What Does Your Public Think? by DemonicHunter4

NEOPIAN SURVEYOR — Have you ever had a view on what the Neopets Team was doing, but couldn’t get it out? Well, many play­ers do, and these sev­eral play­ers got their chance. In this arti­cle, you will see real live play­ers reply­ing to inter­est­ing ques­tions which needed to be asked. Even though this arti­cle may shine poorly on the Neopets team, you have yet to com­pare these to the hard work the team has done for you for four, yes, four years.

Ques­tion: How do you feel about the Neopets cus­tomer sup­port? Do you feel they lis­ten, and care about their case, or do you feel it needs to be improved?

Matt: They need more peo­ple; a staff of 30 or so mem­bers is not nearly enough for the mil­lions of play­ers. Ques­tions are often unan­swered, and peo­ple get auto­matic replies that have noth­ing to do with their orig­i­nal email. A larger staff is needed, and they need to be peo­ple who actu­ally read and listen.

Phob2004: I feel like it needs improve­ment, but at the same time there’s only so much they can do. For instance, I often hear peo­ple com­plain that their items were lost in a glitch and they want them back, but I really don’t think that that’s rea­son­able because oth­er­wise you’d have peo­ple falsely claim­ing that they’ve lost things all the time. I do feel as though their responses could be much more prompt; I think they respond to things very slowly most of the time.

Anony­mous #1: I think the cus­tomer sup­port needs seri­ous rework­ing. When I tried to com­plain about some­thing I felt was wrong with the game I was unable to sub­mit any­thing due to a tech­ni­cal error. Fur­ther­more, I have not been the only one to com­plain about this issue. Many oth­ers have and not one of us have received any feed­back or seen any change. We feel they are ignor­ing us and that our opin­ions do not count to the Neopets staff.

Tride­ca­pho­bic: Thus far I have had no need to con­tact them, but from what I hear they aren’t very help­ful. I have heard accounts of rude­ness and gen­eral lack of con­sid­er­a­tion. I think the user needs to know who specif­i­cally to con­tact in order to be lis­tened to. Yes, I do think it needs to be improved.

Author: I feel that the cus­tomer sup­port could be greatly improved. In over 7 months of try­ing to get my wrong­fully frozen account back, I have got­ten only one per­son­al­ized mes­sage, along with 2 more frozen accounts. How­ever, from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, with the amount of staff mem­bers they have, they do great. If I were part of the team how­ever, I would strongly sug­gest hir­ing more cus­tomer sup­port staff members.

Ques­tion: What do you think about the past and cur­rent plots by the Neopets Team? Have they made the plots enjoy­able, fun, and worthwhile?

Matt: The only real prob­lem with Neopet’s plots is that every­thing is con­stantly delayed. Every­body gets their hopes up for some­thing, and it is weeks before it actu­ally hap­pens. The Meridell plot was great, except the end­ing was not much of an end­ing; it did not explain any­thing, and involved absolutely no actual plot. The Mys­tery Island plot was too sim­ple and straight­for­ward, and too many clues were done in the same man­ner. The biggest prob­lem with this, though, was the Neoboards. Users should not have a board just for the plot; it causes many scams, false leads, and cheaters using other people’s clues.

Phob2004: I’ve never really been inter­ested in the plots before the Mys­tery Island one, but I had fun work­ing on it. How­ever, I think the only rea­son I had fun work­ing on the Mys­tery Island plot is because of all the peo­ple I met while try­ing to fig­ure it out. I was really dis­ap­pointed with how it ended, we worked for so long and it was really anti­cli­mac­tic. We all had these elab­o­rate ideas with who was behind it, but there was noth­ing elab­o­rate or sur­pris­ing about it. I think that some­thing more com­pli­cated as far as who was behind it would have made it better.

Anony­mous #1: I highly enjoyed the war aspect of the past few plots but found the actual sto­ry­line to them quite dull. It was unin­spir­ing and had gap­ing plot holes. I can­not com­ment on the puz­zle plots as I do not par­tic­i­pate in them. I’m nowhere near clever enough.

Tride­ca­pho­bic: I am not at all impressed by the plots. In order to get any­where it seems you need to be just plain lucky, in the right place at the right time. Some clues from the Mys­tery Island plot rely on luck or out­ra­geous amounts of refresh­ing to get it at all. They released clues at incon­ve­nient times to most play­ers as well. They need to put effort into a plot or not release it at all. I as well as many other users am ter­ri­bly dis­ap­pointed in the Meridell res­o­lu­tion. Also, the Neopets Team needs to fol­low through on their promises. If they say clues will be released on Mon­day, clues should be released on Mon­day. I under­stand they are busy peo­ple; how­ever my largest com­plaint is the unful­filled promises.

Author: I believe some parts of the plots are incred­i­bly fun, while some parts are not. The war and begin­ning antic­i­pa­tion of the plot is very fun, and enjoy­able; how­ever, the ends of most plots up until this time seem to be a five minute job. The pic­tures are quick, the final end­ing makes almost no sense, and you feel like you spent three or four days work­ing on the plot, for noth­ing. The plots are one of the biggest things in Neopets, and I believe, they should be treated just as impor­tant as they are.

