Release Note discussion!

[Lizzie]

The initial contact shows the hooded sdesc, but any further psionic message still show the true sdesc.

Not sure if that's a feature or a bug, but just pointing it out from one day of testing.

I think that's the point. You don't get to find out if the person you just wayed is the person you intended to way, until you let THEM know who YOU are by "psi"ing them.

It reduces the instances where people will contact someone wearing a hood to find out who that person is.

[Lizzie]

I like the idea. You want to know who I am, while I'm wearing my hood up 4 rooms away while hiding in the shadows? Then psi me a message, thus outing yourself to me first.

Otherwise, you'll just keep finding the tall hooded figure in a ratty purple silk cloak, over and over again.

On the other hand, if you are trying to find Amos and know his name...
and you keep finding the tall hooded figure in that purple cloak - you'll know Amos is over there - or at least you'll be able to assume with some moderate amount of confidence, that the hooded guy is Amos. No, Amos won't get to know that it's you who just found out it's him.

However -

If Amos is a clever girl, he'll have an identical cloak he gives to some grebber and pays the grebber to hide out 4 rooms away from you, while Amos is wearing the same cloak and is robbing your apartment on the other side of the city.

I really like this.

[triste]

Yeah, it's a good feature, but I am now convinced it needs tweaking after what Nao mentions, if what she says is correct. I don't want to find out an ally IG is a gick through a largely OOC mechanism like this.

[HortaCulture]

Yeah, it's a good feature, but I am now convinced it needs tweaking after what Nao mentions, if what she says is correct. I don't want to find out an ally IG is a gick through a largely OOC mechanism like this.

Yeah.. it's.. some of the side effects are awkward. The intent is solid and works for what it's intended to do.. but I don't want to learn people are gicks over the way, or say, know that they're naked. That's too safe. I want to walk in on you casting or kanking that aide (and freak out in a higher risk environment).

I feel like I shouldn't be able to spy on your immediate status via the way, unless I'm a psion, in which case all bets are off.

Are the code constraints too intense to set it up so you contact 'someone' over the way and thus must confirm it's the right 'someone'? Without all the 'hey babee what're u wearin, wait I already kno *wry*' stuff?

[triste]

Yeah, it's a good feature, but I am now convinced it needs tweaking after what Nao mentions, if what she says is correct. I don't want to find out an ally IG is a gick through a largely OOC mechanism like this.

Yeah.. it's.. some of the side effects are awkward. The intent is solid and works for what it's intended to do.. but I don't want to learn people are gicks over the way, or say, know that they're naked. That's too safe. I want to walk in on you casting or kanking that aide (and freak out in a higher risk environment).

I feel like I shouldn't be able to spy on your immediate status via the way, unless I'm a psion, in which case all bets are off.

Are the code constraints too intense to set it up so you contact 'someone' over the way and thus must confirm it's the right 'someone'? Without all the 'hey babee what're u wearin, wait I already kno *wry*' stuff?

Yeah, a good solution may be what I am very sure people were asking for to begin with -- you only know who is waying you. It addresses way sniffing this way. Instead of seeing:

A foreign presence touches your mind.

A foreign presence leaves your mind.

A foreign presence touches your mind.

A foreign presence leaves your mind.

A foreign presence touches your mind.

A foreign presence leaves your mind.

You see:

A nosy, tressy aide touches your mind.

A foreign presence leaves your mind.

The scabby, rat-tailed elf touches your mind.

A foreign presence leaves your mind.

A ripped, world-worn mercenary touches your mind.

A foreign presence leaves your mind.

This at least provides hints to the people being victimized by way touching. They now know that aide is annoying and just way sniffed you, and may have just hired two people to kill you. This is a relatively minimal change that would stop abusive metagaming while fixing the case Nao and many others are worried about.

[triste]

To make the point clear: the goal here is to reduce metagaming, Nao and others are talking about pretty severe metagaming that can be introduced by the current solution so we might want to tweak it. Still happy staff listened to us, to an extent: it is actually valuable to recall that people were requesting a less drastic change and maybe staff didn't have to know better and be so generous. The original proposal was merely to make sdesc information symmetric on the way -- the way it is for psi messages -- but upon initial contact, thus destroying the OOC metagaming tactic of "way tapping." That addresses the problem precisely and doesn't add opportunity for new metagaming [besides minor abuse in some edge cases such as when people accidentally way people, etc].

[betweenford]

Personally I feel like the current implementation is extremely wonky and just promotes additional metagaming culture though to a different extent. People will still (and are able to) "psi-sniff" your sdesc/outfit/hidden/invis/nakedness which gives the outside party way more relevant information than is really necessary. Moreover it doesn't even really stop someone who uses additional keywords to completely sniff out your sdesc via psionics/keyword command if they're in the same room.

I'm all for revealing the outside party's sdesc as a default with some caveats: an outside party (the attacker) can choose to conceal/obscure their outgoing sdesc at the cost of concentration/having to have a skill (while also perhaps sending messages to someone anonymously for extra plotting/politics), and the defending party be able to "challenge" or unveil the hidden mind (but not immediately uncover the sdesc, just end the anonymity) at the cost of having to expend stun points.
Mini-psionic battles of will that might otherwise end in broken anonymity (why is that templar's aide causing trouble?), or curiosity as to why that someone tipped you off about ABC when you can't uncover them.

Situations would end up like this:

Code (normal) Select Expand

The tressy-tressed aide contacts your mind.
The tressy-tressed aide sends you a telepathic message:
     "Heeeeeeeey. *warmth* Just checking in!!!
You sense the tressy-tressed aide withdraw from your mind.

