Dear DB, Please give Shan the authority to require changes.
SMM
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Shan is best placed to have a widespread and comprehensive appreciation of what changes or improvements are required. I believe she is very frustrated by not being able to make changes happen. Let her fix things.
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I agree that Shan is probably more in touch with the masses in this game that just about anyone else.
Though I don’t know that she would appreciate the extra workload! (:
Perhaps we should get her a raise first.
Please do not derail this discussion or use it as a sock puppet.
Civilian, Brand and Marketing
Ex-Disruptor Beam
Then maybe the answer is to give her some staff and have her direct some aspect of this process based on her knowledge. That would spread her plate around while giving her additional responsibilities.
That being said, anyone who does not respect her enough to communicate properly needs to be put on some notice.
I'm okay with this thread if it's constructive and offering suggestions for Shan on how she can enjoy her life better while pursuing personal fulfillment.
Civilian, Brand and Marketing
Ex-Disruptor Beam
In terms of offering specific advice to Shan, I recommend remembering 2 things:
1. We’re Star Trek fans, a notoriously grumpy and finicky group of people. If you screw up, you’ll hear about it.
2. The anger that we have isn’t directed at you. I appreciate your efforts, even if they seem to be putting out fires.
Well then, frankly, I can see if the folks at the two companies I deal with for other reasons would like to hire her. They are in cities with better weather than Boston.
Hey, do you think we can get her a raise instead?
Or at least a medal? Dealing with Trekkies can be seriously rough.
In all fairness, this is absolutely true.
I’d think that the other moderators are involved because it’s too much work for one person. We’re all posting like crazy, and human beings need time to breathe sometimes.
Not to mention that it’s not normal working hours in Boston right now. I don’t know when Shan usually works, but I do hope it is not 24/7.
That's not saying much. We just had 24" of snow.
Civilian, Brand and Marketing
Ex-Disruptor Beam
Dear DB, Please give Shan a bunch of puppies. I think she could use it after today.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
But I will take this opportunity to say a few things.
Game development is messy, it just is. Even more so when dealing with a live game.
Mistakes happen, mistakes will continue to happen because such is the nature of this kind of business, and also because ultimately we are all humans.
That does not mean we just go about our days and say "Oops - oh well" when it does happen.
In another thread I saw checklists being mentioned.
Guess what? Creating a usable/efficient checklist requires quite a few trials too, and it is not fail proof, nothing is.
Does this mean we should not strive to get better at it? Of course not.
Keep also in mind that as members of these forums you represent a small subset of our players, an important subset but not necessarily representative of our whole player base. Try to take this into consideration as well.
I personally find these forums invaluable even if sometimes, like today, they are a bit overwhelming
Black Pebble and myself will continue to raise your concerns, issues, and make recommendations accordingly.
And the help from the players on these forums is and always will be appreciated in that regard.
This is why you will see us insist on productive threads/comments.
More often than not very useful feedback is getting lost in a lot of noise, and that helps no one.
Thank you
We can guess this events multiple stumbles is pretty trivial compared to say... The Mirror Bev issue but you really won't know by how much. As painful as it is sometimes, you have to allow customers to vent. If you don't, you appear to be saying you don't want to hear it. But you can't hide the fact that DB's earned it. If DB wants the praise they have to be able to endure the fury too (when it's deserved).
It was good to finally see one of the moderators open up. Not everyone is going to understand or care, but it’s cool to see a “look guys, it’s tough. It’s nit as easy as you think.” Or “your ideas are good in theory but not feasible”. I’m sure each one of us could say things about our line of work that people would say “oh wow, I never knew that”. I’m also sure your job is no different. Anyway, thank you for finally opening up a bit. I think people here tend to forget that we are all human. It was a good time to remind them that you are too
I said make changes happen not make the changes.
Shan does not instruct changes to be made at present, I believe. That is what I want.
Please carefully read posts before responding.
I did not suggest that Shan is put in charge of DB game development rather having the authority to instruct that changes are made.
Please carefully read posts before responding.
Yes game development is messy. This is taken as absolutely par for the course. It is how issues are handled by DB that a great many people have issues with. Two updates ago you declared there was a bug within the crew screen. The issue is not the bug. The issue is that the last update didn't have a fix for the bug. Correcting bugs in updates is not a priority for DB and that is where DB fails. I hope you are given the authority to direct changes.
There is a huge difference between the making of mistakes with the handling of mistakes when they happen.
