Saying Goodbye with the Request Tool

[Sanvean]

Hey guys, I've noticed a trend towards (edited to make clearer what "this" referred to) using the request tool to send goodbyes to other characters lately, and I'd like to say something before it gets to be a genuine problem. I am not trying to single out anyone, but I have noticed this phenomenon happening a good bit lately and would like to make the staff stance on it clear.

To my mind - and I want to open this up for discussion, because I think perceptions are differing -- the ability to send someone kudos through the request is intended as much to let the staff know that the other player is worthy of celebration as it is to compliment the other person.

Resolving those kudos isn't a matter of pressing a button.  The steps are tracking down the other player, writing them an e-mail about the kudos, noting their account, and noting the kudo sender's account.  I know that sounds picky, but half hours here and there add up, and when I open up the request tool and see a deluge of requests, my heart sinks.

Sending kudos is not a way to say goodbye to the players that you enjoyed playing with.  I certainly understand and sympathize with this desire, but when someone dies and sends kudos to half a dozen people, it starts moving us out of the quickly resolved department and into the "do I have enough free time to do all these?" department.

There's also a question of IC knowledge, because if the death is somewhere that people didn't see, it's better for them to find out IC than through an e-mail.

[Yang]

I don't send kudos myself, though I probably should. I rarely get any positive feedback, and it is encouraging and invigorating to do so from players upon which my characters have had an impact. People may be motivated by this, I know I sure am: someone sends me a kudos and suddenly I feel like I've really made things worthwhile, not only for myself, but for someone else's experience.

Immortals may sometimes not know what to say to certain players to give them encouraging feedback, prefering to resort to corrective, negative feedback. This might work for some people, psychologically. Others (like me) it never, ever will. That's just my personality. To recieve a kudos from some innocence, know-nothing player who has met my character is an honor, a compliment and a blessing. Why would this be a problem at all, ever?

[Sanvean]

I believe that if you read my post, you will see I am not saying do not send kudos.  I am saying do not use the request tool as a way to say goodbye to other characters when a character dies.

[mansa]

It would be a problem when you die and you want to say thanks with all the players that you played with.

So, you would go:

kudos mansa's character who doesn't know you died yet
kudos yang's dead character
kudos lod's character
kudos ghost's dead character 4 back
kudos lauramars's character
kudos cuusardo's dead character 2 back
kudos sanvean's character

Sending those seven kudos probably took 30 minutes.  Which is a lot when you can only log in and watch for 3 hours.  That's 1/6th of your time doing something that isn't -that- important, considering that you should be watching your clan do clan things.

I think sanvean is saying that Kudos is meant for something special, and not for saying goodbye to everybody and telling everybody you had fun.

It's a fine line.  Perhaps limit the ammount of kudos you can give to 2 people a week?

[Djarjak]

I'm against any hard set limits, code enforced or otherwise.

However the key, for me, would be to focus on giving kudos to people who are alive while you are alive, just as an issue of courtesy. There's little reason to wait until you die to let them know what it is about their role play or character you appreciated. As others have pointed out, doing so causes a problem in those cases where 1) we get them all at once, and 2) the recipients of kudos may not realize the person is dead.

If you play with Amos the Kankherd for three RL months, and you think he plays a swell character, don't wait until one of you dies to send kudos. Just do it when you think "hey, Amos is a swell guy, you guys should really watch his RP more, he's worth it".

Or if you're with Malik the Mantis Farmer one day in June and he emotes something that makes you just piss your pants laughing, go ahead and kudos him then. Don't wait until October when he's dead and has played six other characters before you say "oh, by the way, there was this guy I played with in June..."

[Gimfalisette]

The thing is, we as players don't always THINK about sending kudos while our character or the other character is still alive. Because we are in the process of enjoying ongoing roleplay that we don't necessarily think will be ending anytime soon. When a character dies, there is a natural stopping point and time for reflection--"hey that person really IS an awesome roleplayer, I'm going to send kudos." This does not constitute saying goodbye. Rather, it's a logical point for acknowledgement to happen. Perhaps we've thought 87 times previously, "I really should send Amos' player a kudos," but then we get busy with other things. Then, upon a character's death, it finally hits us that now really is the time to get that task done.

I also think some benefit of the doubt should be extended toward players sending kudos on the IC/OOC information issue. From what I have seen, most players are very careful and responsible with this sort of thing. Why not assume that players are sending kudos only when they know they're not going to screw things up ICly by doing so, rather than assuming they're forgetting about IC/OOC separation just because a character has died?

