Hi. My name is player#321

[Player#321]

Hi,

My name is player#321 and I am an Armageddon player just like you. In real life i am successful at my chosen profession. I am also a friendly adult who works for the the government of my country, where  i help people with certain disabilities. I have friends, have family, enjoy hobbies, and play games. I respect all people and am in turn a respectable member of my society. For fun, i play Armageddon.

So why am i telling you this?

Because i feel you might have confused me for my character and have begun to ignore my character's existence.

My characters are sometimes not nice people. They like me have friends, enemies, things the like and hate but they aren't me. I am just a player and like you i am just here to have fun with the character i made up specifically for this world. I understand that you might find my character OOC boring or not interesting or even annoying. I understand that you may simply wish to do more interesting things with others even and have no time for my character. That is fine, i do not mind limited interaction or even being avoided. I do not mind this despite being in a IC situation that forces me to RP with you. However having my character's existence being ignored to the point where the IC surroundings and IC realities are being ignored as well is very jarring to me. It makes playing my character not fun, and again I'm just here to have fun, just like you and hopefully with you as well.

Lastly if by chance i have made you feel ignored or perhaps done something ICly to offend you OOCly somehow, I am truly sorry. I did not mean to do it intentionally. While in the forums we all troll, harass, outright insult or even let our passions rage, at the end of the day we are still people and i believe we still respect each other as such. My IC actions and words are just that, IC and by no means reflect my OOC views and opinions. I have taken the time to post this as anonymously as possible, I rather not have staff enforce IC realism which would force you to interact with me or worse. This is not an attempt to ruin your fun. For the time being I will give you the benefit of the doubt, perhaps I am just plain wrong and being silly doing all this, I truly hope this is the case.

Please don't flame, please don't speculate. If you think you know who it is I am talking about, please please keep it to yourself.  I have gone through all this trouble in consideration to this player and with the hope that I never have to encounter this issue again.

Thank you.

[HavokBlue]

If this is directed at a particular person, maybe the request tool would be a better option.

[Nyr]

Take it IC or to your clan staff.  I approved this new profile knowing you had two other GDB profiles and not with the intention of you airing a pet peeve or personal problems with your PC on the GDB.

[Marauder Moe]

Hi!

Hmm.

Well, honestly I think you're operating under some mistaken assumptions (but I suppose that's my assumption as well, so take it with as many grains of salt as you like).  Most of are are pretty good about not getting OOCly offended by IC offenses.  Most of us have played murderers, thieves, racists, conniving manipulators, and all sorts of unsavory types.  That's part of the setting.  If anything, people will go out of their way to interact with characters that portray these attributes well.

In addition, most people probably don't even know who you play.  They only know your character, and if they have a reason to avoid them then it's entirely IC.  Perhaps you're playing an elf, half-elf, magicker, 'rinther, foreigner, or some other group that tends to be shunned in certain areas.

It's also possible you're not being proactive enough.  If you sit at a bar and just wait for people to strike up a conversation, it's going to take a while.  I'd suggest trying harder to instigate RP yourself, be it positive/friendly interaction or pissing people off and picking a fight.  

Lastly, as you've asked people not to take your IC actions personally, don't take other people's IC actions personally yourself.  As I said, they most likely don't know you, don't know who you are, and thus couldn't possibly have a personal problem with you.

Anyway, good luck!

EDIT: Meh, I suppose my advice is still plenty sound all around.

[Nyr]

Hi,

My name is player#321 and I have a personal pet peeve IC issue that is relevant to my PC and probably should be dealt with IC or discussed with my clan staff.  [--edited by Nyr]

And he wonders why people have problems with Nyr's snark factor.   Before simply pouring salt onto a wound can we just take down the entire thread?

I edited the original post, yes.  By the time I had done so, people had already begun to respond, so I didn't ice the entire thread because I thought it would be a good opportunity for players to respond with encouragement, and haven't had time to even provide any of my own yet (or redirect this into a thread of actual constructive criticism and encouragement by re-editing the original post to be something more conducive to discussion).  I appreciate your assistance in helping with this--I'm not a machine, and must occasionally do other things than moderate the GDB.

