Staff-generated Echoes

[nauta]

Here's the idea:

A staff-generated echo would either be in bold or at least would be prepended with a unique character (':') so we can make it bold in our clients with a substitution script.

Staff-generated echos are usually important, but they often get lost in all that combat/movement spam.

[Malifaxis]

I personally like the idea that you have to pay fucking attention.

That's just me though, and I'm a curmudgeonly asshat.

[BadSkeelz]

Yeah, I don't really see what this adds that can't already be achieved just by paying a little bit of attention. It'd also be really jarring and immersion-breaking to see.

[Miradus]

I think if staff wants to get my attention that they're animating something then they may need to be prepared to have to do it more than once.

I play in a size 18 font because of my cataracts. There's been a significant number of times I've died because I didn't notice "A BadassNPC has arrived from the north" or something similar.

I can't see that this is going to enhance roleplay either. What I would expect to see is what you already see when a bartender suddenly throws out an unexpected animation: suddenly everyone becomes epic roleplayers and people start rushing in from all across the Known as they get alerted on IM to be present in front of staff and part of a potential RPT.

[valeria]

The only time this has been problematic for me was in an HRPT. And ultimately, staff just attached a beep to the command and it worked out fine eventually. I also wouldn't want to see this automatically because there's no reason I should be able to tell a staff environmental echo from a room echo.

But I also don't see the problem in giving staff the option to bold their echoes, as an option.

[Lizzie]

The only time this has been problematic for me was in an HRPT. And ultimately, staff just attached a beep to the command and it worked out fine eventually. I also wouldn't want to see this automatically because there's no reason I should be able to tell a staff environmental echo from a room echo.

But I also don't see the problem in giving staff the option to bold their echoes, as an option.

It would require that your browser/client/shoobiedoobiedoobie/ramalamadingdong is set up to accommodate bold commands sent from the server. I have -no- highlights at all set up. I have text color and background color. That's it. I like it that way.

[Malifaxis]

*polite cough* Its called a client.

[nauta]

Sad face.  Everyone hates my idea. 

I should say that the mud sends my client some things in bold, for instance sdescs during fight scenes.

[Reiloth]

I could see the benefit of having a 'nosave bold' sort of option, especially during CRAZY SPAM RPTs, so you don't miss what's going on that Staff is trying to direct.

[Miradus]

Sad face.  Everyone hates my idea. 

I should say that the mud sends my client some things in bold, for instance sdescs during fight scenes.

I have mine set up to make sounds when certain things happen and also to #substitute or #highlight sets of things I would not want to miss at all. Even though, there's sometimes that things just don't go the way I want and I still miss.

[Ath]

You want to know when I emote!  Whenever I type out something nice and long, and then I find a typo after I send it... then I hang my head in shame.

We have ways to make sure you see shit.  CAPS IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL!  (Though a beep works great also.  A well placed beep... during combat... I can already hear the heart-rate rising.)

[Miradus]

I spend an enormous amount of time not playing the game while I'm playing the game. Either tabbed out into another window posting nonsense on the GDB or reading about falling sperm counts in sea turtles. So I have it set to beep whenever something has arrived or some major change in the environment occurs, such as dawn or nightfall.

Need more weather echoes. Like "a sandstorm is approaching from the east" instead of "dust swirls all about you" just happening suddenly.

[BadSkeelz]

Need more weather echoes. Like "a sandstorm is approaching from the east" instead of "dust swirls all about you" just happening suddenly.

Maybe a chance to Notice weather changes in adjoining rooms? Tie it to Direction Sense so outdoorsy guilds and subguilds have the leg-up there.

[Miradus]

Oh yeah. Nice that there's already a skill to plug it into.

I'd like to be able to see weather patterns for quite some distance and be able to predict the weather somewhat to that regard.

[Rokal]

speaking of beeps I can never get mudlet to play one.

this makes things like combat very frantic for me since sometimes I miss stuff that I shouldn't.