Ques­tion: If Neopets were to stay online for sev­eral more years, would you still play? If not, why do you think you would leave?

Matt: I would con­tinue to play Neopets for­ever, but once frozen, I would never return. To put so much time and hard work into some­thing, only to get it taken away is very unfair. The sad thing is that many peo­ple are wrongly frozen all the time. Another rea­son I would leave is if Neopets charged money to play.

Phob2004: I would def­i­nitely still play; I put a lot into it and I feel like I get a lot back. I love play­ing the games and run­ning my shop. The only rea­son I would ever have to stop was if it got too much in the way of my school­work or if I didn’t have a computer.

Anony­mous #1: If the cur­rent trend of grow­ing restric­tions con­tin­ues I will prob­a­bly leave. It is get­ting harder and harder to write for the Neopian Times and is frankly extremely dis­cour­ag­ing. If the trend con­tin­ues, it will def­i­nitely be the fac­tor to my leaving.

Tride­ca­pho­bic: I think I would still play. The only thing which would drive me away would be stag­nancy in site updates (as in, if the staff loses inter­est and stops updat­ing the news) or else com­plete com­mer­cial­iza­tion. Noth­ing but spon­sor games and more pay to play games would def­i­nitely make me lose inter­est fast. Oth­er­wise the site is run very well, it is always inter­est­ing and I think Neopets is doing a great job.

Author: I would def­i­nitely play, unless I were frozen or charged to play. This game is very fun, and looks like it will stay that way. The chance how­ever, of Neopets turn­ing into a deeply com­mer­cial­ized and non-user-oriented site is very much alive, and would def­i­nitely make me quit.

Ques­tion: Do you think the freez­ing meth­ods used on the Neopets site are suc­cess­ful? If not, what would you do to improve it if you could?

Matt: The freez­ing sys­tem should not be auto­matic; it should be run by live peo­ple. Also, the freez­ing process should not be as sim­ple as click­ing a but­ton. The staff mem­ber attempt­ing to freeze a per­son would need to go through and view how much time that per­son has spent play­ing and what all they have done in guilds and every­thing before mer­ci­lessly cut­ting them off from every­thing they worked so hard for.

Phob2004: I think it is suc­cess­ful for the most part, as it stops many scam­mers. But there are still a lot of scam­mers out there as well as peo­ple that are frozen for no rea­son. I feel that maybe the Neopets Team could look a lit­tle fur­ther into indi­vid­ual cases than they do. A lot of times I hear about peo­ple being frozen because they made a lot of Neo­points in a short amount of time, and that’s not fair. Many peo­ple are even­tu­ally unfrozen if they are frozen with­out rea­son, but it takes a lot of per­sis­tence and patience to reverse some­thing that shouldn’t have hap­pened in the first place.

Anony­mous #1: I think the freez­ing method has its pros and cons. While it does man­age to freeze quite a few peo­ple that deserve it, a lot of inno­cent peo­ple get frozen in the process. How­ever, I can­not think of any way to fix it aside from mak­ing it purely run by humans instead of code, which would be imprac­ti­cal con­sid­er­ing all the peo­ple play­ing Neopets.

Tride­ca­pho­bic: I think freez­ing is nec­es­sary to help keep our accounts safe from hack­ers and scam­mers. I think it’s gone about the wrong way, though. Peo­ple make mis­takes and should be able to plead their case. The Neopets sup­port should make an effort to be more help­ful to peo­ple who have hon­estly had their accounts wrong­fully frozen. Inno­cent play­ers are nearly shak­ing in their boots in fear of mak­ing a mis­take and los­ing their accounts in which they have invested a lot of time and hard work

Author: No, I along with many of my friends have been wrong­fully frozen because of a bug or glitch. The auto­mated freez­ers have to go or have to be fixed. Dur­ing the time of the Vol­cano Run bug; a bug where the auto­mated freezer glitched pretty heav­ily; I counted over 2,000 forum mem­bers out of a lit­tle over 10,000 forum mem­bers were frozen because of it. And only about half, to this day, have been unfrozen. This means, that from one lit­tle bug, one code froze about 10% of the forum’s accounts. These were hard-working, hon­est play­ing Neopet mem­bers that were frozen. I def­i­nitely think the auto­mated freezer needs major fixing.

Ques­tion: Do you feel that Neopets’ Mod­er­a­tors are doing their job? Do you see scam­mers and cheaters get­ting away with their wrongs, or have the Mod­er­a­tors been good?

Phob2004: I see a lot of scam­mers on the Neoboards, and I see a lot of peo­ple say­ing they have been scammed. But I think the Neopets Team does their best to elim­i­nate scam­mers and tell users how to spot them. I think that Neopets could be more effi­ciently mod­er­ated if they let long­time respon­si­ble users that they know they can trust have some mod­er­at­ing priv­i­leges though, instead of con­stantly hav­ing to report peo­ple. I think this would greatly help the scam­ming prob­lem. I do think that the mod­er­a­tors are doing a good job for as much as they have to deal with, though.

