[MUD-Dev] Re: Affordances and social method (Was: Re: Wi

[s001gmu at nova.wright.edu]

On Fri, 7 Aug 1998, Holly Sommer wrote:

> On Fri, 7 Aug 1998, J C Lawrence wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 14 Jul 1998 03:46:36 -5 
> > Jon A Lambert<jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > Nod.  The availability of @gag did not prevent the Mr. Bungle
> > > incident.  Nor would @gag or "squelch" affect third party
> > > observation of such activity.
> > 
> > A thought:
> > 
> >   Many games have a concept of different volumes of speech, such that
> > a whisper is only heard by those close by, normal speech has further
> > propagation, and shouting can be heard over a wide area if not the
> > whole game.
> 
> And another... an "ignore" command, which works like #gag in tintin...
> 
> % Bubba leers at you.
> % say Cut it out
>   You say 'Cut it out'
> % Bubba says 'How about you and me...?'
> % ignore Bubba
>   You are now ignoring anything having to do with Bubba.
> 
> From then on, you basically run into just (in perlspeak):
> 
>    # Where $person is the name in a list of ignored people
>    if ($_ =~ /$person/) {
>       $_ = "\n";
>    }

I recall coding something like that into EoD code, way back when.  Seemed
like a pretty simple thing to do.  All socials, says, tells, global chat
commands are simply not sent to the target, and the sender gets a '<blah>
is ignoring you.'  I was quite surprised it wasn't in the code to begin
with.  Seemed like a very simple, and yet powerful tool for social
control.  Equivalent to locks on doors.  It discourages the idle theif,
thus removing a large % of the problem.  You still need to deal with the
determined theives, but at least you reduce the problem set.

> This doesn't keep $person from attacking, stealing, or otherwise DOING 
> things to you - and indeed, you'd want to modify the check so that you 
> are notified of actions like that (else $person could steal you blind, or 
> you'd be in combat, and not even know it), but it certainly gets around 
> having to enture social dorks.
> 
> Also, you could chose to send a message back to Bubba like "Newman is 
> ignoring you." for tells and emotes. This should get the message across.

*nod*  As I said, simple, powerful, to the point.

-Greg