05NOV14 - Help us kill the petition queue!

GM Rikoo

Just now I realize we have a 1 min cooldown on Petitions 

Oh, and +1 Rill

This post will be about 2 things:

1) How to fill out a petition.

and 

2) Helping us KILL THE PETITION QUEUE

OK, first priority. The petition queue is old, long and dusty. It's a wise old thing, but it's time for it to die. Sort of. The problem is that we are a tiny team and were a smaller team before. We came up with the petition system without guessing just how many would be filled early on, and how difficult it might be to keep up with it. Combine this with the fact that many players have now had their issues fixed with patches or updates with the normal stream of updates to both the game and to the player's own access (browser type, connection, etc) and you can see just how we have petitions in the queue that are years old. 

It's also possible that we actually solved many of these petitions and never closed them. Simple enough.

OK let's cover filling out a petition, in an attempt to clear up our petition queue and to help streamline the process. I also want to "train" players on how to fill one out simply because we get a lot of petitions that are complete non-issues (the player was reading something incorrectly, for example) but still take us loads of time to track/complete. There's nothing wrong with having a "user error" but we just want to make sure that BOTH of us are not making mistakes where possible. 

Second, where do you fill one out? In game, here: http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/Player/Support  ...if you cannot get into game or have an issue filling one out, simply send me an in-game-message or write one directly to community@illyriad.co.uk !

Third, what are some of the things you should include in a petition? While we can see some information through in-game tools (we can look up your account and its activity, for example) we cannot see everything. This is where you come in. Here are some of the main things we look for in a petition:

1) Who are you or, more specifically, what town does this refer to? The name that is on your profile. Your email. Any contact information that you would like to give us, other than home phone number of Facebook or something. A back-up email is always handy.

2) What time did this happen? if you don't know the exact time, give us an idea. A good example is "This happened about 5 hours ago.." or "It happened around 1400 server time..." Server time is great because it is the same for everyone, and we can track back because of the time you filed the petition. 

3) What you were trying to do when it happened, in as much detail as possible. This is the background circumstances surrounding your petition.

--- 3a) "I was attacking a bunch of NPCs" is *NOT* useful. However...

"I had sent an army called "Army One" from my Town "Townsville" B to map location -300|300 with orders to occupy the square for 6 hours, and there was a Legion of Wild Dogs on the square when I first dispatched the army, and they were also there when the army arrived at about 16:30 server time today" --- *IS* useful.

--- 3b) "I was going after some grapes" is *NOT* useful. However...

"I sent a group of 4 Herbalists from Town "Townsville" to map location -300|300 to harvest approximately 80 grapes that are located there on a patch that I harvest regularly and have claimed sovereignty over, and when they were dispatched about 4 hours ago there were no hostiles (NPC or player) occupying that square, but when they arrived about 20 minutes ago around about 16:30 server time there was a pack of Wild Dogs on the square who killed the Herbalists"  --- *IS* useful.

--- 3c) What you expected to happen but didn't; and any thoughts you might have about why it didn't happen as you expected.

This is essentially the reason why you're opening the petition, and you need to explain not only what you thought should have happened and what you believe happened instead, but also provide any thoughts you have on why it may not have happened as expected.  You might have been trying out a new tactic, for example.  Or perhaps the person you were attacking quit his alliance or abandoned his account during the attack.  There are things you may have noticed that will be extremely helpful for us in piecing together the sequence of events.

--- 3d) If you get an error message popup onscreen, we need to know precisely what it says.  Screenshots are the best way of sharing this.

4) The browser you were in: If it was Chrome, tell us. If it was FF, tell us! If you can, tell us the version or if it was tablet, phone, etc.

5) Your connection speed: This doesn't usually matter, but it can be helpful to know. Let us know if your connection dropped, for example.

6) The name of the army involved: if you sent an army somewhere, send us the info about the army. The name, the commander, anything. We can see movements and other things but those army details are very, very important.

7) A screenshot: (as noted above) screenshot everything when you come across a bug. What good does it do? Well, in one single screenshot we might be able to get more information than a player might remember to provide. Think about it: a screen cap has map location, army information, browser, all that good stuff. Wanna know how to take and share a screencap? Go to this thread.

OK, so that we discussed how to fill out a petition PROPERLY, (and thank you for that!) let's talk more about how you can help us DESTROY THE QUEUE. No queue means no game issues! (Well, reported ones at least.) 

I am the community manager, but I can also solve some petitions. For example, I open the list and can scan for issues that might be something I can take care of (missing passwords, player issues, etc) and then I go through and see if there are any that might be recurring. I bring some petitions to the attention of the devs (game-breakers, etc) and some I leave there for them to discover. They go through the queue as well and solve as they can. We all do this every day.

If there is a petition that is of a certain age, it's very likely that the issue is long gone thanks to standard patches or tweaks along the way. It is our fault that we did not stay on top of the petitions and close all of them as they were fixed or tweaked, but we are a tiny team and we created a petition system that you will rarely find in other games with a staff this size. It grew faster than we though it could, thanks in large part to the fact that players could report any little thing, including (to a large degree) issues with other players or issues that were user-error. 

So, check your petition. Go here and see if there is a petition up top. See if you can recreate the bug (if possible) or check to see if the issue is even still an issue. If you couldn't see your caravans before, can you now? Or it's possible that those missing NPCs have long ago marched of or died at the hands of another. Either way, let's say your issue is not an issue anymore.

Then open it back up and put NO LONGER AN ISSUE, PLEASE CLOSE in the comment. You can go into details if you want, or you can just put the CLOSE THIS DEVS, FIXED and call it a day.

Feel free to ask questions or suggest items in this thread!

GM Rikoo

EDIT: This post will likely be updated/tweaked as we go on.