Are we allowed to post questions on the forums? If not, feel free to move this question to idiots and close it too, Daganev.

When something happens and we aren't sure if it is a bug or not, how can we ask the administration? They won't respond to BUG reports, they just fix them and carry on. We are not told the results of ISSUEs, nor are we to speak about them. So, if we aren't sure if something is allowed or not, where are we supposed to ask?

If, say, Choke was disallowed for village influencing, and then later, the admins changed their mind and decided to allow it, we would never know. The first 'rule' wasn't posted anywhere, just a global announce, so why should we expect a change to the 'rule' be posted?

I am not complaining about exploiting or dodging of bugs or anything, or about anyone. I am someone who likes to be prepared, so I was asking in my last post if I needed to be prepared for something or not, since there is literally NO WHERE ELSE TO ASK IT.


Let me put it another way:

Wisp was not supposed to work on people who were standing on monoliths.
Wisp is now summoning people who stand on monoliths.
This change was not announced.
So, is it an exploit to use Wisp to summon people who are standing on monoliths?
In other words, is it a feature or a bug?

Choke was not supposed to work in peaceful villages.
Choke is now working in peaceful villages.
This change was not announced.
So, is it an exploit to use Choke in a peaceful village?
In other words, is it a feature or a bug?


Where can we find the answers to such questions, or where should we ask such questions? If we do not know the rules of the game we're playing, and if we're not supposed to ask about them, how are we supposed to not break them?

Generally, if you ISSUE ME , you will get a reply, eventually, from the admin. This is probably the best way to get questions answered. Or email the admin (support@lusternia.com), or ask your city/guild/personal patron via a message. I'm sure a message to Estarra or some such might stand a good chance of making it as well, if it were a valid question.

Generally is the operative word, because I have used issue me to find out if something was a bug, and never received a response on it. The issue was eventually erased, and then when I went back and checked to see if the bug was fixed, it was still there.

As far as I can tell, if an issue is deemed unimportant, or that the person has not broken any rules, the issuer is not informed of anything. I've sent in issues of harassment, and plenty of other people I know did as well, and we never heard a thing back about it, and the person was not punished for quite some time. When he was shrubbed, someone told me it was because of a completely unrelated event. So, in other words, what we saw as harassment the Admins did not see as harassment. Now, how the heck are we supposed to know that? We can't ask about it on the forums, if what was happening was harassment or not, because that would be discussing ISSUEs, which we aren't supposed to do.

Hrm, I'd rather you do receive a response rather than having an issue deleted. My guess is that whoever was going over that issue at that time thought it was a bug and thus moved it to the bug category (though you still should have received a message). Believe it or not, we aren't really gods and do make human errors, especially when work is backed up.

Generally speaking, asking questions on the forums is NOT the way to ask the administration a question. We don't read every post and would rather players not have the expectation that the forums is the fastest or best way to talk to us (when it is not).

However, since I do happen to be responding to this thread:

1. Wisp is not prevented by a monolith. It is prevented by the target moving. This was inferred by the last wisp announce post. My apologies if it wasn't clear.

2. Choke should not be usable during peaceful influencing. There was no need for an announcement as there was an in-game message requesting it not be used and was subsequently fixed.

well I don't know anything about Issues, or I should say "not a lot about issues, from past practical experiance with them" But the lack of communication sometimes is something I've noticed.

There was a bug fix to Totem bonding lengths that was never announced, and even that lack of an announcement was used to some small advantage in-game.

It would be nice to know some of the smaller bug fixes as well, even if they arn't major-major things (even though personally I'd view this, and both of shorlens examples as major, others might not)

Edit:This isn't even an admin-only thing, as I've heard people in Serenwilde talking about how the news boards should be used for well, news, more often by the Commune leadership to let them know things.

Keeping people in the dark=bad

EDIT: Ninja answered by Estarra.

The forums are for us players to talk to eachother. Once in a while someone who happens to be an admin might chime in, but its mostly for us to talk to eachother.

If you have a question for players, ask it and try not to attack them in doing so, if you have a question for the Admin, use the Ingame stuff or emails.

To be clear on something, I DID NOT know about that ingame announce. I was not here for that first village when Etanru used it. Also, Munsia and others, instead of you know...telling me it was illegal, what did they do? They called be pretty names and told me how low I was. Never was I told that the divine said this was illegal, but sicne Estarra has made that clear now, I do know. Next time people should try explaining things instead of becoming stupid IC and making themselves look the fool, trust me, I've done it enough times to know how bad it looks.

