Posts made by surreality

@Misadventure -- You could arguably code watch to handle unknown alts in the way I described without revealing them in the process: when you do +watch/hidefrom <name> (or whatever one names the command), <name> is added to your list of people you're hiding from that you can see. The actual list the +watch code references, however, can be stored on an attribute that isn't player-visible. This means it's possible to, when adding Sally Chatterbox to your 'hide from' list, have the code also IP check Sally and add her and her alts to the list the code is actually using to hide you -- not your little list of names that you can see. This way, you can hide from a player engaging in annoying player behavior without revealing that player's alts and infringing on their privacy in the process.

To the best of my knowledge, this code doesn't omit them from the list of connected watched people when it's randomly checked -- it just doesn't alert you directly when they connect or disconnect. Which is no big deal, IMHO.

+watch isn't overkill. Pagelocking someone for being a minor nuisance in regard to the way they use +watch kinda is.

TR had a pretty nice setup generally for +watch compared to others I've seen. You could selectively hide from individual charbits with it -- which is helpful. I never was a fan of Shang's 'all or nothing' approach on this one, for instance.

Also it's a bit overkill, depending on the behavior.

I may have no qualms interacting IC/when there's cause with Sally McChattypanties, but I may not want Sally page-bombing me the second I log in with huggy-snuggle crap and whatnot every time I connect, especially if I have only a few minutes to pop in and reply to a job or something and wish to do so without dallying over chatty trivia.

Depending on how it's coded, you can hide from the stalky type these days -- which is a huge help.

My secret dream is that some day this will be coded in such a way as to work off of IP rather than name, on a hidden 'avoid' attribute, so it does not reveal alts in the process. Even if they are the alts of someone behaving like a twit.

@Misadventure said:

How about &afinger updates a list of who has ever read their +finger, for the paranoid, and there is no timing specific notice, for the paranoid user of +finger?

It provides metrics, feeds everyones insecurities, and takes up space.

If someone doesn't want people finding out any information about them, how about not volunteering that information in +finger in the first place? I mean, it isn't like they aren't listing this information themselves, entirely of their own volition, and choosing what they do or do not make public (aside from the most broad strokes: name, alias, connected/not, etc.)

+finger is the public profile on a game. You can leave it pretty blank if you want, but it's still public. We have the same thing here, and I don't see anyone claiming there is a downside to not having the ability to see who clicked on their name to read that profile -- or any suggestion that ability is some kind of right, the lack of it is deprivation, etc. here, so why is M* somehow the exception to what many typically expect regarding the same sort of data?

And another one! &afinger depresses me. I can't count the number of times I see it go off, then get a page from someone who clearly did not read a word of what was written there, when I know dang well it all scrolled up in their face. That gives me a serious case of the murderface.

A wiki wouldn't be a bad idea, in all seriousness. I would avoid the sites that offer the pre-cooked ones like wikia on a wikifarm -- but mediawiki is not impossible to set up on its own if there's server space for it. (I was able to do it with Bobotrons help and Glitch's tutorial, and if I can do it, it can definitely be done!)

It wouldn't be too hard to set something up as a 'game page' template similar to the way games set up a character page template; it'd just require different fields. Even the categories could be set up in a similar way, just for games instead of characters: potential, active, dead, theme/etc. Since edits can be tracked and reverted as needs be, it isn't as scary to police as it could be if the need ever arises.

@Misadventure said:

You object to someone knowing you are reading their information?

Knowing? Not really.

Thinking this entitles them to attention -- or anything at all -- beyond that? Vehemently.

(God, I really am apparently sharing a brain with @Rince!)

@Rook said:

@Cobaltasaurus
I am unsure why you think my idea of what AFINGER is, is off. Now maybe on the WoD games, there is no literal &AFINGER attribute that the +FINGER code parses and emits to the +fingeree, but on other games, that is exactly how it works. If you are attributing AFINGER as a built-in emit within the code of the +FINGER command, then it isn't truly an AFINGER in the sense of the rest of MUSH/MUX attributes that get triggered on actions (@asucc, @adrop, @adesc).

I am not sure why:

• &AFINGER me=
• +finger code that will not parse functions within AFINGER attributes
• +finger/silent

will not work for solutions to your point 2.

The examples I've been giving aren't just from WoD games -- they're from a pretty broad range, unfortunately.

While I could list at least a dozen more examples downsides to having &afinger, I haven't seen a positive presented as to why it should exist in the first place.

