Small Ideas - AIN'T NO COMBAT THREAD

Moirean

The better solution would be for people to just not try to mess with events. At least in my head, there's kinda an unspoken code of behavior in events that is sometimes forgotten - don't do excessive spammy stuff like defup, don't go PK people a ton for unrelated reasons just because they are there (been guilty of that one myself ), keep stuff focused on the plot, don't randomly chatter about something completely unrelated. To me, trying to trick/troll people into thinking your illusions are coming from the admin to highjack the plot or mess with people or whatever reason there is seems like it goes against this code of conduct, but I guess it's up to each person's interpretation and personal RP.

Oleis

Here's an unofficial thought: what if player illusions only worked in friendly areas? (Your house, haven, friendly city)

Aishia

Kind of seems like an all or nothing thing. Most of what I see Illusions used for is trolling, or stretching the bounds of reasonable RP. (People acting like it's real!) Not to say there isn't SOME legitimate use. I for one wouldn't be sad to see them disappear entirely.

Jensen

Aishia said:

Kind of seems like an all or nothing thing. Most of what I see Illusions used for is trolling, or stretching the bounds of reasonable RP. (People acting like it's real!) Not to say there isn't SOME legitimate use. I for one wouldn't be sad to see them disappear entirely.

Using illusions to fool people is legitimate

Using illusions as a means for real player made events is also legitimate

I would be sad to see them gone.

Haven

There are many ways to deal with this too. There's the lifevision artifact (or skill if your class has it) and telesense to help detect if you're being mind locked for the hallucination. If it's in room, you can also (dangerously) assume that if someone is sipping their elixir regularly, they might be up to something.

At the end of the day, it's a choice one way or another to run with an illusion or not regardless if its one sent by a  god or a player. You don't -have- to run with it if its a god. If it's fitting for your character, you can resist right up until the god forces it upon you if you so desired. Maybe it's just me but as a player, I don't exactly afford the gods special treatment just cause. I consider them to just be another roleplayer - just with another (cooler) toolkit than I.

[spoiler]It's why I usually frown whenever I see a god char serve in an administration role IG because it's not always clear right away which role they're applying: i.e., is this Auresae the fire goddess yelling at me or is it the player? Am I talking to the administrator or the character whom my character might be foolishly disrespectful toward? As opposed to Alecto/Razmael/Oleis/Becue/Celani being 100% OOC and therefore guaranteeing the situation to be an administrative one. It's also why I cringe when Celani (or the Someone powerful tells you) are allowed to slip IC with events and stuff cause it blurs the line again. They've gotten better with it over the years but still. :-w

[/spoiler]

The difference between this and combat illusions, is that in combat you're not afforded the time to make the conscious choice and consider due to the pace of it all while in an RP setting, for the most part you are.

Haven

Now that I think about it, can we (gods included) get an official ooctell command for the game?

ooctell Amika Don't do it!

[OOC] You tell Amika, "Don't do it!"

[OOC] Amika tells you, "Wuh eva. Wuh eva. I do wuh I wan."

oreply Fine. Not a good idea though.

Nola, the Oracle tells you, "I think we should have a city meeting."

[OOC] You tell Nola, "Fine. Not a good idea though."

[OOC] Nola tells you, "Uhh..."

otell Nola Unicorn! That was a miss. Sorry.

(Order): You say, "Nola Unicorn! that was a miss. Sorry."

(Order): Severn says, "..."

.

You pointedly say nothing at all.

<You think, "Unicorn my life!"

You think, "Unicorn my life!"

And then if we want I guess we can code aliases or whatever to make that prettier or more wieldy or something.

Ezalor

IMO just make a flag for rooms that events are happening in that disables illusions there. The friendly areas thing would kill its combat use altogether, which I personally wouldn't mind, but that might upset some people.

Moirean

This is just my own personal opinion, bear in mind. I've talked to a few people about it, and some of them think illusions should be able to used like this during events, others think it's uncool. Maybe just make it into a flag that each individual god can put on a room - heck, maybe the gods like it as is. Maybe I shouldn't be trying to guess what I should be doing as much in an event, but double-thinking "is this talk from a magic blade coming from the admin or from another player" seems just really out of place in a big hectic group event, imo. 

