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- zxq 40s
- QueenZombean 33s
- Napoleon 2h
- Ameliorative 31m
- Bruhlicious 8h Deine Mutter stinkt nach Erbrochenem und Bier.
a Mench 7m Doing a bit of everything.
- notloose 8h
And 23 more hiding and/or disguised

Why does Withmore feel like summer camp?
We here to roleplay, or what?

This thread was inspired by these comments in the Ideas:Another Level of SIC Encryption thread.

What I'd really like to see with the SIC is a legitimate reason, backed with common knowledge, why your character may have it be inactive

I hate when people say other characters are sleeping -all the ****ing time-.

Seems like there's more of this kind of thing going on than there used to be.

It comes with two other new trends:

First, players who shack up with each other and can't not have their sleeping carcasses seen by their fuckbuddies/roommates or the guests of their fuckbuddies/roommates. Sleeping characters are literally more visible than they used to be in this game.

And second, players who don't put the effort in to be themely and be creative about how they ICly talk about things which unavoidably are influenced by real life factors. This comes out in a lot of other ways besides just the borderline-meta comments about how someone "isn't up yet" - the one which has been shouted a lot lately is the one about how people aren't roleplaying like they're in an infuriatingly crowded megacitystate. There are others too.

I say they're new trends, the way I see it is they have come to Sindome recently along with what I completely admit is an extremely positive development: The tripling and quadrupling of our active daily player base since late last year. There are a lot of new players and I'm thrilled for it. Let's ALL set an example for the new ones who continue to come in daily and weekly by working harder to be themely.

It just doesn't make sense from a realistic standpoint. Unless it does make sense from a realistic standpoint, but then there needs to be a common reason for such a thing happening.

Personally, I'd like to see more creativity or at least willfull suspension of disbelief on the part of players who make their characters say things like this. Especially if their character hasn't literally seen the person sleeping.

On the other hand, if a sleeping character is right in their face, what the hell else are they supposed to say? "I'm looking right at them. They're... asleep."

Still, I cringe at some of the unrealistically intimate SIC chatter - how exactly is it that we pick a handful of voices out of the millions and millions which are supposedly using the system every hour, and zero in on newcomers, recognize alias changes, and scan what people are saying to each other when we're not even being addressed directly ourselves? It's a real-life condition of the game but it's still supposed to represent an impossibly annoying, intrusive and crowded system which really if you think about it should result in people either becoming disoriented or putting a lot of effort into filtering out all the irrelevant stuff.

Same thing with people talking as if there's literally only one bar on the Green sector, there's literally only one each of multiple types of professional service providers, there's literally only one channel on television. Unimaginative, unthemely, and un fun. We here to roleplay, or what? We create Withmore by living our characters in it. I'd like to see people pretend our city as much as they pretend their characters.

(Aside on the subject of sleeping, there have been elaborate plots and consequences triggered by people who've let their characters sleep a long time, hehe.)

hear hear.
Very well said.
Agree with all of the above.

On the SIC matter: I'm probably somewhat guilty myself. It's something I'm working on improving. More and more I find myself noticing things on SIC and dismissing it entirely thinking; 'What are the chances my character was really concentrating that much on that particular bit of SIC to to come to the realizations that I notice only because I'm viewing a very stripped down and condensed version?'

Another side note continuing with the fact that there are 65 million people in Withmore. When you are out in a public place, unless your perception skill is very high, you will not notice the moment someone walks into the room, there are constantly people coming and going. Especially in places like Korova, The Drome, Grunen's, Sing-a-Rong. And on the other end of that, when you first get to a crowded place, you are -not- immediately going to spot your friends.
I'm glad my little thought provoked its own thread.
The only thing I'll really disagree with is the SIC matter. In game terms, the SIC is a vital point of communication and perhaps one of the best methods for characters to meet each other. We frequently encourage new players to use the SIC to ask for help.

I would tend to think that the SIC offers some sort of filtering, or perhaps there are multiple public channels and the population is split into manageable chunks between them. Just ideas.

If we were constantly hearing 65 million voices in our head, we would all be insane, or perhaps Borg.