I haven't experienced the exact same issue (my PC being ignored).  I have ignored some other PCs when playing.  This is sometimes IC, and this is sometimes OOC.  I have, on occasion, not noticed a PC in the same vicinity with me for 15-20 minutes at a time, due to being wrapped up in a conversation with other PCs.  I wouldn't take people ignoring your PC to be anything other than IC.  People probably are not doing it for any reason other than IC reasons.  Anything happening IC should be taken to be IC, more or less.  You shouldn't read too far into someone's motivations.  Yes, the way things happen in game can make you feel bad in the real world.  I can count plenty of times where someone has ticked me off IC, which ticked me off OOC, which fed back into my play.  Angry people don't react to situations that well, and it is great--you have biofeedback for Armageddon, and can exploit the feelings of the players behind characters!  So if someone is ignoring you or treating you poorly in-game, it has no bearing on who you (the player) are as a person.  It has everything to do with who you (the character) are as a person.

[Spice Spice Baby]

Having not read the unedited original post, if you are feeling ignored, my best advice is to start some shit. If it's IC for your character to be pissed off about being ignored, why not handle it IC and start bitchslapping people? If you're playing a quiet type whose personality unfortunately lends itself toward being ignored, I've been there before and it sucks. Not much you can do other than act out a little more or initiate interaction with others on your own terms.

[Nyr]

I'll go ahead and restore the original post.  It's vague, it is apparently due to a current situation, but I think the feedback is more important in this case.

[Nyr]

There, all done.

edit to add:  you may notice that I've deleted posts here, even a couple I made, because they are no longer pertinent to the conversation.  I didn't think I was necessarily being trollish/snarky/whatever, just as direct as possible.  I am also taking some cough meds that are amazing.

[Cutthroat]

If you're getting angry or frustrated at IC things, you should take a breather to think about that. It's just a game, yes, but it's a pretty serious one, and often players are investing a good chunk of time into it, expecting a reasonable return in fun. Take a small break, ask yourself about what's annoying you and think of meaningful ways to fix that. You've been told to seek out IC resolutions or to talk to your clan staff (remember, independents have clan staff too). A combination of this is helpful. The GDB is not the best place to express these concerns in any specific fashion, so you won't get tailor-made advice, though you will get general advice and tips like this. Good luck.

[Barzalene]

Ruh roh! I hope I'm not the intended recipient. (I don't have an inflated sense of my own importance, it just seems like a clue points to the possibility.)

If so please feel assured that there is no ooc rancor informing IC responses. There are some IC responses that are solely IC, coupled with my job and life taking up more energy than usual cutting into my play time and ability to concentrate.

Um if it's not me then um, never mind!

[musashi]

I think everyone's touched on the important bits. Just try your best to keep IC, IC. Don't take anything that happens in the game, or even on the GDB for that matter, to heart.

The internet can be a harsh place.

[Lizzie]

I often find myself unintentionally ignoring characters who are sitting right there, characters who my PC *might* have an actual interest in. But circumstances, and my own problem with focusing on screen scroll, often prevent it. I have a narrow attention span. Not a short one, a narrow one. That means, I can focus VERY easily on a couple of things at a time. But if you add a third, or fourth thing to the mix, I can't focus on any of it, get badly distracted and frustrated.

So if my character is talking to someone at the bar, and having a way conversation, while scan and listen are running, and all this other data is happening...well as long as I don't have to respond to any of the other things happening, I can do just fine. I can pick up bits and pieces of the conversation at the other table, interject a joke about something one of them said... but having a *new* conversation with someone else..is just too much. Something has to give. And that ends up being whatever it is, that *I* need to act upon, that's in addition to whatever I was already acting upon.

If you find someone ignoring your PC, but not ignoring anything else, consider they might be just overwhelmed and need to let something slide, and it's just plain your turn.