Toz

-Illusioning messages regarding OOC information, such as Administrative

announcements, communication from Gods, or credit transfers, is illegal.

Note that illusioning prompts is exempted from this stipulation due to

its combat usefulness.

^Using illusions during an event, as if a legitimate part of an event, should be at least partially covered by this. The OOC information that the admin are trying to convey is being disrupted by players posing as Admin, basically. You can argue they're trying to push their agenda, for certain - but they're using them because 1) they can't really be called on it and 2) because they know they're getting some part of administrative oomph behind their words.

Consider receiving these two lines at the same time:

 As you pick up the sword, it sears your hand, glowing brightly with an unnatural, painful heat.

 As you pick up the sword, it glows blue and starts to freeze over, ice clinging to it.

So, as a player, what do you do in that situation, exactly? If you incorporate the sword being hot into your emote in such a way that it isn't what your character thinks (like trying to melt ice with it) and it's actually officially frozen and it's just a player gumming up the works, there's an awkwardness there. Just enforce it being illegal to pretend to be the admin, and expand the rules in HELP ILLUSION RULES to cover that using illusions in an event, to try to pose as part of the event to push some gain, is heavily frowned upon and/or illegal. It screams of lame to me, given how linear most IRE events are, that players are sneaking illusions in and changing what little outcome there might be to an event.

Haven

Toz said:

-Illusioning messages regarding OOC information, such as Administrative

announcements, communication from Gods, or credit transfers, is illegal.

Note that illusioning prompts is exempted from this stipulation due to

its combat usefulness.

^Using illusions during an event, as if a legitimate part of an event, should be at least partially covered by this. The OOC information that the admin are trying to convey is being disrupted by players posing as Admin, basically. You can argue they're trying to push their agenda, for certain - but they're using them because 1) they can't really be called on it and 2) because they know they're getting some part of administrative oomph behind their words.

Consider receiving these two lines at the same time:

 As you pick up the sword, it sears your hand, glowing brightly with an unnatural, painful heat.

 As you pick up the sword, it glows blue and starts to freeze over, ice clinging to it.

So, as a player, what do you do in that situation, exactly? If you incorporate the sword being hot into your emote in such a way that it isn't what your character thinks (like trying to melt ice with it) and it's actually officially frozen and it's just a player gumming up the works, there's an awkwardness there. Just enforce it being illegal to pretend to be the admin, and expand the rules in HELP ILLUSION RULES to cover that using illusions in an event, to try to pose as part of the event to push some gain, is heavily frowned upon and/or illegal. It screams of lame to me, given how linear most IRE events are, that players are sneaking illusions in and changing what little outcome there might be to an event.

Impersonating a god and other OOC things are one thing but illusioning a conflicting emote is another. When you get the hot/cold illusion as you've described, you have to consider that something's wrong because both cannot really be true. Therefore, I'd argue the proper response would be that your character is confused by the blade and perhaps drops it in alarm or something. Alternatively, you could pick just one and run with it to see what happens.

The admin as far as I know can see every command input going on in the same room as them iirc and if they so chose, could do something about it. From either temporarily shifting the focus to the illusioner to deal with that or perhaps even zapping if they found it appropriate or something.

Admin illusion:

As Toz holds the blade, it becomes brilliant as flames suddenly wreath around it. Somewhere nearby someone goes squish.

Then a boulder falls from the sky and kills the illusioner. Or maybe an NPC in the room recognizes the illusion and helps notify the group something is up so that the group can deal with the offender, etc. Then the offender can either continue and push the limit til they're caught/removed (PK'd, zapped, RP'd at, disfavored, whatever RP response people come up with) or they'll stop and wait to do it another time if it is an arc they wish to pursue with their intended target.

I wouldn't consider their actions illegal or wrong, however. Maybe their RP is that they're a trickster or maybe they have a vendetta against the target, I dunno. But I wouldn't say it's wrong.

