Making an NPC mail policy, and sticking to it

[Kent]

I would really like to not see a repeat of Gad's horror story where no one would respond to his npc mail for many months. I too have had some good RP letters go unacknowledged, and I mail less than 4 per month, I'm not a heavy mailer.

I would like to propose a policy addressing this.

Under this policy, only one npc letter per week may be mailed out by a character per calendar week. (This means letters requesting a response; mailing in an item or a requested response to an npc doesn't count as it doesn't put a burden on the GM's, etc.) If two or more such npc letters are sent in a calendar week, the additional letters are simply sent back to the PC unanswered. The PC would have to date each of his NPC letters (use the Time command for assistance).

On the GM's side, they must provide a proper RP response, come heck or high water, in less than 8 days of the time of mailing.

There could be 4 vacation weeks declared, for example, in the summer, when this policy is put on a temporary moratorium...but those weeks would have to be declared on the BBS, limited to those 4 or 5 vacation weeks; after which the under-8-day response time would resume.

To avoid confusion, let's define a calendar week as beginning 12:01 am Sunday and ending midnight the following Saturday.

[jilliana]

I don't like this idea very much, not for me, but for the GMs.

I don't feel it's my place to determine when and how NPCs respond to my mail. There are perfectly legit reasons why some NPCs don't answer promptly.

In extention, there are perfectly reasonable and acceptable reasons why GMs don't answer to NPCmail. They give of their time and energy to interract with players and I would venture to guess that a lot of those letters are filled with questions, demands and the like that require time to address appropriately.

I'm sure that if Rias and the other GMs feel they need to fix the npcmail system, they'd do it in a way that would be beneficial for all.

[Jirato]

One thing to note is the incident Gad brought up happened before the npcmail command. Also, you may want to read Rias' reply, as the issue was addressed.

Second, I'm not sure if you've sent any NPC mails recently, but there is now a nice little message informing you that a response isn't gauranteed, especially if you are contacting the head of a guild or organization.

[Kent]

Second, I'm not sure if you've sent any NPC mails recently, but there is now a nice little message informing you that a response isn't gauranteed, especially if you are contacting the head of a guild or organization.

Well, I would have to agree with Gad, that this really isn't the direction you want to steer the game in. What I'm trying to say, is that this type of thinking, I believe, leads to a perpetual 5-10 player base count..not in anyone's interest.

[Rias]

We could just have these heads of these large-scale organizations do what those in the real world do: Send form letter responses.

Honestly, its something we're working on. Some things do slip through the cracks, and I agree that's a problem. But really, I don't think we need to feel obligated to have some of these "high-up" NPCs to respond to some of the silly/inane letters they receive. Hence the extra disclaimer when sending NPCmail now. There are a few people who seem to think it's their own personal "get NPC interaction/information/assistance/exclusive attention whenever I want" button, and that's not how it should be treated. We just can't keep up with something like that.

[TwistedAkai]

We could just have these heads of these large-scale organizations do what those in the real world do: Send form letter responses.

Plus 1.

Especially for the silly/inane letters, or ones that are really routine, like applications. Like, if the letter seems like they would just stamp it "B2" and pass it off to a scribe for a scripted response to be copied down and sent out in reply, there should probably be a script for it.

[Kent]

We could just have these heads of these large-scale organizations do what those in the real world do: Send form letter responses.

Honestly, its something we're working on. Some things do slip through the cracks, and I agree that's a problem. But really, I don't think we need to feel obligated to have some of these "high-up" NPCs to respond to some of the silly/inane letters they receive.

Well, I agree a silly question deserves a silly or abrupt response from the NPC's secretary.

As I suggested, a character would be only permitted to send one letter per week...this would put a real cap on what you guys would have to keep up on.

My complaint is that I have sent a couple of detailed, serious, RP intensive letters on fairly important matters, and they have been 'filed' along with the inane ones.

