I was dealing with support yesterday and found a lot of the same things you describe here. Strange sentence construction, lack of knowledge of the game, confused instructions... I got my problem sorted out, but it was almost in spite of the GM, not because of him.
That said, it seems there's either a pool of bad GMs amongst the good (variations within a population? Impossible!) Because some of the GMs I've dealt with in the last few months are exactly the opposite: fluent in English, knowledgeable, and friendly- to the point where I've been able to joke around with them as they're fixing the problem... And they get the jokes.
At the end of the day, I think it's just luck of the draw- There's some good, some bad, and you just have to hope that you get one of the good ones.
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Sartre once said, "Hell is other people." What does that make an MMO?
GMs depending upon the time of day could be based in any of the main NC locations aroudn the world. (US, Europe, Korea).
All the GMs can be called into any of the NCsoft games.
You may just have gotten for example a predominantly Lineage GM from the Seoul office.
Even as recently as the last couple of weeks I had non-urgent issues (basically bug reports) dealt with 'out of game' by names I was familiar with (there was one new-one I hadn't seen before).
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
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In the past, when I've used the GMs (via in-game /petition), support has been excellent. The GMs know the game, are polite and friendly, and speak coherent, apparently native, English.
Today, the GM I dealt with (regarding a bugged mission) clearly had English as a second language. Lots of very weird sentence constructions, like "have a pleasurable game play" and "it is currently under investigation of Developers".
Moreover, this GM was apparently an idiot. At first he was like, "there are many mobs in your mission, please kill them first". I had to say, twice, *this isn't a door mission* before he got it. The full detailed explanation was already in my petition, this particular problem is on the known issues list, and it should have been grotesquely obvious what this mission was and what the issue was.
Has NCsoft/Paragon started offshore outsourcing of CoH support to some form of call center-ish organization that has no clue about what they are actually supporting?
Anyone else had recent problems in dealing with support?
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They do, and it isn't recent. I've been running into these types of GM's since I started playing in '05. Based on the sentence construction/grammar, they sound suspiciously familiar to the agents my company employed for email support in 2004-2006. And yes, they were overseas, in a country well-known for 'offshore tech/customer support'.
However, when support is contracted out, the company doing the contracting may not field all of the work in the same location. Some agents may be in one country, some in another. And altho' you find good and bad support everywhere (our worst was in North Hollywood, CA, of all places!) you can definitely see linguistic, 'slang' and other differences from one locale to the next.
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
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Today, the GM I dealt with (regarding a bugged mission) clearly had English as a second language. Lots of very weird sentence constructions, like "have a pleasurable game play" and "it is currently under investigation of Developers".
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This.
I usually see them not say anything at all except the copy and pasted hello and goodbye that they are required to say. When they DO talk back, it is with poor typing skills and grammar.
...Most of the time...
I don't know what happend to support but I was REALLY POed the other day.
I made an arc... No errors... We started playing it and a mission would not complete.
It was defeat all, and we did. DEFEAT ALL. Anyways.
I contacted support. No GM showed up in game but I got an email. which is normal.
In the email it explained to me how to quit the mission.
I SAID I DONT WANT TO QUIT I WANT YOU TO SHOW UP AND GET THE LAST FOE ONTO THE MAP.
I got an immediate responce telling me I am wrong.
and nothing else was said.
The map was the university basement one.. and it was defeat all... mission would not complete... I could see a foes foot sticking out of the damn wall.
I explained it fully in the original petition.
I was like? WTF?
Here is how you quit...
In the past when doing normal content a GM shows up in game and just puts the foe on the map...
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I don't know what happend to support but I was REALLY POed the other day.
I made an arc... No errors... We started playing it and a mission would not complete.
It was defeat all, and we did. DEFEAT ALL. Anyways.
I contacted support. No GM showed up in game but I got an email. which is normal.
In the email it explained to me how to quit the mission.
I SAID I DONT WANT TO QUIT I WANT YOU TO SHOW UP AND GET THE LAST FOE ONTO THE MAP.
I got an immediate responce telling me I am wrong.
and nothing else was said.
The map was the university basement one.. and it was defeat all... mission would not complete... I could see a foes foot sticking out of the damn wall.
I explained it fully in the original petition.