It's not about not communicating with your friends. It's about not noticing as soon as someone changes alias. Or when someone is new to the city because you've never seen their alias before. Or assuming they are "sleeping" because they aren't on the network.
Also, to ensure you are getting your firends messages, buy an encryption, buy a progia, private message, gridmail. These are all ways to stay in touch. The public SIC SHOULD be flooded.
I'm just not buying it. Not from a playability angle, nor from an in-character angle.

Typically, players are not close together in this very large game of ours. The public SIC ensures that our OOC playerbase maintains some IC community. It gives news players direction when they have no idea what to do. It allows the promotion of events and is even used by the Judges to announce punishments. In short, I think some suspension of disbelief is necessary in exchange for the good it does for playability.

Further, I maintain my view that we can't possibly be hearing 65 million voices in our heads without going insane. That would be more demanding on the mind than the most demanding cyberware currently out there. There has to be some kind of filtering or partitioning of public channels into manageable groups. Almost everyone gets a SIC, and the city wouldn't want almost everyone to be nuts.

Otherwise, sure, I agree that there are means of private contact and that the ones you listed are all perfectly valid.

Just don't use it to do something asinine like:

Generally, if I plan to be inactive for an extended period of time I will actually remove my character from the city and roleplay a 'holiday' or simply head out to one of the IC locations away from the city and leave my character logged out there. Nobody sleeps for 3 weeks straight.

In regards to the SIC spam I have to agree. A lot of what is said on there is much too specific and responded to very easily. In reality there are 65,000,000 online via the SIC implant. So a message over the public SIC would be broadcast to these people. If they are asleep or otherwise occupied the fleeting thought would be ignored. I like to imagine certain people would have modified SIC implants with something like ADblock Plus on it. Something that blocks the advertisements and the majority of the chatter. In real life I imagine most people would have the public channel entirely blocked as well because anyone could project thoughts perverts, con artists, constant spam advertisements. Hell, there would probably be that many scams and scandals happening every day on the SIC people wouldn't trust it.

BUT. Because we have a small core of players, who for the most part like to know what everyone else is up to nobody shuts off the public SIC for an extended period of time. And because we generally have a maximum of 30 people using the SIC the chatter is quite minimal to what it would be comparatively. In reality, it would be like a Facebook Newsfeed that everyone is constantly posting to and updating. Trying to sort out the legitimate messages from the spam would be nigh impossible.

Hence encryption keys and private SIC's.

So, spare a thought for the 64,999,995 who really don't care about your plans for the evening. Does your boss really want to know how high on Marcy you are right now? Of course not.

While this is a good topic, I hope it doesn't affect the way newbies use the SIC adversely. My character doesn't like what he sees on SIC at times, but as you have all already pointed out, there are 65 million people in the city. I suppose it would be perfectly plausible to come across banal conversations all the time.

Also, some of these conversations give other characters insights into whoever is talking. Which could in itself be used for whatever purpose you may see fit.

Some of these conversations also end up turning into cat-fights, which I have to admit, are quite to funny to watch.

In my opinion, strange and irrelevant conversations would be normal in the city, even though my character may not like it.

I also apologise for digressing here, but I assumed that SIC was visual, like the terminators HUD. Especially considering the red font and all. I'm a bit confused by people saying that it's a thought in your head.

I would have to acknowledge the problem of the 65 million, but let's think about an IC reason why we notice other individuals distinctly, i.e. pc and npc characters.

For some reason we are walking down a crowded street and we run into a pc. This individual strikes us for some reason. What they wear, how they act, we notice these things, marking this person from the rest of the mix...later on we immediately recognize them again. something about their character, about their person, is distinct. This allows us to meet a random person, or for an emergency doctor at FSMC to operate on the player character rather than the 20 other used and abused filling the room. If certain citizens were not distinct to us, then it would be perfectly reasonable for a player to rp for 4 hours straight in an "empty" intersection, chatting at citizens all day long... simply to be realistic.

Could not the same work on sic? Through the multitude we focus on the distinct voices, some thoughts we catch on to and begin to recognize. We understand their personalities to a certain extent, recognize their SIC names and the encryption keys they use. Just as we may notice the same immy walking down Fuller twice in a week, so also we recognize the cranky bastard on SIC.

