Philotom, back to Limbus' original issue, do you think, from a customer service perspective, that GA has a good practice in place as it relates to their FAQ, TOS and account termination procedure?

Philotom is right, and I stand corrected... But just to clarify, it's not the game I hate, it's the way GA manages it
But as for the game.. There were several reasons I quit (RL issues the main reason) I HATED the shadow lord buff, that ruined the game for me.. And as for the merger of battle groups.. It "should" have been a good thing, and I was all for it.. But everyone retreating into status messages destroyed what should have been a great improvment in the game.. But I agree with Snog's question, what do you think?

Snogripple and DoMortas - thank you for bringing me back to the original subject. I admit that sometimes I can get carried away and tangent away from the original point. I do hope to continue to see you both in game and to keep you both as in game friends, despite any disagreements we may have on the forums or elsewhere.

For the record, I don't think that Grey Area handled these bans correctly.

From a customer service standpoint, I believe that termination should be the final step in a process that includes notification of the initial violation followed by a clear explanation as to what that violation entailed and how to stop the offensive behavior.

I would have sent an email along these lines: "We would like to inform you that on 6/27/12 at 6:37pm EST we detected the use of x third party application in conjunction with your Shadow Cities gameplay. Please be aware that use of this application while playing Shadow Cities may possibly affect your in-game location and as a result may give you an unfair advantage in the game. Use of the application on your part may have been unintentional, so in the spirit of fairness, we ask you to refrain from using this or other, similar applications while playing Shadow Cities. Please note that this is only a first warning and no punitive action has been taken; however, future violations may ultimately result in account termination. If you have any further questions, please review our TOS and FAQ links, and please do not hesitate to contact me directly."

The key is to be up front with the basic information, which as far as I have seen, GA has not really been. Another key is to provide actual answers to specific questions, within reason, and within a reasonable timeframe. For example, "What application was I using that caused this problem?" is a reasonable question and should be answered, whereas "I demand that you provide me with a full and comprehensive list of any and all applications that might be causing this problem" is not a reasonable question. Similarly, demanding a "same day" response is not reasonable. Companies have things to do, you know? Thinking that your particular complaint should be prioritized over everything else that the game makers have to do is IMHO unreasonable, and borders on arrogance. 24-48 hours is a reasonable timeframe for a company with a small staff to get back to you. All complaints should be answered on a "first in, first out" (FIFO is a common internal customer service term) basis and that's the only way to be fair to everyone. Prioritizing the grousing of repeat complainers only encourages them to clog up the workflow further.

Repeat offenders should definitely be terminated. Reasons for termination should never be made public. I would go so far as to say that in this case GA has provided too little private information, and way too much public information. After all, it's not in Grey Area's interest to publicly malign players, nor is it worthwhile to publicly provide information to cheaters that they could then use to continue cheating. Nor, for that matter, do I think it would even be a positive course of discussion on the boards as they have been these last few months.

I know that my previous post seemed off-topic, however, I don't really think it was - I just forgot to provide a bridge between the topic at hand and my direct comments. Maybe this would be a suitable bridge:

The small minority of negative players I referenced previously have effectively made open conversation impossible around here. No answer is ever good enough. Were GA to provide the information that is being demanded, what would happen is that some would start to dissect every word that GA wrote, and then send GA fifty to sixty follow up questions on the boards, AND on Facebook, AND via multiple emails in an effort to rip the whole thing apart. Said players would then likely expect answers to every single one of those fifty questions, and upon receipt they would proceed to rip the answers apart and repeat the whole process ad infinitum. I have seen this happen before on other public forums, and it is never pleasant. In the end, those players who are determined to be disruptive and negative will always find a way to be so.

The forums have become the sort of place where accusations are levied and grievances are aired as opposed to a place where honest questions and constructive criticisms are exchanged. Some of the posts from players to GA on these forums are just completely disgraceful. To refer to GA as "idiots" or a "totalitarian government," or to refer to Chadj and Khamos as "stooges" etc. etc. It's completely unacceptable. A proper message board would have moderators, and there would be no place for comments like those. Reading some of this stuff, it's not hard to imagine why these players don't get responses very quickly if at all. Sometimes when people do receive responses, the responses themselves are reposted to the boards so that everyone can rip them apart. For GA to answer or pay attention to such scathing posts is only to put fuel on the fire. Believe me, I know. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, and when absolutely nothing you say to the person placates them, when they just move on from subject to subject complaining about everything, at that point you have to just level with them and say "It's obvious that you're unhappy here. This may not be the product/service/game for you. We'll be happy to refund your most recent in-game purchase, and as of today your particular device is banned from future gameplay." That is what I would do with chronic complainers.

