Lame Contact

[Anonymous Kank]

A foreign presence contacts your mind.

(10 seconds later)

You sense a foreign presence withdraw from your mind.


Can we please please please get rid of contact pinging?  I realize sometimes it's just misdirected contacts, but I'm simply not going to believe that's always the case.  Anyone who has had an even slightly notorious character deals with the above on a consistant basis.

Too many people use contact as an OOC way to figure out if someone is logged on and it's a pile o poo.  The character is ALWAYS going to be around, not just when the player can manage.  When no message is passed repeatedly, something less than honest is going on.

Anyway to have contact query the player database and just return the sleeping message if someone isn't logged on?

If not that is there anything to fix this?

[Delirium]

Though I'm tempted to respond with only 'roll with it IC or ignore it', I can actually sympathize with this a bit, having experienced it.  It gets pretty annoying to log in, be around for a few hours, and have what feels like fifty kajillion people popping in and out of your head not saying anything.

For reasons I won't delve into though, I don't think there's much of anything that can or should be done about this and so I have a few brief tidbits of advice to help you stay (OOCly) sane:

1) barrier

2) ignore it

or

3) React IC

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure why this annoys people.  I'm not a perpetrator of the activity, but it seems a likely enough scenario that in a world full of psionics there would be a lot of little connections to your head.

[Cale_Knight]

The only time this really bothers me is during slow periods-

A foreign presence contacts your mind.

(oh boy! RP!)

You sense a foreign presence withdraw from your mind.

(.... )

[Xygax]

I don't consider what you call "contact pinging" to be an OOC abuse in any way.

-- X

[amoeba]

The only time this really bothers me is during slow periods-

A foreign presence contacts your mind.

(oh boy! RP!)

You sense a foreign presence withdraw from your mind.

(.... )

Heh, very true.  For those getting all the contacts, at least it means you're busy, easily enough ignored.

[Mean_Old_Bastard]

I remember one time as a militia...god...we were chasing this guy. Some thug...who was notorious...and who put bombs in...and...and...

And we were going all detective on his ass. But we could never find him. He wasn't on when we were on. Why couldn't we track him down? OOC.

I'm with xygax that yeah...your CHARACTER IS ALWAYS THERE...but really you aren't. And thats an ooc thing...it really...really is.

[Anonymous]

I don't consider what you call "contact pinging" to be an OOC abuse in any way.

What is the staff consensus on this?  I understood that the last change of contact messages was for this very reason since previously you got a different message depending on whether or not the player was logged in or not.  (And prior to that you had the same behavior as today just with a different message.)

[Cuusardo]

That's what I thought the contact message change was put in there for as well.  I mean, it seems rather twinky to sit there and contact someone, then break contact to determine whether or not that PC is online.  Being on or offline is a totally OOC concept, because when you're logged out, your character is still part of the world, and is still actively living and doing things.

[amoeba]

[stuff snipped]]
... your character is still part of the world, and is still actively living and doing things.

Ah, but is your charcter still "living"?  Pinging a person to find that out seems very IC.

[Dark Lightning]

I've found myself a victim of this, and it usually results to one of five or six people who I can usually narrow down and then gripe out ICly.. still probably amazes them how I know.. but it's just a lucky guess in all reality.

[Adhira]

I don't believe that every broken contact is solely for the purpose of checking if someone is 'online' or not.

And I agree with Xygax on this one.

[Bestatte]

It annoys me as well, because of the "oh boy, RP!" thing. But if you have an sdesc with a keyword that is very common (such as tall, or elf, or dark for example) than you kinda have to expect that you'll be contacted OFTEN in error.

On the other hand, if your sdesc is something like..

the globular, glowing goon

then yeah sounds like someone's targetting you intentionally and that would really annoy the piss out of me. But go on and react ICly about it. Maybe you could start a war or something - you never know what those evil mindbenders are up to afterall.

[Cenghiz]

I usually try to send a message ike "Hmm.. there you are! I'll get you!" or "Bah.. I thought of 'Red', not a dwarf with red skin damnit.." or something like that.

