My ctoninued absence.

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tanriel
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My ctoninued absence.

#1 Post by tanriel » Sat Jun 07, 2014 8:41 pm

Hello,

I suppose I should have written this sooner, at the least. I am a bit tired already so excuse the length of the note and possible mistakes should you find them, I tried to rewrite it a few times already. I am unsure whether rewriting it has improved it at all, possibly not.

I did not write to the other thread, "Absence", because my note here is rather long already, so I simply made a new thread.

I have somehow managed to get myself knee-deep into work-related activities of various sorts and I find myself unable to play for at the very least a full month to come, so well past 12 of July 2014, at the very, very least. Unfortunately after that I don't know if and how much time I will have to play the game either. This is partly outside of my control too,
as there are specific deadlines I must meet and "achieve" in reallife, and I can not too easily control these.

This is only partially the truth, though - the other part is that my motivation to want to play the game after the change to the who mechanic has instantly dwindled down to zero in one go. My chin literally fell down when I first heard about the change to 'who', just like you were to suddenly experience a shockingly bad nightmare (like, scary Freddy in "A Nightmare on Elm Street"; ever tried sitting close before a TV, at night, with the volume raised up a lot AND on top of that, you are all alone in a large house? I swear that I am not too easily scared in reallife, but give me loud music and sudden, unexpected stuff and I am a scaredy cat quickly).

I don't quite have the time to write down in detail right now why that is so in regards to that change - I will defer this for now and do so at a later time, and write a much more detailed note, with the aim of trying to explain to Turian - and any other admin who may still be active - why this presents to me a too huge hurdle to want to overcome.

I am out of ideas how I could effectively achieve to experience the same amount of fun I used to have before that very change, minus the time when I had to make a break because of reallife.

After I will have explained in detail everything there seems to be about the new who system, I will then try to offer hopefully useful alternatives and, with some luck, eventually Turian will make changes to the system to allow me to continue to play the game. Admin is my last hope here after all.

Even then I still can not guarantee that I will be back, I am sorry. But I inform you beforehand.

I am faced with some difficulties here - reallife demands a lot of my time, and a game I used to enjoy playing immensely, has at the very least one major inherent problem that is entirely impossible for me, and not within my reach, to overcome.

The suggested "workarounds" are not working in any way whatsoever, it feels as if someone else has effectively crippled the game for me, and the offered replacements
... sorry to write it down so bluntly, are really awful. I can not take this seriously to think of such "replacements". IC messengers? More runic rings? This is in no way any compensation in the slightest.

You can perhaps now imagine why my enthusiasm for wanting to play the game has been set to zero here - and it has nothing to do with any player but it has everything to do with a singular change to the game from my point of view.

I can't really play the game with the changed who mechanic, but I also don't want to get retired by a change to the code by a wizard who perhaps was not even aware of the problems he caused to at the very least some players, or the side-effects from that change alone. After all, I am not the first player to complain about that change, and perhaps if several old players all come to rather similar conclusions, there may be something behind their reasoning? In general it would be nice if rather than swiftly making changes to core elements of the game, we could get to discuss these for a much longer while before any of these effectively make it into the game. I here refer to important changes that will affect most or all players, especially when said changes change the nature of the game in a negative way for some players. From my point of view, that would be a much better way to handle the game. And I distinctly remember that in the days before the webforum here, we often could discuss with admin on the general OOC board and the OOC guildboards - I would like to remind people of that. The webforum really also affected the game, or at least some parts of the game, some for the better, some for the worse (like if admin or wizards do not want to discuss anymore, then it would be a change to the worse from my point of view).

Anyway, more about that note about why I think changing 'who' the way it was done was a big mistake, at a later time, I just don't know when that other note will be finished - reallife has complete priority, the coming week will have 3 deadlines and my weekend right now gets eaten away by those deadlines, but expect that note to be finished within perhaps ... ~10 days?

Hopefully.

It will have to be detailled enough for admin to understand.

Now there are a few things left to say to most other players of the game, but especially the two dozen or more really great roleplayers I have met over the years in the game, as I
don't know when I may be back, if at all. (Two dozen, that's a minimum number, really, the number may be well over two dozen but I have not met with everyone else or interacted with everyone; sometimes it does not ICly make sense to even want to interact, too, and some characters are more like loners even though they may well be great roleplayers, I might never be able to find out).

I won't mention any specific names, as I might forget to mention others who would have been deserved to be mentioned.

I have enjoyed playing with the lot of you immensely since my return to the game - I don't know when? 2009? 2010?

