Who List/Friends Verb Expansion

[Avedri]

Hello!

I do have some concerns with the who list changes, mostly from an new character perspective. I hope the GMs are considering options on how to make sure new characters can easily get the support they might be looking for.

Additionally, can it be time to expand on the friends verb now?! With like verbs and such to reflect that you consider this person a friend?

Can there be different types of friends that allow someone to show up and have different verbs based on how you interact with that person?

Acquaintance
Friend
Beloved

Ex.

Acquaintance - greet <name> - You give a casual nod in greeting to <acquaintance>

Friend - greet <name> - You nod in greeting and give a friendly wave to <friend>

Beloved - greet <name> - You greet <name> with a knowing nod and gleeful smile.

Thanks!

[Solaje]

I would love to see the friends verb expanded too.

[Fayne]

Totally agree that friends need to be reworked to be a bit, well, better. At this point you're either not friends or willing to kiss and embrace the person, and can recognize them by the sound of their voice alone. It'd be nice to have variations on that, and have a few verbs reflect relationship status.

[Jirato]

New players have question, mentors who are unmasked will show up regardless of friend status on the who list as well. We're keeping an eye out for additional mentors.

Friends expansions would be a pretty low priority right now. We actually do have a few verbs that have special actions for friends, but it's not seamlessly integrated with our social RP verb system, so that'd have to be overhauled first. Not saying it's never going to happen, but I've got enough other projects to work on right now.

[Avedri]

Are you guys still using the project management tracker to provide transparency on what priorities are?

[Jirato]

Are you guys still using the project management tracker to provide transparency on what priorities are?

https://trello.com/c/exqdGBXQ Here's a card for the friends list expansion.

Just to clarify, it's transparency on priorities with player-submitted requests only. We each also have our own private boards visible only to the GM team, as well as a couple common ones for coding and building requests and bugs, so stuff might not move very quickly there at times, especially with a major transition like what just happened.

[Fayne]

I'd like to know what you guys are looking for in mentors. I've wanted to be a mentor for over a year now, so I'm interested to know what I might need to do to qualify.

[Carressa]

I actually would love to see the friends thing expanded because I agree.. to put it in the simplest terms, I always was a little bothered that "This person I will hug" and "this person I will kiss" were both the same level...

Especially for someone like me, who loves hugging, but contrary to recent events, does NOT want to be kissing everyone :)

That being said, WHO is by definition "meta"... I'm guessing that the change was made to prevent issues where you could tell who was online/around in a non-IC way... but as someone who's been MUDing for years, that's the entire concept of WHO. It's 100% ooc, so being able to know which of your friends are around is no less "meta" than knowing which other people are around.

And unless I'm mistaken, there is a way to hide your name from the who list anyway, in case you want to be sneaky thiefy and not have someone go "hey, ther are only 5 people online and I see four of them... sooooooo it's <insert thiefly name here>.

I guess what I"m getting at is that I'm not entirely sure what the gain was in the WHO change.. personally I kind of like knowing who's online (and I have lots of people I consider acquaintances who I don't set as friends because I don't want to kiss them)..

[Fayne]

I think an easy compromise is rework the enemy system so that it is an aquaintance system, so that people you've met can be put there and still show up. Those who want to avoid "metagaming" can just not put people there. And as someone pointed out earlier, the enemy list as-is is really risky and not all that useful since PK is highly restricted by rules such that killing someone on-sight all the time is a no-no.

[Kiyaani]

I have to agree that adding something to the Friends verb - either varying levels of friendship or just setting it so that friends is an entirely OOC method while there may be a different IC verb adjuster - seems necessary at this point. Though I also think it's nice to not necessarily have to be in RPHARDCORE all the time to hide if you want to.

Many of my characters are *not* the touchy feely type, but I do like to know when people I frequently RP with are online. Having to add people to a friend list that allows them to be more forward with my character via the emote system isn't something I'm too keen on, especially since we've all met a few characters who are extremely extroverted or don't always respect personal boundaries.

We play this game to be social so part of logging in is sometimes knowing there's someone to be social with (unless you just want to grind skills). I feel the change to WHO as it is right now definitely needs some work. I really think there should be some kind of separation between knowing your friends are around to RP with and allowing them to RP certain ways with your character through emotes.

[Ryland]

I like the idea of different acquaintance levels. It could start simple with three levels: someone you're not fond of, someone you are familiar with just as an acquaintance, and someone you consider a friend.

[Barius]

I simply find it disconcerting that the friends list dictates what my emotes do in the first place.

If you want to be more friendly with someone, use more friendly RP verbs. I don't want to type "greet fred" and find out that just because I consider Fred a friend, I'm giving him a hug instead of a friendly nod.

I've really never liked any kind of character status in game changing how emotes behave. As my mudding years have gone on, I've also found less and less reason to use prewritten emotes, and much prefer to type my own. And I'm glad that the emote command is finally getting some action. I hope that continues.

As for the topic, I'm not all that fond of the who list changes, but I understand why it was done. Maybe it can be adjusted with this friends thing in mind to make it RP friendly on all counts.

[Vaylon]

If you want to be more friendly with someone, use more friendly RP verbs. I don't want to type "greet fred" and find out that just because I consider Fred a friend, I'm giving him a hug instead of a friendly nod.

I agree with this. Canned emotes should do what they're supposed to do and that's all.