Oh, and one more thing - threatening legal action is usually the LEAST likely way to get your problem addressed. First of all, people who honestly want to address the problem don't make threats. They have a constructive tone. They offer praise, suggestions, and fairly worded criticisms. They are also mostly polite. On the other hand, people who threaten to sue are actually, in my experience, the least likely people to do so. Here's a secret that I've learned - you never really hear from most people who are actually prepared to sue you in court; you hear from their lawyers. In my position, when my company has been sued (it happens, sometimes reasonably, sometimes not so), in most cases I've never even heard from the charging party before. So I go to court, present what info we have, point out that I've never heard from this person before even though I'm very "contactable," I offer a compromise if one seems reasonable, and then let the cards fall where they fall. To be honest, I win most of the time, but not always. A smart company will never accept arbitration - arbitrators tend to side with the plaintiff. A smart company will insist on seeing a judge. And most of the time, the judge will side with the company if they have all of their basic legal ducks in a row and the customer has shown bad faith. Most people who sue do not have real grounds to do so anyways - they're just angry people who want to cause problems. Either way, making threats of this sort just doesn't help anyone. It makes you MORE likely to get banned for being disruptive and ruining the experience for other players though, and LESS likely that your problem will be addressed.

In reference to these specific bans, I knew and was friends with many of these players as well. I defended tommasso on more than one occasion when players would make accusations about his gains on the leaderboard, and lost in-game friends over this. I do not want to think that any of these players was cheating, nor do I want to think badly of GA for these bans. In almost no case do any of us have actual, real data to review, nor should we be able to do so - after all, can you name any other game company out there that would let its players look at its internal procedures or code? I doubt it. In the end, it all comes down to a matter of trust. Some choose to trust the banned players' assertions that they did not cheat. Some choose to trust that GA has their reasons for doing this. Either way, all you're doing is trusting words on a screen. In no case will any of this stop me from enjoying Shadow Cities when I have the time to do so.

I will say that whatever mistakes may or may not have been made on GA's part, I do think that it's reaonable of GA to allow these same players to rejoin with different accounts. I actually believe that this shows a huge amount of restraint and good will on GA's part - after all, the devices themselves could be banned outright. Also, I do think that this is a learning process for GA and I'm confident that these procedures will be tightened up and fine tuned with time.

As for the FAQ and TOS, I've never had a problem with them, and I don't think that *most* players do either. In general I think it's pretty obvious what most of the community considers to be cheating, and it's pretty obvious what the game makers consider to be cheating, even if their enforcement mechanisms are not yet up to par. A responsible community will self-police, and make reports when they have solid information, and eventually the problem will be addressed.

In the end, with things the way they are right now, with the unhappy people up there on their soapboxes with their megaphones, with the forums as angry and ugly as they've been, I don't think that GA has anything to gain by being more specific in the FAQ or the TOS, and I do not think that they have anything to gain by providing more information. I think that their best course of action is to answer the people who ask questions in good faith, and to ignore as much as possible the dissident, unhappy voices - eventually those voices will subside along with whatever support they have, and the majority of players can then get back to enjoying the game.

(Again, edited for typos.)

Edited by Philotom (June 29, 2012 18:38:21)

Well thought out Philotom. I do hope that GA has learned a great deal about customer service from all of this. I think we have all learned a lot, especially those of us that are new to this type of community gaming.

For Philotom:
I add only an extract from one of my previous post about the ban of Marcomec:

"In summary: I was banned for something that I can not know, breaching rules
that do not exist or are unclear, for a wrong time, from people who say they
want fair play and that is the first that does not respect it."

