Contacting

[Lizzie]

No. You can't. Now typing contact figure is only good for when you're in the same room as they are.

You're mistaken. I was riding with my hood up 3 rooms away from someone who I'd never seen before last night and they somehow contacted me...explain.

Anyone can attempt to contact any -single- keyword, such as "man" or "muscled" or "eyed" or "haired" and end up with the wrong person. It could easily be someone who's pal mentioned she was looking for the green-eyed man yesterday, and he wore a brown dustcloak, and was tall. And you, wearing your brown dustcloak, being taller than Amos, walked by. So Amos figured maybe that was you. And he typed "contact tall" and there you were.

[Bluefae]

     Before I ever knew there was a controversy about how and when it was appropriate to Contact others (ah, the "blushing ingénue" days  ), I always thought of first-time, same-room psi-ing as though my character were deliberately concentrating on the object of her curiosity.  As in, it wasn't that she could distinctly see the features of the person (assuming the previously-cited voluminous hood, et al.), but rather was reaching out with her mind via line-of-sight and connecting with another sentient.
    Once "inside", at least on a surface level, she had some sense of what the other's likeness would be.  I'm not certain this is in line with what the Staff has promulgated, but it seems to be.  I'll readily admit this makes more sense with some sdescs vice others.  

[Gunnerblaster]

You know what, after reading Bluefae's post - That does make a good IC excuse why you would try touching minds with someone you just met. It just bugs me, OOCly, how they get your exact sdesc - Even if you are wearing a hood and/or facewrap. It just goes to reinforce how awesome it would be if someone contacted 'dark.cloaked.figure' and actually managed to get 'the image of the dark, ebony-cloaked figure' instead of their sdesc.

And even if you're doing it for a completely different reason, if that other PC could happen to be hostile towards you - You're accepting the handicap of stunning yourself and also putting yourself into a 3-5 second 'lag' in order to try and peer into their 'mind's eye'.

Zalanthians are, after all, telepaths - To some degree.

[brytta.leofa]

What I totally wouldn't feel comfortable doing is matching a person using ONLY the sdesc, however it's acquired.  I need more than an sdesc to be sure that I've caught the right pulchritudinous, coffee-maned lass.

[Spoon]

Seems out of place to me in the context of everything else... If it is okay to do, I find it odd that any character can just go "Hmm, I can't see that person's face clearly because of their hood. No problem, I'll use my psi powers to identify their most notable features!"

Except a HOOD doesn't cover your face. It covers your hair.

And being as you can only contact someone hooded who's in the same room with you and it allows you to see that, well, that seems to say that you can... see who you're seeing already.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

You've inferred than I believe hoods should entirely conceal someone's identity which is not the case .  It makes far more sense that you should get the sdesc from using look or assess, I find that using contact to divulge this is a little absurd when you can just look at them.

[AmandaGreathouse]

Yes and no. I think it's good that hoods (and etc.) hide your sdesc. Because from 2-3 leagues away, people 'won't' be able to see what you look like... and to my knowledge, they also won't be able to 'contact figure' and get it. But if they're in the same room, with a LOOK at you, they ought to be able to divine your sdesc, and so can see it via contact.

I really didn't mean that to come off as snarky as it did in retrospect.

[spicemustflow]

edit: shit, bluefae already said it.

[Agent_137]

also, again, if you don't want your sdesc available to people who contact figure or contact man then there is a very IC way to deal with it:
http://www.armageddon.org/cgi-bin/help_index/show_help?barrier

it's nobody's fault but your own if you don't use it intelligently

[Rogerthat]

Love how the Helper just like. Made you all Shush. Was epic in my eyes.

[Spoon]

I've had PC's who have on a whim just contacted "man" and struck up a conversation between strangers out of boredom and isolation

I missed this first time over. Is there any kind of IC explanation for this or can people simply 'surf' the way?

[Nyr]

also, again, if you don't want your sdesc available to people who contact figure or contact man then there is a very IC way to deal with it:
http://www.armageddon.org/cgi-bin/help_index/show_help?barrier

it's nobody's fault but your own if you don't use it intelligently

Indeed.  Use barrier.

