Eve online technical support. EVE Online: Support message to players

It's been about a year since the support team published a devblog and it's time for an update. This blog is entirely about support and does not include game content or release information. So let's talk about petitions.

Year in Review

Before we talk about response times, queue status, and addressing your feedback, we want to highlight a few things.

New petition system

Last June we launched a new petition system, a hugely valuable improvement to the old system in use since 2003. We've started playing with a lot of new tools to help track petition counts, measure average times (more on that later), and various other things to help GMs find something interesting that helps you, the players.

The most obvious benefit to players is new system This is a Help Center, which contains about 190 notes and has about 5k views per day. We love to interact with you directly, but I think you will agree that it is better when the player can get an answer without a petition.

Summit of the tenth convocation of the CSM

For the second year now, we have been organizing a meeting with the CSM at their summit in Reykjavik. One of the main issues they raised was transparency regarding what is and is not an exploit. Based on this, an article about known exploits was created. This is one of the most liked articles and we try to keep it up to date. We are looking forward to the eleventh CSM summit in September.

Player submitted art

Last March, Operations and IT expanded their footprint and installed a new wall between themselves and the help desk. The bittersweet moment of the last part of the wall left us with a feeling of loss (<3 отдел Операций), но в целом много и пустой стены для покрытия чем либо.

Despite our best efforts to decorate the wall, it was decided that a couple of cat memes were not enough. That's why we asked you to create some pictures for this wall. You did a great job and the winning art was printed and then proudly hung up for all the GMs and visitors to see( see above).

Petition Queue Status

In addition to the above, we should note that the past six months have had their difficulties, and to be honest, the support during this time was not entirely ideal. Twice in the past six months, largely due to reasons beyond our control, the petition backlog has become so large that we have made the difficult decision to send out a mass mailing to most of the petitions to encourage players to update their petitions while the issue persists. We managed to reduce the queue by 70% using this measure, but this is not the best support, which we admit. However, as has been written, our level of support is high, our response time is short and we hope to continue to do so.

In mid-July, we made some changes to mail routing, resulting in player responses to petitions not reaching our support team. New petitions did this, but any replies sent via mail did not, and 1,701 players were affected. We should have identified this problem earlier, but it eluded us. After this, we contacted the affected players, apologized and provided ship skins as compensation.

Queue structure

It might be a good idea to give a quick overview of what the help desk queue looks like before moving on. Players submit petitions that are filtered into different categories: payment, gameplay and technical assistance, these three main categories are also divided into many subsections. This does not mean putting all petitions into one big queue and processing them on a first-come, first-served basis. We cannot afford to have one large queue, since our GMs work with different training and specialization. Also, some petitions are more time sensitive and should be resolved as quickly as possible.

All petitions are important to us, but we filter some into a queue where responses from GMs will be received in less than an hour - usually within 15 minutes. In this queue, we handle the aforementioned time-sensitive petitions such as abusive behavior, harm petitions, stuck characters, and a few others that can be quickly resolved with a click, such as mission issues.

We also try to process account-related petitions first. The reason for this is that a player who wants to return to the game and does not remember his data should get it as quickly as possible, and not wait several days, during which his desire to return may disappear or he will not have time for this great comeback.

Petition response time

One of the main points of agreement with players is the need to be more transparent about the wait time for a response to a petition. We would like to be able to tell the player that they can expect a response in x number of hours, but this is simply not possible with the current mechanics of how our system works and because there are many factors that affect this time.

The first factor is the number of petitions. It should be easy to say that the more petitions, the longer the response. However, predicting the number of petitions is not an easy task. With our new system, we can only accurately determine how many petitions we receive on average per week. But in Eve, such a thing rarely happens on average in a week. The graph below shows daily petitions from July 2015 to July 2016. As you can see, there are frequent peaks that make it difficult to predict response times.

Some bursts occur due to updates, and we can count them, because they are planned, and some appear out of nowhere. The two largest peaks over the past year occurred when we did not expect to receive an increased number of petitions. For example, the problem with a black screen during login was completely unexpected.

The approach we are aiming for is that players will receive a response within 36 hours of submitting a petition. By doing this, we remove the need for accurate response times.

Below you can see the average wait time for the first response to a petition in July 2016. A response of 0 to 1 hour typically refers to those petitions mentioned above being either time sensitive or easy to respond to. Achieving an average response time of 36 hours is difficult to achieve and will not happen instantly, but we feel that it is achievable and that this is the level of support you deserve.

Hire more GMs!

When we talk about response time we always get the question - why can't we just hire more GMs when the response time is too high. EVE is a beautiful, expansive and challenging game for both players and GMs. It takes some time to find a GM for each position required. This is especially true for non-English speaking support. Things get even more complicated when the new employee must be transported to the barren and volcanic land in the middle of the North Atlantic, also better known as Iceland.

