You're a little bitch.

Agreed.

(Unless GOG wants to give me unlimited power, in which case I'm totally fine with it and vow to uphold the standards of megalomania set by moderators elsewhere.)

But seriously, the lack of moderation is one of the best things here. I've only seen a couple threads locked for bad behavior in all my years here, whereas on the CDPR forums, I've had untold numbers of posts replaced with pony pictures. Which is a thing that happens there.

Figuring that a full forum shift is low on GOG's goal list at the moment.
If they have limited resources, I'd rather they continue on getting more games and making sure they work as well as possible.

Not spending time comparing one forum to another since this is the only one I use, and the only one I intend to use.
If it all falls apart, either from technical failure, getting buried in shitheads, or both, I'll set up a forum and bring the good people I've met along when I go.

Plus on top of it, what do you define high service?

Just think of moderation ;)

Can of worms, I only say ;)

i would vote for moving all witcher-related threads on gog.com to them (http://forums.cdprojektred.com/forums/6)

especially if they're left-handed,crippled and use steam.

I'm so glad to see more honesty around here. I really appreciate that.

Well since you wanted to spread that clusterfun over here into this thread, I will say that it is possible to do management of discussion spaces reasonably. It's just not easy, and requires effort and money, and almost no one does it.

Farming it out to random unaccountable joe-schmoes doesn't really work.

It was more about definition of high service. For some this clusterfun as you called it ;) does belong to high service, for others it is a no go.

Farming it out, we do agree, it just doesn't work.

But just as a thought: Giving this to somebody elected by the community? (like minimum requirement to vote, being at least here for 6 month, for example?)

OK, would mean doing the job of somebody else, BUT the freedom we have here is priceless ;) AS mentioned by others, hey it feels like heaven (with also quite some drawbacks though....)

But back to the topic, what do you define high service for a free product?

Fixed :P

Because they feel we are not quite mature enough for the third class yet.

If you are going to add trademarks, then do it the right way (Alt+0153)! :D

How many points of maturity we get if we hide TinyE on the basement?

I was talking about the overall "service level" for the "store".

In a physical store, I can talk to someone about the products. If the product does not work as advertised, I (theoretically) can ask about the problem in person and maybe it will get resolved.

For expensive products, some types of service may come free. For example I purchased a 1,800$US bicycle. The shop did a variety of parts exchanges and the service to get them installed at no cost to me, because they believed this was part of the service that they should offer as part of the purchase.

I'm not saying GOG *should* offer a high level of service, but responsiveness, accuracy, dealing with problems promptly, etc would to me be a high level of service for a digital software seller.

I don't know what that would really cost. I'm suspicious prices would have to be significantly higher, possibly over double, and I doubt there's a significant audience available to make such a thing viable in the face of lower prices elsewhere. Which was why i said it might not be possible.

OK lets stick with your definition for the sake of it ;) (and no, I don't want to bash or similar, please keep this in mind ;) )

So, here we already have the first problem:
The forums are not the shop.
Yes agreed for the shop-part the response could be better (I say it straight forward). The response time and/or resolution does not always match our expectation. Will there be differences for sure. But we as a consumer also have to remember, GOG does not always has the full rights. I have the feeling a lot of people think that GOG is a dev, which is not the case. So can they always fix everything? I don't think so. Staying with your example: If the shop does not have all the tools to do the job, would you really blame the shop? To my experience, GOG has always tried to get the tools or give you your money back.

So the forum part:
This is a free gift too us the consumers (and you don't even need to own a game AFAIK). So they are already generous. Can we really complain? Agreed certain things could be better, but that brings us to the main point.

COST:
Let's imagine you just have ONE person taking care of this stuff. Let's say, he would get paid only 2.000 Euros. normally that would mean in most of Europe, this person costs 4.000 Euros (social/insurance etc.).
So let's translate this over into games. Let's assume average price per game would be like 8 Euros (Yes, I pulled this figure out of my .... ;) ). Just too PAY this one guy, you would need to sell 500 games A MONTH, in a year min. 6.000 games.

No with your bike, you went with a really expensive one (you must have too much money ;) ), but no think of, if your bike would only cost 150 bucks, how likely you think the shop will be, to do some free work now?

As I mentioned before, the biggest problem for a company is going over a certain thresh-hold. Before one person can do multiple jobs, but afterwards, just logistic wise, it will be only ONE dedicated person. And that suddenly can get quite a burden AND CAN bankrupt a company easily.

To take your example of a bike shop:
You are the owner and the repairman and and and....
Yes you can make quite a bit of living (only example) you sell/repair/maintain 10 bikes per day (for the sake of it).
Let's say you make 50 bucks per bike in average, would mean 500 per day or (20 days) 10k a month. You have to deduct (again for the sake of it) 5k for insurance material and whatever. Leaves you with 5k. Nice sum ;)
Now you get more customers as you offered a good service. (for the sake of it, let's double)
Can you still keep up the work? No, you have to get another person
Too keep the numbers, yes you would make 20k, but your cost increase as well and your time to do everything shrinks at the same time (paperwork), so you can only do 8 per day.

What happens? Either you loose quality or you have to get another guy on board....ups... not longer 20k - 4k,...plus, what about vacation, sickness??? ups....so 20k -4k -4k, only 12k left....

And that was an easy comparison ;)

Once you broke this magical number, it is getting easier again, but there is always the problem going from mom's and pop's shop to a bigger level.

Now let's go back to GOG:

You want one guy for forum
One guy for support in English/German/Russian/French (worst case 4 guys)
You want to have guys supporting/testing the problems (let's say 3 ONLY)
You would need to have manager/CEO
You need accounting 1 person
1 person web
1 person database
1 person tech assistance locally (setting up HW/SW)

What do we have already now:
13 persons, would mean to pay them (keeping the figures above) 13 * 6000 games, makes 78.000 games to be sold every year

And all this does not include the HW/power/rent needed.

hence my original question, are you willing to pay more? ;)

Sorry for the lengthy reply ;) and disclaimer: I do not work for GOG ;)

And for the sake of it I did NOT include marketing and similar!!!!!!

EDIT: AND MY POST IS NOT EVEN CORRECT! the 8 bucks would assume a PROFIT of 8 BUCKS!!! Now think of the sales!!
I think to be honest, you would need too at least double or triple the numbers....

Don't be tedious.

I was replying to this comment here.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/why_are_we_being_treated_like_second_class_citizens/post41

It does not speak specifically of the forums.

Independently, GOG.com is effectively a store. The forums are not the the whole store, but they are indeed part of the overall experience.

Personally, I have no problems with the forums, and do not believe a change is needed (save perhaps the bugs.)

Your remaining comments are based around some idea that I believe such a level of service should be offered, and are arguing against it. Have fun with that straw man.