contact cease

[Lotion]

If you contact cease I hate you. It doesn't matter if you just wanted to check if someone was online. If your character wants to see if a specific person is up it means you either want to interact with them or avoid them.

• You want to interact: psi Hey Amos! Let's hang out you're cool.
• You don't want: psi Ugh, I thought so. *ceases*

[Narf]

I'm inclined to dredge up the old "give the short description of the person contacting you when it happens" suggestion. I never thought it was fair that the contactor gets more info than the contactee.

[NinjaFruitSalad]

I think there is something really wrong with the practice.. at least etiquette wise.

Though it makes me wonder if there should be a psionic "sense" command that pretty much only lets you tell if someone is around in the world, with chance of failure either not making it accurate, or giving away the fact that you tried to sense that person.

[John]

I would be all for that. Contact is quite a abusable. While staff theoretically police it, I doubt they do so consistently or effectively. This change would stop certain meta-behaviour and get players to act in ways their PCs should act.

[number13]

Maybe this is crazy....maybe contact should just be a psion skill (and the psion class then shoved into a blender and broken down into subguilds). Instead of contact/break you would just use the psi command, as if it was a tell command. Same stun loss, and barrier still prevents it.

Further, if it is just like the tell command, it could include emotes.

psi amos (pensively) "Hurry and get to the barracks. The Sarge is pissed."

For pinging someone's head to see if they are contactable....a sense or ping command, that reports back to the target that the ping occurred.

You feel a tall, muscular man is reaching out telepathically to find your mind.

.....

With all the above in place, there could be an exclude command, instead of an expel command. You put another character into your Exclude list, and they have to break past your barrier skill in order to ping or psi you....and it costs them extra Stun to do so. So if you've got someone abusing the ping command or psi commands, you can handle the problem yourself.

[Lizzie]

A problem with adhering to the "let's be polite at all costs" thing with regards to the Way, in this case:

You're a leader character. Or a very busy aide character. Someone who has people in their head often, sometimes for lengthy discussions. You're walking up Stonecarver's trying to get to a meeting. At the same time, you're going back and forth between minds, getting a task accomplished with the bunch of them. Time is of the essence - you don't have time to sit down and rest in the middle of the road until your stun points go back up, you just have to keep moving and hope you don't pass out. Your stun points are now down to 40, and the way conversation isn't over yet.

Lord Templar orders you to find Amos's mind to relay another set of instructions.

You get the wrong Amos, and your stun points are now down to 38.

You don't have enough stun points to way the wrong mind to tell them you wayed the wrong mind, AND find the right Amos AND relay the message to him.

This is the #1 most common reason why I don't bother wasting stun points telling people I have the wrong mind. Because I don't want to pass out and waste anywhere between 10-20 minutes of play time being unconscious, especially when my character is in the middle of getting things done. If it happens while I'm waying the right people, I'll take it on the chin. But if it happens because I, the player, decided I'd be polite to another player, then I'd be like - wtf. And what a waste of time. This is a game. My character needs to relay information. Not the right person? Oh well - I'll move on til I get the right one. In my character's mind, your character just isn't important enough to address.

The #2 most common reason is because I keep getting an NPC when I'm trying to get someone else. The same NPC, whenever the "someone else" isn't logged in.

On the other hand - once in awhile, I'll enter someone's head on purpose, and not say anything, precisely to annoy them. To let them know "someone is in my head, I'm not alone." It's a pretty powerful message, I think, and I don't apologize for sending it.

[Grogerif]

There are also situations where having low stun can kill you.  I'm out here in the desert, I'll way Amos to pass some time.   Oh look, <insert danger here> entered the room.  The stun points you use to Psi a message could be the stun points that keep you awake.

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

Let's be real here. Most contact ceasing in the game is caused by:

l me
The figure wearing a sdesc concealing mask is in excellent condition.

Amos the Curious walks in from the west.

You feel a foreign presence in your mind.

--

Sdesc fishing is... Frustratingly prevalent

[Lizzie]

Let's be real here. Most contact ceasing in the game is caused by:

l me
The figure wearing a sdesc concealing mask is in excellent condition.

Amos the Curious walks in from the west.

You feel a foreign presence in your mind.