In other games, a new GM can be trained in a few weeks; in EVE, full preparation for work with any degree of independence takes six months. This means that if there's a sudden surge, we can't just hire a dozen new GMs. Hiring hundreds of GMs is also not possible - we are a commercial enterprise and we must maintain staffing levels to provide decent support while remaining cost effective.

At the same time, we have expanded our team both in Iceland and abroad. At the time of writing this blog, we are expecting a couple of new GMs next week.

Account security (account sharing and hacking)

If you've visited Reddit in the past six months, you may have seen threads dedicated to safety petitions. It is worth clarifying this point to understand these cases and the reasons for taking so long to resolve them.

Cases related to account security are perhaps the most complex and therefore they must be handled by the most competent GMs with many years of experience. These cases often involve the laundering of claims and assets by other players, as well as RMT, using all sorts of tricks that need to be monitored in order to take measures to return the damage or punitive measures against the participants. During the investigation, the GM may discover more hacked accounts, each of which must be investigated. This further complicates the situation and requires more time to make a decision.

Since the introduction of experience cans, we have seen an increased number of cases of RMT. This increase has led our security department, GM and software team to collaborate to create special tools to identify and resolve these cases. It took time to research, create, and implement these tools, but they have since made a huge impact on the speed at which petitions are processed. Unfortunately, development delays resulted in long waits for responses to player hack petitions - delays that we were unable to clearly explain to players. To these victims, we offer our sincere apologies and hope that they received additional game time as compensation for the delay and communication gap.

We plan to do better in the future, but we need to help players use two-factor authentication and ask them to refrain from sharing or funding RMT. Buy PLEX or other services directly from the Central Center or other official sellers.

Future improvements

We mentioned earlier that we wanted to reduce our response time to 36 hours. We have several upcoming support changes over the next few months, some of which will be visible to players and some of which will be internal use only.

Most of the improvements to provide better support are already in place. But there are some things you can do to help us.

• Provide all basic information that you think is useful to the GM. We regularly receive petitions for ship compensation from players. But they do not include the name of the character who lost the ship or the name of that ship. This means that the GM needs to request this information instead of directly investigating the reasons for this loss, which leads to further delays.
• Do not submit duplicate petitions. We understand that if you do not receive a response, you will come to a logical solution to requesting that response, sometimes by submitting a new petition. Sending this affects response times for both your main petition and other players' petitions. We ask that you only submit one petition.
• If you have a problem that affects several members of a corporation or alliance, then choose a representative (preferably a director or CEO) to communicate on behalf of the affected players, rather than sending a petition from each. As a rule, we must contact the director or CEO to make decisions on corporate or alliance matters in any case, so one person is enough.
• Bumping a petition does not improve response time. We want to point this out because players regularly send additional posts to their petition with the intention of bumping it to the front of the queue. This does not affect your place in line in any way.

Finally, on behalf of every GM in the department, we would like to thank the players for making the game that it is today. We look forward to talking with you through petitions or in person at Fanfest and private player gatherings.

Good luck
GM Ender
Director of Help Desk

Translation © makstomaks

During the game you may need to contact our support team. The support service operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without weekends, breaks and holidays. There are Russian-speaking employees at the headquarters. Communication is carried out by text messages. Communication is also possible via email.

You can submit your application using the form on the website:

Alternatively, you can simply send an email to [email protected] directly from your email address.

To speed up the processing of your application, you must submit it to the appropriate category.

Character stuck!

If for some reason you cannot continue the game (black screen when entering the game, your ship does not respond to commands, etc.), you should write a request in the category " Gameplay» > “Character is stuck!” These tickets have the highest priority and we will review them within minutes and help you resolve your issue.

Please note that if you submit a ticket in this category and your problem is not related to stuck characters, you will likely have to wait much longer than if you had submitted your ticket to the correct category in the first place.

Account

Please read this article before submitting your application:

If you still haven’t found the answer to your question, then you should create a request. If we are talking about a problem with any payment, then you need to indicate the payment number in the application (the payment number consists of 8 digits), and also describe what service you tried to pay for and what went wrong.

If we are talking about lost information to enter the game, then you need to create a request, if possible indicating the following information:

• Name account(username);
• Full name specified during registration (your real name);
• Address email, which was used during registration. If you have subsequently changed your address, it is worth indicating when the changes were made and which address was used;
• CD key used to create the account (if used);
• Last 6 digits credit card, with which the account was paid (if you paid for your account using a card).
• If you have ever used subscription access keys (“ETC”, “time codes”), then you should copy at least one of them into your application;
• The address recorded in your payment information (the real address associated with your credit card);
• Your date of birth specified during account registration;
• The names of all characters assigned to this account;

Technical issues

If you are having technical issues with your game client or launcher, then this category is for you. Before submitting an entry to this category, please try resetting your cache files.

