time a dev says something "off the cuff" it's immediately confirmed to be Word of God and must therefore be true and the entire dev team is held to it. Because of that, the devs don't communicate with us.

 

Maybe if the majority of the playerbase of this game didn't act like spoiled five year olds all the time, and could converse with the dev team like adults, they would have actual *conversations* with us.

 

Promises are in their job description. They are our link to developers. And their link to us. That's why they are called CUSTOMER SERVICE. Not a cheerleading service.

Vocal minority ... that usually means those that actually posted something.

There is bug that deletes already learned blue and purple schematics. It started with F2P launch. At first there were only me and another player that reported this bug. Today there are numerous players that experience this bug. How many should there be before this "local minority" becomes something you would be willing to listen to?

Because to this day, we still haven't got a helpful response about this bug.

They answer almost exclusively in "customer support" sub forum only, even though many bugs are reported in other sections. They simply ignore them.

Oh, and this bug is yet to be added to "known issues" list. Does that mean they don't acknowledge it as a bug, they didn't even read multiple threads about it, or that "known issues" list is not actually that, but just some list to appease us. In either way it's just an insult to proper CS.

 

Devs know how long approximately something will take to fix. This is the promise they should make. Next coming patch, one week, several weeks, ... They are able to make such promises.

 

I am paying for this service and they can not decide to stop offering it simply because they get bad responses to their posts. They should learn to make more diplomatic ones. Not total ******** of automated responses that are helpful to no one.

 

Maybe if more of us would be more critical of their poor service (if it can be even called that), they would improve on it. But them launching F2P and than allow huge part of their team to go on holidays, means they only care about our money. Not service. There is none.

[Glower]

Thanksgiving november! Only in Bioware.

[Ungodlyomen]

Drop a f2p patch then HIDE.

 

Im guessing thankgiving? Maybe.

[symke]

After today's patch we can all se why they are so silent.

Even they themselves do not trust in their own capabilities to make this game better. Or stable!

I think they are just pushing things from left to right and hoping that by the time us, players, realize this game is going down the drain they will have earned enough money to appease shareholders for this year.

And to them it's the only group of people they care about. Sadly.

[Scourn]

this is what happened to warhammer online and mythic when EA started the layoffs over there to. Its only a matter of time before its complete silence when EA lays off the rest of the devs and gets their skeleton crew to milk this game for as much as possible like they did for warhammer the last 3 years now. This is EA at its finest and it shows you just how out of touch this company is with its player base just like mythic was. Ironic Jeff Hickman was one of the main players at mythic with rob denton and mark jacobs that destroyed warhammer online and everyone hated , yet hes still here just in texas now instead of virginia and his attitude is identical when they sunk warhammer online , so I expect the same here.

[Andryah]

Joveth commented last week that they had a reduced staff. And no, "most" offices don't take the week off. In fact, quite a few were open again on Friday.

 

A lot of companies take the week off for Thanksgiving these days, or run at very reduced staffing.

 

Why? because it is a popular and clever trick of the CFOs to trim operations costs for the company.

 

See, vacation benefits accrue to the companies expenses when it is earned by an employee (NOT when it is used). The accrued vacation hours in the workforce is a huge unspent liability that companies can draw upon via forced shutdowns. By forcing (or encouraging) vacation to be taken... the company draw out of the accural and do not have to pay actual salary.... so they save operations expenses in their balance sheet. It's a common tactic these days (particularly large companies) to do this during Thanksgiving and Christmas.

 

I'm not saying whether it's fair or proper, etc... I am simply pointing out why companies do this sort of thing.

[TUXs]

A lot of companies take the week off for Thanksgiving these days, or run at very reduced staffing.

 

Why? because it is a popular and clever trick of the CFOs to trim operations costs for the company.

 

See, vacation benefits accrue to the companies expenses when it is earned by an employee (NOT when it is used). The accrued vacation hours in the workforce is a huge unspent liability that companies can draw upon via forced shutdowns. By forcing (or encouraging) vacation to be taken... the company draw out of the accural and do not have to pay actual salary.... so they save operations expenses in their balance sheet. It's a common tactic these days (particularly large companies) to do this during Thanksgiving and Christmas.

 

I'm not saying whether it's fair or proper, etc... I am simply pointing out why companies do this sort of thing.

Yeah, I realize some companies do this, but it's most certainly not the norm in MOST companies and it's inexcusable that Bioware felt they were in good enough shape to pull it themselves.

 

A "reduced" staff is expected but they needed to have an adequate support staff...they didn't. No excuses, no holidays...they operate a 24/7 business and need to staff accordingly, especially given the massive F2P launch they JUST had. Again, they didn't.