'People are shy' as a 'positive' is actually encouragement of very poor behavior, and a fallacious understanding of the command and its actual purpose, that leads to much bigger problems down the road.

One should not need a +finger/silent command to be unbothered when they check publicly-available, player-volunteered information.

This is a cultural problem that ultimately, code is not going to resolve with a notification; keeping it will 'aid' shy players and the aggressive, obnoxious ones in ways that are simply not aid. Removing it encourages players to speak up to their interests actively in the case of the 'shy'. This is important, because this is not a passive hobby, it is an inherently interactive one. If someone is too shy to interact without an automated notifier pinging them that someone felt like seeing what public information they listed about themselves, what happens when that person gets no further feedback? Are they going to become any less shy or any more confident when the person does not pursue any further inquiry? Highly doubtful.

Edit: A much more useful switch option in this case would be to have players be able to use something akin to +finger/noisy if they're seeking attention in return or want it to be known they're looking over whatever it is. Leave the rest of us in peace, for mercy's sake. HR's example of "You were just looking at me!" below is spot on.

@Rook said:

However, I believe that AFINGER can be used by me to mutually find RP interest, RP Hook interest, new people to a group, whatever. I believe that it facilitates player communication and link-up, when used right.

Except... it isn't. +finger provides the basic data to the person making the inquiry when the only information they may have is the other party's name. (I'm not talking about &ofinger -- that is its own creepy kettle of fish.)

Interest is not confirmed because someone doesn't recognize a new or unfamiliar name and wonders who or what it is attached to, and assuming otherwise is what causes most of the problems I rattled off earlier -- interest is only confirmed if the inquiring party makes some kind of direct inquiry beyond typing +finger <name>.

This is why I say there is zero benefit to having the other party notified, and only downside.

At best, you're stuck having to explain to some brain-dead idiot that 'I was using the command that gives me the basic information you listed yourself about your character to find out if you were interesting or not', which nobody should have to do, and no one should be required to justify to someone who doesn't understand what public, volunteered information is.

Add me to the people who loathe &afinger with the burning flames of a thousand suns going supernova at once. That is only mild hyperbole; I really despise &afinger.

I finger people for the usual reason: "Oh, who's that?"

Entirely too many self-important morons think this is an excuse to do any number of things from there:

• Demand to know what you found fascinating about them. (This is especially funny when they leave it mostly blank and there is nothing whatsoever to find fascinating. Besides, if you already knew enough about them to find them fascinating, why would you be checking basics like +finger? Pfft. Idiots.)

• Strike up the world's most long-winded conversation about shit you could not possibly care less about even if someone was holding a gun to your head and demanding you give at least one wee fuck. (Again, especially annoying when there is nothing interesting about them whatsoever or no commonalities there.)

• Start screaming "STALKER!" at you if you +fingered them once before a month ago and had simply forgotten. (Again, usually because they were completely uninteresting.)

• People actually using +finger constantly to be stalky fucks and trigger your &afinger to make you feel watched. (A game played often enough on the aforementioned Shangrila that there's mention of not fingering someone if they have you on +ignore/etc. in policy.)

...I may not be entirely rational on this point since I find the above so needlingly-peeve-inspiring, but I see absolutely no positives whatsoever gained from &afinger. None. Not a fucking one.

@HelloRaptor said:

Unrelated to the life's blood thing, I don't really like Conditions. I find them more or less a huge hodge podge of often unrelated rules that can't decide if they're fluff or system, which vary wildly in severity, involve often contradictory ideas of what constitutes resolution, and too many of them play into one of the worst relics of the older system which is the XP abyss that is Integrity.

I can see the seed of a good idea, but every time I find myself wanting to play with them I just sort of balk at how shit they collectively are in implementation.

From this perspective, while I don't share it personally, it's at least 'contained'. Crappy ones can be revised or removed, other effects can be applied, etc.

I'd rather have these things in a contained list I can edit and adjust as needed than, say, deal with overly complicated combat rules that have all the tilts worked into their core material in a way you need to memorize beyond the current 'if x, apply an applicable tilt'. There's a good versatility there to tailor something to the scene without an excess of potentially overkill trivia to memorize.

I think the color stuff is the MUXify thing -- all the code snippets show up with it generally. I don't think you'd be seeing that on the actual MUX at all.

@Cobaltasaurus said:

God, you people kill all joy and fun.

