Perfume/Cleaning Oil Durations

[Katima]

Hello folks!

As some of you may know, I recently reworked and economized soap. This was just a small part of a bigger project I'm working on to economize and balance scents in general.

It was brought to my attention by other staff that there was a big discussion in the not too distant past where players said that they're not interested in perfumes and cleaning oils because when you use them, they burn out too quickly. I'd like to meet you all halfway on this and find a happy medium between staff opinion and community opinion about the ideal length of a single 'use' of perfume or cleaning oil. In the poll here you'll find all of your options which I made up myself. My fellow staff have weighed in, and now its your turn.

I'm not leaving this up for very long because I need to get to work, so make sure your opinion is expressed before its too late!

[Lotion]

poggers

[Usiku]

poggers

Hrm?? 

[betweenford]

poggers

[mansa]

poggers

Hrm?? 

ok boomer

longer is better.
is there a way to remove perfume?  perhaps with a strigil?

[Brytta Léofa]

poggers

ok zoomer


I think perfumes should last one long play session. So: 8 days, but including logged-out time (like alcohol).

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You are no longer smelly.

I also wish spice smells wore off whilst offline. Nearly got reamed out by my Byn sarge for using spice in Nak. "Sarge! It's from that trip to Luirs.. ..last month.."

[Fredd]

I'de like for my scent to be saved if i log off. Similar to poison status, ect.

4.5 hours is plenty long enough for a scene

my BIG problem with scents, is that you have to actively SNIFF someone to notice it. And that has an echo. And then people look at you weird.

Scents should add a tag line to you desc. So they are always noticable. Otherwise you are that weird guy walking around, shoving a hand under peoples nose, and going "sniff me."

[Alesan]

my BIG problem with scents, is that you have to actively SNIFF someone to notice it. And that has an echo. And then people look at you weird.

Does it? I've never seen this.

[Riev]

I've never seen sniff echo.

[Alesan]

The thing I HAVE seen echo is if you just "sniff" without arguments. That's the only one I've ever done that people have reacted to as if they saw what I did.

[Katima]

my BIG problem with scents, is that you have to actively SNIFF someone to notice it. And that has an echo. And then people look at you weird.

Sorry, but also good news: this is incorrect. I've tested this to obnoxious levels with the assistance of other staff members, NPCs and even on a mortal PC because you made me doubt myself, lol. There is no echo when you sniff except to yourself. Maybe it used to be that way, but it isn't that way now. You don't even create an echo to others if you openly sniff a room you're standing in with <sniff room>.

As Alesan said, the only time you'll echo is if you type sniff with no arguments, because <sniff> with no arguments is like  <wave> with no arguments in that it is a hard-coded emote with a specific output. It creates an emote when you use it without targeting someone, because its designed to do so in the code.

[Alesan]

I'de like for my scent to be saved if i log off. Similar to poison status, ect.

We are not going to do this, sorry to say. Scents will continue to tick down once you've logged off. The changes are to make them more beneficial while players are logged on, and to ensure they don't run out during long scenes.

my BIG problem with scents, is that you have to actively SNIFF someone to notice it. And that has an echo. And then people look at you weird.

Sorry, and also good news, this is incorrect. I've tested this to obnoxious levels with the assistance of other staff members, NPCs and even on a mortal PC because you made me doubt myself, lol. There is no echo when you sniff except to yourself. Maybe it used to be that way, but it isn't that way now. You don't even create an echo to others if you openly sniff a room you're standing in with <sniff room>.

As Alesan said, the only time you'll echo is if you type sniff with no arguments, because <sniff> with no arguments is like  <wave> with no arguments in that it is a hard-coded emote with a specific output. It creates an emote when you use it without targeting someone, because its designed to do so in the code.

The only other comment I have to make about it, is if it is coded as an emote... it isn't highlighted as one within the ANSI coloring system.

[Katima]

The only other comment I have to make about it, is if it is coded as an emote... it isn't highlighted as one within the ANSI coloring system.

I'll have to look into that, cause I just noticed the same thing.

[Katima]

is there a way to remove perfume?  perhaps with a strigil?

Not currently, that I know of. I've put in an ask to our coders to see how difficult creating a script for that would be. If it ends up getting done, I'll of course make an announcement for it.

[Fredd]

I'de like for my scent to be saved if i log off. Similar to poison status, ect.

