Your Survey Irritates Me

[Kilgs]

Why are we waiting for it? It's a survey.
Why is it only open to those who subscribe to your newsletter?
Why are you not simply working on the features mentioned in this forum... it is coincidentally titled "Realm Works Feature Requests"

It is fairly obvious which top 5 features need to be implemented from a simple paging through the forum. At least two of them have been screamed since day one... export and calendar.

At this point, waiting for a survey seems like a stalling tactic.

 

[Chemlak]

Okay, but of the other 311 feature requests, which ones should be done first?

Which ones will make the users happiest, and which will seem like a waste of time?

 

[MaxSupernova]

At this point it's a good PR move, because there seems to be a bit of a swell of "Well, what's holding this thing up?".

However (as seems to be a common issue) it was announced well in advance of the time that it was actually ready without a release date and (also a common issue) since the announcement all we've heard is "soon", "soon", "no really, soon".

Communication and transparency are good things, but transparency is best when the things you reveal about your company and your process actually make your customers happy instead of making them doubt.

 

[Exmortis]

All giving release dates do is fuel the fire when things get delayed. Even EA, microsoft and Ubisoft, some of the largest software companies routinely have delays with products. LWD is a small company and will face them as well, but worse, they have not the resources of those juggernauts to call upon.

Giving a release date before you are 200% sure you can make it is suicide for a small company. The fact they are still here, communicating, and working with us (survey ahem), keeps me happy and satisfied that they are listening and doing the best they can to provide what we the customer(s) want.

And for the record, its customerS, the survey is a perfect way for all of the people here, willing to share their voice to have that voice within the boundries that LWD can provide. Accepting random and uncontrolled feature requests in a forums with out structure and guidlines is like peeing into the wind, sure it sounds like fun at the time, but all it does it get you wet.

The survey gives us the customers the ability to help guide LWD with the features added to Realm works, with structure and planning. Chaotic anarchist feature requests irrates me, it gets no one anywhere useful. Everyone has an idea, everyone has a demand, no one has help to get there. The survey will structure our request and expectations, so LWD can meet those expectations.

 

[AEIOU]

While I agree with the OP, not everyone reads the forums.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

Paizo for its last two playtests have used a "Survey" system instead of the forums only. They learned that many of their customer base are not on the forums and their voice is just as important to be heard.

A non-forum based survey should allow for a much better result.

 

[Acenoid]

Well I suggested it in another thread, there bug systems out there that manage "themselves" if used by the users. Items will be rejected / advanced and tallied against.

But in general, I think that people have to calm down. It's software development we are talking about. They try to be communicative, but if there are no good news - for whatever you are doing - they is no way to do it "right".

If you say nothing ppl will ask.
If you tell them a date, even if you do not have an exact one, you will be measured against that.
If you give them your a representation of your current status e.g. soon / 70% finished etc... you will also win only a little.

So I can just recommend to ignore the timed-announcements to avoid being disappointed. It's not necessary.

There are specific requirements to make a survey representative. I suppose LW has the email adresses of all buyers, so they could easily check how many ppl have bought the product and participate in the survey. If such a person has not oped out from newsletters and such, maybe it makes sense to contact them.

Also I hope that this survey has a real effect. I'm really interested if this custom calendar will be #2 or lower ....

 

[liz]

Why are we waiting for it? It's a survey.

If we put out a survey with every single feature request listed here in no particular order, no one would take it. Okay ... maybe a few people would take it, but then it wouldn't be representative of our users. It's important that we design it to gather a lot of information, but in a way where it's not overwhelming to the users. We want people to feel that they can make their voice heard.

Why is it only open to those who subscribe to your newsletter?

There are laws around mass emails. As such, we send our mass emails through the same service that we send our newsletter. This ensures we follow the law. If you purchased our product within the last year, you're on our mailing list for our newsletter. However, if you opted our of our newsletter, we cannot (legally) include you in our email unless you opt back in.

