Chat/OOC Updates Pt. III

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Candelori
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Re: Chat/OOC Updates Pt. III

Post by Candelori »

My initial reaction was to think that I would miss the feeling of community connection. Upon further reflection I must admit that this feeling of connection I recall from the chat channels was from a time during the very early stages of both MUDs when there were but a handful of players and chat was less frequent but more intimate when it did occur.

After some consideration I feel optimistic about the changes and especially look forward to the questions-only channel. Perhaps we can foster a better sense of OOC community here on the forums, which is another aspect I miss from my time I spent in CLOK. The humor, shout-out, and various general socialization topics served well to form bonds with fellow players outside the game while remaining within the same community of people. I do hope this can be the case here as well, as I do not think I will join the ancillary chat channels through the third-party platforms.
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Taliaferro
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Re: Chat/OOC Updates Pt. III

Post by Taliaferro »

I'm also hoping this will foster more activity here on the forum. Discord and that kind of thing is great for real-time chat and I definitely will keep using it, but I think good old-fashioned message boards like this one are really good and useful for a lot of things in a game and community like ours. A chat-room type thingy's good for asking for tips and chewing the fat, and all, but it's really difficult to go back through the endless archive and try to search for something specific you need to know about without being the umpteenth person to ask that same question for the umptieth time.

Aside from that, I'd love it if we had a few more categories here on the boards. Mostly to facilitate RP. I recently posted a log of an RP event. I'd like to see a category for that sort of thing, and perhaps for IG letters and journals and interactions like that. We have a lovely IG mail system, obviously, but sometimes it's useful and fun to post these things online for other people to see.
Prism
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Re: Chat/OOC Updates Pt. III

Post by Prism »

Initially, when the conversation of changing the chat system as it stood arose back in October, I was one of the few who weren't really sure how to feel about the game channel at the time.

Having had some time since then to experience the game from multiple angles and now take a break from it post holidays for a little while, I can definitively say all of the changes here sound absolutely amazing. I'll probably be back sooner as a result.

As politely as possible-- the Game channel was starting to bring me down. Every time I'd peek in at the chat it was usually conversation that had nothing to do with the game. I kind of come here to play the game. So I like it when I can focus on said game-- It's why I usually have the channel tuned as of now.

One other teensy thing-- and this is more addressed at the community. please don't use the afk system as an osay system. That's super unfortunate to hear, and super immersion breaking. I was initially super psyched about the way afk worked here because of the intentional way it can be used. There's a big difference between "afk grabbing a drink" and "afk my kid just spilled her drink all over my dog". But if all people are doing are using it as a in-game OOC chat system, I'll gladly take the sadness of a less verbose afk message over my immersion being broken so hard.

Sorry for the complainyness near the end there. But all said, I'm excited about the changes, and excited to make a return in some time. I'm still really excited about the faction system and societies and gaaah so many things.

tldr: I like changes. Many likes from me. Changes good. OOCness in IC bad. No OOC in IC. Keep IC IC. Much love.
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merin
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Re: Chat/OOC Updates Pt. III

Post by merin »

Prism wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 7:32 pm One other teensy thing-- and this is more addressed at the community. please don't use the afk system as an osay system. That's super unfortunate to hear, and super immersion breaking. I was initially super psyched about the way afk worked here because of the intentional way it can be used. There's a big difference between "afk grabbing a drink" and "afk my kid just spilled her drink all over my dog". But if all people are doing are using it as a in-game OOC chat system, I'll gladly take the sadness of a less verbose afk message over my immersion being broken so hard.
Just to follow up here. I tend to agree; I think that the afk system can be used productively. I guess, though, this is a 100% perfect example of "This is why we can't have nice things".

I would ask that, instead of removing it, either it be re-designed or we as a community decide to stop abusing it. Because Prism is correct. "afk pizza guy showed up" tells me as either a person involved in RP or an activity needs a few minutes to get their pizza, get a plate, and maybe come back and get situated--5 minutes, VS "afk my dog just threw up all over the couch" means it's probably going to be ok if I slip out of the current situation because that's something that can and usually does take a bit of time. A third example is "afk currently on the phone, distracted a bit" means this persons' here but slightly delayed in responding; this can indicate to me that if I don't get a hello back to my hello in a minute or two it's coming, i can choose to be patient or not, but the person just isn't ignoring me.

It can also be argued that if someone's AFK then I can choose to wait as well, but I think this gives me a much better idea of if I should wait or not. I'm not oposed to waiting if someone needs a minute or waiting if someone tells me "Dude I need some patients here" but if I'm not in the know I tend to just leave as I don't know if people are legit there or not and I have other things to do than find out by waiting five minutes for a "x nods to you in greeting".

So here's what I propose, if the fluid messaging is not allowed to stay:
Give the AFK command certain arguments, AFK 1-10, distracted, and indefinite. It could work like this:
afk 5
[AFK] Merin is going AFK for about five minutes
AFK indefinite
AFK Merin is going AFK/[AFK] Merin is going AFK for an indefinite amount of time.
afk distracted
[AFK] Merin has indicated he will be slow to respond.


While we're on the subject, can I have a way to change how long I have to not interact before I go AFK please please please? There's times where I'll just chill and watch people and the game will tell me I'm AFK but I'm not. I'm not asking for anything like super long but, like, five-10 minutes rather than like 2? If it's 5 minutes of inactivity already, then allow me to double it?
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Marcuson
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Re: Chat/OOC Updates Pt. III

Post by Marcuson »

I like the suggestions that Nobody has made in this thread.

