Can we please cut some slack to the devs?

cyineedsn

[quote="Pylgrim"
The thing is that I'm not talking about accountability. Accountability is still paramount. Mistakes are made? They must be fixed. Users were affected? They must be apologised to (done) and compensated (happening soon). Improvement is necessary? Feedback is not only warranted but actually much desired. The whole point of the thread is about the tone of communication. Case in point, the current server errors: No later than 5 minutes after the issue presented itself, no less than 7 threads were created, most of them filled to the brim with sarcasm, vitriol, mockery and ridiculous entitlement. This is not helpful to anybody. This is just the haters having a holiday.[/quote]

That's fair, I can see your point.

With that in mind, it's hard for people to not get a bit outraged after voicing feedback over the server outages/issues with progression/people getting locked out after node 8/whatever other misc complaints over the weekend. Then seeing the devs say "we understand", and then immediately repeating the same event. Sort of a fool-me-twice, out-come-the-pitchforks situation I guess.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Unreasonable demands and angry demands are not the same. You can make a reasonable demand that is angry. Sometimes I think devs in any game are too caught up in 'constructive criticism'. Let's say a dev just deleted your account and wiped out everything you have and you got a note saying 'haha I don't like your name you lose'. According to the posters you're probably supposed to make a post like: "Hello dear dev, I lost everything in my account and it seems like it's because a dev thought my name was dumb. I'm sure this is totally a misunderstanding so I'd like to politely request my account to be restored." Of course, in reality you're probably going to get something like "WHAT THE @!#%* DEVS I DEMAND MY MONEY BACK OR I'LL SUE YOU!" And the second response is just as valid as the first one.

Attitude still matters. Both responses are valid, but if you got singled out because of your attitude/tone/post history instead of a dumb name then you are reinforcing your image as a troublesome customer by issuing threats and demands. Posting the problem without the angry bits may in fact be more likely to get your issue resolved because the people fixing it aren't going, oh its that guy again, we hate that guy, if we served food we would surely spit in his...

Unknown

Megdar wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I've never bought the 'unanticipated load' argument in any game since every game that ever got crushed due to insane popularity had no problem with upgrading their capacity in a matter of days.

It's funny because it took 8 years for Blizzard, one of the biggest MMO provider, to figure out how to have smooth launch. Every time something major was coming, there was server lag, login crash, instance lock, weird bug etc...

The first release without problem was Cataclysm. If the biggest online game can't be stable with the money they make, I'm able to give some slack to a small game from a small provider...

No you can't go out and buy server, sometime it's not even the servers that are the problem. Sometime, you just discover your code is not meant to handle it, and you can't just change server code in 3-4 days...

Maybe they should have delayed it... the movie is still not even out in the US for another week anyway.

That's a case of a calculated tradeoff because the login server of any MMORPG is not designed to handle even 1/10th of the population attempting to login concurrently. MMORPGs are generally designed assuming at most 1/4 of the active player base will ever be on during a peak time, and if you assume people login during prime time over a period of 3 hours then you'd never have more than 1/12 of the population trying to log on concurrently and that works out. Until you have a new expansion or a big event where everyone is trying to play and log on at the same time. Now in this case I'm sure Blizzard did their study and say that well we don't really need to multiply our login capacity by 10X and server capacity by about 4X because people really don't quit from launch day problems based on our study, and this is probably an accurate assessment. It doesn't mean the problem is insurmountable. It's just that it's not a big deal. On the other hand, the Ultron event is pretty much the game itself. Whereas if you missed the launch of a MMORPG it just means you hit level 100 a week later, if you missed the Ultron event it's not coming back for a very long time. You're not getting the rewards offered which can be quite good and likely needed in the next event. People have already put in significant time/commitment/money into this event only to fail at the end due to a server outage and this is nothing like hitting the level cap a few days later than you planned. And note that often the company in question will still apologize and give back something even though it's a risk they accept. Note that if congestion issues are persistent they also get resolved almost immediately. Any MMORPG that turned out to be really too popular than devs anticipated had no problem doubling or more the number of servers in a very short timeframe. This suggests the cost of those servers is clearly not a big deal if they can be brought online so quickly. It simply defies the prevailing trend of computing to suggest that hardware can possibly be a significant cost. You can easily find articles that tells you your smartphone is more powerful than a computer X years ago, but apparently for roles that require a static amount of computing power multiplied by the number of users somehow managed to always stay ahead of Moore's Law's exponential growth.