On the SIC matter I fully agree with the view pocketface brings up. How many people are on Facebook, posting publicly every day? Of them how many do you personally have on your friends list? Of them how many are there who you never miss a single posting from?

I see the SIC functioning the same way that FB takes our friends posts and comments and compiles them into what it sees as relevant info, giving us the posts on our feed of what our other friends are talking about most, linking them to things that we actively read or view, and suggesting friends based on who we mutually know. It also does things like letting us break our friends down into even more elite groups (read encryptions).

I think this is a good representation of how the tech covers this massive pool of users in an efficient way, without flooding us with nonsense, but also bearing in mind the concept that some bs/ads/spam are inevitable due to the nature of the ultra-consumerist society.

But not everyone in Whitmore is on SIC or else the SICpuppy ad wouldn't be in the game asking if you have SIC implant then you got to think how many people will have the money to buy said implant
The implant is mandatory in the city, its not about buying it since everyone should have it. The sic puppy is serving another function you need to find out icly.
Those unSICced denizens of the city are also not counted in the 65 mil that are quoted as the city's population either. That number refers to the official citizens, traceable by their mandatory SIC implants. That has no bearing on the idea of public SIC, and being able to pick out and comment on every nonsensical things anyone says, or to notice every new alias that crops up and immediately know it's a new immy or whatnot.
One way to fix the feel of SIC would be to eliminate the public channel. Make all SIC communication encrypted, leaving a lobby type channel up to the players. Then no one would wonder why the open channel only seemed to have the same small group (compaired to the overall populace) of people everyday.
It doesn't need fixing.

It just needs us to behave with a little imagination.

Unthemely, unimaginative, and un fun:

There was a perfect example tonight, with an unnamed player treating the opening of a new restaurant as if it were the first ever of that type in the sector.

Don't do that.

There are dozens upon dozens of restaurants of every conceivable type in the city, just because they may not yet exist as player accessible locations doesn't mean there are none. Treating the game world as only what you can directly access is metagaming that can potentially ruin the game for others.

Withmore is a freaking huge city, please try to remember that people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:New_York_Metropolitan_Area_Counties_2013.png

Above is a map of how New York City, a city with 8.3 million people, is divided. While 65 million is a lot more, the platform divisioning of Withmore help to lessen the congestion to... I like to think... the level of Manila (41,014 persons per square kilometer) (http://images.forbes.com/media/2006/12/20/congested_1.jpg) in Red, and maybe like Taipei in Gold (9,835 persons per square kilometer) (http://images.forbes.com/media/2006/12/20/congested_9.jpg), noticeably less in Green, and Elysium levels on Blue (www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/).

I do two things with assumptions like these.

1. I roleplay to create environment. In my emoting, I almost always describe how crowded my character's surroundings are, and how they respond as a result. Sometimes I interact with the ambient population in benign ways, like whispering in their ears or bumping into them or suspiciously eyeing them. This is not for my benefit, but for the benefit of the other person, who may be having a harder time visualizing these things in a room that only has two players. If someone spots me right away in a room that should be crowded, I emote back about how I respond in surprise after just barely catching a glimpse of them waving at me through the hoards of people. I think this behavior is contagious, because the other characters that I interact with regularly also emote like this, and never seem to have these problems conceptualizing population that I keep hearing about or seeing happen on SIC. Plus, gentle reminders like this are less offensive and disruptive than the OOC chatter I see about it.

