Spam Of Looks

[AmandaGreathouse]

The thing is... It just doesn't echo when you look at vnpcs, they're just spotting you from amidst some of the others they no doubtr get enough of a glimpse of to at least see what colors they're wearing and such. You know.

[chrisdcoulombe]

When someone is uncomfortable with me looking, I assume they are up to something so I look more than once. 

[Dakota]

>look (as her cold gaze drifts over those along the bar) some.man

...

see? Was that hard? I just spelled out the whole suspension of disbelief (i.e. that I'm looking at more people that YOU).

[Fathi]

This is one of those things you just have to learn to filter out. It used to bother me when I first started playing, because I felt like I had to emote and perform for all those people who looked at my character!

But then I realised that just because they look doesn't mean they give a shit.

[Jeshin]

Don't worry, one day you'll be annoyed people don't look. How do you think Templar mcHardnose feels when he spends 3000 sid on some new item for his look and no one bothers to even look spam him because they all know he's a Templar?

Look spam shows you care!

[rocketman]

Some people make it sound like "look" is someone staring at you point blank without flinching. In fact it could be just a turn of your head, and the person comes into view. In real life if your in the supermarket, and a big lady with a bright green shirt stands in line behind you, you notice her as you silde your can of pea's up to the cashier. Now you didn't stop and stare at her you casualy seen her and now you know a big lady in a green shirt is behind you. I think its the same thing with the look command. Its a pain yes when the entire room "looks" at you when you step in. But I don't take it as if I am being stared at.

[SpyGuy]

Look just needs to be an hemote instead of a normal echo. So people won't freak about it.

I agree.  But it should work similar to "look in" so that if you added a command emote it'll become a normal emote.

Examples:

look amos = vanilla hemote

look amos (narrowing his eyes) = normal emote

[Voular]

My templar use to order people to look at him, for his swanky outfits.

In any case, I really hate people who do "non-emotes". Ie. "emote ignores ~you." and so forth. You don't have to emote out negative values, simply emote out doing whatever the fuck else you are doing that leads you to ignore me. You might as well emote "e is not rich and is not bald.". Makes about as much sense. It's information we already know, and can deduce from the situation. No need to hit me over the head with a fucking insult emote.

[Dalmeth]

It's funny.

The real world operates with the same degree of anxiety.

People are just going to look at you.  Get over it.

[AreteX]

I don't see what the problem is when it comes to looking at everyone.  The comparison about a bar/club has been made with 100's of potential people.  When I am at a bar/club in real life I look at everyone all the time.  I am a big fan of people watching anywhere I go.  I am sure other people do this.

When you look at someone you take a quick assessment of them and move on usually.  If you like how they look or are intrigued you go back eventually and maybe stare for a while.  When you look at someone in-game it isn't like you're staring at them for an extraordinary amount of time.  You're looking at them.  This could be emoted to give more intent.  If you're staring, emote it.  If you're just glancing, emote it.  I don't see why there is any problem with someone looking at your character.

Now, I do understand why you might be annoyed by walking into the tavern and immediately being looked at by every PC in the room.  This is something I tend to avoid myself unless my character is already looking at the entrance direction.  If I am waiting on someone and staring at the tarp then you'll probably be looked at when you enter.  If I am deep in conversation then I won't just suddenly turn and look at the new PC that entered the room.  But, if you walk up to the bar and sit down I might give you a glance because... I'm at the bar too and just like RL I tend to look at people who come sit at the same bar.

I think this is a matter of the correct emoting and interpretation of look.  If you're staring while you look, emote it.  And if there is no emote accompanied with the look then don't assume someone is doing anything more than a cursory glance and let it go!

[Creslin]

I personally think the staff should do one of the following:

• Remove the echo from look unless an emote is attached.
• OR - Make looking at someone something that has to be noticed by the watch skill like hemotes (unless they emote??  )
• OR- add a command that gives a fraction of the information that look gives and has no echo
  

If they added a new command like 'glance' (help glance currently refers to assess) it would be cool if you only 100% of the time saw certain equipment (cloaks, shirts, pants, boots, helmets/masks, weapons (especially on back), gloves) and the rest had to make watch skill checks.

I.E not everything will notice that bracelet, or that necklace, or that earring, belt, ankle items, ect, but making a watch skill check you could notice these things.

[DustMight]

If you gag the look on your client you won't see it. 
Problem solved.

[Creslin]

If you gag the look on your client you won't see it.  
Problem solved.

I don't think you understand what I was getting at... it's not all about whether *I* see the echo or not. It's also an issue with being able to look at someone without being noticed that you're doing so, which some people want.

[titansfan]

I lived in a tavern for pretty much my whole life, my grandparents owned it. After 17 years of bar watching, I notice that anytime someone comes into the tavern, people will turn and give a glance at said person for the following reasons:

A) To see if they actually know said person.
B) To check out said person because said person might be *haaaawt*
C) The noise of the door opening/closing startled them
D) People are just curious creatures (or drunk).

[Lizzie]

I think people are trying to compare a tavern or inn, with a real-world american-style dance club.

