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a Mench 16s Doing a bit of everything.
- Vulkan 29s
- Napoleon 3m
- notloose 3h
And 17 more hiding and/or disguised
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@option LOOC
It's being abused.

The ooc command is how the Discord mafia we recently learned about spread its poison to many players who wouldn't otherwise have gotten involved in it.

Besides that, local ooc (looc) abusable in other ways too. People use it to try to steer the direction of IC events rather than just doing it via their IC actions.

I'm not going to suggest deleting the local ooc command, but what about an @option to turn off receiving such messages? Like the old thinks option, before thinks were just completely disabled barring IC solutions. People who didn't want to see them because of their OOC nature didn't have to.

This is a bit delicate because there can be very legit, good and important reasons to say something ooc and to receive that. So maybe the sender could be notified if they did ooc to <<>someone> and <>someone> had it turned off, just in case whatever it is they had to say was critical in some way.

It could happen, though even the lightning-rod use cases you're probably thinking of can be handled IC. I've done fade-to-blacks completely in character without ooc communication. IC unwanted attention doesn't have to be, and shouldn't be, handled OOCly unless and until it crosses or closely approaches the consent lines spelled out in the @rules. Other forms of distasteful RP also are 100% IC and there's no support anywhere in the @rules for objecting to them OOCly.

I suppose there's also the possibility too that the person with @options looc turned off who's being addressed with ooc to <<>you> could be notified that someone's trying to say something to them OOCly, in case they want to turn the option back on for the particular instance.

If someone were sending an ooc message with a very good reason, and the sender gets notified that the person they addressed it to isn't receiving LOOC's, I don't think it would be a bad thing if it were understood that the sender could fall back to xhelp and get staff to help with this. There can't be any downside to staff being made aware of whatever the situation is and taking action to support the sender, can there? If staff aren't available, the sender can always take theirself out of the IC situation in many ways, both IC and OOC options exist.

What about ooc's which aren't to someone? It's a non-issue, that's literally just ambient chatter. Don't notify the sender if people aren't getting it. If there's really a good reason for attempting to engage someone OOCly, they can and should just use to.

A lot of LOOC usage is perfectly innocent, innocuous and appreciated by at least some players. Not everyone would want to turn off receiving looc, and people would probably not be discouraged from using looc for the variety of harmless things they do use it for. But there are good reasons for players to opt out of looc, and if they did, there would be options and alternatives for those times when someone really does need to address them OOCly.

I thought the circle you're talking about did it using the ooc commands in a different game, though. ooc commands in sindome are monitored.
IDK. From what Slither said, it seems like the cheaters were using IC methods to share their contact info with one another.

I feel like local OOC is incredibly important for the cases that Mench lists in the help ic file:

To assist new players with getting their footing in the game.

To offer immediate command assistance to someone that is struggling to use a command.

To let a player know something may be a @bug and to assist them in submitting it.

To let someone know their @LP is wrong or is missing some punctuation.

To let a player know you're going to be AFK for a moment.

To communicate with any staff in the room that you are in.

To ask another player to Fade-To-Black.

Negotiating FTBs should be done OOC because, if it's a torture scene for example, trying to negotiate that IC won't make sense and it could come off as ICly trying to avoid a negative consequence. I often use local OOC to discuss going AFK/@ooc, saying things like 'BRB 15 minutes' or something so my RP partner can decide whether they want to stick around til I come back or no.

LOOC has very important uses and I get the feeling that if we codedly limit its use, then staff will have even more interpersonal issues between players to deal with. If you see people chatting about IRL stuff on OOC just tell them to stop, or xhelp about it.

Absolutely not.

If ooc is being abused, it needs to be monitored. and from my experience it has been.

looc is a Integral tool for new players to learn commands as well as to communicate with the other player in scene if you need to step away for a few seconds or if you aren't comfortable with a certain situation and wish to FTB.

The removal of such a tool because a few people abuse it is not something that would benefit the community at large. Monitoring it will. And it does get monitored.

I'm not saying you can always FTB ICly. I was trying to illustrate that ooc can be a crutch at best, and a literal cheat at worst.

As far as 'AFK 15' goes, there are the "afk" command and the "@ooc" command. There's also just going 15 minutes without reacting - God knows that's a well worn tradition around here.

I'm not sure how this is supposed to help anything. You want to remove a major RP tool that has worked perfectly so far because.......???

If you have so little trust in your community that you'd rather penalize every single person that plays the game rather than those that actually break the rules, I don't even know what to tell you.

"discord mafia spreading its poison with looc" is a bit dramatic there. From what I understand, most of what happened happened outside of the game or on global ooc, which was already disabled, and not local. And local ooc is pretty easy to filter client-side if you use a something like mushclient and it bothers you that much.

Obviously people shouldn't be using looc to have full on conversations but disabling ooc communication entirely is a almost a comical idea. This is a social game with almost 0 documentation outside of help files and esoteric commands. Sometimes you need to tell someone something not in-character, correct a typo, or a million other uses for looc.

And, again, it's fairly easy to filter on your end if you don't like seeing it at all with a client.

You want to remove a major RP tool that has worked perfectly so far because.......???

1. I don't want to remove it. I want to opt out of it.

2. It's not an RP tool.

3. It doesn't work perfectly.

1. I conceded that there are good reasons for its use at times, and provided ideas how to backfill the unavailability of looc if someone has opted out of it and there's a good reason to communicate with them OOCly. You make it sound like a nuclear option.

2. RP is IC, it's not OOC. OOC discussion about how IC events should go is either a literal cheat, or it's powergaming, or it's an invocation of an OOC @rule. None of these are "RP tools."

