Contact - The Way

[roughneck]

This is an offshoot I brought up on the 'Hoods' thread and I thought maybe I'd just start one here.

My beef with the Way the way it is now is that all the power lies with the -contacter- rather than the -contactee-.  The way allows people to get sdescs, check if who they're hunting is online and so on.  I feel connecting minds is a fairly intimate encounter and you shouldn't be able to creep in someones head like a mind shadow.  I think a couple changes either now or in the next game could be really neat.

1.  The contactee gets the sdesc of whoever contacted them.  Unless you're a mindbender why should you be able to veil who you are until you say something?  You're in my fucking head, I should know.

2.  The contacter DOESN'T get the sdesc of who he contacts.  This saves the contact 1.dwarf, 2.dwarf, 3.dwarf... and so on until you match who you're looking for so you can cast your uber magick.  It also stops circumventing hoods and masks and gives reality to the trust involved with connecting with someone's mind.  This probably seems awkward but it's not.  For example:

Contact tall, muscular man

-you contact him

psi, "Is this Amos?"

the tall muscular man contacts your mind

the tall muscular man sends you a telepathic message, "Yea, this is Amos, wanna spar?"



This is how -I- would like to see the way work.  I'd be interested to know what you others think, maybe I'm the only one because I'm typically on the shit side of clans and superpowers heh heh.  If you all had a harder time finding me I could give you some real man-hunts and would get to rely on old-fashioned intelligence gathering, tracking and so forth.

just a thought,

roughneck

[evil_erdlu]

Loved it, to tell the truth. But my word is just an inexperienced offpeak newbie's word and my experience with 'contact' is humbly - lacking.

I dislike kidnapping someone else's thread, but still I want to add a little bit of something. From my tiny bit of experience, I want to add to the above, 'contact' is not taxing enough to the contacter. Even with the beginner skill and a bit of practice, it seems someone in a comfortable position may perform a way-chatter with great ease. It can't be eavesdropped. I know I know. There are mindbender folks. But how many? I'm sure they are a lot less than folks with high 'listen' skill.

Maybe if we force folks to whisper about their secrets, more people may hear. Of course, this idea is thrown about by someone who doesn't know a bit about mindbender skills, one's effectiveness, their frequency, yada yada...

[Lakota]

1) Barrier

2) Expel

fin

[Lizzie]

Hoods vs. The Way - a Vent, by Lizzie

There are dozens of "hooded figures" around the game. NPCs and PCs both. The only way you could be certain that the one you -want- to contact, really -is- the one you contact, is if you watch him log into the game, hooded, and contact him immediately. Otherwise, it goes in chronological. And you have no idea what order it's in. Entering "contact hooded" will only give you the most recent person to put their hood up. If that noble who just walked out of the bar, put his hood up to keep his face from the sand, then HE will be the hooded figure you contact, not the elf who dashed passed you a moment before the noble walked out of the bar.

So I don't understand why everyone gets all huffy about the "issue" of using "hooded" or "figure" or "facewrap" as keywords to find identities. You have a -chance- that you'll be right. But there's also a big possibility that you'll be wrong. So what difference does it make that you try?

[roughneck]

Hoods vs. The Way - a Vent, by Lizzie

There are dozens of "hooded figures" around the game. NPCs and PCs both. The only way you could be certain that the one you -want- to contact, really -is- the one you contact, is if you watch him log into the game, hooded, and contact him immediately. Otherwise, it goes in chronological. And you have no idea what order it's in. Entering "contact hooded" will only give you the most recent person to put their hood up. If that noble who just walked out of the bar, put his hood up to keep his face from the sand, then HE will be the hooded figure you contact, not the elf who dashed passed you a moment before the noble walked out of the bar.

So I don't understand why everyone gets all huffy about the "issue" of using "hooded" or "figure" or "facewrap" as keywords to find identities. You have a -chance- that you'll be right. But there's also a big possibility that you'll be wrong. So what difference does it make that you try?

It's also based on distance now, it's very easy to contact the hooded the person you are trying to on a chance encounter.

1) Barrier

2) Expel

fin

This is true, I just don't like the system in place because Barrier is useless until you're a champion, it just gets crushed by anyone with a decent contact skill.  Expel has to be branched yada yada...  I guess it comes down to a preference thing where I would just like to see a general lower psionic ability in everyone and threw it up here for discussion.  Use it to talk to your buds, co-ordinate things, strategize etc. But let that new character who wants to stir shit up have a chance at a good chase and some intrigue without having to wait until he branches barrier.  A change would also call for a lot more scouting/intelligence type work and make minbenders more powerful.