There was a lot of great roleplay to be had, and there is a reason why I collect things like "Fun Snippets" - it is the main reason why I used to play, as a player. Because this kind of roleplay was great, humour at least for me works best. (It may be quite obvious to these players too, as often the opinion of me as a player aligns with the opinion of my
character - not always, but at least in regards to humour, that one is very closely overlapping.)

Of course there also were some great opponents - again I won't mention any names, but the greatest evil players were IMO the creepy ones, those who seemed to be everywhere all the time yet could cause fear with words alone (mostly), rather than plain PvP alone (PvP is rather boring IMHO, it's unfortunate that the game has become so PvP-centric without storylines attached to these PvP encounters, and I am completely aware that my character contributed to that just as well; but there are situations that can't really be ignored ICly unless you wish to ignore roleplay or your character completely). Playing evil is hard, playing a successful and creepy evil is even harder.

Some other events also were unexpected - again not to mention anyone in particular, but sometimes you would then be faced with a situation such as "Damn, I just realized I did not want to know any of that!". Like when there are creepy other characters with dead bodies in their cellar. Would you really want to know? And there really were some creepy other characters out there, luckily my character has not discovered all of them. It was also quite interesting to see that there are certain moments in the life of a virtual character where you reach a point when you really try to avoid knowing everything, because that knowledge will often just burden the character and will affect decisions and opinions, sometimes for the worse.

There were also some great moments of roleplay, in particular incidents in where my character was "outplayed" or "outsmarted" by another player. Perhaps I find the time to actually turn these into standalone logs to publish them, should I still have them somewhere (but only with permission from these players).

The most surprising ones seemed to be those situations in where other playercharacters convinced my character to do things he would not want to do - a few players may remember some of these situations perhaps. It was often a surprise to me as a player
as well, considering that I would assume to know my character better than others (or so I would think; does it make sense to see your own character surprise the player? But so it did feel sometimes.) And sometimes to OOCly follow the character even though you know OOCly as a player that this may lead to problems lateron eventually, which my character seemed to have had a nasty habit of doing sometimes; but you would also often have no other IC choice because the IC situation at hand would logically warrant or demand a certain behaviour or action. There were many of these situations, and in general to those other playercharacters who were cleverer than my character, well done! (But perhaps my
character is not as clever as he believed to be, I still think that some of these situations OOCly were great to have - imagine a great speech by Martin Luther King like "I have a
dream", and suddenly you'd have people feel enthusiastic for that. That's similar to how one's character can feel sometimes.)

I should also want to mention a specific incident at the beginning of July 2013 (so more than a month before I went away), in where my character met two other characters. The
roleplay took not more than perhaps ten minutes of talking each time - but meeting one of these characters would not have been possible at all in the new who mechanic (the player was not really active at all; a main reason for that player's character to even connect at all was for a chance meeting with my character to speak, and so it was almost pure luck to even see that my character was online at the same time; in the new who-system, such a player will have been denied even that chance, because it is absolutely useless to that player to know that my character would have been active 40 hours ago
but is not active at the time of connecting to the game), and the other character
was mostly a chance meeting as well, which was only possible because of the old who system as well (because if there is no other player to interact with, why should I or any other player stay online and remain connected? This is something that the wizard who changed the who mechanic should give an answer to, there are some players who
play mostly because of ***other*** players alone
, and if those players don't play, guess what these players will then do - do you think they will play the game or not? The answer to this question is rather easy to find out.)

To the perhaps three playercharacters or less or so to who, my character ICly promised to return - I am very sorry! I am completely aware that there are unfinished storylines, and it would be nice to continue and see how these unfold eventually, but it was not
entirely within my possibilities to easily return - the lack of time was due to reallife and at one point I had to leave anyway, be it a week or two weeks earlier or later.

And I can't play in the new who system either for reasons that I will explain lateron in that other note.

But it was great interacting with you, and everyone else just as well, too. OOC hugs to the lot of you, to those who want to!

At present I am an inactive player and possibly a retired player, unsure whether I will be able to play again - the future will show. But please do not wait for my character (or me as a player either), even if I would have the time, which I don't, I just can't will myself to want to accept the changed who system at all.

To everyone in general, I wish you all the best in your journeys, both in reallife and in the game should you play.

Hopefully you will all have a lot of fun playing regardless, or at least have had enjoyed many great moments of playing the game.

PO Tanriel

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Allalltar
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Re: My ctoninued absence.

