who the bloody hell thought this was a good idea

[quote:2zb2i1in]

The name “Sloth” was chosen to embody the original philosophy of the mud, which was to make everybody’s lives as easy as possible.

[/quote:2zb2i1in]

I agree. When instant chat programs, phone numbers, mobile phones, SMS/Texting, Email and even the crier its self can work to communicate someones death outside of the game… whats the point in trying to restrict it in game?

All you old farts need to switch your ICQ to Skype as well btw… Nothing says old computer user who doesn’t keep up like a person who uses ICQ. :twisted:

If modern day people can sense spirits… imagine how much better the power of sensing the departed might be in a fantasty magic game… I don’t know why you bother restricting it.

As an alternative to icq perhaps we should all log into an alternate mud as well as sloth … and use that purely for channel talking …. if we chose a mud with very few players (bottom of the TMC list thing) then conversation would be unlikely to disturb their players … then comms could be within a separate window in the same client … hmmm gives me another idea … lets have a sloth outing to another mud holiday style … actually that could even be a quest idea that requires little work from imms … pick a mud at random, all log on, the player who can find the most coins and pass to an imm at the end of an hour gets a reward in sloth.

[quote:1thnqntb]

The name “Sloth” was chosen to embody the original philosophy of the mud, which was to make everybody’s lives as easy as possible.

[/quote:1thnqntb]

Back in the day there used to be plenty of people using ICQ while playing Sloth, but that does seem to have gone out of fashion in the last year or two.

Personally, I used to think that making it harder to tell someone has died via ingame means mostly just makes it harder for newer players who haven’t collected a network of friends and acquaintances to call for help, while having little affect overall. But I suppose now that relatively few (I think) people are communicating outside of Sloth while playing, it’s more likely to affect everyone. Of course it could just precipitate a resurgence of ICQ or such.

Also, I realise not everyone uses Wintin or ZMud, but they both have a built-in chat functionality which can be set up to basically work like a channel. It even works between the clients.

My suggestion is to give certain pets the ability to gossip that you’re dead. Perhaps the brownie. This would come at the expense of using a better supp, but would be worth it when you’re doing dangerous solo work.

it wasn’t my idea to fix the channel bump glitch btw…but it was a glitch…it’s hard to get that indignant about it.

Yes a brownie or other pet would work, nice idea btw.

I guess the way I’d repond to it though is to ask have you typed channel list recently?

In the old days there used to be 1-3 active channels at most times and almost everyone joined a channel. People joined for safety in case of death (channel dropping), but the benefit they gained was getting mixed into conversations and meeting people, the sort of social exchange that is the key difference between a local text adventure game and a mud. Yes groups are where that can happen, as are clans, and gossip, but in group mostly chat is kept to a minimum, clans are sign up membership and gossip well its nice to be able to leave a conversation or filter it out while leaving gossip open at all times.

I think the channel drop ‘glitch’ may well have been a glitch or a bug and from a purest point of view should have been fixed / removed, but its had the unforseen consequence of killing a large part of the sloth social society.

[b:3e0hux0q]I previously raised the arguement that you should let us talk in channel when dead because we can anyway if only we all joined the same chat window / icq, but we play sloth for a reason, we like things simple. Why not add an extra feature to the game, set up a website channel, link to a chat window on the website so we can talk in game whether dead or not, and even join in the channel from the website when not even in the game (logged in to the website of course). [/b:3e0hux0q]

Encourage us all to work ad socialise together by building communication tools into the game rather than this silly situation that (even though not the intention) stops us working together, leads to frustration and bad feeling and silly sods like me posting inflammatory and emotive messages on the forum that while in hindsight were probably not the best approach are a true refelction of how I felt at the time.

T

Excellent idea Thraxis

Thraxas has a great point. People joined channels for chat/safety. Chat promoted friendship and unity and instead of people dropping link to tell people they die, just let it be said in channels from now on. I think it would promote more people to join together, to talk, to interract. Why should we be forced to use programs like ICQ and other programs? I think we need to keep it more “in-house” and not rely on other programs (like the phone, the webpage, and other programs).