Anony­mous #1: I think the mod­er­a­tors do an excel­lent job, con­sid­er­ing all they have to deal with. The Neopet play­ers them­selves help a lot in this by report­ing any scam­mers they see.

Tride­ca­pho­bic: The mod­er­a­tors need to be more con­sis­tent. They don’t seem to be work­ing at all times or all boards and many scams, cheats, and trash boards slip through the cracks. How many mes­sages each hour on the gen­eral chat are about preg­nant 12 year olds or sleep­over par­ties? It’s very disgusting.

Author: I must say the mod­er­a­tors have been doing great to the amount I’ve seen. I’ve hardly seen any inap­pro­pri­ate top­ics, and the ones I have, were erased and the users were frozen (or warned) for doing what they had done, bro­ken the rules. The mod­er­a­tors could use some more mem­bers, but for the mean-time, they are doing fine in my opinion.

Ques­tion: If Neopets were to add more adver­tise­ments, but in exchange hired more sup­port, design­ers, and artists, how would you feel about it?

Phob2004: I wouldn’t mind that at all, it would prob­a­bly make Neopets a bet­ter place over­all. Some­times I hear peo­ple com­plain about the ads, but they never bother me. If it takes more ads to make Neopets a bet­ter site, then so be it.

Anony­mous #1: Con­sid­er­ing how sub­tle a lot of the adver­tis­ing is; I wouldn’t mind a bit! More staff means more stuff which means more fun. As long as the adver­tis­ing don’t turn bla­tant or annoy­ing. Or pop-ups, no pop-ups should ever be allowed.

Tride­ca­pho­bic: I would pre­fer they add more adver­tise­ments and hire more staff. The adver­tise­ments aren’t that irri­tat­ing and in fact, they should add some inter­est­ing and help­ful fea­tures to the site. I enjoy many of the advert games and free­bies (like the free cereal for pets). I am just afraid the site may soon be only spon­sor games which would be very unfortunate.

Author: I would not mind one bit. The adver­tise­ments I see are very lit­tle, and because I don’t play games often, it doesn’t bother me at all. Some­times, I even enjoy see­ing lit­tle reminders of how we can play on such a great site with­out pay­ing. I encour­age, and want more adver­tise­ments, in the hopes that the Neopets Team will decide to use the money to get more work­ers, because it would improve the site lots, and make a lot more mem­bers happy.

Ques­tion: If you could do three things to improve the cur­rent site, what would they be, and why?

Phob2004: I would make long­time reli­able users have mod­er­at­ing priv­i­leges. I really think that this would help a lot with scam­ming. It would also help to keep the Neoboards clean if ded­i­cated users could delete party posts and other inap­pro­pri­ate posts. Also I would make things come out on time! I real­ize that the Neopets Team is busy, but if they’re that busy then maybe they need to hire some more peo­ple to get things out by the dead­lines they promise. It’s a con­stant prob­lem that not only sets a bad exam­ple for users but also frus­trates many peo­ple, myself included.

Anony­mous #1: I would remove the restric­tions on the Neopian Times. I would allow the writ­ers to write their ver­sion of Neopia. And I would have a bet­ter writer in charge of the storylines.

Tride­ca­pho­bic: I would have more (or dif­fer­ent) peo­ple read­ing and answer­ing e-mails from users, I would have promises be fol­lowed through, and I would put more focus on draw­ing users to the site through its qual­ity rather than merchandising.

Author: The first thing I would work on is the cus­tomer sup­port. The cus­tomer sup­port has to be improved the most, whether it means adding more mem­bers or orga­niz­ing it bet­ter so that more cases are viewed, and helped every day. Sec­ond, I would work on mak­ing Neopets a lit­tle more excit­ing, with­out the plots, Neopets would be a rep­e­ti­tion every day. For some peo­ple it would be restock­ing, train­ing, adding money into the bank. For some peo­ple, it would be play­ing games, and adding money into the bank. It would be the same thing every day, so a new giant and impor­tant addi­tion to the site every month or so would attract more new play­ers and keep the cur­rent play­ers play­ing. Last but not least, I would add more Neopia-wide activ­i­ties, such as plots. A pos­si­ble thing could be a sports league, where play­ers could make teams, and leagues could be formed. Some­thing, where peo­ple could com­mu­ni­cate and have fun doing stuff they nor­mally don’t do.

Well, this is the end. I’d deeply like to thank the peo­ple who were inter­viewed, who gave me great replies to work with, along with many of my edi­tors and proof-readers. And a huge, huge, HUGE thanks to the Neopets Team, who don’t get the credit they deserve. I also hope the Neopets Team takes some opin­ions that were given into con­sid­er­a­tion, for the way to keep the pub­lic, is to please the pub­lic (within rea­son, of course). — DemonicHunter4