We are not going to do this, sorry to say. Scents will continue to tick down once you've logged off. The changes are to make them more beneficial while players are logged on, and to ensure they don't run out during long scenes.

my BIG problem with scents, is that you have to actively SNIFF someone to notice it. And that has an echo. And then people look at you weird.

Sorry, but also good news: this is incorrect. I've tested this to obnoxious levels with the assistance of other staff members, NPCs and even on a mortal PC because you made me doubt myself, lol. There is no echo when you sniff except to yourself. Maybe it used to be that way, but it isn't that way now. You don't even create an echo to others if you openly sniff a room you're standing in with <sniff room>.

As Alesan said, the only time you'll echo is if you type sniff with no arguments, because <sniff> with no arguments is like  <wave> with no arguments in that it is a hard-coded emote with a specific output. It creates an emote when you use it without targeting someone, because its designed to do so in the code.

Awesome. I swear it used to echo. But it's awesome that it doesn't. Thank you for checking.  Could we maybe get some sort of tag to show that someone is scented? That way we know to sniff them?

[Delirium]

They always wore off too fast for the price imo.

Glad to see this getting looked at.

[Brytta Léofa]

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n [smelling fancy]

[Brokkr]

The only other comment I have to make about it, is if it is coded as an emote... it isn't highlighted as one within the ANSI coloring system.

I'll have to look into that, cause I just noticed the same thing.

Because sniff by itself is a command that does stuff, for certain races.  Not just an emote.

[Fredd]

They always wore off too fast for the price imo.

Glad to see this getting looked at.

I always thought of them as something you wear for scenes usualy. Like the big fancy noble party, where you would expect everyone to be scented.

Another thought. So, Oil's which need a strigil AND an Oil to use, last the same amount of time as perfume? This should be changed. if someone is fully cleaning themselves with oil and strigil, that scent should last longer. This should be your day-to-day thing. While perfumes should be shorter lived, for fancier scenes.

Another thing to note. Perfumes are just 1 application, which is sort of annoying. And bottles of Oil are like 2. You common Aide wouldn't really be able to afford this. But i've seen it demanded of them.

Because of this, and my aforementioned "bottles of oil should be more day-to-day" I think bottles should last 9ish hours. More or less a full day of rp. And the bottle should have 6-7 applications. So it can be used across the week, letting the people who SHOULD be scented, easilly be able to do it without to much upkeep.

Perfume vials should have 3-4 applications and keep lasting 4.5 hours... Okay maybe 6? Long enough it should reasonably cover any formal event, and enough applications to use for a couple.

Just for context: None of you remember those tiny trial sized perfumes/cologns the big brands used to give out? You'de get several uses before it was empty. That';s more or less what I pictured perfume vials to be. So 1 use seems silly.

[sucre]

Strigil oils are fine as is, IMHO, because they come with multiple uses.

Perfumes should last longer because so many of the vial objects are one and done. Either that, or they need their prices adjusted accordingly.

[Fredd]

Strigil oils are fine as is, IMHO, because they come with multiple uses.

Perfumes should last longer because so many of the vial objects are one and done. Either that, or they need their prices adjusted accordingly.

They don't come with THAT many uses though. Like 2-3 if i remember correct.  Which seems a bit shallow.

What about my point of Perfume vials should also have more uses? that would seem to solve your issue with them.

[sucre]

I'm pretty sure it's 3-4, some having more, I use them fairly regularly on my PC. That said, perfumes are ~40 sid for basic scents that last less long, iirc, outside than oils. Oils you can get for 20-30 more sid and have more than double the uses and, afaik, they last longer.

I suppose your idea for more perfume uses would work. I didn't go through every reply in this thread before I added my comment, sorry for that.

[Fredd]

I'm pretty sure it's 3-4, some having more, I use them fairly regularly on my PC. That said, perfumes are ~40 sid for basic scents that last less long, iirc, outside than oils. Oils you can get for 20-30 more sid and have more than double the uses and, afaik, they last longer.

I suppose your idea for more perfume uses would work. I didn't go through every reply in this thread before I added my comment, sorry for that.

If I could find the ones with more then  4 uses, i'de probably use them a lot more then I do. And I should probably use them a lot more.

[Katima]

So to clarify the debate, currently single-use perfume vials last the exact same amount of time as strigil oils if the perfume is set to default duration. All strigil oils were set to last 9 IC hours per 'use', and all strigil oils have 3 uses. This brings them to 27 IC hours per bottle, which is the exact same amount of time a single-use vial lasts.

