Jump to content

Sign in to follow this  
Tiberius_theron

I don't feel Grapeshot values it's players time, money, or effort put into its products.

Recommended Posts

I don't feel Grapeshot values it's players time, money, or effort put into its products. I've become extremely disenchanted by the way the Developers are starting to handle in-game issues, glitches, and bugs. We have players quitting by the thousands, and leaving the game with negative reviews daily. The need for more in-game GM support has become increasingly apparent. Just this morning a friend tried to merge his company, game bugs out and recruits him instead of merging the companies. Now he's SOL. No access to his ships, tames, etc. We all submit tickets to the GMs and PM Amber, Dollie, and Jat on Discord to make them aware of this game breaking bug.

Instead of getting a quick reply of we'll get this prioritized with a GM and get it fixed asap. We get this nonsense.

 

Quote

 

[9:35 AM]Dollie:

I'm sure one of our GM's will address it soon.

 

 

Last week we lost a Brig to a bug where the ship just stopped in the middle of the ocean with full wind to SOTD. When we report it....we get this BS.

 

Quote

 

9:01 AM]Jat:

Sure, that makes sense but we're a small team and have to allocate our resources accordingly, we believe the best way to do so is through technical solutions and resolving bugs/exploits rather than GMs

[9:01 AM]Jat:

GMs may provide more immediate gratification, but it's our development team that is going to fix the issues with our game in the long term

 

 
 

 

^ In other words your time invested into the game means nothing to Jat or Grapeshot at the end of the day. PvP is PvP. But when it comes to game breaking bugs on Grapeshots part, the team can and should be addressing those issues the same day. Grapeshot shouldn't be allowed to call Atlas a MMO if they aren't willing to put in the effort to have proper MMO customer Service GM's.

It wouldn't be so bad if the Grapeshot team answered all tickets in a timely manner, however it takes days, or weeks to get a simple reply. Which is unprofessional from a customer service point of view, and leaves players feeling worthless. So they leave the game. While I understand the game is EA, it seems to be the common thing to lean on when things go south, and Grapeshot just doesn't want to put further investment into its team manpower to properly address issues.

Instead, they'd rather lose players.

Edited by Tiberius_theron
  • Like 2
  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Not surprising. This is just one of the many reasons I play on a server that does have an active GM (an unofficial server). This is not likely to change until the game is released, and possibly not even then.

Just want to clarify, I think what they told you is fairly accurate (still sucks for you though). They do not have the resources to have enough GMs to help with problems like yours. This is the way ARK is also handled (similar, some say same company), which is why I'm not at all surprised.

Edited by wildbill
  • Like 2
  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This is just hilarious. I'm mad GrapeShot doesn't value my time, as I waste my time complaining about bugs I have already reported in a forum about an EA game where I literally go to waste my time. 

 

FYI, we are not players. We are testers. Don't like losing stuff to bugs, come back after launch.

  • Like 1
  • Haha 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

@Wh33ls

@Nohealz

The EA went out of the window when Grapeshot marketed Atlas as an MMO. When you mass market your game as an MMO, that also implies MMO level customer service. "It's EA so we don't deal with it", it's the NUMBER ONE REASON this game tanked from the beginning and has so many negative reviews.
You fanboys sucking the butthole of Grapeshot are explicitly the biggest problem all games have. You add nothing constructive to any situation and only serve to further shady big corp. behaviors.

Edited by Tiberius_theron

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This thread raises a legitimate point. Wildshot's™ track record with customer support is not what one might call confidence inspiring when one looks at Ark, and by contrast that was a game where they could offload a lot of the support function onto private server owners (Last time I played Ark, it was as one of those private server owners and private servers outnumbered officials by a factor of 45 to 1). Atlas as an MMO centered around a handful of vast official servers expected to support the bulk of the game's population will not be able to get away with such lackluster support levels.  If support response times are lackluster when the playerbase is shrinking during Early Access ( a period where one would expect a conscientious developer to provide increased support staff owing to higher instances of bugs and glitches), that does not bode well for what kind of support one might expect further down the road if playerbase and activity levels rise.