3. There are things it's fine for, but the same thing is true of XOOC, Free-Chat and Politics-WOW and we don't force people to opt in to these either. Similarly there are things that happen on XOOC which occasionally drive staff to disable it because it wasn't fine. Please don't pretend looc can't be anything but positive for roleplaying situations. I'm not even talking about "immersion", I'm not even talking about innocuous chatter unrelated to gameplay, I'm talking about the objectionable behaviors I mentioned above (I guess this either hasn't happend to you or it has and you were OK with it).

it's fairly easy to filter on your end if you don't like seeing it at all with a client.

For one thing, you understand this is against the @rules, right?

For another, it doesn't provide any of the backfill I offered for when there's a good reason to actually receive an out-of-character message.

"Let's go back to IC"

"Let's return to RP"

And my favorite Not responding and continuing to RP

All ways to cut off local OOC if it goes too far.

Immie aides (good ones at least) rely on local OOC quite a lot to help show new players the ropes/explain things like the grid, basic commands, etc. You can get a feel for if someone is a reroll or outright new most of the time, but some folks aren't going to pick up on subtle IC hints when you tell them to 'read the menu on the bar' and are going to need that local OOC to tell them the command is "read menu on bar".

Then FTB for sex and torture, sanity checks for if you're RPing some particularly heavy content, letting someone know they need to read the recent updates that changed how a system they were previously familiar with works etc.

If people are opted in by default, that helps with immies, but asking someone to go easy on the details for torture scenes could just be completely ignored by someone who has opted out of local OOC.

Say you've lured someone into a trap or cornered them and you're about to do whatever and they for no knowable reason just pop into @ooc. Seems really suspicious, where as if they say in local OOC "Oh fuck my dog just threw up on me, brb" then you know what's happening and that they're not trying to use @ooc to escape IC consequences.

Honestly, allowing people to change their SD usernames/encouraging people at signup to not use the same username they use in other places would probably go a lot further to reduce people trying to get in touch OOCly than letting folks opt out of local OOC.

I get where @beandip is coming from.

I also believe that I understand some of the points raised by other people in this thread.

If it is possible to toggle @ooc, I think that it should be tied to certain job functions.

The only job function that I can think of where @ooc is "necessary" is for WCS greeters. I have done that job ICly. @ooc is a good tool.

I have also used @ooc to FTB torture. I'm not a fan of it.

I have had someone use @ooc to FTB MOO-Sex that was themely for their character, but they did not want to engage in.

All that being said, I'm in favor of @ooc being kept in the game so long as it is logged. The only abuse of it that I've seen of it in 4 years has been when I was a third party, and two other characters were using it in an apartment and going on and on about some other game.

I have seen numerous times when @ooc has been used in a public place like a bar or club. If @ooc goes on for longer than two or three back and forths, people are not shy about speaking up and strongly suggesting that it should stop. I have been the one to suggest it stops, and it always has.

"@ooc Now that we've cleared THAT up, let's go back to IC posing." has always done the trick for me.

As long as the logs are time stamped and / or monitored, a steady @ooc back and forth between two or more characters is going to stick out like a sore thumb.

I'm in favor of @ooc being kept in the game so long as it is logged.

I mean, none of that would change under my proposal, it would still be both present and logged. Heck, maybe it could even log whether the recipient got it or not based on their @options.

I could take or leave this idea, but I think some of the reactions in this thread -do- paint it as a nuclear option, as someone said. @beandip (correct me if I'm wrong) is offering the suggestion that it be made optional for -you-, the individual to turn off -your- personal LOOC the same as any other chat that exists (xgame, xooc, etc.). It isn't a hard stop to the moo's use of it, only to those that choose to opt out.

Some of the counter arguments that make sense could be fixed by alerting a player that they've been pinged for a directed LOOC. Based on the RP situation, the player could then choose to @trust the sender for the next sixty seconds or something - long enough to discuss a FTB or command issue before returning to that blissful OOC silence. Or not.

LOOC should not be optional for anyone. It is required for players to communicate to one another for a plethora of reasons, including when one wishes to FTB or say they are uncomfortable with certain actions being taken.

Adding new systems to deal with that so people can opt out is a bit overkill in my opinion, and I don't see how opting out of LOOC would reduce cheating -- cheaters wouldn't opt out of something they supposedly use to cheat with (I doubt this, as the staff watches LOOC so carefully that they even issue shouts telling people not to engage in smalltalk on it.)

I mean that's a good point. You wouldn't expect someone using it for nefarious goals would opt out of it anyway.

I didn't really see that as the use for it. I imagined this being used by those that don't want to be approached by said deviants that use LOOC as a handshake for offgame relations. To the point where they'd rather block the potential for that communication altogether than deal with it in the first place, and as well to minimize local scroll in public places.

We also can't arbitrarily decide that staff constantly watches LOOC just because they occasionally tell rooms to stop doing it. Or that they watch it so unerringly that no one could get away with using it outside of its purpose in @rules. Correlation and causation.

I would go so far as to suggest that despite monitoring, this mode is -most likely- to be used in facilitating the kind of interactions we don't want. If only because it's the only OOC method of communication that can be done in private IC spaces (to my knowledge).

As far as those uses we need it for, again a ping system could be used. LOOC someone with nothing more than "FTB", or, "Command Help", etc. Switch it on long enough to assist, and it's all gravy.

Do I think it could be done without hindering LOOC's legitimate and necessary uses? Absolutely. Do I think it warrants staff taking the time to make it happen? Not really.

Hek has a great system in place for requesting unimportant LOOC to stop, and it's never failed me either when I've use it.

You wouldn't expect someone using it for nefarious goals would opt out of it anyway.

No, but whatever they're using it for has no effect if the chummer they're trying it on has opted out. "Talk to the hand" so to speak.

And yes, the original idea had pings on both sides, letting someone know their looc's got blocked, and, letting someone blocking them know that attempts are being made.