Are in game GMs essential?

[FeebleMan]

Newbie question, in search of a pros and cons regarding in game GMs.

For the pros the only thing I can come up with is that it puts a human facing in the game. I understand that this can be important, but is it essential in game?

As to cons the costs associated with trying to maintain on demand support seem very high, more so than a small company may be able to meet. Would it make more sense to devote vital resources to improve out of game support channels?

[eldaec]

The only mainstream game I've played without them was EU DAoC.

And (purely in customer service terms) that was a total clusterfuck.

Most players didn't even know how to access support if something went wrong. That said, in a niche game that is only played by die hard fans or hobbyists, maybe it's not a big deal.


This thread might be better suited to the games development forum. You get a slightly more philosophical approach to discussions over there.

[Xilren's Twin]

This thread might be better suited to the games development forum. You get a slightly more philosophical approach to discussions over there.

Not only that, but be sure to define what you are talking about.  There's (potentially) a big difference between an in game GM versus a CSR handling "help im stuck in the side of a hill" support requests...

[Kitsune]

Games need GMs, and they need about five times as many as they have.  I have yet to find any game that had a GM respond to any issue in less than thirty minutes.  Thirty minutes of being stuck in a wall, thirty minutes of the quest monster vanished, thirty minutes of An_Idiot_01 having mistakenly looted the non-tradeable item someone else needed.  Until the online games are fixed and without any flaws to trap or screw over players, they need the GMs.

[eldaec]

An_Idiot_01 having mistakenly looted the non-tradeable item someone else needed. 

Also, wherever designers still think ninja-looting + no-trade is a good idea, games need them to die in a spawn queue fire. But that is a whole different thread.

[Fordel]

EU DaoC didn't have the little crystals to solve their problems?

No wonder all the Euro folks I know that played on the EU servers fucking hated everything over there.



I still remember when someone got his players head, literally, stuck up a horses ass in DaoC. He somehow managed to get locked into some kind of permanent 'jump mode' that wouldn't cancel and wouldn't let him move/leave the horse, and it really did look like he was stuck in the horses ass. He couldn't log out due to the jumping and closing/crashing the client didn't do anything to free him when he logged backed in.

It took one of the little CSR Crystal guys to appear and use his CSR magic to remove him from the horses ass (after lol'ing at him a little bit with everyone else around).

What would you do without the CSR at that point though? Send in a support mail and be unable to play the game for 2-3 days?

[Venkman]

What function is the GM performing? CSR or events?

If the former, yes, required. You need to have the ability for a CSR rep to log into the game to "see" what is going on through the eyes of an ingame character, while also doing so with whatever other tools are available to them.

If you mean dynamic events GMs, no, I don't think they're a requirement per se. I also don't know how much of a value-add they could provide. Events for crowds at this scale have to be so structured they might as well be triggered anyway. We're way beyond a cool few people doing dungeon romps through dynamic content. This is the age of Rolling Stones Concerts, with the same sort of crowd control needed.

[Morat20]

Games need GMs, and they need about five times as many as they have.  I have yet to find any game that had a GM respond to any issue in less than thirty minutes.  Thirty minutes of being stuck in a wall, thirty minutes of the quest monster vanished, thirty minutes of An_Idiot_01 having mistakenly looted the non-tradeable item someone else needed.  Until the online games are fixed and without any flaws to trap or screw over players, they need the GMs.

I've had WoW GM's respond in less than 15 minutes. I've rarely had to wait more than 45. I was surprised as shit the first time I filled out a bug report and got a whisper from a GM 20 minutes later.

My prior experience was "File bug report, never hear anything about it again".

[CharlieMopps]

There are still GMs? I haven't actually seen a GM in-game in about 7 years...

[Bunk]

Games need GMs, and they need about five times as many as they have.  I have yet to find any game that had a GM respond to any issue in less than thirty minutes.  Thirty minutes of being stuck in a wall, thirty minutes of the quest monster vanished, thirty minutes of An_Idiot_01 having mistakenly looted the non-tradeable item someone else needed.  Until the online games are fixed and without any flaws to trap or screw over players, they need the GMs.

I've had WoW GM's respond in less than 15 minutes. I've rarely had to wait more than 45. I was surprised as shit the first time I filled out a bug report and got a whisper from a GM 20 minutes later.

My prior experience was "File bug report, never hear anything about it again".