I don't have an opinion about the OOC chat going away. I mostly use it to ask and answer questions or occasionally comment on game mechanics or suggestions. I do find complaining frustrating, and I put players who constantly complain on ignore, though sometimes I have to turn off the OOC channel completely. Joke answers to honest questions are also frustrating, and I'd prefer it if people didn't do that.

However, I'd like to make an observation regarding the philosophy driving these changes. Punishing everyone is not a very good way of reining in a few bad actors, especially when one or two simple changes could take away the privileges from those who abused them. Perhaps that's too confrontational. Maybe it is. But if your choice is between gaining the ire of someone who was already abusing the system or gradually building resentment among people who were following the rules, it seems counterproductive to choose the latter option, as ultimately you will drive them away and be left with only the first group.
artus
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Re: Chat/OOC Updates Pt. III

Post by artus »

It's almost as if some people are not reminded enough of the fact that chat isn't to stray too far from the game topic. I've noted one of two three something people now in particular who keep doing it, though I'd rather point out names unless asked. The community is growing and bad fish are going to influx in more and more, making it hard to control. While having the chat accessible from only the screen sounds like a good idea, it doesn't lessen the traffic of off topic stuff or even the amount of messages sent if people can just open a second window and be done. Instead, those who prefer it productively and don't have third party and use clients that don't support second window like some phone ones are going to miss it entirely. If chatremind isn't fired often at everything, I see nothing wrong with it, tbh.

Also, while we're on the afk topic, may I suggest lag command please? Sometimes it's not afk. It's lag. If there's only afk then we have no way what so ever aside from chatting to the entire group we lag, which clutters the chat history. Afk custom message being gone sounds good, given how much people use it to osay, but at the same time, there are people who use afk productively. Have you considered limiting afk message to like one or two words? If typo correction is going to be a command, the reason for abusing afk custom is less.
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Rias
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Re: Chat/OOC Updates Pt. III

Post by Rias »

Part of this shift is out of a desire to have a deliberate layer of separation between IC and OOC communications in the game itself. Even if everyone were playing perfectly by every rule and guideline, we feel the consistent flow of OOC chatter being in the game, now that we have a larger population, serves to detract from the game's atmosphere and distracts players from staying IC when they're actually in the game and we want to encourage them to be enjoying playing their character rather than chatting out-of-character.

Regarding AFK custom messages: It's one more thing that would have to be actively monitored and policed by staff for what was meant as a little non-essential nicety. If a player feels an AFK explanation is necessary, they can us the TELL command. I would recommend the same for cases of excessive lag affecting an active scene. Players are in general very understanding if they do happen to notice that others are taking a few extra moments to respond to goings-on. If lag is somehow causing minutes of delay in responsiveness that's certainly something I could see a player wanting to explain, but if it's just adding a few moments, even if consistently, I imagine it would not even be noticed by others involved.
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Jaster
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Re: Chat/OOC Updates Pt. III

Post by Jaster »

Might I suggest some sort of "group tell" function, which would allow multiple players to communicate OOC, but privately amongst themselves, without having to access outside resources?

It could work with one player initially sending a group tell invite, then each player would separately approve their inclusion in the group tell with the ability to drop out of the group at will.

You might even be able to have a group tell log, which would allow the player to keep track of any open group tells they are included in.

Then the syntax would be something like GTELL (GROUP #) (MESSAGE).

Just be careful not to send your tell to the wrong group when talking smack about each other, ya heathens!

Also, sounds like a lot of work...

You got this, Rias. :)
Bean
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Re: Chat/OOC Updates Pt. III

Post by Bean »

Jaster wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 11:53 am Might I suggest some sort of "group tell" function, which would allow multiple players to communicate OOC, but privately amongst themselves, without having to access outside resources?

It could work with one player initially sending a group tell invite, then each player would separately approve their inclusion in the group tell with the ability to drop out of the group at will.

You might even be able to have a group tell log, which would allow the player to keep track of any open group tells they are included in.

Then the syntax would be something like GTELL (GROUP #) (MESSAGE).

Just be careful not to send your tell to the wrong group when talking smack about each other, ya heathens!

Also, sounds like a lot of work...

You got this, Rias. :)
Hi!

Without any disrespect, I got to say that this is a bit of a risky idea if it would be implemented. As somebody that comes from a few MUDs that did this, The only thing that seems to happen was that cliques formed much more quickly. It essentially had the problems of chat, but localized to a small, usually tight group. Once people know that others they might not think too highly of our not in the group, talking smack becomes a part of the chatter, and that just tended to breed animosity from my experience. Also, just like chat, plenty of people would actually get distracted from the world if Conversation started flowing ooc.

Essentially, it becomes an unmoderated exclusive group that tends to distract and detract from the experience.
artus
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Re: Chat/OOC Updates Pt. III

Post by artus »

Usually when people report lag, it's not a minor lag thattakes seconds to pass. Sometimes the net is really bad and they disconnect every 2 minutes in an rp. While it may be better explained in one on one setting, telling the crowd isn't gonna be easy especially when 6 people are in the room.

Something else to bring to attention: afk at its current state has something that doesn't break it and things that aren't supposed to break it but do. I use hunger command to keep afk alive and it breaks afk when cooking doesn't. Not sure what command I'm going to end up using as universal keepalive for the soundpack, unless keepalive is implemented server side or something. It's way too easy for my net to stop loving me.:(
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