However:

spamming contact figure/contact cloaked/contact etc. when you enter a room full of cloaked people JUST to see their sdescs might be considered abusive by staff.

[X-D]

It should only be seen as abusive by staff if there was some other recourse coded IG.

Which there is not.

Since I see now days 50% or greater PCs that have sdesc words that do NOT match a single word in mdesc.

And as has been stated MANY times in the past, a hood only shadows the face, if my PC is 3 feet away I should be able to pick up just about everything it would show with the hood down. But the only coded method we have to do that is with contact.

So till there is a study skill or other reasonable method then contact is what I WILL use.

And to be honest, if staff finds that abusive then put in a realistic skill to cover it. Put Mdesc masks back in  and make that be the sdesc shown if somebody contacts you.

This subject comes up many times over the years, but nothing ever happens to fix them. If anything the trend is to go the other way, with Highlords and overlords in the past stating that everything is working properly and it was not twinky or abusive to get sdescs with contact.

BTW, make rules on these things, "staffers might" No no no...that is unfair to everybody in so many ways.

edit
Meh, decided this part would be in another thread.

[Nyr]

spamming contact figure/contact cloaked/contact etc. when you enter a room full of cloaked people JUST to see their sdescs might be considered abusive by staff.

Enlarged for emphasis--all other legitimate cases and arguments aside, we can definitely tell when someone is doing this.

[Myrdryn]

It's all about intent.  While the way is a powerful tool, for 'normal' people (non-mindbenders), contact isn't intended to function as an information gathering tool.

[AmandaGreathouse]

It should only be seen as abusive by staff if there was some other recourse coded IG.

Which there is not.

Since I see now days 50% or greater PCs that have sdesc words that do NOT match a single word in mdesc.

And as has been stated MANY times in the past, a hood only shadows the face, if my PC is 3 feet away I should be able to pick up just about everything it would show with the hood down. But the only coded method we have to do that is with contact.

So till there is a study skill or other reasonable method then contact is what I WILL use.

And to be honest, if staff finds that abusive then put in a realistic skill to cover it. Put Mdesc masks back in  and make that be the sdesc shown if somebody contacts you.

This subject comes up many times over the years, but nothing ever happens to fix them. If anything the trend is to go the other way, with Highlords and overlords in the past stating that everything is working properly and it was not twinky or abusive to get sdescs with contact.

BTW, make rules on these things, "staffers might" No no no...that is unfair to everybody in so many ways.

edit
Meh, decided this part would be in another thread.

Yeah, I was under the impression that it was alright to do that.

From this:
Quote from Halaster:

I'd agree with this except the situation where... you're in a room with a guy in a white veil. He's standing RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU, but you have no idea any of his keywords, so.. you go with contact white. That'd be ok, since you're staring at the guy, heh.

Another quote from Halaster:

nope, if we thought you shouldn't do it, we wouldn't let you do it via code. It's not twinky.

And one from Morgenes:

A code change is going in that makes it so that you can only use someone's name, keywords and REAL short description when contacting them from any room other than your current room.  Keywords granted from temporary short descriptions (such as from hoods/masks/face-wraps, whatever) will not be usable.

Note that this does not change the way contact works if you are in the same room with someone.  You will be able to use hooded/figure etc... to contact them if they're in the same room.

We (we being the staff of Armageddon) feel this brings the code into line with our vision of how contact targeting should work and at what level it can be used to determine who someone really is.

You know... because if they're in the room with you, you ought to be able to theoretically glean their sdesc from a close look at them, but if they're too far away, you obviously wouldn't be able to tell it by LOOKing at them. As the change in code reflects. Right?

Adding this last part specifically to address your last post, Nyr, if you don't mind me asking: Where's the fine line between doing that and not, if you're LOOKing at all the people you're doing it to? [I just use a LOOK, myself, but I'm inclined to ask out of sheer curiosity.]

[Myrdryn]

I'd like to note to the above post that when this change was made, when contacting a hooded figure, the message someone would receive was something like: 'You contact the hooded figure'.  So it wasn't until this change that it was possible to abuse contact like this.