2. I never talk about '65 million people.' I have lived in many of the largest cities in the United States, and things that happen in these cities that may not in places that other players are more familiar with is... even with cars and public transportation, people do not want to travel clear across town to accomplish something. Just the trip takes hours. You live in a part of town, you work in that part of town, you hit all the restaurants in that part of town, your local gangs 'represent' your part of town, and maybe once in a blue moon you venture out to do something unusual. And so, like the divisions of New York, I imagine that we are all in just one of the smallest divisions of the city. I mean, come on, an entire sector that has like 10 streets on it, and not even as a grid? I can still pretend that the streets are very, very long when I roleplay, and maybe throw in the occasional ambient street here and there, but I can't convince myself that the corners of the city end where the corners of the map are. So, as I said, I assume that we're all in this district. I can't name it, of course, since I'm the only one with this hallucination, but it allows me to do things like lower the scale for SIC communication. Ever been on a VOIP server with 100 people in it? It starts out incredibly noisy, and then you end up with just a handful of individuals who dominate the conversation while everyone else tunes it out or passively listens... until something funny is said, anyway, and then your ears explode from 100 people laughing into their microphones. Also, with the creative idea to make up names of bars and things that don't actually exist to create a better illusion (I don't remember if it was in this thread, but I love the idea, whoever came up with it), I can shrug my shoulders and say, "Hmm, never heard of it, maybe it's not in my part of town" rather than making up stuff about it to pretend I've been there (unless my character's a liar :p). Similarly, it doesn't make me cringe quite as much when someone says "meet me at the convenience store," as if there were only one, because maybe there's only one really good, well-known one in an adjacent part of town, and maybe the conversation is picking up from somewhere when I wasn't paying attention. When I talk, however, I'll have the one I'm "most familiar with" in mind and describe it simply as "a" convenience store, at such and such location. Ultimately, with this, what I do is not let it bother me that SIC sounds like a chat room with 40 people in it.

So, on OOC-Chat I was advised recently to "react ICly" to theme breaking shit.

Sometimes that works.

There are other times though when I don't WANT to have my character be the asshole ICly over another player's OOC approach.

Yes, you sound narcissistic as hell when you have your character act like all of Withmore revolves around you and your twenty intimate friends. No, I don't necessarily want to deal with this theme breaking by having my character Treat Yours like they're narcissist. Or other potential ways of reacting ICLy which would still be out-of-character for the way my character actually would react.

Sometimes reacting ICly is fine, depending on the subject matter. Sometimes it's not.

I just want to implore everybody to keep in mind that every first-week new player who sees you treat Sindome like a forty person world is likely to follow your example. Break this habit, now, please.

You don't have to be an asshole, what I was driving at is;

C1> SIC is dead today!

C2> What are you talking about? It's fuckin' cluttered...

Or if somebody is being extremely ambiguous on SIC (meet me at the cab on x street), you can point it out in an IC way by responding appropriately (which one? There's a lot of fucking cabs on this street mano, it's the fucking financial district.)

You don't necessarily have to treat them like a narcissist but you can approach theme-breaking in this way and also lead by an example.

Perhaps when the newbie population is especially high a GM with some free time could have Juicy Vee do a shout out to his fans and trigger a massive explosion of SIC responses, so much that it becomes annoying to the eyes with a good amount of scroll.

Simulated SIC chatter to show people what they should be visualizing when things are "quiet."

If people are learning from others treating the world like only forty people exist in it... Perhaps an irregular showing of population is in order to remind people or educate new players.

The players are just reacting to how the game system presents the world. More cues in the system itself hinting to a much larger population than is visible would help push players to react more 'themely'.

For example, the public SIC - it should probably be made explicit that the system is filtered somehow, since a literally unfiltered stream of 65 million people would be an awful idea. I also brought up the idea of more frequent system messages in crowded areas hinting at the presence of a general crowd of NPCs - I think this would do a lot to help the city feel a bit more crowded.

Long Post:

bean_dip referred to this post in the Oct 3rd 2015 Townhall post and I'd like to *boot* this up to the top.

Ambient Population and Buildings

It's a good idea (especially for the Red sector) to take into account the ambient population and that there are many many more apartment buildings, industrial warehouses, vehicles, bars, nail salons, strip joints, sex item stores, pawn shops, underground casinos, gyms, et cetera, than what we can interact with. (Hell, I would figure some of those 'boutiques' in Green are just fronts to small whorehouses.)

One intersection mentions trendy shops and restaurants even though you can't officially enter any of them. Another room mentions "Each boutique charming in its own way. The windows of each shop showing samples of their wares."

