A who list with no titles

[Stiehl26]

I do not believe this is an "issue that matters" so I am putting this here. I just wanted to know what people, (the immortals), thought about having a who list that does not have any information concerning an individual, just their name.

This would, I would hope, lead to to more interaction between individuals...forcing them to interact with other individuals to form an opinion of them. I believe all classes have access to either lore, know alignment, or detect good/evil...all of which could help an individual get a sense about how another individual is classified.

If changes to the description format were made, then you could tell what race an individual is by *gasp* actually looking at them. Descriptions are kind of horrible as of late. I have seen a lot of spelling errors and minimal effort put into them. If the description was required to have the race within it..."A tall, lithe male elf stands before you" then looking at someone would have more of a use than gauging what you were going to kill them to take.

It's just an idea. Snuff it out or pursue it's ramifications as you see fit.

[Olyn]

I've played a mud like that before.

[_Clifton_]

Get rid of race too.

Titles would be completely unique.

[Stiehl26]

Yes, no race. Just a name and perhaps in game quests or achievements for titles? Kill 10 elves in pk and be able to choose a title (or keep no title at all) like Joe Blow the Keeper of Elvish Scalps. I dont know, just rambling.

[Resatimm]

Titles are on the who list mainly for newbies. I think we had a serious discussion 3 or so years ago about this very issue. We thought it would negatively impact the newbies the most. The vets would have people scouting out ranks or just plain word of mouth, and they would generally know what rank each person was.

[Stiehl26]

If we expect our newbies to understand the combat system I don't see a titleless who list confusing them any more or less. The more I think about this, coupled with the emphasis on roleplay (which we have got further from), the more this could be a good move in the right direction.

[Vevier]

I am against this because I feel that it would only hurt newbies in the long run: vets know about abandonedrealms.com/players a resource which gives you much more than a title (Which you can script to give the level anyway, or even paste it into that part of invokation.)

ar.com/players will give you...

Title: the Muse of Heralds
Gender: Female
Level: 51
Path: chaotic neutral
Class: gnome thief

Who list gives you title. Whois gives you gender. Removing the title would make vets either struggle as they're probably meant to or they'd just make use of that part of the site, which newbies don't because they don't realize its there.

[Ceridwel]

This idea is retarded. Sorry Stiehl.

[rabidgecko]

It's not retarded. I think it would be really cool to have no who list at all, letting there be more of a realistic paranoia effect of not knowing who's where. But that isn't at all practical for a game like this, unfortunately.

[Slade]

I thought about variations of this awhile back. It would force people to interact; you would have to feel everyone out to figure out who you should be PKing. You could remove titles and level from the whos (I think race should remain), and the alignment feedback from con. This would force people to use detect alignment, or just witness others to see how they act before doing anything rash.

The problem though is that who group is badly needed for ranking, and that lets you distinguish potential groupmates/allies from the rest of your PK which are then clearly enemies, making it all mostly a moot point.

[Thorgoth]

my problem is going off of what slade said and that's the fact that with such a small playerbase, i enjoy being able to see someone's rank and know that in my head all i have to do is gain 2 ranks before i am in their range, but with this new set up you wouldn't know who is potential and who's not, so it would just lead to the current "oh no one to rank with" sleep/quit

[Groq]

Also when your pking ranks matter a bit. You'd have no idea someone was 8 ranks over you until they just fucking own you and everything lands through all your saves. Don't like this idea much at all, yeah it would be good for more interaction but I see more down sides to it than upsides.

[Ceridwel]

Agreed. I'm all for increasing interaction and more roleplaying, but in my opinion this is not the right way to do it. I have a hard enough time pking as it is knowing the rank/class/race of my adversary. But on top of that:

- How would a Knight know who a Legion was, and vice versa?
- How would a newbie or someone seeking knowledge know who a Mystic or Herald was?

[Davairus]

Back in the day when I was just building, I got access to defunct private imm forums (a forum which doesn't exist anymore), and this subject was under discussion. They very nearly went ahead with it, which I found very scary. It looked like it was being pushed because the up-and-coming Imms had much different idealogies for AR (i.e., hardcore rp) to the imps left in charge after Stryth moved on (casuals who focus on pk). Not long after that, the Imm staff fractured and eventually dissolved because of their differences... I'm glad to let you to discuss this issue amongst themselves and reach the obvious conclusion instead of stepping in with counter-arguments. Its a pk game and you need the class information to prepare, or a shaman ganks you because you have no saves, etc. The titles are nice enough for flavour as well in my opinion.

[_Clifton_]

You could implement it as an opt-out'able option for those hardcore rp'ers who want the mystery. As a tradeoff, maybe those people could show up at like [ Fire ] <PK> Noob the Shaman, just hides level information.

[Groq]

Umm as long as their title shows up for everyone else that isn't a bad idea. Just they have to deal with not knowing much about anyone. I fully support this plan.

[Ceridwel]

Interesting. So, give people the choice to toggle the full who/whopk/whogr list, like we already have for colours for example. As long as I have the choice to have my setup stay the way it is now, how can I argue with that.

[Vevier]

I would support the option to switch, but I remember a couple years ago when I was messing around and looking at different muds and how hard it was to deal with not having a who list. On the mud that I tried, you had to write a one line description (A female gnome with a frumpy pink bonnet) in addition to your long one, and until you introduced yourself to someone, all they saw on the list was that short description, not even your name. It was very intimidating. Newbie helpers were visible, but it was rough to learn that new system. (That ended up being the only mud I returned to, but that was because someone took me under their wing and showed me around/became my buddy)

[Slade]

The idea is to force something on everyone that would force interaction before action. As an option, the only people who opt-in are not the problem children behind the "fix" - this would be pointless.

[_Clifton_]

I agree. The only people who wouldn't opt in ever are those whose priorities are powergaming and statwhoring. I'd bet that anyone who enjoys roleplaying even the slightest has wondered why discovery isn't based on character interaction. Its racial stereotyping and profiling like the recent NW china events. You are X. X is bad and deserves to die. You deserve to die. That's for goodies. For evils its, I'm evil. Everything deserves to die. That's how most first time pk interactions goes.

What I'm failing to grasp is how the who list benefits newbies the most. At most it let's them know who's on, race, sex and level if they're in pk. Its the vets who knows that if X levels again, I can kill X so I'll start scouting.

The downside is that people could roll a human necro/shaman and abuse the lack of information, which translates directly into preparedness.