Further GrapeCard cannot plausibly plead poverty the way many independant studios can when trying to get their new game off the ground. Stiglietz and Co. sitting on a rather sizeable pile of cash generated from Ark's out of nowhere runaway success for 3 years should be able to afford greater customer service staffing than just about anything short of a AAA studio. 

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
9 minutes ago, Wh33ls said:

This is just hilarious. I'm mad GrapeShot doesn't value my time, as I waste my time complaining about bugs I have already reported in a forum about an EA game where I literally go to waste my time. 

 

FYI, we are not players. We are testers. Don't like losing stuff to bugs, come back after launch.

The minute one pays for a product, one has the right to expect to be treated like a customer. Testers in free alpha and beta trials of times gone by could not reasonably expect support. In a paid EA, one should certainly expect to encounter bugs and glitches, but to say that one should expect unprofessional levels of CS response times just because it is EA is ignoring the difference between free trials and paid. If Wildshot™ does not want to provide reasonable levels of CS support during EA, let them make EA free. They are not broke, sitting on 3 years of Top 10 steam levels of revenue from Ark. Failing to provide professional levels of CS in a paid product, EA or no, is not excusable.

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
39 minutes ago, Tiberius_theron said:

@Wh33ls

@Nohealz

The EA went out of the window when Grapeshot marketed Atlas as an MMO. When you mass market your game as an MMO, that also implies MMO level customer service. "It's EA so we don't deal with it", it's the NUMBER ONE REASON this game tanked from the beginning and has so many negative reviews.
You fanboys sucking the butthole of Grapeshot are explicitly the biggest problem all games have. You add nothing constructive to any situation and only serve to further shady big corp. behaviors.

So by your logic, if a game is an MMO, it can't have an EA beta testing phase. Better tell all the MMO's on this list they are doing it wrong https://www.mmogames.com/mmo-beta-list/. Constructive? How about we call each other names instead?

 

34 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

The minute one pays for a product, one has the right to expect to be treated like a customer. Testers in free alpha and beta trials of times gone by could not reasonably expect support. In a paid EA, one should certainly expect to encounter bugs and glitches, but to say that one should expect unprofessional levels of CS response times just because it is EA is ignoring the difference between free trials and paid. If Wildshot™ does not want to provide reasonable levels of CS support during EA, let them make EA free. They are not broke, sitting on 3 years of Top 10 steam levels of revenue from Ark. Failing to provide professional levels of CS in a paid product, EA or no, is not excusable.

They had support, Jat replied and explained their reasoning for not giving back individual items. They could have a team of 1,000 GM's giving back all the items people "lost" in game due to bugs and nothing would would ever get fixed. So instead, they are fixing the bugs that cause the problems. 

[9:01 AM]JAT:

GMs may provide more immediate gratification, but it's our development team that is going to fix the issues with our game in the long term

  • Haha 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I just want to add a quick note about the thread title while I’m thinking about it. Notice how the OP used the phrase “I don’t feel...” This is a better way to title an editorial thread because the difference between using it and not is the difference between stating something you know for certain (your own feelings), and conjecturing about things you probably don’t know for sure (developer attitude, intent, mindset, etc.) It might not seem like much, but it is the difference between far minded statements and largely unsupportable allegations.

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
7 minutes ago, Wh33ls said:

They had support, Jat replied and explained their reasoning for not giving back individual items. They could have a team of 1,000 GM's giving back all the items people "lost" in game due to bugs and nothing would would ever get fixed. So instead, they are fixing the bugs that cause the problems. 

[9:01 AM]JAT:

GMs may provide more immediate gratification, but it's our development team that is going to fix the issues with our game in the long term

If I went out and purchased a new car and 2 days later the transmission fell out, I'd be back at the dealership pronto. If the car manufacturer told me, "We're sorry but we're not going to replace your transmission because we aren't spending money on mechanics, we're spending it on engineers to keep the transmission from falling out in the first place,"..... I'd go home and start cleaning the guns.

Fixing a busted transmission in a new car is not immediate gratification, it's called a responsibility to your customers.

Edited by Jean Lafitte
  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
  • Confused 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Just now, Jean Lafitte said:

If I went out and purchased a new car and 2 days later the transmission fell out, I'd be back at the dealership pronto. If the car manufacturer told me, "We're sorry but we're not going to replace your transmission because we aren't spending money on mechanics, we're spending it on engineers to keep the transmission from falling out in the first place,"..... I'd go home and start cleaning the guns.

