Arena cap is getting out of hand

[AWwrgwy]

I can dig that but polling/ surveys are and will remain the best way to interpret what your base desires. The data from your base and of course the interpretation from you. It never hurts to ask the questions. Thx for taking part of this discussion.

Long before I saw that article I was saying give the customer what he wants, not what he ask for, because they are rarely the same thing.

HiTech

And herin lies the crux....


wrongway

[TheDudeDVant]

And herin lies the crux....


wrongway

Dunno what you mean.. I disagree with his position on the customer not knowing what to ask for.. but that is ok.. It really doesn't matter if you agree or not though, you still have to ask the questions.. Actually, you have to really figure how to ask the questions.. Cause you already know the answer is wrong.. The wording is crucial so you will know by the incorrect answer given on what to do next.. Its just that easy!  

But no matter how you look at it.. Polling your base is essential and needed data..

[ImADot]

...a long time anecdote "the customer is always right"...

The customer is NOT always right; sometimes, but not ALWAYS.  In this day and age of entitlement, frivolous lawsuits and "more me now", that old tired adage is no longer valid.

[hitech]

OMG this is why we hear "customers dont know what they want?" He doesnt even give any facts to support his opinion or include the names of the businesses that supposedly failed because they listened to their customers. Doesnt the fact that his theory flys in the face of a long time anecdote "the customer is always right" raise questions? And how about the polling and consumer data companies that make millions every year finding out what people want through polls? Not that politicians dont waste money anyhow, but do you really think they spend thousands of their own money figuring out what hair color voters want to see for nothing?

These people seem to disagree.

http://www.crf-usa.org/election-central/public-opinion-polls.html

I know of 1, it's called Warbirds.

HiTech

[hitech]

It really doesn't matter if you agree or not though, you still have to ask the questions..

This is not the way I've seen the world work. Asking the question can be very detrimental. No matter which way an answer comes out, you upset many of your customers because you didn't listen to THEIR idea.

It is similar to the idea, it is much easier to ask forgiveness then permission.

What you are forgetting is that in the end the answer you really wish is what the will the customer do with their pocket book. Polls will never show the true representation of this. I can not count the number of times I have seen post from people who say "I'm quiting because of ....." and when you go look if they did delete their account they never did.

History has shown us that very rarely is it a good idea to ask a question, take a poll,announce a change before time that you know will be controversial. All it ends up doing is getting everyone upset before they even see the details.

HiTech

[morfiend]

History has shown us that very rarely is it a good idea to ask a question, take a poll,announce a change before time that you know will be controversial. All it ends up doing is getting everyone upset before they even see the details.

HiTech

  This is something that just cant be denied!   I'd add the customer may be right but that doesnt mean they're correct.



     

 PS: as a subcontractor I found myself in this situation far too many times,sometimes no matter what you do you cant please everyone.

[FLS]

OMG this is why we hear "customers dont know what they want?" He doesnt even give any facts to support his opinion or include the names of the businesses that supposedly failed because they listened to their customers. Doesnt the fact that his theory flys in the face of a long time anecdote "the customer is always right" raise questions? And how about the polling and consumer data companies that make millions every year finding out what people want through polls? Not that politicians dont waste money anyhow, but do you really think they spend thousands of their own money figuring out what hair color voters want to see for nothing?

These people seem to disagree.

http://www.crf-usa.org/election-central/public-opinion-polls.html

The notion that "the customer is always right" refers to the business practice of placating unreasonable customers. It does not refer to letting customers make policy because they are infallible.

Polls are useful but generally polls are used to find out what people think so that they can be told what they want to hear. Public opinion polls are not used to determine policy, their purpose is to help sell the policy to the public.

[SunBat]

Yes economy is always a factor, but my point was not to show you all the data , nor describe why we believe it was not the economy that cause the change , my point is that arena splits and economy show up very differently in metrics. And our interpretation of all our data is the split caused a major change that started increasing our size.

There has to be more to what?

HiTech

Fair enough.  I see what you are saying.  You answered my question.  Forget about the second part, it was pretty much the same question just phrased poorly because I was typing fast on my phone. 

I thought of a recent example in my profession as an illustration of what the customer wants and what the customer thinks he wants are two different things.  This is especially true with complex issues that appear on the surface to be very simple. 

The current facility I am working on is so big that it is split up among several contractors.  There are some structures that are very close to each other that are done by different contractors so it is very easy to compare one design to the other.  Some foundations were poured for one structure carrying pipe that was practically identical to the other structure loadwise but one set of foundations was larger than the other set.  One of these structures was designed by my company.  Our foundations happened to be the larger ones.  Oh!  How scandalized everyone was!  We had WAY WAY WAY overdesigned our foundations and cost the client millions of extra dollars!  The construction guys and the other contractor had a good laugh at our expense. 

I then asked them to compare the steel on both structures.  Our structure had less steel than the other structure.  To make a long story short, we were smart enough to compare the relative cost of more steel to more concrete.  The cost of more concrete was cheaper in that part of the world, so we made structural decisions (this is the complexity that is missed when people simply look at the size of foundations) to cause more load go to the foundations.  The total installed cost of our structure ended up being millions of dollars less than the other structure. After I explained the situation (the construction guys never quite understood because they just know big foundations are bad, very bad), I jokingly asked the client if he would like for me to reduce the foundations and increase the steel since he WANTED smaller foundations.  We had a good laugh and he declined because what he REALLY WANTED was a few extra million dollars to use to purchase materials for bad contractors that weren’t as smart as SunBat Muppet, P.E.   

P.S.  If we polled our clients and our construction guys and asked them if they would prefer larger foundations or smaller foundations, they would always choose smaller foundations.  The poll would be flawed and steel guys would get rich. 