[Akaramu]

I often find myself unintentionally ignoring characters who are sitting right there, characters who my PC *might* have an actual interest in. But circumstances, and my own problem with focusing on screen scroll, often prevent it. I have a narrow attention span. Not a short one, a narrow one. That means, I can focus VERY easily on a couple of things at a time. But if you add a third, or fourth thing to the mix, I can't focus on any of it, get badly distracted and frustrated.

So if my character is talking to someone at the bar, and having a way conversation, while scan and listen are running, and all this other data is happening...well as long as I don't have to respond to any of the other things happening, I can do just fine. I can pick up bits and pieces of the conversation at the other table, interject a joke about something one of them said... but having a *new* conversation with someone else..is just too much. Something has to give. And that ends up being whatever it is, that *I* need to act upon, that's in addition to whatever I was already acting upon.

If you find someone ignoring your PC, but not ignoring anything else, consider they might be just overwhelmed and need to let something slide, and it's just plain your turn.

This is very much true for me as well, and I would imagine others. I can only pay attention to so many things at once, and even when my character doesn't seem to be doing anything they might be struggling to keep up with three way conversations at the same time.

[Player#321]

Nyr, you know what you wrote, you know what you deleted. That said you are human, and you caught yourself and corrected it. Thank you, i appreciate it. I'm moving on...

I considered deleting my own post for three reason.

- People aren't really understanding exactly what the problem is so my original post is mostly fail.

- I like to keep IC  and OOC as separate as possible, and perhaps this wasn't vague enough towards my current character.

- This was clearly the wrong way to handle this situation.

To clarify a bit, assuming a player is doing these things intentionally, the key word here being intentional :

1. A player types two commands and leaves the room every time time another PC arrives. No problem. IC.
2. A player completely avoids says, tells, emote and commands to and from PC. No problem. IC.
3 A player behaves in a way that prevents others to interact with a certain PC. No problem either. IC, really a-hole but still IC.
4. A player begins to ignore the IC world and IC consequences, just to keep ignoring PC. Now we are having a problem. It needs to be handled by staff now, either icly or OOCly.

Honestly the easiest way would have been to cry to staff that someone wasn't RPing with me (nicely or otherwise) and snitched on them in order to have them forced to stick around me and at least toss commands at me. More likely they would just store and that would suck too. Stupidly i thought this would be a better idea. I guess i thought if it was vague enough, everyone would be reminded to keep OOC and IC things separate at least, so if i keep being annoyed and store my character, there would be less of a chance I have this problem again somewhere else.

For the most part, its once again forced me into thinking, am i really having enough fun to bother with all this? I don't know, but i've left my own thread in tact if only to keep myself from posting stupid shit later on.

[Zoltan]

I often find myself unintentionally ignoring characters who are sitting right there, characters who my PC *might* have an actual interest in. But circumstances, and my own problem with focusing on screen scroll, often prevent it. I have a narrow attention span. Not a short one, a narrow one. That means, I can focus VERY easily on a couple of things at a time. But if you add a third, or fourth thing to the mix, I can't focus on any of it, get badly distracted and frustrated.

So if my character is talking to someone at the bar, and having a way conversation, while scan and listen are running, and all this other data is happening...well as long as I don't have to respond to any of the other things happening, I can do just fine. I can pick up bits and pieces of the conversation at the other table, interject a joke about something one of them said... but having a *new* conversation with someone else..is just too much. Something has to give. And that ends up being whatever it is, that *I* need to act upon, that's in addition to whatever I was already acting upon.

If you find someone ignoring your PC, but not ignoring anything else, consider they might be just overwhelmed and need to let something slide, and it's just plain your turn.

This is very much true for me as well, and I would imagine others. I can only pay attention to so many things at once, and even when my character doesn't seem to be doing anything they might be struggling to keep up with three way conversations at the same time.

This. It's not always fun keeping up with a zillion things at once, even though that's to be expected when you do certain roles.

And also, sometimes it -is- totally IC that my PCs utterly ignore a PC (because my characters are sometimes douches).

