-Good Form- and -Bad Form-

[Forest Junkie]

Debated for a while where this thread should go; decided here, since it deals mostly with abuse of code and such.

Here's my list, and yes, I checked it twice =P

Good form:
IMO, one's role-playing of a search for herbs/poisons/useful materials

Bad form: Logging on at 7:01 P.M. Saturday, hauling ass to a spawn point, and jacking all available herbs before above pc can make it there the next RL day, Sunday.

Good form:
Killing a beast that will remain nameless on a road that will remain nameless, leaving its corpse in a heap for all to see, as you show off your mad fighting skills and protect the defenseless peasants from harm.

Bad form:
Oh wait, said animal has useful shit on it now, let's skin the body and forget that we have been rping letting their corpses rot for the past five ic years! YAAAY!! I peed in your pool lady! YAY!!!

I''ll just put up those two pair for now. Feel free to add your own!

Granted, I know the above pair can be situational, and I may be, and probably am, just talking shit. The first pair does really irk me, but the second I merely find humorous. I don't think it's bad really that people use the nameless animal's parts for things, but I do hope you are rping any reasons for suddenly switching your ideals. (As I'm sure most everyone has.)

[flurry]

Your first example reminded me of something similar I experienced with a previous character.   That character was an independent crafter, and had a particular shop where they would sell their wares.   Except that within minutes of the mud going up on Saturday evening, five of everything they were going to sell had already been sold to the shop.   And I mean within five or ten minutes.    Usually for other unscheduled reboots too.

But you know..I just chalked it up to several PCs making items of that type, and only one place to sell them.   I was there too, checking right after the uptime, because usually I had waited all week to try to sell the items.   I personally never sold five of everything, because in a week I rarely made five of anything, but when I had the rare opportunity to sell what I had, I would.   It sucked to know that you often had a ten minute window to sell things, and I almost always missed it, but that was just how it was at that time.  

So you could be experiencing something similar.   Several PCs all interested in the same herbs, and someone takes the opportunity to get it while they can.   Maybe not twinky, but definitely unpleasant for all involved.

[UnderSeven]

There are endless instances of this sort of thing really.  Other examples include going into rooms and acknowledging the virtual npcs and not having you char notice every player as if they are the exclusive only people there, or using hide and sneak when someone is clearly paying attention to you specifically without even bothering to emote how or that you're doing it, or the list goes on and on, my point is this:  While it's good to mention to people what things are not good form and why, it's also something that belongs in role play discussion.

[JollyGreenGiant]

or using hide and sneak when someone is clearly paying attention to you

Now that gives me an idea.  What we really need are flashbangs...

[Rindan]

I don't see the issue with suddenly deciding to do more then slay a beast that gets in your way.  I imagine most Zalanthas folks are practical people.  If you can extract something that you spend the time to kill, you might as well.  For better or for worse though, the code changes.  If suddenly a worthless creature's hide becomes valuable, there is no reason to not start taking its hide.  The code has suddenly changed the realities of the game, and the best you can do is simply adapt to it.  If you are the type of person to skin anything you kill if it has useful parts, then the fact that a creature has useful parts is a good reason to skin it.

[Forest Junkie]

The second pair of good/bad, as I stated, was more of an observation I found humorous. I do not look down upon anyone for using the carcass of a slain beasite, but instead, I merely hope they are role-playing their sudden change in attitude of its potential use.

[sacac]

Good Form-
A skinny, almond-eyed elf brushes against you, pulling your cloak to reveal the two uberswordss hanging from you belt.

Bad Form-
He does the same thing when you happen to be sitting.. at a table..

[Angela Christine]

Other examples include going into rooms and acknowledging the virtual npcs and not having you char notice every player as if they are the exclusive only people there,

Okie dokie.  From now on before looking at any actual PCs I will:

em looks at the bald, green elf suspiciously.
em looks at the brown-haired man.
em looks at the chubby gambler, smirking at his cards.
em looks at the manly man.
em looks at buxom dwarf.
em looks at the happy, fun templar with a quick bow.
em looks at delicate, cream-skinned maiden.
em looks at the spider-veined crone, pushing her out of the way.
em looks at the tricksy elf, suspiciously.

Obviously the look echos aren't spammy enough unless you pretend to look at imaginary people too.    Or maybe I'll continue to look at the virtual people virtually, I haven't decided yet.  

AC

[Callisto]

Good form:

Cute kittens.