[Tisiphone]

It's also based on distance now, it's very easy to contact the hooded the person you are trying to on a chance encounter.

This is actually incorrect.

[Lizzie]

Yeah that didn't ring true for me either actually. Not knowing the code but knowing just a smidge of "code logic" I figure it works something like this:

There are 30 "hooded figures" in the game this moment.
3 in Tuluk, 3 in Allanak, 20 in Red Storm, 3 in the Tablelands, and 1 walking the North Road near Luir's Outpost.

You - are in Allanak. You want to find the mind of the hooded figure who just robbed you, to get his identity, because you didn't get a chance to "look" at him.

Right before you type "contact hooded," Faithful Lady Guida Sarducci raises the hood of her robes, in Tuluk.

Now you type "contact hooded" and what happens is, because Guida is so far away, PLUS she is the most recent person to be a "hooded figure" in the game, you will automagicakly try to find HER mind. And fail. Because of the distance. But she's the mind you're gonna keep failing with, until either she takes her hood down, or someone else puts their hood up.

Edited to add other possible outcomes: You'll actually find her mind (succeed the contact skill), and she'll send her artistically subtle assassin goon squad out to kill you subtly. Or, someone will kill her, and you'll find the next hooded figure down the line of "recent hooded figures." Or she'll log out and you'll still find the next hooded figure down the line.

Summary - if you don't know what the guy looks like, you will NOT know if the hooded figure you succeeded in contacting, really IS the person you were trying to identify via the Way.

[Desertman]

  The way allows people to get sdescs, check if who they're hunting is online and so on.  I feel connecting minds is a fairly intimate encounter and you shouldn't be able to creep in someones head like a mind shadow.  I think a couple changes either now or in the next game could be really neat.

1.  The contactee gets the sdesc of whoever contacted them.  Unless you're a mindbender why should you be able to veil who you are until you say something?  You're in my fucking head, I should know.

2.  The contacter DOESN'T get the sdesc of who he contacts.  This saves the contact 1.dwarf, 2.dwarf, 3.dwarf... and so on until you match who you're looking for so you can cast your uber magick.  It also stops circumventing hoods and masks and gives reality to the trust involved with connecting with someone's mind.  This probably seems awkward but it's not.  For example:

Contact tall, muscular man

-you contact him

psi, "Is this Amos?"

the tall muscular man contacts your mind

the tall muscular man sends you a telepathic message, "Yea, this is Amos, wanna spar?"



This is how -I- would like to see the way work.  I'd be interested to know what you others think, maybe I'm the only one because I'm typically on the shit side of clans and superpowers heh heh.  If you all had a harder time finding me I could give you some real man-hunts and would get to rely on old-fashioned intelligence gathering, tracking and so forth.

just a thought,

roughneck

Sanvean has already stated in a different thread that using the way to gather SDESCS is not permitted and you should not RP knowing someones SDESC simply because you see it when you contact them.

Would I like to see some code to make it so this "cant" be abused, yes.

But for now I will go with...The staff has said DONT DO IT, so DONT DO IT douche bags.

[Desertman]

Hoods vs. The Way - a Vent, by Lizzie

There are dozens of "hooded figures" around the game. NPCs and PCs both. The only way you could be certain that the one you -want- to contact, really -is- the one you contact, is if you watch him log into the game, hooded, and contact him immediately. Otherwise, it goes in chronological. And you have no idea what order it's in. Entering "contact hooded" will only give you the most recent person to put their hood up. If that noble who just walked out of the bar, put his hood up to keep his face from the sand, then HE will be the hooded figure you contact, not the elf who dashed passed you a moment before the noble walked out of the bar.

So I don't understand why everyone gets all huffy about the "issue" of using "hooded" or "figure" or "facewrap" as keywords to find identities. You have a -chance- that you'll be right. But there's also a big possibility that you'll be wrong. So what difference does it make that you try?

Actually it contacts the Hooded Figure closest to you, which is extremely easy to abuse in the desert, to say the least.

Anyways, the staff has said dont use contact to get the sdesc of hooded figures, so, it really doesnt matter what either of us thinks.

Luckily, I agree with them.

