Getting Things Fixed!

Our experience working with the STO development team has been awesome. They've been extremely responsive to resolving issues reported by players. This actually has a bit of a funny history.

From my years working in MMO CS, I'm used to having processes in place that involve compiling reports for the developers and begging them to get things fixed. So, for STO, I had some crafty workflows in place for escalating things. I figured that each week, we'd meet with the producers and discuss the top 10 absolutely critical things that needed to be fixed. I anticipated going into the meeting and working my hardest to make a case to get even half of them even looked at.

After all this careful preparation, intrepid live producer Dstahl completely blew us out of the water by getting everything fixed, and concluding with "That's it? I know you guys have more things you’d like fixed!"

As a result of that, we've changed our process to focus on a higher volume of issues. It’s great to see the development team so focused on fixing bugs that affect players. We've allocated more resources to CS bug triage (sorting through bugs, finding issues on the forums, publishing known issues in the bug interface, etc).

There are a ton of fixes coming, so keep filing those bug reports with the confidence that they will be escalated. Don't forget to check out Litana's recent activity in the Gameplay Issues forums!

Item restoration

One of the things we've been working really hard at is our ability to restore items. Well, the funny thing is that the ability to restore items is there; that's not a problem at all. The challenge that we're facing is the ability to view historical inventory data. I can restore your MK X Sniper Rifle, no problem, but what I can't prove is that you had one and lost it. Right now, we're limited to looking at real-time data. If you say, "Hey, I had a Tribble, and now I don't," I'm limited to saying, "Yes, you're right, I've confirmed you don't have it anymore!"

Obviously, that's not optimal, so the CS team is working with the programmers to try and figure out crafty methods of tracking down lost items.

Griefing

How do we deal with griefing?

Players who are found griefing accrue account penalties in the same form they would if they were found harassing another player. However, it's not always black and white. We look at a few factors to determine if someone is truly at fault.

First of all, we have to see if the instigation is one-sided. One thing that griefers are always looking for is to elicit a response from the "griefee" (lack for a better term). If the player who is being griefed is freaking out and threatening the griefer, then they are basically encouraging the griefer to continue, and we're not going to intervene. In order for us to take action against a griefer, the griefee needs to be totally innocent: not insulting the griefer, not making threats to get them banned, etc. If you are asking to be picked on, we can't take your side.

If we're going to take action against a griefer, we need to see the following:

• The player who reported the griefing has attempted to resolve the issue on their own by responding maturely with a request to stop.
• The player who reported the griefing has tried to resolve the issue on their own by using the tools available to them, such as change instance, ignore, etc. (These options are context dependent.)
• The player reporting the griefing is not baiting the griefer in chat.

Usually, griefers are only looking for a volatile response from people. If you keep calm about their actions, they usually leave you alone without having to involve a customer service representative. But if someone is really trying to ruin your day, don’t hesitate to ask for help.

Fleet Management

STO has a pretty extensive fleet system, and like many other games, fleets operate within their own management structure.

We take a hands-off approach to fleet management. Our expectation is that fleet leaders can set the expectations for behavior within the fleet, and have disciplinary measures available to them via the fleet management tools. If an officer or a leader is unhappy with the actions taken by a fleet member, they are perfectly welcome to remove the player from their fleet.

In the GM department, we actually do receive a fair amount of tickets where mismanaged fleets are asking for GMs to reverse the damages. Unfortunately that's outside the scope of things we can help with. Here are the two primary examples:

1. A member of a fleet will be granted access to the bank, and will remove more items than the fleet leader would have preferred. From our perspective, the player did not violate any policies, as the leader is responsible for setting the daily bank withdrawal limits.
2. This one is the ultimate /facepalm. All fleet leaders (you can have as many as you like) effectively have super-admin access over their fleet, including the ability to demote other leaders. It's not uncommon that we'll see a dispute between two leaders end with one demoting or kicking the other. Not a violation, from the GM perspective. Giving someone leadership effectively gives them the right to take away your leadership if they so choose.

Our goal is to allow fleet leaders to manage their fleets the way they want, knowing that we won't interfere with their business.

That's some of the stuff we've been seeing lately. We’ll have more updates for you pretty soon, but I just wanted to check in and give everyone a brief window into life in the customer service department.