Contact Amos...

[I]

... Amos is not in right now, would you like to leave a message?

I was thinking. Realistically, somebody would IG be around all the time unless they're asleep, so you should be able to contact them whenever. Here's my idea: Your friend is not logged in, but his character should be able to be contacted by you right? SO, what you do is contact him, but instead of never being able to reach him, you get a message like 'You faintly reach his mind."

Then when he logs in, he gets something like this "The message weak and faded in your mind, the guy sends: <Insert message here>"

So, just something I thought could be put into the game and it could be useful in a bunch of places. Suppose you are a crafter of some type and some guy asks for some thing, you just send a message to your partner and it saves the trouble of having to see him IC if you miss a few days.


Anybody else see any sense or use in this?

[RogueWarrior]

I've always wished we had something similar to this. I just think it would help out alot, and make roleplaying alot more... efficient. That way everybody and their mother aren't looking for Joe Bob the guard, when he's scheduled to be sparring, but isn't anywhere to be found. I just think it would help things... alot!

[Larrath]

There are multiple problems with this.

I'll cover two - sometimes a character will want to play dead and have a Barrier up all the time.  I've done this once, and the barrier was immensely important for doing this.  You can't really keep a barrier up when you're logged out.
Second, it's possible that two (or three, or eight) PCs will share the same names or keywords.  Just try to 'contact sinewy' or 'contact muscular'.  This is even possible with the true character names, though that's rarer.

And there are other things.  So, in summary, I doubt this will happen, and for good reason.

[Maybe42or54]

Mud Mail? I like it, but don't think this idea is workable.

[RogueWarrior]

Yeah. I can see where the downsides would be, but I really believe if enough thought were put into it, we would have a really satisfactory system. For example, the "offline reply" would be given if... 1) The person was offline, 2) the person was dead, 3) the person had a barrier up. I really think this would help it work, for both IC and OOC purposes. Also, I've always wished there was more of an ooc pm channel. Giving the same functions as the OOC command, except to certain people. You wouldn't have to interrupt the flow of the game, and it could still be used as sparringly as the OOC command, or any others are now. I've seen these points brought up in previous posts, and they've been pretty well shot down. I just think that if they are worked and monitored right, that they will be handled just as well as what we have now is. I really think it could help, and if it doesn't work for whatever reason, get rid of it, or change it to make it work better.

Just my two cents,
Rogue

[Larrath]

Like I said in my earlier post, the two points I've brought up aren't the only ones.  I won't go into any other points, but the fact is that it's just really not practical.
If you need to contact someone, you can make post or send a PM on the board (while keeping any and all IC details out of it), or you can email that person's clan imms (or the MUD account for someone with no clan) and ask them to help you coordinate the meeting.

This system, though potentially very helpful, is also very unlikely to go in, and this is really the bottom line.

[ibusoe]

Love it (idea in originial post.)

[Cuusardo]

What, like leaving an answer on a telepathic answering machine?  The brain doesn't exactly have a tape, with rewind and playback buttons.  :?

[Nao]

no, the brain is not an answering machine... But your character would be able to be contacted via the way anytime. I like the idea.. For those that walk around with barrier all the time and/or could get annoyed with two many ooc messgaes abotu the psis their character received when the player was offline... make it toggleable. so icly, the character would have their barrier up when the player is not logged in and the option is turned off.

Right now, characters are unrechable when the player is not logged in.. this makes no sense at all icly.

[Sholdyn]

I have to agree with Larrath.

Is it IC to wake up one day and have 100 psionic messages hit you all at once? Is it IC to be able to toggle something like this? I dont' think it is. I think that this proposed solution is a lot less realistic or "IC" than the supposed problem.

If you can't arrange a playtime before hand, it is easy to email the staff, as Larrath pointed out.

[Halaster]

Right now, characters are unrechable when the player is not logged in.. this makes no sense at all icly.

Agreed, but it's more for other issues than IC realism, in this case.  However, if you want an IC "reason", I'll give you one.  The Way is not a science nor is it always totally reliable.  Sometimes, it just doesn't work like you want it and you can't contact people.  Just like sometimes radios won't pick up signals as well on one day as the next.  Call it atmospheric interference, or solar flares, or whatever.  The Way just doesn't always work (i.e. when the player is offline).

Also, if we did something like this, then I bet you the next thing you know someone is going to ask, "while I was offline, my character was pumping iron with Ahnold, plz raise my strength!!!".

I, personally, wouldn't like something like this at all.