I just want a bit of clarification and understanding how things are.
You're like me playing something you like.
but
There is no clarity and no way to treat players fairly
There are no precise rules (btw FAQs are not rules)

Under these conditions the development of any business and activity is at least compromised, if not doomed to fail ... enjoy the game while it lasts

ty

Well said Philotom, I agree on many points, but disagree on a few as well... Many of the negative posts from people are because of the lack of clear information from GA, both public and private (myself included) I have been involved in several online communities, I have been a mod, admin, systems administrator, dev, project manager, and even a clan leader for many online consol games. And I have never seen a company handle things as poorly as GA has.. But while I agree some people will never be happy, I can honestly say that most of us here just want clear answers from GA.. I only have 1 account, no Alts, not jail broken, and I'm sure you remember I'm 100% anti-cheating, having said that, if GA were to ban me saying "I cheated" without telling me how, or in what way, I would be just as pissed off as several of the people here who were banned without warning, or clear reason as to why.. I believe in a simple logic, if you know what can get you banned, and you do it anyway, then you deserve to get banned, AFTER a clear warning that if you continue, you will be banned.. But to get banned without knowing why, or what the reasons were, other than a copy/paste from the ToS is just bs.. There will always be cheaters, in any game, people who will do anything and everything they can just to "get away with it" but for the rest of us, a clear list of what can get you banned is greatly needed, we know spoofing, and the mana hack will get you banned, but beyond that.....

And just for the record, I have emailed GA several times (before all this started) offering to help them, work for them (for free if needed) I have submitted several ideas for improvments that I have gathered from the in game community (the most ignored by GA) and no, they were not done in any kind of negative way.

Thanks Snogripple - I have always had great respect for you as a player and am glad to exchange points of view with anyone. :-)

To Marco1: I apologize - the length of my posts can sometimes obscure the smaller points they contain. Brevity has never been my strong suit.

I don't think that GA handled your ban correctly, and I do think that they should have given you specific information as to what your actual offense was. I do stand with you and all the other banned players 100% in your requests for that information, as well as for the chance for you all to make amends. I do hope that Grey Area learns from this experience and makes internal adjustments going forward so that it doesn't happen again.

However, my only real course of action as far as protests go would be to stop playing Shadow Cities entirely, and I just like it way too much to do that. So I hope that over time we will all be able to move forward, and I hope to see you around the world as Marco1.

Hey DoMortas -

Thank you for the reply, and likewise - well said. I've respected you as a player since I joined the game. We have not always seen eye to eye, but I respect your opinion even if I do not agree with it. I'd also be the first to admit that you have far more experience than I do with online gaming and with technical issues in general. I'd agree that GA's communication style has grown more cryptic, even canned and jargonesque over the past six months or so. It 100% has. They could improve vastly in this regard and others. I would never say that they are perfect, but I do think that they're doing their best, even if "their best" isn't good enough for some people and could be improved. I think that they have a vision for the game that we don't entirely see, and that our desires to have the game be "the way we think it should be" can get in the way of our enjoyment of "the game as Grey Area intends to make it." At some point, priorities and desires will diverge. Many players will leave as the game evolves, either because they're busy, or burnt out, or because of drama with elements of the community, or just because they don't like the way the game is evolving. That is totally normal and to be expected.

What gets my goat is the tone of the public posts. It has become outrageous. Somewhere along the line it seems like some players got the idea that repetition, nagging, and enhanced volume would hasten GA's response to some issues, such as lag, or energy rewards, or splitting up certain battlegroups. But everyone knows the game lags. GA knows it too. And I'm sure they are trying to figure it out. I'm sure it pisses them off. For me, it works a lot better on an iPad and with WIFI than on my 3GS using the 3G network. But that's to be expected too. To be fair, they have tried to fix some lag/crash issues in the past, and have been roundly spanked for it. The beacon lists fix, for example: I thought it was fine. I mean, is it really necessary to keep a beacon up 24/7 for 6 months? I don't really think so. I live in Brooklyn - my beacons get destroyed often. So I just cast another one. For some people, the beacon fix completely ruined the game forever and all time. For me, it reduced crash and lag, so it helped. Some people left as a result of it. Some people refused to leave gracefully, and decided to air their complaints as publicly and as often as possible. I think most players just dealt with it. New players don't even know that such a situation ever even existed. But for those who remember it, it is a source of unending anguish and resentment that we still hear about on the forums to this day. This is just one example.

