I think that maybe the no forum banking rule should be added on the Rules page. Forum banking aka making a forum private and having yourself the only member adding sp to it each day so that you can do Sarah's quests. I know that staff has said in forum posts as well as news comments that it isn't allowed but there are people who don't know that it not allowed. Possibly it could be put under the No Cheating rule.

I agree, this should definitely be officially included in the rules if staff has posted that it's not allowed. It would suck to get in trouble for something that was once fairly common practice.

Support.

Sure, but only if they're going to actively enforce it. I'm not sure how enforceable it is though.

I'd say a better option would be to address the root of the problem, which is that people are doing it because of the pressure get in as many quests as possible to complete the quest-a-thon. As long as that's still a thing, people will continue to find ways to game the system. They were doing it long before forum group banks were a thing by sending their savings to friends via trade, and I don't see that being stopped either.

So with that said, some suggestions:

1. Open up Sarah's quests to everyone for the duration of the quest-a-thon. Just accept that people really want to do her quests, and make it easier. The quest-a-thon goal could be increased slightly to account for this if necessary.

2. Change how Sarah's quests work:

2a. Maybe once you unlock Saggitarius's quests, Sarah's quests are permanently locked for you. But then that would upset achievement hunters...

2b. ...so maybe if it's not too much trouble, you could just change the number of daily quests for her; once you unlock Saggi's quests, you can only do 5 of Sarah's quests daily and Saggi's quests could come down to 5 daily (10 with a GA, obviously) to keep the numbers as they are. Then just increase Saggi quest rewards slightly to compensate for the lowered cap, and everything stays balanced.

2c. Oooor... make Saggi's quests an unlockable reward that you get for completing the last tier of Sarah's achievements? Again, I'm not sure if this is even possible, but I kind of like the sound of it. Her achievement caps out at 150, which isn't at all unreasonable. So new players spend ~2 weeks doing Sarah's quests, finish her achievements, and her quest is permanently replaced with Saggi's.

3. Just stop including Sarah's quests in the quest-a-thon. Brand new players won't be able to contribute as much, but honestly you can unlock Saggi's quests in a day or two so it's not a big deal if they really want to do more. And you only need to complete one quests to qualify for a prize anyway.

I'm for implementing both and 's suggestions. Enforcing the rules is key.

I would hope Quest-A-Thon goals would be adjusted accordingly with the removal of any quests!

Carl, Sarah and Saggi should all be removed from the quest-a-thon. Only quests that can be accessed by anyone should be there, so Wizard, Quentin, Alexander, Pete, Mori/Nori, Maleria and Cinthia.

Cut the number in the future to balance for the amount of questgivers, but yeah.

I like Sopheroo's suggestion. It's logical and the only difference between players then would be having a GA.

I don't see a reason to exclude Carl, since there's no individual advantage to doing more quests for a quest-a-thon. It gives incentive to unlock the Omen Islands for people who want to help out more, which is fine by me.

Saggi I guess I could see, but only if there's no other solution to the "cheating" issue. It feels weird to exclude him when he's always been one of the core quest givers.

I'm not against having Carl's quests included for Quest-A-Thons, since they already added him as a possible Shinwa's quest person to encourage more people to unlock the Omen Islands. And it's not like those map pieces are super expensive anyway.

I'm also not really against having Saggi as a qualifying quest, since probably way more people have access to his quests than to Sarah's quests.

I do agree that there should be an addition to the official rules and also maybe a mention in the FAQ about not creating forum groups to act as a personal bank, since I've only seen that mentioned on the forums and in news comments (and not everybody reads those).

there are two rules that should be added / explained on the main rules page -- the forum banking loophole this topic was made for (you can't use a forum bank as a personal bank for questing purposes, but you can transfer/hold funds between users when you want to do saggi/sarah's quests as seen ">here and ">here)

and

The pound thing that said was a surprise to me! There's a thread by about pound spamming and it hasn't been closed and locked, and after the Ruffie was Lifelike-d and Subetapedia'd with the lie that they're common in the pound, someone spammed a lot of them into the pound.

Not that I was thinking of doing it myself but because it is more trouble than the amusement is worth it to me than anything. I did not know that dropping a lot of pets off at Adopt R Us was an issue at all and would not have inferred it in any way from the Rules as written.

the ticket quote is actually from 's suggestion thread! i did a thread in bragging and complaining when someone dropped all the ruffies but like you, i thought it wasn't a rule-breaker or anything (it was just kind of annoying, since i was date-hunting). and then when it was flooded again the other day and i sort of-kind of remembered the "it's against the rules" post so i went looking, and now here we are.

tbh i... don't really care about either problem; at this point i just want them in The Rules instead of years-old forum posts. there was actually a third sort-of rule/guideline i wanted to see cited or at least put Somewhere Easily Findable more than the other two problems (it was about buying from frozen users' cw shops) but i can't remember which admin posted it :U

Or just make it so that you can't bank sP in a forum group until it has 2+ or 5+ members.