Heck, I remember way back in EQ1 something like 10 years ago when LDoN turned out to beway more popular than developers planned and they didn't have enough server capacity for the instances so they were literally just hooking up extra desktops to the network deal with the demand, and if a desktop can be considered as a plausible stopgap measure 10 years ago, it must be more than enough to handle this given the growth in computing power while demand for computing power in gaming has not changed. For all their fancy graphics, modern game servers still are just sending you basic info like character status, enemy position, health status, and so on.

Unknown

Cryptobrancus wrote:

Attitude still matters. Both responses are valid, but if you got singled out because of your attitude/tone/post history instead of a dumb name then you are reinforcing your image as a troublesome customer by issuing threats and demands. Posting the problem without the angry bits may in fact be more likely to get your issue resolved because the people fixing it aren't going, oh its that guy again, we hate that guy, if we served food we would surely spit in his...

While it's always preferable to be polite, I think a lot of time devs (not just in this game, in general) have this attitude of 'we'll only listen to suggestions that sounds nice' even though a lot of time the mistake is so great that no polite response can be reasonably expected. Take just MPQ history, if you're an impartial observer writing to a dev on what you thought about the 2 AP Thunderclap, it's probably going to read like, "I have no idea what kind of drugs you're on when you made Thunderclap cost 2 AP". There's no 'I'm sure you guys have your reason' part because it's just unfathomable. Or take the recent Iron Fist nerf that happened about a week after his release. Again, there's really nothing nice you can say about this because if you've any kind of objectivity you'd know Iron Fist's purple was not going to stand given the game's history, so how can you possibly have anything nice to say to either an egregiously overpowered ability or what appears to be a total bait & switch? I lost 3750 HP out of that change and I sucked it up, partly because Iron Fist got me through The Hunt with 3 Professor X covers with my sanity intact due to how broken he was, but no if I have to critique on that particular scenario it's not going to be pretty.

Arondite

For the record, I agree with most of what you said. The one thing I take issue with is the whole "do you know how hard it is to code?" Argument.

That's a non argument.

Sure, code isn't necessarily easy, but it's what programmers do. It's their whole job to be good at it, despite its difficulty. My job is hard too, but if I mess it up I lose said job. Difficulty doesn't matter when that's what you're trained for and its the path you've chosen, and usually your pay is adjusted to compensate the difficulty of the work depending on your field, so...

Again. Coding is hard is a non issue.

Unknown

Bigtaf wrote:

As a leader of a software development team I would like to weigh in a little.

Heres where I cut D3 some slack

1) Yes bugs do happen, its a given in software development. I don't care how large or small the development team is, it will happen to the best of us.
2) It was a new event so certainly the margin for error was a lot higher then normal. They tried something new thats a good thing.
3) Server load is difficult to predict, when you've provisioned for 100,000 users and see a peak of 1M users there exists a high probability issues will occur. This is something that can be planned for and implemented (relatively easily) early on in development, trying to patch this in later on can be difficult. So it could be they never expected their app to reach this level of popularity.

Heres where I think D3 needs to improve

1) Learn from there mistakes. After Event 1 went so poorly there should have been either a delay or additional resources allocated to prevent a repeat of issues. Honestly if the reason for no delay is Marvel pushing for a quick release for promotion sake, then D3 has to have a difficult (re pride swallowing) conversation and own up to not being quite ready. It would be better to release a quality product a week later then a questionable product immediately.
2) Communication lacking at best. When these type of issues occur (and as I mentioned it happens to the best of us) its important to get infront of the issue and be proactive not reactive. Customers in my experience do understand issues occur and as long as they think your working your **** off for them they will be a lot more lenient. Generally my approach is outline how the issue affects them, outline a path to rectify the issue with as accurate a time frame as possible, assure the customer there will compensation ( if appropriate). D3 reps should be all over the forum when major issues occur, reassuring customers and maintaining that customer confidence (See below)
3) It's very important to prevent a repeat of similar issues. This causes customers to lose confidence. The most important thing is ensuring customers have confidence in your ability to recover from the issues.

Well said!

fmftint

Arondite wrote:

For the record, I agree with most of what you said. The one thing I take issue with is the whole "do you know how hard it is to code?" Argument.

That's a non argument.

