Geas

*Imagines: A man with gray robes, large and strict spectacles, busky eyebrows and a solemn facial expression, sitting on a chair behind a desk, with a shelf behind him. The shelf contains numerous books.*

Today, we shalt bring forth the topic of power-leaving.

First, a look at... The dictionary:

*takes forth a dusty old tome, brushes off the dust and reads aloud*

Power-leaving. Verb. 1. When one abruptly leaves, leaving no room for any reaction to one's parting. 2. extreme hurriness where one grows blind to everything. 3. A non-standard word.

*puts down the tome*

As we may see, power-leaving is the act of leaving abruptly. There are several problems with this:
1. It makes it impossible, or fairly hard, to shout something to someone when they leave. "Wait!"s are quite unheard of.

2. It is rather annoying if you have been searching for someone, and then the someone suddenly... *pauses dramatically* leaves powerfully.

3. It can ignore situations. For example, A sees B run off, and charges ahead and blocks the road, since A has something to tell B. B cannot continue on the road, due to A, and instead of addressing the situation, power-leaves. B walks north, off the road, west, south and is back on the road. This is the equivelant of 'get grabbed by person' 'charge into forest' 'hope no trail will be left' 'walk past person while person knows exactly where you are' 'run back on road' 'continue walking'. While perhaps appropriate in some situations, this did not seem to make any sense at the time for person A.

4. It is rude. Both ICly and OOCly. If one wishes to portray oneself as rude, or in a hurry, an emote stating that the person leaves abruptly, et cetera, and giving someone a chance to responding, albeit perhaps ignoring the response due to rudeness/haste, might be better?

Thus, we may deduce a slight change in how one leaves somewhere might be in order. Perhaps thou may voice thy opinion?

*the man tucks at his spectacles, looks at you for a moment and smiles curiously*

I always imagine rooms as quite large spaces, so people moving through them and not stopping and chatting for a bit only seems natural.

Power-running, power-lifting, power-sleeping, power-dating, power-eating, power-laughing, power-spawning babies, you'll have SO MANY BABIES. 400 BABIES.

isengoo wrote:I always imagine rooms as quite large spaces, so people moving through them and not stopping and chatting for a bit only seems natural.

I agree.
This is when someone has stopped, though. Or when you, for instance, grab onto them to hinder their way further (block), and they just leave in another direction. Gee.

Olrane wrote:Power-running, power-lifting, power-sleeping, power-dating, power-eating, power-laughing, power-spawning babies, you'll have SO MANY BABIES. 400 BABIES.

*turns from to to *

I think the main problem is power-gaming.

With all seriousness...I agree that this is often a problem. I think people should stop long enough to give others a chance to interact with them if possible.

I may be wrong but I think what @Zehren addresses here is that "power-leaving" - or whatever other term is used - makes interacting with other characters harder.

Now I don't think this should be generalized too much. Characters sometimes simply don't get along with other characters and may try to avoid them. That's something I see as a completely valid way to go about.

The underlying real cause is probably indeed "power-gaming" - or however you want to define that word. I have a rather simple definition:

Specific activity is rewarded (fighting, herb searching etc... etc.), interaction with other characters less so directly. I think this is not easy to address or change either. IMO the skill system has a large influence on that (as cool as the skill system is)

But I can think of small changes to help with that:
- smaller characters get a specific, larger influence on happenings of a MUD based on their roleplay and invested time with that roleplay, and less on their stats and skills. If smaller characters are more "useful" and interesting to seek out for the big chars then the big chars will increase on that part.
- skill decay is adjusted so as to not penalize those who seek out to interact with others more than training up. If a character chats with others and would as a result be "smaller" than others who spend a lot of activity-time training up, well ... then this is the encouraged behaviour for most characters to follow. Talking with others would be a waste of time in this regard (in regards to power-training, and before anyone thinks that this is my opinion - this is simply a statement)
- another idea is to make sending tells to others easier. If a character can send a tell to someone else, then how many would really ignore that? Of course sending tells is not cheap right now, and everything that costs money currently ... is tied to being active or "strong". At least easier for the big chars.
There aren't easy jobs for small characters at the moment. How can they afford those ~10 gc tell devices? If everything what's useful costs money then well ... you are better off with a big char.

lanyara wrote:I may be wrong but I think what @Zehren addresses here is that "power-leaving" - or whatever other term is used - makes interacting with other characters harder.

Now I don't think this should be generalized too much. Characters sometimes simply don't get along with other characters and may try to avoid them. That's something I see as a completely valid way to go about.

Instead of simply hurrying off at once, west, east, <other direction>,this could be handled better, and more interestingly, by use of emotes, such as "*spots person, turns away and begins walking*", giving the other players a chance to respond in some way. (As in *watches as B leaves with a sign of smug satisfaction upon his face*, for instance.)

This isn't so much about IC issues (who and how one wants to interact with others), but about complications when leaving an area.
Several times I've been chatting away, I'm half-way into typing a rather long sentence, and the person I'm about to adress goes *wave, run off*. The only solution to this, except removing the *wave, run off* would be to say each word seperately... Spam, spam, lovely spam.

