Bring back top 10 Rp... with a twist!

[Puciek]

Not a secret that I dislike that the top 10 rp disappeared because it may one day, eventually, eh, in some odd circumstanced potentially get abused. But instead of yammering how much I just want it back, how about we compromise in the middle and bring it back up, but instead of reporting it with IC names we would use OOC names instead? This way people can decide what they want to show there. I would do it with one caveat though that it will be a lock-in name, and once set it will forever show the name on activity like that for this specific character.

The ability to see the list did add a bit of sport to it, and it did encourage a certain type of personality to seek more RP just to climb the ladder. And seeing it really helps to reinforce it even further.

[wimple]

Just an idea.. instead of setting an OOC name which is coding in something new, could just be a player's account name.

[Voxumo]

Just an idea.. instead of setting an OOC name which is coding in something new, could just be a player's account name.

I was actually going to suggest this before I saw Wimple's comment. This seems like a nice compromise.

[Rabek]

This seems like it could be used to associate characters with account names, which is bad and invites metagaming. Not sure what the problem was with the old way.

[Puciek]

This seems like it could be used to associate characters with account names, which is bad and invites metagaming. Not sure what the problem was with the old way.

Some people thought that because people see their character as active but not in taverns 24/7 it means they are a mage. As stupid as it sounds.

[Voxumo]

This seems like it could be used to associate characters with account names, which is bad and invites metagaming. Not sure what the problem was with the old way.

Some people thought that because people see their character as active but not in taverns 24/7 it means they are a mage. As stupid as it sounds.

I think the actual concern was with renames. Like if the top person suddenly changed names, it could oocly be used to determine said person is one and the same... a silly and unfounded reason still.

[AlwaysShunny]

I don't mind the new system. In fact, I actually prefer it, because I don't like people knowing how much I RP, and the list wasn't really necessary at all, kind of like the last names on the WHO list.

Maybe if there was some way to opt out of a player's name being shown so that only those who would want to participate be on the activity list.

[Andruid]

I've caught myself metagaming the old activity output before -- not on purpose, but the list would occasionally reveal to me that PCs who were supposedly "gone" or "laying low" were actually QUITE active, and I found that it was affecting whether or not I talked about those people in rumors, whether I continued to mention them in my RP, etc. While I'm sure we can all agree that metagaming is bad, and we shouldn't do it, there are ways it can creep into your RP or process without you necessarily realizing it.

Aside from the fact that I could never compete with the top 10 anyway (must be nice to have that kind of free time), that's really the main reason why I was happy to see the list go -- and why I don't really care to see it return in its old form.

[Puciek]

I've caught myself metagaming the old activity output before -- not on purpose, but the list would occasionally reveal to me that PCs who were supposedly "gone" or "laying low" were actually QUITE active, and I found that it was affecting whether or not I talked about those people in rumors, whether I continued to mention them in my RP, etc. While I'm sure we can all agree that metagaming is bad, and we shouldn't do it, there are ways it can creep into your RP or process without you necessarily realizing it.

Aside from the fact that I could never compete with the top 10 anyway (must be nice to have that kind of free time), that's really the main reason why I was happy to see the list go -- and why I don't really care to see it return in its old form.

I don't think you actually did metagame there at all. This is very keen to what was talked about the whoinvis thing, where we have people who permanently live on whoinvis but actually roam around, and if they want to disappear then we have IC ways to do it, rather than OOC one. That's also why we have whois and can see if someone is playing or gone so we can RP accordingly - there is no point wasting OOC time chasing down someone who quit.

[Andruid]

Respectfully, I disagree. While players make a lot of decisions, regularly, that are based on whether they think a player is around, available, or active, the instances to which I'm referring are indeed a form of (perhaps minor) metagaming.

If my character only has reason to think that someone has gone missing/left town/is dead but continues to pursue a PC based on the fact that I saw said person in the number one slot on the activity list (or in a hypothetical case, constantly in the wholist), then I absolutely consider that to be metagaming, even if it does lead to RP. I am glad for protections like whoinvis precisely because they make it easier for me to RP without constantly wondering whether I'm acting based on OOC knowledge or IC info. (Probably, in some sense, you could say that most of us are engaging in harmless metagaming most of the time, and that this is really just a question of where, in a collaborative storytelling environment, we choose to draw the line between what is acceptable and what is harmful.)

Personally, I like to be exposed to as little OOC bias as possible while still enjoying the convenience of being able to send a messenger to a target that I know is on grid. In some cases, however, I have gone so far as to alias commands like WHO so that they return the room desc instead of the wholist, just to keep me from auto-analyzing who might be where doing what.

If the staff want to bring back the activity list with OOC names, I have no problem with that and see no reason why it would have to be a permanent name. The more obfuscating, the better, IMO. ;)