Perfume/Cleaning Oil Durations

[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.