You won't be seeing hundreds of people milling about in these Zalanthan bars - maybe a few dozen in any one room, at any given moment, at the very most. Perhaps you'll see hundreds of people pass in and out over the course of a game-day. But that'd consist of "the random VNPC crew of 6 Bynners" with the "random VNPC crew of 4 Oash Elites" along with the "random VNPC crew of 3 solders" plus the 3 PC soldiers that are always on duty and assigned permanently to the building, plus "the 4 random unaffiliated nondenominational citizen VNPCs who came in for lunch," and the so on and so forth...

and that's one game-hour period. Then the next game hour, you have a whole new set of a couple dozen people. And maybe there'll be 1/4 of an hour overlap between groups, where there might even be a few people standing waiting for an empty stool at the bar.

at night you'd have much more, because that's when most of the houses and organizations allow employees to take time off.

But "much more" is another dozen, not a few hundred. There are probably several more virtual bars to accommodate more virtual customers, in addition to the 2-6 in the city (depending on the city).

[BadSkeelz]

I can't speak for many other taverns, but I imagine the Gaj as being similar to a large German Beer Hall i.e. pretty friggin' big. Being the largest (it takes up a full block on the [admittedly not to scale] city map) and least exclusive, it stands to reason that it'd draw huge crowds. A crowd of hundreds is not at all hard for me to imagine there. I've seen other PCs emoting having to force their way through the virtual crowd even if it's just me and them in there. And you'll still get "crushed by the crowd against the bar" if you're the only PC there. Place is busy.

[ghostymudy]

Tangent time - the look command echoing.

In my opinion I don't think of a look echo as being a terribly bad thing as it doesn't really give people much of and advantage in any way and it's pretty sensible. If I'm looking at you in a way that allows me to discern the decorations of none-common armours, then I think it's fair to say you might notice. If you want to just glance at someone briefly in a way that doesn't attract attention then just Hemote it manually, yeah you wont get an echo describing their appearance indepth as well as every little visible trinket they have on them but then you're glancing at them, not giving them a good hard stare down, as evidenced by the Hemote you typed out.

You could then go on about the way you'd be able to spot the general colours of people's outfits and uniforms at a glance without picking up the fine details... but then that's easily answered by whacking an emote on their stating you're glancing in that way and leaving it to yourself and the other player to play it off as what it was RP'd to be, a glance, that "playing off" being you not picking up on fine details until you have a normal look at them and them -possibly- not paying it much heed.

You could respond to that by mentioning how even if you pay it off perfectly as a glance, some people still RP as catching you out. The solution there would be to "deal with it", because sometimes people  catch you glancing and people will react to it as they wish. If the amount of the people RPing it as them catching you glancing at them far outnumbers those ignoring it, think about the vNPCs that don't catch you glancing at them. You notice all these vNPCs in a tavern yet the three thugs in the corner of the seedy tavern that would happily beat your breed to a pulp for looking at them don't, because they didn't notice you, so count yourselves lucky!


Either that or we could just stop caring about something so miniscule that barely affects RP and keep going as is with a system that's functioned well facilitating RP for longer than I've been born. Code shouldn't really need to walk people through this by their hands and I believe our playerbase is mature enough to let the occasional glance go.

Either way, if people make a thing of you glancing at them then it's more RP, that's what the games about, no?


That all probably made bugger all sense but I don't care since it's late and I never get to post on the GDB anyway. I just feel complaining about people seeing you looking at them is a little silly.

[Kiara]

Look, I don't care if you call me silly or stupid for posting about something I find rather annoying. But again it's also another one of the reasons I hate posting on the GDB because 80% of the GDB population degrade and insult you.

Bottom line this post was about when you walk into a tavern and ALL the pc's in that room look at you. So all you see when you walk in is the following. No pauses in between looks, no nothing, you just get spammed with 10x looks from people. I did this post because I walked into a bar just recently and this is exactly what happened.

1. (blah looks at you)
2. (blah looks at you)
3. (blah looks at you)
4. (blah looks at you)
5. (blah looks at you)
6. (blah looks at you)
7. (blah looks at you)
8. (blah looks at you)
9. (blah looks at you)
10. (blah looks at you)

No emotes that are visible to me, and the fact that this is in fact annoying. Emote with the look do SOMETHING, don't just type Look Blah! If your hemoting GREAT!! If not this is something to think about. Yea the game is about rp, but really that's not rp. Rp is when you actually type "Look blah, while glancing past blah."

[Delirium]

That's emoting. Roleplay is doing what your character would do, in a consistent and believable manner.

Lookspam used to annoy me, too, but it's just one of those things that's necessary to gloss over. Don't sweat the small stuff, etc.

[Malifaxis]

This is the most idiotic thing to get annoyed over.  Seriously.  It's so goddamn minute that it's laughable.

Let just say (and I'm not saying you do, I'm just using this as a hypothetical situation) that you only ever play F'me PCs who are fucking perfect and who, perhaps, paint their toenails.  How are we supposed to know you have immaculately kept and painted toenails without actually looking at your PC?  You (hypothetical you, remember) took the time and effort to put that into your Ldesc so you (again, hypothetical) obviously want people to know.  How are we supposed to know without looking at you unless you walk in to the bar like this:

Her immaculately painted toenails leading the way, the buxom, buxomly set of womanly curves wrapped around a vague character concept enters from the south.

