Lame Contact

[Anonymous Kank]

A foreign presence contacts your mind.

(10 seconds later)

You sense a foreign presence withdraw from your mind.


Can we please please please get rid of contact pinging?  I realize sometimes it's just misdirected contacts, but I'm simply not going to believe that's always the case.  Anyone who has had an even slightly notorious character deals with the above on a consistant basis.

Too many people use contact as an OOC way to figure out if someone is logged on and it's a pile o poo.  The character is ALWAYS going to be around, not just when the player can manage.  When no message is passed repeatedly, something less than honest is going on.

Anyway to have contact query the player database and just return the sleeping message if someone isn't logged on?

If not that is there anything to fix this?

[Delirium]

Though I'm tempted to respond with only 'roll with it IC or ignore it', I can actually sympathize with this a bit, having experienced it.  It gets pretty annoying to log in, be around for a few hours, and have what feels like fifty kajillion people popping in and out of your head not saying anything.

For reasons I won't delve into though, I don't think there's much of anything that can or should be done about this and so I have a few brief tidbits of advice to help you stay (OOCly) sane:

1) barrier

2) ignore it

or

3) React IC

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure why this annoys people.  I'm not a perpetrator of the activity, but it seems a likely enough scenario that in a world full of psionics there would be a lot of little connections to your head.

[Cale_Knight]

The only time this really bothers me is during slow periods-

A foreign presence contacts your mind.

(oh boy! RP!)

You sense a foreign presence withdraw from your mind.

(.... )

[Xygax]

I don't consider what you call "contact pinging" to be an OOC abuse in any way.

-- X

[amoeba]

The only time this really bothers me is during slow periods-

A foreign presence contacts your mind.

(oh boy! RP!)

You sense a foreign presence withdraw from your mind.

(.... )

Heh, very true.  For those getting all the contacts, at least it means you're busy, easily enough ignored.

[Mean_Old_Bastard]

I remember one time as a militia...god...we were chasing this guy. Some thug...who was notorious...and who put bombs in...and...and...

And we were going all detective on his ass. But we could never find him. He wasn't on when we were on. Why couldn't we track him down? OOC.

I'm with xygax that yeah...your CHARACTER IS ALWAYS THERE...but really you aren't. And thats an ooc thing...it really...really is.

[Anonymous]

I don't consider what you call "contact pinging" to be an OOC abuse in any way.

What is the staff consensus on this?  I understood that the last change of contact messages was for this very reason since previously you got a different message depending on whether or not the player was logged in or not.  (And prior to that you had the same behavior as today just with a different message.)

[Cuusardo]

That's what I thought the contact message change was put in there for as well.  I mean, it seems rather twinky to sit there and contact someone, then break contact to determine whether or not that PC is online.  Being on or offline is a totally OOC concept, because when you're logged out, your character is still part of the world, and is still actively living and doing things.

[amoeba]

[stuff snipped]]
... your character is still part of the world, and is still actively living and doing things.

Ah, but is your charcter still "living"?  Pinging a person to find that out seems very IC.

[Dark Lightning]

I've found myself a victim of this, and it usually results to one of five or six people who I can usually narrow down and then gripe out ICly.. still probably amazes them how I know.. but it's just a lucky guess in all reality.

[Adhira]

I don't believe that every broken contact is solely for the purpose of checking if someone is 'online' or not.

And I agree with Xygax on this one.

[Bestatte]

It annoys me as well, because of the "oh boy, RP!" thing. But if you have an sdesc with a keyword that is very common (such as tall, or elf, or dark for example) than you kinda have to expect that you'll be contacted OFTEN in error.

On the other hand, if your sdesc is something like..

the globular, glowing goon

then yeah sounds like someone's targetting you intentionally and that would really annoy the piss out of me. But go on and react ICly about it. Maybe you could start a war or something - you never know what those evil mindbenders are up to afterall.

[Cenghiz]

I usually try to send a message ike "Hmm.. there you are! I'll get you!" or "Bah.. I thought of 'Red', not a dwarf with red skin damnit.." or something like that.

I don't think you're gathering OOC information by psi pings.Folks' minds may be closed to connections for many reasons. Being logged off, a strong barrier, physchic strains or even some ways of cloaking your own mind. I won't give an example to the last one, it may be IC, but many folks may remember having great difficulty contacting to some guilds.
So when you psi-ping someone, ICly you know you can't find his mind for some reason and OOCly, you know you can't find his mind for some reason. No extra OOC info is gathered. Eh, where's the OOC abuse?

[path]

Delirium mentioned barrier, which reminded me of in IC solution. If your character is well known enough and has a high profile or whatever, you'd be well off hiring someone (maybe even part time) or borrowing them from the Atrium, whatever, to handle your mental communication, while you put up barriers whenever you like.

