Originally Posted By Stolypin (20 APR 2012 9:02am)

Originally Posted By Nefaro (20 APR 2012 7:15am)

Originally Posted By thewood (20 APR 2012 4:41am)

I did notice SES seems to be really trying to salvage its support. They have posted more in the last fews days than in all the last year.  They seem a little defensive, but par for the course.

 

I don't know if its the complaining at sites like this, complaining at thier own forum, or the discussion of SAI around the web that kickstarted them.  Or it might pitiful sales of their new mappack...

 

Probably all of the above.  When their new map pack reportedly had severe problems in even starting certain scenarios, and nobody had heard from them in a long time, you know they're taking a hammering on the public front.

 

 

 

Well, I know they are certainly taking a "hammering" from a handful of posters on this forum (which, of course, is a forum associated with a SES competitor), all of whom claim they will not, or will no longer, patronize SES and thus have no recent experience with SES customer support (or the lack thereof).  And while these posters should therefore have no opinion as to SES's current customer support (or lack thereof),  they apparently have nothing better to do than repeatedly bash games which they do not own and have no intention of owning.

 

You know, I buy a lot of wargames (computer and board)  but still my purchases account for only a small percentage of the new games released every year.  It has never dawned on me to go to a wargaming forum and repeatedly post remarks about games (and, in particular, the customer support for such games) which I do not own and do not intend to buy.   

 

Well, I for one bought Distant guns and Jutland before the new SES StormEnergy System came out.  The games were Okay, but surprisingly dull in many ways.  I won't go into the details of trying to get old pre-stormEnergy Games working, but I did it once and I learned not to bother doing it again.

I have no idea what SES current problems might be, but I have to say that I am not surprised that they are having a lot of problems.  And all the moreso since I never could figure out what was wrong with SES even when I was very hopeful about their games.

Originally Posted By Hexagon (20 APR 2012 9:47am)

I want know if we say something false about SES games... 

Much of what has been posted here is completely contrary to my experiences.  I own both Distant Guns and Jutland and:

1.  Have had zero problems with the DRM;

2.  Have had zero problems with the new Stormpowered engine (including as it interacts with my AV program);

3.  Have had zero problems with customer support (which included needing help restoring both games after a hard drive failure); and

4.  Have greatly enjoyed both games.

As for issues with the new map pack, I can't speak to that since I don't own it (yet) but I certainly would not be surprised to hear that there are a few bugs considering that every new release of any new game or module has bugs. 

I am absolutely fine with posters relating comparisons to SAI which appears to have some definite advantages (though I would expect that given that the game is opting for realism over graphics).  I am absolutely fine with posters relating problems with games or with customer support.

What I find objectionable (and suspicious) is the continuous bashing by posters who openly admit to not owning SES games and who say they have no intention of EVER owning an SES game.  I personally don't intend to ever own any space-related strategy game but I certainly don't feel compelled to stalk the Distant Worlds forum and post endless rants about how bad I think the game is.      

Originally Posted By Stolypin (20 APR 2012 10:32am)

 

What I find objectionable (and suspicious) is the continuous bashing by posters who openly admit to not owning SES games and who say they have no intention of EVER owning an SES game.  I personally don't intend to ever own any space-related strategy game but I certainly don't feel compelled to stalk the Distant Worlds forum and post endless rants about how bad I think the game is.      

 

As chance would have it, I have bought a SES game (Distant Guns), and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a SES game owner, SES, your company sucks.

Originally Posted By Stolypin (20 APR 2012 10:32am)

How many updates has SAI had so far?

 

 I personally don't intend to ever own any space-related strategy game but I certainly don't feel compelled to stalk the Distant Worlds forum and post endless rants about how bad I think the game is.      

 

SAI has had a number of updates since release.  But compare the SAI forum with the Jutland one and Im sure you'll agree theres a considerable difference in tone.

http://forums.navalwarfare.net/forumdisplay.php?34-STEAM-amp-IRON-WW1-NAVAL-CAMPAIGN-SIMULATOR

OK I see your point about the Distant Worlds analogy, but this isnt a Jutland forum.  If it was our comments would be wiped, we would be banned, and the board...would be silent.

