CLOK BBS

So. Had a little discussion with someone earlier.

Our characters are enemies. We're on each other's enemies list, and we have tried to kill each other.

But this person brought up an interesting point in regards to the Friend List. Me? My reaction is never to have someone on the Friends list/Enemies list. Their thought however, is that the initial level on the Friend list is "Acquaintance".

Their thought is that an "Acquaintance" is someone that you recognize by sight, or someone known, but not necessarily friendly with. As such, they use it to keep track of people their character knows, whether they are friendly or not.

It did make me ponder, cause it makes sense. What do other people think?

There's still so much OOC about both Friend and Enemy. People will add friends just to see if they're online, but then have the option to set levels to alter their emotes to match how they actually feel towards a character. Enemy doesn't get that benefit. I guess more to your point - there could be varying levels of enemy as well as friends. You can have an enemy acquaintance or you could have an arch nemesis who you know everything about and will attack on sight etc. But it sounds to me almost as though people are friending you to know if you're around or not since it completely negates the mechanical benefit of having you on their enemy list, and if someone is your enemy you should at least be mildly acquainted with them - even if only by reputation.

I have mixed feelings about this list. I find it's a great way to remember who I've met in character, but I also find myself using it for blatantly OOC reasons to see if someone I like is online.

There really could be a way to add different levels of enemy because you want to remind yourself who they are, but don't necessarily want to kill them.

I know this is slightly off-topic, but I'd also like to see who is on as mentor, but I don't like that they being a mentor automatically makes it so that they can see me.

jilliana wrote:I know this is slightly off-topic, but I'd also like to see who is on as mentor, but I don't like that they being a mentor automatically makes it so that they can see me.

Mentors can't see that you are online (unless you happen to on each other's friend list) even though you see them. The only exception to this is that we can see brand new players who still have their starter skillgain bonus, and receive a notification when someone finishes the tutorial.

Just my two cents: I personally love that the friends list can now be used to keep track of everyone your character has ever met. The way I use it is to add someone after my character(s) have interacted with them a few times, enough to properly know who they are and have it decided whether they are a friend, someone with who they wish to associate with, or someone they simply recognize but don't necessarily need or want to associate with them frequently, or on a personal level. Having emotes give different outputs based on friendship level is also another plus. I do believe it would be nice to have a similar system for the enemy list as well, since you can dislike someone but not necessarily want to attack them on sight.

As for being able to see when certain people are online, this is only really capable of abuse when both parties involved are using it for the same purpose. That being said, and while it is nice to be able to log in and see which of your friends are online right that moment, I think being able to see the online status of anyone is a bit too OOC for CLOK's intended environment. There should be no way for my character to know that so-and-so is around if they themselves haven't been tuned into the ESP network. They also shouldn't be able to know that what's-his-face isn't around simply because I know OOCly that we are on each other's friends list and I don't see them on the WHO list. In this regard, I think the WHO list should be all or none, either showing everyone logged in as it used to, or no one at all (unless of course you still have your newbie bonus active and there are mentors logged in).

So to sum up my thoughts: I think adding someone to your friends list as a way of saying "I know this person a little and could pick them out of a crowd" is perfectly acceptable and is what the list is meant for, but I think the added ability to see when mutual friends are online waters down the usefulness of the list for those who want to avoid any unnecessary OOC input or don't necessarily want anyone knowing they're logged in, even on an OOC level.