I was like? WTF?
Here is how you quit...
In the past when doing normal content a GM shows up in game and just puts the foe on the map...
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This so reminds me of logitech support. A while back I had a question about the logitech gamepad and how none of the gamepad functions counted as active windows functions so the screensaver would pop on in the middle of playing a game. I tried all the power settings posted screenshots, gave detailed examples. It took nearly 30 mins to compile the ticket in a tidy, concise, clearly stated manner. The response I got:
Please make sure you are using your logitech product for gaming only.
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The GMs aren't allowed to do anything with MA missions. Only dev created content. Someone on the forums had a runin with an (english speaking) GM while on an MA mission and was told that they can't do anything except explain how to quit the mission, and send feedback to the author.
They can't even do the "Pull the NPC out of the wall" trick if it's MA.
Don't ask me why, but apparently, that's the way it is.
@Roderick
I haven't noticed a difference. Unfortuantely I dont meen that in a good way; i have never gotten anything remotly aproximating satisfactory service from the NCSoft support staff. Perhaps I've just been unlucky.
Recently I was helping a friend complete her Snaptooth valentines' day mission. Snaptooth the elite boss was untargetable. He behaved as if he were an ally. We called a GM. After several rounds of broken English, my friend understood that we need a hero and a villain on the team to complete the mission. I explained to her that thats not how the mission works and that I ahve compelted it many times solo, but she felt it was easier to acquiesce, so off I went tog et my villain. It still didn't work. Then the GM said that we had to kill everything on the map. So we did. On the ENTIRE OUTDOOR MAP. Still nothing. Then he told us to ahve a nice day and left. I would say that I have never in my internet carrear had such an overpowering wish to find out where someone lives and beat the crap out of them. but honestly, thats about par for the course as far as Ive been able to tell.
I did have a good GM ONCE who helped me find the glowie ina mission that was stuck inside a wall. That was nice. Ussually though, they show up 3 hours later and tell me to reset the mission.
My silliest GM story: My husband was on a villain. He had a problem with a mission. The GM he got was a "blaster"....who did not have villain tells enabled. I had to log in a hero and inform the GM that my husband was TRYING to answer him, but couldn't.
On the other hand, most of my experiences with prompt, helpful GMs who quickly figured out the problem and fixed it date back to before i7...
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
I don't encounter GM staff too much. The one issue I had was a mission with no mission door (which had been the straw on the camel's back that made me take a few months off). When I came back, the door still didn't exist so I filed a report. The standard GM couldn't help me so here comes Gilgamesh himself to fix me!
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@Razoras
This past Sunday night at 11:30 ET a GM showed up withing 10 minutes of a stuck petition to complete an incompleteable and undroppable mission for me.
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I opened a petition a few days ago.
The GMs (two) were very nice to me... and even said that they called a Dev to see my problem. They asked me to not leave the map.
It was kind of nice having a Dev looking me... I decided to believe it was BABs... I know that it wasnt his field of action the particular bug that was affecting me... But as he is my favorite Dev, i prefer to believe that he was the one poking me... ^_^
** Guardian�s Crazy Catgirl **
************* 22 XxX 10 *************
Yes. I can get lost on a straight-line map.
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I haven't noticed a difference. Unfortuantely I dont meen that in a good way; i have never gotten anything remotly aproximating satisfactory service from the NCSoft support staff. Perhaps I've just been unlucky.
Recently I was helping a friend complete her Snaptooth valentines' day mission. Snaptooth the elite boss was untargetable. He behaved as if he were an ally. We called a GM. After several rounds of broken English, my friend understood that we need a hero and a villain on the team to complete the mission. I explained to her that thats not how the mission works and that I ahve compelted it many times solo, but she felt it was easier to acquiesce, so off I went tog et my villain. It still didn't work. Then the GM said that we had to kill everything on the map. So we did. On the ENTIRE OUTDOOR MAP. Still nothing. Then he told us to ahve a nice day and left. I would say that I have never in my internet carrear had such an overpowering wish to find out where someone lives and beat the crap out of them. but honestly, thats about par for the course as far as Ive been able to tell.
I did have a good GM ONCE who helped me find the glowie ina mission that was stuck inside a wall. That was nice. Ussually though, they show up 3 hours later and tell me to reset the mission.