#2 Post by Allalltar » Mon Jun 09, 2014 10:56 am

tanriel wrote: This is only partially the truth, though - the other part is that my motivation to want to play the game after the change to the who mechanic has instantly dwindled down to zero in one go. My chin literally fell down when I first heard about the change to 'who', just like you were to suddenly experience a shockingly bad nightmare (like, scary Freddy in "A Nightmare on Elm Street"; ever tried sitting close before a TV, at night, with the volume raised up a lot AND on top of that, you are all alone in a large house? I swear that I am not too easily scared in reallife, but give me loud music and sudden, unexpected stuff and I am a scaredy cat quickly).
So, you are telling me, you lost all your motivation because of an OOC feature that was changed to be more OOC ? I find that a little disturbing.

I supported the change of the WHO interface? Why ? Because it's an OOC thing that was abused 99% of the time. Because it broke a lot of immersion and generated a lot of trouble. People sending you random tells because they knew you were on. People not doing what their chars would do because the goodies/baddies who could wipe the floor with them were online. It was very surprising to watch how many attacks on certain places / cities were done when the who list was empty, just to name a personally very annoying example.

Are we currently lacking IC ways to augment the loss of who? Yes, we do. We are aware of it, we are working on solutions. What bothers you so much?

- That you can't find people who you wanted to RP with anymore?
=> We are working on that one, as said. Be a bit patient.
- That you can't see your enemies and decide whether or not you can do things that
they would usually react to ?
=> Well you were never supposed to know.
- That you feel very alone in the game right now?
=> Again, yes, that is a problem. We are aware and seeking solutions for that
problem and I hope we'll have IC based remedies soon.
tanriel wrote: I am out of ideas how I could effectively achieve to experience the same amount of fun I used to have before that very change, minus the time when I had to make a break because of reallife.
Again, because of an _OOC_ feature, which gives you knowledge you were not allowed to use in any IC way ?
tanriel wrote: After I will have explained in detail everything there seems to be about the new who system, I will then try to offer hopefully useful alternatives and, with some luck, eventually Turian will make changes to the system to allow me to continue to play the game. Admin is my last hope here after all.
Alternatives are, of course, always welcome. But keep in mind, the idea here is to
make an IC based way of getting people together, not provide an OOC all knowing
insight.
tanriel wrote: The suggested "workarounds" are not working in any way whatsoever, it feels as if someone else has effectively crippled the game for me, and the offered replacements
... sorry to write it down so bluntly, are really awful. I can not take this seriously to think of such "replacements". IC messengers? More runic rings? This is in no way any compensation in the slightest.
As I said, we are working on IC replacements. The runic rings and similar suggests are but a facet, a start, not the final solution. As said, we are discussing this.

I must admit, the change has revealed to me at least, that we are having a pretty large
gap in our IC communication when WHO is missed that much. I have expected the usual wave of complaints, nobody ever loves to have taken away something that they have relied on so much as WHO was relied on, in most ways, not intended that way.
tanriel wrote: You can perhaps now imagine why my enthusiasm for wanting to play the game has been set to zero here - and it has nothing to do with any player but it has everything to do with a singular change to the game from my point of view.
I don't really get it, still. I've read your note a few times now and I don't see where your problem is, apart of hearing 'the old who was removed, that sucks'. I can understand it sucks, yes.

If your problem really just is that you can't effectively find out if there's people you want to hang around with anymore, I hope we'll have something that will address this problem soon.

Please, explain to me with what exactly you are missing now (apart of the unfair OOC advantage WHO granted).
tanriel wrote: I can't really play the game with the changed who mechanic, but I also don't want to get retired by a change to the code by a wizard who perhaps was not even aware of the problems he caused to at the very least some players, or the side-effects from that change alone. After all, I am not the first player to complain about that change, and perhaps if several old players all come to rather similar conclusions, there may be something behind their reasoning? In general it would be nice if rather than swiftly making changes to core elements of the game, we could get to discuss these for a much longer while before any of these effectively make it into the game.
This now sounds like an accusation. Like we were never listening to you and just working to make this game not fun. Really?

Please, do me the favour, look past of your 'we lost a feature', and sum up what you can add to the list what the old who provided you what I not already said that it's neither unfair OOC advantage nor said to be already worked on. And please be short and precise.