I had a similar experience in WoW shortly after BC launched. I stumbled across a low level mob that respawned 2 seconds after you killed it, every time. It was essentially a free money tree, albiet very slow since it was a lev 5 mob. I figured I'd report it to cover my ass, and I got a tell about ten minutes later. The rep discussed it with me, and actually came back a few minutes later to let me know that it was "working as intended" at that point, and to have fun.

As for GMs, it all depends how you do it. I think UO proved that just giving people powers and letting them mess with the populace doesn't work out very well. I'd rather things be a little more controlled, a la AC1's monthly events, with the occasional dev playing a key role in game to advance a story.

[FeebleMan]

Not only that, but be sure to define what you are talking about.  There's (potentially) a big difference between an in game GM versus a CSR handling "help im stuck in the side of a hill" support requests...

Sorry, was just interested in CSR GMs. Is it really necessary for a rep to show up with a red name tag, rainbow cloak, or glowing aura? Or could other channels provide the same and possibly better service?

[FeebleMan]

What function is the GM performing? CSR or events?

If the former, yes, required. You need to have the ability for a CSR rep to log into the game to "see" what is going on through the eyes of an ingame character, while also doing so with whatever other tools are available to them.

Does that really require an official GM persona in game? Or is that something that could be handled by a CSR without interupting immersion for others?

I guess the crux of my question is not whether GMs are needed, but if they require an in game presence to be effective.

[bhodi]

Does that really require an official GM persona in game? Or is that something that could be handled by a CSR without interupting immersion for others?

I guess the crux of my question is not whether GMs are needed, but if they require an in game presence to be effective.

What the hell are you talking about? You're all over the place with your ill-framed questions. That's a completely different question than your first one.

The answer is, of course, no. In fact, it's simply faster without an 'im-game presence'; when there are tools created to show multiple queues, questions in them, all integrated into a ticketing package, having to walk an avatar around (except in special cases) is simply a detriment to efficiency.

They also aren't there to show off or to bask in the glow, showing off their red hooded cloaks that no one else can have, they are there to fix people stuck in the side of the wall. Not to put them down, I've been a CSR more times than I like to think about, but you don't need to give people making near minimum wage any sort of attention like that -- it's ripe for abuse.

In CSR land, the time-to-fix or resolutions-per-minute or whatever you call it is king.

[Venkman]

I can foresee scenarios where being able to log into the game would be valuable. Like, a mob that is stuck. Yea, you can check the logs. Why not just pop into the game to have a look yourself. "You" are not seeing anything anyway. You're just seeing what the game tells your character to render through your client onto your screen. You can do this as an actual ingame character, an invisible avatar or whatever. I'm sure this isn't absolutely required to happen often, but not having CSRs ever log into the game world isn't going to increase their expertise in what they're supposed to be expert at either. Maybe it's not a Level 1 requirement, but should be for Level 2.

I guess the crux of my question is not whether GMs are needed, but if they require an in game presence to be effective.

Is there a particular reason you're asking? Are you gunning for a role as a CSR, looking to build a company and wondering if you need these people, or just so curious you decided to delurk for idle curiosity? :)

[FeebleMan]

Is there a particular reason you're asking? Are you gunning for a role as a CSR, looking to build a company and wondering if you need these people, or just so curious you decided to delurk for idle curiosity? :)

More horrifying than all those actually, I've been employed as a CS manager for an upcoming MMO aimed at children (like ToonTown). I bring in more traditional software subscription experience which is turning out to be both good and not so good. I provide a different perspective than many of the people that have been in nothing but video games and MMOs for the past decade. But have significant gaps in experience, like understanding how best to help customers in a wholly unique environment. My only experience with GMs thus far has been that I've never had a problem in an MMO that required a direct in game response, and reading about how wretched CS is in most MMOs especially regarding in game response.

We've had some internal discussions about the need for in game response, but I'm not convinced that "because it’s expected" is reason enough to pour a lot of resources into something that might be better handled by other means.

[Venkman]

If your system allows you log into the game at all, you should be fine for starters. No idea what game you're working on, but if it's targeting younger kids, it's probably a pretty "closed" system. The more closed it is, hopefully the less issues you'll have. As long as, like, the code works and stuff. Without dispensing secrets, is yours' closer to ToonTown MMO or Webkinz "MMO"?

[FeebleMan]

Closer to ToonTown and WoW than Webkins.

