Chat-free periods

[Barius]

I rather enjoy the periodical chat free days we used to have. Can we make that happen more frequently? I like that it forces us to get more involved with the game and stop chattering nonstop.

[Alicia]

option ignorechat

I do it quite often. If people want to chatter, let them chatter. If you don't wanna hear it, turn it off.

[Barius]

It isn't about me wanting not to see it. It's about encouraging more roleplay game wide.

[Lacie]

Totally support this. There's always so much borderline stuff said on chat, and I think it'd help people focus more if they weren't tempted to comment on what's going on so much. It seems especially bad when something like an event is going on.

[Vitello]

If used properly the chat channel can promote rp. 'chat looking for rp anyone game' works a lot better than randomly wandering the grid hoping to find someone.

If people are miss using chat hand out penalties. HOWEVER some people are in my opinion to heavy handed about 'keep it ic'. Chat is there to talk about theme, share ideas, or just bullbreeze as friends.

Removing chat doesn't make better rp, better rpers make better rp.

[Vitello]

Also instead of dictating to the entire game how to play, why not have player run -invited- no chat periods.

[Jaster]

I generally agree with Vitello's perspective. While typically not with chat, due to my limited play time I often find myselff prudently using OOC communications to help facilitate IC interaction. I'm not ashamed of that, because if I were to rely solely on chance IC interactions to progress my roleplay, my character would be (more) stagnant.

While that doesn't speak to the original intention of this thread, it does go to show you that not everyone is willing or sometimes even able to play the game in the same manner as somebody else. What works and is enjoyable for one person may not be so for another.

That being said, it is usually the case that I am not around for the chat free periods anyway, and I'm not bothered by them when I am around. So, if many people enjoy them then I can be supportive. Chat can be a great tool for the playerbase, but as it is often misused and abused (by myself included), I can see why some players may enjoy time without it.

[Lavi]

I actually agree with Barius and Lacie, chat seems to get everyone distracted from what's going on IC, people get the lines blurred, and I think people would put more life into their character otherwise. I think tells are alright, but I personally don't use them much either.

[Lysse]

If used properly the chat channel can promote rp. 'chat looking for rp anyone game' works a lot better than randomly wandering the grid hoping to find someone.

If people are miss using chat hand out penalties. HOWEVER some people are in my opinion to heavy handed about 'keep it ic'. Chat is there to talk about theme, share ideas, or just bullbreeze as friends.

Removing chat doesn't make better rp, better rpers make better rp.

Generally speaking, it's best to minimize facilitating RP OOCly as much as possible. When roleplay is planned ahead, when group RP is plotted out, when PCs roll into the game in pairs, and trios, and more, it tends to lead to a community comprised of OOCly formed cliques that are largely insular. It can also lead to stagnation, and drives away players that try to rely entirely on IC communication for facilitating RP. The quality of the roleplay usually goes downhill when it's overly contrived, as well.

That isn't to say that it's bad to do things like trying to plot out a time for an event, or if there's an important meeting between PCs and you need to figure out the best OOC time to do it. But using Chat to facilitate more than 10 or 20% of you r general roleplay is probably a habit best dropped. You don't have to randomly wander the grid to find RP. You can look for it using Esp as well. Of if you have access to Druidry, through the Commune system. I've gotten really, really neat RP out of responding to distresses to the Gaea.


That being said, according to Zoiya when Chat-Free periods are active, the amount of active Roleplay actually shoots up. And personally, I agree with it. A lot of the stuff I see on chat typically leaves me wanting to turn it off, including things like people discussing borderline inappropriate topics, people discussing ideal mechanical efficiency in regards to the code, so on and so forth.

[Lavi]

I actually have resorted to keeping my chat off most of the time because so many people do things that ruin my experience on there, that it makes it hard to keep it on. it's nice to talk about things like What books people are reading from time to time, or Music they've been listening too, but so much stuff goes on over chat that shouldn't or doesn't need to be there, and while we're all adults for the most part, it just gets in the way of so many things. I like keeping my actions IC as much as possible, and I've seen chat wear down that IC ooc barrier so many times.