I am admittedly half-heartedly considering this. Like... I don't know what system I'd use. But this is the kind of joy and fun that I think warrants entertaining with a stupidly simple system behind it since the systems wouldn't be the real point anyway.

Because entertaining it would certainly be.

I always wanted to make a parody game and honestly, this would be close enough...

@Coin said:

One thing we'll never get on a MU that we get all the time on television is the will-they-or-won't-they Uresolve Sexual Tension...

... because on a MU, they always do.

I'm laughing because as true as this normally is? I've had this take years to accomplish sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't.

Bonus: this was while I was playing on Shang, where that is the whole point, usually. How epic fail is that?

@Cobaltasaurus said:

You people take things way too seriously.

Following @tragedyjones' lead here's some thoughts on Vampire Diaries as a MUSH

Shall I go on? >.>

Bonus round: And when a bunch of people want to use the same PB, you have endless doppelgangers running around.

See? PERFECT.

As generic teen soap opera, meh.

As a hilarious mashup of The Vampire Diaries, Teen Wolf, etc.? Oh I would be so there.

@Thenomain said:

@icanbeyourmuse said:

I believe there is a game that is all those spun into one. Lantern Hill or some such thing.

URL, please!

Seconded.

I know that generally speaking, unless I'm swamped (or dead idle), I'm visible. My general approach has always been to just leave my connection up to catch questions on channels and so on that I might be able to answer when I am back at the screen, which is harder to do (or sometimes just forgotten to back-check) otherwise.

Auto-darking is something I never was especially keen on, I'll admit. Auto-dark for idle is a two-edged sword; it doesn't show the staffer as available, but it also doesn't show why they aren't available if someone has paged, finds they are connected, and simply gets no answer. Seeing a long idle time would be an instant explanation for this that might stave off some potential hard feelings of 'is Staffer just ignoring my question?' that not being able to see the idle time can create understandable doubts about.

Auto 'set to idle' is probably a better option for that, at least, with a default idle message with the staffer's current idle time displayed in response to pages.

People ignore 'off-duty' regularly. 'Busy', as mentioned, is likely a good addition. To be fair, off-duty could mean busy, it could mean 'I feel like picking my butt right now, sorry' or any number of other things -- all of them valid -- but busy is just all around less ambiguous.

@Ganymede said:

I wish I could just hole up in my office every day to plow through my work, but I have this fucking phone that just won't leave me alone. And e-mails. And people keep walking into my office.

I deal with it.

I'm all for removing the DARK flag for staffers entirely. If you're working on something, have an &idle message up.

There's an entitlement thing on a lot of games. "You are connected, therefore you can do my thing right now, even if other people are ahead of me in line, even if you are asleep, etc." Oh hey let's chatter for half an hour about the weather even though you're trying to set up somebody's stats who has been waiting patiently... who will scream at you until you're cringing if you misplace a dot due to the distractions or have to ask a question you lost the answer to in the mountain of spam now on your screen.

Sometimes having the idle message set just scrolls your screen much faster, since it adds another line to every page that keeps on coming in.

I got it a lot at work, too. Customers have zero qualms emailing at 3am and bitching by 3:15am why they don't have an answer yet.

It's worth noting that most of these concepts can't be built with standard starting points, anyway.

The bigger 'reality break' tends to be due to rapid advancement, I'd think, as a result, barring the 'I have a mountain of points to transfer so the new alt will be epic from the jump' scenario. Transfers are a different thing.

I'm with @lordbelh on this one.

It isn't the fantasy factor that gets irksome with this one, but it's more the 'must be the -est' issue mentioned upthread, or what @il-volpe mentioned regarding flaws.

Be an -est if you must, just pick a specific thing, not all the things ever, and generally you're fine.

It's generally only irksome when someone can't be all the -ests and throws a tantrum on what is ultimate a very basic, fundamental playground level truth: the -est pile of toys is for everybody to share across the whole playground, you can't have them all, little Mary-Sue-GreedyBritches.

On a reasonably sized game, well-shared -ests can be a kickass RP asset, because they're simply niches; you know who to go to when you need that thing, and everybody gets RP out of the deal. It can also foster community amazingly well when a group recognizes each other for their hand-selected snowflake factor and gives everybody a chance to shine in their chosen way.

None of that is a bad thing, and it's pretty basic to the way most groups are built going back to the old D&D days of 'everybody pick a different character class so we have a well-rounded party, guys!'