A familiar presence contacts your mind.

[FantasyWriter]

I suspect the people being contacted would be getting the advantage of slowly becoming familiar with others' mind, instead of the other way around.

Agreed.

[IAmJacksOpinion]

I think "foreign" is being used for the Way at the moment as a synonym for "external", not "unfamiliar".

This.

Honestly, this idea doesn't really add anything to the game except a new table that counts how many times you've way'd each individual character. (Krath, characters like Tasok Salarr would have one thousands of records long...) So someone finds your mind? Great! When they've way'd you and you can ascertain their sdesc, you can RP their presence being as comforting and familiar as you would like.

I'll leave you, with this:

[Fujikoma]

It would, however, be quite useful for THAT ONE GUY who's always contacting you and dropping connection...

You know who you are.

Yes, you! Stop metagaming. Chances are you'll find the answers you seek IC.

It would be nice to know who that jerk is so I could stab him with tainted knives. 10k times? Yeah bud, over the limit. Doesn't happen to every PC of mine, but wow, it does get old.

[IAmJacksOpinion]

Meh, I sincerely don't really mind that guy. Sure, it can be construed as meta-gamey, but in all actuality your character is in Zalanthas 100% of the time. You are in Zalanthas less than 50% of the time, AT MOST. It's a game, not a second life, and as such I'm not going to log on and spend my precious game time laying traps for people who aren't online, despite their characters still being actually in Zalanthas.

Shoe on the other foot, if you get people ghosting your mind every time you log in, you can be fairly certain someone is gunning for you - and that helps you to not get caught with your pants down. Joke's on the meta-gamer.

[Fujikoma]

If you log into your breed or elf and someone isn't trying to kill them, well, you're not playing them the way I play mine, whether someone's out to kill them or not, I'm starting with the assumption there's people out to get them. The foreign presence touching their mind, then withdrawing without a word doesn't tell them anything they don't already know as fact.Just saying, sooner or later I want to clean my blades of taint in their lungs. But, I do see your point. Alas.

[mattrious]

I am against both the "familiar presence contacts" and the revealing of an sdesc upon contacting.

If your character was gifted enough to have these type of abilities or powers then that's fine. Though, changing it so everyone in the game would be able to do it as well? That is a little jarring to me and I just don't think it actually improves the game.

[Inks]

I hate that one dude who is constantly contact then dropping connection. What Fuji said basically.

[Fujikoma]

It's like before caller ID, when people would call your house, and hang up as soon as you picked up.

[HavokBlue]

When people contact/cease me I just assume I either have a common sdesc word or they want to kill me.

[Desertman]

I believe staff is already working on a change to The Way in this regard.

I think their idea was to make it so you have to have the exact sdesc of the person you are trying to contact in order to contact them. Basically, in order to find their mind you have to have met them face to face at some point. No more random "across the world" finding of minds just because you heard the name "Amos" in a tavern somewhere.

Just tossing that out there.

[Nyr]

Source?  First I'm hearing about it.

[ShaLeah]

Source?  First I'm hearing about it.

I teehee'd.

[Desertman]

Source?  First I'm hearing about it.

For the record, we are talking about making true-names not be contactable either.  Just their current keywords based on their sdesc alone.  Name, any extra keywords you may have added will not work.

Honestly the idea that true-names somehow hold more power is something staff have tried to downplay and are poised to outright say they don't matter.  If we go ahead with this change, the name of your character will be a convenience for you and staff for determining what to call the character.  To all other players, it won't matter unless they do 'addkeyword <person> <keyword>'

Granted, this may have gotten talked about in the last year and a half and shot down. But, being a player, I wouldn't know that. Maybe you guys are still talking about it? (Which I assume isn't the case since you haven't heard about it recently enough to recall.)

[Nyr]

in that same thread:

We're looking at one option as Morgenes mentioned.  It may not be feasible.  However, in the grand scheme of things, this code has probably been this way for longer than most of you (and many staff members) have been playing the game.  If we change the code, great.  If we don't, okay--but you'll live, and you'll probably be bringing it up again a couple more years down the road. 

You have like 6 more months, noob.

[Fujikoma]

Ah, will make it too easy to tell who's going under an assumed name and metagame that way. There are plenty of situations where a person may wish to hide their identity, as feeble an attempt as it may be.

[Desertman]

in that same thread:

We're looking at one option as Morgenes mentioned.  It may not be feasible.  However, in the grand scheme of things, this code has probably been this way for longer than most of you (and many staff members) have been playing the game.  If we change the code, great.  If we don't, okay--but you'll live, and you'll probably be bringing it up again a couple more years down the road. 

You have like 6 more months, noob.

Does that mean we decided it wasn't feasible?

I had such hope...

[valeria]

My problem, when thinking of sdesc-only contact limitations, is how would you ever find those merchants, nobles, Byn Sergeants, whoever you are trying to get hired by, to express your interest in meeting them for the first time?  It's already hard enough for newbies to find these guys.  Think of the children newbies.

[Lizzie]

My problem, when thinking of sdesc-only contact limitations, is how would you ever find those merchants, nobles, Byn Sergeants, whoever you are trying to get hired by, to express your interest in meeting them for the first time?  It's already hard enough for newbies to find these guys.  Think of the children newbies.

Not only that, but this will REALLY encourage people using sdescs exclusively to describe each other, which is a bone of contention with many players. I mean how often would a rinthi describe his best friend as the verdant-hued vermillion-eyed youth? But if that's the only way you can contact his best friend via the Way, then that's how people will be describing each other and never mind trying to "roleplay" a description because it makes more IC sense.

[Nyr]

in that same thread:

We're looking at one option as Morgenes mentioned.  It may not be feasible.  However, in the grand scheme of things, this code has probably been this way for longer than most of you (and many staff members) have been playing the game.  If we change the code, great.  If we don't, okay--but you'll live, and you'll probably be bringing it up again a couple more years down the road. 

You have like 6 more months, noob.

Does that mean we decided it wasn't feasible?

I had such hope...

I think we got sidetracked by other stuff.  Part of feasibility is also "is it something we care about enough to focus on instead of the stuff we already have on the plate?"  As you saw, what Morgenes was talking about went beyond simply "removing other names" and went into "letting the player add keywords to other players" (which would have to be stored on the keyword-adder's PC).  While things are steadily moving towards database driven stuff for this game, I don't know if we're quite in that position yet or whether that would be the way this would be handled.

[Desertman]

in that same thread:

We're looking at one option as Morgenes mentioned.  It may not be feasible.  However, in the grand scheme of things, this code has probably been this way for longer than most of you (and many staff members) have been playing the game.  If we change the code, great.  If we don't, okay--but you'll live, and you'll probably be bringing it up again a couple more years down the road. 

You have like 6 more months, noob.

Does that mean we decided it wasn't feasible?

I had such hope...

I think we got sidetracked by other stuff.  Part of feasibility is also "is it something we care about enough to focus on instead of the stuff we already have on the plate?"  As you saw, what Morgenes was talking about went beyond simply "removing other names" and went into "letting the player add keywords to other players" (which would have to be stored on the keyword-adder's PC).  While things are steadily moving towards database driven stuff for this game, I don't know if we're quite in that position yet or whether that would be the way this would be handled.

No worries, you have kept the hope alive.

Thanks.