Good point, Thraxas,

Brad

I personally enjoyed the previous issue when you had to suffer all these Russian transliterations in exchange for small chance to get raised. Well now it’s gone and frankly speaking I’m almost sure it was a racist anti-Russian decision.

Hope with new Obama all those stereotypes from the Cold War will disappear and we’ll get it fixed!!

p.s. Is there some sort of ‘monotype’ opposite to ‘stereotypes’?

p.p.s. To those who never get it right: I’m NEVER serious! (well at least not on this site).

p.p.p.s. Nice ideas Thraxas & Juggleblood.

Kida

I agree with Thraxas’ second post, and Brad’s follow up as well. There is no point in not allowing us to speak to each other on channels when dead. We, of course, can communicate through some other fashion like ICQ, but from how I see it, having more people on channels more often leads to communication about more than just death…which is why the channels were integrated in the first place.

I agree with…

• post #4, paragraph 2, words 2-5

• post #2

• post #2, except paragraph 2, word 4

• post #9, except the pps

:shock: :twisted:

I personally enjoyed the previous issue when you had to suffer all these Russian transliterations in exchange for small chance to get raised. Well now it’s gone and frankly speaking I’m almost sure it was a racist anti-Russian decision.

Kida[/quote:1ustw47q]

lol, you caught us!

Seriously though, best I can do is forward this suggestion to admin list and say I’m in favor. This is ‘sloth’ after all. Running around looking for mobs was too much work, so they implemented hunt. Allowing players to ctalk while dead would be equally slothy imho.

Just keep in mind that there are those in high places who are always concerned that we’re not challenging the players enough. There’s a good chance that opinion will carry the day, nothing will change, and we drop the issue and move on and get ICQ accounts.

I’ll keep you posted.

I agree with…[/quote:26w4xjte]

I worry when jezer agrees with anything I write

Given that there seems to be a groundswell of support among the players and some imms for us to be able to communicate deaths in channels in game I’d welcome a comment / thoughts from one of the decision makers about whether this can happen.

T

We are listening to the suggestions, however I do not anticipate us having channels open to dead people, I’m sorry.

Frankly, this idea to me and several other Admins is that its not only too easy but just silly from a gaming perspective…

ct – Im dead at the spectral guardian

splork – where is that?

ct – run is 12wsd4e;open portculis;3edwesn12w;enter mist;en

We are considering several options atm but this one is not going to happen.

Splork

Corpus Severance will be level 13 necro and 38 cleric on reboot, same as S3, also the percentages of it working have been increased.

Enjoy,

Splork

ct – Im dead at the spectral guardian

splork – where is that?

ct – run is 12wsd4e;open portculis;3edwesn12w;enter mist;en[/quote:1dj5aecf]

Good point, and very true that would add inbalance … how about your god announcing to those in your channel that you’ve died?

Corpus Severance will be level 13 necro and 38 cleric on reboot, same as S3, also the percentages of it working have been increased. [/quote:1dj5aecf]

Nice and very welcome, thankyou. Hopefully its a significant increase in %, and that most players will keep it up constantly, up until now the % success rate has been quite frankly appalling (maybe 1 report a week from 60 or so hours logged in) so much so that I’ve stopped casting.

T

The code is quite confusing so if it isnt working people will have to tell me.

Also, I am not looking to have people notified on every death but a decent rate should be achievable.

Splork

…Encourage us all to work and socialise…

[/quote:3dmb0n8f]

So here is my take on it. I do think you should use channels to avoid death and corpsing. But the way you should do it is less like an automated safety net and rather more socially.

The issues we have with the old implementation is it was silly how easy it was to write a script to alert, ping, and vision immediately upon channel drop. Joining a channel was almost an automatic guarantee there is no danger to soloing.

There should be some danger to soloing.

My encouragement is this: when you are soloing and about to try something dangerous, tell the people on your channel.