Would you have bought that new car if at the time of purchase they told you "This car is not completely finished, there will be unknown mechanical issues that will cause failure"?

 

  • Thanks 1
  • Haha 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 minutes ago, Wh33ls said:

So by your logic, if a game is an MMO, it can't have an EA beta testing phase. Better tell all the MMO's on this list they are doing it wrong https://www.mmogames.com/mmo-beta-list/. Constructive? How about we call each other names instead?

 

They had support, Jat replied and explained their reasoning for not giving back individual items. They could have a team of 1,000 GM's giving back all the items people "lost" in game due to bugs and nothing would would ever get fixed. So instead, they are fixing the bugs that cause the problems. 

[9:01 AM]JAT:

GMs may provide more immediate gratification, but it's our development team that is going to fix the issues with our game in the long term

Notice how I never argued that GM’s should give back items. My statements were about reasonable levels of CS support or lack therof. Nothing you just said invalidates or changes my statements. Ark had a lousy track record of CS responsiveness and as I explained Atlas’s core differences mean CS responsibilities are less easily offloaded onto private server owners.

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
5 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

Notice how I never argued that GM’s should give back items. My statements were about reasonable levels of CS support or lack therof. Nothing you just said invalidates or changes my statements. Ark had a lousy track record of CS responsiveness and as I explained Atlas’s core differences mean CS responsibilities are less easily offloaded onto private server owners.

Then what is a reasonable level of customer service? In the first example he said, "just this morning", and he has already posted Dollies reply. That seems like a pretty quick response time. 

  • Haha 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 minute ago, Wh33ls said:

Would you have bought that new car if at the time of purchase they told you "This car is not completely finished, there will be unknown mechanical issues that will cause failure"?

 

The car analogy is a poor fit because no one sells cars still being designed to the public. Let me offer a different analogy instead. Test pilots are warned and fully aware of the risks associated with flying test designs, they accept those risks much like any player should accept EA will have bugs. But try telling the test pilot that if he crashes medical assistance may be slow in arriving “because it’s just a test design, it’s not a full plane yet,” and see how many pilots get in the cockpit.

  • Thanks 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 minute ago, boomervoncannon said:

The car analogy is a poor fit because no one sells cars still being designed to the public. Let me offer a different analogy instead. Test pilots are warned and fully aware of the risks associated with flying test designs, they accept those risks much like any player should accept EA will have bugs. But try telling the test pilot that if he crashes medical assistance may be slow in arriving “because it’s just a test design, it’s not a full plane yet,” and see how many pilots get in the cockpit.

Apples and oranges. I'm in medical need vs I lost muh items. 

  • Haha 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Just now, Wh33ls said:

Would you have bought that new car if at the time of purchase they told you "This car is not completely finished, there will be unknown mechanical issues that will cause failure"?

 

Every new car has that same problem right now. There have been millions and millions of vehicles recalled due to design flaws. It's a given that both automobiles and games will have their design flaws. Refusing to assist a customer as result of these design flaws is not how a successful business is operated. There's an old saying in business, "A happy customer will tell a friend. An angry customer will tell 10 friends." Allow me to give you proof of this:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/834910/ATLAS/

A poorly designed product is not an excuse for lousy customer service, whether you tell the customer it may be flawed or not.

  • Thanks 1
  • Confused 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 minutes ago, Wh33ls said:

Then what is a reasonable level of customer service? In the first example he said, "just this morning", and he has already posted Dollies reply. That seems like a pretty quick response time. 

Ummm, reread the Op’s post. Dollie’s response didn’t resolve the issue, merely advised that at some unspecified point in the future a GM would address it. No disrespect to Dollie but this isn’t a true response unless you consider hearing “please continue to hold, your call is important to us” to be a response.

  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
12 minutes ago, Wh33ls said:

Apples and oranges. I'm in medical need vs I lost muh items. 

Your response is a red herring because I am not attempting to equate the level of seriousness of the two, merely illustrate by analogy the unacceptable ness of lackluster support. I strongly suspect you are deliberately  pretending to miss the point in order to avoid confronting the soundness of the underlying argument.