If the crash occurs regularly and you can reproduce the error, then you should attach the EVE launch log to your application:

1. Close the game client;
2. Open the launcher;
3. Open the launcher settings and check the “Launch clients with logging” option
4. Launch the game and reproduce the error;
5. In the logging tool window, select “File” > “Save As” and save the file;
6. Attach this file to your application.

To resolve most technical issues, we may require a DxDiag file to check your computer's configuration:

1. Click “Start” - “Run”. Enter dxdiag in the line and click OK. A new window will appear.
2. Click on the “Save all information...” button.
3. Once you save the file, attach it to your application.

If you're having trouble with the launcher, you might want to check out this Help Center category. If nothing helps, then you should write a request in this category, attaching to it the launcher failure log, which can be found in the \EVE\launcher\cache folder

Gameplay

If action has been taken against your account, you can always appeal. This can be done by creating a request in the “Gameplay” > “Rules and Policies” > “Ban” category. Before submitting an application to this category, please read the terms of the user agreement:

Terms of service:

And procedures for blocking accounts:

If you believe that the action taken against your account was taken in error, please write to us a request, indicating all the information about your account (using the form above) and a description of the situation. Please note that we do not have the right to disclose account information to third parties. This means that if we cannot confirm that the player who sent us the application is the original owner of the account, we will not be able to help him.

If your character has had...

CCP Leeloo | Community Developer | @ccp_leeloo | [email protected]

Game Masters are on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including weekends and holidays. Game Masters are customer service representatives who handle all EVE customer service. They resolve all issues related to the service. Their work is paid, so don't hesitate to contact them.
There are also official volunteers who help players.

Where to go for help

Always review the Knowledge Base before contacting support. The information there is frequently updated and new articles appear. In most cases, this database quickly provides players with the answers they need.

Support

There are three ways to ask for help: write to [email protected], submit a petition in the game using the “Support” option, or ask a question in the Customer Support Knowledge Base.

The more information you can provide regarding your problem, the faster and more efficiently it will be resolved.

For technical problems:

1. Open C:\Program Files\directx\setup and double-click the DxDiag icon. A window will appear.
2. Click on the “Save All Information” button located in the lower right corner.
3. Attach the received file to your letter or petition.

For gameplay related issues:

Provide all information relevant to your problem, such as your username and character name, a short but detailed explanation of the problem and how it happened, and whether you have encountered it before.

Compensation

Response time

Some days receive more petitions than others, and the GM may take longer to respond. Petitions are reviewed in the order in which they are filed based on the severity of the issue. Stuck characters and other problems blocking the game are addressed first.
Filing a petition to have a character stuck for any other reason is punishable by death. Well, not exactly, but that's how it should be. Filing frivolous petitions or intentionally filing a petition under a different category may result in a warning. We ask you to be considerate towards other players EVE Online and not overload GMs unnecessarily.

Contact Game Master

When you encounter a GM in the world of EVE, he is probably there for the purpose of helping another player. If he allows himself to get distracted by talking to other players or resolving issues that were not sent correctly, other players in line ahead of you will wait longer for help. It is fair that problems are resolved on a “first to ask, first to answer” basis according to the severity of the issue. Please be considerate of others and follow the established procedure for obtaining assistance from GM.

Those. As a rule, people start looking for AliExpress support when some kind of trouble has already occurred. And as a rule, they cannot find it right away. They often start saying that there is no feedback on the Aliexpress website, or something like that.

But in reality, everything is completely different.

The technical service works in online mode(online chat) and answers instantly, or rather, a very smart robot answers. Who knows the answer to all the questions that are popular in the aliexpress online store.

How to contact a live operator, AliExpress Support Services?

To contact a live operator, at the end of this article, click on the blue button - Help Desk.
And write 2-3 times - Hello(with such errors)

And select:

And click -

A blue button will immediately appear - Go to chat

And a live AliExpress Support operator will immediately connect to you!

Login of recent updates Eve.

1. Before you start chatting and asking questions, you need to log in.

2. The maximum number of characters in one message is 500 characters!

3. In order to attach a screenshot to a message, you need to wait for the operator to connect to your message. After which, in the lower left corner you can see a small icon for attaching the desired screenshot.

Interesting: Due to the large influx in honor of the 11/11/2018 Sale on Aliexpress. The living operators were “hidden” a little further from us!

If necessary, a support worker will go to your dispute and review all your evidence. Even to the point of viewing your attached video recordings. After everything he has examined and seen, he will immediately write you an answer - what you need to do or redo.