[Wiley]

^^^

...frickin' genius, I tellsya. 

Design by committee is a horrible, horrible idea the vast majority of the time.  Online games are very much not one of the exceptions to that rule.

Wiley.

[hitech]

Exactly Sunbat.

What happens is that the customer translates his wants into an end product, and then ask for the end product not what he wants. But in the customers mind they are the same thing.

Translating want's/desires/needs into products is almost by definition what engineering is.

HiTech

[Delirium]

Translating want's/desires/needs into products is almost by definition what engineering is.

It also describes late night 1-900 number advertising perfectly as well. 

[Oldman731]

P.S.  If we polled our clients and our construction guys and asked them if they would prefer larger foundations or smaller foundations, they would always choose smaller foundations.  The poll would be flawed and steel guys would get rich. 

....so....you want HTC to make airplanes...out of steel and concrete...?

- oldman (so confused)

[ink]

Ive been a Tattoo artist for 23 years...and most certainly the customer is NOT always right, personally I cant stand the arena caps, is it gonna make me quit?..... nope, would the "cesspool" of one arena make me quit?......nope   would I enjoy one arena? hell ya  I was here when there was only one main so remember perfectly well what it was like, same as it is today, just in one arena, the hords, the ganging, the avoidance, the 200 cesspool was just the same, if someone quits because of the "banter" on 200...well they just don't belong, go play xbox and then tell me 200 is bad, haha 200 is mild.

this game is by far the best in its class bar none.......do I like every decision that HTC makes? nope   do I think HTC knows what he is doing?    I would be an idiot if I thought he didn't.    the guy may not be the best "people person", but when it comes to this game he knows what he is doing,  I for one em glad he made it, for I have had many many hours of enjoyment, oh so many


and another thing I gotta   HTC for is the fact that he actually listens and gets involved with his product, here he is responding to his customers, not many owners will do that.      

personally I wish you, HTC   would implement a zone eny, you have said this game is about "Combat" and thats the reason I am here, I combat the hord, but what kind of combat is that? it would be better if say I am fighting 6 cons (any multi number would work)  and I actually get to kill some of those cons, my perk bonus would be higher if say I was fighting just one.  and the perks for the cons that got my kill would be lower, this may or may not make people decide to stay out of the horde so much.

but ether way you do it does not matter to me, I will be here as long as possible and bearing no Real life issues I will always be here  

[Tigger29]

For the record, my ideas are just something I thought of that I felt may help the situation.  Personally, I'm not all that unhappy with the current setup.  I feel that yes it needs improvement but I also fear that too many changes may end up worsening things.

If my ideas help HTC then I'm glad I could help!  If not then.. oh well.  No loss on my part!  I just got tired of seeing everyone complaining about the caps, but never offering any kind of a solution.

I can not count the number of times I have seen post from people who say "I'm quiting because of ....." and when you go look if they did delete their account they never did.

This kind of reminds me of customers who bring their cars in with a serious safety issue.  We check it out and give them a price they did not want to hear.  The #1 excuse used is "That's too much.. I'm just going to go trade it in" which, if you translate it means "I don't believe you and I'm too cheap to fix it so just give me my car back!"

Three months later that same car is back for an oil change, usually with the same exact safety problem.  When confronted again about the issue they say "Erhrrm.. Yeah... I'm saving up for a down payment" or some other bull like that.

A month later that same car is towed in with that part finally failing, causing even more damage to other parts, and they end up paying us twice the price to fix it than they would have paid in the first place!  It just cracks me up.

Then there are the customers who need $100 worth of brakes, and instead of spending the money they go and trade it in on a new car instead.  I never did understand how buying a $25,000 car can be cheaper than spending $100 to fix an otherwise good vehicle?!  It just shows that many customer (ok most) are simply CLUELESS.  I've found that over the years selling repair work to customers, you get better results if you TELL the customer what you are going to do instead of asking them.  If they have a problem with it, they'll let you know.  95% of the time if you ASK them they simply don't know how to respond, usually because they simply don't know enough about it to feel confident in their decision, so you have to take on the confidence for them.

[grizz441]

Got love this, lets not look at the Elephant, but dismiss it as nothing more then coincidence. "and numbers went up for a few months". But then again if you really had any info you would know the duration. Because a few months was not what happened.
Since you are willing to dismiss it as coincidence, no data I could ever show you could convince you otherwise because "coincidence" covers all.

I will concede the fact that there was a player spike after the split and the cause of that spike was in at least partly due to the split.  I also agree that there is a stagnation point in a one arena environment as the population increases, gameplay will inevitably start to decrease which may cause a few lost subscriptions for a myriad of reasons based on the particular customer.

BUT....

The cause and effect relationship between an arena split and player increase as you explain it on the boards if often very misleading.  A split should only create a player increase if one arena is passed its stagnation point.  Stagnation point should be based on different factors such as map size, game play dynamics, and player interaction.

There is however, a low stagnation point as well in which two arenas can meet if numbers drop too much.  In this case, if you combined the arenas back into one and where this one arena is now between the two extreme stagnation points, you should have a player spike as well, just like you did when you split the arenas due to the high point.  Does this mean that simply joining arenas causes an increase in subcriptions?  No, just like it does not simply create a spike when you split arenas.  It's all dependent based on when you do it.

I'm curious, in a worst case scenario, for whatever reason, player numbers dropped to the point when two arenas were below this 'low stagnation point', would you rejoin the arenas?  The point is, when you make a statement that splitting the arenas caused a player spike and offer no further explanation, you imply there is a direct cause and effect relationship there, when that is clearly not the case.  

I'm sure you know all of this already, and maybe this is what you knew of early in our conversation that you "chose not to explain".