zombilicious wrote:
I appreciate another viewpoint, but I would like to point out that this happens in real life all the time. I don't know about the rest of you, but I would never willingly to and spend time with/engage with someone I find annoying unless they happen to have a really good personality outside of that. My characters are the same; if they find you irritating, they're not going to talk to you, listen to you much, or engage with you unless absolutely forced to in a communal setting. I'm not sure why the ability to tune out someone (one-sidedly, without it alerting the person who is being tuned and not-permanently) is any different than simply being selective over who you're engaging with.
rias wrote:
If you don't mind, I'd appreciate helping me understand better. You can email it if you don't feel comfortable sharing it here (or just not get into it further at all if you don't want to). I get the feeling that with the level of opposition the idea is getting from some people, I should understand that opposition better before making a decision. I may very well just be suffering from old man brain and not completely absorbing reasons already given, but I feel like I'm still blundering around in the "I'm not sure why people don't like this idea" zone and that's not a good place to be for the person deciding whether it happens or not. Thank you to everyone for all thoughts, feedback, and patience in explaining things during this discussion!
I will try to respond to both of these, with the context that, as Zombilicious said, this is only my viewpoint. It may not resonate with others, and that is okay.
From a thinking about this and reasoning why it makes me concerned approach, there are the reasons listed previously: players feeling ignored and trying to circumvent it or feeling offended by it, the ones ignoring it becoming upset someone is trying to circumvent their ESP ignores, a subtle encouragement to form cliques which might isolate specific players, or the way an in-character ignore feature might result in arguments over the harassment policy. Essentially, it feels more abusable than useful?
Mostly, I dislike how ESP ignore might color character interaction as an easily available option to strangle it, and struggle to think of a case where the outcomes of its use would be positive or community-building, rather than community-fragmenting, or at least, envision a community where the implementation of this feature and whatever problems it might address is worth all of the potential drama hazard flags. At the same time, I may be the worst possible person to speculate about this. My first impression of this particular suggestion was extremely negative. So maybe anything considered will be in an equally unhelpfully negative light.
Specifically addressing Zombilicious, it is true "this happens in real life all the time." However, by virtue of being real life, it is something we exist in all of the time. Real life has Twitter, Facebook, Discord, Phones, Email...
COGG has ESP. Real life has millions of people; COGG has, at maximum activity hours, maybe 40 or so? Real life offers a 24-hour, 7-day enforced subscription program, whereas COGG is viewed through the window of a MUD terminal for a limited time each day. It feels as if the impact of casually deciding to ignore will be felt far more on COGG than outside of it. In a sense, it makes players more powerful? better able to hurt each other, for how close we stand to one another. And this doubly so for well-established experienced players toward anyone new attempting to start playing here. But then in its own way I accept this is biased criticism. Social media has never been particularly attractive to me, and it would be not very appealing to see that kind of culture spread to the ESP.
More specifically to Rias, putting words to why it bothers me is hard for how inherently subjective it is, and also how it tangles with my understanding of other social aspects of COGG, and also not an insignificant amount of baggage from other games with extraordinarily insular communities which have nothing at all to do with COGG. Trying my best to make examples directly relevant in order to mitigate as much of this bias as possible leaves behind three points. It worries me as to the kind of message this mechanic would send to players learning about the game, where one must not only choose a faction to clash against, but then be handed a tool to cut out specific players from the opportunity to rp with them. In a...design-intent-presentation way, if this makes any sense. It especially concerns me players might use this as an alternative to helping other players find meaning in the game, or worse, given how frequently in-character events and, well, characters are discussed out of it, that it might be placing OOC ignore a single thought and command away from IC ignore. This is not to say anyone currently playing would think to do this, or even that I would suspect them of it, but it seems like a very easily permissible situation enabled by the mechanic. Worse--one which could be extremely difficult to monitor; potentially even more so than whatever disagreement type issues you foresee this solving? Maybe overtop telepathy zones and factions, both of which serve to shrink the circle of characters immediately available to interact with, it feels a little excessive?
This was longer than intended, despite numerous revisions. Also as stated by others, much of this is softened by the proposal of an extremely short duration and being a stationary location, pay-for kind of service. Also-also, I am probably in the extreme minority about this, and if you like the idea along with most everyone else, then it should be okay. I worry about everything, particularly matters of community and atmosphere, and much of my concerns are based around how others would use and perceive the feature--I could be wrong, people are unpredictable. Either way, thank you for reading through to the end and allowing me to elaborate. It is admittedly not something I would have done without prompting.
-Alila