Announce newsboard - use it.

Please?

I like how things get added and fixed and changed frequently here in Lusternia.

I don't like when completely random things suddenly work differently than they used to, without any notice. Like emotes that get changed from something neutral to something negative (see prod?)...

Now, that might not be the end of the world, but it'd be really nice to, you know, be able to rely on the things you use for roleplaying don't sneakily change every so often.

I mean, I don't mind if the emotes and stuff get changed... new stuff, yay! But please, please, do tell us before we make fools of our dignified (trying) characters due to unannounced changes.

Thanks!

(Oh and, yay for the linewidth thingie! Go Lisaera)

If they forget to mention it in an IG announce, they probably won't remember to post it here.

Stuff gets changed so much that I imagine it would be a bit tedious to announce every little thing.

Exactly, we do announce the big things, and try to keep a record of smaller things and post them periodically. Granted it's probably already been noticed by the time we announce it. Personally I don't like announcing every little thing, just the important ones(like attack messages that are changed, formula's for damage, etc).

It'd also be good to know when minor bugs are fixed, such as quest bugs, or skill bugs.

If you mean the in-game Announce board, we try to strike a balance between keeping the players informed and not needlessly spamming the news.

As Hajamin said, we attempt to keep track of the smaller fixes and post them periodically but with a team of several coders working all over the place at various things, that is a harder task than it may sound.

What's more, a lot of the bug fixes/code improvements we make won't mean a great deal to players as they may only crop up as problems very occasionally and be difficult to recognise as the same thing, or they may just be sources of bursts of lag that you have no idea what is causing anyway.

I'm saying it would be nice to know if maelstrom works or not (Some say it does, some say it does) because we can't expect an announce post saying when its fixed. Same is true for the bug with dreamweaving that moves your body around. Some of the best skills people can't use because they don't know if its going to kill them or not.

Maelstrom was fixed, and announced MANY posts back during the... second round of envoy reports.

Dreamweaving, I think that was fixed, but I'm not sure as Roark normally handles dreamweaving things.

Hey, I personally don't mind having the Announce board spammed. Makes me very happy whenever I see news. (Unless I get nerfed of course. )

I think maelstrom had been re-broke since then though. Dunno, just seems like I've heard stuff about it recently. Also, I think it was Elryn who posted about his body moving to Magnagora, pretty recently. When I was a dreamweaver, I dreamwalked to Delport, climbed over rubble, my body moved, and I died to the group of 4-5 magnagorans there. After that, I never agressively dreamwalked again, because the small potential of pay out wasn't worth the risk of dying from the bug. Even after rumor had it that it was fixed, I don't think there was ever any post confirming it. Posting changes like that would help the people who play this game, and also reduce the feelings that nothing is being done to fix bugs that sometimes feel like they're overwhelming us. I don't think anyone really minds announce post spam, and if the admins don't have the time to write them, bug the ephimerals (sp?) cuz they're supposed to be slaves to the Divine

Same.

The rubble one was fixed a long time ago, and I'm pretty sure it was announced. This other one I'm not sure about.

As for writing announce posts, that's something only a few people can do, if you look at all the posts you'd see only 4 people write there.

Roark, Lisaera, Estarra, Hajamin

I think there's a balance between keeping the excitement of a big announce post, and the constant glow of smaller regular ones.

Here's a thought... if we leave the Announce board for major announcements, could we have some sort of changes log for all the minor bug and skill fixes and updates? One that could be checked by date, and not necessarily require a great deal of effort in adding notes, and if it's like a log each minor change can be added at any time.

For instance :-



etc

That would be so cool.

And that would be different from using the announce board how?

Every little ittsy bitsy change would be recorded, at least from what I understand.

Well... in theory, you'd be more eager to just write a one line to the log whenever you change something. That's the assumption here.

You fix a bug, you write a short note immediately.

Announce posts, you have to collate everything you've done until you can make a nice cohesive post. Also, you don't want to spam continuous announce posts with little changes - only the major stuff gets through. A log doesn't have that problem.

Just a thought, if it would be used.

The time taken to write that little bit, is also time taken away from fixing other bugs. It may not seem like a long time, but trust me it is, plus bugs fixes are loaded in groups, so it would still mean writing a bunch of things at once.

There is also my far larger concern, such a system gives away when we have big projects going on. You notice, hey they haven't been recording as many bug fixes lately... they must be working on something else... kind of ruins the supprise of new things being added in if you know something is coming.