Seeing when people are 'awake'

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Zisrith
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Seeing when people are 'awake'

Postby Zisrith » Sun Mar 20, 2011 9:18 am

First off, I've been on a long hiatus from Cantr, but I rejoined today with some new characters (The staff were nice enough to reopen my account, thanks for that~) and I've thought of a simple way to see if somebody's playing/played their character currently.
The way it could work is if somebody's on their character while you are or has been on in the last five minutes, their name will show up in plain white text, while if somebody hasn't been on, their names will be the same shade as characters who have no events. When looking at the descriptions, somebody who's on currently could have a line saying "(Their) eyes are open", while somebody who's been on in the last five minutes would have "(Their) eyes are starting to droop" or "(They) look sleepy", and somebody who's not on will have "Their eyes are closed, (they're) asleep."
Naturally, I just thought of five minutes and the messages off the top of my head, but regardless of what those values are, I think this would be a really useful function for roleplay and gameplay's sake. Naturally, if you look at somebody in real life, whether they're asleep or not is normally obvious.
Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
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SekoETC
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Re: Seeing when people are 'awake'

Postby SekoETC » Sun Mar 20, 2011 9:59 am

I think this suggestion has already gotten rejected earlier but I think it would be useful in some cases, as long as it was possible to enter a stealth mode where characters would only appear awake after they've spoken or moved, and just checking your character list wouldn't mark chars as awake, you'd have to check the character in question.
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Addicted
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Re: Seeing when people are 'awake'

Postby Addicted » Sun Mar 20, 2011 10:06 am

Hi Zisrith. Welcome back.

I really don't want other character/ players to know when I'm online or not online or for how long. I have a few reasons for this, but mainly everyone would learn how addicted I am and that I live in Australia and work out all my characters. Also, it will make some of my characters vunerable if it can be seen I've been 'sleeping' for a while. It will take away from the roleplaying aspect, where I play with characters whether the player is online or not. I have one character who would just like to sit there and not be noticed (yes, that may be hard to believe if you know some of mine). If it's clear I'm online, this character will be thought to be a phsyco or something.
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Zisrith
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Re: Seeing when people are 'awake'

Postby Zisrith » Sun Mar 20, 2011 10:34 am

Well, I suppose the different name fonts may make it too obvious, although I still think if somebody looks at you, they should be able to tell if you're asleep, for better or worse, since human beings don't stand around with their eyes open when they're asleep. If the amount of time your character is 'awake' is more than the amount I suggested, it would be harder for people to tell how often you're on and thus take advantage of it as well. If you're character's not doing anything, there's not much chance that somebody will be checking their description anyways, so in order for your character to look like a sleepless psycho, somebody would have to be staring at you nonstop, which is also pretty weird
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Comy
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Re: Seeing when people are 'awake'

Postby Comy » Sun Mar 20, 2011 4:38 pm

I have to agree with Addicted. I'd rather people not know if I'm online or not. Cantr is supposed to be a slow-paced game and, yeah, real-time interaction is nice, but it's not the only form of valid interaction. I think knowing whether people were online would discourage people from interacting with people who weren't. Conversations in Cantr can take hours or days and I don't RP those gaps as the characters just randomly conking out in the middle of talking; it's just part of how the game works.

For the most part, I consider sleeping just a euphemism for being offline. It doesn't have to mean the character is actually sleeping.
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Zisrith
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Re: Seeing when people are 'awake'

Postby Zisrith » Sun Mar 20, 2011 5:59 pm

Hrmmm, you've got a point. I didn't think of it that way, I've had several week-long conversations myself ^_^;;
Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
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SumBum
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Re: Seeing when people are 'awake'

Postby SumBum » Mon Mar 21, 2011 4:54 am

This was a BIG dislike of mine for another game. I got tired of other chars jumping on mine when I had just logged on for a second to check something, then getting pissy when my char didn't respond. It's also a big green light to any thieves, letting them know the perfect time to grab and run. Among other problems.

If you want to know if anyone else is "awake" to RP with you, just do a simple emote and it's likely someone else will respond to it.
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gejyspa
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Re: Seeing when people are 'awake'

Postby gejyspa » Mon Mar 21, 2011 11:02 am

I always assume that if I am the last one to "make a move" in Cantr, that no one in my room has been online since then. Seems kind of pointless to continue to do/say stuff if no one is going to respond. I mean, sure, I talk/sing/sign to myself all the time in real life (yeah, it's true. You would probably think I'm a weirdo if you saw me walking down the street, but that's probably due to 8-9 years living without even a roommate or pet after my college years), but I don't think it's right in Cantr. So please, even if it's just to scratch your nose, do SOMETHING with your char when my is on top of the event log. Or I'll just presume (possibly with justification) that y'all just hate me.
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Sunni Daez
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Re: Seeing when people are 'awake'

Postby Sunni Daez » Sat May 21, 2011 6:05 am

Dislike this idea... could give to much advantage..
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Doug R.
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Re: Seeing when people are 'awake'

Postby Doug R. » Sat May 21, 2011 7:33 pm

Sunni Daez wrote:Dislike this idea... could give to much advantage..

Well, seeing as how it's in rejected suggestions, you don't have to worry ;)
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