Sucre is probably thinking about the legacy perfume oils and lotions offered by a certain fancy-pants clan that have multiple uses. IIRC that clan has 2-3 single-use and 4 multi-use scents spread between oils, perfumes and lotions. Their oils predate the Oil Tradegoods project and as such operate the same way typical perfumes operate, but some of their products intentionally have more uses than oil tradegoods because of the clan's specialization in frivolity.



We are not making vial perfumes that last more than one use, because they're tiny vials of liquid perfume. What we are doing is making it so that a single 'use' of a scent item applies a scent for whatever amount of time wins the combined staff and player voting process. This means that multi-use scents will naturally last longer than their single-use perfume vial counterparts.

For an example scenario: If 12 hours won, a vial of perfume would last 12 hours and need to be bought again after, or an Oil Tradegood cleaning oil would last 12 hours x3 uses, so 36 hours total. And those fancy-pants items will be adjusted as well, so if players are willing to put in the work to find the PC/NPC sources related to the fancy-pants clan, they could get potential days worth of uses out of a multi-use product sold by that clan.

Its also still being discussed whether or not oils and lotions will have longer durations than single-use 'liquid' perfumes. If 9-12 hours wins out as the minimum for single-use, its unlikely that there will be a difference other than the difference offered by number of uses in the item. But even under those terms, multi-use items will be drastically extended in shelf-life.

[Katima]

I'de like for my scent to be saved if i log off. Similar to poison status, ect.

Through science Brokkr and I have figured out that this is actually how it works by default. I had 4.5 IRL hours on my timer, logged out for an hour, and when I logged back in it was still 4.5 IRL hours. So scents only tick down while you're online.

Also, a 20 year old bit of facts that people who smoke spice might love: scents fully overwrite spice smoke smells that linger on a PC (this might also apply to the stinky scent you get from being around poop, rejoice Bynners!). Better yet, if you have a perfume active, you can smoke spice and it won't re-overwrite the perfume, OR stack with the perfume scent. The perfume stays dominant over smoke. Brokkr told me it was announced long long ago when perfumes were added to the game, so I was permitted to re-announce it to everyone! We're going to look into having that feature explained in the helpfiles for spice and perfume.

[Riev]

"Why do you smell like febreze, Citizen?"
"Certainly not because otherwise I'd smell like zharal, Lord Templar."

[slipshod]

The cleanest scent is no scent at all...

But the ordinary constitution of human bodies is quite otherwise, and their best and chiefest excellency is to be exempt from smell. Nay, the sweetness even of the purest breath has nothing in it of greater perfection than to be without any offensive smell, like those of healthful children, which made Plautus say of a woman:

Mulier tum bene olet, ubi nihil olet.
["She smells sweetest, who smells not at all." —Plautus, Mostel, i. 3, 116.]

And such as make use of fine exotic perfumes are with good reason to be suspected of some natural imperfection which they endeavour by these odours to conceal. To smell, though well, is to stink:

Rides nos, Coracine, nil olentes
Malo, quam bene olere, nil olere.
["You laugh at us, Coracinus, because we are not scented; I would, rather than smell well, not smell at all."—Martial, vi. 55, 4.]

And elsewhere:
Posthume, non bene olet, qui bene semper olet.
["Posthumus, he who ever smells well does not smell well." —Idem, ii. 12, 14.]

Michel de Montaigne, 1580

[Fredd]

I'de like for my scent to be saved if i log off. Similar to poison status, ect.

Through science Brokkr and I have figured out that this is actually how it works by default. I had 4.5 IRL hours on my timer, logged out for an hour, and when I logged back in it was still 4.5 IRL hours. So scents only tick down while you're online.

Also, a 20 year old bit of facts that people who smoke spice might love: scents fully overwrite spice smoke smells that linger on a PC (this might also apply to the stinky scent you get from being around poop, rejoice Bynners!). Better yet, if you have a perfume active, you can smoke spice and it won't re-overwrite the perfume, OR stack with the perfume scent. The perfume stays dominant over smoke. Brokkr told me it was announced long long ago when perfumes were added to the game, so I was permitted to re-announce it to everyone! We're going to look into having that feature explained in the helpfiles for spice and perfume.

I knew that last one

So, okay, keeping perfumes single use, sure.

