Ryzom

From: http://ryzom.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11217

lawrence wrote:Some of you have expressed their wish to get more game-related questions answered.

In this forum thread, we would like to gather any game-related questions you may currently have. At the end of this week, we will compile the list and see if we can get you guys some answers from the relevant developers or artists at Nevrax.

We may not be able to get answers on all of your questions, but I will try to give you guys some explanation or background information in such cases.

Depending on your feedback, we may be organizing Q&A rounds more frequently in the future.

What would you like to know more about? Is there something we can perhaps add to the ryzom.com website? Any existing content that should be explained in greater detail?

From:http://ryzom.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11180

lawrence wrote:Hi Folks!

In order to be able to provide the development team with more detailed player feedback on patches, I will create a dedicated feedback thread for each patch from now on.

Please post any feedback you may have regarding today's patch in this thread.

Cerest shouldn't even give this thread the benefit of an attention for its worth (none).

With the amount of whines and negativity the GMs have to put up with, I am surprise they're still so civil.

You know, I saw that thread earlier, and the first thought that came to mind was "Oh boy, Raynes is going to throw a hissy fiss".

p.s. What's to prevent you from posting in that thread?

Ah, I see that you did.

So, exactly what are you complaining about, big boy?

vinnyq wrote:Cerest shouldn't even give this thread the benefit of an attention for its worth (none).

With the amount of whines and negativity the GMs have to put up with, I am surprise they're still so civil.

You know, I saw that thread earlier, and the first thought that came to mind was "Oh boy, Raynes is going to throw a hissy fiss".

p.s. What's to prevent you from posting in that thread?

Yes I am going to throw a hissy fit becuase when you read the EU boards and the information and thread Laurence creates they are a world apart from anything on the NA boards. He's VERY active with the community. He sees something wrong and he is on top of it to address it.

As for me whining, I wouldn't complain if there was 1/4 the attention paid to the NA operations as there is the EU operations.

I wish they would allow server changes, I would be on the EU server so fast.

raynes wrote:I wish they would allow server changes, I would be on the EU server so fast.

Well as far as I know, there's no difference between the 4 servers except for language, ie french german english, so I don't know what you would hope to get out of changing servers.

As for the forums, you are free to post to any region's forum. Just like some people from the UK and german servers have been regularly posting to the N.A. forum. I believe support is handled by different companies for Nervax for the different servers, so it may be that the UK support works differently with Nevrax than the NA support. For me, most of the items I have submitted bug reports on in game have been resolved, so I haven't felt a need to post to the forums.

Hi everyone,

Unfortunately it seems someone decided to post some information which was not intended to be posted yet. This was to be discussed in a meeting tomorrow as to how we would approach this specific subject, but it seems someone jumped the gun. Those two posts should not be listed anywhere right now. I just hope the information doesn't change between now and the meeting.

We have no intention of chaining someone to a server or community with which they are so verbally and visibly unhappy. Anyone is welcome to cancel their account and move to another server if they feel it would be a different experience. Unfortunately, we cannot transfer your character or account unless it was within one week of registering your account.

Cerest breaks her back daily trying to make sure she has the correct information in a timely manner. She is not interested in posting something fast, if posting it fast means the information is wrong. She is always moving around asking questions and making sure she has the right answers. It has been shown in the past that fast reactions lead to bad results, and she has no interest in making bad results. We work on a 6 hour delay in the U.S. It doesn't excuse us from giving you information, but there may be times we are a little later than the European servers. Cerest isn't hiding information, nor is she being lazy (far from it). You are welcome to browse *all* the forums, and that is why they are there, but bringing a personal fight back isn't attractive to anyone. This isn't a competition for information, it is a team effort.

Have fun out there.

While I normally avoid posting on NA-server-specific threads given I play on the EE server, this one begs a response.

The premise for Cerest-bashing - that the EE server gets superior and more timely information - is just wrong. In fact, until very recently it's been dead opposite. In general, until very recently EE players have almost universally come over to the NA boards to get any sort of response.

Want proof? Look at the post count by Cerest versus those of Lawrence. Cerest is over double Lawrence's. Want further proof? Start looking at where the majority of those posts come from. Lawrence has been fairly good at answering Technical Support issues. However, when it comes to game issues and bug reports, his postings in the EE General forums have been up until now abysmal. I can count exactly twice that Lawrence has responded to confirm a bug in five months, and his response to other player issues has been non-existent. (I remember posting a 'wow, Lawrence speaks!' post a month ago when he finally came on to confirm the bug had been confirmed and passed on to the devs - I was in shock.) Compare that to Cerest's good faith effort to answer whines, trolls, and generally act as a liason to a set of devs that frankly don't care one whit about customer communication and you can't but compliment her on her efforts. Maybe she's not perfect but I can count 20 or so times where EE players have gotten answers on threads here that they haven't on EE.

I don't know enough about CSRs in game on the NA server, but I do think those who think the grass is greener should also look at the threads posted after the last weeklong event. The posts on the EE board generally panned the event team's conduct, and the event team on the EE server lagged far,far behind the NA server in posting hints.

Yes, in recent weeks Lawrence has stepped it up, and I strongly appreciate him finally getting around to getting a thread together to pass on to the devs. But if you have a problem with the NA CSRs for other issues, comparing Cerest to Lawrence isn't the way to do it. IMHO, Jolt has a long, long way to go to match up to the communication provided on the NA server.