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...wow. A few nights ago I had the exact same glitch with Snaptooth, and the GM just killed him for us and completed the mission.
GM support is wide and varied.
Had awesome GMs that fixed the problem right away.
Had awful GMs who never even understood the problem, let alone how to fix it.
Spice of life and all that...
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Anyone else had recent problems in dealing with support?
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hahahahahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHhahAHAHAhahahahahah ahahahahahaha
hahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHEHEHEHEHEHEHE HEHEHEHEHEHE
heheheHAHAHAHAHahahahaha *gasps for breath* AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
omg
don't get me started.
seriously.
*leaves thread*
Thank you for breaking the thread, Merm. could you fix it before you leave, please?
There I was between a rock and a hard place. Then I thought, "What am I doing on this side of the rock?"
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This past Sunday night at 11:30 ET a GM showed up withing 10 minutes of a stuck petition to complete an incompleteable and undroppable mission for me.
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I had one show up within ten minutes, while he was a little off with the English, he couldn't seem to comprehend that it was my ACCOUNT's snaptooth mish, and I had logged in another acct to clear it (I was unaware of the bug til this happened), but I finally got it thru to him, logged on the original toon, he cleared it and all 3 of the toons got the goodies.
The last 3 GM experiences I've had were pretty good (two fixed a renaming for me over the email), and this one. Honestly though all the other ones before these most recent ones sucked.
Thanks, NC Soft, for closing my favorite game ever without warning and with plenty of life still left in it, and thus relieving me of the burden of EVER wanting to buy, try or even hear about another game from your company. Will my decision make a dent, or persuade them in anyway, shape or form? Nope, obviously not. Don't care. NC Soft is dead to me. ~ PsyFox
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I opened a petition a few days ago.
The GMs (two) were very nice to me... and even said that they called a Dev to see my problem. They asked me to not leave the map.
It was kind of nice having a Dev looking me... I decided to believe it was BABs... I know that it wasnt his field of action the particular bug that was affecting me... But as he is my favorite Dev, i prefer to believe that he was the one poking me... ^_^
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thanks that made my night,
on a more serious note. I work Technical support (no not for this game) for a software company which makes a completely different type of software. Often times we have strange rules that we are required to follow for the only reason being that the higher ups tell us too (such as they cant fix MA missions). There are also alot of cases where we can only just take down the customers information and pass it on.
In our software (Which is a fair bit less complicated then a video game) we still have over 20 categories any given bug can be categorized in. Some of the support reps know the different categories better then others, (me for example i work mostly with data delivery issues, while another support rep might work with gui bugs, and yet another with grid issues, and another with web interfaces). we all take support calls and answer e-mails but often we have to ask someone else for the answer.
In all honesty i try to imagine the support team City of heroes similarly, some of them have more experience working in particular parts of the game (blue/red, powers, numbers, chat, net, database, etc) when you contact support you might not get the person who is most familiar with your bug, you get whomever is first available to help you, they will (i hope if they cant help pass you to the person who can or at least pass the bug in the right direction)
anyway besides the point, I have issues a few petitions and the few times i have it has usually been resolved nicely. however i don't think i have every actually seen a gm or dev in game... one day i hope i will thou ^_^
im sleepy and i prolly didn't make alot of sense... im going to bed now, tomorrow is another day of working with people who have no right using a computer who cant figure out how to save a file (yeah i actually get that call)
In the past, when I've used the GMs (via in-game /petition), support has been excellent. The GMs know the game, are polite and friendly, and speak coherent, apparently native, English.
Today, the GM I dealt with (regarding a bugged mission) clearly had English as a second language. Lots of very weird sentence constructions, like "have a pleasurable game play" and "it is currently under investigation of Developers".
Moreover, this GM was apparently an idiot. At first he was like, "there are many mobs in your mission, please kill them first". I had to say, twice, *this isn't a door mission* before he got it. The full detailed explanation was already in my petition, this particular problem is on the known issues list, and it should have been grotesquely obvious what this mission was and what the issue was.
Has NCsoft/Paragon started offshore outsourcing of CoH support to some form of call center-ish organization that has no clue about what they are actually supporting?
Anyone else had recent problems in dealing with support?