I always thought that was a groovy concept. And realistic in this case as well, since there's obviously a need. Think what a cool character role you'd be creating. You don't have to be a noble to hire someone, keep that in mind.

[Ghost]

Contact pinging should be OK.  Because, even though that person is still living in the world, you can not interact with him in anyway.  It should be perfectly fine checking beforehand whether or not you have a way to interact at all.  If it was possible to interact with the logged off characters, yeah, then it would be twinking.  But let me give you an example:

1) There was one dude and he was in a nearly-jail-place.  He is like in a cage or something.  He is not let to leave a two room place at all, and he is not willing to.  All he does is simply sit at some place, waiting for an end of his "friendly-jail".  Now, my character had to kill that person, and there was a due time for it.  My character could easy get into the place and leave, after all, he was the person putting that dude into that jail.  ICly, the moment my char was forced into the kill, he would just go, spill the blood all over the place.  There was nothing that could stop him for it, but the dude's not being in the game at the moment.  So.. I had to wait.  Wait for him to log in.  And there was no IC explanation why my character was waiting, but not doing it.
So.. What do you think?  Is it twinky checking if the dude is online?  No.  Never.  If you are full-proof safe from any interaction when you are logged off, I find it totally fine to check if you are interactable, name it via contact/break or any other stuff.

2) Psionic dudes might be doing some sort of stuff and you might not know anything but just feel the enter/leave message.

3) Some people might be trying to contact similar names/similar descriptions and stuff.

But calling it twinky?  Naah.. I don't see anything twinking here.  It is no less twinking than being logged off, when someone needs to find you in game =P

[Qetesh]

Paths idea is a really good one. If you are the type to get a lot of incoming PSI, work on your barrier skill and hire someone to take all of your contacts unless they are super personal.

In general I don't think barrier is used as much as it could be. But people just touching your mind is not an OOC abuse, they would be trying to reach you regardless.

[Naiona]

There are many, many reasons that someone might be contacting and not saying anything before releasing.

Don't assume someone is being twinkish.  I've had emailed complaints that 'So and so keeps contacting me and then breaking contact without saying something' only to start watching that person and see that it's not the person they are accusing at all, and in fact, it is something far more interesting going on.

[Cuusardo]

Say you're playing a hermit PC that lives in this little cave out in the wastes.  Johnny Raider knows that your character lives in that little cave, and that you never leave, because you've caught him hanging around your cave quite a few times, watching you.  Since you never leave the cave, your PC is still there while you're logged out.  Then one day, someone contacts you, then breaks contact without saying anything.  In a matter of moments, here comes Johnny Raider with his buddies into your cave and attacks you.

That scenerio just seems twinky to me, because you're ALWAYS there, but Johnny Raider waited until he knew that you were online to come after you.

[Qetesh]

Say you're playing a hermit PC that lives in this little cave out in the wastes.  Johnny Raider knows that your character lives in that little cave, and that you never leave, because you've caught him hanging around your cave quite a few times, watching you.  Since you never leave the cave, your PC is still there while you're logged out.  Then one day, someone contacts you, then breaks contact without saying anything.  In a matter of moments, here comes Johnny Raider with his buddies into your cave and attacks you.

That scenerio just seems twinky to me, because you're ALWAYS there, but Johnny Raider waited until he knew that you were online to come after you.

If you are always there Johnny raider could also just sit inside your cave and wait for you to log in. How would you react then? Just walking in? But you were always there right?

It's unrealistic for you to never leave the cave in the first place. Food? Water? And just because your PC is logged in Johnny has -no- idea where you are. You could be on the moon. If you are the type that is parinoid, after receiving a contact like that.. You could go for a walk. And it would be completely IC.

think:

Hrm, I bet that was Johnny wondering if I am around my cave.. I should leave a bit, he may come looking for me.


Essentially it is the same as contacting someone to see if they are on to go and meet. And most of us do that without thinking it's twinkish all the time. Using contact to cause adverse effects is no worse nor better. Basically you are trying to find out if that person is there to –interact- with IC'ly. After all you can't interact with them when they are not on and that is just a limitation of the game/playability.

[IntuitiveApathy]

Essentially it is the same as contacting someone to see if they are on to go and meet. And most of us do that without thinking it's twinkish all the time. Using contact to cause adverse effects is no worse nor better. Basically you are trying to find out if that person is there to –interact- with IC'ly. After all you can't interact with them when they are not on and that is just a limitation of the game/playability.

