Objective length

[Anonymous]

How many times have you tried to write an objective, and it is too long.
When you want a desc change implemented, or need to be clanned in a specific clan after chargen, it is customary to but it in your objective. Those are easy.  Dwarven objectives can be a little more involved.  Anyone who desires to explain a current mindset, love, hate, plots or goals and reasons behind, is limited to explain.  I think it would be really cool if change objective was like a background length page that is rewrittable.  Staff when looking at a character would have far more information about the character. Allowing the staff to interact with a firmer concept of the character involved.  Allowing the player to enrich and further deepen his character.  These expanded objectives would be ideal for future character blogs as well, copied as time passes and new goals/ objectives are introduced.

Just looking for player and staff feedback.

signed,
Wanting to write/explain more detail that will be viewed efficiently for better interaction

[SewerRat_inTheOpen]

I only made use of objectives my last couple of characters.

Like -get rich--kill this--tame that-. Pretty short and simple.

[Praetorian]

I sort of disagree.
I have always thought of objectives as a 'passing glance' reminder/informer to the imms of a very basic motivating force for your character.  If are constantly hanging around the entrance to the Borsail estates, then a 'change objective to be hired by Borsail as a guard' demonstrates why you are there, quick and simple, to any prying imm.

If you want to join Borsail so you can have wild monkey sex with noble fancy-pants and try to milk him for sid for the rest of his life when you have his otherwise unknown child, all born out of anger for lord fancy-pants having severed your mothers left breast for disobedience 20 years prior, then that sort of detail would be best left to emailing your immortal and the mud account.  The nice thing is that now, pretty much everyone technically has an immortal since they assigned certain imms to field the needs of unclanned characters.

Also, I'm not certain imms would want to read a whole page on every character they check up on to see if they can help with something - especially when information included within would be best suited for your own seperate imm.  I personally have always thought that the immortal who-list probably contains character objectives (though I might be wrong) which also makes for 'shorter the better'.
'who'
Smeagol          [The Guild]            Looking desperately for my precious!
Bilbo               [Unclanned]           Learn why this ring acts so strange...
Sauron            [Nakki Templar]     Destroy them all!  DESTROY THEM ALL!

Anyways...doub't I'm even remotely close on that, but hey I ramble

- Prae

[Bestatte]

I prefer to see around 6 inches, for length.

But that's kinda subjective, not objective.

[Akaramu]

My current PC's objective will not change until their death or retirement =P

I find objective length alright as it is, but some sort of -additional- window to keep more detailed IC information for other staffers (not from one's clan) to see would be swell.

[Tamarin]

This is what background is for, people.

[Tlaloc]

Dwarven objectives can be a little more involved. Anyone who desires to explain a current mindset, love, hate, plots or goals and reasons behind, is limited to explain. I think it would be really cool if change objective was like a background length page that is rewrittable.

Praetorian basically hit it on the head with this one. Objectives will continue to be one line long, because the way we look at characters objectives. If it were set to where we can see them as 'backgrounds', whenever we did a search for objectives, we would be spammed for pages and pages and pages.

As for dwarves:

Your background is where you're supposed to place the detailed information about your dwarfs focus. However, Foci are supposed to be big and broad enough that they'll take most of your dwarfs life to complete. This is where good use of your objective comes in: its suggested that, in order to help your dwarf work through his life to complete his or  her focus, that you break the overal focus into a bunch of smaller 'foci'.

So, a dwarf who has the overly used and awfully generic: "To become the best fighter in the world" focus would have details about that focus in his background. Meanwhile, he'd use his objective to define his 'steps'. His first step might be: "Find someone to train me at swordplay."
After that, he might change it to: "Win a city-wide tournament.", or "track down better fighters than me, and kill them."

As for love, hate, plots, goals...these  might be more suited towards a combination of becomming more succinct and brief in your objective, emailing your clan staff, and liberal use of the 'think' command.

[deinol]

I agree that objective should be a short one liner. However, I kind of like the idea of being able to change/add to the background of your character. I know the background I wrote for my character, while still somewhat relavent to where he is now in life and why he's there, changes that have occured in game (I've been alive a while now), would be worth noting in my background.

Perhaps if there was a way for players to add notes to the character the way Imms do. Except I can see that being a disaster waiting to happen as some players would add notes constantly, which could greatly annoy the Imms.

I'm guessing for occasional major additions to background, you can e-mail your Imm and request the change.

[Delirium]

Perhaps if there was a way for players to add notes to the character the way Imms do. Except I can see that being a disaster waiting to happen as some players would add notes constantly, which could greatly annoy the Imms.