[Barzalene]

Whew! OK not me.

[Lizzie]

I have totally had times when my character intentionally ignored another PC. There have also been occasions (not a lot, but definitely some), where I'd encounter roleplay that I'm really not enjoying at all, and will make the OOC decision to ignore it, or distance myself from it if that option is practical to do at the time.

Usually I'll try to engage in the RP anyway. But just sometimes, I'm not in the mood for "this" kind of RP, or "that" kind of RP, and someone doing "this" or "that" in the room, and so I just find an excuse to not interact.

[Cutthroat]

And also, sometimes it -is- totally IC that my PCs utterly ignore a PC (because my characters are sometimes douches).

Yes, indeed. But I think it is possible to roleplay ignoring a PC. From the amusingly childish (tell amos Tell Talia I'm not talking to her anymore, but her dress is on fire) to the more natural (emote glances over at ~talia briefly then narrows his eyes, and turns his head away from !talia).

Player 321 seems to be saying that his PC is being ignored so much by this character ICly, that it has become OOC. And if that is 321's opinion, then that is definitely something to take up with staff.

[Yam]

Yeah. When you think it crosses the line into ignoring the IC world, you need to send in a player complaint. It may be an accident or ignorance on their part, but that will address it.

[Nyr]

Nyr, you know what you wrote, you know what you deleted. That said you are human, and you caught yourself and corrected it. Thank you, i appreciate it. I'm moving on...

I considered deleting my own post for three reason.

- People aren't really understanding exactly what the problem is so my original post is mostly fail.

- I like to keep IC  and OOC as separate as possible, and perhaps this wasn't vague enough towards my current character.

- This was clearly the wrong way to handle this situation.

To clarify a bit, assuming a player is doing these things intentionally, the key word here being intentional :

1. A player types two commands and leaves the room every time time another PC arrives. No problem. IC.
2. A player completely avoids says, tells, emote and commands to and from PC. No problem. IC.
3 A player behaves in a way that prevents others to interact with a certain PC. No problem either. IC, really a-hole but still IC.
4. A player begins to ignore the IC world and IC consequences, just to keep ignoring PC. Now we are having a problem. It needs to be handled by staff now, either icly or OOCly.

Honestly the easiest way would have been to cry to staff that someone wasn't RPing with me (nicely or otherwise) and snitched on them in order to have them forced to stick around me and at least toss commands at me. More likely they would just store and that would suck too. Stupidly i thought this would be a better idea. I guess i thought if it was vague enough, everyone would be reminded to keep OOC and IC things separate at least, so if i keep being annoyed and store my character, there would be less of a chance I have this problem again somewhere else.

For the most part, its once again forced me into thinking, am i really having enough fun to bother with all this? I don't know, but i've left my own thread in tact if only to keep myself from posting stupid shit later on.

I do know what I wrote. I still stand by it. I can rewrite it if you prefer. You may continue to vent here, or bring it up properly with staff via the request tool. You obviously have a chip on your shoulder about a specific situation, rightly or wrongly. Most of the time, experience has taught that these are misinterpreted situations or that the player is missing key information.

The more you've spoken on this, the more I would agree that you do have a personal pet peeve IC issue.

You should address it with your staff.

[Malifaxis]

And this, children, is why we don't allow slave PCs.

*closes the book of morals*

[Majikal]

Something tells me that Mal doesn't have a book of morals.

[mattrious]

*Psssst* It's because you smell.

[SMuz]

My character ignores a lot of characters because it's in his personality. I am intrigued by them OOC. I want to look and say hi and flirt, but my characters can be loners who don't quite like certain people. I think a lot of other characters do the same thing. Don't take it personally.

If you're playing a non-human race, you'll get it way worse

(also i glanced through the first post and not the clarification post)

[valeria]

Ultimate gist of my advice, because it's mostly been covered by other people--if you have problems with how someone is dealing with you IC, deal with it IC.  If you think the problem has crossed the line into OOC, take it to staff with a player complaint.