Moirean

Having led player-based events before, I can say that it's really hard to just keep the plot going at a steady quick clip while all the action goes on. I can't even imagine how much harder it is for admin with mob possessions and illusions and item creation and all sorts of other stuff. Tossing in extra other stuff like event-appropriate deaths might be  hard/overwhelming, 

Haven

Moirean said:

Having led player-based events before, I can say that it's really hard to just keep the plot going at a steady quick clip while all the action goes on. I can't even imagine how much harder it is for admin with mob possessions and illusions and item creation and all sorts of other stuff. Tossing in extra other stuff like event-appropriate deaths might be  hard/overwhelming, 

Understandable and I agree that it can be difficult but it comes with the job of doing an event. You just gotta roll with the punches. It's not like you're completely helpless in those situations or that rules are being broken.

I mean...if they -really- wanted to, they could probably close off an area temporarily and RP with a handful of people. (Haha, I can already imagine the griping about that from some people and the favoritism accusations but so long as the actions taken were within reason, to them I'd say: Deal with it.)

Saybre

Small Idea for News posts
- To keep from Mis-posting to the wrong section
  - Just have NEWS bring you to SECTION>LIMBO
This wouldn't allow any posts to be posted in, so you would be forced to SECTION <whatever>

Alternatively-
Allow LIMBO to be posted in, but only visible to you, and only holds 1 post ever.
Each time you post to it, it deletes the previous, to be used as a proof-read/formatting news section.

Xavin

Here's the thing about illusions. Gods and admin types don't use them if they're actually doing stuff around players. They have the ability to actually make emotes that target just one person, or room wide messages that are not illusions.

Jensen

Riiiiight, Moi just wanted a way to be able to distinguish the difference on a player level since to us they can look the same.

Ishin

Delete illusions.

Haven

Xavin said:

Here's the thing about illusions. Gods and admin types don't use them if they're actually doing stuff around players. They have the ability to actually make emotes that target just one person, or room wide messages that are not illusions.

I understand that and what Moi is after but I don't agree with it because I believe that it shouldn't matter whether it's a god character's emote or a player's illusion. Roleplay is roleplay is roleplay. To that end, I don't believe there is anything being done wrong when players use illusions in the same manner or use skills to affect mobs regardless if an event is going on or not.

Can it be frustrating or difficult sometimes? Sure, but that's the nature of playing with other people as opposed to a static environment/NPC.

Lin

This is hilarious. Over the course of Aetolia's history we're always like "hey let us emote off balance", "hey let us have super long illusions", etc. etc. and there's always that one guy that says "hell no, someone will abuse it". And we laugh at him. And now we have someone actually abusing it.

Toz

Then I'm going to (and I would advise everyone else to do the same) ignore anything not emote-colored as not actually happening. It's not 'roleplay is roleplay is roleplay', it's a frustrating mechanic that obfuscates what is actually happening with 0 risk to the person using it. The world was up in arms over Aishia fearing a mob using a skill, this is certainly worse in that it is not something that can always be undone with a few seconds of effort.

Much as I'm not obligated to let godmoding actually occur (emote punches $haven and kills him is not valid RP), I'm not obligated to react to anything save actual mechanical effects. And, react to those mechanically. You can illusion as much as you like about how broken my arm is, but if it's not mechanically broken I don't have to do anything. Similarly, I'd like a way to tell if something is coming from the Mouth Of God(tm) as opposed to some jackass player. And there's a sizable difference between actual, event-based occurrences and player-run illusions.

Haven

Toz said:

Then I'm going to (and I would advise everyone else to do the same) ignore anything not emote-colored as not actually happening. It's not 'roleplay is roleplay is roleplay', it's a frustrating mechanic that obfuscates what is actually happening with 0 risk to the person using it. The world was up in arms over Aishia fearing a mob using a skill, this is certainly worse in that it is not something that can always be undone with a few seconds of effort.