Bad Form:

Following people clear across the city to take a look at them and, without so much as a look extention emote, turn and walk back the way they came. OMG hoodiez hide m4d th13v3z b3tt4r g3t 4 l00kziz d00d.

Asshole.

[FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit]

Couldn't have said it better myself, Callisto. Here's another, along the same vein...
Good Form:
The tall, muscular d00d has arrived from the east, pushing through the crowded street.
The tall, muscular d00d exclaims to you, in sirihish:
"Hey, you!"
The totally l33t d00d pauses in the street, a pair of ragged-looking elves shoving past him.
Turning around, you say the tall, muscular d00d, in sirihish:
"Eh? You speaking to me?"
Bad Form:
The tall, muscular d00d has arrived from the east.
The tall, muscular d00d exclaims to you, in sirihish:
"Hey, you!"
The tall muscular d00d sayst to you, in sirihish:
"I need to talk to you."
The tall musuclar d00d says to you, in sirihish:
"Hello?"
The tall muscular d00d says, in sirihish:
"Whats wrong with you?"
The tall muscular d00d says, in sirhish:
"Hello?"
The tall, muscular d00d shrugs.
The tall musuclar d00d walks east.
The totally l33t d00d pauses in the street, a pair of ragged-looking elves shoving past him.

You get the picture? Look, streets, shops and taverns are generally busy places, and dunes, fields, and wagon yards are large areas that take a while to walk across. If you walk into a room, don't expect everyone to immediately acknowledge your presence and flip out  a 'tell' in a second flat. Some of us like EMOTEing, so wait two Krath-damned seconds and give us a chance to respond before you jet off. Put down the crack pipe, try to keep your fingers moving at less than fifty thousand WPM, and let me finish my sup3r l33t EMOTE of d00m and @w3som3dn3zz.

Ah... I live whining threads, don't you?

[flashz00]

Good form:

Cute kittens.

Bad Form:

Following people clear across the city to take a look at them and, without so much as a look extention emote, turn and walk back the way they came. OMG hoodiez hide m4d th13v3z b3tt4r g3t 4 l00kziz d00d.

Asshole.

Try being thrown into jail and while being hauled to jail someone notices it and you are cloaked and they trie to catch up to the soldier till they do and take a look at you then turn in the other direction.

[Anonymous]

Try being thrown into jail and while being hauled to jail someone notices it and you are cloaked and they trie to catch up to the soldier till they do and take a look at you then turn in the other direction.

Yeah, because people never rubberneck.....

[spawnloser]

Rubbernecking is one thing...but do people follow cop cars all the way across the city in real life?  Don't think so.  Do you go following that person wearing a hooded sweatshirt all about the city until you can get up in their face and get a good look at them?  Hardly.  Grow up and get over it.  There are a lot of people besides thieves and ne'er-do-wells that put up hoods for RP purposes.

I personallty don't give a shit how long your emotes are I guess, as long as they don't take 5 minutes to come through. Time is going faster on Arma? Like around 20 times as fast ? So you take five minutes for your four or five line emotes.  Yeah thats cool... :roll: Too bad you only do or say something let's see every 5*12 = 60 minutes, an hour. Personally I would rather have a 2 line emote or less that is in time with the situation. Now if you and so and so are idling somewhere and don't really care how often you speak so be it. I guess this is personal taste more than bad form. This is especially annoying in combat situations and the like.

You head north followed by the slow emoting fool.

A gortok is here snarling.
A grey gortok is here slavering.

look n
-slow emoting guy begins emoting-
[Nearby] A white gortok is here slavering.

You tell the slow emoting fool 'Too many gortoks I see some approaching'
You gesture off of the road wildly.

SEVERAL ROUNDS OF COMBAT

A white gortok has arrived from the north.
You shout 'Flee!'
You peer at the slow emoting fool.
You tell fool 'We are out numbered head for town!'
A gortok bites the slow emoting fool on the head, nicking him.
A grey gortok bites you on the arm, nicking you.
A red gortok has arrived from the north.

Snarling you exclaim to the slow emoting fool 'Fuck this, I am out of here!'

A white gortok bites your foot.
A red gortok bites the slow emoting fool's leg.
A grey gortok bites at you but misses.

SOME MORE ROUNDS OF COMBAT

You turn and sprint away from the slow emoting fool.
You flee, heading north.

A white gortok bites at the slow emoting fool, barely grazing his leg.
A grey gortoks snarls turning on the slow emoting fool.
A red gortok misses the slow emoting fool with his bite.

