Your Customer's Trust, Confidence and Loyalty

[Sahdee]

I never quite understood why this is even a valid excuse for this kind of problem. Yes, if this was some glitching or massive lag then maybe it's more fitting of this reasoning, but isn't this problem a little bit on the grander scale of things?

I would certainly have thought that people not being able to play the game is kind of a grand scale problem, yes =]


I'm going to share this here, found it in another thread:



I feel bad for Yoshi, since he really did intend for people to get to play the game and enjoy it, and it's not his face that should be in that gif, but it's still an apt description of the experience a great many of us have had so far =/

The problem, as has been discussed ad infinitum for the last day, is an issue of a lack of hardware, or at least a lack in processing power on the hardware currently available. I've come to the conclusion that they're just stalling right now while they wait for the new hardware to arrive and be imaged, integrated in to the network and start being part of the load balancing. That is reasonably educated guess. Until that happens, we're screwed.

This to me doesn't seem entirely unplausible. In fact, quite the opposite.
Though one would have thought the time since P4 would've been sufficient for them to order improved hardware. Then again, if there wasn't anything suitable stocked nearby, who knows how long it would take to get there.

Mind you, how hard is it to get someone to post something along the lines of:

'We're very sorry to hear about the troubles many of our players have been experiencing. We'd like you to know we've traced the problem to faulty hardware. It's unclear why this problem didn't crop up during the beta.
We ask for your continued patience as we work to solve this issue. Rest assured our highest priority is to get everything back up and running optimally as soon as possible.
Depending on the duration of current malfunctions, we have plans in motion to add extra days of subscription for everyone who purchased the game to make up for lost game time. We appreciate your patience, please follow <insert informational source here> for further updates over the following days.'

Just letting the players know what to expect accounts for so much.
It's when people sit around for hours trying to log in before finding out it's just not going to happen that they get irritable. Even the token hours at the end of P4 made people more annoyed than anything for the simple reason that the extra hours weren't announced until an hour or two before they actually happened, which by then was late night or early morning, depending on which continent people were on.

It's also a basic principle of business that if you treat people well, you'll get loyal customers, and loyal customers will support you even if and when your product or service is found lacking.
On the other hand, if you treat your customers like dirt, even a good product is unlikely to save you.

[ClaireBear]

A bad taste in your mouth? That's completely unfair to everyone who digitally bought it up on PC, maybe even ppl who preordered physically. Call me jealous or whatever, but it bullshit that they're giving a free complementary game AND a refund to PSN ppl. What makes them better than pc ppl at all? And tons of ppl (pretty much like me probably) Own a PS3 but prefers to play MMOs on PC. To hell that they couldn't/won't be able to play EA, I don't call playing like 3 hours for the whole weekend cause of errors, bugs, crashes, maintenance, login limitations or whatever they/the game threw at us, as playing the EA at all.

As I said, jealous or not, this is fu***** bullshit, and yeah i'm pretty pissed, my patience's running low and I really believe they should come with a workaround for all of us who preordered for the EA (as most ppl stated, a moogle cap and a caith sith doll's not enough for a preorder, we're all here for EA)... Even if they just give us like 3~5 days of extra free time without having to pay a sub, at least that's something and it shows that they care even if a little...

Ps: I did love the game, don't misunderstand me, which is btw why the hell i'm complaning so much, cause I just can't play at all... Also, sorry about the 'bad manners' didn't mean to troll or anything, it's just that... wtf?!

No worries. I'm sure a lot of people don't know about the full refund and free complementary game solution for PSN customers unless they followed the forums, had a friend who bought through the PSN store, or read my original post.

And it really was unfair and I previously voiced how unfair it was but people claimed I was dense or being a troll when I said SE should have found a more viable solution so that everyone would benefit at least those who preordered.

[WarBovine]

Just to toss out a little more gas to this already raging inferno one of my mates told me the official launch has been pushed back to the 29th. If this is true then an article I read about SE wanting to go live with a huge demo during an onstage presentation at PAX PRIME on the 30th would make sense. The NDA prevents pretty much any big name reviewer from grading the game due to early access. Theory has it that they have the entire dev team working around the clock to iron out anything that might be a hitch in the PAX PRIME showing so they can get as much publicity as possible while they have a skeleton crew working on bandaiding the servers until the actual dev team can go back to work on the servers. Game goes live for possibly 1 day, no one can put out a review that quick SE picks up massive publicity and we're the ones out 30 to 60 bucks.