Much as I'm not obligated to let godmoding actually occur (emote punches $haven and kills him is not valid RP), I'm not obligated to react to anything save actual mechanical effects. And, react to those mechanically. You can illusion as much as you like about how broken my arm is, but if it's not mechanically broken I don't have to do anything. Similarly, I'd like a way to tell if something is coming from the Mouth Of God(tm) as opposed to some jackass player. And there's a sizable difference between actual, event-based occurrences and player-run illusions.

That's perfectly fine and well within your right if that's how you want to play. It doesn't change the fact though that illusions are meant to a) make you reconsider the reality of the situation or b) lead you on.

Though it looks like I might be in the minority again. -shrug- To each his own, I guess. I said my piece.

Draiman

I agree with Haven.

The entire point of an illusion is to fool you and make you react in a certain way. If the illusion was relevant to the event and was IC I personally don't see it as a problem, personally.

I also think you're warping the rules a little bit, @Toz. The ruling stated OOC information from a God character. Anything happening during an event that pertains to the event is IC, IMO, and not against the rules.


Edit: I wasn't at the event, so I don't know what happened. I'm just speaking in general.

Angwe

I agree with @Haven as well and go on to say that there's plenty of risk to an illusioner, IMO, if we can figure out the offending party. Ever seen someone grind a pancake into a sidewalk? That kinda risk.

Xavin

Eh. See, if people are abusing it....well, rather than saying 'no, that's not allowed', why not make lifevision a bigger chance to detect illusions, maybe not 100% like it originally was, but higher than the 1/3 chance it is now, and drastically reduce the cost of the lifevision artifact power?

Lin

What we're doing here is an awful lot of blaming the gun and not the shooter.

Xavin

that is it exactly. The way I see it, if someone is tossing illusions in an event or just hanging around and is found out...well they deserve in character consequences. I don't like the idea of removing illusions completely because they are an rp tool and have some utility still.

Veovis

Illusions are a great roleplay tool. They're a nice way to enrich a scene given the restrictions on emotes in IRE games (which are generally not found in other RP intensive code-bases like TinyMUX/PennMUSH). 

Some people mis-use them, but that's no reason to get rid of them entirely. 

Toz

So, color admin ones to be pretty. Or not, if you want to live your life dangerously. Then we can still play with illusions for RP in a way that isn't cheesy, but our events end up cleaner too.

Moirean

People used to mount up their mammoths and stand on top of every quest vendor in WoW. The coders eventually put in a radius around each vendor because players couldn't be trusted to be responsible. My ideal solution is for people to just not be derps and try to highjack/troll events, but we've had three events now where this has gone on, from various different people, and it seems lots of people think it's not even an issue and is good RP, hence the request for a coded solution.

Calipso

Funnily enough...it isnt me doing it too. Hadnt really given it thought, but generally why would someone feel the need to ruin a storyline admin have worked hard to think up and make? Tsk, some players should have illusion priveledges stripped.

Daingean

This illusion hate is entirely ooc and smacks of a disinterest in fluidity, which confuses the pants onto me. [That's not a typo.]

Illusions look like real lines because they're supposed to convince your character that what they're seeing happened - obviously, we treat illusions very mechanically much of the time, because their principal use these days is to mess with systems, but if someone is using illusions to mess with my character, event or no, it feels like a case of ducks being ducks and so on.

I do not even a little bit understand a desire to have some sort of hard coded protection from you making a mistake because an illusion encouraged you to do so. They're illusions. That is, you see and possibly react to what is not there to react to. Look like a dunderhead? So be it, that's rather the bloody point.

I would assume that such a flag exists as has been mentioned here - if a god/admin is running something and doesn't want wrenches thrown into the cog, they've probably got a command that lets them glue all wrenches to the hands of their owners. I firmly and freely understand if this was a matter of someone using illusions to mess with the admin themselves, and throw off an event that has a foregone conclusion that is required for some sort of connection being made. But I also don't see how that's really a possibility given that if someone is messing with an event and the person running it doesn't want them to, it has to be somewhat easy to hit the poof button on said saboteur.

So... people want protection from making mistakes that may or may not cause repercussions to their character's self-image? Because their character reacted to an entirely legitimate piece of trickery? What in the..

Edit - spelling.