Anonymity on the radio and the problems caused by it

[SekoETC]

I honestly think the complete anonymity on the radio is ruining the game, leading into tons of asshattery. It's just as exploitable as the previous tricks of barricading oneself in a building or changing your name to seal an envelope and make it look like it was by someone else, or the ability to attack everybody in town without getting tired. These things were addressed and it made the game more fair, so I hope the radio will be one day. We could discuss different possibilities of how to address this.

1. Make it possible to see which transmitter originally sent the message.

or

2. Make it possible to identify the speaker.

or

3. Make it against the rules to pretend to be someone you're not and ban the imitators. Not a very good solution because it would take human monitoring. It wouldn't be realistic either, since dishonest people are a part of society.

4. Have an ingame raiding squad go through all abandoned towns/ones with no respectable government and destroy all the radio transmitters that aren't monitored by trusted individuals.

With #1, people probably don't want it to come for free, so triangulation has been brought up a lot.

with #2, people could be assigned voice characteristics (high/low, nasal, hoarse, gravelly, creaky, feminine/masculine) and an ability to alter one's voice with practice, with a chance of failure. It wouldn't necessarily be required to be able to identify people based on their voice, but additional details would narrow down the possibilities of who someone could be.

[*Wiro]

I'm against #3. It's a bad solution, since like you said dishonest characters exist and are a fun part of the game. I don't expect to see this happen in any complicated form, so #1 is the most likely solution. What if you could construct an additional machine, a "locator" that shows where a message comes from when turned on? This has the added benefit of being just useful in general (for trade, meeting up, getting to know people) while still allowing dishonest characters some room.

[SumBum]

I knew the current radio bs would prompt at least one complaint here.

I'm in favor of an additional piece of equipment that gives a vague direction of where a transmission originates with some chance of error.

viewtopic.php?f=90&t=22359

[Uma]

an assigned voice per person (from a drop down list. or something you can only change once every 10 years). would be the best I'd think.

for finding some one. It would be great if you could use some kind of tool to work a job at a radio. and if you did. it would tell you from what repeater, the message comes from. so then you move to that repeater and do it gain. repeat until you find the person you want to strangle

[Alladinsane]

#4 is an ingame solution and if its possible, thats most likely the way to handle it.

You would not even have to destroy the radio's, you could just change the stations on the repeaters. Its just as gremlin as the anonymous troll response and it gives some people a purpose (vigilante radio enforcement?).

The op does not really give a game advantage or disadvantage that i see...

Its just annoying as heck.

But then we start to deal with potential slippery slopes... should we ban whispering because its annoying when two people do it constantly?

The player settings allow us to filter out radio messages. But if you choose to use it or work in a building that has one, you may have to take the good with the bad. Change the station or change your filters. Some people also trade valuable messages over the radio and they often use private channels. There is even an attempt to set up another network based on a different channel as the main converse medium.
I truly don't see the problem here and yes I get annoyed with it too, the occasional 'asshattery' and fart noises is very annoying. But I don't think a 'rule' is necessary.

I like the triangulation idea though... it does not identify the speaker, but the location. obviously it leaves the ability to troll and run... or maybe identify a secret radio in the same town ("have you checked the children?"). But if chases happen, It could lead to some fun conflict.

Be well.

[bnlphan]

Cantr doesnt have to respect physical laws. I've always been in favor of being able to assign an identity to people on the radio or if its someone you already know it would show as well.
You hear from radio frequency 100. Bob (A man in his twenties) says Hello anyone listening?

or You see Radio Asshat arriving from unknown location.

You attack Radio Asshat with a steel battle axe.

[Otherside]

I retract my previous statement.

I actually don't care.

(Sorry!)

[Cdls]

1. Make it possible to see which transmitter originally sent the message.

I like the idea of there being a device to locate where a signal came from, but given the technology behind such a thing, it should require significant resource requirements to make possible. The chance of success should also be dependent on multiple messages being sent from that same location as well as multiple attempts to ping the originating location being required based on how many repeaters it has gone through.

2. Make it possible to identify the speaker.

Given the ease of anyone being able to mask their voice, I am against this.

3. Make it against the rules to pretend to be someone you're not and ban the imitators. Not a very good solution because it would take human monitoring. It wouldn't be realistic either, since dishonest people are a part of society.

I am sure that PD would rather see radios taken out of the game before having to babysit their usage more than we already have to.

4. Have an ingame raiding squad go through all abandoned towns/ones with no respectable government and destroy all the radio transmitters that aren't monitored by trusted individuals.

Having something like this set up OOCly is a breach of the rules. I am sure that if it got annoying enough, groups could be formed in game, but I have yet to see it happen. I had a character who tried to do it, but nobody was interested :(

with #2, people could be assigned voice characteristics (high/low, nasal, hoarse, gravelly, creaky, feminine/masculine) and an ability to alter one's voice with practice, with a chance of failure. It wouldn't necessarily be required to be able to identify people based on their voice, but additional details would narrow down the possibilities of who someone could be.

Characters shouldn't have characteristics forced upon their character. People have been against forced descriptions, this is just doomed to fail as well for the same reasons.


I only see #1 as being doable, but only if done right.

[SekoETC]

Yeah, I didn't mean that voice types would be forced on characters, but that they would be initially chosen by the players, and you'd be allowed to change it occasionally as the character ages, but nothing really drastic.