Sure, code isn't necessarily easy, but it's what programmers do. It's their whole job to be good at it, despite its difficulty. My job is hard too, but if I mess it up I lose said job. Difficulty doesn't matter when that's what you're trained for and its the path you've chosen, and usually your pay is adjusted to compensate the difficulty of the work depending on your field, so...

Again. Coding is hard is a non issue.

Thank you! Difficulty of a task isn't an excuse for failure.

If you went to a restaurant and the cook had a bad night and made everyone sick would you say, cooking is hard, give the guy a break?

Malcrof

Megdar wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I've never bought the 'unanticipated load' argument in any game since every game that ever got crushed due to insane popularity had no problem with upgrading their capacity in a matter of days.

It's funny because it took 8 years for Blizzard, one of the biggest MMO provider, to figure out how to have smooth launch. Every time something major was coming, there was server lag, login crash, instance lock, weird bug etc...

The first release without problem was Cataclysm. If the biggest online game can't be stable with the money they make, I'm able to give some slack to a small game from a small provider...

No you can't go out and buy server, sometime it's not even the servers that are the problem. Sometime, you just discover your code is not meant to handle it, and you can't just change server code in 3-4 days...

And Blizzard is a multi-billion dollar company. Smaller companies dealing with an influx of people and a popular event are going to have it way worse.

GothicKratos

fmftint wrote:

Arondite wrote:

For the record, I agree with most of what you said. The one thing I take issue with is the whole "do you know how hard it is to code?" Argument.

That's a non argument.

Sure, code isn't necessarily easy, but it's what programmers do. It's their whole job to be good at it, despite its difficulty. My job is hard too, but if I mess it up I lose said job. Difficulty doesn't matter when that's what you're trained for and its the path you've chosen, and usually your pay is adjusted to compensate the difficulty of the work depending on your field, so...

Again. Coding is hard is a non issue.

Thank you! Difficulty of a task isn't an excuse for failure.

If you went to a restaurant and the cook had a bad night and made everyone sick would you say, cooking is hard, give the guy a break?

Funny, I've gotten food poisoning from a few restaurants over my 20-some years. You know what I did? Stop going there. You know what I didn't do? Throw a vitriol filled fit in the restaurant's lobby.

NighteyesGrisu

PhoenixDream wrote:

No we can't. They're incompetent and proved it over and over and over again. Players have every right to be angry. Especially whales, because there's no excuse why they didn't design their servers to cater for the paying customers first. More so given this is a PVE event...
But hey, they're human and humans make errors, right? Too bad Demiurge's producers, designers and coders (I do hope the plural is warranted) seem to make a lot of errors... and quite often.

yet in all their incometence they've somehow managed to create and run a game that captivates thousands of people, drawing them in so much that they get angry if they can't play for an hour or 2. Isn't that fascinating?

in any case, +1 to the OP, he pretty much nailed it.

Unknown

Megdar wrote:

It's funny because it took 8 years for Blizzard, one of the biggest MMO provider, to figure out how to have smooth launch. Every time something major was coming, there was server lag, login crash, instance lock, weird bug etc...

The difference with World of Warcraft - as I believe others have mentioned - is that the downtime only means you will reach your goal later (you don't actually miss out on anything like many have with the SW cover). It also might be easier to accept these issues from D3 if they had a track record of "customer loyalty" - which they certainly don't (it's about the bottom line for this game).

With an event that features a cover required for the next event, they should have postponed the start of the second event until:

1) fixes had been implemented for the issues
2) find a good way to compensate the user base that missed out on required covers because of the downtime

These two things would have been the "customer friendly" thing to do. While I understand they are in the business to make money, happy customers are the best way to stay successful.

Either way, there should be someone out here on the forums or in game updating the player base with the current status of the issues. It is the simplest thing to do that can have the biggest impact on how they are perceived by their player base.

Unknown

The main difference with Blizzard is that WOW was a subscription based product. ALL of their players were paying customers. MPQ, if lucky, has about 5%.
Oh, and Blizzard's project list is awesome (Lost Vikings! Dune! Warcraft! Starcraft! WOW!). Demiurge's, well...

Unknown

CybrGamr wrote:

2) find a good way to compensate the user base that missed out on required covers because of the downtime...

Just playing Devil's advocate here but the root cause for any loss of covers in the Ultron event is not the server issues, it's that the alliance didn't play enough earlier in the event.

TheOncomingStorm

We rib them because love them.