And while I'm glad that when we send kudos that helps the staff know who's doing a good job--that's honestly not why I send them. Because as much as I appreciate and am grateful for the huge amount of hard work that you dedicated staffers put in, it's the other players that I interact with, through their characters, on a daily basis. And it's important to me that these other players know someone is enjoying them. My fellow players rock my RP world, and I want them to know it. That has nothing to do with saying "goodbye" and everything to do with "your roleplay is awesome."

In the future, however, I'll try to send kudos as requested more often in the course of normal play, not just upon reflection at one or another character's death.

[Sanvean]

I'll willing to cut people the benefit of the doubt, and I am totally pro people sending kudos.  We included that field in the request tool for a reason.  

But when I see a kudo that simply says "Goodbye, really enjoyed playing with you" - and see that repeated a dozen times, it seems to me the player is misunderstanding the purpose of kudos.  And when the goodbye ends up giving someone knowledge of the death that they don't know IC, there is an additional problem.

This is a new capability, and we're still figuring out the process, obviously.  Your patience is appreciated.

[Dakkon Black]

The kudos tool rocks the world, and I have to admit, I've been stingy with it, both from forgetting to do it when I see good players and just being.. well stingy.

I have to really really agree with Sanvean here. This sounds like the same issue with sending a PM to everyone in the clan that you died, or posting on a clan gdb board. Send kudos, not goodbye's.

As for the staff upkeep side of it. I'm no coder, but couldn't something be put in that basically gave you two buttons. Aprove, reject?

Hit approve, and it marks up both giver and reciever account notes, and opens up an email for you to send with the recievers email addy.

Sounds very nice and easy, of course Probably not so easy to code.. but heh.

[Barzalene]

I think the problem is matching the kudos receiver to an account. Let's say my account name is Deb and I make a pc named akdfdsjeowrjs and when people ask my name I say it's Lefty. Now you say, you know imms I love Lefty. Lefty deserves my Kudos. The imms go Oh yeah, Lefty. Lefty who? They do a search, no lefty. So, they ask one another do you know Lefty? Which Lefty?...

So, I think the idea of accept reject would be great, except for the fact that it doesn't take into account that you have to track down the receiver.

[Djarjak]

The ones that are the most fun are "I got mugged by the dark hooded figure in the rinth. I have no idea what his name or description was, but he had blue eyes. I just wanted to commend him for role playing the scene excellently and opting to let me live..."

So, yes. There's a bit of a manual step required in most cases.

[Cegar]

Yeah, thanks much for the clarification. I think a lot of us actually didn't know that it wasn't mean to be used in this capacity.

[Yang]

I think that Ic sensitive 'I just died' type information should be cautiously doled out by players sending kudos, fairly monitored by immortal inbetweens, and respectfully diferentiated between OOC and IC knowledge by the recipient.


I have no idea at all though, how you would police this better than you do now. In my opinion, the kudos command is far more a positive addition than anything else, but I hope the kinks can be worked out through education and respect as to etiquette while sending/recieving. I've never sent one, in any case. Just hasn't crossed my mind, but I see Sanvean's concern I think, and agree that an IC death should be kept IC.

[Vessol]

I have only sent two kudos.

One to a guy who I played with for awhile and he saw me die.

Two to a guy I was roleplaying with which ended in his IC death.

I think those are both valid reasons, I of course compliment their RP, everyone loves feedback.

[flurry]

But when I see a kudo that simply says "Goodbye, really enjoyed playing with you" - and see that repeated a dozen times, it seems to me the player is misunderstanding the purpose of kudos.  And when the goodbye ends up giving someone knowledge of the death that they don't know IC, there is an additional problem.

Maybe you could have a policy that if someone's PC dies, they need to wait a certain amount of time before sending out kudos that allude/refer/hint to their PC's death.   That way you (staff) wouldn't need to try to decide if the death was public knowledge or not.

e.g. it would be okay to say "Hey, Malik is a ton of fun to RP with.  Keep up the good work!"  but not "Thanks for all the roleplay!  I didn't see that one coming! Poor Amos.    ".

[Sokotra]

Request tool?  What request tool?

Kudos?  So we get free chocalatey granola bars now for good RP?? AWESOME!!!  I'm in.

[daedroug]

Just in case your not joking :wink:
http://www.armageddon.org/request

also Dune Rocks

[path]

It seems to me that what you're looking at is just an irresponsible and incorrect way of using the tool you've provided us - that we all like a lot. I think when you catch someone doing it, maybe send them a neat pre-written Don't Do This with an explaination of why. But I don't think you should ever put youself through any trouble for kudos that are obviously not very...kudoie.