Idling
Not logging off while away from the game

We used to force an idle off at 1 hour. We raised that to 24 hours. You don't get UE if you are idle for more than a certain amount of time, so you can't just collect it that way.

I can understand the arguments on both sides, but I rarely see folks more than an hour idle. It's not against the rules, but it's also completely IC to treat someone differently if they are constantly unresponsive to you when you SIC / talk to them.

I would implore folks not to go idle in public spaces, because A. you will be robbed and B. it's bad form, of course.

I'm interested in hearing the further argument on both sides though.

I think the idea is that they could just disconnect if they wanted to sleep. I have no issue with people idling a bit and then catching up on RP. It's not against the rules to idle icly.

I'd argue the issue is not the staying logged on and the passive gathering of data, but that staying logged on is a direct protection against any kind of non-combatant action.

It allows for combat characters to stay logged in and have the ability to 'know' if a non-combatant followed them in for espionage or breaking and entering. There are a few ways a non-combat character could violently fight this, but I don't think it's feasible. Nor reasonable, imo, to demand that people do as a tactic against those perpetually online.

I don't mind people who do it sometimes, the always online. And absolutely there are some of us who are genuinely awake for that long. But for people doing it weeks and months on end, I think that's something to address.

A number of solutions to this have been proposed over the years, including turning SIC into gibberish, and obscuring the activity on camera feeds with greater idle times. I don't remember what the response was, but I think there is some expectation that players that will do this are just going to find some method to avoid any attempted coded solution. Ultimately, it would just burn up admin resources dealing with it.

Personally, I believe the most egregious examples are fairly obvious, and staff simply XHELPing them to let them know they are being 'gamey' or meta is as good a solution as any. Intense investigations to track down every offender seems unnecessary.

Ultimately, whether staff want to discourage this behavior is up to them.

I always try to evaluate the Pros and Cons of any topic. Sometimes out in the open like this. Always in my mind and via my internal thoughts before I write / post.

The ONLY Pro that I can find for allowing characters to remain connected and idle for long periods of time is that it gives the impression of activity. Of people. Of the potential for RP and engagement.

That said, even that Pro is shaky at best. As others have said, it's frustrating to reach out to someone via SIC, Progia, etc. and not get a response. They're connected, but they aren't there.

My last character was a tech. They had cameras all over the place. They were setting up cameras for other people. As a player, I took that responsibility seriously. "With great power, comes great responsibility." I intentionally DID NOT idle. I did not camp my charbit in front of the screens to Hoover up all of the data.

IMO , any player who does that with their character deserves the Wall. The character does, not the player. That's an abuse of power. Full stop. Knock it off. Stop doing it.

The same goes for SIC to a slightly lesser extent. There have been a few times when my character as ICly asked about a current topic on SIC. And the response they have received is, "That's paydata. Pay up."

Okay, fair. How about "everyone else" who was idle and just sucked up that data by virtue of being idle and able to scan their back scroll? ESPECIALLY the corporate characters who have 100% , no interruption , SIC connections.

Come on now.

Be "real". If YOU, as a player, are not engaged with the game, log off. I don't mean a 5 minute bio break. I don't mean 15 minutes to go eat some lunch.

I get what I think @crashdown said about keeping weird hours. Between working random shifts as an IT guy, combined with a life history of stimulant abuse, I've pulled some marathon sessions. Even so, there's a difference. "Being on one" or "working a 12 (hour shift)" every once in a while is NOT the same as being connected 24/7 , or near enough that people can't tell the difference.

If the MOO had the coders to make it happen, I'd love to see a coded, forced dissassociation.

Something like , "character.idle > 300 seconds = NO INPUT TO character.session"

They don't receive camera inputs. SIC inputs. Can't see / hear anyone in the exact same room with them. They need to "look" "examine" "think I'm bored." SOMETHING that requires them to actually engage with the game. Something that will be obvious if they set an idle timer in their client to get around.

@Aida

That's an awesome point and perspective.

It's very real. Very akin to catching up with friends and acquaintances RL.

Not all of our RP is going to be super stimulating, dopamine floods.

I want to bump this up again.

This idling is making playing the game in slower time even more of absolute pain. I look at @who and there are ~20 people logged in, but only 5 of those actually anywhere near the screen based on IDLE timeout. Good luck filtering out which ones are those when you want to engage some RP, as most calls and sics get unanswered.

That's extra annoying, on top of all the other issues mentioned in this topic already.

While I agree that idling excessively should carry some consequences, it becomes difficult when that expectation is placed entirely on the players to reinforce it. Sometimes I do miss SICs getting lost in scroll or getting pulled away but I try not to make this common. If you're known for it, I really don't think that's good. While we can all understand that we're adults and things come up, just totally walking away for hours on the regular on purpose feels disrespectful to other players. I think it's -really- weird for people to advertise that they're sleeping and to 'leave a message'. That seems contrary to how SIC works, but in the past Slither has said its okay to catch up on RP, so I guess its fine?

@Aida I also wonder if people would prefer to be more active in those off hours, but just due to lack of people have gotten used to kind of idling around, waiting for rp. If the idle timer was lowered, would you miss out on even more rp potentially do you think?

TLDR: The messaging behind idling is confusing and I don't really understand the reasons behind allowing so much of it.

As someone with adhd I'd be okay with an idle timer of a couple of hours disconnecting the player. Sometimes you just forget you haven't disconnected or pass out while IG.

As an often off peak player it is hard to sic folks sometimes and not get any response without knowing if they are actually ignoring you or just idle, but I'm pretty okay with that overall.

There really isn't much to do in Sindome, generally speaking, so activity can only be in short bursts unless you're passively hanging out in a bar. I personally AFK with a pinger set up to tell me if I get a ccom or a call.