[Fayne]

Again, we have an option to ignore chat. No one is forcing anyone to listen to it or use it. In fact, new players ignore it by default. I support Jaster and Alicia and Vitello. Chat is a tool used to increase enjoyment of the game for some people, and I honestly believe it makes the community we have closer. Sure tells are nice, but some people are intimidated by talking one-on-one to people they barely know, or don't know at all. Yes, I abuse chat. And I try to stay off of it as much as possible. I usually use tells more than I use chat. However, I wouldn't have started sending tells to the people I do if I hadn't been able to get to them a bit on an OOC channel like chat first. Do I get distracted by it sometimes? Yeah, and if it's a real problem I usually turn it off for a bit. I enjoy having chat around though, and I would actually support an "opt-in" chat-free period, though to be honest we already have this in the hardcore RP option.

[Barius]

For those of you quick to react in the "But I like chat and you should just ignore it" way, I urge you to spend a day or two with chat off (or RPHardcore on) and see if your immersion doesn't improve. Again, I'm not making this suggestion because I don't want to see chat. I'm making this suggestion so occasionally people can get themselves more involved in IC behaviors without running to chat every 30 seconds to comment on what's going on.

[Lavi]

If you are getting distracted by chat, that makes it hard for us people who are trying to be real into the game to do so, because we're waiting for responses, and then people seem to not be focusing on being believeable, and it kind of ruins it for me. plus with all the problems that go on on chat, like people arguing about IC stuff, people letting out IC information, People talking about things their characters are doing in game... all of that hurts the environment. If we could have chat not have all that stuff I'd be more in favor for it but I kind of just keep mine off, and even then it's hard to RP with people who are busy having all these other topics distract them. It's like when you're putting in a lot of effort to make something entertaining and fun, and the person who's helping you is completely uninterested. I don't see us getting rid of chat any time soon, but I wish it wasn't on nearly as much.

[Kunren]

I like chat myself, but I do get distracted by fun conversations often. I must be super lucky because I have NEVER seen someone overly abuse chat in regards to letting IC info slip. Well beyond something small from a newbie here or there, of course, but that's to be expected.(ie brand new player asking over chat where to find a way out of a city or something). Not to say it doesn't happen, I'm sure it does,I just don't have the perspective that a lot of people seem to have about people abusing chat because I haven't been around to see it. Now, I need to get in the habit of turning chat off at times because it can be a distraction, but during long skill grinds and such? Chat is really nice to have. Clok ain't 100 percent RP all the time, thankfully, the grind is part of the process as well :D

[Lysse]

Clok ain't 100 percent RP all the time, thankfully, the grind is part of the process as well :D

Clok is listed as an RP Enforced MUD. So, unless you're in an OOC area, or in a room with a GM, Clok should be 100% RP all of the time. Even if you just log in to chat, your character is still around, and can be interacted with. Grinding skills should also be taken IC, as well.

[merin]

I remember when chat was done on the IRC channel. it was glorious.

[preiman]

that was nice. i kind of stopped going over to the irc because a lot of the time i was the only one there.

[merin]

Same.

[Alaia]

Chat is really nice to have. Clok ain't 100 percent RP all the time, thankfully, the grind is part of the process as well :D

Clok is certainly light on RP sometimes, but I would never say that Clok ever has moments where it's acceptable to not be RPing. It's RP-enforced. It's not RP-accepted, RP-encouraged, etc. Enforced means that at all times, you are to be playing your character. The fact that Clok has outlets for OOC socialization in no way changes the fact that if you're playing Clok primarily for the grind (which should be your character's progression, considering Clok is an RP MUD), you're compromising the integrity of the game as an RP MUD.

Certainly, Clok is set up differently from many other RP MUDs; it's much more like the Iron Realms Entertainment franchises (of which I came up in as a new MUDder) than it is like Harshlands, Burning Post II, the Inquisition: Legacy, etc. Consider the ability to have an OOC medium a perk, not a statement of the type of game we play. You're still expected to be in RP mode all the time, even if you choose (as a player, or as a character) to take your character off to be by themselves to "grind" alone.

To turn this post back to the actual subject of the thread (I apologize for derailing, I really do), I can see benefits to having a place where people can socialize OOCly. People are going to do it whether it's good or not, this can't be helped, it's just how it is. That said, I generally don't approve of things like divulging what your PC is currently doing, making jokes about current RP no matter how harmless, etc. You don't have to agree with me, of course; I simply agree with Barius that immersion goes up when you take away the OOC aspects of a game. Too much immersion can be bad, of course -- you can get as many problems with someone too invested in themselves and not invested at all in their peers -- but generally, too much crossover (no matter how innocent) occurs with public OOC mediums. I've seen it ruin entire games.