So set it up so that they don't have to read it or see it unless they want to.

I would LOVE to be able to update my character via notes on the pfile itself.

[Anonymous]

I would LOVE to be able to update my character via notes on the pfile itself.

[Akaramu]

Dito. A background is too static, I'd love to see a possibility for players to add an always up-to-date, everchanging and fairly detailed note to their character file.

[wizturbo]

I would LOVE to be able to update my character via notes on the pfile itself.

Amen.

[Cenghiz]

Playing a race other than 'dwarf', my character has a few objectives;

1. Take xxx to bed
2. Take yyy to bed
3. Take zzz to bed
4. Find the ring your Lord asked for.
5. Learn more about that bynner with the stink
6. [The real nerving question your char's always thinking about while idling.]

The first five objectives are clear. An imm would realize what you're doing easily after a few moments of observation when you're working on them. But the last; a staffer may have difficulties following if he starts watching you in the middle of your 'think's, 'emote's, etc. So I choose the sixth one as the objective.

So I believe the objective is necessary to help a staffer catch up with your char instantly instead of scanning through your report mails.

But the other side of medallion.... The staffer sees:

Char's objective: Why does kkk act like www?

8:00 am: The char's flirting with xxx in Bard's.
9:30 am: The char's crafting in his apartment.
The emoting and thinking sequence after the crafting missed
10:45 am: The char's training in the facilities of his clan.
12:00 pm: The char's speaking to a kadian agent about a ring in Silver Ginka.
13:15 pm: The char's emoting watching yyy, thinking about ways to get her to bed.
Again a slice missed, the char was thinking in the balcony
14:00 pm: The char is MUDsexing.. Better not watch.
15:00 pm: The char's keeping on his MUDsex session.
17:00 pm: Still MUDsexing??!

The staffer thinks: This char is not trying to accomplish his objective.

I'm wondering if there's another solution for this problem.

[Marauder Moe]

I don't think anyone is going to be confused when a non-dwarf does things not related to his objective.  Besides, I don't think its crucially important that every staffer knows the goals/motivations of every character in the game.  If one does, they can look at the account notes on that char and ask other immortals who may watch that character more often.

[Akaramu]

I don't think its crucially important that every staffer knows the goals/motivations of every character in the game.  If one does, they can look at the account notes on that char and ask other immortals who may watch that character more often.

OMG! I disagree with Marauder Moe. I did not believe this day would ever come.  :wink:

Its not crucially important that EVERY staffer knows. And they wouldnt have to look at the player's character notes, it would always be optional.

Your argument assumes that the staff is aware of the motives and goals of PCs who play off-peak, are unclanned or in a clan with a very busy immortal, and perhaps short-lived. I can easily imagine how very easily an immortal could miss the two-hour long solo RP session that totally explains everything a PC will strive for in the coming RL months. Some players dont enjoy repeating their motives in thinks over and over again, and some players are watched a lot less often than others for reasons beyond anyone's control.

Immortals already get an immense amount of email to dig through every day as it is, and I can just imagine how hard it can be to keep track of everything, cross-communicate, and check on unobserved facts with other imms who are going through very busy RL phases.

It could only help to ease the burden a bit, and simplify things.

[Marauder Moe]

Well, I don't write my thinks -just- for immortals to figure out what I'm doing.  I'm sure sometimes what my character is thinking about could be quite confusing without knowledge of prior context.  If after looking at notes and consulting other immortals about my character an immortal is still confused, they can send me an e-mail asking for clarification (I've had this happen before).

Now, certainly if my character is trying to accomplish something big that affects clans or large amounts of characters I'll send an e-mail to whoever its appropriate to (clan or independant char immortals) explaining motivations and everything.  The same goes for if I need some help from the imms.  Otherwise, though, I'm just going to keep on playing however I feel like.

EDIT: Back on topic... sometimes I've had to condense my objective a bit but  if changing the objective length is difficult code-wise I don't think its really worth it.  Thats just my opinion, though, and I certainly wouldn't protest a lengthening.

[Akaramu]

I dont think everyone who is in favor of player-written character notes plays for the imms.  

I guess that wasnt your point, but it had that sound to it.

[Tamarin]

I just don't think this is really worthwhile.

Backgrounds can be updated via email already.

You -should- be sending your pc's doings and goals to your clan imm anyway.

If you aren't clanned, send them to the indy staff (halaster et al).

Is having an extra paragraph in your score going to seriously affect the way you play your character?

