Re: Letter to RSI (Long One) From: aj863@Freenet.carleton.ca (Garth Werner) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1993 04:39:31 +0000 You'll pardon me fo taking up a lot of space here, but I want to babble. Some anonymous poster put up a potential letter to RSI. I already said I wouldn't pen my name to it, but I will ramble on throughout this article to present my thoughts, be they my views on Duelmasters and RSI, or at times, I may just be critiquing the writing. So without further delays: November 10, 1993 To Whom it May Concern, I am writing you this letter in hopes of making the game that I enjoy, more enjoyable for me and more profitable for you. I do not intend for this letter to get anyone in trouble, instead I write in hopes that I can bring some serious problems to light. Get rid of the first part of the 2nd sentence. Just say I'm writing in hopes.... First, I would like to start off by saying that the points that I am going to present are not mine alone, but those of numerous customers that use your service as well as customers who tried to use your service, but, found the customer service / quality assurance to be so bad that they went elsewhere to spend their disposable income. The service You shouldn't really be saying that they are not yours alone, because they are, others may have similar points, but unless you mass distribute and get them each to sign and send in a copy, this letter is your opinion and thoughts exlusively. You might say something like "Other individuals who have previously tried the Duelmasters game have told me they have quit for the following reasons: (Be specific with names and individual circumstances) I am referring to is the game called Duel Masters. While I am aware that you run several other games, I am sure that what we have to say applies to them all. You are writing to discuss how they handle Duelmasters. Be specific about it, don't chastize them for their whole way of doing business, stick to how they handle the one game they want to discuss. The one thing that was unanimous among the people I talked to was that your game is fantastic. The programming that this was required for this is nothing short of genius. Your company has obviously put allot of care and thought into the development of this game. Say the game is great, addictive, worth the time and money you put into playing it, you may think the programming is great, but the programming and development is another story altogether. Everything in the game that has been considered development has basically been putting out fires. ADM was created because individual warriors were too dominant in DM. Thus the all-star arena was born. Primus came from new warriors being unable to break into the top end of the game. Tournament classifications were a trial and error process. Regional arenas were created because of overcrowding in ADM 100. ADM 100 still crashes their system because all warriors are entered there before going to a regional. Sandbagging existed, and public outcry eventually led to its elimination. There was no thought out development, that is why characters stagnate when they hit about 100 skills, and again after 4 stat raises after maxxing out. If the game was a brilliant piece of programming, it would be easy to let the game develop further, but their is only so far that it can go. Man, the poor structure in the programming has cost my warriors oodles of skills in the long run. What I wouldn't give to see Christine with her missing skills. 4 Grandmasters (1 short of Archie in Attack) and 1 short of GM in Decise would be interesting, and her Deftness still has room to grow from 17. But that's my personal beef. We also enjoy the very elegant touch that your writers bring to the turn results. They have a very pleasant way of bringing the game to life. The spotlights and the personals make the game have a `family' type appearance instead of a cold computer generated data sheet. Say what, what have you been smoking. Judge Beni was alright, but he seemed like more of a player than an RSI employee. All of these spotlights and personals are not RSI's writers, it's you and I. Any good game facilitates communication amongst participants. This para is basically bogus. In short the game is great! We have no problems putting out the money you request for the game. We do feel how ever that the price is a bit high. The price is a very minor inconvenience that we are willing to deal with because of the quality of the service. It's been proven that the price is at the correct market value, if it wasn't they'd either have no customers, or they'd be losing money. Another para that should be removed. However, the two things that disturb your customers more than anything is your customer support, and your quality assurance. We realize that the amount of paper that your company processes on a weekly basis is staggering, and that keeping up with it all can be a nightmare. Unfortunately, this is not an excuse. Your a company that is providing a service, and if the service fails to be sufficient it will inevitably reflect badly on your company's profit margin. Having personally spent over 15 years in the retail industry, your customer support can make or break your company. The problems we encountered such as: No one answering the Customer Service line or just getting an answering machine that never seems to be listened to. (Although, we have recognized some improvement in this area.) Hold on, this is a PBM (BY MAIL) being the