[kicking jay]

I'm for #1 and kinda #2 and #4. Although it wouldn't solve all the problems, triangulation would make it somewhat possible to identify where they're coming from. Perhaps combined with some kind of expensive device which would give a rough direction (north, south-south-east, etc) of the broadcast direction, it'd be effective.

I like #4, simply because I'm a fan of being able to select standardized describers for a char, and I think describing a voice is a great idea (I already have descriptions of people's voices on nearly all my chars), but I don't like the fact that it'd be mandatory to work.

I would be in favor of #2, making it such that you can recognize a voice, name it, and then match it to a person, but...
It's already so hard to be a dick in Cantr, petty trolling on the radio is one of the last ways possible do to so. Unless there was some memory degradation (eventually, a random selection of the names you assign to people would degrade to "a familiar man in his thirties", then to "a man in his thirties", with the amount of interaction between people having contributing to which names degrade), I'd not think this is a good idea.

To sum it up, I'd only support, at this time, triangulation, and/or some redesign of the character description page such that you could seperately describe their voice and body. (and clothing, and demeanor, and injuries) And I'm pretty sure that's another suggestion.

[Melodianme13]

1. Make it possible to see which transmitter originally sent the message.

I think with how far some of the radios reach, that this would be really difficult. You can have someone talking from Shai on Shai/Terrogatha and Not only can that entire island hear, but all of Cantr island and Treefeather as well. The air waves reach too far, in my opinion, for locations to be recognizable.

2. Make it possible to identify the speaker.

I don't like this option either. People can easily mask their voices. Some people don't even want to choose an eye color so i doubt they would care what their character sounds like and voices can change. Accents can be changed. I mean... I probably sound like a middle schooler with a squeaky high pitched voice, but for the last couple weeks I know I have been super nasally because I've been sick.

3. Make it against the rules to pretend to be someone you're not and ban the imitators. Not a very good solution because it would take human monitoring. It wouldn't be realistic either, since dishonest people are a part of society.

I don't quite like this either. Like you already said, it wouldn't be realistic. Sometimes people do actually do things just to get a rile from others. I don't think this should be against the rules.

4. Have an ingame raiding squad go through all abandoned towns/ones with no respectable government and destroy all the radio transmitters that aren't monitored by trusted individuals.

I am definitely against this one, more so than all the others. Who is to say who can be trusted? If a town of just two or three people have worked hard to make a radio, then why should they lose the right to use it simply because they lack numbers or government? Further more, how do small towns or abandoned ones lead to misuse of the radio any more than larger cities with established government? Radios are usually kept in rooms where no one sits because the radios are annoying. I would think the larger towns would house radio misuse more than others. It would be easier for people to slip in unnoticed to use it. Not to mention any car or ship can have radios as well and can use then between the towns while traveling. Would those be dismantled against the car owner's permission as well? Any group going into another town to break property within that town, no matter the reasons, would not be right. It would only cause an up roar. If only certain towns are allowed to have radios then you may as well remove radios all together.

[Swingerzetta]

2. Make it possible to identify the speaker.

I don't like this option either. People can easily mask their voices. Some people don't even want to choose an eye color so i doubt they would care what their character sounds like and voices can change. Accents can be changed. I mean... I probably sound like a middle schooler with a squeaky high pitched voice, but for the last couple weeks I know I have been super nasally because I've been sick.

I disagree here. People can mask their voices. They cant' EASILY mask their voices, not in a way that doesn't sound totally unconvincing. I know if I tried, people would ask me why I sounded like Kermit. It takes good skill to sound convincingly like someone else.

This has been brought up in suggestions before, and it makes perfect sense to me, and sounds like the best solution. Really, sounding like someone else is from the realms of RP, and people playing properly would go along with this. Making it an option to be fooled or not fooled by radio imitators and trolls would cause destructive players to think twice, while non-destructive players with a good in-game reason to imitate or harass would feel free to go ahead.

edit:
Another option was hinted at in here: Removing radios all together. It'd be sad to see such a great accomplishment like the expansive radio network be taken away, though. I wouldn't necessarily like the solution, but I'm just saying that it is a potential solution. (Besides, creating a multi-island mail network sounds like much more fun)

[kicking jay]

Your voice should be identifiable. However, you should still be able to mask your voice, so that it is treated as an unrecognized voice would be.

In other words, you can't imitate somebody, but you can hide your true voice. To the listener, it'd probably sound like: "You hear a muffled voice from radio at freq. 100: ... ", as opposed to "You hear Bob Dylan from radio at freq. 100: ... "

[Swingerzetta]

Your voice should be identifiable. However, you should still be able to mask your voice, so that it is treated as an unrecognized voice would be.

In other words, you can't imitate somebody, but you can hide your true voice. To the listener, it'd probably sound like: "You hear a muffled voice from radio at freq. 100: ... ", as opposed to "You hear Bob Dylan from radio at freq. 100: ... "

The harmonica solo would eventually give the identity away, anyway.
But yeah, good idea.

[SekoETC]

Some towns keep track of which buildings have a radio transmitter and keep those locked. If someone asks for permission to send a message, they will be monitored when they send it. Building private transmitters is either banned or only allowed for individuals who seem mature. Now if all towns did that, there would be no room for trolls. Yet I've seen plenty of towns where all locks have been broken and you can just walk in and send a message. It's convenient when you're a traveler and need to send a message, but it opens it up for exploit.