In regards to mind calls - you can request one at any temple for a very low amount of favor.

Zehren wrote:Several times I've been chatting away, I'm half-way into typing a rather long sentence, and the person I'm about to adress goes *wave, run off*.

Yep, I agree.. but it's also quite a practical problem IMHO. The guy who starts talking/emoting can also do something like "emote starts to speak" before starting to type that long sentence/emote.

Then on the other hand, if people are leaving so quickly it's perhaps also a good idea to consider whether you really wanted to talk to that person.

if people are leaving so quickly it's perhaps also a good idea to consider whether you really wanted to talk to that person.

Awww... they just don't know yet about this type of roleplay perhaps!

You could try breaking up the stuff you are typing into smaller bits, maybe?

Will try to.

Wouldn't there be a code-wise solution?

Give every room a (hidden) size number.
This can be used in various ways, eg

- set an auto-delay to any movement order: You can leave a "very large" outside area only after 20 seconds, or something.

- various other possibilities (Spotting, sneaking ...)

There must already be code for checking distances ("You travel a long distance to the east.")

But I think it was decided to not go for having delays if you want to travel between different rooms.

The solution was to instead handle this with fatigue / exhaustion (and later with that stamina stuff ... that heavily breathing and panting)

Adding code to go and reduce on "power leaving" is probably the wrong way to go about it.

It would be better to see that bigger chars have more reasons to interact with smaller chars.

Arogarn wrote:Wouldn't there be a code-wise solution?

Give every room a (hidden) size number.
This can be used in various ways, eg

- set an auto-delay to any movement order: You can leave a "very large" outside area only after 20 seconds, or something.

- various other possibilities (Spotting, sneaking ...)

I remember reading somewhere on the foru about another mud with.... locations inside a room. As in hide in northeastern corner of room, shoot someone with bow, flee for your life, and have a headstart. That would be fun. Very fun. Especially coupled with a delay for travelling across the room.

Edit: Power leaving as I intended it isn't when people rush through... It's when you are already chattering with, or RPing, and then someone goes 'kthxbye'.
Or 'I must be off, wave, leaves south' as it might also be called.

Edit II: Big characters interacting with small characters... Remove all NPC shops

Or easy fix, if someone powerleaves you ignore them/be rude to them for a bit. Don't talk to them/interact with them, and explain why. It's not like you have to be friends with everybody in the MUD. Why not tell them ingame instead of complaining ooc. It's an in game/roleplay thing, why not deal with it that way?

ganandorf wrote:Or easy fix, if someone powerleaves you ignore them/be rude to them for a bit. Don't talk to them/interact with them, and explain why. It's not like you have to be friends with everybody in the MUD. Why not tell them ingame instead of complaining ooc. It's an in game/roleplay thing, why not deal with it that way?

I think it is more of an OOC matter, as it doesn't deal with how a character acts (i.e leaves abruptly), but with how one makes one's character leave. 'wave, run off, giving the other player no chance of making his character respond in any way', compared to 'X waves quickly and says in Common "I must be off now. Farwell," before begin to walk towards Y direction'. The latter would give a chance of calling out after X, or not do anything, and even if called out after X could just ignore that. Same IC situation, different OOC handling.

How a character behaves in-game is always IC. :)

Though often why a character behaves in-game in a certain way is derived or influenced from OOC ("i wanna go troll hunting now ... this little rat here is wasting my time") but even then it is still how a character behaves. A rude character!

Being too polite won't fit to all characters anyway ... imagine Ganon politely saying:

"I must be off now. Farewell"

rather than:

"Run."

"Now."

Leaving abruptly can also be easier than spending time finding something fitting in-game before you "may" leave ... ;-)

But just to make my opinion clear - I'd sign on any petition to increase the possibilities between char-char interaction in all sorts of ways, less dependent on the char size, and more on the roleplay.

lanyara wrote:How a character behaves in-game is always IC.

Though often why a character behaves in-game in a certain way is derived or influenced from OOC ("i wanna go troll hunting now ... this little rat here is wasting my time") but even then it is still how a character behaves. A rude character!

Being too polite won't fit to all characters anyway ... imagine Ganon politely saying:

It isn't about being polite IC, and awaiting when you can leave, it's how you make your character leave. Not in what manner you make your character leave, but the way you make your character leave thusly. since it seems this was understood as politeness, I'll use another example.

"nod
You nod.
west
you leave west."

Compared to.
"emote nods and begins walking westwards.
You emote: X nods and begins walking westwards."

Is there any IC difference between those situations? In my opinion, no.
Is there any OOC difference between those situations? Yes.

I'm not talking about when to leave, awaiting perission, a good time, et cetera.
Nor about how to leave ICly. (wave, or nod, or just roll your eyes and wander off...)
This is about giving other players a chance to make their character respond to you leaving. They could, for instance, call out after you. "Hey! Wait!", roll their own eyes, or just watch as you walk away.