Edited by boomervoncannon
  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
16 minutes ago, Jean Lafitte said:

Every new car has that same problem right now. There have been millions and millions of vehicles recalled due to design flaws. It's a given that both automobiles and games will have their design flaws. Refusing to assist a customer as result of these design flaws is not how a successful business is operated. There's an old saying in business, "A happy customer will tell a friend. An angry customer will tell 10 friends." Allow me to give you proof of this:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/834910/ATLAS/

A poorly designed product is not an excuse for lousy customer service, whether you tell the customer it may be flawed or not.

So you walk into the dealership and the service tech tells you. Ok, you have a problem with your car, a mechanic will fix it shortly. Do you go straight to yelp and flame the dealership for the service tech not fixing your issue and passing it on to someone who has the tools to fix it?. 

 

15 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

Ummm, reread the Op’s post. Dollie’s response didn’t resolve the issue, merely advised that at some unspecified point in the future a GM would address it. No disrespect to Dollie but this isn’t a true response unless you consider hearing “please continue to hold, your call is important to us” to be a response.

I didn't say she resolved it, I said she responded. I'm fine hearing that if I am getting transferred to someone who can fix my problem. Dollie's job is not* GM or dev, so I doubt she has the ability to fix in game problems. 

7 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

Your response is a red herring because I am not attempting to equate the level of seriousness of the two, merely illustrate by analogy the unacceptable ness of lackluster support. I strongly suspect you are deliberating pretending to miss the point in order to avoid confronting the soundness of the underlying point.

The seriousness is exactly what invalidates the analogy. I would not hop into a test plane (one that is guaranteed to crash) if I would not receive immediate medical treatment upon the inevitable crash, however I did buy an EA game that has bugs that will be fixed sometime. 

Edited by Wh33ls
  • Haha 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
3 hours ago, Tiberius_theron said:

Grapeshot shouldn't be allowed to call Atlas a MMO if they aren't willing to put in the effort to have proper MMO customer Service GM's.

It not really a MMO. The MMO tag is basically meaninglessness. Its a pirate survival sandbox. Servers aren't supported by active GM's and will never be. Unless you pick unofficial servers with good admins.

  • Haha 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
16 minutes ago, Wh33ls said:

So you walk into the dealership and the service tech tells you. Ok, you have a problem with your car, a mechanic will fix it shortly. Do you go straight to yelp and flame the dealership for the service tech not fixing your issue and passing it on to someone who has the tools to fix it?. 

If I walked into a car dealership as a result of a flawed car design and the secretary, not the service tech, pointed to a sign on the wall...

We're too cheap to hire enough mechanics.
Please consider yourself a pedestrian
for the next two weeks.

You're damn straight I'd flame. Hell, I'd light a bonfire.

__________________________________________

If I woke up one morning, logged into Atlas and found this in my harbor:

...and was then told, "Sorry, we don't have enough GM's to fix this for at least 2 weeks. But we are hiring dev's to prevent it."

You're damn straight I'd flame. I'd light a bonfire under that one too!

Edited by Jean Lafitte
  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, boomervoncannon said:

This thread raises a legitimate point. Wildshot's™ track record with customer support is not what one might call confidence inspiring when one looks at Ark, and by contrast that was a game where they could offload a lot of the support function onto private server owners (Last time I played Ark, it was as one of those private server owners and private servers outnumbered officials by a factor of 45 to 1). Atlas as an MMO centered around a handful of vast official servers expected to support the bulk of the game's population will not be able to get away with such lackluster support levels.  If support response times are lackluster when the playerbase is shrinking during Early Access ( a period where one would expect a conscientious developer to provide increased support staff owing to higher instances of bugs and glitches), that does not bode well for what kind of support one might expect further down the road if playerbase and activity levels rise.

I wonder what the current ratio of private to official is? I don't know how to find this number, so I have to guess that at least twice as many play private servers. We can assume that plan is provide enough official servers for the MMO version of the game, but that may not be how it actually will work. They don't make money from the servers, just from selling the game, so whatever sells the game would make the most sense for Grapeshot.