Checklists were suggested to help prevent the same mistakes from repeatedly occurring. Asking customers for suggestions for additions may help make them more robust. There is virtually no checklist that is fail proof which is why there should be mechanisms in place to review and update them as opposed to not using them. A checklist for the implementation of a faction events could be reviewed before a faction event, for example.
Noise is not useful that is why it is caused noise.
The issue yesterday was a minor issue in the scheme of things that at worse impacts on the current event (and even then it is just the current phase of the event).
DB put their hands up and admitted that a mistake was made.
I occasionally play over mobile games, one of them I was unable to connect to for almost 24 hours - and the compensation I got for that was a big fat nothing.
Timelines has flaws and bugs, all software does (and some of them have been pretty big).
Personally for me the fact that the low AM on voyage alert only works intermittently is far more important an issue. The miscommunication of this event barely registers as an issue for me. If the biggest problem a player has is that they have spent merits buying transmissions for a faction that isn't in the event they are doing pretty well.
Throwing your toys out of the pram over a minor issue is distracting from the more important issues.
In recent months there have been some really nice additions which have added new life to the game. Voyages have been really great and have added a nice extra level to game play, and recent collections have been great as well (and as a result all the grey, green and blue characters that I used to airlock as soon as they came in are now worth developing (even if they only enter the freezer seconds after completion).
No offense, but your post is confusing. I still don't know what you mean by "give Shan the authority to require changes." I thought maybe you meant approve.
I meant that if she decides that a change is required that she has the authority to make it happen. She would instruct coders to make the change and that priority would be at her discretion. This process would bypass committees as she sees fit. She would consult with others at her discretion.
For example she may decide that the order of ships in the voyage screen has to be from high antimatter to low. She may then enquire as to what the coders are currently doing and instruct them accordingly. This may be to implement the change after they have finished their current task before the next update, for example.
The sphere of her remit would be bug fixing / UI changes / enhancement of the provision of information etc. This to improve the customer experience. At the moment too much time is take up by firefighting. For hundreds of years such proverbs as "a stitch in time ..." outline what is required. Unhappy customers don't spend as much and leave. Unhappy customers don't recommend the product. She would not be responsible for the conception or development of new features.
Thanks for clarifying. With again no offense intended to you or Shan, I don't think that's appropriate for the Community Manager*.
*Again, no offense to Shan - Community Manager may be an over simplification of your full role.
@Black Pebble Before deflecting blame on to the players for causing stress on @Shan for pointing out snafus, please pass this advice on to the developers, who hopefully have a much closer (let alone personal) relationship with @Shan. All of the players' recent gripes (and the DB: Do Better campaign) could have been avoided with very simple 4-eyes checks, if not a full-fledged QA process.
For instance, who opened up the event in QA and verified at all 3 factions set for the event were loaded? Who verified that the correct number of missions (whether it be the new 6 * 3, the original 10 * 3, or the original/new 1 * 20)?
And if there was miscommunication, why wasn't the miscommunication clarified before hand? Even if there wasn't enough time for this communicstion to go out during the week for the event, the prior communication about change in missions came out 6 weeks ago. Surely there would be enough time in the 6 weeks to shoot out a message.
The last group of people to be surprised should be you customers, not your own staff.
So while this post might sound like complaining, it is not. It is a suggestion to have testing in place before releasing an event. When I do software releases, I do four levels of testing before getting approvals to move into production: developers doing unit testing of their own code, QA doing QA testing based off of test scripts they write (signed off by business analysts), business analysts doing verification testing before sending to the users, and UAT done by users. Since DB does not have a beta testing group, I can understand that UAT cannot be done. But that still allows for at least two levels of testing.
Players have requested, pleaded, even begged to be QA or beta testers. And not just because they want to try out new features early, because we love the game and want it to succeed for all players. If DB cannot support testing, please reconsider opening up qa/beta testing to players.
All of the snafus that players have griped about are immediately noticeable within seconds. It makes it plainly obvious that there is no testing being done.
If DB can't see the facts for themselves, then, with all due respect, they're as blind as a Tiberian bat!
Most of Shan's time is spent dealing with the mess created by her colleagues. She would have less on her plate if her activities were focused on prevention. This would also make her life less stressful.
It **tsk tsk** when this happens but the event was only down for minutes and had run for 5 days (with that part of the event being 3 of them) there were plenty of time to hand them in. There is always a risk with this type of last minute sniping.
I remembering being worried that the problem was just impacting me and I might slip out of position during the outage but I was lucky that it was widespread.
The compensation they gave out more than made up for the outage in most player's eyes I expect