Not just could: you NEED to if you want to get fixed.

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Gotta agree that for a server that boasts thousands of users, support is pretty light. Does Nas not have 1 person he trusts to handle day-to-day issues?

These questions come off as if you don't see a problem with a main way of communicating with the sole source of help as an IRC Chat with a semi-attentive person to support over 1,000 players at a given time.

I don't believe you actually believe there isn't a problem there, so I'd challenge you to be a bit more sympathetic to everyone as well. They're frustrated. Nas solely uses an IRC Chat to manage the many bugs that users find. I get it, it's free and it's his time.. but asking like "Why can't you just be on a chat designed from the 90s.. permanently until he decides to help you?" isn't really a valid response.

Everyone knows that NasChat is woefully unequipped to scale with the server, and that if he wants people to actually be happy.. he has to figure out a way to manage his response to issues better. You can tell them that the current best way to get help is to use NasChat repeatedly until you catch his attention without making it sound like someone pointing out how insane that is, is dumb.

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There used to be a better way, Wolf, with the ticket system. But it was flooded with the same people who say "hello" and then never do anything else.

Nas would have to go through each one of those JUST THE SAME as he does in naschat. Except tickets stay even if the person never really had an issue. He had over 1k tickets in just 6 months - and that was when there were about 1/4 the amount of people playing here. And not all of those are just the same, easy, repetitive thing he can fix (which he prefers to fix by actually fixing the mission, which is what he's tried to with 2-3 before). 4000 tickets in 6 months is what we'd see now: that's over 20 issues a day people bring to him. Each one he'd have to respond to and confirm if they were fixed.

By bringing it to naschat and bringing it up every day with him, he knows there is a real problem. It may seem primitive and not the professional way to do it, but being just one guy has it's downsides. It's also what allowed nas to last so long. Drama about GMs, between admins, people having prior knowledge of things, none of that can happen here. It's what destroys servers. Every single one that's been shut down was due to a mix of those things.

The hammer of justice and the wrench of fixing might turn a little slower here, but it works. Sorry. I wish he'd accept the help he needs, too.

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Sure - It definitely seems like he needs a better ticket system, or some folks that can respond to tickets and prioritize them for him to review and to cut out the ones that seem like they are frivolous or just need the technical help that you provide.

All I'm saying is... to pretend that IRC Chat is the answer as the server scales, and that newcomers that come here and don't know all the reasons you just mentioned are dumb for seeing how obviously horribly flawed that is, is just silly.

You can acknowledge that it's the current system without sounding like it's stupid to hope/expect better.

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There's a lot of people who come into chat who could've saved themselves loads of time by going to the Troubleshooting page and pressing Control + F. I'd say the majority of the people who come in seeking help.

Is the server down?
I got error code 3101 one time?
Password entry causes double-entering of characters
etc, etc.

All of these non-stop repeat reasons for a person to come in take up a load of time to read through, interact with the user and get them to answer your questions and stop assuming they have some unicorn issue. Nab is able to help prevent a lot of these in chat for Nas but there's still a definite issue when some legitimate concern for Nas is found. It's sitting in an IRC query tab. Most of the users leave IRC before giving him a chance to look at their issue and respond. Hell, most of them leave chat in ~5 minutes overall regardless of what happens...

Would a corporate-type drop down ticket system designed to bottleneck these types of user-solvable issues/non-issues (some routes landing in dead ends with the same TS info on the Wiki), where only a fraction of selections send a legitimate ticket, be any better? With clear text to explain on the landing pages with an actual ticket entry option that not being elaborate means you likely won't get help?

I personally really hate systems like this when I have a legitimate issue and need to contact support. I prefer what we have here, but some people don't possess the critical thinking necessary to simply look at a TS page and resolve the simple issues.

IRC chat is not the answer, and I've been asking him to bring tickets back, and to let me help with them. No dice.

People aren't stupid for having trouble getting help. But they sure as hell need to be persistent and allow themselves to be helped if they want to get it. That's how nas does his filtering now, basically.


I agree with Chakan that we don't really need tickets, though, too. Nas could put a lot of load off him by having even 1 GM that can temporarily do things like alter mission progress, give back Ex quest items that aren't re-obtainable, and deal with player reports. But he has his reasons for doing these things himself. Trust me, I've offered to help quite a bit. If he doesn't even trust me, who has done almost nothing on this server besides help people install and troubleshoot in naschat for over a year (I've only got 1 75 this whole time), who will he trust?

Imagine how better things could be if:

- After an auto-HP in a far away area you can ask a GM to take you back
- When the boat bugs out and doesn't let you board, ask a GM to take you to the destination
- When pirates aggro through the ground on the boat and kill you, ask a GM to raise you at your destination
- When a player holds mobs for half an hour that a party is trying to kill, for no reason but to grief them...
- When a group aggros Minotaur and gets sent into the wall on draw-in...

etc etc.

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I agree with you - a GM would go a long ways.

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No i did not send a PM because:

"PM's are permitted for ONLY sensative/exploit/security related matters. Otherwise please post your question in chat. "

I did not consider this to be one of the three matters listed above. I DID post about it in chat multiple times, and remained in the chat for hours at a time watching for responses. No it has not been fixed for me yet. I guess i will try the PM thing after all when i have more time to kill.

My whole life i've practiced patience; disciplined in respect above all else, and it seems the only way to get something done here is by kicking and screaming the loudest and i just don't have it in me.
I would sooner leave the server with a bitter taste in my mouth than have to act like a child to get what I want.

Luckily I haven't gotten blocked yet, but I have tried to help friends who have and it's the most frustrating thing ever. Getting blocked and finally unblocked only reminds you of the frustration you'll have to deal with the next time it happens and let's face it... The server is far from perfect, riddled with issues.... it will happen again and again.