I think you need to look at this as what would a reasonable person expect. Lets call that reasonable person a well informed person. If you found the game in the first week, the chances are pretty high you played ARK. If you found it recently and started playing, you had to have seen the steam reviews.

So would a reasonable person knowing the reputation of ARK and having read the reviews expect that they would get good GM support in game? I don't see how.

Would everyone like good support? Sure. 

So what is this thread about? Just complaining about not having something no reasonable person would expect to get.

  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 minutes ago, Wh33ls said:

So you walk into the dealership and the service tech tells you. Ok, you have a problem with your car, a mechanic will fix it shortly. Do you go straight to yelp and flame the dealership for the service tech not fixing your issue and passing it on to someone who has the tools to fix it?. 

 

I didn't say she resolved it, I said she responded. I'm fine hearing that if I am getting transferred to someone who can fix my problem. Dollie's job is not* GM or dev, so I doubt she has the ability to fix in game problems. 

The seriousness is exactly what invalidates the analogy. I would not hop into a test plane (one that is guaranteed to crash) if I would not receive immediate medical treatment upon the inevitable crash, however I did buy an EA game that has bugs that will be fixed sometime. 

You are splitting hairs by using the word response when what matters is not response but resolution. Acceptable levels of CS are 10% response time and 90% resolution time. It is nice that Dollie at least let him know they were aware of the issue in a timely manner, but only extraordinarily incompetent levels of CS fail to do this bare minimum. If you consider this a fully acceptable level of CS on its own I pray you’re never the CS rep I get stuck dealing with anywhere.

So fine, you say the seriousness of the analogy invalidates it. *eyeroll* Personally I find that to be a load of hogwash, but for the sake of robbing you of such a lame excuse I’ll play ball. Let’s switch to a less life threatening analogy. You go to a factory outlet store (where retailers sell products which didn’t meet full factory QA inspection for discounted prices) You are fully aware that the shoes you buy there may not be perfect, but they are discounted and the store has a reasonable refund and exchange policy, so you buy a pair at a nice price, take it home, put it on the next day and the tongue on one shoe promptly falls off. The shoe is useless. Not to worry, you take it back to the store for an exchange, only the clerk informs you that despite rows of identical shoes that only the general manager can handle exchanges and he just left for two weeks vacation in Des Moines, you’ll have to come back in a fortnight. 

This would be piss poor CS, and given this companies track record, this is directly analogous to the concern being expressed by the Op, which you seem intent on dismissing on grounds I do not agree are acceptable.

  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
20 minutes ago, Jean Lafitte said:

If I walked into a car dealership as a result of a flawed car design and the secretary, not the service tech, pointed to a sign on the wall...

We're too cheap to hire enough mechanics.
Please consider yourself a pedestrian
for the next two weeks.

You're damn straight I'd flame. Hell, I'd light a bonfire.

__________________________________________

If I woke up one morning, logged into Atlas and found this in my harbor:

...and was then told, "Sorry, we don't have enough GM's to fix this for at least 2 weeks. But we are hiring dev's to prevent it."

You're damn straight I'd flame. I'd light a bonfire under that one too!

In both examples you state hire more people. I'm sorry to say that in the real world there is this thing called limited resources. So if they are going to hire more GM's to deal with your temporary problems they are also going to have to let go of the developers who are coding long term fixes. I myself prefer long term fixes that help everyone playing the game and not just short term fixes like give me my stuff and delete these rafts that help a few people. 

  • Haha 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 minutes ago, wildbill said:

So would a reasonable person knowing the reputation of ARK and having read the reviews expect that they would get good GM support in game? I don't see how.

A reasonable person should expect to receive timely customer support for products they have purchased. When that product is so defective that it is unusable for the purpose it was designed for there should not be weeks of waiting to be given a canned response.  I should not have to spend days researching a gaming company just to find out what their customer support is like. I can go to any car dealership for any manufacturer, purchase a car and expect, and get, reasonable customer support. Why? Because they all know it's good for their business as it improves... watch this... customer relations. 

I have never played Ark and knew nothing of Wildcard prior to this purchase.  Which means, you can just classify me as being totally unreasonable because I expect timely customer support because I paid for this product. That's what I've come to expect from every other game I've played and that's what I expect from this one.

  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
Sign in to follow this  

×
×
  • Create New...