I think this is a nice idea, if anything from playability in busier scenes - things can get hectic, -fast-

[Malken]

Sad face.  Everyone hates my idea. 

I should say that the mud sends my client some things in bold, for instance sdescs during fight scenes.

Welcome to the GDB, where you can always count on that one person hating your idea no matter how great it might be.

[Jihelu]

I like the idea.
But heres why I think it is bad.



I feel like players should respond to all echos, atleast in thinks or feels perhaps. I'm not saying you gotta emote throwing up at the sight of vomit every time but just keep it in mind. A staff generated echo would basically tell you to ignore all other echos.

[Lizzie]

I like the idea.
But heres why I think it is bad.



I feel like players should respond to all echos, atleast in thinks or feels perhaps. I'm not saying you gotta emote throwing up at the sight of vomit every time but just keep it in mind. A staff generated echo would basically tell you to ignore all other echos.

Agreed. It'd also be like saying "hey psst over here - staff is watching! You can maybe earn karma if you actually emote once or twice in the next 10 minutes!" and then when the special fancy staff echoes stop, you can go back to being your spam-casting no-emote no-tell self.

If you feel like the only time you need to step up is when the staff is watching - how about just assume staff is always watching, and step up all the time.

[Miradus]

I emote to entertain myself, not staff.

In fact, they're probably better off not watching at all.

[Lizzie]

I emote to entertain myself, not staff.

In fact, they're probably better off not watching at all.

I think that's a good way to do it (innuendo aside). Reiterating: If you feel like the only time you need to step up is when the staff is watching - how about just assume staff is always watching, and step up all the time.

You're not one of the people who that'd apply to then

[nauta]

I emote to entertain myself, not staff.

In fact, they're probably better off not watching at all.

I think that's a good way to do it (innuendo aside). Reiterating: If you feel like the only time you need to step up is when the staff is watching - how about just assume staff is always watching, and step up all the time.

You're not one of the people who that'd apply to then

Yeah, good point.  Now I even think it's a bad idea!  I hadn't thought about that.  I still will encounter a talk script I haven't encountered before and flip into 'interact-with-NPC' mode for a bit.

My motivation was the big battle RPTs that happened in Tuluk a while ago (go bats!), Allanak last year with the riots (go, um, I still am not sure what happened there), and also the battle RPTs in the tablelands recently (go gith!), wherein, overwhelmed with spam, I ended up combing logs to figure out the crucial staff-prompted clues about what was going on.  (I was -- I still am -- kind of, a newbie to combat and movement spam.)

I don't know about the beep thing, but maybe a wemote (or whatever command is used) that you could do a -b on to make it bold in certain hairy large-scale contexts.  (I'm assuming that the mud is capable of sending our clients text in bold.  Like I said, at least with a tintin++ client that doesn't highlight them, the sdesc of my opponent shows up in bold/bright white when I enter a fight.)

[Lizzie]

Nauta I don't know about the gith thing since I wasn't there. But I also wasn't there during the big Tuluk/Muark-territory "thing." My character was parked in a fairly remote part of the game world. I saw a few all-caps game-wide echoes, and I saw a few echoes that were nested in asterisks. So it's not that they don't have the means to do these things for players. They do, and they've actually made use of them. It's just that you had trouble keeping up with the screen scroll (as do I, which is why I'm SO glad I manage to miss most of the HRPTs or have characters that aren't on the battlefields).

[lostinspace]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAYXgbSlSv0

[Culinary Critic]

I personally like the idea that you have to pay fucking attention.

That's just me though, and I'm a curmudgeonly asshat.

My first Malifaxis +1.

Realism = pay attention to the stuff going on around you.  I've lost characters to it, you've lost characters to it, we all have.  In a world where someone will kill you for a drink of water, you'd best be watching the goings on around you.

Staff, any echo I do or don't see, appreciate the effort.