I agree 100%. I even wrote this in my email to the furies last time.

Actually, it would not lighten the work load in 9 cases out of 10, because we'd still have to first approve the design, wait for them to do it, check the area after they claim to be finished, edit the area where the player made mistakes, before that we'd have to set up the basic structure of the area as well, not to mention making all the creatures, items, and other parts of building you've never seen, not to mention the coding behind everything, and the testing...

And that's if you've been trained to do it - in other words, you're a mortal builder. (And I believe applications are always open for that, if you wanted to apply - if not, your application could still be put towards when a call was put out.) Using someone with no experience at all would make everything ten times harder that it would be doing it alone, especially considering the high standards we set for our building.

The 'building' people seem consider to be building (i.e - the rooms descriptions) when it comes to an area or quest is generally the least important aspect, as well as the easiest to do. It's everything else, added with that - plus, every other thing the team need to do normally (remember as well, that most of us are volunteers - we don't get paid to do this), that makes it time consuming.

Ideas and inspiration are plentiful, but sadly, time isn't nearly as abundant. We'd love to push out more, just as much as you want more - but the day just isn't long enough, when we need to be able to support ourselves outside of being here as well.

We still love you all!

No no no...you can't leave! I'm losing my best customer

Regarding the lack of feedback for envoys, has a restricted forum section been considered?

Not only would that encourage more of a collaborative process in which personal upgrades are not the only goal, it would allow for the admin to interact without too much extra work. (We all know you are as addicted to the forums as we are )

Isn't there already an Envoy board IG?

How would a forum section be different?

Easier to give feedback, easier to browse, topic-based instead of just one giant stream of posts, able to quote other people and parts of their posts easily, owned smilies, need I go on?

Can post on it while not playing and dealing with the annoying IG news system too.

More complaints, more whines, more debates based off of misinformation or just plain on vengeance. If we have an Envoy board, it'll have to be extremely moderated or else it'll just turn ugly.

Well, it would only be for the guild envoys. If there are problems, they can be replaced. :shrug:

Besides, look at the total number of posts on these forums compared to the total number of posts in game.

Huh, strange, that's exactly what I was thinking would be useful. An envoys board. Would this be doable?

There is too much posted on the forums instead of the game where it belongs, as is. An envoys 'forum' would just be that much more of a problem, as we'd have to assign and unassign people special ranks for every time they are moved to or out of an envoy position.

Well... former envoys could stay I suppose, so you'd only have to add the new ones.

The thing is, not everyone reads and posts on the forums, or even wants to.

Envoys are removed generally for a reason. If we wanted just anyone to be discussing skills, there would be no reason in assigning envoys, and we'd just ask for general reports from anyone who wanted to write it.

Even then, it would still require us to continually add people, and work on something on forums that should be discussed IN GAME.

Edit - by 'just anyone' an envoy is chosen for the reason of having some idea how the skills work, and (hopefully) being able to look at them objectively, and not in a manner of 'I want my guild to be the best, so I'm going to overlook how this is too good'. Those who cannot do these will not remain as the envoy of their guild for long.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but envoys don't actually discuss anything in game, do they? Is the envoys board IC? I was under the impression that it wasn't. It's all done over the newsboard and by email, I thought. So it looks like the maxim of "it should be done in game" is being applied rather needlessly once again. Having it on the forums would not change any kind of in-game politics like the public-news-replacements that tend to be debated in the general forum here.

And don't patrons have to reappoint envoys in-game anyway? How long could it really take to add someone to a list of people with forum privs? I understand that you guys have limited time but this is what, one or two minutes every few weeks an envoy gets changed? How often do they rotate to begin with? Narsrim's been ours for ages, so's Gregori, and Terenas has been ours since eons ago. Granted that's just Serenwilde, but those don't really sound like very good reasons not to do it, to me, and it would at least partly solve the communication issues.

The Forums are overabused as is. And I know for a fact envoys discuss (or complain) plenty about their skills in game, I've sat and watched them do it.

If an envoy wants to say something, the envoy board is right there, available for them to post on, as they have in the past. And yes, while patrons do assign the envoys ingame, we don't assign people to groups on the forums. So yes, it would be a pain having to track down envoys according to their forums name (if they even have an account, which not everyone does, you need to remember), as well as keep track of who is currently an envoy and who is not, and keeping up to date with that on the forum accounts.

Instead of whining for more forum things which not every envoy is likely to be able to use, and will be more of a hassle, why don't the envoys ask for something more akin to an actual channel/organization, where they can talk amongst themselves and gods that listen in, or to them when they discuss skills, and still have a board to post to? Every envoy would be able to access it, and it would certainly be easier to keep in control.

I see enough people whining on the forums about things they should be taking, or at least reporting, ingame already - for example, bugs, issues, etc, instead of posting where it matters. It would be unfortunate if those specific incidents needed to start being aggressivly moderated, but more of you need to realize the forums are not the BUG or ISSUE function, and should not be treating it as such.

I wasn't whining exactly, it was just a thought.

However, I must admit that you have struck upon the converse issue that annoys me the most... people taking OOC stuff in game. Any channel upon which characters are encouraged to talk about skills and mechanics I believe will be to the detriment to the RP environment in Lusternia. At least a news board is static enough that communication upon it does not occur alongside one's character actions. OOC channels for characters, though, I have always opposed.

It was only a thought to facilitate an easier and more open discussion. It isn't suitable, oh well.

It is worth noting that if an envoy wants to reach out and work with other envoys, they can do so fairly easily. I always try to coordinate with Terenas for anything related to Moon. Corbenic and I have/will be discussing issues like Astrology, Hexes, entities in general, etc.

The Moondancers as well as several other guilds are encouraged to make suggestions. I usually have 3-5 posts reminding everyone that it is time again to message me with suggestions. As soon as I get suggestions, I post them into a guild project everyone can view. The guild project is word-for-word what is sent in as the envoy report so every member should have an understanding of what's going on.

In general, I'd say 90% of the suggestions in my report come from guild members, 5% from outside sources (like someone in another guild), and 5% are usually my own. I think that's pretty fair considering.

We have the plots board, rarely used. We have mortal builders, those that apply and are chosen get to build for credits. Those that do the best jobs get the chance to submit their own area proposals.