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All right, I'm adressing a slight problem that we've had in the game lately, and that's the issue of OOC chatter.

As of a week ago today, I have not used the OOC chat feature once, except to ask someone to step OOC.  This was part of an experiment to see if it that feature is really necessary.

My findings: When the option is available to you, and the people you're RPing with start chatting OOC, it's hard to keep quiet. But… there is no real NEED to talk OOC at all.  Some of the admins have been wondering as of late whether we might be able to get rid of this altogether, and I think it's quite conceivable.  Chatting OOC really takes away from the reality of the RP, especially what with all those green lines distracting your vision from the part that really matters! ;)

Following is a list of times when a person might want to say something OOC:

you have to go away for a minute - you could just hit afk and then go @ooc
you want to correct a typo - hit typo and then repost and put (repost) after it like so
you want to make a joke or comment about something in the RP - this is rarely necessary, and most players are talking on IMs anyway so make it there (I personally would miss this interaction but overall it just creates annoyance)
someone has a question about code or a command or something else important OOC - step @OOC, or they could xhelp it or ask via IMs
you meet a newbie who needs a talking to - step @ooc


Now, you may be wondering, "Miriam, how're we going to convey the need to step @OOC if we can't use the OOC chat feature?"  Well, the answer to this question includes a new feature where you can request another character to step OOC... so if I'm RPing with Billy and I need to ask him if he can be back on the game in an hour to finish something cause I have to go... I can just use this new command to give him a message like:

<OOC> Tylissa requests that you step @OOC with her.
to everyone else:
<OOC> Tylissa requests that Billy step @OOC with her.
We could possibly (and this is my own addition to the main idea which came from an admin) include a feature where the person requested to step @OOC would get a y/n option and just be able to hit one to agree to go OOC or not.

I might also like to see a few more commands for basic ooc things that we might want to say. Like... we could have

<OOC> haha!
<OOC> sorry!
or a few other things that players would commonly need to communicate.

Anyway, my experience of not talking OOC for a week really made me consider what it is doing for the game.  It is something that many of us are attached to, I know, but if you think about it for awhile you may see that it really isn't necessary at all with the addition of a few features, and that in a way it detracts from gameplay. Have you ever been RPing with a crowd and suddenly everyone starts talking OOC? You soon forget what was happening in the RP and you have to scroll up to see what the last character said, and it's difficult to get back on track.

Please, in responding to this, do not say the thing about priority of what needs to be coded. The order in which things get coded is up to the admins, I just want your feedback on the idea itself. Does anyone see problems with this?  Or additional features that you would need to see added, etc?

If anyone isn't sure, try it for a week. It's an interesting experience.

By Tylissa at Sep 28, 2002, 10:02 AM | 0
I personally think that the OOC IG chatting has it's near-essential uses. It *can* detract from RP when it's overused though - the problem isn't the fact that it exists, but that players overuse it instead of @OOC

And, of course, that it pops up in the middle of everyone's screen during RP.

To get around this, some people use private SIC messaging and prefix ooc:  

At any rate, removing it would remove distractions from RP. But, we'd still need something more immediate in the way of OOC chat than just calling someone else to the OOC room.

I suggest the regular, in-room OOC chat be removed and replaced by OOC paging, and include a way for people who DON'T want to get OOC messages to turn it off, something like  @msg on/off

Obviously this should be used for 'quickie' things, like 'get on aim' or 'I have to log', or 'no, the command is used *this* way'.  

That's my…uh...lemme see...0.4 chyen

By Murphy at Sep 28, 2002, 12:57 PM | 0
Oh my FUCKING god. I love you guys!

Here here!

By TheFinn at Sep 28, 2002, 4:11 PM | 0
Ha, thats funny, OOC paging, *rofls*.

A private way to OOCly talk to someone in the same room. Wow, that won't be abused.

By Johnny at Sep 28, 2002, 4:23 PM | 0
Well, then how about leaving in OOC chat as it is but giving people a toggle so they don't see it if they don't want to, with the ability to page someone OOCly but only in two flavours, to ask someone to go to the ooc room, or to ask someone to turn on their OOC chat flag?


