Request for support analysis of ticket

#1 - Sept. 20, 2013, 9:03 a.m.

Hi folks,

Firstly, support ticket for reference – 130919-001010

Very quickly, I don’t particularly want to discuss specifics in public of this particular support ticket (although I will do if absolutely required) – what I am kindly requesting though please is that you take the overall gist of my support request into consideration and abusive bullying more seriously in future, with a possible view to having such behaviour placed into the realms of being particularly frowned upon and indeed, against the general terms of service signed up too by players using Anet’s services/games.

It is not fair in any way whatsoever, that a minority of abusive bullies can unfairly call out, ostracise and continually abuse completely innocent players within your game and in this case, on one particular server.
So much so that players affected are then forced to transfer to another server (and the costs that go with that) in order to try and continue to enjoy a game they put a lot of effort into and generally, apart from incidents of this nature, get a lot of enjoyment back from the game itself.

I also don’t think your customer support take incidents of this nature seriously enough and the overall impact it can have on those affected and I’d kindly request please that you also consider a review of customer support best practices and show a little more empathy and understanding in any future incidents.

Cheers.

Gaile Gray

#9 - Sept. 20, 2013, 7:40 p.m.

You’ve submitted a ticket and asked for a review in the same day, but I know you’ve already been told this and needn’t hear it again.

What the agent told you in the ticket is accurate: the team can very swiftly address the issues you reported (such as verbal abuse) if you will report it from in the game. We have agents monitoring such reports 24/7/365, and the report/review process is much faster if you’ll use the in-game system.

Saying generic statements in a ticket such as “this morning [somebody did something]” is less easy to research. This morning what time zone? What if that’s another date because of time zones? What server? Are you sure you spelled all names accurately? What was your character name at the time? (Some of these you answered, I’m making general comments here.)

I know you’re unhappy that all the players you reported were not actioned, but according to what you wrote, at least one player was suspended. I’m intrigued that you were able to say “one player was banned for 72 hours.” How do you know that? I don’t see it in the ticket.

As the agent assured you, if they can prove unacceptable behavior, they will take action. Don’t assume that nothing happened just because you’re not told the outcome. And again, if you will avail yourself of the in-game report system, the team will be able to efficiently and quickly remove all offenders in a similar situation.

Gaile Gray

#12 - Sept. 20, 2013, 11:09 p.m.

You are welcome. And thank you for the larger context; I understand the situation better now. Honestly, my first reaction, as a player, would be to report and depart. I’d be off that world and probably that TS server as soon as my little timer allowed it, and I suspect that’s what you intend. In the meantime, we as a company will review the reports and although I hope there isn’t a further incident, we will be watchful for it.

About the reporting system. In my ideal world — both as a player and as a dev — a player would be able to tell us a great deal from within the game. But implementing a system that allows a larger amount of input might be — and I speculate here — both difficult and costly in dev resources and perhaps in game operations themselves. I do not know if an expanded system would result in latency issues, but I do think it might overburden the servers, if on a world map a number of people are inputting large ticket-size amounts of text about everything from misbehavior to offensive names to bug reports. (I will ask a programmer and hope they don’t laugh at the silliness of my speculation there.

The good news is that even a brief report gets to the on-the-spot observers, and from what I’ve seen it’s not often that people who engage in offensive behavior or chat get by with it for any extended period, or even for the one time. If someone gets an undeserved and accidental skip after Report A (because, as you suggest, the observer may not be clear on the nature of the issue ) I’m pretty confident that Report B will reveal that they not only offended in that instance, but were also noted for a possible infraction earlier. The agent will review the aggregate reports — not the numbers, but the details (to prevent “report griefing”) — and will take the appropriate action. Sometimes that action comes within minutes. Sometimes is comes even a day or two later. Don’t worry, the agent isn’t mulling over that one report for a couple of days. But as I said, aggregation of data may result in action which, to the offending player, seems entirely random.

So the player writes (or posts on these forums) to say “I have no idea what I did!” Not that I would ever be skeptical ~ahem~ but one might speculate that ninety percent of the time they know full well what they did, chapter and verse. The remaining ten percent may not associate “that really horrible racist thing I said yesterday” with “the infraction that I earned today.” We let them know, uphold the suspension, and carry on. Or, in the rare case of an error, we immediately reinstate and apologize.

I’m glad you got the apology, and I truly hope your experiences improve in the future.