high lvl pulling mobs on low level.. Am i a whiner?

[Canto]

Originally posted by Kuroshio

However, Sony Online Entertainment and their Customer Support Representattives are responsible for the creation and enforcement of Policy in those games. Same goes for Turbine/Microsoft

Wow if this is the case then all these games must be screwed up.

Rest assured that this model does not exist in very many industries. Guess it's a cost saving measure letting less expensive labor have this type of function.

In traditional business, this would be the equivalent of letting human resources make executive decisions.

[Canto]

Originally posted by Jaesic


As to your (Sanskrit) comments about the problems with the game being Cz's/CS flaws... he said they are the authority on the rules and their enforcement, he never said they are the ultimate authority on the game as a whole.

Point taken.

[Kuro]

Originally posted by Jaesic


...
Designers and programmers aren't paid enough have to deal with people constantly attacking their work (neither are CS people really, but they can at least distance themselves from it because its not their own work they are defending). And if they are spending time dealing with people like you attacking them, they're not doing what we ARE paying them for... and thats providing new material, fixing old problems, and so forth.

Just a note:
Most the programmers and designers I've met are singularly brilliant individuals when it came to coding. That doesn't mean they werre suited to deal with the various personalities and conflicts that are found in this type of environment. They've spent their careers (and in some cases, most of their lives) dealing with numbers and compilers. Not people. That's where Customer Service people enter the picture.

In fact some of those same brilliant programmers and designers I've met have enough personality quirks to make a person seriously consider having them committed. My company's web designer will only converse in Scooby Doo (I wish I was kidding but he will only speak to people like he's Scooby Doo)

[Jaesic]

Originally posted by Kuroshio


Just a note:
Most the programmers and designers I've met are singularly brilliant individuals when it came to coding. That doesn't mean they werre suited to deal with the various personalities and conflicts that are found in this type of environment. They've spent their careers (and in some cases, most of their lives) dealing with numbers and compilers. Not people. That's where Customer Service people enter the picture.

In fact some of those same brilliant programmers and designers I've met have enough personality quirks to make a person seriously consider having them committed. My company's web designer will only converse in Scooby Doo (I wish I was kidding but he will only speak to people like he's Scooby Doo)

He's probably a pretty impressive web designer though, eh?

And I agree completely with your first paragraph...

[Kuro]

Originally posted by Jaesic


He's probably a pretty impressive web designer though, eh?

And I agree completely with your first paragraph...

He's fantastic. And all I have to do is force myself to think like an 8 year old in order to understand a fracking word he says

[Jynne]

Rhut rhoh, Rhaggy. Roh rhore Rhooby Rhacks!

[Canto]

Not being in the software industry, was not aware that such important functions as playtesting and implementation was left to the governance of "customer service." This explains so much about why singularly brilliant pieces of work are introduced and then supported so badly in the marketplace. It also puts in the consumers' faces that the there is not enough competition in this industry. The first product to truly break this market open will have a separate "gameplay" department that makes all executive decisions with respect to the "rules of the game" and will be staffed competitively with the other departments.

[Kuro]

Originally posted by Sanskrit
Not being in the software industry, was not aware that such important functions as playtesting and implementation was left to the governance of "customer service." This explains so much about why singularly brilliant pieces of work are introduced and then supported so badly in the marketplace. It also puts in the consumers' faces that the there is not enough competition in this industry. The first product to truly break this market open will have a separate "gameplay" department that makes all executive decisions with respect to the "rules of the game" and will be staffed competitively with the other departments.

This is a programmer

A small excerpt excerpt:

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. I am the law!

Do you want him dealing with issues such as Rules of Conduct and disruption resolution? Especially in a game you pay for?

And I assure you, this wasn't written in jest. I was a mud coder for a long time as well. The favorite feature I ever coded? A button in my workroom that instantly spawned 10 wandering, agro super mobs in the areas I coded. It would also turn on the listening devices I had added to every room and pipe them into my workroom. Just so I could hear the "WTF?!?" from the players.