I don't think you're gathering OOC information by psi pings.Folks' minds may be closed to connections for many reasons. Being logged off, a strong barrier, physchic strains or even some ways of cloaking your own mind. I won't give an example to the last one, it may be IC, but many folks may remember having great difficulty contacting to some guilds.
So when you psi-ping someone, ICly you know you can't find his mind for some reason and OOCly, you know you can't find his mind for some reason. No extra OOC info is gathered. Eh, where's the OOC abuse?

[path]

Delirium mentioned barrier, which reminded me of in IC solution. If your character is well known enough and has a high profile or whatever, you'd be well off hiring someone (maybe even part time) or borrowing them from the Atrium, whatever, to handle your mental communication, while you put up barriers whenever you like.

I always thought that was a groovy concept. And realistic in this case as well, since there's obviously a need. Think what a cool character role you'd be creating. You don't have to be a noble to hire someone, keep that in mind.

[Ghost]

Contact pinging should be OK.  Because, even though that person is still living in the world, you can not interact with him in anyway.  It should be perfectly fine checking beforehand whether or not you have a way to interact at all.  If it was possible to interact with the logged off characters, yeah, then it would be twinking.  But let me give you an example:

1) There was one dude and he was in a nearly-jail-place.  He is like in a cage or something.  He is not let to leave a two room place at all, and he is not willing to.  All he does is simply sit at some place, waiting for an end of his "friendly-jail".  Now, my character had to kill that person, and there was a due time for it.  My character could easy get into the place and leave, after all, he was the person putting that dude into that jail.  ICly, the moment my char was forced into the kill, he would just go, spill the blood all over the place.  There was nothing that could stop him for it, but the dude's not being in the game at the moment.  So.. I had to wait.  Wait for him to log in.  And there was no IC explanation why my character was waiting, but not doing it.
So.. What do you think?  Is it twinky checking if the dude is online?  No.  Never.  If you are full-proof safe from any interaction when you are logged off, I find it totally fine to check if you are interactable, name it via contact/break or any other stuff.

2) Psionic dudes might be doing some sort of stuff and you might not know anything but just feel the enter/leave message.

3) Some people might be trying to contact similar names/similar descriptions and stuff.

But calling it twinky?  Naah.. I don't see anything twinking here.  It is no less twinking than being logged off, when someone needs to find you in game =P

[Qetesh]

Paths idea is a really good one. If you are the type to get a lot of incoming PSI, work on your barrier skill and hire someone to take all of your contacts unless they are super personal.

In general I don't think barrier is used as much as it could be. But people just touching your mind is not an OOC abuse, they would be trying to reach you regardless.

[Naiona]

There are many, many reasons that someone might be contacting and not saying anything before releasing.

Don't assume someone is being twinkish.  I've had emailed complaints that 'So and so keeps contacting me and then breaking contact without saying something' only to start watching that person and see that it's not the person they are accusing at all, and in fact, it is something far more interesting going on.

[Cuusardo]

Say you're playing a hermit PC that lives in this little cave out in the wastes.  Johnny Raider knows that your character lives in that little cave, and that you never leave, because you've caught him hanging around your cave quite a few times, watching you.  Since you never leave the cave, your PC is still there while you're logged out.  Then one day, someone contacts you, then breaks contact without saying anything.  In a matter of moments, here comes Johnny Raider with his buddies into your cave and attacks you.

That scenerio just seems twinky to me, because you're ALWAYS there, but Johnny Raider waited until he knew that you were online to come after you.

[Qetesh]

Say you're playing a hermit PC that lives in this little cave out in the wastes.  Johnny Raider knows that your character lives in that little cave, and that you never leave, because you've caught him hanging around your cave quite a few times, watching you.  Since you never leave the cave, your PC is still there while you're logged out.  Then one day, someone contacts you, then breaks contact without saying anything.  In a matter of moments, here comes Johnny Raider with his buddies into your cave and attacks you.