I personally would be very hesistant to put changes past our whole playerbase. Why? Because it's a sport to tear every idea to pieces and people who like an idea don't generally have a habit of sticking up for them. Some of the threads in this forum have made me want to quit coding for this game more then once, as I have also announced, simple by the amount of selfish, unneeded ranting some people like to bring forth.
tanriel wrote: I should also want to mention a specific incident at the beginning of July 2013 (so more than a month before I went away), in where my character met two other characters. The roleplay took not more than perhaps ten minutes of talking each time - but meeting one of these characters would not have been possible at all in the new who mechanic (the player was not really active at all; a main reason for that player's character to even connect at all was for a chance meeting with my character to speak, and so it was almost pure luck to even see that my character was online at the same time; in the new who-system, such a player will have been denied even that chance, because it is absolutely useless to that player to know that my character would have been active 40 hours ago
but is not active at the time of connecting to the game), and the other character
was mostly a chance meeting as well, which was only possible because of the old who system as well (because if there is no other player to interact with, why should I or any other player stay online and remain connected? This is something that the wizard who changed the who mechanic should give an answer to, there are some players who
play mostly because of ***other*** players alone
, and if those players don't play, guess what these players will then do - do you think they will play the game or not? The answer to this question is rather easy to find out.)
Again, really? So you are telling me, somebody who didn't have any magical OOC means to find you would never have met you in game ? I find this a very sad statement. Of course, it's not ideal to find people IC right now, but what you are describing is exactly the type of thing I (and many others) hated about the old who. People gaining magical knowledge of others presence. Of course, nobody wants for people to stop playing, but also using an OOC magical knowledge thing will not help there. Then we could already make a global shout and allow everybody teleport to everybody else....
tanriel wrote: At present I am an inactive player and possibly a retired player, unsure whether I will be able to play again - the future will show. But please do not wait for my character (or me as a player either), even if I would have the time, which I don't, I just can't will myself to want to accept the changed who system at all.
I am very sad to hear this, I always believed that Tanriel added something to the game, but forgive me, what you describe seems completely over the top for me. I mean, in essence, you are telling me, you are unwiling to play an game which favors RP and immersion into a fictional world, because you can't tell, as a player, who's playing at the current moment in time.

That tells me a lot about how much we're still lacking in an IC way of really connecting people with each other, but I ask you to take a moment, step back, and reconsider how much the little line 'WHO is OOC information and must be used that way' has influenced the way you play and enjoy the game.

I really hope that people can step past the OOC information issue and assist us in figuring out an effective system that lets us NOT rely on immersion-breaking OOC information, I would really appreciate that.

On a side note, I have considered for a some time if I should answer to this or not, as some of it reads very aggressive , to me at least. If there's something that's wrong for
you beneath the problem you describe, feel free to take it up with any of us, but keep
general dislikes and anger towards others out of the forum. Thank you.

I do hope you'll find a basis to return.

Allalltar

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Re: My ctoninued absence.

#3 Post by luminier » Fri Jun 13, 2014 8:09 pm

I skimmed Tanriel's post.

Not sure why the change to who could be that crippling to someones play life in Geas. Though it is sad to hear, to be true.

It is an OOC feature that I abused to no end when I first started playing and then turned off for good - mainly for personal selfish reasons.

One of the biggest (or only) gripes that you seemed to list was that it was harder to meet up with people. Would you be opposed to just mailing someone with an OOC time to meet in game? Or, if you don't know them, how would they be able to meet you anyways (unless by chance) with the old system?

Perhaps I should read more carefully.
The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.

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Re: My ctoninued absence.

#4 Post by Blizt » Mon Aug 25, 2014 3:36 pm

Perhaps a thirty minute limit could be impimented between switching characters.

This would solve the problem of seeing if someone is online with one character then quickly logging off and logging another one to interact with them.

Hell, make it an hour. :twisted:

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Re: My ctoninued absence.

#5 Post by Aslak » Sat Aug 30, 2014 12:30 pm

Blizt wrote:Perhaps a thirty minute limit could be impimented between switching characters.

This would solve the problem of seeing if someone is online with one character then quickly logging off and logging another one to interact with them.

Hell, make it an hour. :twisted:
I would rather not see that. Well, I only have 1 char, but with as few players online, it would not be wise to block out even more

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Re: My ctoninued absence.

#6 Post by Blizt » Sat Aug 30, 2014 3:53 pm

It was a joke! So people who do not realize that can have reason to hate me even more than they already do :twisted:

I wouldn't mind a ten-fifteen time minute lapse though.
I will admit I do switch characters very rapidly though, but not just because I can see who is online and switch to interact with someone else.

I do it because I have way to much caffeine in my system and get bored so easily

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