We need better comunication with the Community team

[Ruf]

Work any customer job for a week and you will understand the reason for invalidate/discard/ignore.

Here I'll provide two examples, without naming the company:

(Wireless company)
When you work as the front-line grunt, you often get calls you don't know how to deal with, these fall into two categories, those that you can pass off to escalations and never have to deal with, and those that you will be pushed back on because YOU can solve it. I personally hated calling escalations for anything short of "customer won't talk to me at all", so I rarely talked to anyone in that department. However when I got promoted to that department, good golly, you see the sheer level of incompetence that you're surrounded by. So as I said before, I didn't like sending calls to escalations. Now that I was working Escalations I knew exactly what I could push back on, and guess what, I pushed back on -everything- except "caller won't talk to me", which I would take those calls, tell the caller to work with the representative, they can fix your problem, and if you call back again, all offers are off the table. It's incredibly rare for someone to "need" to escalate except when they deal with someone who is so incompetent to the point of actively screwing up on the call.

So moral of that story, is that just because there is staff, doesn't mean all staff are equal. But trying to escalate past someone just because YOU feel you are more important than someone else, just doesn't work. And yes I worked in the department for the VIP's.

(Auction company)
When you don't have to hear people on the phone, simply read and reply to emails, what is often missing is the tone. I'm told MY tone comes off impersonal when I free-form an email, but you're not allowed to glamour up a business email with emotes, so instead I macro'd the most boringest form emails ever. When I was moved to the IP protection department, I wasn't allowed to send anything but the legal-approved form emails. You were not allowed to tell people who had listings taking down for being counterfeit why they were taken down. When an big IP company reported thousands of listings, they come down, no if-ands-or-buts.

But what do people think? They think they're being singled out, that they're a victim, that they are being personally harassed by YOU, and so forth. So what tends to happen is the most egregiously hostile emails... get left in the inbox for someone else to deal with. At the beginning of your shift, everyone cherry-picks the emails that they can do the fastest, leaving the dozens or so, often profanity laced emails about how they livelihood is being ruined by you personally. Nobody wants to reply to those, because they generate another twenty emails from the same person, all addressed to each representative they previously interacted with, fishing for that one person who will not check the records on the account and just do what they asked without question. So this one guy, got whacked for counterfeits one day in one country by a report from another country, and the dumpster fire that ensued involved him emailing every person he ever contacted at the company, all the way up to the office of the president, faxes to every fax number the company had, and so forth. The unofficial unwritten policy to dealing with THAT guy was delete without response. Because any response, results in costing the company thousands of dollars in time cleaning up the fire.


It is people like that, why corporations have a "thank you, no response will be forthcoming" by default. It lets them off the hook for poor customer service, because certain people abuse customer service, and they are just people, they are not your punching bag for all your misgivings with the company. With IP infringement, bugs, and security issues, often no response is the correct response because acknowledgement admits liability.

Which to go back on topic here, Square-Enix has a customer service problem, it goes back at least as far back to V1.0 beta, if not further back to FFXI. V1.0 should, quite literately never have been released, and every game SE has released for the PC since, has been something of an arrogant "people will buy it, no matter how buggy it is, it has Square-Enix on the label", but perhaps they have not realized how much they lose in positive PR or customer loyalty by not fixing or addressing issues in a timely manner.

But it needs to be said again, NA customers feel entitled to a customer service experience that is impossible. If every issue could be addressed instead of ignored, there would be a lot of duplicate, if not inconsistent answers from different staff over time, and as we've seen time and time again on the GD forum, people are not nice when they feel they are being personally slighted. You know, instead of the company just doing business. The customer is not an idiot, but continue to treat them as such, and they will tell others how they were treated, and it's very hard to right a wrong after it gets onto social media. MMO's, and Games in general is not a captive audience. There is always something else people are more willing to play, and they stick to your company's game because of sunk costs, or their friends are here. If your company manages to piss off enough of those friends, they will go somewhere, and the people who spend the most amount of money on your game will leave with them.


TL;DNR version: Square-Enix needs to address things that are being said in the forums, like once a week just to show they're listening, and not merely letting things blow up uncontrolled. There is no reason for 15 different threads about the stupid app.

You got good arguments

[EmmaVirgin]

that here is still no text of someone from se says to me that they dont give a cookie about us. at that means to me that they think: shut up , pay your sub , play or leave and play something else.

[tidas341]

You know I wish people would take people serious! Rather make comments that seem rude!! I think they could put subtitles in all languages!! It would make communication alot better for all!!

[Alleo]

You know I wish people would take people serious! Rather make comments that seem rude!! I think they could put subtitles in all languages!! It would make communication alot better for all!!

