Custom Descriptions

[KVZ]

Those descriptions are great thing. I tested them in testing enviroment. I cannot wait to see them in the game. How about making direct link to report particular description when mis-used/abbused to PD?

[Snake_byte]

Yes, Kevez. I like that idea.

[Doug R.]

Yea, the link would just send the description, along with character information, right to the PD. Great idea.

[Dudel]

Yea, the link would just send the description, along with character information, right to the PD. Great idea.

In theory could that be applied to a lot more things... like notes and building names? :O (Tangenting from topic, sorry, but this could solve a lot more problems in the future as well.)

[SekoETC]

Hmm, sounds like a good idea. It could be in a separate file that could be linked to from what ever might be potentially offensive and with a click you would send info to it, like your id, the offender's id, the offending text, and the page could contain a textbox for extra details and a button that actually sends the report so that if someone is just clicking it to see what it does or clicks it accidentally, it wouldn't send the report yet but you would have to confirm it. The problem is it could be abused, though, so it should probably be limited to once a day.

[Doug R.]

All good ideas, Seko. I wouldn't worry about abuse, though. If someone starts spamming the PD, we'll just slam them back, no worries

I also had an idea. We should provide a link to a page outlining guidelines for the use of this feature. The link would go in the text box description. This eliminates the "I didn't know" excuse for CR/feature abuse. If you want to set up the page, I can provide the content.

I know you've done a lot of work on this, and that's 75% of the process. I'll read through the entire thread, summarize it, and then try getting the key people to agree to it so we can move it to accepted.

[KVZ]

Yes. Many players would be happy. Self-descriptions were suggested many times also on Polish forum, and they wait for them.

[Doug R.]

Gen and Piscator are on board, and so am I. Sarah hasn't chimed in yet. That's 3/4 of the active GAB members, so I think we can move this to accepted.

Here is what we're accepting:

-A text field to enter a custom description for each character
-A link to report another character's custom description to the PD
-A link to a page listing guidelines for use of the custom description


Other concerns:

Language: Usually you can tell what language someone is just by their name, and honestly, genetic appearance traits were supposed to be introduced into the game and were scrapped. Who's to say we shouldn't be able to tell a Pole from a Fin by looking at them? I think this should just be embraced as a feature and adapted to as players see fit.

Cheating: Since you can't see a character's description when they're not in the same location, communication via this method would be limited. We could limit appearance changes to once per day, or we could compile all descriptions into a report for the PD to catch this. Or we could only generate a report if descriptions were changed over a certain frequency. Or we can do nothing. I honestly don't know how making someone sit and read a lengthy report every day will be useful, so I'm leaning against this option. What would be important is that PD members be allowed to view character descriptions in the database, however, so I'll add that:

-PD allowed to view/alter/delete character descriptions in the DB

[Piscator]

I think that after the initial phase the change report might be pretty small. After all, if you don't use the feature for constantly twittering what you char is doing, how often would you change the description in a lifetime? Apart from that, you wouldn't have to read the report every time, the main thing is that changes would be logged somewhere so that, in case of a complaint, PD could prove that char X swiched his description to "Y smells" for an hour and then switched it back. It would be like a surveillance camera, you would only check the tape if something happens.

[Doug R.]

Alright.

[SekoETC]

In the test environment it currently adds descriptions to a report when they're changed, but there's no code for sending the report and clearing it yet. The code for sending other reports seems kinda complicated, though. It's hard to see which parts are essential and which are just cosmetic, like sorting.

[Doug R.]

I'm sure you'll get through it.

[Piscator]

I'm sorry to add yet another detail, but will the custom description show up in the tool tip, too, and if not, would it be a good idea?

[SekoETC]

It might be a good idea but I'm not sure if I'd know how to do that.

[Piscator]

Well, I guess it could always be implemented later. No need to make it any more complicated right now. I just wanted to mention it.