Why are you not simply working on the features mentioned in this forum... it is coincidentally titled "Realm Works Feature Requests"

As others have mentioned, there are Realm Works users that aren't on our forums. Additionally, this survey will give us better quantitative data than just gauging interest by looking at posts on a feature request thread, or some other method.

It's also important to point out that this survey will split up "big features" from the "little features". Sure, there are some features on the definite "to-do list", like Calendars and Journals, that are going to take a lot of time. However, there may be smaller items that people really want that could take a few hours for a developer to crank out while waiting to meet with someone on a larger feature. Those smaller items may be hard to determine by just looking at the forums.

I hope that clarifies things a little bit.

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

Why are you not simply working on the features mentioned in this forum... it is coincidentally titled "Realm Works Feature Requests"

As others have mentioned, there are Realm Works users that aren't on our forums. Additionally, this survey will give us better quantitative data than just gauging interest by looking at posts on a feature request thread, or some other method.

........

I hope that clarifies things a little bit.

Not to speak for Liz, but to clarify the clarify.....
From Kilgs>"Why are you not simply working on the features...."

Who says they aren't????

It isn't like LWD is sitting waiting on the results of the survey.. I'm pretty sure Rob isn't just cutting a pay check to the troops while they wait for the results of the survey.....

The Survey is a sanity check to insure the focus is in the right places.

 

[Kilgs]

I opted out of the newsletter and yet am active and interested. So why not a link to allow participation if someone is not on the newsletter list?

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

I opted out of the newsletter and yet am active and interested. So why not a link to allow participation if someone is not on the newsletter list?

Liz addressed this above..... There are laws that restrict companies from mass emails especially when the receiver opts out
Will there be a link here to the servey, possibly, she often links update and newsletters .
But if you truly are active and want to weigh in.... Why wouldn't u want the newsletter to stay informed?

 

[Kilgs]

But if you truly are active and want to weigh in.... Why wouldn't u want the newsletter to stay informed?

1. Because I don't want to get ads on Market items for d20/DnD games which will likely be the primary focus of such.

2. Because LWD won't send me a confirmation email.

3. With an existing business relationship, I'm curious what laws everyone is referring to?

 

[Exmortis]

1. Because I don't want to get ads on Market items for d20/DnD games which will likely be the primary focus of such.

2. Because LWD won't send me a confirmation email.

3. With an existing business relationship, I'm curious what laws everyone is referring to?

1. I have been getting the newsletter since buying HeroLab over a year ago, and never never never have I received anything BUT a LWD newsletter. You should do your research before speaking, not only will you then be more accurate, you will actually retain some credibility in your future posts.

2. Wow.....I have no answer for that.

3. Well I cannot speak for lawyers, nor US laws, but here in Canada mass emails are not legal, unless you specificially have requested or opted in to receive them. Here they must even break the opt in up, and ask if you want company info and outside partner info. So LWD opt in would be two check boxes, one for the LWD newsletter and one for say paizo to send you marketing crap your referring too. So your making a scene over LWD being a lawful moral company.......really?

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

1. Because I don't want to get ads on Market items for d20/DnD games which will likely be the primary focus of such.

2. Because LWD won't send me a confirmation email.

3. With an existing business relationship, I'm curious what laws everyone is referring to?

Kilgs, your starting to bare a stark resemblance to a swamp dwelling creature, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are genuinely trying to understand and try, again, to answer in behalf of LWD.

1> I've been receiving the newsletter since its inception for RW. No extra mail, sidebar sales pitched nada.. Just an update on where they are and what's going on. Granted, at times those newletters were overly optimistic (wholly different topic than your concern here), but they left me with no such impression as to a means for LWD to "sell my email address" to others as spam often does. No extra links leading me to far away unrelated venues I didn't ask for. As to where you "think" the primary focus is,,, that is a presumption. There is no supporting evidence to this point, sofar.

2>Not sure what "confirmation" you are looking for???