Your OOC pager goes *BZZT*->Bob wants you in the OOC room!


Your OOC pager goes *BZZT*->Bob wants you to turn on your OOC chat!

By Murphy at Sep 28, 2002, 9:09 PM | 0
Murphy said: At any rate, removing it would remove distractions from RP. But, we'd still need something more immediate in the way of OOC chat than just calling someone else to the OOC room.

And I replied: What? Give me -one- good example.

I mean, what do you need to tell someone OOCly that can't be communicated through typo/afk/lag?

That you have to take a pee? - afk
That you messed that one up good? - typo

And if you absolutely can't communicate it, ask them to step @ooc. That's WHY it's there: So people can talk OOC.

You claim you need it, but Tylissa certianly didn't. Not once. In a week of steady playing. And the new OOC emotes havn't even been added yet.

So, I ask again: What is this dire need to communicate with people OOCly that absolutely cannot be done while @ooc?

-Kevlar

By Kevlar at Sep 28, 2002, 11:30 PM | 0
Well, like, say, when you're explaining to someone some of the slightly more complicated things, like how to install an encrypt.

Obviously you could step OOC, then say, 'type help ce', then step back IC to test it, then step back OOC to find out what was done wrong, then step back in…

Obviously, one could xhelp, but wouldn't that be poking an admin when a player can do just as good a job of explaining something?

What if a newbie starts talking OOCly while IC, and you, as a player, want to explain to him the diff between OOC and IC, not sure the guy will understand if you ask him to go to the @ooc room?

What if you're having trouble with something - I know cell phones gave me trouble for a while before someone told me OOCly to put a - in front of what I wanna say. And it took  a lot less time than someone telling me to get OOC, then get back IC.

If OOC chat is completely taken out, the number of trivial xhelps is going to be a lot higher than now. It'll also make the game a lot harder to learn for newbies if a player can't drop a helpful hint every so often.

By Murphy at Sep 28, 2002, 11:39 PM | 0
While I do find it distracting I also think that along the lines Murphy is it could be a hindrance to remove the ooc chatting option all together.

Often the new players that you are explaining things to are not the ones you're actively conversing with, but other people in the room that your character happens to be in. So then in order to explain something to them under the system Tylissa has suggested you'd have to@:
A.) stop your roleplay,
B.) ask them to go into the @ooc room with you,
C.) explain whatever it is you wanted to explain and then
D.) go back @ic and hope that the people you actually were roleplaying with stuck around - which depending on what you're explaining and the thickness of the player could just be thirty seconds or as I've had this happen to me five to ten minutes.
and potentially:
E.) repeat the process all over again if they don't get it

That would be a distinct pain in the arse. I'd rather have the @page system opened up for players to use so you can @page the other player and explain OOC things to them that way than have to keep going @ooc and @ic and back again. Then you're not disrupting your own roleplay or even theirs, but can still help them.

A lot of people bitch, some admins in particular, about people chatting OOCly with AIM/ICQ/Smoke signals but really the fact of the matter is its not going to stop. People like talking to the folks their roleplaying with. I talk to…quite a few people but I've not ever...not once given away IC information OOCly to a player.  Yeah, sure there are people out there who do that but to behave as if everyone is doing....well its rather insulting.


As we don't have cents, that's my two pence.

By Tash at Sep 29, 2002, 2:19 AM | 0
These are all special cases.

Just how often do you install a new SIC encryption key?

Just how many times does this newbie have to get told to get IC?

Yes, people are going to talk OOC using AIM. Yes, we are never going to stop that.

What this is going to stop is the simply staggering ammount of idle chit chat that goes on OOC, and completely disrupts RP.

Yes, you gotta stop your roleplay to help a Newbie. You gotta do that anyway, because your going to say a few things OOC, then scroll up to see what you were last talking about. This is an added step.

You can get help while @ooc. You can explain it to them as much as you want while @ooc. You don't have to keep dropping back and forth. If it's disrupting RP, tell them to xhelp. We'll even add a emote telling a person to ask over xhelp.

