Korizan
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Posted - 2008.10.14 23:44:00 -
[31]
 Originally by: Astria Tiphareth
Edited by: Astria Tiphareth on 14/10/2008 19:03:26
Edited by: Astria Tiphareth on 14/10/2008 17:56:55
Please note this thread is intended to discuss how the Ghost Training change was handled, not the actual change. There is an official discussion thread on that topic already over in Info Portal; feel free to contribute to it if that is your beef.
As a professional software developer who is occasionally called upon to provide communications to customers, I feel I have a certain level of knowledge about how to indicate changes to customers. In my view, the recent Ghost Training messaging did not handle this very well, as illustrated by quite a few threads on the subject. Rather than tell CCP how to do their job, I will merely agree to disagree, and rather than state they did it 'wrong', I would have done it 'differently' (albeit I am commenting here with hindsight). To illustrate my point, here are a few guidelines I follow, and had they been followed, I personally would have been, well if not happy then at least less aggrieved by the way things were handled.
Call A Spade A Spade
Contrary to many indications, the EVE community is actually very intelligent on average, and thus any marketing information that goes to them really ought to get things straight, and tell it like it is. Vague and ambiguous statements are fine for conceptual work; they can help prompt new and exciting ideas; indeed I've missed that aspect where devs would say 'how about this?', but that's by the by. Concrete non-negotiable changes should be laid down in black and white, and the reasons for them doubly so.
Stating this change is fixing a bug, or updating an unintended feature, is simply not going to go down well. It's been stated by CCP's own player guide that the original behaviour was an expected feature. Call this change what it is - a change. Making it look like a bugfix merely makes CCP look even less efficient (5 years for a bugfix is pretty slow even by my company's standards, where we recently did a 'Jita' and fixed a usability bug that had been in for 3 years), and sends some very bad messages.
Depending on how you view it, this sudden reversal of current game mechanics after five years either states 'new person in charge, undoing what they think their predecessor did wrong' or 'CCP can't agree on this, because one group has said it's a feature, another group says it's a bug'. Neither is a good message to send.
Edited Aside: The one case I can think of where you don't call a spade a spade is for legal reasons - for example, much as you might wish to say that your competitors are a bunch of uncooperative idiots when your customers complain about you not reading the competing file format properly, this is not a career-enhancing move. However I don't see that applying here.
Provide Warning
Whilst I'm all for speedy CCP, particularly on bugfixes, changing a mechanic that potentially affects the entire community is not something to rush at. To CCP's great credit, the speed changes still aren't in, and clearly further thought is going on from what the live dev blog implied. Why was this not followed in this change, with a mere 48 hours notice?
Timing
Timing, as they say, is everything. With a series of quite controversial changes under its belt already, and an upcoming major industrial expansion (we hope), I am surprised that CCP felt now was a good time to make this change. The veteran community is already reeling from changes, many are describing lack of trust in CCP, and all in all, now would be a great time to build bridges, not burn them.
Continued in next post... (after the combobreaking)
If you don't mind let me rephrase your opening post.
Dear CCP
Can you explain why there was such short notice on a change that obviously effects a vast majority of the player base ?
Sincerely,
Astria Tiphareth
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