But can we up the amount of uses in a full bottle of strigil oil?

[Katima]

But can we up the amount of uses in a full bottle of strigil oil?

Considering perfume doesn't tick down while you're logged off, we're effectively increasing the shelf life of a bottle of strigil oil from 4.5 IRL hours to 18-36 hours depending on how the voting goes. I feel like that eliminates the need to also add more 'uses' to a bottle of oil. This is especially true when considering that all strigil oils ingame are able to be crafted, and accounting for the fact that a specific frivolous clan's related scents naturally have more uses to encourage players who want 'just a little more' to explore those options.

Our goal isn't to make them last so long they never need to be replaced, the goal is to give them more value per scene for their function and cost, and to hopefully through those changes make them more popular in-game for players who enjoy the flavor they add to roleplay.

I'm more than willing to hear your reasoning to the contrary, though, so I can present that to other-staff.

[Delirium]

What I find is that though the strigil oil bottles technically "last" longer due to more uses, their scent fades so fast that they barely make it through an IG day or two, which may be "realistic" but from a gameplay standpoint makes it annoying, what with all the timey-wimey handwaving we do when conversational scenes can take 3-4 days to complete.

So I end up springing for perfumes just because they last longer even though they only have 1 use each.

[Alesan]

I'de like for my scent to be saved if i log off. Similar to poison status, ect.

Through science Brokkr and I have figured out that this is actually how it works by default. I had 4.5 IRL hours on my timer, logged out for an hour, and when I logged back in it was still 4.5 IRL hours. So scents only tick down while you're online.

Also, a 20 year old bit of facts that people who smoke spice might love: scents fully overwrite spice smoke smells that linger on a PC (this might also apply to the stinky scent you get from being around poop, rejoice Bynners!). Better yet, if you have a perfume active, you can smoke spice and it won't re-overwrite the perfume, OR stack with the perfume scent. The perfume stays dominant over smoke. Brokkr told me it was announced long long ago when perfumes were added to the game, so I was permitted to re-announce it to everyone! We're going to look into having that feature explained in the helpfiles for spice and perfume.

Just so I know I'm reading this correctly - this means that perfume/oil scents will not be overridden by anything else that might change a person's scent post-application, for the duration of the perfume/oil's scent?

[Katima]

So I end up springing for perfumes just because they last longer even though they only have 1 use each.

This will be changing

[Katima]

Just so I know I'm reading this correctly - this means that perfume/oil scents will not be overridden by anything else that might change a person's scent post-application, for the duration of the perfume/oil's scent?

I don't know about 'anything' else. But I know that currently perfumes override the poop scent debuff and the spice smoke scent debuff. Override does not mean delete in this case. If these effects are still running when your perfume runs out, they'll still be there, but if the perfume outlasts them then they will never be detectable. Perfumes don't remove each other, however. If you use 3 different perfume scents, you smell like 3 different perfumes and will have multiple scent messages when someone sniffs you or you sniff yourself.

It was one of the 'perks' of buying and using perfume when perfume was first added to the game. Most players don't know about it because the relevant announcement was made like 20 years ago and we didn't get the information added to helpfiles. I'll be working on that at some point as well.

[Riev]

Thank you for making perfumes all take one herb.

Nothing was more concerning than using the "old" perfume code to get a one-hitter, when you could use the 'new' stuff and get three uses no problem.

[Katima]

Just to give everyone whose brought it up as a concern some reassurance, we ARE going to be adding a way for perfume to automatically have a place on your character. The coding for adding a scent to your ldesc is something that would take an exceptional amount of work, but one of our code-fu folks has agreed to work on a modification to the perfume code that will cause applying a perfume to put a unique message at the end of your character's main description for the duration of the perfume buff. This will not be something you can edit, and it will not take the place of the customizable tdesc code. Its going to be its own thing, likely appearing after the normal tdesc edits you all can add.

I cannot give estimations or promises for when this is going to happen. Our coders are always insanely busy. But I was told that its doable and will happen eventually. I'll of course update my announcement thread and announce on discord when it comes to be so everyone can rejoice.

[Delirium]

I was okay with perfume not showing up and having to sniff someone, you can always emote about it if you want to draw attention to it. Sniff doesn't echo, and more spam in the desc and eq list is just going to be .. more spam.

I'd rather see it added to the "assess" code, personally. Or you can just sniff them.

assess -v tresssy.aide
She is shorter than you.
She is heavier than you.
She smells like sunshine and minty flowers.

