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We all make mistakes because we are all human. It is part of the learning and growing. There are several ways to recover from mistakes depending on how severe the consequences are. Here are some examples of people making mistakes and how they can be remedied after the fact.
1. A professor at a community college spends a week preparing an final exam (multiple choice) for his students. When the students take the exam at 8:00am some notice that every answer is C all the way down their scan tron. Most of the students finish the exam quickly, turn it in and go to their next class. One student finishes last and tells the professor that the answers were all C and that it might be wise to have the students retake the test. The professor is ashamed and has to make a hard decision.
1a. The professor emails his students a take home copy of the exam and tells them he/she made a mistake and would like to make it up with an open book exam. The students can email him their exam within two days and everyone understands.
1b. The professor fails all of the students that took the exam and passes the one student who brought the incident to their attention.
I'm sure you have had a teacher who has chosen 1a and one who has chosen 1b.
2. A super market has just started selling their product online and are excited for the extra revenue. They sell everything from groceries to top of the line electronics. The next generation of gaming systems have just been released and sales are going through the roof for their online sales. An employee realizes that one of the systems is selling out much faster than the others. They go online and check the stock and prices and discover that one of their gaming systems is priced at $50 instead of $500. They go to their manager and tell them the news.
2a. Their manager is furious and demands that the person who set up the online site with the prices is fired and permanently bans everyone who bought the $50 system.
2b. Their manager calmly thinks about how this happened and tells their employee to get a hold of their PR department. He/she has the site temporarily taken down and the price on the system fixed. No one is fired and everyone learns from the incident.
There are always at least two ways to handle a mistake. One makes some people unhappy but keeps the ball rolling. The other creates distrust and rubs everyone the wrong way. For Eye Dentity they had a patch to roll out. NA is one of the last clients to get the update. Most people who were expecting this patch read the notes from other versions and built up a lot of hype. On patch day people are excited to get out there and explore EVERYTHING. At some point someone does Best Hero Tournament and they realize "Wow did they change the rewards on the last boss?". The word spreads and people go crazy making more money than they could have imagined. Some people with level heads realized this after running a few times "This is going to break the game.". They either ran it a few times to confirm and then flocked to the forums to notify the ED or they ran it a few more times and realized how broken BHT was and started trying out other content. Then there are the people who played the market and made more money than anyone could have made running BHT on multiple characters. We all know how this event turned out in the end. I made this post to put the situation into perspective. Do you want your player base, ED, to trust you with their time and money? Or do you want people to leave the game because of one mistake. I don't develop or publish games, but I do understand that listening to your community is one of the most important aspects of keeping a game alive.
1. A professor at a community college spends a week preparing an final exam (multiple choice) for his students. When the students take the exam at 8:00am some notice that every answer is C all the way down their scan tron. Most of the students finish the exam quickly, turn it in and go to their next class. One student finishes last and tells the professor that the answers were all C and that it might be wise to have the students retake the test. The professor is ashamed and has to make a hard decision.
1a. The professor emails his students a take home copy of the exam and tells them he/she made a mistake and would like to make it up with an open book exam. The students can email him their exam within two days and everyone understands.
1b. The professor fails all of the students that took the exam and passes the one student who brought the incident to their attention.
I'm sure you have had a teacher who has chosen 1a and one who has chosen 1b.
2. A super market has just started selling their product online and are excited for the extra revenue. They sell everything from groceries to top of the line electronics. The next generation of gaming systems have just been released and sales are going through the roof for their online sales. An employee realizes that one of the systems is selling out much faster than the others. They go online and check the stock and prices and discover that one of their gaming systems is priced at $50 instead of $500. They go to their manager and tell them the news.
2a. Their manager is furious and demands that the person who set up the online site with the prices is fired and permanently bans everyone who bought the $50 system.
2b. Their manager calmly thinks about how this happened and tells their employee to get a hold of their PR department. He/she has the site temporarily taken down and the price on the system fixed. No one is fired and everyone learns from the incident.
There are always at least two ways to handle a mistake. One makes some people unhappy but keeps the ball rolling. The other creates distrust and rubs everyone the wrong way. For Eye Dentity they had a patch to roll out. NA is one of the last clients to get the update. Most people who were expecting this patch read the notes from other versions and built up a lot of hype. On patch day people are excited to get out there and explore EVERYTHING. At some point someone does Best Hero Tournament and they realize "Wow did they change the rewards on the last boss?". The word spreads and people go crazy making more money than they could have imagined. Some people with level heads realized this after running a few times "This is going to break the game.". They either ran it a few times to confirm and then flocked to the forums to notify the ED or they ran it a few more times and realized how broken BHT was and started trying out other content. Then there are the people who played the market and made more money than anyone could have made running BHT on multiple characters. We all know how this event turned out in the end. I made this post to put the situation into perspective. Do you want your player base, ED, to trust you with their time and money? Or do you want people to leave the game because of one mistake. I don't develop or publish games, but I do understand that listening to your community is one of the most important aspects of keeping a game alive.