Where Do We Go Now

[dumbstruck]

There has been some considerable back and forth in the past few months about adding a 'where' feature. As recently as the past 3 days we have had new players looking for it. Why? Because on text based role playing games, it's a fairly standard feature, especially text based games which are seeking to increase opportunities for people to get together, interact, and roleplay with one another.

There's a few different places where people have tried to poke holes in it, but there are ways to handle all of those. One of the ones I've seen was people talking about someone logging in and using 'where' seeing no one near them, and logging back off. Firstly, if they're not already going to do this and abuse it with the who command and we already have who, I don't know what, but secondly, you can, and perhaps even should, tie this to a little delay in using or picking up the numbers. (Lets say, an IC hour, or 10 minutes, before changes in a status is shown to others, to reflect for it carrying through the world via npc traffic) This prevents the information from being instant. Or something you can get as soon as you can log in.

Another issue is how voluntary/compulsory a system might be. Personally, I think the only time it should not be opt in would be for sponsored roles in well established meeting rooms (think, a templar in Red's Retreat, might automatically show up by default unless they opt out, where a half-elf grebber basically anywhere would have to opt in). By making the system something that doesn't really default anyone to showing up as being anywhere unless you're a sponsored role in an established tavern area, this allows everyone choose how anonymous they are. But conversely by not limiting the number of places a person might show up to taverns allows for scenes in other places, too (three grebbers are at the Western Gate at morning devotions, for example).

Does anyone else have any issues and/or solutions to those issues that they can think of that they would like to offer?

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

Maybe instead of a 'where' command, 'who' could append a couple vague contextuals in certain situations while in the cities.

For example, 10 people go into the Gaj, and you're in Allanak

>who

There are 34 players currently in the world, other than yourself.
Seems there's a gathering at the Gladiator and Gaj.

[dumbstruck]

Maybe instead of a 'where' command, 'who' could append a couple vague contextuals in certain situations while in the cities.

For example, 10 people go into the Gaj, and you're in Allanak

>who

There are 34 players currently in the world, other than yourself.
Seems there's a gathering at the Gladiator and Gaj.

Maybe. But I'm not looking for that. I'm looking for stuff specifically about a where command. Not something that automatically shows up on who. Not that you're automatically included in. And I feel like that is often muddled in when someone brings up something for where. That's fine, but that's not what I'm looking for here. That can be an idea for who. If that makes sense? It's nice. It's a nice idea. But it's a different idea than this one.

[Fredd]

You could make actual citizen groups and let anyone cwho it.

Now you know when other people are playing in your city-state.

It doesn't seem to bother other RPI's.

[Kavrick]

I just want an opt-in who command that shows you the s-desc of people who have opted in and are online so I don't have to spam the <100% success contact to see if my friends are around. It's simple and I don't understand any downside of it if it's opt-in.

[dumbstruck]

I just want an opt-in who command that shows you the s-desc of people who have opted in and are online so I don't have to spam the <100% success contact to see if my friends are around. It's simple and I don't understand any downside of it if it's opt-in.

Same. I'm trying to spitball for ways that possible downsides could be addressed, because someone in discord mentioned about someone logging in and doing where and logging out and I've played another game that had a who command that had a delay on it so you had to wait 5 minutes before you could type 'who' and that seemed to work out fine to prevent that. I think waiting an IC hour to simulate foot traffic possibly getting around for you to maybe 'overhear from vnpcs' about a person at a given place after they post up seems like a reasonable delay, and from you logging in before being able to use it at all, to keep from being able to log in and use it and log out if that's even a real concern.

[Riev]

Who area

"In the last in game hour, there were 20 players in the Southlands.
In the last in game hour, there were 4 players in the Northlands."

[tiny rainbow]

Thread exists already:

https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,59217.0.html

[Riev]

Thread exists already:

https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,59710.0.html

Thats this thread.

[Kavrick]

Who area

"In the last in game hour, there were 20 players in the Southlands.
In the last in game hour, there were 4 players in the Northlands."

The issue I have with something like this is that it really doesn't help me actually find people to rp with. Like cool, theres 20 people in the south where I am. How do I find them? Lunno. Not to mention that the Southlands also includes the entirety of the Vrun, Allanak, and red storm village. How many rooms is that? Like It's a cool feature that helps you know what parts of the game are active, but it doesn't help me find people to interact with

[CirclelessBard]

I've been pleased with a couple of systems I've seen in other games that allow players to locate other players:

1) Certain rooms are flagged as "public". Whenever someone types "where", they see the number of people in each public room. If needed, this can be restricted to show locations only in the same zone as you. The only way to "opt out" of such a system is to not be in a public room. Anyone in a public room is assumed to be seeking roleplay.

Code Select Expand

> where
There are 2 people in the Gaj.
There is 1 person in Red's Retreat.
2) Add a command to let people flag themselves as seeking roleplay, like "lfrp" (looking for roleplay) with a brief description of what they're doing or looking for. Then people who type "where" can see a list of people seeking roleplay. Use "lfrp" with no arguments to turn it off. The list can be anonymized or show sdesc depending on what is more useful to the community.

Code Select Expand

> lfrp is at the Gaj, nursing an ale after a long day of training.
You're set as looking for roleplay.

> where
Someone is at the Gaj, nursing an ale after a long day of training.


[Kaathe]

These are the underlying issues I'm hearing

1 Checking every bar for interaction is a pain and you can potentially miss people doing the same.

2 Trying to find friends and clan mates with contact takes awhile because I'd have to do at least two contacts per person to be reasonably sure i didn't just fail contact. 

3 There's no way to announce I want interaction oocly across the game other than posting on ic boards and idling taverns. 

Veterans obviously are used to this and many don't feel the slowness especially with the reduced contact cost in taverns and master contact at char creation. But I can see it could feel painfully slow coming from some other game with a global where command. 

I'm trying avoid an opinion here as story teller.  But I do want to help shape and understand the proposal. 

[dumbstruck]

These are the underlying issues I'm hearing

1 Checking every bar for interaction is a pain and you can potentially miss people doing the same.

2 Trying to find friends and clan mates with contact takes awhile because I'd have to do at least two contacts per person to be reasonably sure i didn't just fail contact. 

3 There's no way to announce I want interaction oocly across the game other than posting on ic boards and idling taverns. 

Veterans obviously are used to this and many don't feel the slowness especially with the reduced contact cost in taverns and master contact at char creation. But I can see it could feel painfully slow coming from some other game with a global where command. 

I'm trying avoid an opinion here as story teller.  But I do want to help shape and understand the proposal. 

Also, for me, and I realize, I might be an outlier here, I don't like the idea of making every point of contact here tavern-centric. Not everyone should have to be in a tavern all the time to find people. I don't like taverns, and I don't want to have to be in them to find people, limiting all the meeting people stuff to them is definitely artificially limiting in a way that is kind of upsetting and not fun or ideal. Why would we do that when, for example, the bar room in the Pah is the room in the Blackwing bar and is more or less irrelevant, but the real room that would make sense might be, say, the main room at the Gem.

(I more or less just don't want to see a general 'where' thing turned into another thing that is very tavern centric and thus completely passes me by in effect but is nice.)