That scenerio just seems twinky to me, because you're ALWAYS there, but Johnny Raider waited until he knew that you were online to come after you.

If you are always there Johnny raider could also just sit inside your cave and wait for you to log in. How would you react then? Just walking in? But you were always there right?

It's unrealistic for you to never leave the cave in the first place. Food? Water? And just because your PC is logged in Johnny has -no- idea where you are. You could be on the moon. If you are the type that is parinoid, after receiving a contact like that.. You could go for a walk. And it would be completely IC.

think:

Hrm, I bet that was Johnny wondering if I am around my cave.. I should leave a bit, he may come looking for me.


Essentially it is the same as contacting someone to see if they are on to go and meet. And most of us do that without thinking it's twinkish all the time. Using contact to cause adverse effects is no worse nor better. Basically you are trying to find out if that person is there to –interact- with IC'ly. After all you can't interact with them when they are not on and that is just a limitation of the game/playability.

[IntuitiveApathy]

Essentially it is the same as contacting someone to see if they are on to go and meet. And most of us do that without thinking it's twinkish all the time. Using contact to cause adverse effects is no worse nor better. Basically you are trying to find out if that person is there to –interact- with IC'ly. After all you can't interact with them when they are not on and that is just a limitation of the game/playability.

I know this is going to raise hackles, primarily because it seems like such an OOC/break the flavour thing - but why not make people visible on the 'who' or maybe at the least 'who -c' commands?  I mean, if the rationale behind contact pinging is to see if they're available to interact with (a completely OOC action that translates to IC later on), and this is actually -ok-, then why not take the OOC action completely out of the IC realm and remove the confusion (and resulting angst)?

Or is OOC'ly finding out if one person's online ok, while finding out if everyone else is online overboard?  If this is the case, it seems like a rather weak argument to me, after all if players are ok to find out if one player is online, why not all?  What difference would it make really, if knowing when one is online to interact with is ok?  The same arguments about abuse can be made (arguably it is a bit harder to 'contact ping' several people if you're being hunted by say, a whole gang, but this only requires a bit of time), but Qetesh (and other staff, through implication) essentially says those arguments are moot..

By the same token, the benefits from knowing who's online and who isn't should be obvious, a simple extrapolation from knowing if one person is online: at a glance you'd know if you could potentially go interact with a certain person or group without having to guess.  For clans it could be even more helpful, especially those that are highly dependent on having others around.

But I don't know, is 'who' just taboo?

[flurry]

I am sort of wondering the same thing that CRW asked.

I understand that there are some perfectly reasonable and mundane IC reasons to 'ping' someone, so the act itself doesn't seem inherently twinkish to me.  

However, if the intent is purely to discern if someone is logged in or not, is that considered twinkish/abuse?   I ask because when the change to the contact message was changed two years ago, one of the primary reasons mentioned was abuse.   At that time, generally you could tell immediately if someone was logged in or not.   Now it's not quite so cut and dried, and it is more seamless than it was then.   I do think it was a very positive change.   But if it was considered abuse then, isn't it still now?   Again, I'm thinking of the limited case where the intent is just to figure out if someone is logged on or not.

Or maybe I am mistaken about what kind of abuse was addressed by that change.

I was looking back at this thread specifically and the staff posts about why that change was made.

[Marauder Moe]

why not make people visible on the 'who' or maybe at the least 'who -c' commands?

It would let you know if someone is alive or not.

[Qetesh]

The Who C command was in effect for a long time for clans, but people would simply log in, do a who c and log out if there was nobody on.

Also Who C is an OOC command. Contact is not. You are contacting a person because your character is. So in one way or another your Character is having an IC interaction with that other PC. That other PC now knows IC'ly that someone is trying to find them weather you say something or not and they can react IC'ly towards that.

By just doing a who, or who c they have no way of knowing that someone else has found them and intends to interact.


Also I will say that faking a death IMO is also extremely hard unless you do it very well and -everyone- knows about it.

Lets say your friend tommy is offline when you die, and doesn't hear about the death, he may try to find your mind, and get you. You aren't -really- dead and he didn't think you were. So he did not abuse the code by finding you and now you are outed if tommy talks. That simple.

