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Thread: Funcom plz tell why Most players have unaceptable pings

  1. #181

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kurt2013 View Post
    Probably not even funcom knows, because of the subscription and f2p model. For example, if you have a game that limits access to people with a monthly sub only, you will know the effects of your doings quite fast (next month). If you have 3 month, 6 and 12 months subs it complicated things (because players are listed as "active sub", while they don't play anymore at all or in worst case spread the news amongst others). Now add third party revenues like the item shop and a f2p access that complicates things even further...

    Then there are people with multiple accounts, groups of friends and whole guilds...if a critical point of annoyed players are reached it can become a snowball effect fast and your population can appear larger or smaller than it really is. That is a good reason to pay some respect to customer feedback and not belittle people as "whining and crying". A company/customer relation is not a onesided favor by the company and if players leave or stop paying (worst case are players NOT leaving, but trolling doom all over global on crom or running pvp amok on fury like certain people) those players save stress, money and time, while the company has to keep struggling.
    Yes, this seems like a difficult challenge. However, this and even more complicated scenarios are routinely dealt with by quantitative methods. Statisticians solved problems like these long ago, and currently have so many models available at their disposal to deal with these scenarios. Any reasonably modern data analysis system (we don't even have to go to expensive Oracle / SAP / SAS solutions) can model data such as you describe and proceed to give you probabilty distributions.

    In other words: What you describe is not a problem for people whose job is to actually analyze data. We've solved it long ago, even before computers, but now that we have powerful computers in place, it's even easier. I don't know how complex and capable Funcom's data analysis tools are, but as long as they aren't stone age, we can safely assume they are capable of modelling and running simulations for the complex data you describe.

  2. #182

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    Times like this must be annoying for volunteer moderators. All time saying follow social guide lines, follow something, delete posts, merge threads, ban people, tell them again to follow social guide lines...

    I feel sorry for them
    They are lucky, because i hardly feel sorry for anyone usually

  3. #183

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rathothis View Post
    That is true (otherwise they are idiots), but it misses the point. Because the fact that Funcom's decision may be rational doesn't mean that its customers shouldn't voice their dissatisfaction. It's actually a luxury for a company to have a qualitative feedback channel like these forums, in most businesses, getting feedback is much more difficult
    We are in complete agreement.

    And indeed, I was not "commanding" people not to complain. Rather, I was informing them (in case they were mistaken in their assumptions) that the change is permanent and will not be reverted even if they complain. That's why I started the post early with "quit now", because if they truly cannot live with the ping, then they have no other choice because complaining certainly won't send the servers back to EU, simply because the servers aren't going back to EU, full stop. Funcom made this quite clear.

    If they still wish to complain even though they realize it won't change a thing, I certainly won't stop them.

    And quite honestly, I really have no problems with those just complaining about ping. I have no feelings about it either way, different strokes for different folks, as the saying goes. What really bothered me were those posts that are complaining and cite made up statistics - 100s or 1000s of players leaving, for example - and then doom and gloom, as if they had more data than Funcom. It's just completely ridiculous, and in case they actually think they would be somehow affecting Funcom's decision making with those posts, I decided to point out the flaw in such a course of action.
    Last edited by aocjv; 17th May 2013 at 17:07.

  4. #184

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    Quote Originally Posted by aocjv View Post
    We are in complete agreement.

    And indeed, I was not "commanding" people not to complain. Rather, I was informing them (in case they were mistaken in their assumptions) that the change is permanent and will not be reverted even if they complain. That's why I started the post early with "quit now", because if they truly cannot live with the ping, then they have no other choice because complaining certainly won't send the servers back to EU, simply because the servers aren't going back to EU, full stop. Funcom made this quite clear.

    If they still wish to complain even though they realize it won't change a thing, I certainly won't stop them.