Estarra, your avatar is glorious. Whenever I see you post, I just imagine this insane(ish) aged grandmother figure sitting there singing out loud to herself, and tapping away at the keyboard with exaggerated taps. Those kind of really exaggerated taps where you raise a single out-cast finger about a foot above the keyboard then plonk it down sharply, except that I imagine this grandmother doing that twice every second or so. Exactly as it is in your avatar, tapping away. Hilarious.

I'd assume the number of issues would have told you that.

I never in any post blamed you or accused you of exploiting anything. I really felt bad having to ISSUE you about it, since you had no way to know if it was allowed or not. I actually thought it was allowed again, since it's been RL months since peaceful villages were introduced, and I've never heard of Choke being used except for the first time, so it seemed to me that it was fixed and then changed after the envoy reports. Hence my question.


ISSUE ME is nice and all for getting answers, but the answers are privately given, and when twenty people want to know the answer to the same question, isn't it easier to ask on the forums?

If someone had a question, and asked in game, would it be allowed to post the question and the answer (after it's received) here in case anyone else wondered about it?

I know in class, teachers always prefer you to ask your questions so the rest of the class can hear them and the answers so everyone can lear, but I do understand that the situation is different here because the Admin (or teachers in my horrible analogy) don't always read all the threads.

So yeah...ignoring the stupid second paragraph, would that be allowed?

This is one of those cases where we just can't please everyone. We've received complaints from people when small changes are posted because "the announce board is filled with small useless crap and becomes meaningless to the point where no one reads it".

Anyway, to reiterate, the forums are NOT the place to ask admin questions. Not everyone reads the forums so we are not going to pass out information just to forum readers. Nor will there always be an admin who reads every single thread. Sometimes I even tell the admin to stop reading the forums when they feel they are personally attacked. Sometimes I stop reading the forums at certain points for a variety of reasons. Thus, please, do not look at the forums to have questions answered by the admin. That said, if you are looking for answers from other players, then of course the forums are an appropriate place to ask.

P.S. Who says I'm not "this insane(ish) aged grandmother figure sitting there singing out loud to herself, and tapping away at the keyboard with exaggerated taps"?

Just a thought, taken from something Kingdom of Loathing does - you could use the announce board for big updates like it is now, and create a "trivial updates" listing to list all those little updates that people might want to hear but aren't important enough to warrant posting on announce.

In regards to bug fixes, I'd prefer to have the choice myself.

If some people don't want to read them, they don't have to. I know skimming a post that doesn't apply to me is very easy - most of the time I read public I read the title and usually then ignore the actual post. But at least it's my choice to read or not.

It's like shouting, in a way. Lots of people complain when ANYONE says ANYTHING, but each of us still has the choice of having shouts on or off. We aren't all forcibly deaf because of a few people who don't like having to type a command themselves.

The other thing is that communicating bugfixes and other minor changes usually will generate quite a bit more goodwill towards the administration, in my opinion. If I can see that over the past few months lots of things were being looked at, no matter how small, then I'm not going to feel as dissatisfied that those issues important to me haven't been addressed yet - I know you guys are working on something else. As horrible as it sounds, I am given reassurance that the admin are intent on improving and investing in the game.

It also makes me feel that the admin have a greater respect for the playerbase. They are willing to share information about changes and fixes, rather than a much cooler policy of 'you're playing OUR game, WE'LL decide what you need to know."

So yes, bugfix posts = good.

I just think the time taken to list every change they make would detract far too much from actually getting the work done.

Well, you can always just compile a list and post it every week or so. Shouldn't be too hard, just mark down what you've done, end of the week comes, put up a bulleted list. Doesn't even have to be more than a sentence each, I'd think.

I hope you are.

Because some of us know better.

But in regards to getting answers about anything really, I wish there was something that told us what was appropriate. For contacting gods, to resolving problems, to dealing with custom things, I've been referred to a god's email, support, estarra's email, messaging a god in-game, and issueing it. Some more definition would be nice. *shrug*

Like...

Need a god to marry you?
-Message them in game
Have a problem with not getting credits?
-Email estarra@lusternia.com
Question if something is a bug?
-ISSUE ME
Have a bug?
-Use the BUG command

That kind of thing.