The advantage here is others are not disrupted. Seems to me Tash's argument is for this, not against it. She said you'de "go back @ic and hope that the people you actually were roleplaying with stuck around - which depending on what you're explaining and the thickness of the player could just be thirty seconds or as I've had this happen to me five to ten minutes."

Damn straight. Because it's VERY rude to sit there and explain something OOCly while others are in the room and trying to roleplay, especially if the explination is going to take five to ten minuites, as you pointed out. The only difference here is your not stopping OTHER'S roleplay.

Don't have the paitence to help a newbie? Don't want to go @ooc to assist a fellow player? xhelp and let us know. We'll take care of it.

And just how many newbies in a day do we get around here? And of them, how many are you helping? And how often? From what I've seen, these are rare occurances far and few between.

I can tell you from first hand experience that right now 75% of ooc talk can be completely avoided, 23% can easily be comminicated with OOC socials, and the remaining 2% are thoes special cases where you gotta explain something like how to install a SIC encryption key.

So I ask again: What is so dire about having to go @ooc? That's WHAT IT'S FOR! So people can talk ooc!Tylissa did it NO PROBLEMS AT ALL, with a complete lack of OOC socials, and she's a certified newbie helper.

The problem I'm seeing here is people are so attached to their OOC and they never use @ooc unless they have to go afk or something, that when someone talks of talking it away, they panic.

So I challenge you: Stop using OOC. Pretend it's not there like Tylissa did. If you have to say something OOC, ask the person to go @ooc. Try it. See what happens. See just how often you -really- need it… and remember that the other people wouldn't have it either. Because it's very easy to respond to an OOC comment. But when noone can OOC, there's nothing to temp you. Don't believe me? Prove me wrong. Please. I'de be facinated to know just how many times in a day you had to ask someone to go @ooc for something that couldn't be communicated with a ooc social like lag or typo or ask xhelp. You'll find it's alot of OOC reactions and comments to IC events, and that's completely unnecessary.

-Kevlar

(Edited by Kevlar at 2:47 am on Sep. 29, 2002)

By Kevlar at Sep 29, 2002, 2:45 AM | 0
Well I help every newbie I see, as well anytime I see the Sam_Guest, and most of the time, I can tell them what they need to know in a line or two, and in most cases that I have experienced, that would be less disruptive to rp, than leaving the room, and then coming back, when you go @ooc you go into some void, like a martian just beamed you up. Then voila your right back in the room, with absolutely no clue whats going on, and in an ic kinda way you didnt go anywhere, so you would need to ask someone else in the room to go @ooc and then explain to you what all happened, then guess what, as soon as you go back, you get to repeat it till everyone gets sick of you. What I think should be done is to simply add an ooc++ function to the ooc command, that counts how many oocs that you have done, and limit them to so many per hour or something. I know its real easy because I have coded similiar a million times. As long as the encryption subject is up, I did experiment with it, and then xhelped over it, and the IMM that answered simply told me you can not make your own encryption keys, you just pick a name, and it automates the keys. Well after wasting a bunch of Chyen, I found out the admin was wrong, even after I pointed the paragraph out in the helpfile, they stated its just worded wrong. But through the use of xhelp, and wasting chyen, I figured it out and explained how it worked to the imm. The other problem I see with going @ooc every time is your going to be in there with everyone else that has, and its going to go up once this is implemented, it might not turn out so well. In the way that it might get spammy in there. Another thing that could be done is simply to make xhelp a global ooc channel, with a strict policy that its only used to ask, and answer questions, and that the answers have to be truthful, and not malicious. I have seen this work before with only minuscule repurcussions, and those only happened when a player went out to abuse it, well you can do anything about those people you want, and you can not code as many features as you want to prevent it, hindering the people who would use it to everyones gain. They go from m** to m** to entertain themselves that way. So all you can do fairly is just ban them like their flies and keep the game fluid for us that love it.