“About to stab silver dragon,” says Clink

“You are crazy, the silver dragon will kill you” says the chorus

“Ahh, but I two run him….fighting now,” says Clink

“let us know when you are safe…”

I’m glad how we managed to drag imms into discussion. And I’m sure it will be helpful for the mud we all love so much.

Is there any chance you mighty gods can explain stupid mortal how it seems to you the ‘ventriloquate’ spell should work? I personally think there are a bunch of spells that should be wiped out of code due to useless. Are you ready to discuss that too?

Kida

…Encourage us all to work and socialise…

[/quote:1wx5ftwh]

There should be some danger to soloing.

[/quote:1wx5ftwh]

Yes there should be the same danger as there is when grouping, groupees already get enough bonuses in terms of greater xp rate and bigger equipment available, but they currently are almost guaranteed someone casting a raise at them where soloists have virtually no chance of this.

As far as the socialising goes I think you’re missing the point entirely, you’re right it could work in the way you describe but it dosen’t. The stark fact is that since channel dropping was removed almost no-one joins a channel and therefore because they’re not in a channel they dont use it to socialise … arguing that we still could while true is just ignoring this basic truth of the situation.

Splorks point that we shouldn’t be able to direct others to our dead body is very well made … this uncertainty of location and the need for a raiser to physically get there adds the additional danger to soloing you’re looking for. So don’t let us talk, but do a channel broadcast when a member of the channel dies, or let their god annouce it to the world, or even just other devotees of the same god perhaps, or if corpus could be made to work properly and I’m talking here of each person having a 10% or so chance of reporting each death if the spell is up (rather than what currently seems about a 0.5% chance) but there needs to be some fair, realistic and operable way of making death notification work.

This isn’t for me a leaving the mud issue, although it has caused some to leave in the past, but it does slow everything down for me … I am now hugely risk averse, I wont push the boundaries of what my char can do nor explore any new areas because the chance of rescue is pretty much zero and the loss though death too much to risk right now.

Can I also say a big thank you to those who’ve entered into the debate and engaged with the subject rather than just making a decision and imposing it. Thanks,

T

Actually, I disagree wholeheartedly that channel usage is way down because the drop channel bug was removed. There are several reasons for this and one of them includes the removal of it.

Channel usage has been down since the inception of this Sloth and I believe the major reason is the majority of players are now new to our game and most of them 1)don’t know they exist or 2) have a hard time introducing themselves into a channel of strangers…

Just my 2 cents,

Splork

I find the main problem with channels is that people talk too much.

No talking allowed.

SILENCE!!!! I KEEL U!

See, Brad is scaring away all the newbies

While many of us agree with Clink’s reply, the simple fact is the channels have never worked this way and we are pretty sure they never will.

We are going to add back this feature but I have one request that goes a long with it and it is very important to the game that it is taken seriously.

We would appreciate it if everyone gets included and welcomed into our channels, especially the hordes of new players that our game now has. One of the biggest reasons that Ive held off on this is because Ive felt it is extremely unfair to all the new players who are afraid and tentative to join channels with people they do not know and dont feel comfortable with.

So when you see them, invite them in and let them know the channels are there for safety and getting to know one another.

Hopefully this helps bring back the social aspect of our channels and continues to create a sense of community.

Enjoy,

Splork

Please thank Krom when you see him for continually pressing me on this one:)

I don’t call listening to reason, and going against one’s own personal beliefs in the interest of others soft, Clink. I’d call it strength.

I found it really tough when I started on the hosers channel, and I NEVER felt that I belonged in there. Conduct your affairs with a bit of honour and you’ll be off on the right foot… ignoring those who won’t like you no matter what you do… you can never win with these people, so don’t try… Aim to respect others instead of impress them.

Thank you.

T

That’s great, I sense an aura of surrender. somewhere. Channels are an excellent enhancement. Um.. The altruistic value of one mudder helping another. Thanks for the great improvements, channels back sets it apart. Especially for those who only spend a few hours a day, die and lose two days solo xp.! whiff

stab