Code (obscured) Select Expand

A foreign presence contacts your mind.
A foreign presence sends you a telepathic message:
   "Meet me at the the bench at Theyaks' Walk for your package."
You sense a foreign presence withdraw from your mind.

Code (mental "combat") Select Expand

A foreign presence contacts your mind.
>>unveil
>You attempt to unveil any concealed minds. (Could roll a vs against every mind individually?) (Could tell the 'attacker' they've been revealed if its a minor success?)
The tressy-tressed aide sends you a telepathic message:
     "Abigail Oash is spreading rumors about you to all the other Lords."
You sense the tressy-tressed aide withdraw from your mind.
The tressy-tressed aide contacts your mind.
The tressy-tressed aide sends you a telepathic message:
     "Actually, ignore that."
You sense the tressy-tressed aide withdraw from your mind.

[HeeBeeGB]

I wonder if there might be some way to 'recognize' someone's mind. After all, are all these presences foreign after a while? Are there distinctive signatures behind Aide Tressy and Templar Soandso?

If not, I wonder if the true way to ameliorate the problem is making it much harder to contact someone based on their cloak description. It used to be that you could contact people wearing a cloak (contact hooded.brown.sandcloth) even if they weren't in the same room as you. That was changed so you had to be in the same room as them. I wonder if it might be made even more difficult, which presents the opportunity for hooded people to be more anonymous, criminals to operate with a bit more potential to get away after being seen, and so on.

I don't dislike this change...I suppose I don't entirely see the point of it, beyond whomsoever is fishing for your desc must send you a 'psi' to do so. The other implications (That people under certain spells, that they are naked, or other modifiers) seems a bit too far for what is ostensibly Newbie Psionics, compared to a Mindbender. I don't think people should be able to tell you are naked from afar, it's odd. Before it felt like we were operating with HAM radios, and now it feels a bit like we've jumped to a brief version of FaceTime.

[triste]

Yeah agreed HeeBeeGB, it is like everyone now has 20% of the power of a 4 karma mind worm*. It should be changed. If I were playing a gicker with sdesc modifying spells, I wouldn't log in at all right now. I don't trust people /not/ to abuse the sort of knowledge being leaked right now.

* However, I have always been in favor or more low level, accessible psionics. My characters get accused of being mind worms all the time due to their intuition -- I would love to have the chance to actually roleplay one before I die IRL! Therefore, I think ideas like Betweenford's idea here is great and deeply roleplay enriching:

Code (obscured) Select Expand

A foreign presence contacts your mind.
A foreign presence sends you a telepathic message:
   "Meet me at the the bench at Theyaks' Walk for your package."
You sense a foreign presence withdraw from your mind.

Hell yes, I love this. How is something like this anything but awesome.

Before the conversation here gets cut off with claims that we are cluttering the thread, I think a larger discussion on introducing low-level psionics would be beneficial and it is timely. Great ideas here.

[NinjaFruitSalad]

I think only worn items that modify sdesc should be shown over the way.  Otherwise, stuff like hiding, shadows, and magic effects shouldn't.  Would seem more fair, honestly.

[Lotion]

A good idea

I think this is a good idea

[NinjaFruitSalad]

Very good idea, betweenford.

Also, I've realized a way to gain meta-knowledge from the code as it is. Supposing you and your friends are hunting down a wanted somebody. Maybe this person is trying to evade capture via stealth and switching out their cloaks to try to confuse and throw off their chasers. Well, nope! Not anymore! Simply contacting that person shows you what cloak they are wearing (if they have it pulled up to obscure their face), and so someone could just contact/cease frequently to know exactly what cloak they are wearing.

[Fredd]

Tuluki Crimcode update? 

[triste]

Tuluki Crimcode update? 

Beat me to it, my reaction to this was 👀

Every possible implication of this update is intriguing af

[HortaCulture]

Expanded options for item creation.

Wat is?

[Blink]

Tuluki Crimcode update? 

I am going to make a guess that it will apply to Morin's.

[Aruven]

Intriguing. I'm curious where this starts to blend with a certain guild though.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Code (obscured) Select Expand

A foreign presence contacts your mind.
A foreign presence sends you a telepathic message:
   "Meet me at the the bench at Theyaks' Walk for your package."
You sense a foreign presence withdraw from your mind.

Yeah.

[Pew Pew]

Code (obscured) Select Expand

A foreign presence contacts your mind.
A foreign presence sends you a telepathic message:
   "Meet me at the the bench at Theyaks' Walk for your package."
You sense a foreign presence withdraw from your mind.

This would be fucking epic

Yeah.

[KittenLicks]

Personally, I'm curious what this (the change to contact) is going to do to the stealth meta. Can you now hire someone to stay in your mind and tell you if your hide breaks while you're scoping out a mark?

[betweenford]

Personally, I'm curious what this (the change to contact) is going to do to the stealth meta. Can you now hire someone to stay in your mind and tell you if your hide breaks while you're scoping out a mark?

Don't mind me, just spamming stat several times every minute.

[Fredd]

Personally, I'm curious what this (the change to contact) is going to do to the stealth meta. Can you now hire someone to stay in your mind and tell you if your hide breaks while you're scoping out a mark?

Remember how people used to complain all the time that Burglars burgled in the early AM's when the player count is like 6?

We are back to that.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

What if a door couldn't be opened unless the player who owned that door was online?

I suppose then you could say people will metagame by trying to unlock doors, I guess ... eh.

[wizturbo]

Stealth code shouldn't work in apartment hallways.  Make them no hide.  Problems solved.  Can still burglar but you're taking more risk.

[Is Friday]

Stealth code shouldn't work in hallways or apartments.  Make them no hide.  Problems solved.  Can still burglar but you're taking more risk.

Simple solutions are often the best. It makes no sense to be able to hide in apartment hallways (without magick.)