[Panda]

The way was so confusing to me, as a newbie, that I had to have someone explain it to me very in depth, before I even remotely understood what was going on.  Now fortunately, I get it.  But I think if I'd been trying to contact people and not getting any sort of confirmation message, or any sort of message who I was talking to, I would have found it infinitely more confusing.  That isn't to say that it's a bad idea, but that the help file would need to be a lot more explicit, or you're going to have even more confusion among new people than you already have now.

Also, I don't find the way easy to do at all.  It takes me a crapload of attempts to contact someone, and then if I'm doing anything, it seems my stun drains faster than my ability to maintain it.  Maybe I just suck at the skill, though.

[FuSoYa]

For Panda.  It's just Zalanthas' version of a tell basically.  With different IC stuff backing it up.  And yes, it's hard and crappy in the beginning.  It gets better.

Brandon

[Panda]

I gathered that, eventually.  But, my point is that the OP's idea, would have made it even harder for me to figure out   And a lot harder for me to use.

[musashi]

It's also based on distance now, it's very easy to contact the hooded the person you are trying to on a chance encounter.

This is actually incorrect.

For what it's worth ... I have had my character contact hooded figures before after I was no longer in the same room as they were.

I always got the right person I was looking for, without fail.

That led me to believe that who you contact when you throw a keyword at the game was more based on distance than anything else. But I could have just been lucky, every time.

[Desertman]

It's also based on distance now, it's very easy to contact the hooded the person you are trying to on a chance encounter.

This is actually incorrect.

For what it's worth ... I have had my character contact hooded figures before after I was no longer in the same room as they were.

I always got the right person I was looking for, without fail.

That led me to believe that who you contact when you throw a keyword at the game was more based on distance than anything else. But I could have just been lucky, every time.

No, you were correct, it is based on distance.

[spawnloser]

Lizzie, you're wrong.  It has NOTHING to do with who is the most recent hooded, figure, it has to do with who is the most recently logged in hooded character.  This means that if ONE PC is in game that is hooded, you will get the PC before the NPC until the NPC is reloaded.

Also, you will target someone in the room with your before reaching to someone outside the room, in my experience.  I never fail to get the person right there when we're in the same room.

If we are NOT in the same room, Desertman, you're wrong.  Within the last week or two I got the wrong person wearing the same cloak as someone else I saw run past my character and tried to reach.

[Lizzie]

Well. If the other three people who corrected me over a week ago weren't enough to convince me that I was wrong, you really did it, Spawnloser! I would never have realized if I hadn't waited a week after being corrected, to learn that I needed correcting.

Yes, that was sarcasm.

[Tisiphone]

I would really prefer not to see a discussion of Way mechanics on this board.

[Riev]

Unfortunately for you, Tis, this is the Code discussion board. And I remember the imms posting information about how the way works before, so unless that got rescinded, its going to happen.


Honestly, last I knew, a majority of the Contact skill was based on distance. I -think- I even remember seeing that if someone is farther away, its also harder to contact. I could have been dreaming that part though.

[brytta.leofa]

Guys. It's in the MOTD:

  Changes have been made to psionic-range checks, to make them more reliant
  on real distance.

[Lizzie]

Right Brytta. So when you try to contact hooded..and the only hooded figure is on the other side of the world, it will be harder for you to find his mind, than if he was sitting in the bar next to you. But it is still THAT hooded figure you're trying to find. If you try to find "hooded," and there are two of them, and one of them is sitting in the bar next to you, but he's been there all week, either linkdead or an NPC, and some OTHER hooded figure logged in an hour ago and is on the other side of the world, that OTHER hooded figure will be the one you end up trying to contact.

Unless that's changed, and wasn't documented, that's how it has -always- worked for me. The order of the keyword your contact attempt targets, is dependent on who is in the game and when they got there. Whether or not you succeed, is -more- reliant now, on distance, than it was previously.

[Semper]

I don't know why I'm replying to this thread, but I think you guys forget you can type "contact the figure in a long, gold-lined silk cloak" and narrow down the people to only a few, if not one. I still don't think that is a legitimate way of using the Way, and I think the staff mentioned something about it, so I don't see the problem.

As for the OP's idea, from the first look, I liked it, though I think the Way requires a mental image to contact people...at least from what I gather from its use and discussion. So, if anything, I'd just like a better chance at discovering the people who contact you, such as more frequent moments of their image lingering in your mind, even if they don't use psi or other psionic skill that doesn't mask their identity.