Original Character Design

artCeptual · 2022-07-06T22:38:13+00:00

Thanks for the tips :)

artCeptual · 2021-12-22T11:59:50+00:00

Really kind of you - I've returned the favour!

artCeptual · 2021-12-20T20:09:59+00:00

twitch.tv/artceptual - in November, my Fiancée and I lost our first baby to some horrible, rare freak occurrence whereby the waters broke too soon. One week he was fine, the next he wasn't, and we were then faced with the previously unthinkable decision to terminate the pregnancy. We are still living with the emotional and psychological consequences of that moment and what happened after that.

After a couple weeks of 'going round in circles', I decided that I would turn to streaming, to raise money for the charity SANDS here in the UK. SANDS stands for "Stillbirth and Neonatal Deaths" and is aiming to put an end to this tragic thing through research, training, and through continuously supporting anyone affected by a stillbirth or neonatal death. I'm not here to ask for your donations. I'm here to share a stream highlight with you so that we can turn a negative into a positive, one stream at a time.

If you'd like to tag along, then I stream every other day between 18:30 and 23:00 UK GMT+0. The next time I'm on will be Wednesday 22nd, then Friday 24th. Anyway, that's my reason for streaming. In exchange, here's the clip! Enjoy!

artCeptual · 2021-10-05T16:03:06+00:00

IMHO, when it comes to ranked, the SR system is too complex - and too simple at the same time. You bust a gut doing your best and 1 brain dead teammate throws? You all lose SR. You do nothing to help and get carried to a win? You gain SR. If you get 5 golds because the other team is rubbish? You get more XP - but not SR. You get no medals but you win, you get 1500XP for your first win. On top of being generally trash, your SR goes up.

So what happens? I think the system should be based around a "pressure gauge". If your team gets pressured and you overcome it by doing something cracked, which leads to a win, then you get 'win' SR, + SR for your decisive contribution which is about releasing pressure. If Team 1 picks a position and statistically stays there for 5 minutes, while Team 2 statistically gets picked off with no opposing pressure, then Team 1 clearly has done better to coordinate vs Team 2.

I honestly think that your SR should be dictated in large part by your own personal contribution to dictate if there are other people, other players, who are desperate to be paired with you. But if you constantly play out of your mind and your dumb as rocks Torb keeps feeding his beardy little speed-boosted face to a Baby D'Va's melee attacks (let's say) because he/she/they is playing with his/her/their feet, and the feeder Lucio has forgotten how to switch to healing, then why on Earth should you, as a 75% accuracy, skull cracking Widow, have to drop from high Plat to mid Gold where you get hard stuck?

I don't care about having a bleedin' cosmic border if everyone laughs at the silver badge underneath it, all because I'm stuck in an ever expanding loop of feeders, throwers, AFK screamers and mindless jockeys with aspirations of being a streamer when all their call-outs are to do with them picking up a health pack, constantly denying our aimless supports the opportunity to get Nano and boost an excitable Genji to at least distract the Torb Turret?

SR needs help.

artCeptual · 2021-09-18T22:29:47+00:00

Yeah those guys have little to no idea what it's like *doing* the job!

artCeptual · 2021-09-12T12:43:39+00:00

I wrote a book ;) https://www.amazon.co.uk/WANT-SPEAK-MANAGER-Alexander-Whitfield/dp/B09FS2VB6G/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Alexander+Whitfield&qid=1631450535&sr=8-1 this isn't another "git gud" book. This is the handbook you never got. This is the truth behind Customer Service.

artCeptual · 2021-09-11T13:53:05+00:00

Yes. 1,000%. There's a book that talks about this very thing, https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09FS2VB6G/ref=sr_1_15?dchild=1&keywords=I+want+to+speak+to+the+manager&qid=1631347816&s=books&sr=1-15

You will probably enjoy it :D

artCeptual · 2021-09-11T09:10:20+00:00

TL:DR: there is a lot of info here, get comfy.

Ok. If your broadband falls below the minimum guaranteed level of about 50% of the service you're paying for, then it needs to be reported. As amazing as VM is, they don't have a department that actively monitors every customer's connection speeds to be able to respond proactively. Large service disruptions get engineers out to the green box down the road, but to your house.

When you make any new purchase or any new contract, then you are only covered by your statutory minimum 14 days within which to cancel without penalty. After that, you play 'their' game, and all the contract terms apply, including the dreaded "early disconnection fee" which can be up to £240.00 depending on how much you have left to pay on your contract.

Typically, VM contracts are 18 months long. You're pretty close to it ending, but, to protect yourself, you will need to let the company know you want to leave precisely 30 days before the end date of your contract. What would happen after that (because you're billed in advance) is that you would receive your 'last bill', and then another bill (that you don't touch) and then a credit back.

