Maybe I'm naive, but I feel like UAs should know how the event is run lol? I don't think Keith needs to be the one who communicates all the things to the user base, and if that's what is supposed to happen, no wonder we're getting as little information as we get. It shouldn't be that way.

I always thought that UAs were like, shiny mods I guess? Like they wouldn't know the ins and outs of events the way programmers should so they can't really comment on those issues very in-depth on their own.

I could be wrong, of course, but that's the impression I got.

Well yes, of course they SHOULD know how the event is supposed to work.

That doesn't mean they all do though. :X

And it definitely doesn't mean that they are kept in the loop when things do not work as they were intended, and need to be fixed. (In other words, I don't know if has informed that she fixed things on the 20th and that the FAQ should be updated). Rasputina hasn't posted since the 17th and her status is hidden, so for all any of us know she hasn't been on in days either.

tl;dr My point is, staff is slipping on the communication front (again) and it's not really a surprise, since it's hard to communicate when you aren't even logging in.

I'm talking more along the lines of when/if we can bite using skins when we're progressing, etc. That information should have been known prior to the event starting. A little foresight goes a long way though obviously it's not what's being done. Planning is the key word here and planning is what feels like is being largely ignored each and every time.

He logged on once in the past two weeks, and he hasn't posted publicly in a month. (I may have started casually stalking him when I noticed he seemed to have disappeared again.)

Yes, planning is key. I agree there 100%. However when plans do not work as expected, communication becomes paramount. And staff can't communicate if they aren't bothering to log in. That's all I have been trying to say from the get-go... Not sure why it needs to turn into an argument?

UA do have to know the in and out of events, because they have to answer tickets about it. they're not shiny mods, they're the first line of operation, concerning customer service.

It seems to me, atleast what ive noticed since before christmas and up until now...unless there is a major issue we get mostly silence. Its frustrating.

I'm not someone who's very keen on collecting skins, but I feel the need to announce that it's been nearly 2 days since I paid to get infected with dolly dreadful and it hasn't happened yet. I hope this isn't intentional since we only have a couple more days until survival is over. I imagine this must be really frustrating for those who are after as many skins as possible :( If I'm not mistaken last year the wait time was like... a day or less? I thought that was a good timeframe to collect virus skins, I think there's enough skins in circulation that letting a user collect say a max of 4 over the course of survival is reasonable.

You need to get bitten by other people with it. If that doesn't happen, it will develop on its own but it takes 3+ days

Oh my bad, thanks for clearing that up! (I was under the impression that it took ~24 hours for an infection to occur unless you get bitten which will get you infected quicker) Not a lot of people biting on the forums though as most are probably progressing with infections of their own so I still think 3 days is a bit too long :(

I agree, it does take too long and I'd like to see that changed. relying on other people to get bitten doesn't work for less popular strains, and it shouldn't be like that

This frustrates me.

If you want older strains and they happen to be less popular and no one is biting you can possibly have 3 to 6 days (if you want two less popular strains) of this event where nothing is happening for you. And probably not get a chance at a 3rd strain at all. Who would think this was a good idea?

No one should have to wait more than 24 hours to be infected and I think considering the current length of stage advancements that even that is a little long.

I also would have liked the overall guidelines to be more clear. People are getting so frustrated with the long wait times and the confusing nature of biting/when biting can happen that I'm getting profile stalked during stage three and four asking "are you mature enough to bite" which frustrates me because 1) that should be happening on the forums and 2) because the answer is no.

Infection rates shouldn't depend so greatly on multiple bites. And if they do, the wait times for lack of bites really should be shorter. When everyone's desperate to try to get skins in time, nobody's biting because they're busy looking for someone else to speed up their own infection, and that just creates a downward spiral of frustration.

I'd also say get rid of the cooldown between bites, except maybe if you're biting the same person. I've just been doing infections for Blistered Hearts this year and haven't gone for any new skins of my own, and sometimes when I check the thread there's a lineup of seven to ten people all waiting and I'd like to just blast through and get everyone but it's completely impractical when I have to wait five solid minutes between each one. There's no point to it; the achievement's grind-y enough as it is (and I finished all the tiers last year, so this is really not a complaint about it), and it's not like we get rewarded for biting, so I don't see the purpose of making biters wait.

I'm trying to get infected with Grossfungus. It seems like all the people the could bite me are progressing through other viruses, so I'm stuck waiting the full three days. In the mean time, I can't bite anyone else, so there's really no event for me to participate in.

So am I. It's very frustrating; the wait times weren't like this last year, and there wasn't any really clear disclosure that things changed this year. This year's event is definitely less exciting and fun than last year's.

And that's getting to be a recurring theme. The snow sculpture contest wasn't as fun as the all-out snowball fight last year. Luminaire trees this year -- well, everything worked out in the end, I guess, but the event was more fun the year before.

Masquerade had better rock.

Three full days aren't even the upper limit. I was told that we could wait for three or more days depending on the queue. So I'm curious to know what's the longest wait time out there. Though on the bright side, I got grossfungus from last year, and I can bite you tomorrow morning when my crack head is done (and if you are still not infected by then).

At this point, it frustrates me to even think about getting another strain because none of the ones I want have many biters available :(.

[edit] I can book you for grossfungus bites too :)

- That would be awesome, thanks! :D

: Much appreciated, amigo!

[edit] I finally got infected early this morning -- looks like Speiro still needs a bite, though.