Another area, in Red, mentions things like, You stop momentarily and inhale deeper, amazed at the smell. Wafting from somewhere above, you get the scent of fresh flowers, good home cooked food, and a lady's perfume (with the smell of feces below), OR, and the air is filled with the electric buzz of a thousand people squeezed into a space meant for a few hundred. OR A lonely industrial plant stands out from the run down warehouses....(And this is on the opposite side of the city area than SHI.) THEN A few grimy workers trudge to the low-paying industrial plants to the north.

These industrial plants are not something you as a character can interact with but you can still RP with it. :)

Get the idea?

LOTS of vehicles. LOTS of people. Drome, Deji Pachi, 100 Rads, Red's Finest, Sly's, The O, Sing-a-Rong, Cafe Bizou, Grunen's, The Wooden Box, Tony's, Bitchn' Chickn', Lucky Dragon (& all the stores you can interact with & shop in) - These places are always packed to some degree or another, even if you're the only seemingly obvious Player Character in the room at the time. Read the room descriptions. (You may find out something interesting or realize something you can do.)

SIC:

You know how your email can get spammed with penis enlargement spam or hair thickening shampoos and treatments, or tech newsletters and such? I figure that's also happening on SIC. Along with those random additional SICs we catch. Or other people having mini fights like the others we sometimes catch on SIC. Also, occasional music releases or shows, etc.

Characters are not sleeping 16 or more hours in a day. Maybe they're hiding off sic or you just didn't catch them on SIC earlier (wink wink). There are tens of millions of names on the SIC "who" at any time. Your SIC alias is Joey? Well, there's a Joe, Joee, Joie, Joey2086, JoEy (You get the idea). (There's a reason why I ended up putting the word "the" before my RL name with an email addy. It's worse with SIC especially since it's now 2100.) ;)

There are a lot of people around and it's super cool & aces that there are so many more players around.

If you're feeling guilty at not being friendly with other players, and need to use them, that's OKAY. They should be used. Sometimes characters want to be used. They just may not know it yet.

(Or maybe they do.)

Please please keep it in mind. :)

Lots of Malls, apartments, etc.

Thank you and Have fun exploring with your plotting.

Some of them want to use you

Some of them want to get used by you

Some of them want to abuse you

Some of them want to be abused

please use me

Yes! brojo, you get it.

I'll use you.

I have to say that I agree 100% with Vetra, I think this is very true still to this day.

I won't point fingers or name names, but there are several characters that conduct themselves in this manner which then in turn make new players follow their bad example making this progressively become the norm for the player base.

In the six months or so that I've been playing, I've seen this trending more and more with each day. Unfortunately the Staff doesn't have the time or energy to monitor and police every player in the game.

So it up to us the player base to play the theme and enforce the theme on other players who don't seem to understand it or that refuse to play the theme, instead choosing for their to live in some kind of bubble, breaking immersion for the rest of us.

Last time I checked this game was called Sindome, not the Sims: Dome. So please for your sake, for other players sake and for future players sake, play the theme!

Otherwise we might as well be all wizards and elfs, which makes as much sense as how some players play the game.

So if you see other players break the theme, don't play along, don't follow their example, don't be nice and pop them out of their little bubbles and bring them back into the theme, if we players don't do it nobody else will.

Posted by=Vetra

"So, on OOC-Chat I was advised recently to "react ICly" to theme breaking shit.

Sometimes that works.

There are other times though when I don't WANT to have my character be the asshole ICly over another player's OOC approach.

Yes, you sound narcissistic as hell when you have your character act like all of Withmore revolves around you and your twenty intimate friends. No, I don't necessarily want to deal with this theme breaking by having my character Treat Yours like they're narcissist. Or other potential ways of reacting ICLy which would still be out-of-character for the way my character actually would react.

Sometimes reacting ICly is fine, depending on the subject matter. Sometimes it's not.

I just want to implore everybody to keep in mind that every first-week new player who sees you treat Sindome like a forty person world is likely to follow your example. Break this habit, now, please."