SOME ROUNDS OF COMBAT

The slow emoting fool, raising his sword as wet red blood is whipped by the wind  across his lean form, cloak swirling in a dancing pattern, lets out a primal war cry, echoing down the road and into the surrounding area as the late sun illuminates the twisted and leaf lacking scrub, brings his sword down in a vicious arc towards the slightly off color patch on the patchy fur covering the grey gortok's neck.

The slow emoting fool crumples to the ground as a grey gortok bites his face off.
*BEEP*

[Anonymous]

Rubbernecking is one thing...but do people follow cop cars all the way across the city in real life?

If a thief getting dragged somewhere and roughed up isn't the Zalanthan equivalent of a car wreck, what is?  Would you walk a couple of miles to throw tomatoes at someone you didn't know who was in stocks for a day?  I wouldn't, but I can imagine people doing just that in an ignorant society with a low standard of living.

You got caught, people are going to look at you.  Nothing is going to save you now.  When my PCs have been dragged to jail the frustration I've had was with myself for not having done it right or at a better time, not with how those around me chose to act.  

I love how thieves/lawbreakers want an interactive game right up until the point they fail their subdue or steal command, then it's all about the VNPCs that you should be looking at instead of them.

The guard has just subdued you and somehow your hood keeps up in just a way as to keep anyone from seeing you as you are dragged to jail. Also wouldn't the guard want to show your ugly face to the commoners? Maybe. And also again, The guard is dragging you to jail really fast., so maybe I wanted to take a look at you but the NPC is moving faster than i can type look.

[spawnloser]

First, the equivalent of a car wreck would be the scene of a murder, if you want to compare apples to oranges, really.  A thief getting hauled off to jail is actually the equivalent of a criminal in the back of a cop car.  If you're talking about someone getting arrested, well, that's a Cops episode...now, while amusing, you don't bitch at them for fuzzing out the faces of all the criminals...stop feeling that you need to see the face of everybody on the mud.

Second...that guy being hauled in by the cops in real life, if you say that someone would ever follow someone for a large chunk of their day (mind that in Zalanthas, a walk across town and back can take two hours and that in a 9 hour day, that IS a healthy chunk of one's day), I want you to back it up by following that cop car with a criminal in the back because he went past too fast for you to get a look at him.

[Anonymous]

First, the equivalent of a car wreck would be the scene of a murder, if you want to compare apples to oranges, really.  A thief getting hauled off to jail is actually the equivalent of a criminal in the back of a cop car.  If you're talking about someone getting arrested, well, that's a Cops episode...now, while amusing, you don't bitch at them for fuzzing out the faces of all the criminals...stop feeling that you need to see the face of everybody on the mud.

Second...that guy being hauled in by the cops in real life, if you say that someone would ever follow someone for a large chunk of their day (mind that in Zalanthas, a walk across town and back can take two hours and that in a 9 hour day, that IS a healthy chunk of one's day), I want you to back it up by following that cop car with a criminal in the back because he went past too fast for you to get a look at him.

This argument is getting too abstract.  If some guy down the street is getting hauled out of his house and I notice it, I'm going to go look.  Am I a RL twink?

Going back to armageddon:

Scenario One:
think Is that that elf I've been trying to get killed?  Maybe now I can pay a militia man to kill him.
e;e;e;e;look elf  (because they get hauled through rooms so quickly)

Scenario Two:
Noble says: You, go see who that is and if you recognize them, then come back to me.  It might be our secret agent and I want to save him from jail.
Servant: Yes m'lord.

e;e;e;e;look elf;w;w;w;w

No m'lord, it isn't.


I just don't see the crime against humanity in looking at someone who is being dragged off.  Face it, when that happens you have become a spectacle and no amount of bickering over whether it's equivalent to cops beating a guy senseless or cops making a drunk walk a line is going to change that.

Where's the mortal RP sin in daring to look at someone who is being dragged down caravan way?

[spawnloser]

Okay, CRW, how many times do you think people are honestly thinking that?  Seriously.  With one character of mine, I'm wearing a hood...I walk into a room, someone else walks in from the opposite direction (mind you, this was the first PC I'd seen in hours real time).  I keep walking the way I am...the person enters after me...I continue...they follow...repeat ad nauseum until I got from near the warrens all the way to the Poet's Circle.  After looking at me...they walk away.  Seriously, I was just walking down the street and this guy follows me damn near across the entire city just to look at me?  Now, who would follow someone for what has to be nearly a mile or two of walking just to take a look at someone and walk away?  Personally, I think it's a retarded thing to do.  Unless everyone is playing an obsessive compulsive, following someone like that just to look at them is utterly ridiculous...just try contact the person you think it may have been, for crap's sack!

