I just read toraks goodbye thread and am now wondering if emailing imms with questions about your current character is bad. Is it?

I've done it a few times with my current and am worried that I've been unwittingly soiling my character with the OOC questions. I'm hoping this is a situational thing as my questions were more mechanical but still I wonder! Feedback please?

Knowing who the person behind the character is completely ruins the fun for me. I treat each character as a clean slate and base all interactions with them based on what they show me IC. If you want to know about Whiysdan, RP and figure it out, I'm around a good bit.

To me, there's pretty much no reason to email an IMM about an active character or talk to them OOC about stuff and let them know who you are.

Of course, I can only speak for myself.

=w=

.

NT

1) In general, if there's an IC mechanism for something, you should always try that first and often. Empowerment, arranging IC events, cabal induction or leadership, tattoos, requests for information, quest participation, etc.

2) If it's a bug, put it in the bug queue here on our website. This way all coders can see it. If you're worried it will compromise something about your character, request that the resolution not be made public. Bugs sent via email tend to get buried.

3) If you have a question about how something works, or have an opinion about a change that's needed, the forums are usually the place to start. We permit anonymous posting on Gameplay to let you do this without linking the character and the player. Please use it-- it also lets others benefit from the answer.

4) Lobbying via OOC mechanisms is much less acceptable. It's one thing to bring something to our attention, or request clarification. It's quite another to send one (or multiple) staff members what amounts to requests for rewards, appeals of IC decisions, increases in power, special favors, etc. This is generally pretty rare. (I didn't receive the recent batch, but Torak is uniquely (in)famous for going over this line in the past.)

5) If you are sending a ton of OOC requests, you're probably doing it wrong. Most things can be handled by the forums. Staff members get busy, and just because you have a lot of time and interest on some topic, doesn't mean that person can or will keep up.

6) Most OOC matters should go to imms@carrionfields.com (most questions) or imps@carrionfields.com (issues dealing with staff), as appropriate. This lets someone who is free (and/or has the most information about the topic) jump on it.

While we're on the topic: Visible Immortals are In Character, just like any PC. If an Immortal decides an OOC conversation is necessary (and can't be handled via a couple tells from 'An Immortal'), they will have it in a private room, and it will be very clear that it's intended to be OOC. We don't want any confusion (in either direction) about whether the situation is IC or OOC.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

My opinion is that contact with individual immortals in the context of a current character should be limited to subjects and circumstances that cannot for whatever reason be addressed IC or in-game. Email is not for asking for advice, getting "pre-approvals" for potential avenues of RP, telling us what paths/virtues/etc. you want, and so on. One legitimate example might be letting your patron god know that due to unforeseen circumstances you will be offline for a couple weeks.

Also, I would ask people to post bugs on the bug board, game mechanics feedback on the gameplay forum, etc.

We have just a couple players who are especially needy via e-mail, and I don't think anyone enjoys this behavior (even though we might otherwise enjoy their characters, etc.)

And then if an Immortal asks me to post it to the bug board, I do.

You can't exactly have a balance discussion with an active character on the gameplay forum. If I was going to discuss demon path shamans, everyone is basically going to know who I am immediately and add the conversation on how they view my character.

The whole reason I sent you and Daevryn an email about it was because I was hoping to have a discussion, outside the view of the game, so I didn't cause this exact problem.

I mean, you do, don't you?

And BTW, whenever I see a GWB character that doesn't act like Jerry, we all know it's you. You've had what, 6 of the 9 followers?

He can't take credit for changes 2 years down the road that had nothing to do with his suggestions.

When there's not a single other player in the game with the path, or has been, for months.

That won't tell everyone who I am or how I'm not happy with it.

Idiot.

...it would actually post as Torak and everyone would know how Ptolo is. Oh wait, that's not how the forum works, it would show up as Ptolo ONLY. So who is the real idiot? It's not me.

Again, I knew this was you because of your ability to do GWB. Most other people don't know that. You could have posted as Ptolo with no issues (unless you were excessively whiny in your posts, in which case yeah, some people might treat you differently but ####'em).