However my my opinion, it would be poor RP on the part of someone who has heard of your death and believes it to be true to tries to contact you (just to check oocly).

I've always thought that the PSI aspect of the game would make faking a death just about impossible and most people wouldn't really bother to even try.

[IntuitiveApathy]

It would let you know if someone is alive or not.

Isn't this what you'd find out when you 'contact pinged' someone?

But wait..

Also Who C is an OOC command. Contact is not. You are contacting a person because your character is. So in one way or another your Character is having an IC interaction with that other PC. That other PC now knows IC'ly that someone is trying to find them weather you say something or not and they can react IC'ly towards that.

By just doing a who, or who c they have no way of knowing that someone else has found them and intends to interact.

Ironically, I think I now understand the rationale behind 'contact pinging' being ok for the staff from MJ's comment, even though it was meant as a rebuttal to the question of "why not 'who'?".

I think what Qetesh is trying to say is that by looking at it completely IC'ly - that is, your character is trying to find out whether the target character is alive/awake IC'ly - that this is ok (the side benefit is that the target has some IC warning).

But see, the problem with this is that when you fail your contact, the target character could very well be alive and doing virtual things in the game-world (MJ's fear is that you'd be able to know this, OOC'ly 'automatically', with the who command when a player logs on), but there is no actual IC way to find out whether a character is alive with contact, if the player is not online.  

How does your character react to this IC'ly, when there's a contact fail?  He/she has to make up some lame excuse, like 'oh, there must be a problem with the Way'?  In reality, we disregard it OOC'ly, because we know that it's more probably that the character isn't online.  Yes MJ, the character could be dead and that's why you can't contact them, but if they don't show up on the 'who' list, wouldn't you have the same possibility there - that the character is dead?  But I bring you back to the subject matter of the thread: 'contact pinging' is supposedly ok, for some hybrid IC/OOC reasoning.  Thus, the mess, the confusion, the angst between IC/OOC use of contact.

[Qetesh]

I think what Qetesh is trying to say is that by looking at it completely IC'ly - that is, your character is trying to find out whether the target character is alive/awake IC'ly - that this is ok (the side benefit is that the target has some IC warning)

All you would find out by just touching a mind without saying anything is if they -might- be around to interact with. But they might be on anyway if you don't reach them. All this does is let you know that they are in fact available to communicate with and lets them know that someone is fishing around for their mind.

But see, the problem with this is that when you fail your contact, the target character could very well be alive and doing virtual things in the game-world (MJ's fear is that you'd be able to know this, OOC'ly 'automatically', with the who command when a player logs on), but there is no actual IC way to find out whether a character is alive with contact, if the player is not online.  

How does your character react to this IC'ly, when there's a contact fail?  He/she has to make up some lame excuse, like 'oh, there must be a problem with the Way'?  In reality, we disregard it OOC'ly, because we know that it's more probably that the character isn't online.  Yes MJ, the character could be dead and that's why you can't contact them, but if they don't show up on the 'who' list, wouldn't you have the same possibility there - that the character is dead?  But I bring you back to the subject matter of the thread: 'contact pinging' is supposedly ok, for some hybrid IC/OOC reasoning.  Thus, the mess, the confusion, the angst between IC/OOC use of contact.

Contact isn't an exact science, it isn't like instant messenger, it's not always effective.  You cannot assume that just because you can't find someone's mind, that they aren't OOC'ly "on line" and your PC would not/should not make any assumptions about where they are or what their status is.  You just can't reach them. All New PC's have a horrible time trying to find someones mind. Do they just think they the person is dead? No.. they think they suck at the way.

So not being able to reach someone is just that.. You just can't reach them.

It would be like saying, "We haven't seen Timmy at the bar in the past few days.. He must be dead."

You might assume that after a few weeks have gone by and still no contact or sight of Timmy. But certainly not after a few failed contacts.

