[Poll] Trial Removal of OOC Channels - One Week Countdown

[Rosequartzfox]

While I have enjoyed times of silence with ooc communications, I do feel like they should at least be an option.

In my opinion, tells and guild chans should be reintroduces, with an emphasis on the Deaf and Quiet commands. I am not sure if they a perm, or toggle off with log out, but from what I am reading from the others, is that it would be nice at times, and then not at other.

An example:
If you are part of the Merchants, and they are discussing the finer aspects of tooling, or asking for help with strings, and you don't want to see it, or you want to less spam/chatter, turn it off. Keep it off if you don't want it at all. If someone is trying to organize an event or plan something, throw up a pboard saying 'Hey, on Sunday around 6, I would like to try to plan X event on the gchan. Please turn it on if you want to be part of the discussion.' Then post whatever in the pboards for those who missed, or those who choose not to use the gchans, and get their input.

I think there are options for everyone, and have been since before the removal of ooc comms, and they can customize their level of immersion or non-immersion to best fit their play style, and personality.

Just my thoughts on the matter...

Quartzi!

[AlwaysShunny]

I'm voting for a strong net negative. A big pushing point for the removal was that IC information wouldn't be able to be shared OOCly so easily. Being as how sensitive IC information about one of my characters was shared OOCly through Discord several months into the trial reinforces my opinion that people will always be abusive and exploitative no matter what. It's just whether people will do so using mechanics in game or outside via other channels.

The removal of guildchannels sapped much of my interest in participating in guilds, especially covert ones, as I didn't know who was on and felt as though accessibility to other guild characters was never high enough.

Tell removal doesn't bother me as much. I think it would be beneficial for players to have more means to communicate minor OOC things than just a distracting osay or an abrupt pboard note in the middle of a scene. I also feel that the removal of tells increased osay usage in RP, particularly among newer players who were unfamiliar with etiquette. I saw plenty of passive aggressive osay exchanges that I would have preferred not to have seen.

I rarely used guildchannels and tells before the trial removal, but their removal left a negative impact on me while playing. TI Legacy appealed to me because while it was RP intensive, the game still left room for breath, which I felt benefited me in my adjustment period getting in.

[Kinaed]

Interesting. At the time of posting this, the vote is neck in neck (10 positive, 10 negative, 4 neutral). NOTE: People can revote until the polling time ends.

I get the sense that the vote might be different if we had separated out tells and guild channels rather than asking about a net positive or negative.
I agree with the one party who said that people will abuse/share OOC info regardless of tells or none - the change wasn't really about OOC exchange as much as it was about immersion.
For those who made friends and don't really play, but think that having tells might have encouraged them to try playing, I have to think that through - I'm more interested in our current actual pbase's feelings and needs about their play - no disrespect intended. It's lovely to see people like TI enough to hang around even when they're not playing. I just have priorities around making TI a great game ahead of making it a great OOC socialisation platform. We won't grow from nostalgia alone.
For people who are 'passive aggressive' in osays, please stop. It makes those who do that sort of thing look bad as well as harms the game in terms of attracting and retaining players.

Thank you everyone, regardless of where on the spectrum your opinion is, for taking the time to share it with us.

[wimple]

I think for this poll to be useful, you really need to separate the tells from guild channels. I'm voting a net negative. I don't enjoy the loss of the social aspect on tells, but with tells and guild channels gone, it makes it incredibly difficult to help guild folk with guild commands. Pboards aren't great - they break immersion in scenes (for everyone! because we all get notified someone is writing one!) more than a tell or a guild channel would. And I don't get a ping when I get a new one to look at, so unless I'm constantly checking boards then I don't know if I have an immediate one I need to respond to - which can hold things up for others. And even when I have gotten a ping - having to check my board list, read a long pboard note, etc., is super immersion breaking for my scene, whereas a tell won't take up that much room on the screen and I can RP around it easier. Visnet isn't the best alternative - when it came up in an OOC meeting that people actively disliked being told help files, I just turned the channel off. I never thought suggesting a helpfile was passive aggressive or wrong, often there are so many I can't find the one that I am looking for, so I always appreciated being pointed to the right one. But if that's going to potentially get me complaints, then I don't have the time for it.