[DrewC]

I spent a year as a CSR for Mythic on Dark Age of Camelot.  Based on that experience I would say absolutely yes, CSRs need the ability to enter the game and experience the world in the same way that players do.  What CSRs don't need is a cool avatar with a shiny +1 cloak of awesomeness.  I actually liked the way Mythic handled this: CSR avatars with abstract floating gems without stats and we were encouraged to be invisible and unobtrusive.  The only times I ever made my CS avatar visible was to trade items with a player (they had a bugged item) or to try and get the attention of someone who wasn't responding to my tells.

It's been a while, but as I recall something like half the appeals I dealt with were resolved by talking to the player appealing and directing them to other resources or saying no as politely as I could.  Players who had a complaint about the game, or who had questions about some aspect of gameplay, or who wanted to file a bug, or who wanted me to do something our rules wouldn't let us do (tell me how to finish this quest/give me gold/give me xp).  All of those could be resolved through a simple chat interface.  (As an aside, CS staff don't make game balance decisions, complaining to them about how your class was nerfed in the last patch is utterly useless.  There's a good chance they play the same class and are just as pissed, but can't say anything about it.) 

The next biggest chunk, for Dark Age, was players with broken quests.  I *think* we had to remove those from your character in game, but a good database programmer could develop a tool to do that out of game pretty trivially.

The issues where an in game presence was most helpful were stuck players, harassment/kill stealing issues, bugs and bug exploit issues (yay for rocks that NPCs can't climb).  For all of those issues being able to go to the 'scene' and figure out what was going on by direct observation was intensely helpful.  You could move some of that functionality into out of game tools but you're always going to have situations where you want to be able to log in and see what players are seeing.

[eldaec]

The answer is, of course, no. In fact, it's simply faster without an 'im-game presence'; when there are tools created to show multiple queues, questions in them, all integrated into a ticketing package, having to walk an avatar around (except in special cases) is simply a detriment to efficiency.

Depends what you mean by in-game presence I guess.

In EU DAoC, the process works like this.

1) Get your head stuck up a horses arse. (It's EU DAoC, horses have arses instead of asses over here)
2) alt-tab out
3) Magically know that you have to go to GOA's website to report a problem.
4) Navigate the shittiest piece of flash design in the history the web to reach the customer service interface.
5) Register on the customer service interface. Get told to wait for an email address verification email.
6) Wait half an hour for an email, recieve email, return to crappy flash website.
7) Register ticket.
8) Get told by auto email to wait 24 hours.
9) Eventually recieve canned email from CSR who barely understands english, and completely misunderstood your issue.
10) Amend ticket hoping to hit form of words CSR understands.
11) Repeat steps 8-10 several times.
12) ? ? ? ?
13) PROFIT!!!

And people wonder why everyone who played EU DAoC hates GOA.




Anyhow, CSRs themselves might not need a game presence per se.

But from the player's point of view, support does need to happen through the game interface, and needs to happen through real time chat, not through a crappy email interface.

[Xilren's Twin]

More horrifying than all those actually, I've been employed as a CS manager for an upcoming MMO aimed at children (like ToonTown).

We've had some internal discussions about the need for in game response, but I'm not convinced that "because it’s expected" is reason enough to pour a lot of resources into something that might be better handled by other means.

If your game is aimed at kids, I would suggest having some type of in game persona to use for CSR will be absolutely necessary.  While it may not be used every time, with a game like ToonTown that has limited chat functionality, and REALLY young kids playing, a straight chat interface response could be downright confusing to the little tykes.

Plus, you wont scary little Timmy into having his mom cancel the subscriptions when he tells her "some strange adult is talking to me and I CAN'T SEE HIM!  Mommy I'm a-scared!"

[bhodi]

Anyhow, CSRs themselves might not need a game presence per se.

I was talking about communications through the game interface in all cases; email support is nigh-worthless for in-game bugs. DaOC was fine; when I had a CSR replace a quest drop, they placed it on the ground behind me, then told me to turn around, so I never even saw it spawn. It was well done.

If the CSRs need to see the world, let them, but keep them invisible unless there's a specific need, and even then make them look unremarkable. We don't need a cult of personality like the old UO days.

Give the CSRs extensive tools for tracking, sorting, creating tickets to make their job easier and faster. In most cases, all they need to see is the text in a chatroom-like interface, and could tab into a CSR character with teleportation, resurrection, item creation functions (all heavily logged, of course).

If your queues go above 2 hours peak or 1 hour average time, hire more people. Outsource if you have to.

A good wiki/faq/help page goes a long way to reducing volume. A well tested and patched system goes a whole lot farther.