I guess that somewhere along the line the positive, constuctive tone got lost. The true sense of wonder at the game, and exploring the world, and finding new ways to play - all of that got lost. The older players became more discontent, started making bigger demands and more of them, then became very vocal about it, and then became louder. We're perilously close to a situation where it has become acceptable to publicly skewer GA in the most bombastic, exaggerated, insulting ways possible, on Facebook, on the forums, and on the in-game chat. "FUGA" makes my stomach turn. I mean, how can people say that WHILE THEY ARE PLAYING THE GAME? It boggles my mind. And I just totally disagree with that perspective. This behavior needs to be moderated. I think it makes the whole situation worse. It brings down the community. And it really ruins it for people like myself who just want to play, get a few content updates every now and then, and who will restart the game when it crashes. Every IOS game I've ever played crashes. Every one of them. For me, it's not that big of a deal.

As far as cheating goes, beyond spoofing and the mana hack, I think it's fair to say that GA has made it generally clear that remote harvesting or using multiple accounts to gain an advantage in the game is not acceptable. Might they go into further detail and list every conceivable way that the use of multiple accounts could be considered cheating? Yes. But then the cheaters will find the however many methods that GA did not list, and just start cheating that way. GA has also made it clear that you are responsible for your own account security and that if you share that information with anyone you do it at your own risk. I mean, maybe all of this could be tweaked to be clearer; admittedly some of these complaints may be over my head. In general I've had no questions about what constitutes acceptable gameplay. I feel that I have been informed enough by both GA and the community at large, and do feel comfortable playing within the rules as they've been defined, even if those rules could be clearer.

When it comes to the banned players, all I can reiterate is that it comes down to trust - whether or not you accept their statements at face value, or whether or not you accept GA's stance. It seems unlikely that, beyond trust, we have enough specifics to come down forcefully on one side of the issue or the other. There's no way to know. I fear that at this point, no amount of information will satisfy completely. I do find the loss of these players to be tragic, and wish that there was a better procedure in place that involved specific information and a "warning" system. But the way to get there is not by upping the ante with increased public negativity. It's just not going to work.

We will get there though. I think that no one really acts with the intent to do wrong, even if they can be misguided when it comes to their actions. I hope that all of the banned players continue to play with new accounts and that those accounts are not banned in the future. I also hope that the excessively negative players take their role as leaders in the community more seriously and start trying to improve the experience for everyone else instead of complaining all the time. Either way, I know that I will definitely keep playing. :-)

Edited by Philotom (June 29, 2012 21:24:33)

Yes i continue play with Marco1

We have to step forward ... yes! Both: the community and GA

The point is that GA do nothing. This make me come to the conclusion that they are not really interest in this game or are not able to unlock the true potential of this project.

A common economic and commercial rule is: grow or fail

"no wind is good if you dunno where to go"
(a old statement usefull in managing)
ty

Just reading these now and my first reaction is gratitude towards the players who are taking the issue seriously and trying to engage GA in a constructive discussion. Philotom and DoMortas in particular have given a lot of thought to making SC a better game and thinking is the prerequisite to useful action. I'll try to keep this brief but there are two topics I want to respond to:
1. Group Fairness. Regardless of my (or Marcomec's or anyone's) outrage at being banned, it ought to be possible to devise a system for handling ToS violations that a majority of players would agree is procedurally fair even if individual players end up unhappy with their specific outcome. SC lacks that. In the absence of anything like a fair process, I and other players whom I believe to be honest have no choice but to protest our treatment in these forums and Facebook.
2. Civility. Many players, including, I think, Philotom, are disappointed or disgusted with the disrespectful, if not hostile, tone and substance of my and others' criticisms of GA's behavior. Perhaps I have failed but I have tried hard to express my views forcefully but not disrespectfully; to apply as much pressure as mere writing can apply without descending into over-excited name-calling. That said, I deem GA's stony refusal to talk to *anyone* in the SC community as far more disrespectful than anything I have said. And on a smaller but related point, I defend my use of the word "stooge" to describe Chadj and Khamos. GA calls them Moderators but they do not, in fact, moderate. They have been instructed to do no more than earnestly repeat unhelpful and uninformative pablum. They are not stooges in the "Three Stooges" sense of the word; they are stooges in the "One who allows oneself to be used for another's profit or advantage; a puppet" sense. I would note that it is a phenomenal waste of their talents, but that's none of my business.

Ville, Philotom, DoMortas, and others continue to offer constructive, actionable suggestions for improving the treatment of your customers. Yet you do nothing.