I agree with everything here. However at the same time there are a variety of characters who come into the game and look for RP. they go to bars, no one is there to interact with at their play time, they go to clus and resteraunts, they look to break into getting involved. This is especially a problem topside. This game is supposed to be interactive. But what ends up happening is that people don't mix and mingle and so I seem to see that right away the whole idea that the live and changing city is already breaking down. They end up going to sic because it is one of the only ways to get anyone's attention, then they go further into that because there's no interaction whatsoever. The idea that we're roleplaying the theme could very well be inforced by simply having people make more of an effort to show up. by giving out private keys, by mixing and mingling. Just something I've personally noticed. As for the oh there's a new restaraunt I just tried, or the I've been going to place x for service x and it's working out really good. That can always be improved on. I hope we don't get new players reading this thread though and go, Well shit these people are jackasses for being pissed when your not around to help introduce me into the theme, you don't interact with me Icly and when you do it's to tell me I'm not being themely. only thing I'm worried about. Other than that I agree with this. Also It's early I hope this didn't just come out as mindless mumbling.
I gotta agree with what newbs is saying a bit on the whole people will be going onto sic or whatever to try and find player interaction but often word it a bit badly and get shot down by people telling them 'oh there's loads of people there' etc which is great for theme, not so great for interactions.

It's a case of trying to strike a good balance, letting people know ic'ly and ooc'ly that they should react and regard ambient population but also doing it in a way that's not gonna put them off the game (especially when talking ooc). As for his point on people needing to be around more ic'ly that's a nice idea of trying to get people to go out of their way to interact more and interact with new players especially but with the vast amount of place simply just sitting around at one might not actually be helpful for you or anyone else getting rp. Of course babysitting characters and players to get them rp should not be a thing, you gotta work for stuff after all but providing more rp interactions? That's something there can always be more of.

But back to the case at hand everyone here has good points in regards to the stuff but gotta bear in mind a lot of new players won't think or quite get the scale of it. Heck i didn't really think about it until i first saw this thread about a month back.

Going to SIC is fine.

Nothing wrong with that. It's one of the reasons SIC exists, as another RP tool and that you can use it to meet up with people. I see people use it to invite others to the bar for a round.

Just need to keep in mind that your sics aren't the only ones. There are millions on the SIC Who and logging in to the grid. Someone logs into the grid, then another, it doesn't mean it's the same person. Or an aerodyne or Koi or mono passing.

It's never quiet in the city not on sic.

The Drome is *always* packed and there are multiple bars, apartments, pawn shops around.

No one at the bar or joint you're in? Use SIC to invite them to join you. Make a few more contacts you can use down the road.

Yes. I don't mean that we shouldn't consider the environment--Ihave to work really hard at being conscious about it, and I'm getting better over time--but we should also look for that balance. If you want people to act more in theme you have to give them theme to interact with not just get pissed when they're walking around bare streets, or talking over sic from their cubes because they can't find people to RP with. give them opportunites. I have a character who is in a lot of ways stupidly naive for a reason, because it gives somebody something to react to, in a game that's hard to find interactions. A lot of people are fine roleplaying by themselves but that has never been me, and I think that is rare not common place. Just my thoughts though. A balance is all.
@newbs

Nice thing is that many go out of their way to help a new player or meet up with them somewhere. We kinda have to know where.

(And since this is a game where the majority are located in the USA, your time can make a difference with the # of people online, but there are more players now in all time slots than B4 & it's quite exciting.)

Also,

The "many " people there is more a reminder but then I've observed some players heading there. It's a good community.

I had a question on @trusts early on last March and someone came in and let me test it out on them (frisk in this case) & see the difference with both trusted & untrusted.

Thankfully I'm tired and the rest of my tangent is gone.

As the original poster, I'm honestly amazed that I have to explain that this topic is not intended to give anyone the idea that spanking newcomers is the way to address this problem.

Spank the veterans who continue to, can't learn not to, have been shown/asked/shamed repeatedly not to make their characters act like the game is the city, like the rooms are the geography, like the players are the population.

Try harder to set the example for the next new signer-uppers - remember that not all of them are experienced at roleplaying, separating their character from their selves, separating the way the

game-world is supposed to be from the way the game is.

One last comment: this subject typically tends to trigger people to brainstorm ways that game code or world building should be done in order to save the players the trouble of having to remember how to fucking roleplay. This is an asinine idea, because I happen to know that the EXACT same players who think that this is a good idea are the ones who react resentfully when they act stupid, unthemefully, or narcissistically and then other players DO WORLDBUILDING with their own corrective behavior.