It strange that some do seem to hold some grudge against a person even if they say they dont..yes some might be a bit more negative about the game but honestly this thread is important because they do lack in communication so any attacks are just totally uncalled for.

Another problem that I have about the lack of communication: Before we had at least a chance to see if the fan translation was right (even if the official still only translated some things and not all important informations). Now we need to wait for at least a week for something official while we have to take those fan translations as fact. They are not without fault and thus it could be that we are speculating on wrong information..Do they want us to wait a week or longer until we are allowed to have an opinion? Do they want to take the risk with false information and people being angry at them for the wrong reasons?

[EmmaVirgin]

im rly disappointed.
i posted in the german forum 2 screenshots with a playerlist and a fc. a 73 bots strong fc!
i also reported them ingame. 12 hours later i took a look into the forum and what did i see?....uhm well, nothing. the bot company is still at the grind and the thread is wordless deleted.

gg SE. this is how community's work.

[Dustytome]

im rly disappointed.
i posted in the german forum 2 screenshots with a playerlist and a fc. a 73 bots strong fc!
i also reported them ingame. 12 hours later i took a look into the forum and what did i see?....uhm well, nothing. the bot company is still at the grind and the thread is wordless deleted.

gg SE. this is how community's work.

SE do not like anything being posted with names as it may lead to harassment of a player, even if it's absolutely obvious it's a bot. If you want to try reporting them directly to the STF you can do so using the drop down at the bottom of this page (assuming EU account, but I think they all go to the same place anyway) and you can include a link to your screenshot there. For the gibberish names there's likely a overly slow automated process getting rid of them in batches.

[Vstarstruck]

https://gamerescape.com/2016/11/15/f...-fan-festival/

F: It will change gear progression all together.

Y: It is the second expansion pack, and if we were to do the same thing all over again, a lot of people would get tired of it. Like I said earlier, the base design of FFXIV will not change. It’s a game made for this age, but that’s exactly why even if it were to change in the future to fit the future trends, it won’t return to the past. And even if a past trend were to become a modern trend, it still must include a “modern vibe” to it. It is not negating the past, but rather extracting the interesting elements, and inviting players who like them. That’s the product we are aiming for.

So my question with pointing that out here is, do they realize they just copied HW and reskinned it for SB? Why are they still doing the same thing, despite stating they are aware of doing the same thing will tire people?

[Kuroka]

im rly disappointed.
i posted in the german forum 2 screenshots with a playerlist and a fc. a 73 bots strong fc!
i also reported them ingame. 12 hours later i took a look into the forum and what did i see?....uhm well, nothing. the bot company is still at the grind and the thread is wordless deleted.

gg SE. this is how community's work.

See i did similiar and that and cursing over ignored bots with NO ONE directly offended got me a 10 day ban... so yeah... good work <3

[Vaer]

https://gamerescape.com/2016/11/15/f...-fan-festival/

So my question with pointing that out here is, do they realize they just copied HW and reskinned it for SB? Why are they still doing the same thing, despite stating they are aware of doing the same thing will tire people?

TBH the part where it says "the base design of FFXIV will not change" is probably the ilvl, tomestone, dungeon, MSQ, raid formula, they are mentioning. They know they are doing it, and they acknowledge it right in the statement. I presume they keep doing the same thing because it sells. Until people stop buying it they have little reason to change anything.

He's saying if they change the core of the game it will because a breakthrough happens right now in the genre but it won't return completely to something like EQ/FFXI 2004.

The last half of that statement sounds like Eureka. "Past Trend" = grinding mobs/time consuming/exp loss, "Modern Vibe" = Public Events/FATEs/WQs.

The context for the answer is being able to upgrade armor in Eureka and possibly the zodiac/anima weapons (I think the "people will get tired of it" = grinding old content for the third time for relic). Also in the interview he says Eureka isn't for everyone.

Y: We don’t. Up until now, in the theme park called FFXIV land, we went to various attractions through the Zodiac and Anima Weapon quest lines, but I think a lot of people are getting tired of that system.

Honestly this interview is so old (7 months before SB launch) by the time Eureka released they must have gone through a bunch of prototypes and scrapped things since it got delayed.

[KageTokage]

The lack of two-way communication when it comes to reporting cheaters is the thing that irks me the most, because it makes getting them banned a total crapshoot when you can't know why they're repeatedly being overlooked.

For all I know, I could just be missing one key detail in my reports that prevents them from being actionable.

I don't know why they don't just give the GM team authority in these matters because you can actually communicate with them to a degree you'd expect from a paid MMO.