With thousands of players all interacting in game at any one moment there is a vigilant army ready to notice any weird behaviour. As a dev team we need to be aware of the issues players are facing outside the relatively safe confines of our office and its internal network. We have various options open to the players to report issues and get help; such as the forums, support emails and in-game support but where do all these questions, queries and occasional rants go? How do they get sorted out?
Support Team Assemble!
Morgana - Hi, Morgana here. I’ve been here for almost two years, helping players with their issues with the game. I’ve played a lot of MMOs myself and have been the leader of a guild for over three years, which is primarily why I wanted to get into the role of helping players. Although it’s impossible to help every time, we try our best to help to the best of our abilities and we hope that this shows, either through tickets or our work on the forums.
Finn- My name is Finn from the support team. I aid in supporting players by assisting with support emails and tickets, and ridding hack websites as much as we can, but in my spare time I play a lot of different video games too.
How did you get into the OTM support team?
Morgana- I came here straight after university studying psychology, in particular the effects that technology has had upon the way in which we communicate and learn. My final year’s dissertation was on the Motivations and Social Skills learnt from playing the MMO Eden Eternal, which I had been playing for about a year and a half at that time. I knew I wanted to do something in the gaming industry but felt my hatred for programming meant that was never to happen. I looked around and applied to One Thumb Mobile Ltd and I guess something about me was good because I’m aware how bad I was at the interview! Working here has been my first job and I’m loving it. It can be frustrating when we’re unable to help players as much as we’d like and I try to direct attention towards areas of the game that maybe need improving. Hopefully my presence of the forums has also helped to make players feel like we can be better approached.
Finn - I live locally and have always wanted to see how a computer game company works. A friend of a friend referred me to the studio when a vacancy came up and I jumped at the chance. I’ve worked in customer support before but working in a games studio is a completely different ballgame.
What does your daily routine consist of?
Morgana/Finn – Every day we mark down the amount of tickets that we cleared the day before. Usually in a day we receive hundreds of tickets and keeping track of these numbers helps us to see if anything really bad may have happened overnight. Ticket numbers are even greater after the weekend so Mondays and Tuesdays can feel a little stressful at times.
We can also be found on the forums. This side of the work allows us to interact on a more personal level with the players as well as give feedback to the team on how the players are feeling and the changes that they’d like to see in game. Behind the scenes, we help with the competitions, monitor and answer questions on Facebook and the forums, give feedback to developers, get answers for players from the developers and drink a lot of sugary drinks!
What tools are at your disposal?
Morgana/Finn - We have a Support Tool that allows us to search the database and look into information about player accounts. This is the primary tool we use to help players and it’s the fastest way to get in touch with a member of the support team. We’re also on the forums where players can PM us if they feel that they need urgent attention or if support hasn’t replied to them within a week.
What sort of things does the tool allow you to do?
Morgana/Finn - In general, we use it to help players who need to have quests removed or reset, who may be returning and need characters restored, who have dropped items and need them returned and help players who may be getting bullied in game. We also help to recover accounts, take feedback, offer refunds and take bug reports.
Is there anything in particular that takes up a lot of your time?
Morgana– Scamming; it’s a complex subject as we often don’t have the full story. There are times when scamming is obvious and accounts can be easily disabled or given warnings, but sometimes the situation is not so clear. There can also be confusion between what a player determines as a scam and what we see as a scam. One example I can think of is a player selling an item for 300k when others deem the item as worth only 200k
Finn- people sharing their account details and losing them takes up a lot of time. Putting your username and password into a website like “Celtic heroes hack sites” or “celtic heroes hacking apps” is also account sharing. We try to restore the character to the original owner but we cannot always restore all the lost items as this damages the game economy so please don’t do it.
Morgana That said, all reports of scamming are looked into. Players help us a lot if they supply us with as much information as possible as to what happened, what day it happened and what items/gold were taken. This lets us pinpoint the transactions and see if anything can be done. Scamming is an issue that frustrates everyone but it has to be understood that players need to take some responsibility for their own items. Remember; never give your password out to anyone!
We offer refunds to return gold to players who may have purchased items by accident but some players abuse this system and use it as a means to test items out. Recent changes to the refund system mean we are able to process refunds quicker and able to return to tickets that may require more attention, such as a player losing access to their account but it still takes time.
As a guild leader, I understand that clans/guilds will clash. Emotions run high, words are thrown around and then begins the big battle of players reporting one another. Player harassment is not welcomed on Celtic Heroes so all claims are looked into, however this can be challenging when it’s clan issue though I do find it interesting to see how clans on different servers react to these situations.