--

Sdesc fishing is... Frustratingly prevalent

Hardly ever. I -rarely- ever have my hood up, or my face concealed. By hardly ever, I mean I usually ride with my hood down, I don't own a facewrap or mask, and my characters usually don't care if people recognize them or not. And yet - I get contact/cease all the time. It doesn't bother me, unless it's a lingering contact. And then, I ROLEPLAY it. I RP that my character is assuming someone is doing it on purpose to remind my PC that she's never truly alone.

If I have expel and it bothers her enough, she'll toss them out. That isn't always an option, however I consider it a roleplay tool, and use it as such, and assume everyone else is doing the same.

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

The one time I got too tired with lingering folk in my head - the ONE time - and expelled... It was a Templar and I got in trouble. 😅

[Cabooze]

Let's be real here. Most contact ceasing in the game is caused by:

l me
The figure wearing a sdesc concealing mask is in excellent condition.

Amos the Curious walks in from the west.

You feel a foreign presence in your mind.

--

Sdesc fishing is... Frustratingly prevalent

I've been on the receiving and giving end of this, so I can't really be too upset about it. The main point of it is that people are doing this effortlessly without emote to let you know they might be trying to probe you.

If someone enters your room just to contact-sniff you, okay, that's pretty shit. But if they walk in, emote looking up or down at you and concentrating on you in some way and then you get contacted, you can't really complain. It's part of the gameworld. It's the troubles of living in a psionic society. Barrier is a useful skill for this reason, as well.

[Narf]

Let's be real here. Most contact ceasing in the game is caused by:

l me
The figure wearing a sdesc concealing mask is in excellent condition.

Amos the Curious walks in from the west.

You feel a foreign presence in your mind.

--

Sdesc fishing is... Frustratingly prevalent

If someone enters your room just to contact-sniff you, okay, that's pretty shit. But if they walk in, emote looking up or down at you and concentrating on you in some way and then you get contacted, you can't really complain. It's part of the gameworld. It's the troubles of living in a psionic society. Barrier is a useful skill for this reason, as well.

I can't say I've ever had anyone emote about sdesc sniffing me. Like ever in twenty years of playing the game. Sometimes there aren't any emotes at all, they're just sniffing all the cloaked figures in the room because they're cloaked and PC's.

I wouldn't mind this so much if I knew who was doing it, but only the sniffer gets any info which seems... off. There's no risk or cost to it at all.

[LindseyBalboa]

Anytime someone ever used the look command on you before 'sdesc sniffing,' they've given you all the coded roleplay that's really required. Just like in some situations, emoting before a backstab would be nice, but it isn't always okay. You didn't see the look? That's a coded, in-game dice roll that your character failed, even if you the player wish that you could have some OOC notification of the IC interaction. Your character lives in a world where everyone has telepathic abilities, and those abilities aren't always going to be 100% identifiable by the character, let alone you as a player.

That being said, sometimes I contact someone to see if they're around before going to try and initiate roleplay. That, or a mis-contact to some NPC or the wrong PC, is probably about 9/10 of my contact/ceases. Wasting stun points while I'm out in a dangerous situation (and most anywhere on grid counts for that) is dumb. If I'm safe, I might send out a "psi *annoyance*" or something, or whatever IC fits. But that isn't required, any more than in the real world someone is somehow compelled to talk to you on the phone if they call the wrong number.

Beyond that, I'll admit to occasionally contact/ceasing someone if I'm hunting them. Using what limited psionic abilities my character had at the time (contact and barrier, same as anyone starting), and with their personality, it made sense for them to keep their targets on edge, like someone throwing pebbles at a window every few hours or something. Like Lizzie said, it's a powerful message that gets across plenty without typing out worded messages.

tl;dr  I guess a player could decide their character thinks it's rude for contact/cease to happen, but as a game mechanic, it's functioning just fine imo. Throw a barrier up or learn to expel really well, there are coded defenses to contact already in place.

[KittenLicks]

I've contact;cease'd on a few occasions. Usually it's one of three reasons:

1) contact large.nosed.templar. psi Dear Lord Templar.. no, wait, you don't say dear. Lord Templar... wait, that sounds rude. Templar.. person... oh god now I'm just creepily waiting in this guy's head, he's going to know it took me like 5 minutes to write a simple sentence. cease.