Other personal favorites:

• The elephant launcher (did a mudwide shout of a flying elephant landing on a player)
• The player head shrinker (changed your 'say' text so you spoke an tinny voice and changed your appearance so you'd be "Sanskrit with a shrunken head")
• The mud nukers (parsed the current object list, loaded every player object into an array, did a mudwide shout about the coming apocalypse, called destruct() on every object in the array).
• The phantom gnome (followed a player around, constantly taking anything they said and repeating it in reverse order)
• The semi automatic snowball launcher (fired snowballs that actually tracked a target through rooms and smashed into them, filling their inventory with snowballs)

Like I said, personality quirks

[Jaesic]

Originally posted by Kuroshio


The semi automatic snowball launcher (fired snowballs that actually tracked a target through rooms and smashed into them, filling their inventory with snowballs)

Like I said, personality quirks

This one isn't odd... it has a ton of practical uses.

[Jaesic]

Originally posted by Sanskrit
Not being in the software industry, was not aware that such important functions as playtesting and implementation was left to the governance of "customer service." This explains so much about why singularly brilliant pieces of work are introduced and then supported so badly in the marketplace. It also puts in the consumers' faces that the there is not enough competition in this industry. The first product to truly break this market open will have a separate "gameplay" department that makes all executive decisions with respect to the "rules of the game" and will be staffed competitively with the other departments.

The problem with this is that gamers can't afford 'competition' in the sort of way you are suggesting. Software companies like Adobe are able to produce a highly refined piece of software that would meet the sort of requirements that you are suggesting... however, they do so at a cost that the standard gamer would never be willing to pay. Assuming you could get investors to back the idea long enough to make it to release.

[Canto]

I would be willing to pay $25 a month for a well-designed game with quality support; pay $45 a month for cable as it is. I know lots of people who pay $150 per month for cable television (if you include the porn channels). Also believe the price of running the game will decrease as the price of technology continues to decline.

[Snuble]

Adobe What Quality software? The ones I've seen (and yes I do see them in the environment that they where ment to be used ), messes up any piece of hardware in no time *sigh*

[Kuro]

Originally posted by Sanskrit
I would be willing to pay $25 a month for a well-designed game with quality support; pay $45 a month for cable as it is. I know lots of people who pay $150 per month for cable television (if you include the porn channels). Also believe the price of running the game will decrease as the price of technology continues to decline.

Actually I missed something in your original post. You said

Not being in the software industry, was not aware that such important functions as playtesting and implementation was left to the governance of "customer service."

Who said Customer Service governed those? I said Verant was responsible for the programming of EQ and SWG while SOE is responsible for the customer service and policy covering conduct in those games. Play testing and implementatation falls under programming. The same goes for Turbine's relationship with Microsoft. Microsoft may employ good programmers, but they wouldn't know much about the code inside AC and AC2 because they didn't program the million lines of code that makes up that beast.

I don't know if you've paid much attention to the Test Server forums, but that's one of the places Cz is the least active. The Funcom representatives that are more active there are developers, like Znore and Blackmane. And PQA, like Nizno. I play on the test dimension on occasion. I've never seen nor heard Cz there. But I've heard Znore, Blackmane, and Enno on the global channel there many times. Especially during a patch.

[Kuro]

Originally posted by Snublefot
Adobe What Quality software? The ones I've seen (and yes I do see them in the environment that they where ment to be used ), messes up any piece of hardware in no time *sigh*

Thanks to Adobe Photoshop 7, I blew 4 hours trying to figure out why the alpha channel wasn't rendering correctly when I saved a pic in targa format. Despite having done it many times before, I was doubting myself. What was the reason?

A bug in the software never saved the alpha channel when exporting to targa format.

How did I find out? By searching at Google, not Adobe, for information

[Springygirl]

Originally posted by Blackwing


yes.

bannable offense and good riddance.

w3rd

[Jaesic]

Originally posted by Snublefot
Adobe What Quality software? The ones I've seen (and yes I do see them in the environment that they where ment to be used ), messes up any piece of hardware in no time *sigh*

lol... ok... bad example