more whois stuff (tiring, eh?)

Posted by Mice on 02/10

As everyone is acutely aware of by now, telling and whois-ing via player descriptions has been changed and ultimately disabled. Telling to descriptions was taken out because of a disproportionate number of mistells - tells meant for players with like keywords, tells meant for players who had part of a keyword (as a 'lady', i often received tells for LadyAce), and tells meant for mobs (again, I got many tells for certain ladies involved in quests).

Whois - never meant to work on descriptions ANYWAY! - is validly changed due to a proposed change in gameplay (ie, disguises).

A proposed fix to the current "problem" and inconvenience (as many see it) is for tells to work on descriptions and return short descriptions in place of the name (friendly farmer example). But, as it has been pointed out, this will not solve the mistell problem. Take a look at the "variety" of descriptions out there. How many have Celtic, lad, lass, woman, dark, or whatever else in their description? The number of mistells will likely go UP with such a change. And I'll still receive tells for LadyAce and Lad Sidney, and whoever else has it as a keyword. At least with whois, you could narrow your search down (whois celtic, whois 2.celtic, etc). How many tells do you now bother people with before you reach the intended recipient?

So the proposed compromise logically will still create mistell problems, but whois can't go back to the familiar (if unintended) way, either... Unless some change was made, somehow, to disguises, where the disguise keywords responded to tells and socials and the like, but not to a whois.

Since I am not a coder, I see no easy way to do this, but I am familiar on HOW to code, and the logic that goes behind it, and I see it as a viable compromise. Whether or not it would be worth it to code is another thing altogether, but I think it at least deserves a thought. And if it were doable, it would provide a valid compromise - whois could work by keyword, tells wouldn't and mistells would be reduced, and those using disguises would be relatively safe behind them, thus making pretty much everyone happy.

Mice, of Angesley, who would like whois to be like before.