(Edited by Heeru at 11:59 pm on Sep. 28, 2002)

By Heeru at Sep 29, 2002, 8:53 AM | 0
This is exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping to open up!

I like Heeru's idea about a limited number of responses per hour, or session. That was something I had actually thought of too. �But… I'm still all for taking out the OOC chat thing. Would it be a possible option to add the new OOC socials, and also add the ability to page but give the player, say, three per session/hour/day? Something like that? �We could possibly limit something like the page instead of trying to limit OOC comments. �And then we could tell newbies things that way for those rare cases, but we wouldn't be able to abuse it.

And... I must say that I found it difficult over the past week to go without making comments or jokes to the people I was RPing with... but I just had to realize that isn't what the game is here for. �Sure, there are a few situations where we'd need to make comments. But if we discuss more OOC socials that are needed, I think we'll find there are fewer and fewer problems on an ever-shortening list of what we really NEED to say OOC.

If we gave players the ability to toggle OOC on and off, I don't think they would turn if off very often, and they'd still use it to say unnecessary things.  As for the issue with newbies not knowing what you mean when you ask to go @OOC... that is an issue that I thought of.  That's why I think that the feature that is added for asking someone to go @OOC should give them a y/n option. That way all a newbie has to do is hit "y" to agree to it, instead of wondering what you're asking.

But I don't know if that idea would be admin-approved, that was just the way I thought of to deal with the problem of newbie confusion.

(Edited by Tylissa at 1:02 pm on Sep. 29, 2002)

By Tylissa at Sep 29, 2002, 9:55 AM | 0
I do admit, that most of the things that I use OOC for could be handled by OOC socials, usually short things like "hold on" or "brb phone" - but there are instances where it can't.

Another example, once I was grabbed and being strangled and I didn't know about the resist command.

Let's assume there was no OOC chat, and I couldn't ask - either I would have been perma-ed, or, I'd step @OOC and call the other guy OOC to ask how to resist (against the @rules, isn't it?) or xhelp and *hope* an admin has time to answer before I'm kaput? Hell, I was still earning new commands well into my second month here.

I'm not against removing the OOC chat - I'm all for it, actually. But I also think there should be some way, however limited, to give someone an OOC message while in-game, specifically for these uncommon occurances.

A limited number of OOC chats per session would just have people log in and log back out. How about something more along the lines of one OOC communication per 5 minutes? Sort of like how spam-guards work on certain chat networks. It'd be ridiculously impossible to have a conversation when you can only speak once every five minutes (or more!). Or even, just ten communications per 24 hours would be more than enough. But *something* needs to be there that's more immediate than @ooc.

By Murphy at Sep 29, 2002, 1:26 PM | 0
I think we can get rid of em.

Butt! hehe not to sound demanding and pig headed

If Questions like "How do I open u p a 6 pack, or install a key" are asked via Xhelp…it needs some sort of priority.  There are plenty of times I've asked an admin a question, and not gotten answers or had to wait a decent amount for one.  It wasn't anything important so it doesn't matter.  But if a problem arises during RP about RP "how do I kill someone?"  It needs to be dealt with in a matter of minutes.

Overstepping my bounds at all?  Sue me.

By Dominik at Sep 29, 2002, 9:24 PM | 0
I agree with Dom. If the ability to speak OOCly in a room is taken away and our only options are to convince people to go @ooc with us or xhelp then we should get a response on our xhelp enquiries.  Even if that response is only, "Give me five or ten minutes to wrap something up and I'll be right with you." Its better than sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting and not getting any response.

Also if there are no GMs on there should be an automated response message when you xhelp saying that, so you don't sit there for hours waiting for somone to respond when there is no one to respond. And it would be nice if it were possible to see if there were any GMs. Maybe have a little something at the end of @who that can list it.

Personally I find socials lame, but if that's the only option left for me then I'll use them.

But while we're on the subject of inane and useless OOC chatter I'd like to get rid of the think command.

Its idiotic and I suspect often abused. There you have a player giving you free OOC information about their character and how and what they're thinking. There are players out there I'm certain who have found that an all to alluring option and reacted ICly upon what was in someone elses's think posting.