I will reiterate that people are free to turn the chat off on their own, but this won't stop others from doing things like discussing relevant IC information (even minor things) without them. I haven't yet really seen much problem with people doing that on Chat, though.

[Sleilax]

For over a decade I've played MUDs that were not RP, there wasn't even an outlet for RP. Some of my characters did have a personality that came out in my OOC interactions but that's because there wasn't an IC outlet. Coming to a MUD like this can be a bit intimidating for players like myself. Sometimes I want to talk or ask about something and I really can't be certain which channel is appropriate for that particular subject. The fact there was an OOC outlet was something that made me comfortable with Clok (which was not the first RP mud I tried but the first I have stuck with for any amount of time worth mentioning).

I don't chat often on OOC chat but I do like to from time to time and half the time I have it off to concentrate. The important thing is when I want to chat OOC I have that option when I want it and I shut it down when I don't. I think it's always wiser to encourage the player to play a certain way than to force them. So instead of having a period of time where chat is disabled why not just have a period of time where there is a benefit for choosing to turn it off?

As for IC stuff popping up in OOC chat I only really see people talking about stuff that happens to them in game that can't be discussed ICly because it's involves mechanics or gameplay. I would say a majority of conversation that happens on non-RP MUDs involved talking about peoples experience in game one way or another. It shouldn't be odd that some of that chat involves talking about playing Clok, we all have a shared interest in it and is a topic we can't talk about IC.

[Alicia]

Hello again all,

I will have to admit about the distraction thing. If it has been an undue amount of time or if people are really just chatting and not RP'ing, I give them a friendly little tell. "Hey, trying to RP here can you quit chatting for a bit please?" Or if you're one of my "friends" it may be a bit more brash but the point is the same.

When I find myself chatting to much when I need to RP? option ignorechat

Point is, people come to CLOK for different reasons. As long as they keep a decent IC/OOC line and roleplay a character, I don't care if they chat all day long about weird maybe even crazy stuff, it's a game, enjoy yourself. If chat isn't enjoyable for you, try a make it so.

"Hey guys, don't really like this conversation, how about we talk about (insert thing)?"

Or just option ignorechat for awhile! No one here (as far as I know) wants to make anyone have a bad time here, just speak up and let us know if we're weir ding you out or what ever!

[Barius]

"Hey guys, don't really like this conversation, how about we talk about (insert thing)?"

This is off topic somewhat, but I have tried this with certain things before and the berating I get for doing it makes it not worth it.

[Lavi]

I'd have to agree, if someone is like hey folks can we talk about something else, it tends to get that person fried by the players on chat because of a variety of reasons.

[Fayne]

Just do what I do and change the subject without asking. It isn't hard to get the ADD collective that is CHAT aimed at a different topic.

[Ahelis]

As a relative newbie (holy crap it's already been a month now!) to CLOK and MUDs in general, I do have to say that I appreciate the OOC chat and tell functions. I understand that many players here come in specifically to roleplay their characters and my primary reason for joining and sticking with Clok is precisely because of that ability to create and develop a character. But, this may just be a preference thing, I really value the OOC functions because it fosters a sense of community. I like being able to listen and talk "behind the curtains", so to speak, with the people who make up this community of a fictional universe. It helps me decompress after (or during, even) more serious roleplays. I also value simply blabbering about inane things like what someone is getting for dinner, or wishing someone to get well if they're feeling down and under. When things become too distracting or I realize it's interfering with my primary goal of roleplaying the character, I just excuse myself from the conversation and that's that. Maybe this assumes that people will be smart about it, but I like to think people here are smart enough to realize their limits, or learn quickly from their mistakes. Everyone seems to have at least a fairly mature online presence, anyway.

I do agree, though, Barius and Lavi, that the few times I've seen the "let's change the topic" suggestions go over not so well. In my experience it just seems like innocuous banter gone slightly too far (likely because of the high mood everyone is coasting on) before people get the point and settle down, but I've not been here very long so I wouldn't know what it's like the majority of the time.

Sorry if I ended up drawing a full circle in the discussion with my two cents! I'm tired and procrastinating on work.