• IF it's did they receive my request for the newsletter? And it comes to you, there is your confirmation. Your request to receive it was honored.
• IF you opt out (as you did) and you don't receive anything, again there is your confirmation. For LWD to continually ask you "Are you sure you wanna opt out?" or "We have received your request to opt out", "We would like to confirm your request to opt out" are all considered spam at the point in which you declined their services. See below.

3>Existing business relationship (as you loosely put it) is of no relevance. You could purchase thousands of dollars of product, but that doesn't mean you have a "business relationship". You have a company / consumer relationship. Paizo, D20Pro, etc & LWD have a business relationship. Further, you have opted out from receiving the newsletter, yet still want access to it. The simple solution is to watch the LWD website then for updates or here on the forum.

As to the law aspects, Liz is acting in her companies best interest (understandable), as laws differ from place to place, country to country it is best to error on the conservative side. If you are unaware of the existence and the purpose of such laws, you can find a good starting point here
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/spam-unwanted-text-messages-and-email

Hope all of this helps and brings you to more productive posts than
"Your Survey Irritates Me"

 

[Kilgs]

Kilgs, your starting to bare a stark resemblance to a swamp dwelling creature

Personal insults already? I'll accept broken record player... but not that.

I hardly think 21 posts of which 1/3 have been technical issues constitutes a troll.

 

[Farling]

Confirmation EMAIL. Says it right there in the post. I fixed it by creating a new dumbie email account. But thanks for reading.

I'm fairly sure he was asking WHAT you wanted confirmation ABOUT, rather than the means in which the confirmation was delivered.

 

[Chemlak]

Well-known fact: LWD emails quite frequently get caught by spam filters, particularly Google's. If your email provider uses google as a back-end, log into your webmail service, and check the spam folder there - it's probably not even being sent on to your mail client.

Of course, we still don't know what confirmation mail you're waiting for, as others have mentioned.

 

[Kilgs]

Newsletter confirmation. When you sign up it says to wait for a confirmation email...

 

[liz]

Newsletter confirmation. When you sign up it says to wait for a confirmation email...

Hey there! We haven't heard from users about confirmation emails not making it. Can you please check your spam folder? If it's not there, can you shoot me a PM with your email address so I can make sure you made it onto our list? We definitely don't want our sign-up form to be malfunctioning right before the survey goes out, so I want to contact our newsletter service if there are any issues.

 

[rob]

Personal insults already? I'll accept broken record player... but not that.

I hardly think 21 posts of which 1/3 have been technical issues constitutes a troll.

I need to clarify something regarding your original post that has since been deleted. The original quote to which I'm referring is below...

LWD has already misquoted the law in support of their argument for no print/export so I'm not really going to take their (or your) word for it.

Before you ask... LWD stated that the reason for no print/export was concerns about market material and use of it. But that ignores the actual intent and wording of such laws which punish the person who misuses the data... not the person/entity who creates a tool with the potential of doing so.

Anyone who knows anything about that area of law knows that nothing stops people from infringing. It's there to punish the person who does it.

This is a complete misunderstanding of what I was saying in that thread. There is absolutely NOTHING in there about LEGAL requirements or implications. We could easily let users export/print everything they want and be legally safe, exactly as you assert.

That thread has EVERYTHING to do with our ability to secure and maintain a LICENSE with any major publisher - a business reality for a company in our position. If we make it easy for users to pirate material, do you honestly think any major publisher will give us a license in the first place? Or let us keep a license the moment that their IP is readily pirated? We have to take the steps I outlined in that thread to appease the publishers with whom we enter into a license and safeguard their IP. Nothing more, nothing less.

We've got a pretty good handle on the legal front. We've been navigating those waters for well over a decade, and we have a very good Intellectual Property attorney. If anyone thinks we're misguided on the legal front, they should ask us for clarification instead of making assumptions that are likely to be incorrect.

I hope this clarifies things for you.