Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

PJ Axelsson started a thread in the "Wish List, Suggestions for SOM" forum in which he lamented SOM's seeming lack of communication. coyote303, who is a Boards stalwart, echoed PJ's sentiments. As did I.

My question to the ATG community is:

What has been your experience with SOM regarding their communication with you?

This is NOT a dump on SOM thread. I'll delete posts that stray from my question. After we get a number of posts, I'll email SOM and point them towards this thread about how their communication skills are viewed. Hopefully they will read it!

Ive received a mix bag of replies and non replies, but from small sample size

mostly, i've written them about seemingly anomalies or problems with game results, and less about rules, etc.

i've received a reply probably 50-75% of the time, and it didn't take too long for the replies....they always I think explained what happened and why, even though I didn't agree (one of my teams got pounded for like 48 runs total in 2 back to back games, and the next game of course left my crappiest RP in to give up like 8 hits in a row to lose the game, because my other good RP had been wasted in the blowouts the past 2 days), and they've always seemed friendly and helpful

I could be wrong, but I was happy with the % of responses, because I could write them a lot more and don't, and feel I can't be the only one writing and complaining/questioning, so overall I'd say good customer service, at least from the standpoint of answering questions....oh, they also once helped me find my computer team, (not 365, the home PC game), because I had switched devices and hadn't accessed it in a couple years)....all in all helpful to me

The likelihood and quality of a reply correlates roughly to the seriousness of the issue. I reported a bug with the multiple lineups feature when it was first implemented a few years back, and they got back to me and fixed it the same day. The recent update to add league and account Inbox buttons to the menu broke a few things in the phone app, mainly that the game replay on the phone app now looks like the browser based replay. They did acknowledge this, but it has not been fixed. My suggestion to move the Inbox selections down below the menu options I actually use fell on deaf ears - I think they put it in their "Old Man Doesn't Like Change" file. They could be a little more consistent, but I think they are fairly responsive if something is actually broken.

That said, the biggest improvement they could make would be to publish a quarterly or semi-annual product roadmap for 365 and give users a chance to comment, and maybe even vote on the most desirable fixes and features.

They have been pretty good about responding to emails in a timely fashion probably the last year or two honestly. I may not always like the answer, but I give them credit for being more responsive.

They've also been very good responding to my emails, that's much appreciated.

Except for one time , Strat has always
responded to all my questions in a fairly
timely fashion
That being said
It would be nice in a way , if they could have
a place to make suggestions to make the game
better .

MARKSERRI wrote:,,,
It would be nice in a way , if they could have
a place to make suggestions to make the game
better .

There is a "wish list" forum: https://forum-365.strat-o-matic.com/com ... 32d0fcb20f

There is no evidence at all that they read it.

I'm guessing that the game's whole code base is so old and brittle that they don't dare mess with it too much and risk the whole service going down.

That said, the whole quiet, primitive, text-based simplicity is part of what I like about it
---------------------------------

To the question of whether my experience with communication with SOM has been positive or negative, I would say mostly positive. Not ever as prompt as I would like, but they do solve problems eventually.

Still, hardly a day passes when I don't think, "man, if I ran that company, I'd sure run it differently...." lol.....just like everyone else here, I'm betting.

Like most of the other replies so far, I've found communication results to be a mixed bag.

When I write to them about a simple change needed in one of my keeper leagues, the response is typically quick and on target.

When I suggest improvements in how to administer keepers, all I get is crickets.

I'm hopeful that the new price increase will allow them to hire a couple more techies and put some effort into new development.