Which you (again, hypothetical) probably would never do.  Because it's not first in your mind.

As for the blah looks at you problem... again, get over it.  Just like you (hypothetical!) don't enter every room with a staged emote ready to go, every person who looks at you doesn't always have time to express how they're looking at you.

Some people will just look at you.  Get over it.

Some people will look you up and down.  Some will squint.  Some will look up in shock as various parts of their body immediately begin to stiffen because you're playing Tektolnes' own concubine-quality F'me.  Some will glance at you over the rim of a shotglass.  Some will not even care enough to look at you.

And some.  Will.  Look.  At.  You.   Nothing special.  Nothing grandiose.  Nothing even laughably noteworthy.  They just look.  Then they go back to whatever scene they are involved in, having grebbed the information they needed to from your PC by looking at her (namely, your immaculately kept hypothetical toenails.)

Bebop and I walked into a bar last night... wow that sounds like a joke, but it's totally not.  We actually did that.  She was dressed amazingly, I was dressed kinda alrightly, and we walked into this shithole of a bar.  Know what happened?  People turned to look at us.

OMG.

They turned to look!  THE FUCKERS!  So I immediately flipped out and ninjakilled them all.

The end.

[Thunkkin]

The first time I played a character that could hide and also "peek," my appreciation for the game world really went up. I began to notice neat things that NPCs were wearing or to suddenly realize things about N/PCS (their affiliations, slave collars, etc.) that I had missed for a long time. Why? Because I could take my time and look at things without feeling like I was wandering around gaping with my mouth open spamming everyone.

I wish look was silent (offset by mdesc hiding masks and a study command in light of the raiding objection, which is the only objection about the look command having an echo that I find mildly compelling). I cut my teeth on other muds and this aspect of Arm was one of the things I found very tiresome and strange. I hate other people's look spam and I despise generating my own. So I just don't look at people unless I'm talking directly with them and I often end up ignoring npcs. Staff's work goes less appreciated and player's work goes less appreciated.

The "hood"-looks are the best. "OMG IT'S PROBABLY A THIEF OR ASSASSIN AND IF I LOOK IMMEDIATELY IT WILL REVEAL SOMETHING AMAZING. Oh, no, just a normal person. Yawn. I'll walk away before they have a chance to look back." I swear some of you have a "look figure" macro.

Dorks.

[flurry]

Silver lining: If you're overwhelmed with look echos, you must be someplace where there are lots of PCs.

[DustMight]

If you gag the look on your client you won't see it.  
Problem solved.

I don't think you understand what I was getting at... it's not all about whether *I* see the echo or not. It's also an issue with being able to look at someone without being noticed that you're doing so, which some people want.

I was addressing the general issue of look spam, which seemed to be the biggest issue, to me.

[jhunter]

This is the most idiotic thing to get annoyed over.  Seriously.  It's so goddamn minute that it's laughable.

Let just say (and I'm not saying you do, I'm just using this as a hypothetical situation) that you only ever play F'me PCs who are fucking perfect and who, perhaps, paint their toenails.  How are we supposed to know you have immaculately kept and painted toenails without actually looking at your PC?  You (hypothetical you, remember) took the time and effort to put that into your Ldesc so you (again, hypothetical) obviously want people to know.  How are we supposed to know without looking at you unless you walk in to the bar like this:

Her immaculately painted toenails leading the way, the buxom, buxomly set of womanly curves wrapped around a vague character concept enters from the south.

Which you (again, hypothetical) probably would never do.  Because it's not first in your mind.

As for the blah looks at you problem... again, get over it.  Just like you (hypothetical!) don't enter every room with a staged emote ready to go, every person who looks at you doesn't always have time to express how they're looking at you.

Some people will just look at you.  Get over it.

Some people will look you up and down.  Some will squint.  Some will look up in shock as various parts of their body immediately begin to stiffen because you're playing Tektolnes' own concubine-quality F'me.  Some will glance at you over the rim of a shotglass.  Some will not even care enough to look at you.

And some.  Will.  Look.  At.  You.   Nothing special.  Nothing grandiose.  Nothing even laughably noteworthy.  They just look.  Then they go back to whatever scene they are involved in, having grebbed the information they needed to from your PC by looking at her (namely, your immaculately kept hypothetical toenails.)

Bebop and I walked into a bar last night... wow that sounds like a joke, but it's totally not.  We actually did that.  She was dressed amazingly, I was dressed kinda alrightly, and we walked into this shithole of a bar.  Know what happened?  People turned to look at us.

OMG.

They turned to look!  THE FUCKERS!  So I immediately flipped out and ninjakilled them all.

The end.

I think I saw that in the news. Man Brutally Murders Twenty Bargoers Over Look Spam

[Is Friday]

They turned to look!  THE FUCKERS!  So I immediately flipped out and ninjakilled them all.

Did you even get any dodges?