The grass is always greener on the other side

usinuk wrote:While I normally avoid posting on NA-server-specific threads given I play on the EE server, this one begs a response.

The premise for Cerest-bashing - that the EE server gets superior and more timely information - is just wrong. In fact, until very recently it's been dead opposite. In general, until very recently EE players have almost universally come over to the NA boards to get any sort of response.

Want proof? Look at the post count by Cerest versus those of Lawrence. Cerest is over double Lawrence's. Want further proof? Start looking at where the majority of those posts come from. Lawrence has been fairly good at answering Technical Support issues. However, when it comes to game issues and bug reports, his postings in the EE General forums have been up until now abysmal. I can count exactly twice that Lawrence has responded to confirm a bug in five months, and his response to any issues brought up by players has usually been silence. (I remember posting a 'wow, Lawrence speaks!' post a month ago when he finally came on to confirm the bug had been confirmed and passed on to the devs - I was in shock.) Compare that to Cerest's good faith effort to answer whines, trolls, and generally act as a liason to a set of devs that frankly don't care one whit about customer communication.

I don't know enough about CSRs in game on the NA server, but I do think those who think the grass is greener should also look at the threads posted after the last weeklong event. The posts on the EE board generally panned the event team's conduct, and the event team on the EE server lagged far,far behind the NA server in posting hints.

Yes, in recent weeks Lawrence has stepped it up, and I strongly appreciate him finally getting around to getting a thread together to pass on to the devs. But if you have a problem with the NA CSRs for other issues, comparing Cerest to Lawrence isn't the way to do it. IMHO, Jolt has a long, long way to go to match up to the communication provided on the NA server.

a liason to a set of devs that frankly don't care one whit about customer communication

HHAHAHAHAHAHA

Its truely universal, atleast now its confirmed on another server, the devs just don't speak.

Oh well, I can't blame them, if I was in there shoes, I wouldn't either.

On a different note

Lay off Cerest, she does what she can.
If you have a problem with that, you know where you can find me.

fadin wrote:Hi everyone,

Unfortunately it seems someone decided to post some information which was not intended to be posted yet. This was to be discussed in a meeting tomorrow as to how we would approach this specific subject, but it seems someone jumped the gun. Those two posts should not be listed anywhere right now. I just hope the information doesn't change between now and the meeting.

We have no intention of chaining someone to a server or community with which they are so verbally and visibly unhappy. Anyone is welcome to cancel their account and move to another server if they feel it would be a different experience. Unfortunately, we cannot transfer your character or account unless it was within one week of registering your account.

Cerest breaks her back daily trying to make sure she has the correct information in a timely manner. She is not interested in posting something fast, if posting it fast means the information is wrong. She is always moving around asking questions and making sure she has the right answers. It has been shown in the past that fast reactions lead to bad results, and she has no interest in making bad results. We work on a 6 hour delay in the U.S. It doesn't excuse us from giving you information, but there may be times we are a little later than the European servers. Cerest isn't hiding information, nor is she being lazy (far from it). You are welcome to browse *all* the forums, and that is why they are there, but bringing a personal fight back isn't attractive to anyone. This isn't a competition for information, it is a team effort.

Have fun out there.

What you are seeing is the result of silence and the growing tendency to respond to direct questions with dodges that have occasionally been somewhat insulting. Almost every single patch so far since retail has had some change that was considered to be incredibly negative, or simply a massive hidden nerf. But despite the constant fear of patches that Nevrax has done a good job of cultivating, the actual changes made generally don't seem to show that there is much if any interest in listening to the community's feedback. Even little things like quests seem to be getting rolled out onto the servers in an often broken and untested state. We see changes where dev time was spent changing the tick down of a DP from 3 days to 20 days "because it was too fast", but in the thread commenting about this change being silly there were folks who hadn't even noticed it was in at all because it was so ungodly slow to begin with. There are changes to the PR where it becomes impossible to harvest due to stealth code changes that were never really tested, they "fix" that and we get nodes that deplete but never respawn until a server reboot. After months of complaints from folks annoyed at getting DP cause they were attacked by a half dozen ragus that are 150 levels below them, there are patch notes saying that we no longer get dp from mobs that don't give exp... but then it's clarified that these mobs that don't give exp are new mobs nobody has heard of that never give exp to anyone of any level.
Open communication does indeed cause conflict when dates slip and features are cut, but at the same time it generates a large amount of good will that will defend and ignore little problems. Not only that, it pacifies that aggression. In AC the dev's posted a ton and participated in a great deal of threads, sometimes this caused flamewars, but generally it kept things from spiraling out of control. In AO the dev's occasionally posted and occasionally had little articles about things going on or describing game systems, Cz the "community dewd" also posted a great deal to the forums. In both games the community saw their feedback being seen and having an effect on how the game unraveled each month.

Here we see silence and say "erm... wtf?" or "ack!" on almost every patch.

The GM's and CSR folks can try as hard as they want, and file as many reports... but as long as nevrax keeps their current policy of silence and doing whatever the hell they want without changes that seem to show any interest in what the community thinks, negativity and handbiting will continue to spiral down out of control.