Letter from the Producer LIVE Part X: Will the netcode issue be honestly addressed?

[Arcari]

Well technically we waited since 1.0... 1.0 beta for me... lol so month/two wouldn't hurt lol, but I know that's not realistic at this point.

Indeed lol. Hey, did you play FFXI around the time Japan had that terrible earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster, and SE had to shut the game down for what was it...a week? Two weeks? And people lost their goddamned minds over it. Keep in mind, that was over a national disaster, where you would think people would be a tad more understanding, but nope. So I could just imagine people being all like "wtf it'll take them that long to fix this issue, screw this I quit" if that hypothetical situation did happen. XD

Honestly, just acknowledging it's an issue and then either going "we are investigating the cause", "we are working on the fix but it will take some time", or "we do not plan to address it". Any of those would work for me.

As to how long I'm willing to wait (or how long until I quit), that's not really going to be determined by their answer. My patience runs out when either frustration outweighs my fun, or enough of my friends migrate to a new game that I go off and play with them. What it will determine is whether I ever look back on the game or not. If there's hope of it being fixed, I'll check back in to see if that fix has taken place. It's not a lot, I know.. but customer service, which is what that is, does go a long way in keeping customer's long term. I would venture a guess that people would be more willing to check back if they knew for sure that SE at least acknowledged it was something they needed to look into/fix.

See, the bolded part is the forbidden reply that SE cannot say at all costs. I'm not saying you would immediately run off (you seem like a lady of your word for sure), but a quick look around this forum tells me that "we do not have plans to address it" will be the death sentence for a lot of players. I'm pretty sure SE doesn't want to lose their money like that lol. But those first two answers don't seem so appealing either... it could easily just be perceived as "PR crap" like someone around here so kindly put it. I consider myself one of the most optimistic people in the world and even I would have a hard time believing whatever SE had to say about the issue. I don't know, it's kinda sad to think about it that way.

[Sunarie]

See, the bolded part is the forbidden reply that SE cannot say at all costs. I'm not saying you would immediately run off (you seem like a lady of your word for sure), but a quick look around this forum tells me that "we do not have plans to address it" will be the death sentence for a lot of players. I'm pretty sure SE doesn't want to lose their money like that lol. But those first two answers don't seem so appealing either... it could easily just be perceived as "PR crap" like someone around here so kindly put it. I consider myself one of the most optimistic people in the world and even I would have a hard time believing whatever SE had to say about the issue. I don't know, it's kinda sad to think about it that way.

Yeah, I understand that part of it.. I just think saying something (even if it is just PR crap) would be better than nothing. I mean.. that's what the PR department is there for right? I also think if they don't plan on addressing it then it will end up damaging their reputation more for future titles if they keep quiet and pretend it doesn't exist. There have been lots of MMOs, or products, with botched releases that retain customers by how they react to them. As silly as it is to talk about trust between a company and a customer, that bit is important. Customers need to trust that the company will address concerns, especially major concerns. When a company breaks that trust, as SE is doing by remaining utterly silent on the matter, it takes considerably more effort to regain that customer after they leave.

I should probably state that I use to work as a customer service rep for Amazon. So my expectations on customer service, and establishing trust with your customer are exceedingly high.