Unsatisfying

Look, I get it. Its a MUD. People have connection issues. I've lost more than a few characters in other true perma-death scenarios to lag, and not every fight requires a series of monologuing before combat starts. I'm posting because I just feel one of the most hollow feelings available in any roleplaying game, tabletop or mud, is losing your character with no ability to impact it. To glance away for a minute, find that your character has been taken down without even a chance to react or raise their weapon, and most everything you've built is gone without even the thrill of the fall. I'm not saying you should stop your assault if you realize the other player is afk. Its a waste of a perfectly good ambush IC. But I'd really appreciate if we don't weaponize boredom. "Hey, lets wait here for a bit." followed by twenty minutes of no emoting or discussion only to quietly lead a character into a death scenario once you're certain they're gone? Its just a shitty thing to inflict on another player. Mug my character, maim them, kill them, rob them, brutalize them physically, mentally and socially. But don't deny me even getting to interact. I dunno'. I mostly just don't even want to play atm.

this meme was made by ambush gang

Type @ooc then. Problem solved. It sounds like you’re just whining about something that happened to you. Unless someone knows your OOC handle and player name and you are visible on @who there is no way for them to know if you are AFK or not. That’s not their responsibility, it’s yours.

I want to take a moment to imagine up a hypothetical situation that may or may not be applicable to what Ash is talking about. I want to first believe there is a problem before completely disregarding what a fellow community member has to say.

Imagine your character is friends and allies with another character. Imagine that your character does a good deal of rp with that friend/ally in a private setting, like in a person's home. Now imagine that friend/allies player every now and again says they have to afk for just a little bit to go take care of IRL biz in the middle of this rp in a private setting. Imagine for whatever reason this player does not @ooc, but just goes afk. And you decide to just wait and pause a moment to give that player a chance to take care of their biz and return to the RP.

Now, imagine you give this other player that courtesy many times. Just waiting around for a few minutes so they have a chance to get around. Imagine this lulling you into a false sense of security where now you think it's okay for YOU to afk or alt+tab while waiting for this other player.

Now imagine that one day you do the same old thing of giving the other player the courtesy of time to take care of their biz, and it takes a while. And so you make the unwise decision of going of alt-tabbing for a moment while you wait.

And then you come back and you find that your character's "friend/ally" has killed your character and stolen all their shit.

Betrayal and lack of trust are important themes to Sindome, and killing your friends is a good thing to do (in Sindome). But I can see how in that situation I completely made up, many Sindome players would feel salty.

I have NO IDEA if this is anywhere CLOSE to what happened.

But I want to believe that Ash made this post for a good reason, and I want to understand the crux of the matter, here. So I made some shit up to see if I could think up anything that maybe fits.

Of course, even in the example I gave, it would still be better to @ooc

As other posters have mentioned, we do have @ooc, and it's there to give you a breather, or if you have to go off window. We do not restrict going @ooc except in very specific scenarios where it messes with the game (like being in a car sitting down).

Let me post this a different way: If you stay IC, and go off window, when you return you are then privy to everything that happened while you were off window. SIC messages, missed phone calls, paydata you might over hear, UE you might gain. This is an -advantage- that you are getting, by leaving your character in the IC world while you are off window. That advantage comes at a cost to your characters safety, should you be attacked while IC.

If you are having connection issues, yeah it sucks when you get ambushed, but that's why we added the cool down timer for disconnected people.

If you are worried about your characters safety, type @ooc and be safer. We can't ask people to some how confirm you aren't afk if you have left your character IC.