Hey... alright a situation I had today gave me and idea... and of course I am not the first to come up with it... but I was thinking
For those poor people like myself who isp likes to get tempermental an boot you tushy off leaving you 'link dead' and then being mean and not letting you back on...
Have like.. an automatic logout thingie.. if your linkdead for five min, then it just logs you out, so you don't have to sit there living in fear and shouting at your phoneline so your precious creation doesn't get dismantled by someone else when your not able to attend the show...
Suggestions? Ideas?
I like the idea, but I think it's low on the priority list. Obviously the timer idea is a good one.
I can relate, last night about midnight-ish.. my router went down, I thought it was my internet service. Anyhow.. I was linkdead for a good.. 16 hours in public. It was wonderful. I think a timer and logout would be greatly appreciated.. logging into a jumbled mass of flesh would have been oh so sad.
Also needs something built in to prevent people from just dropping link to save their hides. Great idea, just need to prevent abuse.
trouble is you could just go linkdead in a place that you normally can't quit. and then the timer would log you out automatically, and boom, you've quit in the middle of the salt flats as a warrior.
and even if you made it not save, you could just do "save" then "pull plug."
there'd have to be a lengthy timer, and some form of a penalty..I don't know the best solution, but it is something that could use some thought and perhaps implementation.
The MUD can't always tell that you are linkdead, so it would have to go off how long you are idle. I know many MUSHes keep track of how long you are idle, and even include it in the WHO, so maybe ginka could keep track of it without too much strain.
If you are idle for 30 minutes the mud could log you out. 30 minutes wouldn't usually be long enough for your PC to be incapacitated by hunger and thirst, but it would be more than long enough for other PCs or tracking NPCs that are looking for you to catch up and have their way with you.
To prevent a sudden disappearing act, perhaps after 30 minutes Ginka could send a message or change the ldesc so surrounding players would know that the character is about to vanish, and then log them out 5 minutes after that. That would give a Templar time to have you dragged off to the jail before you disappear, enough time for that amorous half-giant to subdue you and drag you off to his locked love nest, raiders to knock you on the noggin and steal your pants, or long enough for your buddies to drag you back to a safe(ish) location.
A 30 or 35 minute delay would be a deterent in itself. Anything could walk in on you in that time. Even an hour would be reasonable.
This would also get rid of people that fall asleep at the keyboard, or wander of for "just a minute" and forget that they are logged in. The people that go idle in a tavern all day long would get the boot too, they don't bother me personally but some players really hate that.
The only time this would be bad is for the person who happens to be critically injured when his "idle time" runs out. Sometimes you will recover from negative hit points if you wait long enough, but if you log out with negative hit points you die. But that is a fairly rare case.
AC
This is the way that it used to operate long, long ago.
You would go LD and after a timed period be pulled into a room called 'The Void' where you'd be until you reconnected. And when you reconnected, you could somehow return to the location from which you were removed.
OR
You could attack the other LD players hovering in the void with you!
I'll let you guess which option people chose to be just one of the reasons
why this feature was eventually removed. This along with people dropping link to avoid death, quit problems, poison, dehydration, being caught by someone, were all probably reasons along with a few others.
I don't think that anything needs to be added for the folks with wonky connections. Yes, sometimes it probably sucks to go LD in bad situations, but I think that has happened to many of us at one time or another. It's just something that is best left in its current state - which really cannot be accused of allowing any form of twinkery.
-LoD
Well, truthfully, I like the idea. I also like the idea of allowing anyone to quit anywhere, with timers depending on class and such, as well as the room_type.
For instance, a ranger can insta-quit in the wilderness. A warrior could as well, but they would have to spend ten minutes to do so. Yes, ten RL minutes. A rinther could quit out anywhere in a city, since you may assume that they know how to find that secertive place to rest, but a ranger would spend 10 RL minutes to do the same. You are in a sandstorm. A ranger, insta-quit, but a mage? 15 minutes. And so on.
And that's my thought.