We contact a live aliexpress operator, in January 2019

Unfortunately, methods for communicating with a live operator on aliexpress are constantly changing. Therefore, I will add new options in this article.

An additional way to connect a live operator on AliExpress

It should be written like this:

1. Hello

2. information

Important: Word - information, must be written exactly with small letters "information"

And immediately a button will appear - Go to chat.

When you click on it, a live operator will join us in the conversation. To whom we can tell about our problem and more...

How to contact a live aliexpress operator, in March 2019 (9 years of AliExpress)

In order to contact a live operator of the aliexpress website support service. First of all, we need to write to Eva:

1. Hello

2. When will I receive my money

And press - Go to chat!

And in general that’s all!

In this, not a tricky way at the moment, you can contact a live operator and solve your problem with an order on the aliexpress website

How to contact a live aliexpress support operator via online chat. In August 2019!

The principle of communicating with a live person in the online chat aliexpress has changed slightly.
Now, in order to contact a live aliexpress support operator, we need to follow this step by step instructions, with screenshots.

To communicate with a live operator, in the aliexpress online chat, we need to first go through the blue button - " Help Desk"at the end of this article, then:

1. Login to your account/ profile (under your username and password)

(If your account is blocked, then watch the video in these instructions)

2. Let's write: Hello

After that, you can try writing to the chat - livechat_link. And a button should appear to connect a live operator to the aliexpress chat. If it doesn’t appear, we continue to enter into the chat: livechat_link until the contact button appears.
Or move on to the next point...

3. Next we write in the chat: When will I receive my money?
And immediately, Aliexpress offers us to select the problematic order.
Select the problematic aliexpress order and click - Send (Or with status - Completed, as in the screenshot)

To obtain the Completed status. On any product, you must first click the Buy button - but do not pay. And after that, in My orders - cancel this order. And this order will be assigned the status - Completed)

(Even if the topic is not related to the order, then it doesn’t matter - choose some order. It doesn’t matter!)

And now AliExpress offers us - go to ! Go to an online chat, specifically with a live operator of the aliexpress website.

An interesting point at this stage: If after clicking: No, I have not received my order, the button does not appear: Go to chat. And you are asked to choose some other answer options - this means that you have to do everything from the first point. Until Aliexpress offers to go to online chat with a live support operator.

You can watch in more detail and clearly in our video instructions on how to contact a live aliexpress support operator. after the sale!

And also about how to write to the aliexpress support service if your account is blocked and your profile is inaccessible.

Online chat - AliExpress Support

Opening hours: 7:00 - 1:00 (Moscow time)

Gamers not only in matters of gameplay, but also in situations related to psychological well-being.

The volunteer organization is called Broadcast 4 Reps (B4R). Unlike other groups and clans, this team offers both new and experienced players assistance in everything related to the multiplayer space simulator.

The group was founded by a player named Coffee Rocks in 2014. The goal of Broadcast 4 Reps is to create a favorable and friendly atmosphere for all participants in the game. Members of the organization communicate in the in-game chat, as well as on Discord.

In 2015, EVE Online publisher CCP Games partnered with B4R and released a motivational video with a message from developers and community members.

The name Broadcast 4 Reps comes from the term “broadcast for reps” common in the EVE Online community. This slogan is thrown out by all players who are in trouble or are under enemy fire. Other pilots, upon seeing the call, usually go to the aid of the crashed ship.

However, B4R provides assistance not only to players whose ship has broken down, but to absolutely all users who need any support. Sometimes the Broadcast 4 Reps group is approached simply by desperate gamers who need someone to talk to. Community members, in turn, try to help the player with advice or simply keep up the conversation.

However, B4R does not claim to be a professional mental health service and always advises people to seek professional support. The group's Reddit page even has psychological help hotlines with phone numbers.

The EVE Online community is famous not only for its cohesion. So, in November, one of the players fell into a deep depression after he was kicked out of the clan. During one of the streams, he said he was going to commit suicide and would do it while broadcasting on Twitch.

User Cannonman58102, who was a member of the same alliance, published a post on Reddit in which he talked about a desperate gamer. During the ill-fated broadcast, more than 350 viewers joined the player’s Twitch channel, who began to dissuade him from suicide and support him in every possible way.

During the stream, viewers saw the player taking something that looked like pills. By that time, information about the broadcast had already reached the Broadcast 4 Reps channels. From there, a member of the Interstellar Services Department volunteer group contacted CCP Games staff.

The developers promptly transferred all available information about the streamer to Interpol. As a result, it turned out that the player who was planning to commit suicide was a 28-year-old resident of Poland. The police managed to save the young man. The management of the Twitch site also participated in the “operation.”