[brytta.leofa]

I'd like to note to the above post that when this change was made, when contacting a hooded figure, the message someone would receive was something like: 'You contact the hooded figure'.  So it wasn't until this change that it was possible to abuse contact like this.

Dude, are you sure this is accurate?

If you couldn't get someone's sdesc from contacting a hooded figure, why change the code so people couldn't (in general) contact hooded figures?  I don't think anybody was complaining about getting too much Way-spam.

[Nyr]

Yeah, I was under the impression that it was alright to do that.

It is.  Not saying it isn't.

From this:
Quote from Halaster:

I'd agree with this except the situation where... you're in a room with a guy in a white veil. He's standing RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU, but you have no idea any of his keywords, so.. you go with contact white. That'd be ok, since you're staring at the guy, heh.

For some clarity here, this is a slightly different situation than spamming up contact on every cloaked figure in the room with you.  Standing in front of a guy with a white veil.  You contact the guy with the white veil.  You get his sdesc.  At the time this was written, you could do this from anywhere in the world.  Due to the code changes Morgenes made, you can now ONLY reproduce the specific situation quoted by Halaster.

Another quote from Halaster:

nope, if we thought you shouldn't do it, we wouldn't let you do it via code. It's not twinky.

For clarity on this one, the question was this:

Is it twinky to type contact blur, contact shadow?

The code has been changed since then.  At the time, it was possible to contact shadow/contact blur from anywhere in the world (much like any other temporary sdesc change provided by an object like a hood or mask).  You can now only do this from the same room.  The same answer from Halaster then applies now, which works out great.

Adding this last part specifically to address your last post, Nyr, if you don't mind me asking: Where's the fine line between doing that and not, if you're LOOKing at all the people you're doing it to? [I just use a LOOK, myself, but I'm inclined to ask out of sheer curiosity.]

The fine line is the mystery meat.

Spamming contact/cease on all cloaked targets in a room because you have an itch to know the sdescs of everyone in the room:  abusive, but really, probably more annoying than abusive because we can tell why you're doing it (we will ask you to stop doing it though)
Spamming contact/cease on any new cloaked targets than enter a room because you have an itch to know the sdesc:  abusive, but really, probably more annoying than abusing because we can tell why you're doing it (we will ask you to stop doing it though)
spamming steal on someone that is shouting "Thief!":  abusive (unrealistic)
spamming peek on someone because your peek skill sucks:  more annoying than abusive (will probably get a sternly worded letter from the UN though)

Spamming anything is usually unrealistic, we generally prefer people not do that.

[AmandaGreathouse]

Wouldn't do it myself, you know, but it's always good to ask. Hope it didn't come off as a dick move due to the wording. Thanks for the examples, though. I was more asking where did contacting, say, someone in a similar cloak to a friend that you're rping as being across the bar and can't see their face so you contact figure cross the line to being considered spamming (especially if, say, you know several bynners and 5 come into the bar, so you contact a few of them 1.figure 2.figure etc to figure out which is which and so forth for targetting, etc). Probably not the same as doing it to each one systematically as a habit though. Anyhow, thanks for the answer.

[Nyr]

That sounds like a great way to eliminate the confusion in that situation.

[Myrdryn]

I'd like to note to the above post that when this change was made, when contacting a hooded figure, the message someone would receive was something like: 'You contact the hooded figure'.  So it wasn't until this change that it was possible to abuse contact like this.

Dude, are you sure this is accurate?

If you couldn't get someone's sdesc from contacting a hooded figure, why change the code so people couldn't (in general) contact hooded figures?  I don't think anybody was complaining about getting too much Way-spam.

The change was made to prevent using contact to discover the identity of a player using a short description concealing device.  For example, if someone had just been robbed by a person wearing a unique mask, it would be possible to contact that person using the keywords of that unique mask.  This wouldn't make much sense.