Well, you can suspice all you want (your number of post is ) but i see more that you are the only one that dont have any problems with SES games when i have problems even when try to test demos... damn, i cant run demo somedays ago...

I dont touch more this, here who is loosing something is SES, not me, more money for better things.

Originally Posted By BlondKnight (20 APR 2012 11:26am)

 

 this isnt a Jutland forum.  If it was our comments would be wiped, we would be banned, and the board...would be silent.

 

 

 

I've often wondered how Matrix would react if I went to their forums and posted incessantly about the bad customer support experience I had with them a year ago, bringing it up over and over again in subforums for games in which I do not own and have no intention of ever owning. 

Actually, that happens at Matrix.  Nothing gets deleted.

SES already has set a precedent of delting any mention of a potential competitor.

Originally Posted By Reckall (20 APR 2012 10:55am)

As chance would have it, I have bought a SES game (Distant Guns), and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a SES game owner, SES, your company sucks.

Same here. Purchased Distant Guns years ago. Won't give SES a dime ever again. Jim Rose's frequently belligerent attitude toward his customers convinced me of that.

Originally Posted By Stolypin (20 APR 2012 12:15pm)

 

I've often wondered how Matrix would react if I went to their forums and posted incessantly about the bad customer support experience I had with them a year ago, bringing it up over and over again in subforums for games in which I do not own and have no intention of ever owning. 

If you had a bad customer support experience at Matrix you should post about it over there.  That will give them the opportunity (publicly) to either resolve it for you, explain what the issue was and what steps theyve made to make sure it wont happen again. Or show that they sometimes also drop the ball.

Regardless if you had a bad time with them, or some other vendor, let people know.  If you dont your peers will roll right over the same cliff.

I think it's just fine for a potential SES owner to express their dislike of the DRM, as it does pertain to the game and is often the reason they don't own it.

I took the leap quite awhile back and purchased Jutland.  Been happy with it, even though I had a problem when they switched to their Steam imitation.  Fortunately their customer service got it fixed within a day or so.  I'd rather have not had the problem in the first place, but it worked out okay for me. 

What has alarmed me over the past few months was the lack of communication regarding ongoing issues.  When a sale pops up named the "divorce sale", it makes you wonder if you'll be having the $65 game you purchased from them for much longer.  And so it all comes back to the DRM, it seems. 

I don't think many people hang out at their forum much, unless they're reporting issues, so I don't complain about deleted threads or anything.  If I wanted to be abused on a forum, I'd go post something critical at Battlefront - there'd be much more nastiness resulting from my efforts there.

Originally Posted By BlondKnight (20 APR 2012 12:29pm)

Originally Posted By Stolypin (20 APR 2012 12:15pm)

 

I've often wondered how Matrix would react if I went to their forums and posted incessantly about the bad customer support experience I had with them a year ago, bringing it up over and over again in subforums for games in which I do not own and have no intention of ever owning. 

 

If you had a bad customer support experience at Matrix you should post about it over there.  That will give them the opportunity (publicly) to either resolve it for you, explain what the issue was and what steps theyve made to make sure it wont happen again. Or show that they sometimes also drop the ball.

Regardless if you had a bad time with them, or some other vendor, let people know.  If you dont your peers will roll right over the same cliff.

Maybe.  Or maybe I should just let it go and accept the fact that not every company -- particularly a small, niche company specializing in computer wargames -- gives perfect customer support 100% of the time (which is what I have chosen to do).

What I should NOT do is continuously bash Matrix at every opportunity, even in threads pertaining to Matrix products that I do not own and have no intention of owning. 

Originally Posted By Stolypin (20 APR 2012 12:49pm)

What I should NOT do is continuously bash Matrix at every opportunity, even in threads pertaining to Matrix products that I do not own and have no intention of owning. 