[Marauder Moe]

I suppose my original reply was directed at Cenghiz's post, which seemed to insinuate that the imms will strike you dead (exaggeration, of course :wink: ) if you do something non-related to your objective.

[Cenghiz]

Cenghiz is the master of exaggaration. Everybody knows noone but Mansa can MUDsex for longer than 3 hours.

[Akaramu]

Tamarin, there were plenty of arguments why the background is the wrong place for such. Did you look at them at all?

I'll add that in my experience the mud account imm is so overloaded that it can easily take weeks until a request is taken care of. Why burden the mud account even more? Imagine just HALF the playerbase sending weekly background updates.  :shock:

[Angela Christine]

I think a player accessible field where we could put, well, anything that we thought a staff member watching right then might want to know about our current goals and activities would be cool.  It wouldn't even have to be cumulative, to prevent the PC's file from getting too long to bother reading at all.  Something as flexible and easy to change as the objective, but as long as the background field.  A Current Events field.  Typing "change current" or perhaps "change CE" would throw you into append mode in the editor, where you would have 1199 characters to play with.  When that got full you could use .c or /R# to remove old stuff and make room for new stuff.

Likewise, there could be a editable second field of main description.  If you don't use it, the background and equipment list look the way they do now.  If you do use it, then there is a second paragraph of description before your equpment list.  This would allow people to add things that would not be appropriate or possible in the static main description, and perhaps even a place to put small changes that don't rate bothering the staff for one of your 2 possible description changes.  This is where you could show off any recent wounds, bandages and scars that don't really fit into any of the wear locations, your current hairstyle, how clean or dirty you are, the overall effect of your outfit (it can be hard to picture how the equipment list looks as an outfit) and anything else that is likely to change.  That Templar may usually be clean and well-groomed, but chances are that if he's been sewer-diving and fighting the horrors that dwell down there, then he is probably going to be dirty and disheveled until he can return to his quarters and clean up.  That Aide or Merchant may usually wear her hair in a simple, easy to manage braid, but if she is going to a party wearing a ballgown she just might want a more elaborate hairstyle to go with it.  That troop of Bynners doesn't look all that good at the best of times, but when they come back from a mission where half of them nearly died they probably look significantly worse (even if the have "slept off" the coded wounds).  To keep the description from getting too spammy, this might be limited to about 5 lines, or 400 characters.  You could change your temporary description by typing "change tdesc" which would once again throw you into the editor.


Just a thought.

Angela Christine

[Marauder Moe]

Hurray for the tdesc idea!  I've idea'd, emailed, and posted about it before but never got any staff response.  

[da mitey warrior]

I think an extended objective is an excellent idea.  

Just make it a text box that you can enter, like a note on a board or a written piece of paper.  It gives you a place to record what your character is doing right at this moment, without having to change your background.

It can be shown on the score command, just like a secondary background.

[Seeker]

I usually agree with AC.  This time too.


Seeker

[Tamarin]

Tamarin, there were plenty of arguments why the background is the wrong place for such. Did you look at them at all?

I'll add that in my experience the mud account imm is so overloaded that it can easily take weeks until a request is taken care of. Why burden the mud account even more? Imagine just HALF the playerbase sending weekly background updates.  :shock:

In light of this, I'm going to shift my position somewhat.

Personally, I think the info from the stat command is long enough as it is.  I wouldn't want another whole paragraph added to that.

The obvious solution to this is to have a new command, that typed alone displays this "extended objective paragraph", or with some sort of parameter, can be used to input lines into a longer paragraph.  I also don't like this, because I LOATHE typing paragraphs of text into a mud.  If you make a mistake, you have to erase the whole thing and start over.

What I -would- like to see, is the ability to log into your character through some sort of html/php interface, where you can view your character sheet, and edit a section called simply "notes".  This would be linked to your character, and could either be archived as you go along, or simply changed to something new.  And since it's through some sort of GUI, it would be much easier to edit a paragraph, and correct grammatical flaws and such.

[Trenidor]

Damn...AC has some great ideas.

[creeper386]

AC ISn't a Goddess.

But has some great ideas I'd love to see implemented. And neither of which really any more abusable then the emote command. I could see leaving a blank line between the main desc and the temp. desc in order to tell what was okayed by staff and what wasn't though. So the second part could possibly be taken with a grain of salt if something is obviously out of whack.

Perhaps even make these two things completely temporary. Lasting only while logged in. So that they aren't always taking up more resources.


Creeper

[Trenidor]

I don't think it would take any more resources than your regular description, but either way I'd have to agree it could only be if you were online, because some of it would be useless the second you change something...Remove a hood etc.

[Original AK]

Thank you AC.