Ok, after answering a couple hundred questions in-game, I have a few ideas on how to make the system better. (If anyone finds another thread on any of these topics, feel free to post the link here.)
Help players:
1) In-game FAQ: There are a handful of super-common questions that are constantly asked. (ex: how do I train) Yes, you can always say RTFM, but it would be nice to have an advisor/GM maintained FAQ in the game, for easy access. (A mimimum of 100 or so advisor points could be required to edit this, to prevent problems.)
2) Newbie message: (mentioned in other posts; just thought I should re-state it here) A simple message to new players with basic instructions, and directions to the sewers.
3) An \"all advisors are busy\" message: Sometimes there are just too many questions at once for the number of advisors that are active. Some people start complaining into the help channel, and cluttering things up. If advisors are posting help to others, an auto-reply to waiting players would be nice.
4) \"/list_GMs\" command: GMs are not as accessible as one would like sometimes. Sure, you can sift through the \"/who\" list, but not all GMs are in the Game Masters guild.
5) If you have 0 advisor points, don\'t bother to show them: This is nit-picking, but if you\'re not an advisor you don\'t care that you have 0 points.
6) \"/advisor /pos\" command ability: New players get lost on occasion and have no way to communicate their location to ask for directions. The ability to send your position to anyone (not just the help channel) would be useful. Though, the abstract coordinates wouldn\'t be as informative as something like \"bottom of the Death Realm\".
7) Non-functional things should not be accessible: Granted, this is partially off-topic and has been mentioned many times, but it is the source of half of the questions on the help channel. If a skill doesn\'t work yet, you should not be able to purchase training for it.
Help advisors:
1) \"You advise (name)\": All other forms of communication are of the form \" (your name) something (target name)\". When I\'m one person answering questions from 4 people, while being talked to by yet more people, it would be nice to see what I said to who in the help channel. This seems like a simple oversight.
2) Just type in the tab: Typing \"/advise whomever\" first gets cumbersome. Simply typing in the help tab should send the message to the last advised person. Additionally, a command like \"/advise %\" could have the same effect.
3) \"/list_advisors\" command: It would be nice to be able to quickly look up the available advisors, to know if I\'m by myself or not. (If you want to keep up the anonimity of the advisors, you could make a minimum requirement of 10 points or so to use it.)
4) Long advice sessions give more points: Granted, the points are mildly useless, but answering multiple questions from the same person over a few minutes should give additional points.
Problems with the system:
1) The advising system tends to time-out weirdly: On many occasions I have gotten a late reply from a player, and then a time-out immediately following. As a result, I couldn\'t answer their new question. This is very annoying, and forces me to resort to tells.
2) Advising system messages should be in the help tab: The \"tapping foot\" and the like messages should be sent to the help tab, as opposed to getting lost in the system tab.
3) Stop the chat tab bleed-through: I don\'t know if this is a bug, or it was intentional, but often reminders of previous messages are sent to the normal says tab. (usually just the \"thanks\" reply after their question has already been answered) I don\'t see why these messages should be here. If you were in the all tab this doesn\'t help, and if you were in the says tab you should be able to notice the blinking help tab.
4) Display advisor points as an integer: Partial advisor points don\'t exist, so why is it displayed with 2 decimal places in the stats window?