There's a thin line between love and hate. Very thin.

MarvelDestiny

Let me vet this post by saying I have played MPQ religiously for many months. I enjoy the game and I appreciate the development team for all they do. The flip side is I also have the experience to see between the lines and comprehend all they fail to do.

Understanding of the situation cuts both ways. Yes, I can and do sympathize with the devs for their current panic mode during Crashfest 2015; been there, done that during radio/CAD upgrades while working 911.

HOWever, our current situation could have been avoided with a little forethought, planning, and server upgrades/expansion. The devs have already stated that they have been planning and working on this for months. I find it hard to believe that not a single member of the team mentioned a need to invest in upgrades. So that leaves two possibilities: either this disasterous AvU implementation and the associated systemwide crashes are products of gross incompetence, or d3p didn't feel the expenditure was worth it to upgrade their equipment.

So, no, I can not cut them some slack. I am not a neutral observer, I am a paying customer who once again feels swindled and am understandably upset along with the vast majority of other d3 customers. To add insult to injury, they did it AGAIN with less than 24hrs to review the failures and improve/implement the system or design. (Yes, I'm sure they are under pressure from third parties, but failures of this magnitude only create resentment and harm the image of all involved.)

I could go on but quite frankly, my opinion of d3 is circling the toilet and I don't feel like flinging my **** around.

Good luck d3 and let the compensation rain!

GothicKratos

MarvelDestiny wrote:

HOWever, our current situation could have been avoided with a little forethought, planning, and server upgrades/expansion. The devs have already stated that they have been planning and working on this for months. I find it hard to believe that not a single member of the team mentioned a need to invest in upgrades. So that leaves two possibilities: either this disasterous AvU implementation and the associated systemwide crashes are products of gross incompetence, or d3p didn't feel the expenditure was worth it to upgrade their equipment.

Neither one of us have any ideas what they did or didn't do. You're being presumptuous in the thought that they didn't do anything to try and curtail issues. Just because there was issues, doesn't mean nothing was done to try and prevent them.

You're also being presumptuous in stating that the developers believe that upgrading equipment "wouldn't be worth it", since that's exactly what they said they did here.

Furthermore, I would posit that the ideal of D3 being bumbling oafs 'that constantly screw up' is extreme hyperbole. Here's how I look at it;

When was the last time there was server downtime? DQvMPQ. That was quite a few months ago. Before that? I seem to faintly remember some downtime at the end of a season somewhere, but I also remember that being compensated by giving users the next up Progression Reward, which was met positively. Other than that, I don't even know - I don't recall any other down times in my stint of playing.

Yeah, we had the Taco Token fiasco, but that got addressed in what, a day? Maybe two? They even came onto the forums and described how and what happened when a forumite asked them. That was recently.

What was the last technical "issue" we had? There's that save data thing that just cropped up - they've got a fixed worked up and it took a week...? That's acceptable.

There was the Shield fiasco, and that was bad, and it lasted longer than I feel comfortable admitting. That was what, a month ago though? What was before that?

Sorry if I view 99% of the complains of "constant screw ups" just condensed complaints about nerfs or mechanics changes (not directly pointed at you).

jobob

GothicKratos wrote:

MarvelDestiny wrote:

Neither one of us have any ideas what they did or didn't do. You're being presumptuous in the thought that they didn't do anything to try and curtail issues. Just because there was issues, doesn't mean nothing was done to try and prevent them

Well, to be fair, one thing that we do not have to speculate about is their response thus far. A technical problem caused a sognificant amount of players to miss out on rewards through no fault of their own. That HAS to be addressed. And while I have no problem with them taking their time putting together a full response, the fact of the matter is that every minute they wait, they are keeping many players locked out of the SW nodes, artificially increasing the difficulty of getting IMHB.

That's not speculation. And ultimately it's the biggest problem I have with D3 on this issue, and... No, we should absolutely not cut them any slack. Stop continuing to punish players for your mistakes and issues, D3.

NighteyesGrisu

Bigtaf wrote:

As a leader of a software development team I would like to weigh in a little.

Heres where I cut D3 some slack

1) Yes bugs do happen, its a given in software development. I don't care how large or small the development team is, it will happen to the best of us.
2) It was a new event so certainly the margin for error was a lot higher then normal. They tried something new thats a good thing.
3) Server load is difficult to predict, when you've provisioned for 100,000 users and see a peak of 1M users there exists a high probability issues will occur. This is something that can be planned for and implemented (relatively easily) early on in development, trying to patch this in later on can be difficult. So it could be they never expected their app to reach this level of popularity.