Conversely, if I contacted my boss, Lord Amos Oash, to tell him that I'd just been robbed, and when I contact him and I get "You contact the figure in an insane laughing clown mask", the same mask that they guy that just robbed me is wearing, suddenly I'm thinking, Hey, this guy just robbed me.  So this was changed also to not give additional information.

To accommodate proximity, when trying to contact people that one might not know that were in the same room wearing sdesc hiding devices, this ability was kept.

My point is the intent wasn't to allow people to gain new information about people using the way, the intention was exactly the opposite.

[X-D]

I still think masks at least should give the mask sdesc even over the way.

The fine line is the mystery meat.

Spamming contact/cease on all cloaked targets in a room because you have an itch to know the sdescs of everyone in the room:  abusive, but really, probably more annoying than abusive because we can tell why you're doing it (we will ask you to stop doing it though)
Spamming contact/cease on any new cloaked targets than enter a room because you have an itch to know the sdesc:  abusive, but really, probably more annoying than abusing because we can tell why you're doing it (we will ask you to stop doing it though)

One problem is that "spamming" Is subjective. If I contact and cease 1 time on 3 PCs, is that spamming? I don't think so.

If my PC is hid or invis and there are 5 hooded PCs in the room which my PC has had time to study, and I then contact/cease on them all is that spamming? Again, I do not think so.

If I get my PC up in somebodies face via emotes and such and then use contact to get the sdesc is that abusive...no, it is not. Because again, we have no other recourse.

Study command/skill and higher barrier caps FTW.
And tighter rules on char creation. Your sdesc and mdesc should share the same words and for the same reasons, No synonyms.

Code Select Expand

Mdesc: This man has black hair and purple eyes.

Sdesc: The onyx tressed violet-orbed male stands here.

Lame, and that is the main reason I use contact...nearly 50% of the PCs I see IG are like that.

[Thunkkin]

If hoods actually hide so little that it's valid to contact someone with a hood in order to learn their s-desc ... why not just have the s-desc be shown along with the mdesc when you look at a hooded person?

After all, since the staff have decided that there is no anonymity in the game, why not just make this information easily available instead of requiring us to use a gimmick?  If looking SHOULD reveal the information contained in the s-desc, why doesn't it?  Making me use contact to acquire information that I will RP as being gained from looking at someone is [self-edited].

Example:

The shadowy cloaked figure has arrived from the east.

> l figure

You look at a shadowy cloaked figure.
The dwarf woman with a giant rack
This small female person is busty and hairless.  She has two eyes, two arms, two legs, two feet, and two hands.  She has a big scar on her left nostril.

[Lizzie]

Thunnnnnkin ponders:

If looking SHOULD reveal the information contained in the s-desc, why doesn't it?

[Huge rant..huge vent. 100% Agreement, plus a bunch of related stuff.]

[/huge rant-vent-100% agreement-related stuff]

[Nyr]

I'm sorry.  I don't understand what it is that people are looking for in this part of the thread.

Posting that staff members might take issue with a subjective, contextual situation results in a call for solid rules.
On the other hand, posting general situations that might prompt a staff email about specific player activity results in several hypothetical situations that (probably) wouldn't fall under those guidelines.

Can't there be some middle ground?  And is it really so bad to get an e-mail from staff asking why you're doing what you're doing?  The only reason I'm chiming in on this thread is to clarify that this is a situation that can't be easily resolved in a quick rule posting, since a player asked via e-mail about this sort of thing.  With the codebase the way it currently is, there is no way to please every single person.  Even if it were changed, people would still be pissed off.  I swear--if we had a magick-only Arm MUD clone and added a spell that did nothing but make people fart rainbows, we'd have half of the GDB playerbase clamoring for its removal on the basis that it was too whimsical and nutty, a quarter claiming that it had a detrimental effect on the game's economy, an eighth pointing out how some people do nothing but spamcast this spell up to mon so that they could abuse it, and the remaining minority taking issue with the fact that we used a Zalanthan word to substitute for "indigo."

More than half of the time that staff members view a player doing something out of the ordinary, communication with the player results in contextual information that we wouldn't have had otherwise.  It's not like an instance of you doing this once will get you banned for life.  Let's keep everything in perspective.