Much more often than people talking OOCly - at least in my experience - my screen gets filled with people using the think command. And if you've got more than five people in a room it can be excessively spammy.

So much of what is put into a think posting can be eluded to by a well done and well thought out pose.

By Tash at Sep 30, 2002, 1:03 AM | 0
But if we have no OOC speak, we will have to ask people IC to go @OOC which is kind of defeating the purpose.  Maybe a command like ooc <name> which tells the person whose name you fill in that you would like to go @OOC but not allow any othe OOC commands while in the actual game.
By Hirononbu at Oct 4, 2002, 7:23 AM | 0
Or we could do it the easy way, and just remove all ooc in the game, and make xhelp public, with @rules that is it for Q/A only. I think that would cover all the bases, easiest to code, and anyone who would abuse it, would abuse anything else…
By Heeru at Oct 4, 2002, 11:14 AM | 0
Heeru may be on to something, but having xhelp be completely public would be sorta like adding a general OOC chat spamming everybody….how about this:

Players who've been actively playing here more than X amount of time, would have the option to sign up to be able to see xhelp queries, and answer them for the admins? That way there'd always be someone to answer xhelp queries, solving the problem of getting help. Then you just leave in the @ooc room and an @social for asking someone to it and *bewm*, all problems solved?

By Murphy at Oct 4, 2002, 2:08 PM | 0
I have one, and only one concern with the removal of OOC chatter in the game.

Newbies. OOC is probably the most effective way to communicate with a new player to the MOO, especially if they are new to the game. In the IC world, it can be an amazing tool to -teach- the player the IC commands, especially room based ones that you don't have access to when you go @ooc. I've used OOC/IG Chatter to teach people the ropes in a fraction of time it would take to teach them in most other ways. Going to the OOC lounge, explaining, then going -BACK- IC to test, then going OOC Lounge when the Noob messes it up. Too slow, frustrating to the Noob, frustrating to the teacher/guide/whatever.

That's it. The only reason really. It's cool to have it, because it helps to build a tighter knit community. But it's removal wouldn't be terribly detrimental to that.

Any abuse issues are nulled really, because people chatter on IM's, which pretty much makes me violently angry and filled with an unholy rage that boils my sperm.

there's my two bits on that.

By Nicadeamus at Oct 4, 2002, 11:53 PM | 0
We had a public Xhelp, XM, but it was used like OOC is now, it won't work for Q/A only

NOw nic we could get a speech system like it is now ooc so only the person y ou direct ooc at sees it, or have a social that says Dom tries to get NIc @ooc otherwise, we do need it

By Dominik at Oct 6, 2002, 9:32 PM | 0
OOC is bad because it disturbs RP. Fair enough. But…is the system really so flawed that we actually need to take time to try and correct it? I think it's about as good as it's going to get. If a couple/few people get carried away, then either a PC tells them to get BIC, or an Admin threatens to kill people.
I just don't see OOC getting abused that often, really. Well, not anymore. I remember back �when Trancer first started up I used to OOC like a 6-year-old playing Everquest. I think if we keep things how they are, we'll keep a lot of trivial questions out of the admin's hair by letting the established players nudge and aid the n00bs along, and if it's major someone simply says "Let's go @ooc", problem over.

/input

(Edited by Lotus at 9:37 pm on Oct. 6, 2002)

By Lotus at Oct 6, 2002, 9:36 PM | 0
I think people just need to practice self restraint.

A private OOC system would be raped for abuse.
A global one like back in the day was insane.
The current one is flawed, but mainly because people are dopes.

I pretty much side with Lotus there on that last point. Just use discression. Either way, it can all be abused.

By Nicadeamus at Oct 6, 2002, 9:39 PM | 0
I've actually noticed a lot less OOC chatter since I posted this anyway. I think people are being more careful with it, and that's cool. We should all just cut back and see how it goes. Thanks for the discussion and consideration, guys!
By Tylissa at Oct 7, 2002, 9:01 AM | 0
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