I agree you should leave poor ol' Matrix alone

Originally Posted By mirth (20 APR 2012 12:28pm)

Originally Posted By Reckall (20 APR 2012 10:55am)

As chance would have it, I have bought a SES game (Distant Guns), and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a SES game owner, SES, your company sucks.

 

Same here. Purchased Distant Guns years ago. Won't give SES a dime ever again. Jim Rose's frequently belligerent attitude toward his customers convinced me of that.

 

 

Same here. I own DG and Jutland but I always hated the absolut arrogant behavior of some of the SES staff. I´ve been with SES since the initial release of DG but they wont get another penny from me.

Beside, a lot of people still remember when the warnings "Don't do this SES. This DRM/JR combo will not end well" were looked down with nothing but contempt (and, when it didn't end well, with even more contempt). So, you must factor in a "WE TOLD YOU SO" of GARGANTUAN dimensions.

Originally Posted By Reckall (20 APR 2012 10:55am)

Originally Posted By Stolypin (20 APR 2012 10:32am)

 

What I find objectionable (and suspicious) is the continuous bashing by posters who openly admit to not owning SES games and who say they have no intention of EVER owning an SES game.  I personally don't intend to ever own any space-related strategy game but I certainly don't feel compelled to stalk the Distant Worlds forum and post endless rants about how bad I think the game is.      

 

 

As chance would have it, I have bought a SES game (Distant Guns), and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a SES game owner, SES, your company sucks.

+100000000000

Same here bought Distant Guns and got burned, company sucks big time and they treat their customers like crap and  their DRM and support suck as well.   

I made the mistake of speaking my mind on their fora last night. This morning I find my post deleted and am now the owner of a nice fat perma-ban. It seems they are very thin skinned.

I own both Jutland and DG, but haven't played them in a while, so I guess I now have more space on my HDD.

SAI is a better game, in any case. Like I said in the post on there fora, maybe it jolted them into action. Now all that's needed is another jolt to get them of their high horse and "we know better" attitude.

Cheers

Bruce

They're in panic mode on their forums. Even the most dieheard fans are complaining. Norm Koger is personally responding to the complaints now, which sounds great except for the fact that he didn't reguarly post at all for a year plus.

A year ago, even with JRs rants, they had a small core of diehard fans, now they've alienated many of those too.

I bought DG pretty much as soon as it came out, and had a great few years playing it.

I couldn't wait for Jutland and tried out the demo, but ultimately it never got high enough on my list to become a potential purchase - not because of DRM or poor customer service, it just wasn't as interesting to play as I had imagined. I thought the focus on the North Sea campaign would make it a bit too contrived to be an interesting game (would much rather chase the Goeben or hunt down raiders in the Pacific). And the thought of playing a Jutland scenario and coordinating hundreds of ships (especially the small support ships) just left me cold.

I can understand people getting p*ssed by a bad customer service experience - but what is the probability you ever really need to have a customer service experience in the first place? There seems to be a really strong opinion here that SES sucks when it comes to customer interactions, but what are all those interactions about? As far as I can tell, a handful of peole have had DRM problems, were publically brushed off and possibly accused of obtaining the software illegally. Yes very poor customer service, but is it really representative?

I doubt that I'll ever get Jutland (or SAI for that matter, the primitive graphics just kill any interest for me - doesn't need to be 3d, but that's no excuse for it looking like it came out in 1995), but I do like the era and hope that companies will continue to develop games for it.

You can say it is not representitive, but it does show that SES had a propensity to not only blow off technical issues with their custom DRM, but actually accuse legitimate users of being pirates.  I see that and immediately think that it sets a precedent.

 I look at BFC's DRM and have maybe once seen them accuse someone of pirating software.  A number of DRM issues have come up and BFC's response is always to assume it's a technical issue.  SES always seems to immeditaely think you are screwing them.

I bought Distant Guns on the first day it was released and now have Jutland plus the addons except for the new map pack.

