The Mobile 'Phone Menace!

[Kelemvor]

To put the question in its simplest form :

Are players treating amulets of communication like a modern day equivalent? And does this detract from their's and others' roleplaying potential?

As an Immortal character I am able to see all tells and otells as they happen in game. I can turn off this function, but to do so may mean that I miss a roleplay opportunity or the option to help a player in difficulty.

Unfortunately, the trend among some players at the moment seems to be for characters to hold lengthy conversations via their amulets. The amount of spam this creates often means I am forced to turn off the view option so I can concentrate on a roleplay or discussion.

This got me to pondering a couple of things. Why are characters using amulets instead of meeting up and roleplaying the conversation? More crucially, why are characters using lines and lines of tells to each other when they are in the same room?

For every good reason I came up with:
-the inability to arrange a meeting...
-the desire to send a discrete message instead of speak aloud etc

I ran into an equally unpalatable reason:
-the desire to continue with their own solo activities (training, questing etc) rather than break off and go roleplay...
- the (growing) trend towards using tells to slight other players without comeback
- the unfathomable habit of sitting in a crowded room and conducting your conversation by tell only


It could be that this is a result of our changing the 'cost' of using an amulet.
It might be that our newer players are used to using tells in this way on other MUDs
It's entirely possible that I'm just old fashioned and out of touch

Does anyone else feel this is an issue?

[Yevel]

I personally think "in person" interaction is better roleplay. I myself don't use tells beyond calling for aid, or asking a question. Or just to see how someone is doing. Perhaps make it cost more than a stamina decrease.

[Isaldur]

I miss the days of yore when Amulets used mana and were only for emergencies..

Can we script them to give brain tumors if used too often?

Editing because my bad humor doesn't add much,

While amulets of communication provide a much needed way of contacting other players I've found they seem to be largely "abused" for lack of better words because there are absolutely no more drawbacks to using one. There isn't even a cell phone bill, or a bad calling plan, or to my knowledge rooms where you can't get a signal.

I would suggest implementing a more discreet whisper command, and making the amulets have some type of drawback. They are in effect one of the most powerful magical artifacts in the MUD if compared to PnP. Unlimited communication through thought is almost unheard of without psionics, and even then psionics do not always last forever.

Originally they were around for emergencies and for quick messages like "Meet me at such and such to talk" and not for full on conversations or an alternative to whisper as most tend to use them now.

[Saranya]

I haven't observed that people choose to RP by tells over face-to-face, and I'm a bit skeptical of the "RP avoidance" idea. RP-ly, even if you use a discrete medium to slight someone, word of it will get around and your PC will eventually face consequences.

I'm not a big fan of the change that you see people whispering into the amulet. It doesn't seem to decrease the amount of tells, and it creates a lot of spam for the room. Bringing back the cost might reduce tells, but more likely it will just cause problems during legitimate RP use. Why not just directly zot people you think are abusing the amulets?

In my experience tells, otells and ask drop off as players become more experienced. Sometimes I've politely asked a player (usually a new one) to just send a PM or e-mail. Most quickly get hooked up on IM for chatting while playing anyway....

...which is a whole other source of delays and problems during RP. (But that's another topic.)

[Elke]

I'm sorry, this whole topic made me laugh because I've had this exact discussion several times. Yes, yes, they are become the mobile phones of FK, right up to the point of the relief when the darn thing is turned off and the occasional desire to throw the thing into the nearest river. Not to mention that with a mobile phone you can set up call forwarding and refuse calls, whereas with the amulet...well. I could see a devastating attack on a wizard's concentration based on filling their heads and going on at them via amulet...

That said, the amulets are essential for setting up roleplay in the first place, because too often there is just no way of getting people in different areas together without it. Unless maybe you used an otell to say, "Would you mind casually walking down this street in Waterdeep so my character can 'accidently' bump into you?" ...

Not to mention that without it interaction between PC's allowed into places and PC's that aren't would become next to impossible.

I only tend to use them in public places for the 'whispered aside', and would be very happy indeed if there was some sort of whisper command available. Perhaps using your amulet could 'stun' you temporarily or give you a set lag, which makes sort of sense IC because you have to concentrate to use the thing? That way you aren't going to be so inclined to use it in an unsafe location or in a public place because whilst you're stunned/lagged there's that vulnerability? Just an idea here.

[Briek]

I think I had best add myself into this discission as a sort of culprit here *cringe* as I have used the amulet in the past to hold conversations, simply because I have been RPing with someone else in person and also speaking to another who is a completely different location IC, again I cringe because when I think about it, this would take alot of concentration and thus could be considered abuse, so to start things off I would just like to give my apologies, I don't mean to clog up up you IMMs with all the chatter.