[Cuusardo]

If you are always there Johnny raider could also just sit inside your cave and wait for you to log in. How would you react then? Just walking in? But you were always there right?

That seems pretty twinkish to me as well, seeing as technically he'd be sitting in the cave while Mr. Hermit was still in there, and neither would be reacting to the other.

[Qetesh]

If you are always there Johnny raider could also just sit inside your cave and wait for you to log in. How would you react then? Just walking in? But you were always there right?

That seems pretty twinkish to me as well, seeing as technically he'd be sitting in the cave while Mr. Hermit was still in there, and neither would be reacting to the other.

And what if some random fella walked in there that didn't know you? But that wasn't the point. The point was that there are far too many variables involved with your scenario. I also don't want to banter back and forth on this and get off topic on ownership of quit locations, but that might be another topic to start a thread on.

Using contact is not the same as using locate.  If John has been staking you a while and knows that you hang out in that cave day in and day out, I see it as perfectly fine reasoning that he can touch your mind, know you are around and go to that cave and find you.

He would have never used OOC info nor would he be using any out of game sources. He really has no idea if you are really there, and has no idea when he gets there if you would have logged out or moved on, or hid or what.

In short, he's just "knowing" that at that moment, you are available for interaction and you now know that someone is looking for you.

[Xygax]

I'm going to post my official stance on this, and unless some other OL or HL disagrees, you can take it as staff consensus:

The reason that the contact failure message for offline people was changed was specifically to make the use of contact less OOCly abusable.  You can now no longer tell the difference between a skill failure, a successful barrier, and a logged off player.  Therefore, if you want to use contact simply to "ping" people and find out if they're online, that's fine.  However, if your failure to reach someone is causing you to come to the final conclusion that they're offline, then you might very well be wrong.

There.  Staff consensus.

-- X

[Anonymous]

It's very nice to get a straight answer on one of these topics where there is logic for either viewpoint.  Thanks.

[Marc]

I dunno...

IMHO this opens the door to a lot of problems with a "The code lets me do it!" mentality.  As far as contact pinging not being 100% accurate, I would be HAPPY to disprove this to any immortal IG.  It is flawless.

Which raises the question:  Where do you draw the line between IC/OOC within the boundries of the code or is that where we need the immortals to do it for us?

[Xygax]

Marc: Please e-mail me your evidence.

And I'm not suggesting that anything the code allows you to do should be what you RP.  I'm only making the call on this one thing, contact-pinging.

With respect to OOC/IC boundaries of the code, you often will be forced to make these calls on your own.  Our game is an RP game, so your decisions must always be measured against what your character would reasonably do.  There will probably never be code, for example, to cause you to become exhausted after 2 IC days straight of practicing, say, the pilot skill.  But that doesn't mean you should sit at your computer spamming pilot for almost 6 RL hours, either.

-- X

[joyofdiscord]

I understand the logic here, and I'll definitely continue contacting like mad when my char needs to get in touch with a friend/contact/other person he's not in an overtly hostile relationship with.  Ultimately, this amounts to basically the same thing: telling me when those players are online, except I'm likely to send them a psi, too.

However, as for me personally, I would feel a little strange contacting someone my char is trying to hunt down, then breaking abruptly, standing up and saying "Let's roll."  Of course, my characters haven't typically been involved in a lot of humanoid-hunting, and when they did, it actually never occurred to me to use contact.  Maybe my opinion would change if I played a militia or someone otherwise involved in rounding up foes, and I spent hours tramping around after someone who's not logged on.  That's just my personal choice on how I want to play, though, and I wouldn't claim it should be enforced on all.

[Confused Kank]

This has me a bit confused. I was once in a situation where my pc had contracted out the death of another player to happen at a certain time. To check on whether the target was actually being killed, my pc kept finding that pc's mind with contact. Since my pc could establish a link, the character knew the target wasn't dead yet. My pc repeated this several times over the course of half an hour to 45 minutes or so, and then I got a message from staff asking the reason I was contacting the player without saying anything. I explained my pc's reasoning and I was thanked for clarifying, and told the staff member was just checking that I wasn't using contact in an ooc manner to determine if the player was online.