2) contact amos. Oh there's more than one amos. cease. contac tall.amos. Okay, so there's more than one tall Amos. cease. contact tall.dark.amos.

3) I haven't seen another PC in 2 IRL days and I'm just Waying every name my character has heard. Eventually, I manage to get into the head of that one grebber I spoke to once half a month ago then never again. I promptly realize I don't actually have anything to say (and that it is a bit dubious that my character even remembers this grebber). cease. Guess I'll go drinking and hope I bump into them.

When it happens, it's usually more about me oocly stressing out than anything malicious.

[Dar]

All I can say is that if I'm playing a criminal, or a red stormer and someone meets me for the first time while I'm hooded and my character feels a contact/cease, he will suspect the person just scried him and invaded his privacy. At this point all the prices suddenly go up and hostile demeanor jumps from 2-3 to 7-9.

At the same time if I'm some different role and I don't tend to be wanted/hunted/private, then I really don't care

[BadSkeelz]

https://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Barrier

[Mendel]

As somebody I don't remember once said:

IF it's worth calling about, it's worth leaving a message.

[Lizzie]

As somebody I don't remember once said:

IF it's worth calling about, it's worth leaving a message.

And if it's not worth calling about, then don't leave a message.

And
Sometimes - the message is the ringing of the phone.

[perfecto]

https://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Barrier

I was actually thinking about this earlier today, how Barrier is pretty much useless now.  With everyone starting with close to maxed out Contact now-a-days; pretty much a 1 minute old character will blast through your barrier unless you've been honing it for a solid month IRL. 

[number13]

I was actually thinking about this earlier today, how Barrier is pretty much useless now.  With everyone starting with close to maxed out Contact now-a-days; pretty much a 1 minute old character will blast through your barrier unless you've been honing it for a solid month IRL.

Even before the chance to contact's starting skill level, barrier was always only useful in a few specific scenarios. If you have your barrier up to avoid the contacts you don't want, you're also avoiding the contacts you do want. And it messes with your stun.

I'd prefer automatic contact blocking -- a list of characters for whom the contact command always fails. For non-psions, it could make sense if Way required two willing parties. And it's solves the problem of people who ping heads just to check online status. If you have one (or a dozen) of those guys in your character's life, it would be nice to be able to just block them and be done with it. A sneaky with his hood up could block the local po-po as well, to make hood peeks a little more difficult.

And this would potentially also fuck a certain widely hated spell, which is 1000+ bonus points.

Or, it could go in the other direction -- a contact whitelist. You have to have met the person and agreed to swap psoinic phone numbers prior to contacting...?

[triste]

I'd prefer automatic contact blocking -- a list of characters for whom the contact command always fails.

Neat idea, but should incur stun/way usage and have a chance to fail. Otherwise criminal folk might just instantly block everyone they see.

Or, it could go in the other direction -- a contact whitelist. You have to have met the person and agreed to swap psoinic phone numbers prior to contacting...?

I kind of like this but would need to include a toggle to let people publicly way you in case you are playing something like a Byn Sarge who wants to recruit people after making a post in a tavern.

Fully agreed all or nothing barrier is and for a long time has been less than ideal. I love the expel skill because it's a more direct way of managing contacts, but your ideas to have control around initial contact here rock [with some tweaking to consider abuse scenarios].

[BadSkeelz]

https://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Barrier

I was actually thinking about this earlier today, how Barrier is pretty much useless now.  With everyone starting with close to maxed out Contact now-a-days; pretty much a 1 minute old character will blast through your barrier unless you've been honing it for a solid month IRL.

I can assure you that "Barrier is pretty much useless" is categorically incorrect. For one, you might start at Master contact, but you are no ways at maxed Contact.

[number13]

Neat idea, but should incur stun/way usage and have a chance to fail. Otherwise criminal folk might just instantly block everyone they see.

That's a feature, not a bug. They'd be giving up their ability to be readily available for social calls (outside of a select group of co-conspirators) in exchange for being mysterious.

[sleepyhead]

I contact cease because I get nervous to roleplay with people. I reach out with the full intent of talking, but then I psych myself out and cease and quit the game.

[Barsook]

I contact cease because I get nervous to roleplay with people. I reach out with the full intent of talking, but then I psych myself out and cease and quit the game.

That happens to me time to time.