On another note, it is essential to setting up RPs, I agree with that wholeheartedly because the FK universe is a massive place, how else are any of the other characters to communicate except by magic?

Also, many people use the amulet as a form of whispering, smoting out whispering quietly and then sending a tell, although I sometimes forget to do this myself I believe if two characters are in the same room, then they are not required to where the amulet in order to tell, emlinating the constant flashing of amulets and spam for players, unfortunately not IMMs however.

When I play also I am on the other end of the stick quite often, I get alot of tells asking "whats this and whats that or can you help?" eithier ICly or OOCly I am not really bothered by this most of the time, but it can be a little annoying if you are already in a Roleplay with someone and at the same time you really don't want to refuse that person help (for example, with a quest) often this is easily remedied, you ask the player you are RPing with if they would like to come and get others involved.

Personally now I think I am rambling on and will stray off topic if I go any further so I will end by saying that I agree that some higher cost would be good although I don't think bring back the mana cost would be fair on those characters who don't actually have any.

[Horace]

My solution -

Turn them into amulet booths, that only fit one person...and don't allow you to speak to dead. Remove all amulets of communication from the game. Exact same mechanics would apply (minus being able to speak to dead people), you can receive a tell when not in an amulet booth, but you can not reply. Allow otells all the time.

[Zuldere]

If my memory is right this is not the first time this type of topic came up. And if I recall not much was done than. Granted this was 1-2 years ago.

[Enig]

Well, first of all, I agree that the majority of times I've seen people telling to someone in the same room it's been a matter of communicating in a whisper. If some other command were put in to replace it I imagine this sort of communication would be, at least, severely diminished.

In terms of the issue in a larger sense I have to admit I don't really see the problem, exept insofar as it seems inconvenient for immortals who are getting swarmed with tells.

As far as abuse goes, I just don't see it. If the use of an amulet allows for communication between PCs that wouldn't otherwise happen it seems to me that it's only adding to the MUD, rather than taking away from it. I think it's safe to say that people would continue to do things by themselves whether or not they have the luxury of their amulets, but undermining their ability to contribute to overall RP, even in the very diminished capacity that amulet communication is capable of, seems like it's taking something back without providing a tangible benefit.

To be honest, I don't know if it's a good idea or not to limit the use of amulets. I haven't really thought about it thoroughly enough to stick to one side on the subject, but I think we have to be careful about the type of message we send when we discuss stuff like this.

If we're saying, "Okay, the imms are getting swamped. Let's tone it down so we don't overwhelm them.", I think that's perfectly fine.

If our rationale, however, leans towards something like, "People aren't RPing face to face like they should, we should try and penalize them until they do.", I think we're just going to turn some people off. Maybe I'm missing something really basic but from what I can tell there aren't really any negatives here that go much beyond the people who are overusing their amulets. That said, for my part I'm perfectly happy to let them continue on their merry way and not let it bother me. Sure, they might be missing out on more engaging RP scenes, but their loss doesn't deprive the rest of us, and to me, it seems rather silly to spend any time at all trying to force people to have fun, because fun just doesn't work that way.

[Briek]

Good comments I think, I don't believe there is really a lack of RP in person in fact I think it's been on the rise lately which is good! and alot of it is down to the amulet. I do agree that we should tone down amulet conversation, as recently I think Kelemvor was just like "Briek please stop, my heads spinning!" which is what brought up this topic, I don't see the problem then with simply starting the conversation on amulet and then asking "Hey, can we meet up to discuss this perhaps?"

[Gwain]

It might do to make amulet communication take ten or twenty-percent of movement points instead of the current amount. I'd still keep the same quota for people in the realm of death since that is a real long distance relationship with the living world. I'd also like to comment that amulet communication in the same room can be accomplished without an amulet and no echoes by simply removing an amulet, though the tell is still seen.

[Mele]

Personally I'd like to see it to amulets working like abilities.

-----------------------------[Abilities]---------------------------------
turn undead 7/7
tell 5/5
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


Just enough charges to call for help / ask where to meet someone / ask for a rescue and raise.

I really loathe receiving tells that are an attempt to converse, personally.

Yesterday in a buffer of 50 lines, 19 were amulet flashes from one person. I really think the convenience has gotten out of hand.


(That idea, totally not fully mine. I heard someone mention an idea of charges, and thought hey that idea would be great making it work like an ability.)

