Exhausted all avenues?

[Steve10]

Moderator Comment: Steve10

Everyone here needs to calm down and show some respect for the hard work that many people put into the game and the work of the team here. If a mistake is made then it gets dealt with but this is not the place to talk about specific instances and if it continues then I will close the thread.

On a personal level however I can vouch for everything Chris has said, he always attempts to fight the corner of the domain when he receives legitimate queries and problems from either users or other crew members. He is almost constantly active dealing with issues and making sure he knows what is happening with his staff and domain and in nearly seven years of me being around the game he has been the best admin I have known and (sorry to any others I've worked for or been mates with) has always shown the most consideration towards his players. He is human and can get frustrated but I think the situations and flames that users often aim at him cause that and the fact he does still carry on doing his job to the best of his ability is amazing. I've seen different domains where things are simply shut down at the very first complaint. The only time we ever do that here is if it's clearly against the rules or goes way past the barrier of decency.

[Lodi]

I do wonder sometimes why people spend so much time complaining. Chris and the rest of the team from what i've seen from reading this forum for a few months and playing travian for a few years seem to do a fantastic job. I emailed admin@travian.co.uk and got a reply within two hours; every time i've had dealings with the Team they've been fair, quick and polite.

Maybe people should remember that everyone but Chris in the UK is unpaid; and if you have any experience in moderating/managing a large community forum or game you'll quickly realise that its not an easy job; and its impossible to keep everyone happy.

Chris & Co as far as i've been able to see do the best they can despite some undeserved hostility from some players.

/Back to just reading the forum again

[Bradden]

I Maybe people should remember that everyone but Chris in the UK is unpaid; and if you have any experience in moderating/managing a large community forum or game you'll quickly realise that its not an easy job; and its impossible to keep everyone happy.

I've seen this used as an excuse before and don't accept it. Travian Games is not a charity to my knowledge - they are a business and we are it's customers. They choose to use unpaid staff but that doesn't mean we should have to accept poor levels of customer service in game. I understand and accept that the forum adinistation is and should be different. However I pay to play Travian and find it unacceptable to wait for several hours for a reply to a massage. I believe I am not alone in feeling that the in-game support is unacceptably slow in resolving issues.

As an example say I pay for a resource gold boost and then get banned.. I am deprived of the benfit I have paid Travian for and should feel it is imperative to promptly resolve the issue. (I do not believe gold benfits are suspended whilst banned). I do not feel that Travian as a company really care how long it takes to resolve an issue - it makes no difference to them.

I would like to add that I do not blame the in-game admins for this situation but as representatives of the company they have a duty - paid or not - to deal with issues promptly and professionally.

[Broken Digit]

You must be the account owner then Broken Digit? How else could you be sure it's a farce and not a rule violation? It doesn't work like the more someone moans the easier they get unbanned without punishment. It rather unncessary prolongs the ban.

I won't even take the bait of your childish first comment, as for the second, how can you be sure?

By all accounts the accused offence has been changed more times than I've had zero bounty on an adventure.

Surely if someone moans more, they are fighting their corner, and providing more evidence to refute the claims.

I'm sure in your experience, you find the genuinely guilty fess up immediately, to continue profiting from their abused accounts.

[Andi]

I've seen this used as an excuse before and don't accept it. Travian Games is not a charity to my knowledge - they are a business and we are it's customers. They choose to use unpaid staff but that doesn't mean we should have to accept poor levels of customer service in game. I understand and accept that the forum adinistation is and should be different. However I pay to play Travian and find it unacceptable to wait for several hours for a reply to a massage. I believe I am not alone in feeling that the in-game support is unacceptably slow in resolving issues.

Travians ingame support (mh/support/admin) has, and have always had a max waiting time of 24 hours. Yes, it might be too long, but that is what you get on pretty much all the online games that uses unpaid staff. EA/Blizzard etc. who see much higher revenues will have support on a 24/7 basis, but that is not feasable to do on Travian, as it would involve paying thousands of crew and perhaps seeing the need for registrartion fees/commercials. For someone to put their lives on hold for a specific time period, there would have to be quite a salary, and also overtime payment on red days, christmas and what not. I would love for crew to get paid and have a lets say 2 hour support, but it is never going to happen. Having played 4 years I have dealth with support/mh three times, so I must admit I fail to see what the huge problem is not having round the clock support, although it was very annoying the one time I was banned unfairly. I wouldn't want to subsidize players who want to quarrel with mhs, are to lazy to read guides/answers and take up supports time daily, or complaints on others behalf to the admin without knowing the situation. So I think (actually) the best situation is to have voluntary crew who does all this, keeping the cost of playing down. Or is it just me?