If someone has a problem is there anything they can do themselves to see if they can get an answer before they contact support?
Morgana- Players can post in the Ask for Help section of the forums which is monitored by us, the QA team, a Forum Guide or one of our very helpful moderators. Players posting here may receive help from others quicker than support getting to their ticket and answering from the support tool. If players have general issues such as problems logging into their game or graphical glitches etc. then they are encouraged to post on forums. Making the title of the ticket more detailed than “help me” or “support read please” is very helpful as it allows us to target tickets that may need more urgent attention.
Finn- If you are dicing and lose or are sharing an account and items get stolen we won’t be able to refund what you’ve lost, so please don’t do it! We also often get game feedback in support tickets, if you have feedback please post it in the Feedback section of the forums as it’ll be seen by the whole team and help get actionable tickets resolved quicker.
Have you ever got any support requests worthy of a facepalm?
Morgana I receive a lot of support tickets about players being killed in PVP
Finn Indeed. The arena is a PVP zone and you’re supposed to fight other players there. I’m not your mum and I can’t hug you for being slaughtered and disgracing your clan
What makes a great support team member?
Morgana Someone who is willing to listen to players’ feedback, has the desire to help people and has the thick skin to not take insults to heart. As a member of the support team, we get to interact with players on a daily basis and grow to understand what they want to be changed in game. We are limited on the amount of help that we can offer which can sometimes lead to some harsh words being thrown our way. Being a member of the support team can be a thankless job, which is why thank you messages always make my day
Finn– Staying focussed on the job in hand.
What are your favourite games apart from CH?
Morgana Final Fantasy! No surprises there I guess since I use a quote from the series as my signature
MMO wise I’m playing Final Fantasy 14 a Realm Reborn and before that I had been playing Eden Eternal which I only left due to the guild wishing to move onto Final Fantasy 14.Finn - Dwarf Fortress (Editor’s note; Masochist!), RimWorld, Project Zomboid.
Ever sent them a support request?
Morgana I’ve had to report players harassing other newer players. Also reported a few cases of botting. All MMOs have their issues but the support teams are always there to try to help out. Just remember to say thank you now and then. It can really help to lift their spirits!
Finn- I have filed bug reports for Dwarf Fortress and RimWorld. So far I can’t work out if my “weapon bag” in Project Zomboid keeps killing me when I put it in the cupboard is a bug or if it’s sometimes meant to happen.
Thank you, guys. Ladies and Gentlemen, please doff your caps to the Support Team and the valuable work they do.
Around the office this week the other teams have also been very busy.
We’re getting a real sense of the scope and scale of Gelebron’s Tower and we’re gearing up to presenting the plans for it to the wider team and then the fun can really start. The art team will begin building the final assets and detailing them while the design team will start laying down placeholder mobs and implementing stats in order to create and balance the gameplay. Not only will this be the biggest gameplay area we’ve done so far we also intend there to be a real sense of progression in skill and challenge as players make their way through the tower and battle the various floors. So, those guys will be busy for a while.
On a related note while the Tower itself is taking shape we’ve not said much about the denizens you’ll find inhabiting that area. The design team have been developing the narrative for the Tower and putting flesh on the bones of ideas for who you’ll face there and we’ll be featuring this very soon on the dev diary along with some questions and answers from our character and animation team, the guys that bring these critters to life.
We’ve had quite a few entries in the FanFic competition and it’s not too late to join in the fun and submit your entry. The competition closes on the 16th of July so get writing and tell us your stories. There’s plat to be won!
http://celtic-heroes.com/forum/viewtopi ... 10&t=58153
Our next release is entering QA and we’ve got something for everyone; new players, veterans, the fashion conscious, the combat specialists, the movers and shakers to name but a few. We’ll be giving out some more details at the end of next week so keep your eyes peeled here on the forums, Facebook and the website.
The iOS Destiny engine is still coming on strong. We’re making bigger and bigger strides to getting a rock-solid and silky-smooth build of Celtic Heroes on the devices we have in the office but unfortunately we just don’t have the strength of numbers to give it a widespread test. The performance under real-world conditions will be something we’ll need to get to a very high-standard before we release the final version but with only a limited number of people and iPad/iPhones in the office this can be tricky to assess.........
...................If only there was a legion of dedicated fans eager to help out and give an early version a run-through to help us test it…like some sort of beta test...................
More news soon!
You didn’t hear this from me, right? ;-)
Have a great weekend and see you in Dal Riata.