But from reading this thread and Xygax and other staff member's posts, it seems like even if what I had been doing -was- contact pinging, it would have still been okay?

So to clarify... the official staff position is that using contact to determine the online/offline status of a pc is never bad play, as long as the player recognises it may not be a completely reliable indicator?

[Qetesh]

As Xygax has said, there is a line between what you should be doing and what the code allows. As it stands, the code says that you can attempt to contact someone as many times as you like. Also, in doing that (and being successfull) They will know each time someone is contacting them. They may get annoyed.

I'd also say contact to find out if someone is dead yet is really not going to tell you if they are.

They coud have escaped and quit, or just blocked you.

Yes, you can contact someone and find out that they are playing weither you say something or not. But faliure to reach thier mind, does not mean that they aren't around.

This doesn't even seem like an issue that would be abused often, especially with the new coded response being so vague.

[Still Confused]

I'd also say contact to find out if someone is dead yet is really not going to tell you if they are.

They coud have escaped and quit, or just blocked you.

Contacting someone and establishing a link is definite proof that they're NOT dead (yet), though. This allows you to contact your would-be assassin(s) and yell at them for not doing their jobs.

I'm just puzzled here because messages from staff in-game seemed to indicate that 'contact pinging' was a no-no, which contradicts this thread.

[Yokunama]

How do people feel about contacting a cloaked figure in order to obtain the figure's sdesc?

[Anonymous]

How do people feel about contacting a cloaked figure in order to obtain the figure's sdesc?

I'd never do it, but I will say I think some people have unrealistic expectations about how much of your desc a cloak will hide and not to mention some people would be recognizable to some degree due to visible build and skin tone.  I really wish people wouldn't act like 'raise hood' creates an impenetrable veil of shadows rendering all of their features completely unrecognizable.

But to answer your question I don't think that determining sdescs was the purpose of the contact command so I don't think that's a good use of it.  I'd almost prefer that sdescs weren't sent back and forth.

[Qetesh]

How do people feel about contacting a cloaked figure in order to obtain the figure's sdesc?

Definitely not something you should do. Especially if you don't know who this person is to begin with. You could contact the wrong figure.

[Marc]

How do people feel about contacting a cloaked figure in order to obtain the figure's sdesc?

Definitely not something you should do. Especially if you don't know who this person is to begin with. You could contact the wrong figure.

That's just wierd.  I mean, of course you can contact the wrong figure and then you'd be wrong in assuming it was in fact the same figure.

This is the message I am getting:

You can contact anyone you want as long as you know them (name/desc or some form of information) and gleen any information you can from that contact.

You can't contact someone you don't know.  This includes people you can see, but not clearly (shadows, blurs, figures etc)

Does that seem right?  The logic behind the first is that contact is an IC skill subject to failure like everything else.  Is the logic behind the later that it's ooc abuse?  I'm really confused

I can try and contact JimBob across the known world for the sole purpose of finding out if he is logged on or not before I go steal his wagon, but I can't contact the figure standing in front of me with a knife? (admittedly the example is pretty extreme :-)

[Qetesh]

This is the message I am getting:

You can contact anyone you want as long as you know them (name/desc or some form of information) and gleen any information you can from that contact.

I think the staff policy on this is that you would be gleaning so little it's a non issue.

You can't contact someone you don't know.  This includes people you can see, but not clearly (shadows, blurs, figures etc)

If you don't know what a person looks like, or never met them or don't even know thier name, why would you contact them? How do you even know if it's them you are contacting? Would it be abuse? I think so, but that's my personal opinion, but moreso, it doesn't make sense.

With your example, yes, you could find out that Joe across the world is playing, but.. there is no garuntee that he will be playing when you get to him.  

As I said earlier, you don't know where Joe is or what Joe is doing, and Joe may choose to block you and you will not be able to contact him again or Joe may log out. You just might not know.

As for your guy in the hood example, if you can read his main desc and think you are contacting the right guy, go for it. I  just hope you are right is all, it would suck if you are wrong.