I know this is going to raise hackles, primarily because it seems like such an OOC/break the flavour thing - but why not make people visible on the 'who' or maybe at the least 'who -c' commands?  I mean, if the rationale behind contact pinging is to see if they're available to interact with (a completely OOC action that translates to IC later on), and this is actually -ok-, then why not take the OOC action completely out of the IC realm and remove the confusion (and resulting angst)?

Or is OOC'ly finding out if one person's online ok, while finding out if everyone else is online overboard?  If this is the case, it seems like a rather weak argument to me, after all if players are ok to find out if one player is online, why not all?  What difference would it make really, if knowing when one is online to interact with is ok?  The same arguments about abuse can be made (arguably it is a bit harder to 'contact ping' several people if you're being hunted by say, a whole gang, but this only requires a bit of time), but Qetesh (and other staff, through implication) essentially says those arguments are moot..

By the same token, the benefits from knowing who's online and who isn't should be obvious, a simple extrapolation from knowing if one person is online: at a glance you'd know if you could potentially go interact with a certain person or group without having to guess.  For clans it could be even more helpful, especially those that are highly dependent on having others around.

But I don't know, is 'who' just taboo?

[flurry]

I am sort of wondering the same thing that CRW asked.

I understand that there are some perfectly reasonable and mundane IC reasons to 'ping' someone, so the act itself doesn't seem inherently twinkish to me.  

However, if the intent is purely to discern if someone is logged in or not, is that considered twinkish/abuse?   I ask because when the change to the contact message was changed two years ago, one of the primary reasons mentioned was abuse.   At that time, generally you could tell immediately if someone was logged in or not.   Now it's not quite so cut and dried, and it is more seamless than it was then.   I do think it was a very positive change.   But if it was considered abuse then, isn't it still now?   Again, I'm thinking of the limited case where the intent is just to figure out if someone is logged on or not.

Or maybe I am mistaken about what kind of abuse was addressed by that change.

I was looking back at this thread specifically and the staff posts about why that change was made.

[Marauder Moe]

why not make people visible on the 'who' or maybe at the least 'who -c' commands?

It would let you know if someone is alive or not.

[Qetesh]

The Who C command was in effect for a long time for clans, but people would simply log in, do a who c and log out if there was nobody on.

Also Who C is an OOC command. Contact is not. You are contacting a person because your character is. So in one way or another your Character is having an IC interaction with that other PC. That other PC now knows IC'ly that someone is trying to find them weather you say something or not and they can react IC'ly towards that.

By just doing a who, or who c they have no way of knowing that someone else has found them and intends to interact.


Also I will say that faking a death IMO is also extremely hard unless you do it very well and -everyone- knows about it.

Lets say your friend tommy is offline when you die, and doesn't hear about the death, he may try to find your mind, and get you. You aren't -really- dead and he didn't think you were. So he did not abuse the code by finding you and now you are outed if tommy talks. That simple.

However my my opinion, it would be poor RP on the part of someone who has heard of your death and believes it to be true to tries to contact you (just to check oocly).

I've always thought that the PSI aspect of the game would make faking a death just about impossible and most people wouldn't really bother to even try.

[IntuitiveApathy]

It would let you know if someone is alive or not.

Isn't this what you'd find out when you 'contact pinged' someone?

But wait..

Also Who C is an OOC command. Contact is not. You are contacting a person because your character is. So in one way or another your Character is having an IC interaction with that other PC. That other PC now knows IC'ly that someone is trying to find them weather you say something or not and they can react IC'ly towards that.

By just doing a who, or who c they have no way of knowing that someone else has found them and intends to interact.

Ironically, I think I now understand the rationale behind 'contact pinging' being ok for the staff from MJ's comment, even though it was meant as a rebuttal to the question of "why not 'who'?".

I think what Qetesh is trying to say is that by looking at it completely IC'ly - that is, your character is trying to find out whether the target character is alive/awake IC'ly - that this is ok (the side benefit is that the target has some IC warning).

But see, the problem with this is that when you fail your contact, the target character could very well be alive and doing virtual things in the game-world (MJ's fear is that you'd be able to know this, OOC'ly 'automatically', with the who command when a player logs on), but there is no actual IC way to find out whether a character is alive with contact, if the player is not online.  

How does your character react to this IC'ly, when there's a contact fail?  He/she has to make up some lame excuse, like 'oh, there must be a problem with the Way'?  In reality, we disregard it OOC'ly, because we know that it's more probably that the character isn't online.  Yes MJ, the character could be dead and that's why you can't contact them, but if they don't show up on the 'who' list, wouldn't you have the same possibility there - that the character is dead?  But I bring you back to the subject matter of the thread: 'contact pinging' is supposedly ok, for some hybrid IC/OOC reasoning.  Thus, the mess, the confusion, the angst between IC/OOC use of contact.