[Trouble]

Games need GMs, and they need about five times as many as they have.  I have yet to find any game that had a GM respond to any issue in less than thirty minutes.  Thirty minutes of being stuck in a wall, thirty minutes of the quest monster vanished, thirty minutes of An_Idiot_01 having mistakenly looted the non-tradeable item someone else needed.  Until the online games are fixed and without any flaws to trap or screw over players, they need the GMs.

As a side note, this was also true to me until last Sunday. In Eve Online there is a place called Jita where on any given day about 5% of the entire player base is congregated. On weekends, if you are in Jita, it generally becomes nearly impossible to operate your character at all, and sometimes impossible to log into the game even. I filed a "stuck" petition through their website and received a response in my mail 45 seconds later saying that I had been moved to a nearby system and to report back if I had any further difficulties. I was shocked to say the least.

[Ironwood]

1) Get your head stuck up a horses arse. (It's EU DAoC, horses have arses instead of asses over here)
2) alt-tab out
3) Magically know that you have to go to GOA's website to report a problem.
4) Navigate the shittiest piece of flash design in the history the web to reach the customer service interface.
5) Register on the customer service interface. Get told to wait for an email address verification email.
6) Wait half an hour for an email, recieve email, return to crappy flash website.
7) Register ticket.
8) Get told by auto email to wait 24 hours.
9) Eventually recieve canned email from CSR who barely understands english, and completely misunderstood your issue.
10) Amend ticket hoping to hit form of words CSR understands.
11) Repeat steps 8-10 several times.
12) ? ? ? ?
13) PROFIT!!!

And people wonder why everyone who played EU DAoC hates GOA.

Goodness, Rhetorical Question here, but is that a JOKE ?

Who thought that would be a good idea ?

[Phred]

Not only that, but be sure to define what you are talking about.  There's (potentially) a big difference between an in game GM versus a CSR handling "help im stuck in the side of a hill" support requests...

Sorry, was just interested in CSR GMs. Is it really necessary for a rep to show up with a red name tag, rainbow cloak, or glowing aura? Or could other channels provide the same and possibly better service?

Don't stop there. Tell us the other channels if you want any sort of decent responce. We've had concrete examples of situations where one's in game presence was mandatory, where is your solution to this?

[Phred]

Does that really require an official GM persona in game? Or is that something that could be handled by a CSR without interupting immersion for others?

I guess the crux of my question is not whether GMs are needed, but if they require an in game presence to be effective.

What the hell are you talking about? You're all over the place with your ill-framed questions. That's a completely different question than your first one.

The answer is, of course, no. In fact, it's simply faster without an 'im-game presence'; when there are tools created to show multiple queues, questions in them, all integrated into a ticketing package, having to walk an avatar around (except in special cases) is simply a detriment to efficiency.

Even everquest 1 as primitive as it was, had a gm warp command that let gm's move from place to place instantly. As to avatars, didn't daoc have gm's show up as a crystal? No fancy cloak, nothing for the noobs to ooh and ah over, just a featureless geometric shape. I imagine some companies give their gm's costumes as a form of team building, being as support in general can be one of the most frustrating, tedious  jobs out there.

Personally I want to hear what he wants to replace the (mmo) traditional in game cs with.

[Dren]

WoW's system is the best I've seen so far.  All in-game and the response time is acceptable (10-20 mins.)  They are invisible and just whisper to you.  Most of the time they can't help, but take your information to be used for the greater good (I can only imagine.)

We had to use one two nights ago for Karazhan.  Moroes died, but his gouge didn't go away on several and we still had two adds to take down.  So, we all ran out and came back in.  Adds were gone, looted Moroes and went on.  We got to the Opera event and we could start it because the instance though Moroes was still alive.  We had done some kind of half-reset.

The GM responded that the system will reset by tomorrow.  We were disappointed, but accepted that and moved on to other bosses for the night.  Last night we went back and Moroes was back along with all adds.  We went through it again and actually got a second looting from him.  So, bonus for us.

People would have liked to see a GM reset the instance, kill everything we had done up to that point and then move on, but I think he did the right thing.  Let the system try to correct for the error and then fix something if it doesn't.  It all worked out fine.

Having no way to at least get that reassurance in-game would have left us with a l lot more complaints and bad feelings towards the game.  Even though the GM didn't help us, per say, we got a lot out of his presence and advice.  Plus, we were able to quickly let him know what had caused the issue (Moroes died just as he was coming out from his last vanish...fluke thing.)