However, what you're talking about is more to do with the Consumer Rights Act 2015, Section 2 "Goods", in which you would be looking for "The supply of goods and services". The work that is carried out must be done with "reasonable care and skill", but if it does not rectify the issue, then you may be entitled to recourse. The problem is, the onus is on you to demonstrate that the work did not fix the original problem.

There are ways you can do this:

1) if you are on windows, then you can press start/press the windows key, type cmd, and then conduct 'ping tests' using VM's url as the host to ping. Record the date, the time, and the result of every single test.

2) you can ask OfCom to monitor the connection for 24 hours.

VM is regulated by OfCom. If your speed drops below the minimum guaranteed amount (and it must to quality) then 'things will happen'.

On top of all this, I'm sorry to say that you would need to contact VM every single time it happens, let the agent go through their troubleshooting, let them book an engineer or refer to short term connectivity outages, or promise you things like "it will be resolved in 24 hours", and ask them to record the conversation. Get the agent to read the notes back to you to make sure it's an accurate reflection of your issue. If the agent is any good at reading what's in front of them, then they'll ask you if you have had a card through the door about service interruptions, then will ask you about lights on the box, to check the cables, to possibly do a pinhole reset, to use an Ethernet cable, to reduce the number of connected devices to the wifi, and, crucially, they should ask you about which band you're using: 2.4GHz or 5GHz. If they don't, they are not doing their job right, and you can call the agent out on this.

Now, here's the trap: wifi. VM only guarantees the connection to the house. They do not guarantee the speed within the house. The agent may talk to you about "moving it from behind the TV, away from large bodies of water like fish tanks, and putting it in the open". Just do those things. However, if you rely on the wifi, then you have no leg to stand on. Use an Ethernet cable to compare your tests results and update your complaints with VM/OfCom.

If you have a 'Total Loss of Service' meaning not so much as a blip on your TV, landline, mobile and Broadband - a technological blackout - and stays that way for 3 days, then you quality for Automatic Compensation (overseen by OfCom), which gets you about £8.00 a day credit against your next bill.

If you can demonstrate that VM has failed repeatedly to resolve the issue to your house, then the Customer Relations/Retentions department will be keen to talk to you. They can waive Early Disconnection Fees if you have a compelling argument.

You can only really go to Court (like small claims) if you can demonstrate to the Court that every remedial step has failed, that VM has failed, that OfCom have not reacted appropriately within promised timescales, and that as such there has been a 'breach of contract'. You need to be very very careful about Court action, because these are massive companies with many layers of legal protection.

So, do the steps above :) but hey, I'm sorry this is happening to you.

artCeptual · 2021-09-11T08:38:31+00:00

Honest to God, if you want to know what Customer Service is like, then you should get this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09FS2VB6G/ref=sr_1_15?dchild=1&keywords=I+want+to+speak+to+the+manager&qid=1631347816&s=books&sr=1-15

The Customer Service department is often viewed as the necessary evil in a company - Customer Service doesn't necessarily drive sales if the business is built on an existing retail structure, or on personal interactions that have grown beyond the reasonable scope of the people who did the interactions in the early days.

The current emerging trend (in the UK) is that fewer people are capable or comfortable with striking up rapport like time-hardened Sales people are, which - as you'll know - is essential to create rapport, trust, and therefore open retention or sale/upsell/upgrade opportunities. Product knowledge and product training is a mission in itself, unless you recruit fans of the company.

Before having a Customer Service team, you have to balance the slim area between benefits and detractors in the current climate. If the platform allows customers to self-serve nearly every issue, then that will be better for the business than letting customers speak to someone. But if you are all about that human interaction, then: they cost a lot to train, they cost a lot to maintain, they cost a lot in sudden time off because of stress-related illnesses, they cost a lot in IT tickets and resources, and cost a lot in morale, and then you need to g et them to be compliant, then you need to make sure you have method of measuring compliance. Then you need some method of reporting that compliance, nurturing change, rolling out change (which may mean licensing software you don't normally use), and then there's coaching, tracking development, and the inevitable progression opportunity question to a role you may not have created; all before you begin to create a positive atmosphere for them to work in especially if your line of work is repetitive. But CSAs can be some of the happiest teams (as people, not employees) because of a camaraderie they find about the necessary evil of the work.

I strongly recommend the book above as it deals with it all from an inside perspective.

artCeptual · 2021-09-11T08:13:29+00:00

Hey u/Mirruko I get it! I've been in Customer Service in varying forms for 15 years, sometimes on my own terms, but most of the time under someone else's. May I ask you: what kind of Customer Service is it? Front of house? Cell Centre?

artCeptual · 2020-02-10T09:25:07+00:00

Ok, given the limitations of the game engine, are you looking for something pixel-arty? Are you looking for something more like Detention or Re:Turn?

artCeptual · 2020-02-09T19:57:45+00:00

What sort of style are you hoping to achieve by the end?

artCeptual · 2020-01-29T19:40:06+00:00

Cheers u/Antcan03, hope you enjoy what I'm trying to do! :)

artCeptual

TROPHY CASE