I know a lot of you don't like their customer service nor their Stormpowered software. But from my experience I really haven't had any issues except one. That was when I had trouble transferring DG and Jutland to my PC two years ago and had big trouble with the license and customer service was terrible until I figured it out myself.

Norm just released an update for both DG and Jutland which tries to solve the issue of fleets' ending position after battles. Early indications is that the issue seems to be solved or at the very least, much less likely to occur. So I'll give some credit to SES and Norm for still patching the two games.

I also got an email from SES stating that the new Map Pack (and everything else) is an extra 10% this weekend. So the map pack is now $18 US which I think I'll get.

But believe me, I understand the frustration with Stormpowered with most of you. But for me at least, it hasn't been too bad using Stormpowered. I just have to remember to transfer the license to my next new PC.

Keep in mind they only fixed it after at least a year of people complaining about it.  And they only seemed focused on it when their own fanbois started telling people not to buy the game.  Fixing it is good, but they should have done it a year ago.

What it says to me is Norm doesn't read the forums and no one else at SES cares.

I think they had a real opportunity to score big with their games but became so distracted with building/fixing DRM and then building their Steam-like Stormpower system, they lost sight of being a game developer.

Not wanting to particularly jump on either side of the fence here, but hearing the elastic band matter being fixed made me want to try the game again.

Tried to play the game, but of course I needed to login.

Login didn't work, did not recognise user/password.

Open a ticket at SES - the user id/password worked there at least.

Intriguing that one of the dropdowns you need to fill in of "category"- error/guidance/etc. - the last one"is "mindless rant". Hmmm.

Anyway, fingers crossed I get to play later this weekend and checkout the changes.

[Edit: 8 hours later and no response. So I cannot play Jutland.  So off to either ME3, Witcher 2 Enhanced or SAI. ME3 I think...in the mood for some intergalactic destruction]

[Edit 13 hours later. No response from SES customer service. ME3 has been a hoot though. Cerberus have taken a LOT of casualties. Amanda Shepherd does a lot of damage with that sniper rifle

20 hours later and no response to the support ticket from SES. So if I get gaming time today, I think SAI for my WWI naval fix, or try out the new Witcher 2 Extended Edition, see what has changed. Looks good. Hopefully SES will be back to me before next weekend's gaming session.

Originally Posted By Hartford688 (22 APR 2012 2:30am)

20 hours later and no response to the support ticket from SES. So if I get gaming time today, I think SAI for my WWI naval fix, or try out the new Witcher 2 Extended Edition, see what has changed. Looks good. Hopefully SES will be back to me before next weekend's gaming session.

The most immediate issue with companies using restrictive DRM is that they need customer service that is on the ball all days of the week because that kind of DRM will regularly give it's customers problems that require CS fixing it.   This is a primary example of why people are constantly concerned about it for the short-term, and why there's so much hair pulling in this specific SES example.  Being a small company, which thinks itself much larger, I think they're trying to do too much with the capacities they have at hand, and the customers on the other end may get pushed down the priority list a bit too much.

As I've said before, my one (DRM related) problem was solved within 24 hours and I was satisfied with it.  But this was a year or two ago, when SES was still fairly active with it's customers.  I get the impression that the latter had taken a nosedive on their priority list lately, and Hartford's example is likely indicative of how the service has slipped lately and the reason their customers have generally been cranky of late.

Well SES got back to me tonight (2.5 day turnaround).

Solution to login again using email address and password.

Login does not use old UserID and password (that you need to access support site) but email address plus Stormpowered password. I had reset that last one just before trying to login on Saturday, and so had certainly not forgotten it, but I am guessing - famous last words - there was a replication delay between the website and the server. I am pretty certain that I tried all my possibilities of UserID,email address and both passwords in my many abortive attempts.

So either user imbecility (always a possibility) or replication delay.

Still I support Nefaro's view...if you are going to have this system of DRM then you need to have no technical issues ever (a tall order given the complexities of different PC setups) or very quick turnaround by your customer service - which is very hard/prohibitively expensive for a small outfit.

Anyway, all fixed now.