Heres where I think D3 needs to improve

1) Learn from there mistakes. After Event 1 went so poorly there should have been either a delay or additional resources allocated to prevent a repeat of issues. Honestly if the reason for no delay is Marvel pushing for a quick release for promotion sake, then D3 has to have a difficult (re pride swallowing) conversation and own up to not being quite ready. It would be better to release a quality product a week later then a questionable product immediately.
2) Communication lacking at best. When these type of issues occur (and as I mentioned it happens to the best of us) its important to get infront of the issue and be proactive not reactive. Customers in my experience do understand issues occur and as long as they think your working your **** off for them they will be a lot more lenient. Generally my approach is outline how the issue affects them, outline a path to rectify the issue with as accurate a time frame as possible, assure the customer there will compensation ( if appropriate). D3 reps should be all over the forum when major issues occur, reassuring customers and maintaining that customer confidence (See below)
3) It's very important to prevent a repeat of similar issues. This causes customers to lose confidence. The most important thing is ensuring customers have confidence in your ability to recover from the issues.

I agree with most of what you said. About 'learing from your mistakes' though I guess the decision to go ahead with event 2 was probably made from a political point rathen than a technical. I'm sure it has happened in your team as well that you needed to push something out because the higher-ups/management whatever decided it needed to go live, even though the devs told them there's still some issues..certainly happened in my team before.

Unknown

There is only one way to know for absolute certain if something is ready to go live or not. Launch it. If there are no events running there will obviously be no undue stress on the servers and everything should look green across the board. Starting up the next round and monitoring it like a hawk for if/when issues arise is the best course of action, and mirrors what I have seen today, be mad at them if you want but players would likely be more outraged if they just stopped everything cold and said MPQ will be back when every last thing is fixed perfectly but no one is allowed to play anything at all until that time.

Unknown

NighteyesGrisu wrote:

Bigtaf wrote:

As a leader of a software development team I would like to weigh in a little.

Heres where I cut D3 some slack

1) Yes bugs do happen, its a given in software development. I don't care how large or small the development team is, it will happen to the best of us.
2) It was a new event so certainly the margin for error was a lot higher then normal. They tried something new thats a good thing.
3) Server load is difficult to predict, when you've provisioned for 100,000 users and see a peak of 1M users there exists a high probability issues will occur. This is something that can be planned for and implemented (relatively easily) early on in development, trying to patch this in later on can be difficult. So it could be they never expected their app to reach this level of popularity.

Heres where I think D3 needs to improve

1) Learn from there mistakes. After Event 1 went so poorly there should have been either a delay or additional resources allocated to prevent a repeat of issues. Honestly if the reason for no delay is Marvel pushing for a quick release for promotion sake, then D3 has to have a difficult (re pride swallowing) conversation and own up to not being quite ready. It would be better to release a quality product a week later then a questionable product immediately.
2) Communication lacking at best. When these type of issues occur (and as I mentioned it happens to the best of us) its important to get infront of the issue and be proactive not reactive. Customers in my experience do understand issues occur and as long as they think your working your **** off for them they will be a lot more lenient. Generally my approach is outline how the issue affects them, outline a path to rectify the issue with as accurate a time frame as possible, assure the customer there will compensation ( if appropriate). D3 reps should be all over the forum when major issues occur, reassuring customers and maintaining that customer confidence (See below)
3) It's very important to prevent a repeat of similar issues. This causes customers to lose confidence. The most important thing is ensuring customers have confidence in your ability to recover from the issues.

I agree with most of what you said. About 'learing from your mistakes' though I guess the decision to go ahead with event 2 was probably made from a political point rathen than a technical. I'm sure it has happened in your team as well that you needed to push something out because the higher-ups/management whatever decided it needed to go live, even though the devs told them there's still some issues..certainly happened in my team before.

In previous endeavors your absolutely correct, sometimes no matter how hard u object higher ups will push for a release. My current project deals with security, allowing serious bugs through could put peoples property or lives at risk. So its no longer a conce
rn. If I'm not confident in a release it doesn't go out period, the possbile lawsuits would far out weigh any benefit in releasing early. Its far more stressful but in some respects refreshing.