Just my little consipracy theory that has way too many little things lining up to be coincidence.

[Noite]

Just to toss out a little more gas to this already raging inferno one of my mates told me the official launch has been pushed back to the 29th. If this is true then an article I read about SE wanting to go live with a huge demo during an onstage presentation at PAX PRIME on the 30th would make sense. The NDA prevents pretty much any big name reviewer from grading the game due to early access. Theory has it that they have the entire dev team working around the clock to iron out anything that might be a hitch in the PAX PRIME showing so they can get as much publicity as possible while they have a skeleton crew working on bandaiding the servers until the actual dev team can go back to work on the servers. Game goes live for possibly 1 day, no one can put out a review that quick SE picks up massive publicity and we're the ones out 30 to 60 bucks.

Just my little consipracy theory that has way too many little things lining up to be coincidence.

The main page now says:

Early Access Period
August 24, 2013 (Saturday), 2:00 a.m. to August 29, 2013 (Thursday), 11:59 p.m. (PDT)

Edit: Also they removed all banners that said 'pre order now, launch date august 27', but the preorder page still says the launch date is 27, wonder for how long that will stay.


You're not so wrong after all.

[Sahdee]

And it really was unfair and I previously voiced how unfair it was but people claimed I was dense or being a troll when I said SE should have found a more viable solution so that everyone would benefit at least those who preordered.

I've come to the conclusion you can't say anything on these forums without being called a troll, a hater, racist, crying, raging or any number of things.

I would suggest you only pay attention to the people who can say what they want to say without name-calling and outright rage.

On a side note, this is approximately how a big chunk of the forum population appear in my head:



Because nothing beats a visual aid =]

Really, there's nothing to be gained by attacking anyone and everyone who simply dares voice their concerns.

If someone wants to complain, I honestly don't see why they shouldn't.
After all, how would SE even know anything was wrong without people telling them?

And btw, that's a basic principle that carries into RL too ;P

[Kouper]

The main page now says:

Early Access Period
August 24, 2013 (Saturday), 2:00 a.m. to August 29, 2013 (Thursday), 11:59 p.m. (PDT)


You're not so wrong after all.

I don't believe they've changed the launch date, just pushed back how much extra free time the early access people get.

Either way it sucks since tuesday is my day off, and being auto sales, end of the month, I'll be working from 7am to 9pm (or later depending on customers) from thursday-saturday and monday. >.<

Sick of this garbage, there's no way they're this surprised by the amount of players connecting in the NA/EU servers, especially since we can easily make characters on JP servers... I think my LS has officially moved to a JP server now.

[ClaireBear]

I guess that answers my question on how confident they were that issues would be resolved by launch day. They are not prepared. Don't know how those two days is going to help them out.

Even if they use the event to cover up any mistakes. They won't be able to escape any questions and concerns asked by the media who are in the know at the event.

If this truly is the tactic of SE then they will lose all credibility as a company. They will be labeled as frauds and whatever remains of their reputation will go up in smoke.

But let's hope this is not the case...

[ClaireBear]

I've come to the conclusion you can't say anything on these forums without being called a troll, a hater, racist, crying, raging or any number of things.

I would suggest you only pay attention to the people who can say what they want to say without name-calling and outright rage.

On a side note, this is approximately how a big chunk of the forum population appear in my head:



Because nothing beats a visual aid =]

Really, there's nothing to be gained by attacking anyone and everyone who simply dares voice their concerns.

If someone wants to complain, I honestly don't see why they shouldn't.
After all, how would SE even know anything was wrong without people telling them?

And btw, that's a basic principle that carries into RL too ;P

Good to learn and to foster whether it be in real life or the Internet. =)

[WaffleWolf]

Is it still not letting people on? I've been doing other stuff so i haven't really kept up with this.

EDIT:
Nevermind, I guess servers cleared up at 1 in the morning PST, but now I'm too tired to play lol

[Noite]

Last I checked, not on my server (Behemoth)... Tried for the whole night, making quick stops to answer in forums/blogs...

Closer I got was a Queue just to get booted off again saying server is full...

JPs are still good, unfortunately... Or maybe not?...