Please Read Before Posting!

Welcome to the Trickster Online Bug Report Forum, yay!

What is the purpose of this forum?
The purpose of this forum is twofold: For players to report bugs, and for Ntreev USA Quality Assurance (QA) staff to update the players on the status of bugs.

Who monitors this forum?
Every thread in this forum is read by Ntreev USA's Quality Assurance (QA) staff.  The purpose of QA is to identify and eliminate bugs in the game.  It is important to distinguish QA from programmers or server technicians, as QA only deals with in-game bugs.  QA is not responsible for GM actions, making new content, updating the website, or handling technical issues with the server or client.  Please understand that while every thread is read, not every thread will be individually acknowledged by QA.  This does not make the report any less important, we thank you for your time in submitting unique, specific reports. =)

What is a bug?
Wikipedia defines it thusly: A software bug (or just "bug") is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from behaving as intended (e.g., producing an incorrect result).

The following issues are types of bugs that should be reported.  This is by no means an exhaustive list:

• Exceptional Errors
  
• ANY type of crash
  
• Graphical issues (items, skills, characters, monsters)
  
• Item issues
  
• Skill Functionality
  
• Translation issues (this includes typos!)
  
• Quest issues (Please make sure you are reporting a bug with the quest, and not simply asking for help)
  

What is NOT a bug?
Just as important as identifying bugs is the process of identifying when something is NOT a bug, since reporting these issues will only clutter the forums and make it harder to get the real bugs resolved.

The following issues, while still important, are not considered in-game bugs and should not be reported on this forum:

• Hardware or software conflicts with your computer and the game client (Technical Issues Forum)
  
• Connection issues with your ISP and the game server (Technical Issues Forum)
  
• Balance issues (Trickster General Discussion Forum)
  
• Administrative actions (bans) in game or on the forums (1:1 Support)
  
• Character deletion (1:1 Support)
  
• Quest Help (Trickster Questions & Guides Forum)
  

What to do if I found a bug?
If you think you've found something that just doesn't seem right, the first step you should take is to search the forums for an existing bug that someone may have already reported.  It will help us address all of the issues in a timely manner if we don't have to read through duplicates.  What *is* helpful is adding your feedback to these existing bug reports, as you may have another angle to share that could help us identify and solve the issue.  If there is a "Known Issues" thread for the current patch, also check there to make sure your bug has not already been acknowledged by QA.

What makes for a good bug report?
If you submit a good bug report, it increases the chance that your bug will get fixed faster.  A good bug report has three key elements: Reproducible, Specific, and Detailed.

To be considered, your bug has to be reproducible.  This means that we need to be able to re-create the bug you observed without you being present.  If we're not able to observe the bug based on your report, it will be marked "UNCOMFIRMED" and will not be resolved.  The more steps you can give us to reproduce your bug, the more likely we will be to discover it under test conditions.

A good bug should also be specific, in that the issue you're reporting can be quickly isolated to one thing (be it a map, item, skill, whatever) that is broken, so that this system can be tested in an isolated environment to recreate the bug.

Finally, a good bug report is detailed.  This means step-by-step instructions of how to reproduce the bug.  You should always include a screenshot if it applies to the situation, feel free to mark up your screenshot in an image editing program to point to the site of the bug.  Tell us what character you were using, what you were doing prior to experiencing the bug, anything you can think of that is directly related to helping us understand what you mean.

"My skill doesn't work" is not a good bug report, we don't know what skill you're using, we don't know what character you're using, we don't know in what way it doesn't work.  "I can't use Mana Arrow" is more specific, but still leaves a lot to be desired.  "When I was using my level 61 Dragon on Path to Oops Wharf, I hit my hotkey for 'Mana Arrow', clicked on an Ironclad Turtle, and nothing happened.  No skill animation, no damage." is a much better report summary, now we can test this by teleporting to that specific map, using a level 61 Dragon, and we can see if we can cast Mana Arrow on turtles.

However, we still don't know how much MP the player had at the time of casting it, what level Mana Arrow they were using, whether they had advanced to second job or not...

So the more information you can provide us, the more likely we are going to be to fix the problem for you. =)

How do I report a bug?
If you've read through all of this and checked the forum to make sure your issue hasn't already been reported, then you will want to create a new thread to report your bug.  Start by making a descriptive title, tagging your bug with a keyword in [brackets] to help us sort the issues.

Please use one of the following categories to report your bug: [Quest], [Item], [Skill], [Character], [Gameplay], [Crash], [Other].

Then, in the body of your thread, start off with a quick summary that accurately describes your bug.  The example listed above for the Dragon experiencing a problem with Mana Arrow would be a great start for a summary.

Next, you want to explain how to reproduce the bug you found.  These steps should be detailed enough that someone who hasn't seen the bug can follow them, and end up observing the same bug.

Finally, include any other information that you think will be useful to our QA team in reproducing your bug.  Some of the following would be very helpful to include here:

• Screenshot(s) of the problem
  
• What map did it happen on?
  
• What job are you playing?
  
• What is your base/TM level?
  
• Were you in a party?  Were you the party leader?
  
• Are you working on any quests?  Which ones?
  
• What equipment are you using?
  
• If you were using a skill, what level is it?
  

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES INCLUDE YOUR ACCOUNT NAME WITH A REPORT

This information should be kept private at all times.  If you do not mind including your character name (IGN), please feel free to do so as this will allow our QA team to examine that character for further assistance in identifying the bug.

Finally, thank you very much for taking the time to report your bugs here.  While we have a dedicated QA staff trained to seek and destroy bugs of all shapes and sizes, they are nothing compared to the combined might of the players!

Moving back to Announcement section for QAAnansi.

Thank you Chaos! <3  I went hunting for this thread a couple months ago intending to give it a bump so people would notice, but it was locked.  D;  For the record, I believe there might be at least 2 more GM-created threads similar to this one that were locked but not sticky.

(And your avatar gave me a lol!  XD)

OMG it the GM chaos from that comic thing!!!!  U were so funny!!

taking this back up!

Chaos, this is why you're my favorite.

You're so funny, yet serious at the same time.

Hey gm help i got 289k in the card battle, in maintenance but still im not the 1st in the top5, the top1 is lower then waht i got. whats wrong, i played for 4hours to get that points and it went to waste help me GM.....

So gm whats up w/ my case? ignored?

try submitting a 1:1 report if you haven't.

what can i do when i put the trickster game thing this keeps on showing this can u plz hlp me

ERROR! ERROR!

Game cannot be operated due to D3D initialization failur. 

*Please check!
- If Direct X is installed
-If the most updated graphic card's driver is installed

**For more detail infos, please refer to the homepage.