Perhaps start servers with registration fees paying for around the clock crew? I think no-one would pay for that unfortunatley. And,, paying all crew money will mean the cost being transferred somehow to us players, which would be more unpopular than the once-a-server-waiting-for-a-reply-that-can-be-annoying.

[itsnotquiteover]

EA/Blizzard etc. who see much higher revenues will have support on a 24/7 basis, .

Ingame communications with Blizzard (wow, no pugging just the fact Blizz have many games now and not so sure what responses are on things like starcraft and stuff ) also have a 24 hour limit on having to be answered. So Travian ingame tickets are no different to that, and those staff are paid. Even emails I've submitted via the site still have a time frame on which they will be answered. Again thats usually 24 to 48 hours. Sometimes we need to step back and realise not everything gets dealt with right away, even in rl things need to be looked into

[Broken Digit]

even in rl things need to be looked into

Even in rl people make mistakes, their reticence at owning up reflects on their and the games character.

[Andi]

Ingame communications with Blizzard (wow, no pugging just the fact Blizz have many games now and not so sure what responses are on things like starcraft and stuff ) also have a 24 hour limit on having to be answered. So Travian ingame tickets are no different to that, and those staff are paid. Even emails I've submitted via the site still have a time frame on which they will be answered. Again thats usually 24 to 48 hours. Sometimes we need to step back and realise not everything gets dealt with right away, even in rl things need to be looked into

Hmm, I actually thought they had a much quicker response time as that have been used as an argument previously, thanks for clearing that up. And yes, not everyones problem (general in life) is of upmost importance and needs to be adressed immidiatley.

[Bradden]

EA/Blizzard etc. who see much higher revenues will have support on a 24/7 basis, but that is not feasable to do on Travian, as it would involve paying thousands of crew and perhaps seeing the need for registrartion fees/commercials.

I've never seen any published accounts for Travian games so what do you base your statement that this insn't feasible?

There would be no need to have thousands of crew.. I've no idea how many cuurently crew a server but when you have to wait 8 hours for a response it clearly isn't enough.


Considering 300 have just applied there are clearly plenty of players willing to help so increasing the size if the crew if needed shouldn't be an issue.

As I said before.. i think it's just an excuse for poor customer service.

[Andi]

I've never seen any published accounts for Travian games so what do you base your statement that this insn't feasible?.

Welll, it would take a huge leap of faith to believe paying crew would be profitable, and not entail the entire cost being showed to the players. Travian probably do make some money, and will offcourse continue doing that. Believing they will increase payed employment tenfold when they don't have to is something I don't need proof of really. (aka I'm basing it on common business calculations, not empirical book reviews - as you say, they are afaik not public).

There would be no need to have thousands of crew.. I've no idea how many cuurently crew a server but when you have to wait 8 hours for a response it clearly isn't enough.

I suppose the number of crew would go down quite a bit, you are correct in that. Number of crew on a server on this domain? I have no idea.. 4-10? Depends on player numbers, Chris is better to answer. But there is 50 domains and perhaps 400 servers (?) so quite a lot I would think.

Considering 300 have just applied there are clearly plenty of players willing to help so increasing the size if the crew if needed shouldn't be an issue.

Thats a huge number and excellent news. However, not everyone is cut out as being crew, and logging in many times a day for years is seldom you find people willing to do. You must take into account that there is only need for x amount of crew. You could have 300 crew on each server, but that would destroy the amount of knowledge learned in a reasonable timeframe. It takes time to train good crew, and the best of the current crew must take the time to pass on all the knowledge it has. Also, the less people having access to limited tools, the better it is (from a security standpoint) I would think. At least when thinking "a few more won't hurt", when they in theory aren't needed.

As I said before.. i think it's just an excuse for poor customer service.

I respect your view that you find a 24 hour answering time as poor customer service, but what do you mean by saying "this" is just an excuse for bad customer service? I have tried to be a devils advocate somewhat, trying to explain that you cannot be displeased with having a 24-hour answering time on support when it is a free game. And (as discussed in another thread), should rulebreakers get a quicker support if they have bought some gold? And would people be happy to pay more for gold if support was quicker?

[CM Chrisvc]

24-hour support is pretty much not feasible, both financially (without massively increasing the price of gold) and in reality. This would mean that you have 3 full-time employees per server, all working an 8 hour shift a day. And those would need days off, so you need to have someone else to cover for them.
Now you may be able to have them watch more than one server, but you would still need a very large number of people. Most domains use the national language of its players, so even the tiniest of domains will need at least 4 full-time staff to provide 24/7 support, even if they only get two requests a day.
From this, the conclusion will be that TG is simply not big enough a company to be able to provide 24/7 support.