PS: Sorry that this is starting to get away from people posting good/bad form examples...but at least we're semi on-topic.

[grog]

The only time I've ever followed somebody around town to get a look at them, was when I was a pickpocket.  Of course I'm quite sure said somebody didn't realize this, because I was quite sneaky at that point in time.   After I had gotten that quite full pouch on this somebody's belt, just because my character was a cocky son of bitch, I bought them a drink at the bar, ended up becoming a good friend.  Never told somebody about it though, even though they got punished quite badly for losing so much of the bosses money, you got to keep your work and personal life seperate.  

My point, if I have one, is that sometimes they may have a personal reason.  Maybe somebody in the same cloak as you killed their best friend, I'd damn well want to know that they caught that son of a bitch, maybe even find a way to bribe a Templar to put me in a cell with him so I can beat him bloody in the dark.

[FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit]

Dead Newbie wrote:

I personallty don't give a shit how long your emotes are I guess, as long as they don't take 5 minutes to come through. Time is going faster on Arma? Like around 20 times as fast ? So you take five minutes for your four or five line emotes. Yeah thats cool...

The scene I described on the street with the 'tall muscular d00d' took within twenty to fourty seconds, I shit you not. Basically, my gripe is people who don't EMOTE, and are unwillingly to wait for others to EMOTE.

The might be newbies, still fresh in their newbie clothes, who don't yet understand the pace of the game, but I can't be sure about that. After all, they jet off before I can finish typing 'look buxom'.

[sacac]

Well then there is a question to be answered..
Should we take turns letting epople emote?
(Like this)
Blih, blih-haired man sits by the corner.
blah-haired, blah chick looks at ~man.

(or)
Man sits down.
man looks around.
man looks at you.

[Lasakar]

I once followed another PC too. I was a newbie and there were only 11 players online. I wanted only to see that this guy is doing. Always one room away I was lookin in his drirection. By mistake I run into him. He looked at me and I looked at him. Well, not knowing what to do next I just withdraw.
I think it was just my curiosity of a newbie.
If I now notice that somebody is following me I just catch him up and talk to him. Often it is newbie. And it happens mostly at times when there are not a lot players online.

Of course I wouldn't do that in the Rinth. I would run... :wink:

[Dyrinis]

The spawn point issue has been bugging me for a while.  I've implemented random plant loading around Allanak but there's a bug with the controller that won't get fixed until Saturday (plants wont load until I manually reset the controller after a reboot).  I plan to imp this in the obsidian mines territory, the red storm territory, and the salt flats tomorrow.  There are some plants that will remain stationary.  Please let me know of any problems with this change.

Dyrinis

[Angela Christine]

The spawn point issue has been bugging me for a while.  I've implemented random plant loading around Allanak but there's a bug with the controller that won't get fixed until Saturday (plants wont load until I manually reset the controller after a reboot).  I plan to imp this in the obsidian mines territory, the red storm territory, and the salt flats tomorrow.  There are some plants that will remain stationary.  Please let me know of any problems with this change.

I haven't seen any big problems with what has been around so far, but then I don't know how it is supposed to behave.  

One thing I really like is that many of the plants can be seen from one room away, even ones whose stationary version could not be spotted from a distance.  That was the thing I was most worried about when I first heard about the change.  Even on a kank you can't cover a good size area in any reasonable amount of time if you have to go back and forth or spiral in some sort of search grid that covers every single square.    Spending hours learning a small territory only to have your exploration completely undone by a random crash would be irritating.
Being able to spot obsidian and some plants in the distance makes grebbing more feasable.

The mobile plants should be good.  It's always hard to deal with looking for plants when you know the area.  Going right to the plants flawlessly every time feels cheesy, even if your character knew the area you couldn't expect plant X to be in flower or in seed or whatever each and every time you went out.  But at the same time wearing out your legs or your mount going where you know the plants are -not- just to give the illusion that you are searching rather than remembering feels stupid too.  It reminds me of every cheesy sitcom where a character learns they are throwing a surprise party for him, but still has to pretend he doesn't know what is going on, and then make a big deal about being surprised.

This looks good.  

AC