[LoD]

Armageddon used to have mud mail between players.  Mud Mail still exists, but I believe it now only serves as a vehicle for Immortals to drop comments to your account.  It would be difficult for the Imm Staff to monitor player sent mud mail or "messages" to screen for OOC information or signs of abuse, not to mention that it's probably a little unrealistic for everyone in the game to have

The only thing I could see ever happening would be for some clans with enough resources to assign an NPC as something of a Way station for its employee's to contact in case others are asleep/unavailable in case they need to make reports.  Sometimes your character has been captured or is going to die and you really need to make someone aware of something, but you just can't seem to find anyone online.  This would allow at least some folks to have a dedicated point of contact who simply relayed messages that were Way'd to him for the clan.

I don't know how this would work; if these people would also be scribes and even more rare, if they'd be able to transfer messages to a board, if they would be set up as rumors on the NPC and removed each reboot.  It's a very fragmented idea, but I think it'd be a neat thing for clans to have that would facilitate leaving messages within one's clan, at least.

-LoD

[Nao]

I have to agree with Larrath.

Is it IC to wake up one day and have 100 psionic messages hit you all at once? Is it IC to be able to toggle something like this? I dont' think it is. I think that this proposed solution is a lot less realistic or "IC" than the supposed problem.

If you can't arrange a playtime before hand, it is easy to email the staff, as Larrath pointed out.

That would be ooc stuff, a message about what your character received when you were offline. The toggleable thing is a bit harder, yes... I thought about barrier but if your character got a low barrier skill they wouldn't be able to keeo it up all the time. Abotu playtimes... It sucks when the person that recruited you died and you got a new superior - that plays 10 to 12 hours after your playtime so you're never gonna meet, no matter how many emails I sent to that player or the imms about coordinating play times.

[Desertman (not logged in)]

As I recall a few years ago you actually did get two seperate messages when you contacted people who were or werent online. I think it was something to the affect of...."You are unable to reach thier mind"...and..."You cannot find thier mind"....but it actually gave you a different message...I dont why it was taken out, and it took me a really long time before I even realized that the reason I was getting different messages was people werent logged on.

[UnderSeven]

I don't like this idea.  Namely because I think we're far to accessable over the way already.  I would like it if there were MORE measures to make someone completely unreachable via the way.  The thing is in zalanthas there should be thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, maybe even billions of minds (animals included) and even while you can not contact minds that are too foriegn, granted no one says how the way works, so many the number of minds doesn't matter, but I beg to differ.  

We know that if there are multiple people with the same name, or look similarly you might have to use a 2.person to contact the correct person.  Then take that number and multiple it by the number of people across the known world that might think of themselves as amos or the shady eyed man and suddenly, it would be a lot harder to contact anyone.  Maybe for playability this isn't the case, but on the other side of the picture, if someone wants to disapear from the way, while it may not be totally possible, it should be a lot easier to do than it presently is.  Last I checked a highest barrier skill < highest contact skill, and we're talking normal people, not a psion.  What I would like to see is the opposite of this suggestion.  I would like to see it made easier to be hidden from the way so people who are logged on are even harder to find if they want to be.

[Cuusardo]

As I recall a few years ago you actually did get two seperate messages when you contacted people who were or werent online. I think it was something to the affect of...."You are unable to reach thier mind"...and..."You cannot find thier mind"....but it actually gave you a different message...I dont why it was taken out, and it took me a really long time before I even realized that the reason I was getting different messages was people werent logged on.

The message used to say something like "You've never heard of that person" if you tried to Way someone who was offline.  When they were online and you couldn't reach them, it said "You're unable to reach their mind."  Having two different messages doesn't really make sense, because if you can't reach them for any reason, you just can't reach them.  Why would you never have heard of them?

[RogueWarrior]

I agree, that all of these arguments are really good, and most, are right. I just think it would help the roleplaying environment as a whole, if, again, there were just two seperate echos for waying. If you simply couldn't find the person, the current one is good. If they have barrier up, are dead, or offline, something like "That person's mind is nowhere to be found." would help alot, I think. But, again, there are alot of reasons not to do it either.

[spawnloser]

I would like it if there were MORE measures to make someone completely unreachable via the way.

How do you know there aren't?

I just think it would help the roleplaying environment as a whole, if, again, there were just two seperate echos for waying.

The two seperate echoed responses you received was taken out so that people couldn't...

>contact guy-i-want-to-kill
He isn't logged in right now.

...and then go do something else.  Later, then...

>contact guy-i-want-to-kill
He's logged in but you can't reach him.

...and then suddenly, they're on the hunt.  (Mind that there are other scenarios similar to this.)  The point is this: being logged in is an OOC concept and being able to tell whether someone is or not can influence IC actions, which it shouldn't.