An attempt of a technical analysis of the 'who' mechanic

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tanriel
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An attempt of a technical analysis of the 'who' mechanic

#1 Post by tanriel » Sun Jul 13, 2014 9:39 am

Hello,

With quite a bit of delay, I would like to write about the change to the 'who' mechanic. I am aware that it was changed again, thus possibly rendering a bit of my analysis quite irrelevant, but I believe it is important to point out the technical differences of the 'who' mechanic in general.

This may be of importance lateron when I may attempt to describe why certain decisions are being made that do not strike me as the optimal solution.

This note here is rather technical and not quite "emotional". What this means is that I attempt to describe the three different 'who' mechanics in somewhat neutral wording, because I believe this is the best way to address admin effectively.

The main target audience of this note is admin, especially Turian, but also of course other wizards - especially a few various wizards who over the years recommended to effectively eliminate 'who', with their various alts on the webforum before, but also quite possibly among other discussion media, even many months or even years ago - and other players as well.

Please excuse the focus on technical aspects here; I will write another note afterwards, eventually, where I will make a more judgemental evaluation of the change at hand, and why the discussions and conclusions reached prior to changing 'who' were and are completely incorrect and absolutely faulty from my perspective.

Now, without further ado - the 'who' mechanic means that players can see who may be online the moment they did issue this command, should their respective character have remembered the other character before, and unless both characters are 'who on'.

In particular, this was the case with the 'who' mechanic up to at least the first half of 2013, and many years before that. I will assign the number (1) to this "old" system, and I will refer to it as the "default". The two changes that occurred to the 'who' mechanic I will label as (2) and (3), respectively, with (3) being the currently used one (July 2014).

Furthermore, what was also possible in (1) was that a player could see the peak number of total players, or at least of all those who are connected at that moment in time. You as a player would receive a number such as "There are 21 players in the game, of these you know:".

This gave players the possibility to find out the peak number of total players on a given day if they are connected to the game, and also assess how many other players may be playing the game at that moment in time. This information often affect(ed) how players would play (or want to play) the game, both negative (players may want to disconnect when only few other players are playing) and positive (players may remain connected when more other players are playing at that same moment in time).

Other MUDs often use different systems - for instance, a few MUDs offer a global who list that is available even through a website, so a player does not even have to connect to the game in order to see who else is playing. Again, I do not judge - there are pros and cons associated with every strategy employed.

Then came the first change to 'who', and I will assign the number (2) to this change. This change removed the possibility to find out how many players are playing currently - it removed the "peak player" assessment feature. It additionally removed the ability to find out which other player is playing at the time of when 'who' is issued.

It brought something new into the game, which was the 48 hours backlog-tracking ability, where also 'who off' characters were now tracked - this meant that you could now find out who of these 'who off' characters have logged in the last 48 hours at least. At the same time with this change, 'who off' was entirely eliminated.

The latest change, which I wish to call (3), brought back the 'who off' playing style again, and also gave players back one feature removed before, which was to find out who else was playing the game at any given moment in time (provided that you connected to the game, issued the 'who' command, and of course your character remembered that other character, and both of those characters are not 'who off'). To compare with (2), (2) did not give you this information because it did not give you present information but rather merged this together with the 48 hours backlog, so you could no longer differ between active players, and those who used to connect to the game but have since then logged off. There was no effective way to find out if any of these players are really playing or not at all. For instance, a player in the system (2) could log in, and instantly log out, and this was "counted" by the system in exactly the same way as a player that connected, yet remained connected for e. g. 4 hours actively playing.

The current system (3) is not equal to system (1), as the peak playing numbers remains eliminated, a '*' is indicated when before there was no '*', and the 48 hours backlog is retained, without any option given to players to opt-out from it.

In all three systems, whenever 'who' was used, players were notified that it was OOC information and should be treated as such.

I believe I have finished describing the three different 'who' mechanics.

Personally I think, but also from a technical point of view, (1) gave most options and useful information to players by far, followed by (3), and then (2).

I will not further judge the change in this thread though, as I wish to make this a purely / mostly technical analysis of the three different mechanics.

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Allalltar
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Re: An attempt of a technical analysis of the 'who' mechanic

#2 Post by Allalltar » Mon Jul 14, 2014 5:05 am

tanriel wrote: This note here is rather technical and not quite "emotional". What this means is that I attempt to describe the three different 'who' mechanics in somewhat neutral wording, because I believe this is the best way to address admin effectively.
I welcome that. Emotional outbursts will not get you anywhere, at least not if you value
any support from people who spend their free time making this MUD a better place for
other people to spend their time on.
tanriel wrote: The main target audience of this note is admin, especially Turian, but also of course other wizards - especially a few various wizards who over the years recommended to effectively eliminate 'who', with their various alts on the webforum before, but also quite possibly among other discussion media, even many months or even years ago - and other players as well.
Honestly... unneeded and harmful. Why?
tanriel wrote: Now, without further ado - the 'who' mechanic means that players can see who may be online the moment they did issue this command, should their respective character have remembered the other character before, and unless both characters are 'who on'.

In particular, this was the case with the 'who' mechanic up to at least the first half of 2013, and many years before that. I will assign the number (1) to this "old" system, and I will refer to it as the "default". The two changes that occurred to the 'who' mechanic I will label as (2) and (3), respectively, with (3) being the currently used one (July 2014).
The old mechanic (pre 2013 post 1990ish) is not described correctly:

The number showed the actual number of people currently, at this moment in the game, not the peak number of people in the game during a specific time. If it said '20' people, then there were 20 people in the game. If it said '3' then there were 3 people in the game.
This is the sole bit of information that you do not have available right now, you can't deduct how many people you do not know / are who off that are currently in the game anymore.

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Sairina
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Re: An attempt of a technical analysis of the 'who' mechanic

#3 Post by Sairina » Mon Jul 14, 2014 9:51 am

While I like the additional information given by the 48 hour numbers, I will also have to adapt my playing style without the information on how many people are playing right now. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I'd have to try it for a while to see whether I like it or not. And we'd all have to wait a while to see how it affects player numbers overall, I can certainly see why the change was made - a low number of players can deter people from playing, so the number is less likely to rise, it also can deter potential new players. Whether the change has the desired effects remains to be seen...

One idea that might maybe help people looking for roleplay (and new players): add information on the daily peak time, maybe from the last day, or maybe averaged over a week, or 48 hours, to give players at least an idea when it might currently be best to log in if looking for a lot of interaction. No need to even add the actual numbers, just something like "the most active time was around 7pm GMT (or whatever)"

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