    And quite honestly, I really have no problems with those just complaining about ping. I have no feelings about it either way, different strokes for different folks, as the saying goes. What really bothered me were those posts that are complaining and cite made up statistics - 100s or 1000s of players leaving, for example - and then doom and gloom, as if they had more data then Funcom. It's just completely ridiculous, and in case they actually think they would be somehow affecting Funcom's decision making with those posts, I decided to point out the flaw in such a course of action.
    Funcom ignoring customer satisfaction. How is that for a business model? You think any company will succeed if you discharge customers feedback, with wrongfully use of statistics, allthough the message stays the same?
    ClengisKhan

    Barbb, Serapha, Yatzi, Pallehysa, Bagpipe

  5. #185

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    My "moo" point - by all means - go vote with your €/$.
    Multiplying posts with threats to quit won't change anything.

  6. #186

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vedmed View Post
    My "moo" point - by all means - go vote with your €/$.
    Multiplying posts with threats to quit won't change anything.
    I voted with my NOK before the servers where moved, because regardless of Funcoms words of promise, i foresaw this would become an issue. So no i havent threatened to quit. Iknow servers will stay wherever they are, but i sure will vent what i exactly think on the matter. And i like to think im entiteled beeing a paying customer since may 17 2008.
    ClengisKhan

    Barbb, Serapha, Yatzi, Pallehysa, Bagpipe

  7. #187

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    It's just people, esp veterans being upset cause this is the first thing we got since 5 months of silence, and it results as a downgrade of gaming experience.

    You know, compared to others mmo, content added in AoC since 1 year is very poor : 1 recycled donjon (aok), 2/3 revamps, and part 1 dragon spine with an unfinished dungeon. And after a sweet long-awaited monthly letter, the very-first action funcom is taking on AoC is reducing the servers to spare more money. We know AoC team have lost the most with Funcom's restructurate (TL not updated since lat feb so the shiny stuff promised in the letter will come to live in mid summer or september), we know TSW have the biggest piece of the cake, and now they continue like that with servers.

    What about tommorow ? What are the other surprises Funcom are wondering to this game ?

    So yea, Funcom must know that many veterans subscribers are now saying "enough". AoC must not pay for TSW failure.

  8. #188

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    Quote Originally Posted by clenghat View Post
    Funcom ignoring customer satisfaction. How is that for a business model? You think any company will succeed if you discharge customers feedback, with wrongfully use of statistics, allthough the message stays the same?
    You over-simplified the scenario (or perhaps your understanding of the situation is really over-simplified, or perhaps your emotions about the current event is clouding your normally astute brilliance) which is why you are leading into a false conclusion.

    The facts that we know are:
    1.) Funcom decided to merge the US and EU servers, and decided on the US due to, in their own words, superior technology.

    That's pretty much it.

    What we don't know are much more: (these are so many I can't list them all, but off the top of my head are the following)
    1.) What's the EU pop vs US pop? Is the difference 10%, less, or more?
    2.) What's the EU income vs US income? Is the difference 10%, less, or more?
    3.) What's the projected population and income for EU and US? Do trend reports indicate a rise or dip in EU players? Do trend reports indicate a rise or dip in US players? What is the slope (positive or negative, as the case may be) of the trend for EU? What is the slope of the trend for US?
    4.) What is Funcom's game plan (vision, mission, thrust)? Will their efforts be focused on maintaining a balance between EU and US customers? Will their efforts be focused on maintaining old vets, or are they leaning more towards increasing the income stream from more casual, new, non-hardcore gamers?
    5.) What were the projected losses and gains from the server move? Have these projections been overcome by actual losses (negative) or have they been surpassed by actual gains (positive)? In other words, how many customers did they expect to lose, versus the customers they expect to gain?


    Do you see a bigger picture now? We are judging Funcom from a position of ignorance (they have tons of data and analysis and constraints; we have, effectively, zero). Customer satisfaction? Perhaps this is all in line. For all we know, their business analysts already knew that a certain % would probably find it unacceptable, but in the long run, a bigger % will be fine with it, and it will result in more new customers and/or better service to customers that chose to stay and to new customers. Or that moving to US will effectively expand their reach into an easier market compared to the reach of their EU servers, or that the simple mechanics of maintenance costs vs projected income dictated that moving out from EU is the only choice.