[pxib]

Customer Service isn't about giving the customers exactly what they want, it's about letting them know that somebody hears they're upset and can explain to them what went exactly went wrong and why. So long as they feel you've acknowledged their problem and are doing everything you can do to help... you're set.

They may still be frustrated but ultimately you just say "I'm very sorry that I can't do more, but I'll pass your frustration on to those higher up. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

1. Your problem is important.
2. I care that you're upset.
3. Here's what went wrong.
4. Here's the simplest possible solution.
5. If 3 and 4 will be a long time coming, offer alternatives.

"Is there anything else I can do for you?" are magic words.

[Salamok]

Customer Service isn't about giving the customers exactly what they want, it's about letting them know that somebody hears they're upset and can explain to them what went exactly went wrong and why. So long as they feel you've acknowledged their problem and are doing everything you can do to help... you're set.

They may still be frustrated but ultimately you just say "I'm very sorry that I can't do more, but I'll pass your frustration on to those higher up. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

1. Your problem is important.
2. I care that you're upset.
3. Here's what went wrong.
4. Here's the simplest possible solution.
5. If 3 and 4 will be a long time coming, offer alternatives.

"Is there anything else I can do for you?" are magic words.

I dunno, I have kind of passed a point where maybe I would rather just get a prerecorded message that says "your fucked, go away" than sit through 30 minutes of phone menus and pleasant but ineffectual people reading scripts in accents I can barely understand.

edit: and 30 minutes is extremely conservative.

edit 2: the more I read what you wrote and the more I think it is that attitude of "we don't need to help you we just need to be nice" is what is sooo utterly fucked up with the tech support industry.  Competent support had too large of a budget and some bean counter decided being incompetent and nice is a viable alternative, oh and ps lets outsource it too.

[pxib]

the more I read what you wrote and the more I think it is that attitude of "we don't need to help you we just need to be nice" is what is sooo utterly fucked up with the tech support industry.  Competent support had too large of a budget and some bean counter decided being incompetent and nice is a viable alternative, oh and ps lets outsource it too.

Perhaps, but it while it doesn't work on you it does work on 90% of the everybody else.

[Salamok]

the more I read what you wrote and the more I think it is that attitude of "we don't need to help you we just need to be nice" is what is sooo utterly fucked up with the tech support industry.  Competent support had too large of a budget and some bean counter decided being incompetent and nice is a viable alternative, oh and ps lets outsource it too.

Perhaps, but it while it doesn't work on you it does work on 90% of the everybody else.

I know, that just pisses me off more though.  They have modified tech support with the realization that 90% of the people who call can't be helped because they are mentally unable to benefit from tech support regardless of how good it may be.  The remaining 10% get "your fucked, go away".

[shiznitz]

In 10 years of MMOGs, I have needed a GM exactly once. I guess I tend to play these games exactly as the devs intended!

[Fordel]

Even everquest 1 as primitive as it was, had a gm warp command that let gm's move from place to place instantly. As to avatars, didn't daoc have gm's show up as a crystal? No fancy cloak, nothing for the noobs to ooh and ah over, just a featureless geometric shape. I imagine some companies give their gm's costumes as a form of team building, being as support in general can be one of the most frustrating, tedious  jobs out there.

I'm sure one of the Red Names can correct me if I'm wrong, but the complexity of the CSR's gem in DaoC marked there place in the support structure.

The Simple diamond shaped CSR was just Entry Level, while the CSR Gem that looked like a 100 sided die, was one of the top support bosses.

[Numtini]

I've needed a GM a few times, very few. Once in DAOC stuck in geometry. Somewhere else for the same.

Having been the subject, along with a friend, of 4 months of on again off again sexual harrassment by her ex, I desperately need a GM in Second Life and they don't have any. Or they don't think it's an issue. One of the two.

[IainC]

Goodness, Rhetorical Question here, but is that a JOKE ?

Who thought that would be a good idea ?

No it's not true.

On topic: GMs should be heard but not seen IMO. We were often ingame for various reasons, our GM identities were known to the players and they could /send us messages for urgent issues. Mostly though we fixed stuff without having to appear in a clap of thunder and surrounded by an angelic chorus. Occasionally I decloaked to shout at some evildoers or to sort out an ingame territory dispute - stuff like that is more effective when the players can physically see you and can relate to you visually rather than just as lines of gold text in their chat window. For 99.9% of the stuff we handled though we were strictly a background presence. Anything else is an unnecessary distraction and just stokes the ego of your CS peons.

[schild]

Topic: Are in game GMs essential?

Yes.

/thread