Actually, that isn't what makes the idea asinine, that's just describing asinine behavior.

What makes the idea asinine is that you can never, ever replace roleplaying with content or programming. No amount of game content or functional features [b[simulating[/] the many many millions of people who share and compete for your character's environment will ever change he fact that you still will need to use your imagination.

Newbs wrote:

If you want people to act more in theme you have to give them theme to interact with not just get pissed when they're walking around bare streets, or talking over sic from their cubes because they can't find people to RP with. give them opportunites. I have a character who is in a lot of ways stupidly naive for a reason, because it gives somebody something to react to, in a game that's hard to find interactions.

Newbs, there is theme to interact with. :) In Every area you go into. People to RP with at all hours. I've recently been awake later and occasionally on earlier. The only time I have observed with few players has been from about 1/1:30am - 3:30am (PST / Withmore Standard Time = GMT -8). There are about double the average players or more at any time than there was last year April. (That is based off observation, not actual statistics and I could be off but there are more players.)

Note: SIC can be used to create meetups. Talk to the bartender, ask them where the party is at (for example) and they'll tell you where and then you can SIC publicly and meet whoever is there. You see someone's post on the Feed that interests you or you agree with? Gridmail them.

I agree with Vetra. It isn't the new people we remind/spank, it's the players who've been around and we go, "Hey... you know there are 66 million people around." "At least 30 million are awake."

Go to the bar and announce on SIC - I'm where the party's at. Where are you? Come to blah bar.

Explore - there are places you don't know about to find.

Vetra wrote:

As the original poster, I'm honestly amazed that I have to explain that this topic is not intended to give anyone the idea that spanking newcomers is the way to address this problem.

Spank the veterans who continue to, can't learn not to, have been shown/asked/shamed repeatedly not to make their characters act like the game is the city, like the rooms are the geography, like the players are the population.

I added to this thread because 1 - very recently I came across a few players and one had mentioned a street name and ONE building where they found something but they didn't give the building's name. The assumption that we would know which one it was existed. I also spot on SIC when a new person is asking where blah place is for courier work (& it's in one of the malls) and the responses are only 'In the mall' or 'the mall in Green'. (The 'in the mall' response could be a good snarky comment but that isn't how it's used because of the number of different people who use that.)

(These are only "Central" areas too. West, South, East sectors - these exist, we just don't walk to them yet.)

And 2 - Because this was brought up by bean_dip in the Townhall Meeting thread for the upcoming Townhall in October.

We just need to set a good example for the new players and RP the number of buildings, people, et cetera that are in this Dome.

"give theme to interact with"

For one thing, read room descriptions - don't pretend that "theme" doesn't exist.

For another, many of us "give theme" with the way we choose to make our characters act, speak and think (on SIC). Again, other people's, and the game's, lack of theme isn't the problem. We're just asking for the few who are to be more thoughtful.

And imaginative. Hell, isn't that the entire reason any of us are here? To roleplay?

Well, I've only played here for like a month or so and my impression of SIC is that it's not the entire city. Just like how the maps we have access to and the only parts of Withmore we interact with are in the central district of each sector, so we would be on 'SIC Central' and wouldn't be inundated with all 65 million citizens, and if someone can't be found on SIC it could be just as likely that they are in North, East, South, West, etc. as it is they are asleep. Either way they can't be interacted with. Just my .02
I like brojo's thoughts on sic being by 'central' and stuff. I know many people have suggested it probably filters people out because the thoughts of 65 million people going through your head constantly would drive you insane and also you wouldn't really be able to properly hear or respond to sic messages with that many constantly buzzing through.
Conversation! :)

Anyways, @bojo and Lightbox:

Except that not all 65 million people are awake at the same time.

I rather liked the idea of the whole city being connected.

Besides, that's what the ads promote - everyone connected. Helps also to explain (and you can RP it) when someone's not responding to you and you do catch them on SIC. SIC might be turned off.

Also, incognito. People use aliases often. Some players have RP'd dropping off of SIC.