    There are, in fact, thousands of possible scenarios. If we had Funcom's data, we could cut that down to maybe just a couple of scenarios. But that's the point: we don't have the data, so any statement we make regarding doom and gloom, future direction, consequences, threats, etc, are all lacking merit. Invalid.

    I'm not saying no one should complain, or no one should share their feelings. Be my guest, please. I'm just pointing out that if you are complaining with the hope that they will back down and go back to EU, that's just not in the cards.

    And for those who are inclined to describe the situation in over-simplified terms or using too narrow of a view, I'm just here pointing out that the real world doesn't work that way, and that in the real world, we can complain all we want, but it's statistically unlikely that any of us can actually come to a better decision than Funcom, considering the enormous discrepancy in data available to us vs to Funcom. It's simply ridiculous to think otherwise.

    That's all. I know emotions are riding high because some of you have found this latest change to have affected/destroyed your normal/traditional expectations with regards to AOC gaming. But that's life. I'm just here presenting the way the real world works, not some idealized, over-simplified model.

    Funcom is a business, and is acting like it. It can't please 100% of the people 100% of the time, and it shouldn't even try. That's not the way to earn money. Instead, focus on whichever segment of the market gets you the most money. Often times that means letting go of some customers or some portions of the market, in order to better accommodate a more lucrative segment.

    And that, boys and girls, is why decisions like this happen. It's just simple business mechanics that you'll see everyday in the real world.

  9. #189

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    Quote Originally Posted by aocjv View Post
    1.)

    4.) Lots of people mentioned that the "ping"/latency has made the game "unplayable" and "not the same game anymore that I loved". Ergo, they don't love it anymore. This is obvious and very rudimentary logic. Due to the increased latency, they don't like the game anymore, which is why they are quitting. If they still liked the game (despite it's current status, which, according to them, has unreasonable latency - a determination that they are well within their right to say since it is a personal thing), they wouldn't be quitting, would they?
    Well i love when people like to come to this sort of conclusion.
    Yes i loved the game. Do i love it with this new latency? Yes i do. Is it playable for me since all i do is pvp? No its not.
    There you go m8, i love combat style of this game and i love melee chars. Sadly they are almost unplayable with 200 ms. I guess people that play it casually can still pull it off, but for those of us that like speed, movement and precision its not the same any more.
    Will i quit?
    I dont know, i will probably give it some time to see how will it look when servers are merge and will us players advantage be huge comparing to eu.
    Will i sub?
    Not if this is not sorted.

  10. #190

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by aocjv View Post
    Yes, this seems like a difficult challenge. However, this and even more complicated scenarios are routinely dealt with by quantitative methods. Statisticians solved problems like these long ago, and currently have so many models available at their disposal to deal with these scenarios. Any reasonably modern data analysis system (we don't even have to go to expensive Oracle / SAP / SAS solutions) can model data such as you describe and proceed to give you probabilty distributions.

    In other words: What you describe is not a problem for people whose job is to actually analyze data. We've solved it long ago, even before computers, but now that we have powerful computers in place, it's even easier. I don't know how complex and capable Funcom's data analysis tools are, but as long as they aren't stone age, we can safely assume they are capable of modelling and running simulations for the complex data you describe.
    Let's hope then, that they have those tools, the correct data needed and the competence to use and interpret them correctly. I've worked with enough tools myself to know, that the existence of those tools and a theoretical base, does not always mean it gives a correct answer or is used well. The hardest part might be the interpretation and presentation to those in charge for decisionmaking (just take some mathematical models that work only under certain conditions for example and there are people who will take even a 1% chance of success by a model as "great! let's do this!", because it is what they want to do anyway).
    Last edited by Kurt2013; 17th May 2013 at 17:59.

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