[xavier]

just exactly how do you know they were filed away along with the innane letters? I mean unless you are the one handling the NPCMail I don't see how you can figure that out. Before you go off and say "because I haven't heard a response." let me tell you that i sent an NPCMail and it took quite a while to get a response. I didn't expect an immediate response and was patient, mostly. So just because you haven't heard anything back doesn't mean it was placed in file 13. Another reason you might not have gotten a response is wrong spelling, incomplete spelling, and it just isn't catching the attention of the GM's through the scan filters they have when checking on that mail. It took me several hours just to figure out who exactly I was supposed to send my mail off to.

[Kent]

just exactly how do you know they were filed away along with the innane letters? I mean unless you are the one handling the NPCMail I don't see how you can figure that out. Before you go off and say "because I haven't heard a response." let me tell you that i sent an NPCMail and it took quite a while to get a response. I didn't expect an immediate response and was patient, mostly. So just because you haven't heard anything back doesn't mean it was placed in file 13. Another reason you might not have gotten a response is wrong spelling, incomplete spelling, and it just isn't catching the attention of the GM's through the scan filters they have when checking on that mail. It took me several hours just to figure out who exactly I was supposed to send my mail off to.

My spelling was correct.

In my experience, you will either get a response in 3 weeks or so, and if not then in all likelihood you will never get a response.

[Jirato]

I think there may be a slight misconception about NPC's in general, which could also lead to some frustrations about NPCMail.

It's not like we can just task any available GM to respond to all NPC interaction requests, it doesn't really work that way. The issue lies in area of responsibility and guruship. GMs typically don't get involved with NPCs that aren't "theirs".

NPCs are an incredibly personal thing. They all have their own personality and story, the GM who creates them knows all about this and how they would react to situations and respond to stuff. It is an extremely awkward situation when we have to possess someone else's NPC to interact with players, and we generally try to avoid it if at all possible not only out of respect for the other GM, but also to maintain consistency. Yes, we communicate to each other and usually share info and desires of how they should act, but another GM is never going to know a NPC as well as the GM who created it.

Now when you look at the guru command, you'll get a somewhat clearer picture or where an NPCs ownership stands. And while I'm certainly not implying anything negative, you'll see that the vast majority of NPC requests go directly to Rias. He's a great guy, but he's spread pretty thin and I'd even go as far to say overworked. Not only does he have all this NPC interaction to deal with, but also as Developer he has a ton of code work to work on, while also having to constantly review stuff done by the rest of the GMs and deal with all the messy decisions and stuff that need to be made to keep CLOK running smoothly. Not only that, but he also has to balance this with his family and personal life, which, if you've been observant, you may have noticed has been a bit rocky over the past couple years.

While Zoiya, Noctere, and I may skim over a letter sent to one of his NPCs and offer internal feedback on it to help stir some creative juices, we're not actually going to respond. Just in the same way Rias isn't going to suddenly start answering Kyskie's mails and doing alterations in place of Zoiya, and I'm not going to suddenly start acting on behalf of Noctere with Winston. It just doesn't work that way. And while I'm flattered to see people genuinely interested and volunteering to be brought on board to help NPC interaction and answer NPCmails, unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way.

Also, to re-iterate what I think has already been said, please keep in mind that while you may be expecting a reply, sometimes we feel a more personal response is warranted. However, a lot of this will depend on time schedules, when you're actually playing the character, and when we're free to act on it. These don't always match up, such as "Gad's horror story" which was brought up by Kent in the original post. While, yes, there was no written communication for months, during the few times when Gad did actually log in, there were several direct consultations with key NPCs of the factions involved.

So, please be a bit patient with us. Yes, I know it's not an optimal situation, and I understand how frustrating it can be to wait weeks without a response. But please keep in mind that the NPCMail system was written specifically to keep things from slipping through the cracks. While you may not get an answer, we do have the tools to easily list ALL NPCs who have received mail and view the individual mails. Misspellings may make things a bit confusing, but we're not actually losing any mails here. Messages are typically only permanently deleted from the NPC Mail queue when they've been properly dealt with.