[Falling Leaves]

Once again things are FUBAR on this domain due to admin supporting a fail MH.

S1 2009-2010 our entire alliance (and our very considerable medals) was deleted by a MH, because they said our alliance name was breaking the rules. We ask what rule, we had no response. We were told to change our alliance name. Why should we? It parodied an oppossing alliance. I searched the rules as to why this was a problem. It wasn't. All the time this was going on, UK admin said "there is nothing I can do".

A few emails later to HQ and EVERY single member of the alliance was compensated 600 gold each. It actually was not what we wanted, we wanted our alliance and medals reinstated.

UK Admin response?

"It was a mistake" - to this day, no actual apology.

And you ask why people get peed off?

I would say that the majority of bigger players play this game for each other, and NOT for Travian.

Customer Service on the UK domain is awful. Actually, beyond awful.

I play the .comx2 Champs server, and there, it is truly amazing.

Maybe send some Crew there for Work Experience?

[Bradden]

Andi - I appreciate you playing "devils advocate" and enjoy it. I was initially responding to Lodi's comment that we should remember that Travian's staff are with the exception of Chris unpaid and therefore we should accept the perceived lack of communcation from the game's admin team.

Personally I find an eight hour wait for a response from an MH unacceptable and judging from the posts on the forum I am not alone in this view. Accepting that employing staff to work full time may not be financially viable I stil believe a case could be made to improve the levels of service.. either by more effective time management or increasing the size of a team. Why should it take 8 hours for a response? Are there really no MH's online for that length of time - or do they just have better things to do with their time than deal with messages from customers/players.


I don't believe it is reasonable to expect players to wait for extended periods of time in a game like this which does not pause. Please bear in mind that it may take several messages to resolve an issue.. waiting several hours each time ends up being days for something can could and should be resolved promptly IMHO.

[CM Chrisvc]

Andi - I appreciate you playing "devils advocate" and enjoy it. I was initially responding to Lodi's comment that we should remember that Travian's staff are with the exception of Chris unpaid and therefore we should accept the perceived lack of communcation from the game's admin team.

Personally I find an eight hour wait for a response from an MH unacceptable and judging from the posts on the forum I am not alone in this view. Accepting that employing staff to work full time may not be financially viable I stil believe a case could be made to improve the levels of service.. either by more effective time management or increasing the size of a team. Why should it take 8 hours for a response? Are there really no MH's online for that length of time - or do they just have better things to do with their time than deal with messages from customers/players.


I don't believe it is reasonable to expect players to wait for extended periods of time in a game like this which does not pause. Please bear in mind that it may take several messages to resolve an issue.. waiting several hours each time ends up being days for something can could and should be resolved promptly IMHO.

The majority of our MHs are middle-aged human beings with a real-life job. None of them would ignore messages, but it is not possible for them to do their real life job and reply to messages at the same time. An 8 hour wait is more than acceptable. From my own experience with email support of various companies, 8 hours is at the top end of response times, and I'm speaking about much much larger enterprises than TG.

[Bradden]

The majority of Mh's may have full time employment however it should be possible to recruit a mix of crew to allow greater coverage during the day. There is little point having 4 Mh's on a server if they are all online at the same time surely. You may find the delay acceptable however I and others do not - as your customers it would be wise to listen and act accordingly.

[zimrich]

I work for a major and very successful retail company, customers can expect a "no longer" than 24 hour responce to any email enquiry.

If people think an 8 hour responce time is that "shocking" for a free game I can only suggest they look outside of travian to see what other companies responce times are.

[Bradden]

I work for a major and very successful retail company, customers can expect a "no longer" than 24 hour responce to any email enquiry.

If people think an 8 hour responce time is that "shocking" for a free game I can only suggest they look outside of travian to see what other companies responce times are.

.. and I work for a successful company where we have a simple policy - deal with it as quickly as you reasonably can. That's what the customer wants.. why keep them waiting?

[pure]

Our account holder got replies from all three, MH, chris and HQ.

I dispute that chris isnt a robot

[Bradden]

I dispute that chris isnt a robot

That's a double negative so surely you are claiming that Chris IS a robot. :p

[pure]

That's a double negative so surely you are claiming that Chris IS a robot. :p

well done sherlock


The worst thing about reading this thread for me is that the disgraceful behaviour ive witnessed from staff is their standard response.

Chris you need to reevaluate how you deal with this stuff totally. Your pathetic attempts to gain confessions or your lack of time for people is coming up over and over again. "admit what you did" when you are clueless to prove beyond reasonable doubt (the accepted way to deal with people in anything). We dont need an admin who ruins accounts on a scrap of evidence because he isnt man enough to admit it isnt enough or savvy enough to see it doesnt add up.

Your problems are brought on yourself