NT

>When there's not a single other player in the game with the
>path, or has been, for months.
>

At this point, I have to wonder about your intentions behind the shaman path "discussion" thread.

Honestly, I can't help but feel that this should either fall into a bug board post (as you think a skill is obviously broken) in which you can request for it to not go public, or a post-death post on the abilities you have spent hundreds of hours learning the nuances of and still feel don't work as intended.

Trying to get your skills changed on your active character feels too much like a plea for imms to make you stronger (on a character that did fairly well). Just because every offensive form isn't lion/gorilla doesn't mean they are broken. Similarly, just because demon path isn't as good to you as breaker or desolation does not mean it is broken or even bad.

>Honestly, I can't help but feel that this should either fall
>into a bug board post (as you think a skill is obviously
>broken) in which you can request for it to not go public, or a
>post-death post on the abilities you have spent hundreds of
>hours learning the nuances of and still feel don't work as
>intended.

But this process hasn't worked for me in the past. Specifically I'm still salty that headbutt wasn't fixed (or even noticed to be broken) despite bug boarding, post death threading, etc. over 3 Hero level orcs (Srithra, Thrunna, Krunk) and *then* it was noticed to be broken.

Too often it feels like the Imm Staff simply believe they know better instead of taking the time to look. Or that so few Imms are qualified to look. I don't mind playing a game that has stuff that is broken/untested/poorly designed/balanced. I do have a problem with people pissing on me and telling me it is raining.

Disclaimer: I have not played any shamans to any real level, though my demonspawn was underwhelming.

But this process hasn't worked for me in the past. Specifically I'm still salty that headbutt wasn't fixed (or even noticed to be broken) despite bug boarding, post death threading, etc. over 3 Hero level orcs (Srithra, Thrunna, Krunk) and *then* it was noticed to be broken.

Historically, there are generally about 200 bugs on the bug forums, ranging from trivial to intricate. They're visible to all coders and people who can change areas. They stay until they get resolved, and fixing a bug isn't necessarily as simple or as complicated as the poster often assumes.

Prays go to all immortals, but unless a coder is searching on the right keywords, they get buried quickly among a sea of empowerment prays, rules issues, random questions, etc. It's a poor plan for getting to resolution.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Is there any way to allow the OP (anonymous or not) to view their submitted bugs? Or, is this just something you wouldn't be interested in? Personally, I always "Check back" on the bug forum in hopes of seeing one of my posts addressed, and I would appreciate this change if possible, or plausible.

This may not be the response you're looking for but we're just not interested in treating the bug board more like a ticket or issue tracker where folks can figure out whether their report has been seen, track progress, request feedback, etc. That's a lot of extra work and distraction for us that almost certainly isn't going to get the bugs fixed any faster.

I wouldn't be opposed to people being able to see a list of all their bug board submissions, but at the same time I don't care enough to try to hack that together in our gross old forum software.

Maybe some day I'll work on a better bug submission system, but for now I think we we have works well enough.

I am fine with being told "no, thats a lot of work and our time is spent doing more valuable things like enhancing the game"

Even seeing a list of the stuff I've submitted would be awesome - with the caveat of it being "easy to accomplish" on your end.

Thank you for looking at my request.

Pretty sure that sometimes I've submitted things more than once because after a while I forget whether I submitted it before. I'm not trying to nag -- just trying to make sure that I submit the thing at least once.

I hear you, but emailing an imm about it isn't the answer either. Sometimes bugs just take a while to be squashed.

More that it can be incredibly frustrating and the outlets are, at best, insufficient at getting issues addressed, even when you do put in the work and do it the "right" way. So I understand trying to take it down a different avenue.

Content of the email as well as quantity of the emails would be the things that I take into consideration. If you are emailing with a question about certain things like making an empowerment appointment or things like that? No big deal. If you are emailing me to try and bring up a million IC things that should be handled IC? Thats a big deal. If you email me 4 dozen times for something that shouldn't be approached in an OOC manner, it will also be a "bad thing".

Hope that helps add some clarity to it.