Also why would you just try his mind, he is standing right there. To see if it works? To see if he's awake? If you are using it for the sole purpose of knowing his short desc, than that's sort of twinkish in my book.

[Yokunama]

Yes, I've been noticing a lot of it lately. People would just contact my character because they could not see it's sdesc. After a while, it sorta gets annoying and frustrating seeing people using it to find out your sdesc.

[Marc]

*stuff*

I guess the point I am trying to make is that contacting someone without communication and/or another coded purpose is entirely OOC (imho naturally).  Yes failure happens (beyond a few massive loopholes, get that email X?), but if you're not trying to communicate/eat brainz/etc what are you trying to do?

I will gladly and happily cede that when someone contacts me there are other functions carried out that I don't know or see.

I will gladly and happily cede that sometimes I get contacted because of a keyword mix up, expecially when I share a keyword with one or multiple others.

But there is no way I will ever believe that players do not use contact as an OOC tool to figure out if someone is online.  That seems more abusive than:

If you are using (contact) for the sole purpose of knowing his short desc, than that's sort of twinkish in my book.

Logged in or out is a completely OOC concept (as established in the quit message conversation).  Sdesc are not.  Why is being able to establish login status a-ok even if it isn't 100% accurate, but using the same skills for IC purposes twinkish?

[Yokunama]

If you are using (contact) for the sole purpose of knowing his short desc, than that's sort of twinkish in my book.

Logged in or out is a completely OOC concept (as established in the quit message conversation).  Sdesc are not.  Why is being able to establish login status a-ok even if it isn't 100% accurate, but using the same skills for IC purposes twinkish?

It is twinkish, because the players are manipulating the code to get information that isn't suppose to be available to them. There really isn't no use for the hooded cloaks, veils, and other items that hide your sdesc, if players are using the code to get information that they shouldn't have. People who wear items that hide their sdesc really do not want to be identified by it. Why let them be unveiled with contact?

I'm sure the immortals did not add the coded feature of hiding sdescs just to have it cancled out by another coded feature.

[Marc]

But as stated in the past many many times, just because you're cloaked does not mean no one can recognize you.  If your disguise is meant to be absolute, it will also change your main description.

We as players are expected to pay attention to a characters entire desc, equipment list, the lighting, weather etc when determining what our characters would recognize.  That's why when people describe someone by their sdesc and their sdesc alone it is frowned apon.  A sdesc is supposed to be the most obvious features of a character, but sometimes those features will be hidden.

If 'the green-eyed man' attacks me and I look at him and notice he is wearing sunslits, I can't exactly describe him as the green eyed man.

I'd think the same logic would be for contact.  If I see a figure running away from a crime scene and only hear her yell a curse, I wont know anything.  If down the road I'm with the green-eyed woman and she shouts the same curse at someone else, isn't there a chance I'd recognize it?  Without having the sdesc to compare I'd never know, but if I, the player know, my character has the option of noticing.  Same thing with height, weight, profile, sex.  Many things that would be obvious even when wearing a cloak or a facewrap.

Weak example.  Just trying to illustrate that these policies seem contradicting.

Unless this is a statement that Line of Sight/General location knowledge of the target isn't enough to Contact/Psi then I still don't get it.

Maybe I'm just being a stubborn, closeminded ass.  Someone enlighten me!

[Ghost]

It is twinkish, because the players are manipulating the code to get information that isn't suppose to be available to them

I think hoods do not make it so hard to see who is under the hood.
Hood only covers the face.  And some hoods does not even cover it entirely.  -I- know only one type of cloak with a hood that would completely cover your face.  And once your face is covered, you have the rest of your entire body still out of it.
And add to it, how you walk, move, voice, and you should not take too long to be recognized.