[Alesan]

I was okay with perfume not showing up and having to sniff someone, you can always emote about it if you want to draw attention to it. Sniff doesn't echo, and more spam in the desc and eq list is just going to be .. more spam.

I'd rather see it added to the "assess" code, personally. Or you can just sniff them.

assess -v tresssy.aide
She is shorter than you.
She is heavier than you.
She smells like sunshine and minty flowers.

Does assess always echo, or is it a hemote?

[Delirium]

It's a hemote.

Sniff <person/thing> doesn't echo at all.

[Tuannon]

Strong perfume or oil should debuff your sneakiness in close quarters.

And other things probably beyond the scope of the code.

[Fredd]

But can we up the amount of uses in a full bottle of strigil oil?

Considering perfume doesn't tick down while you're logged off, we're effectively increasing the shelf life of a bottle of strigil oil from 4.5 IRL hours to 18-36 hours depending on how the voting goes. I feel like that eliminates the need to also add more 'uses' to a bottle of oil. This is especially true when considering that all strigil oils ingame are able to be crafted, and accounting for the fact that a specific frivolous clan's related scents naturally have more uses to encourage players who want 'just a little more' to explore those options.

Our goal isn't to make them last so long they never need to be replaced, the goal is to give them more value per scene for their function and cost, and to hopefully through those changes make them more popular in-game for players who enjoy the flavor they add to roleplay.

I'm more than willing to hear your reasoning to the contrary, though, so I can present that to other-staff.

Heya. Alright. I'll give you a simple reason why. It's more or less my earlier reasoning expanded.

So, one of the most common users of Oil are Aides. No matter what they are called in the house. It is VERY common to demand your Aide wear a scent. How is an Aide who makes 350 coins a week going to afford 7 IRL days worth of oil, when one bottle of 4 uses is all they can get? Before you say something like "noble should provide" or "steal" or "be a merchant in your down time, and shit out money, " I want to point out, back when the atrium was about,  I literally saw nobles kill potential aides, because they "wouldn't" wear scents. Meanwhile that person literally couldn't. They had no paycheck, their skills weren't there to earn the coin they needed, and a certain merchant house was damn near absent at the time.

Just because someone with the right skills and ooc knowledge can make it, doesn't mean it's accessable to those that need it.

Just because a Merchant House can easily order it for you, doesn't mean you ever see that merchant house during your play times.

These are literal bottles of oil. a tablespoon or so of oil can cover the body. Are these people just pouring the bottle over their heads upside down?

So what I am asking here isn't for you to throw like 7 more uses into a bottle. Right now your average bottle is 3 uses. What I am asking is that all bottle get 1-2 uses added to them.

This will bring your average, NPC bought oil last 4 uses, 4 IRL days you can apply oil if you cant get mr. fancypant's mind. And your fancy bottle will be near a full week, exactly what people who wear them need.

I literally stopped using scents because I went through a bottle every other day, because of my high playtimes. I was spending unholy amounts of coin on it. And it wasn't easy for my person to get. (it more or less meant hiring a courier literally every time i needed it) This SUCKED the coin out of that leader, and he wasn't able to push plots like I wanted, so I just stopped the expense.

If you don't want to up the existing bottles, then could you consider adding some "family sized" bottles into the game that we can order? Ones with 7 uses maybe? Exactly enough to apply it once per IRL day in a week. It would still require finding a Fancypants to sell it to you, so offpeakers gonna have some probs. But it would solve what I consider to be the biggest problems with scents currently. That being: For something that some people should be wearing on a day to day basis, it's kind of a pain in the ass to keep enough to use on a day-to-day basis.

[Katima]

Looks like the combined staff and player votes land on 9 IRL hours of uptime per 'use' for cleaning oils and perfumes. This means that a full bottle of strigil cleaning oil will last 27 IRL hours.

It has been decided by staff that the current craftable oils ingame will not have their number of uses adjusted, only their duration.

A specific and very large fancy-pants clan has 'bottled' perfumes and oils that will have more 'uses' as part of their clan's economy perk.

None of this is live yet, appropriate announcements will be made when the time comes. There are multiple coded values to change for all of the associated items and there are something like 40-50 associated items that will be hit by this update. Just keep an eye out for me to make announcements in the coming weeks.

Thank you all for your contributions to this project.