I think losing the social aspect of tells is disappointing (I don't discord and I'm not going to start to, so that social aspect of the game will just be gone), but guild channels would make things functionally helpful. Starting a story event so you can have your own channel to discuss an event seems like ridiculous lengths to go to for a logistics talk for a guild.

There were suggestions in past threads on ways for a limited number of tells to be turned on to help with situations where tells were needed (i.e. people separated in follows/groups for OOC reasons like a game restart or people thinking they grouped their followers and didn't, etc.) and those have not been attempted. I think if there's a clear split on tells, trying something like that to see if it alleviates the problem for those having issues and doesn't impede on immersion for everyone else might be a good idea.

[RestingCoder]

I'm too new for guild communication to affect me, but tells would have been useful in several situations to avoid breaking immersion for everyone in the room when someone had to tell me how to do something I didn't know how to do.

Honestly, I don't have a preference. I started after the trial started. Reading the arguments above, I can see both sides.

I think it would be useful to have separate polls for tells and guild channels though, for sure.

[Vee]

I'm a returning player who returned after tells and guild channels had been turned off and I was SO HAPPY as I honestly hated tells and guild channels before. You would have people trying to send tells to ask about IC information, people trying to send tells to comment on an ongoing scene, people trying to send tells like, "Um, why did you just do that?" referring to something that had happened IC, people trying to send tells like, "Were you the one who just posted that rumor?!", and even people just sending random tells to other people to OOCly complain about their RL problems while they were trying to RP in a scene.

So, then you turn tells off, right? And then you have these people finding you on Discord to be like, "Zomg you turned off your tells. Are you okay????", completely defeating the purpose of having turned off tells in the first place.

Personally, I don't log onto a RPI (or any RP MUD, really) to make OOC friends. I don't like communicating OOC in general. I know there are others out there who do, but we have a Discord channel for that. There are also plenty of other means for communicating OOCly if you just want to chat with your TI friends or otherwise want some sort of social aspect. I've played on plenty of MUDs in the past without any sort of one-on-one OOC communication. And you know what? If I wanted to talk to someone, I would add them on AIM (I feel so old right now), Yahoo, Skype, MSN, etc. and chat with them there.

As for guild channels, there have been times where it would have been nice to have them to try to coordinate a meeting, but otherwise, I've been perfectly happy without them. Speaking from experience, the guild channel I'm familiar with was more often than not simply used for nonsensical chatting which would cause me to turn it off and then someone would actually need my help with something, but my channel would be off so I wouldn't see it. Which would force them to send me a pboard.

I honestly prefer being immersed myself. And I will admit it's distracting when people start writing pboards in the middle of a scene. But I'd prefer seeing, "Joe Bob is writing a note," every now and again than having my screen blowing up red with nonsense.

[Taunya]

Wow, still split down the middle (11-11-4).

As a compromise, how would people feel about a small RPXP fee per use for tells and guild channels, with the fee for tells waived when sending a tell including a cyan or staff member?
I'd suggest 10xp, double the osay tax, just to make you think twice about using them.

[Voxumo]

I'd dig it. Less so for the guild channels, but it still.

[Helena]

The silence of tells was a great relief for me, as in my experience, tells were leading to many IC/OOC crossovers, which made me feel uncomfortable. Some meaningful example: the habbit to coordinate scenes via tells, to reply messengers via tells, to tell or be told "if you do this, you'll face that", and things like that. All those things were done with the purest intentions, yet rely on OOC relationship rather than on IC ones.

Reading the posts, I understand the need of OOC communication for friendliness. Sometimes, I just want to share kind attentions to my RP partners, and that's probably an important part of the game. Yet, it's also very borderline, because when you know nobody outside of their current character, OOC friendliness is closely related to IC relationships. I have mixed opinions on that side of things.

I like Taunya's idea that tells cost rpxp: it's probably the most balanced solution.

As for pboards, I don't think needed to message all the room when someone edits an OOC note: we could simply remove that message.

[Kinaed]

I'm getting the strong sense that:

- The response to this poll would probably be different if we bad separated tells and guild channels
- The people who want these channels gone and prefer it that way feel more powerfully than the people who prefer tells
- We may have a number of old, non-playing people who voted

I'll discuss the matter with Staff, whether we'll start a new poll, whether we'll just RPxp tax tells, or whether we feel confident to just make a decision.