EDIT:  Here are a few posts from earlier threads.  You can check for threads as well.  I just picked up specific posts from two different threads.

http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=128112#128112
http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=122856#122856
http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=122963#122963
http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=123063#123063

[Bestatte]

Hoods don't cover the face. They cover the top and back and sides of the head. If they covered the face, they'd be bags, not hoods.
Facewraps don't cover the eyes. They cover the mouth, in -some- cases the nose, and in -some- cases cover all the way down to the neck.
Sunslits don't cover the eyes. If they did, the person wearing them wouldn't be able to see.

In the dark, these items would make it extremely difficult to see the facial features. In broad daylight, or in a building with light in it, they would not impede the viewer's ability to see. These hoods aren't death-eater robes. They're just cloaks with hoods that jut past the top of the forehead. Ever see a western movie, where the bad guy wears a bandana over his face? You can still see the contours of his cheekbones, his eyes, his eyebrows, the angry scar that twists from his outer right eye to his temple...you can still tell that it's John Wayne, the good guy, even before he says a single word.

If you have seen these people in game before, you would learn to recognize the shape of their face, color of their eyes, features and clothing on their bodies, preference of weapons, the curl of their long hair, etc. etc.

Now, if you have -never- seen them before..you might only be able to say "Uh, definitely an elf. Had to be, he was really tall. And skinny. And had those elfie eyes, y'know, how they angle up at the corners? Wore a bunch of desert clothes. His nose looked like it was..in the wrong place. Or maybe his facewrap was just wrinkled really badly. Oh and green moccasins. Never forget those, I was thinking of getting a pair just like them for my little girl."

But you wouldn't know that he had completely shaven hair, because the top of his head is covered. You wouldn't know that he had a mole on his chin, because his chin is covered. You wouldn't know about the bone loop through his lip. Or the tattoo on the back of his neck. Etc. etc. etc.

But the guy isn't invisible just because he's wearing a hood and a facewrap. He's still identifiable, even if the description you can glean from his appearance identifies him as one of three dozen other elves who've passed by in the last hour.

[Cuusardo]

Speaking from RL experience, a hood can make it very difficult to see the face of the person wearing it.  If the hood is deep enough, you can't really get a look at the person's face unless you're looking at them head on from the front.

I've always imagined facewraps wrapping around the head, leaving a space large enough to show the eyes so that the person wearing it could see out.

[Bestatte]

Right Cuusardo. And when you are using the "look" command, you have that ability to tag an emote to it.

look hooded carefully up and down with a scrutinizing stare.

The hooded figure also has the ability to emote where he is, in relevence to where everyone else is.

>The hooded figure moves immediately to the back wall and faces the corner, keeping his head down.

The RP can (and does) explain why Jimbob knows what HoodedElfie looks like. The RP can (and does) explain why HoodedElfie is making himself intentionally difficult to see past his hood.

The code is intended to allow the looker to get the look. The RP (and description of the clothing) determines how much of that look the looker sees.

[Anonymous]

Just as an aside, in response to the original topic, I'd like to point out that last night alone I contacted the same wrong person 3 times or more because I kept habitually using 'contact <keyword>' instead of 'contact <name>'.  This was probably in the course of 2 hours.

[JollyGreenGiant]

Just as an aside, in response to the original topic, I'd like to point out that last night alone I contacted the same wrong person 3 times or more because I kept habitually using 'contact <keyword>' instead of 'contact <name>'.  This was probably in the course of 2 hours.

It's one of those things that really makes you appreciate the new multi-keyword code, especially for people that pick nicknames based on keywords.

> contact agafari
You contact the agafari-eyed woman.
> break
> contact 2.agafari
You contact the agafari-skinned man.
> break

Me: Hmm, well, let's keep going, the guy just said his name was Agafari.

> contact 3.agafari
You contact the agafari-haired elf.
> break
> contact 4.agafari
You contact the agafari tree tattooed dwarf.
> break

Me: Well, this is getting annoying, I bet all of those people would hate me if they knew it was me mistargetting them.

> contact 5.agafari
Haha, that's a tree.  Good luck with that.

And at this point, you give up because Armageddon was just mocking your pain.  I don't really have a point, except to say that being able to use multiple keywords to contact people is way cool.