Advising chat window is inefficient

[Bragan]

Is there any way to make advising as effortless as tells? Currently every time I want to tell some player something I have to /advice playername message. But usually advising sessions are conversations and not just one thing said, it would be nice to continue the conversation by simply typing the message in the Help pane, like we do in Tells. It's especially relevant when I have to type in a finger-twister of a name fifteen times (don't want to name names, but it's happened)

[Rizin]

Once you type the name once you should be able to tab complete it after typing enough of the unique letters.

[Dihenis]

It's possible to claim more than one person at a time (I've done it before) so you would have to type in the name so the game knows who you are talking to at that time. the advising system is more complicated because of the claiming, so I don't think you could just go based on the person who sent the last message without some new coding

[Tuxide]

I've used advisormode for three years now.  I don't use it much any more because I find it annoying to turn it on every time I sign into the game, and the only incentive for me to turn on advisormode is to find the bad advisors.

[LigH]

I would love to use the advisormode again. But since my Win32 client crashes as soon as I switch it on, I am waiting for any little client update with that bug fixed... for several months now. So I am even more worried that you mention "bad advisors", Tuxide: Don't let the help system get known as useless and annoying, that's not its intention...

[Bragan]

@Rizin that's a useful thing to know, I didn't know the chat window had autocomplete. Thanks.

[Tuxide]

Tuxide: Don't let the help system get known as useless and annoying, that's not its intention...

I didn't say it was useless, I said there was not much incentive to using it.  I don't wish to become a GM, but I've answered enough sessions that I could be one if I wanted to.  But I also don't want there being too much incentive--for example, people were powerlevelling advisormode back when advisor points were visible.

[Dajoji]

Just a side note: advisor points are only a reference when it comes to evaluating GM prospects. Having a whole bunch doesn't mean anything by itself. If you want to know more about becoming a GM, check this sticky.

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

sounds like time for a feature request!

Use the bugtracker, it likes you more than I do.

[LigH]

@ Tuxide:

Sorry, a little misunderstanding... Should have been written like:

So I am even more worried that you mention "bad advisors", Tuxide:

Don't let the help system get known as useless and annoying, by helping less or not seriously, people -- that's not its intention...

My concern was the "bad advisors", whatever you mean exactly. Giving false advises? Giving not very detailed, or too detailed and spoiling advices?

I did not want to say that you, Tuxide, would spoil the system. That was my mistake building this sentence.

[SerqFeht]

I'm been advising a little bit now. Tuxide once used /tells to tell me I gave a spoilerish advice (I did  )

I think a big problem is that there is no clear definition of advising. There isn't really a description of what is spoilerish, and what isn't, for the help channel. Part of the problem of 'bad advisors' is probably that people that don't know exactly what the rules are when they advise. I think tabbing for names is fine, although it is sometimes annoying when I have to take multible sessions because of overload on the window.

Tuxide + LigH, maybe you and I could write an Advisor Guide that defines these rules, if you find the time. I'll start one in the meantime.

[Tuxide]

My concern was the "bad advisors", whatever you mean exactly. Giving false advises? Giving not very detailed, or too detailed and spoiling advices?

I see.  In general, those that break the advising policy.  Like I said, I've seen people powerlevel advisormode in the past, in hopes that when they hit 500 advisor points they can fly around like a GM (again, advisor points are hidden now).  I've also seen the spoiler kind, and the kind who use advisormode for finding guild recruits and platinum miners.  Any more I just use advisormode to entertain myself.

Also, since 0.3.020, most of the questions I've seen come up are tutorial-related.  Out of the rest of the questions, about half of them ask for spoilers while the other half of them require GM intervention (where petition is more appropriate).