Also, you can imagine that schools / classes, mainly on days where there are tests, have some sort of SIC dampener, approved by the WJF course. No cheating. (That's what skillsofts are for.) There *are* some work places don't have SIC access in certain areas. Can you imagine certain research / test areas with SIC? I wouldn't allow it.

Suspend belief, roll with it, have fun. Get upset at people who don't use @ooc and space out in front of you for a long time. Or even if they don't respond to you on SIC. ;) (And just a note, there are IC consequences to all that too.)

Euclid wrote, and I like this:

"More and more I find myself noticing things on SIC and dismissing it entirely thinking; 'What are the chances my character was really concentrating that much on that particular bit of SIC to to come to the realizations that I notice only because I'm viewing a very stripped down and condensed version?'"

Just a note that Vetra wrote in the OP:

"Personally, I'd like to see more creativity or at least willfull suspension of disbelief on the part of players...

"Still, I cringe at some of the unrealistically intimate SIC chatter - how exactly is it that we pick a handful of voices out of the millions and millions which are supposedly using the system every hour, and zero in on newcomers, recognize alias changes, and scan what people are saying to each other when we're not even being addressed directly ourselves? It's a real-life condition of the game but it's still supposed to represent an impossibly annoying, intrusive and crowded system which really if you think about it should result in people either becoming disoriented or putting a lot of effort into filtering out all the irrelevant stuff.

"Same thing with people talking as if there's literally only one bar on the Green sector, there's literally only one each of multiple types of professional service providers, there's literally only one channel on television. Unimaginative, unthemely, and un fun. We here to roleplay, or what? We create Withmore by living our characters in it. I'd like to see people pretend our city as much as they pretend their characters."

Bleh. Sorry. I'm tired and there's no edit.

Only that 1st line about some 30 mil being asleep or awake was really to you two. The rest is more general.

(Xmo works on not being so verbose.)

I actually really like that whole bit about not paying attention to sic chatter sometimes. I've started doing it, not because my character wouldn't realistically keep up with every convo going on over public, but because there are simply times where I, the player, can't focus on everything going on over sic, along with the RP I'm actually involved in, be that, over sic, grid, phone, or in person. There are characters/players, some even that I like RPing with in general, but seem to fall prey to the "omnisciences syndrome", where they seem to know everything that is happening everywhere. "Oh, didn't you hear the thing I said over public sic just now?" No, I didn't, because I'm to busy with something else. I don't look at the damn pictures you post of your baby on facebook, either...that was a metaphor.

I'm not faulting anyone for this. But it's this type of discussion that will make us better roleplayers. I know I'm far from perfect. In my tenure on this MOO I've been temp banned on multiple occasions, I've been bitched out by admins more times than I can count, and I can't think of a single time they were actually in the wrong. If anything, it's a shame they didn't catch me sooner.

My biggest point is, we have to be willing to call each other, both IC, as is appropriate to theme and our characters, or OOC, when the above option doesn't seem fitting.

Ok.. So.. The help file for SIC also indicates that SIC is seen to you like a thought:

Messages on the SIC, both public and private, appear as something akin to thoughts in your head.

The help file also says that you are in control of your perception of SIC:

You assign them a voice and a gender based on the context of the message and your perception of the person messaging you.

If you believe you know the person (keeping in mind SIC aliases are not locked and can be taken over by someone else) your mind may assign the message a voice and tone consistent with how that person sounds in the real (IC) world. It's your mind though, and you are in control.

Now. this is all IMHO but for starters, I agree with the notion that there is absolutely no way even 100,000 people are posting things unfiltered, unchecked, unscreened, as a mass, all at the same time, into anyones cognitive processing centers. It would come out at best like pure white noise, the ‘sshhshaaaaaaarrr’ buzz of a stadium shouting for example.

I tend to play as if SIC transmits whatever, and there are patterns or mental pathways pointing to particular chatter that my character picks up on. They have the capacity to be overwhelmed by it to the point of total frustration, confusion and distress. But they do have some ability to focus on (or ignore) entire chunks of it.

Beyond that it’s a matter of play-ability. Newbies need to ask stupid questions to get IC answers. Players should be able to shout 'Party at X’ so other players can elect to go or not.. right? Right?