[Gwain]

That's not a bad idea, I find that having specific charges of turning allows a priest or cleric to ration out the ability and not use it willy nilly. It could probably work here.

[Hviti]

Would charges be race/class/stat/level specific?

[Elke]

Charges was also something I thought about, although perhaps 'per IC week' or something like that would be best?

The trouble is, you can remove the amulet to 'whisper' to someone nearby but then if someone far off calls you you end up having to start switching the thing on and off again..

I had completely forgotten the 'speak with dead' aspect as well. Not sure what could be done about that, because losing it would mean taking -forever- to be raised, whereas having it -is- a bit shaky IC. I wonder if it would be possible to set up a raising in advance? Sort of, uh, have an option with a cleric to 'pre-pay' as it were, that cleric is constantly viewing the realms of the dead and can auto-raise you that once? That might make the need for amulets a little less weighty?

Again, only a suggestion!

[Briek]

If we were to have charges for the amulets I am assuming that all the time the object is worn it would be recharging, I haven't really counted how long it takes for turn undead and layonhands etc to recharge but would it be similar in the fact that we would see an echo like "You regain the ability to speak mind to mind again" or would it be more like the amulet itself recharging all it's charges at once after say one in-game day? thus seeing the echo "Your amulet of communication glows briefly" or something like that. Having a tells limit for as long as a week I don't think would be quite as good because, if say you used them all quite quickly and then die, you would have to wait a whole week to contact someone and tell them you are dead, which would also mean that your corpse would be long gone.

[Enig]

To be honest I've always found those conversations that start off something like, "So, hey.. Uh.. How's the weather? Also, I'm dead.", to be amongst the most awkward. Just to throw this out there, as a response to Briek and Elke's concern about dead folks not being able to use their amulet to call for help, but maybe an entirely new alternative to this could be thought of, to even further reduce amulet reliance. Off the top of my head something like a 'Haunt button' could be implemented, maybe, that would send a brief echo (a chill runs down your spine? Maybe something less cliched ) to any priests that might be of a compatible alignment. Or, maybe you could target specific characters to spook/generally alert to the fact that there might be someone in the realms of dead that they'd be interested in helping, and they could use 'speak with dead' to establish contact.

Incidentally, with regard to the charge idea, I think it sounds kind of neat. At the same time I'd hope that there'd be a generous allotment of uses handed out, or at least that they'd recharge pretty quickly. I have to say I'd find it somewhat obnoxious if I ended up in a situation where I was online with twelve other people but had absolutely no idea where they were or how to find them besides wandering aimlessly.

[Elke]

I totally agree with you that the, 'Hey! I'm dead!' conversations are some of the most difficult ones. And I love the haunting idea! Perhaps instead you could use those 'charges' to haunt a player online - alerting them to the fact that 'something's up' would be without cost, but you wouldn't be able to get a two-way dialogue - at least not easily, without someone with the ability to speak to the dead intervening! Although it might be fun to expand the Realms of the Dead just a bit, if when you die you're going to spend a long time lingering there...

[Leveran]

Although it might be fun to expand the Realms of the Dead just a bit, if when you die you're going to spend a long time lingering there...

ZOMG I would soooooooo love to program the City of the Dead O.O

[Raona]

Long conversations by amulet are something I've found myself doing more often as well, though for a variety of reasons:

• Negotiations/conversations with others I'd not trust in a face-to-face conversation (e.g., Zarafae)
• As someone known to new players, answering requests for advice or aid that don't require a physical presence (e.g., "My blankety-blank is broken, do you know who might be able to fix it?")
• Having far more to do ICly than I have playing time to do it, I've done far more of some tasks by amulet, in particular Watch investigations (interviewing witnesses by amulet rather than trying to track them down in person) and squire guidance (perhaps counseling is a better word). [The last suggests that I'm setting a bad precedent and example! ]

My concern with the suggestions above comes in light of these examples: If I have a limited number of tells available to me, I will be less inclined using them listening to the rantings of a mad drow, answering questions from Faerun's youth, or checking to see if that last witness may have seen anything. I'd probably also be more likely to seek out squires and pages to talk with them in person, though, which may be a good thing.

In short, the current system, like cell phones, allow one to do more in a limited time, but not as well; you often end up not focusing on either of the two (or more) things you are trying to do. Being one of the rare folk who do not willingly use a cell phone or IM in real life (I HATE the things), it seems perhaps odd that I'm an amulet yapper ICly, but there it is. Perhaps with constraints on its use I'd be less inclined to take on so much and more inclined to do fewer things better (in person, at any rate).