key words here. The entire game should be by mail. You want service, write a letter requesting new rollups, detail your problems in a letter. (Keep a copy for your file). The more time they spend on the phone, the less productive they are at what they are supposed to do. Agreed, the phone should be there for some strange things (IE, don't cash my check because the government just seized $9,000 in back taxes and I don't want a $500 check to bounce). But I don't see any transaction other than a real life emergency that should be handled by phone. The fax is an alternate quick turnaround solution. Requests for materials, arena changes, etc., being met with a very polite "We'll have that done as soon as possible." Then nothing happens, or your request is done incorrectly. (I.E. Customer asks for a Duel Master setup, and gets a Hyborian War setup.) If it's done in writing, you would have a significantly reduced chance of error. See previous comment. Personal Experience: I have a warrior who received a TV at a tournament right before he was sent to Advanced Duel Masters. I requested at that time that he be sent to arena #105. He was sent to arena #100. I would call and request to be moved to arena #105, they would tell me yes, I would hold off using the TV Challenge that he had won. He didn't get moved. I got upset and didn't run the next turn. Then the process would start again. As a result my warriors TV went away because of the inability of customer service to follow through on even the simplest of requests.) The getting warriors transfered may seem simple to you, but in there database of thousands of data files, it's not such a simple procedure. When transfers are due to happen, I start writing multiple ADM arena numbers on the sheet, with comments before and after the split for each number. I think only once has something been muffed. Not band for about 32 warriors and probably a total of 100 transfers. How often did you do something right 99% of the time in school. The rest of the complaints deal with your quality assurance department. There is some speculation amongst your customers as to whether or not this department even exists. I doubt it does! Here are some problems noted in that area: Quality of printed turn. (I.E. Faded toner, printed in bad order (Fights being printed on the backs of other fights, etc.) OK, you print out multiple pounds of paper a day and try and catch the exact time the toner runs out, a computer file glitches. Are you going to pay someone to sit and watch everything that goes through. No way! They eventually catch it. If it's things printed the wrong way, WRITE in and ask for a free reprint of the turn because the thing was printed improperly. For as often as it does happen, it's not a problem. Once again, the percentage rate is probably way up there, it's jsut that people do remember when specific things don't go their way. Input errors on turn sheets. (We realize that this is sometimes the error of the customer, however there is far to much on your part.) Hmm, I've been playing for 7 years now I think, and I can remember only 3 instances of blantant errors on RSI's behalf. There's been times where I've seen something really stupid on the strategy so I queried, but there was no mistake on their part. It would have if people printed legibly on the turnsheets. I've seen things at the FtF's where every single box was incomprehensible to me, but somehow they manage to interpret these things. Late turns. Things happen Slow turnaround time for requests. A lot of this wouldn't happen if they didn't have to spend so much time on the phone, answering questions like, "Who TC'd", did any of my warriors TV? etc... `Diplo's' going to the wrong people. I've seen this once in 7+ years. Not bad. These are just a few of the problems that we have incurred. As stated earlier in this letter, the intent of this letter is not to get anyone in trouble, but to shed light on the areas we feel would make the game more enjoyable for us, and more profitable for you. You have raised the areas you feel are problems, but I haven't seen any suggested solutions. When you say Customer service is bad, do you suggest hiring a telephone operator. Will everyone be willing to pay the extra $1 a turn for this service. I would probably classify this as a token 'bitch session' letter and file it in the round folder. But if there were proposed solutions to the problem, I know it would be at least discussed at RSI. I remember about three or four years back, I wrote in a similar lengthy letter. Almost every single one of my suggestions were actionned in the following month. A couple were ignored, and one didn't have enough public interest to be valid, but they pretty much took my suggestions verbatim. The extra rounds for the Primus tourney came from player suggestions, same with the breakup of Primus and ADM tourney's, the modification of ADM invitation criteria, and creation of multiple turn awards to compete for all came from players suggestions. Thank you for listening. Any time. Don't take what I say here as personal flaming. I'm just set in what I want to see. I'm against the phone as you can see, I also would like to see less time spent typing in fiction, and more time doing personal ads so things could turn around quicker. Although I guess I can't complain, they did a 23 page spotlight for me about 2 years back, and I've got another doozie coming next month in 47. -- Garth aj863@freenet.carleton.ca or crip@micor.ocunix.on.ca Up