Or perhaps make the circle 16th as 16th is when they lose chatter.

You're not limiting new player interaction; for someone with less then 16 circles it would be near impossible (and in fact, actually impossible, strictly going by bank account limitations) to purchase gweths. And up to circle 16 they have access to CHATTER, which is far more useful and community-oriented/moderated source of information. In fact, I WISH genuinely new players will avoid the steaming cesspool of scum and villainy known as the gweth community.

And why is it so complicated? System checks that you are under 16 circles, denies you ability to vote and thoughtcast, pretty simple, one line of code.

Or to compromise even further, below 16's CAN have FULL use of gweths but just aren't allowed to vote on gweth thumps. Now they have full access to gweths but the exploit of making dummy F2P accounts for purposes of cheating the ballots is fixed.

The main problem that needs to be dealt with is this "one man judge,jury, executioner". This is exactly why societies developed constitutions, trial by juries, and law making through consensus building. When a king can just sit there and proclaim through "might makes right" that he finds your RP "boring or unsatisfactory or even OOC(in his opinion)" and then on a whimsy gweth block/thump you it leads to things like this thread and eventually cancelled accounts. When 100 people in concert say "shut up you're disruptive", generally (for normal people), they accept it and move on (and most likely for 100 players to say "yeah, that was way over the line" it probably was truly disruptive).

If you're expecting gwethspeech to be protected in any scenario you are probably going to be disappointed with the outcome.

I'm totally willing to tweak things and make them more group-oriented, but you're not going to get around the idea that PCs will have tools to silence speech which offends them, both on the gweths and in the room with them.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

>>Wouldn't be against it, but it's not like people wouldn't smash/thump someone being OOC, anyway.

Yeah, and it's not precisely a super meaningful change on our end either, but it's an important... I donno, for purposes of the side effects it'd have.

If it's an IC tool and strictly an IC tool, no strings attached, we can interact with it a bit differently than if it's meant to serve as an ooc-bridge. Plus I'm the sort of person that likes my IC/OOC interactions as cleanly split apart as I can.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

Yeah pretty much the last thing I want is the additional scroll of a constant '<Person> wants <other person> to be gweth thumped! Vote now!'

I also liked the view of "mob rule" for public forums, where if person A is being a jerk and person B gweth-thumps, the downtime is 10 minutes. Downtime ends, person A resumes being a jerk, then person C gweth-thumps and the downtime is 15 minutes. And repeat until a thump is capped at 30 minutes.

In the end, I do agree that if someone is being "wrong" on the gweths (IC or not), then it's not just one person who will be reaching that conclusion. I think that's a reasonable safeguard of ensuring someone having to be quiet for an extended period of time is less the result of a personal grudge (IC or otherwise) and more a conclusion of someone's behavior.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

I'm opposed to reducing duration that sharply. I'm fine with increasing duration with subsequent thumps but not making the initial be any less than 30 minutes at a bare minimum. That's barely enough time for someone to cool down and move on.

I also still think charges getting burned off a gweth is fine.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

I think allowing listening while thumped/smashed is reasonable. It'll require some fiddling but it shouldn't be an issue in theory.

Universality of it is a bit harder. To be honest I've talked with a few GMs about the possibility of ditching gweths entirely and making the telepathic network just a thing people have access to (and before anyone screams, there would be an IC rationale behind it). But I'm unwilling to commit to that level of rewrite in the near-term future when I have a few other critical projects on my plate.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

>>Universality of it is a bit harder. To be honest I've talked with a few GMs about the possibility of ditching gweths entirely and making the telepathic network just a thing people have access to (and before anyone screams, there would be an IC rationale behind it). But I'm unwilling to commit to that level of rewrite in the near-term future when I have a few other critical projects on my plate.

If/When a gweth rewrite can be slated, I'd love to see this along with multiple channels/etc.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

I'm opposed to ditching gweths entirely. It's one of the few consumables in this game, and it's what makes the amazing museum heists "worth" doing in a world where thievery has virtually no other practical use.

Can't we all just be adults, let the existing harassment policies do their job, and move on?

I'm just going to chime in here again because everyone else seems to think repeating themselves like a cuckoo clock will make them more right.

I vehemently oppose the idea of reducing the duration of the smash/thump or whatever you decide to change it to. It's already too short vs the cool down of the smash itself. To make it any lower makes it a completely useless tool. If anything make it higher especially if more doodads are being attached to it like no smashing for OOC or allowing listening. I also believe if it's strictly for ic then it DEFINTELY should lock the smasher open. Back your actions up or don't play policeman.

>>DR-Armifer: I'm wondering how effective it'd be if we remove the "to police OOC" from gweth thump, smash, and regular thump, and just make it strictly an IC tool. OOC disruption on the gweths would return to being moderated by the GMs.

>>DR-Armifer: If it's an IC tool and strictly an IC tool, no strings attached, we can interact with it a bit differently than if it's meant to serve as an ooc-bridge. Plus I'm the sort of person that likes my IC/OOC interactions as cleanly split apart as I can.

I would strongly favor that. Putting ordinary players in a position to enforce game policy (especially via IC tools) is problematic for several reasons.

Of course, in order for that to be a viable proposal, the GM moderation would have to be more frequent and more consistent. Right now, either as a result of manpower or a deliberate policy decision, only the most egregious instances of OOC result in GM attention. Even in those cases, given that the same people keep engaging in the same behavior, that attention doesn't seem to be very effective.

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Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall rank!

sortable list of all Trader-owned shops and inventory: http://www.elanthia.org/TraderShops/

armor and shields: https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Armor_and_shield_player_guide

>>Have you considered just removing the charges from gweths and making them permanent?

Sure, but if I was rewriting the telepathy system anyways, why keep a legacy item that is so unsightly that we invented a secondary system just to hide them (which, admittedly, grew from there)?

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

Gweth-Thump will still need to be implemented if gweths became permanent and non-destroyable.

Also, I propose Gweths and crystal rings being smashable via Barbarian roar only.

I disagree entirely with the concept of putting that kind of power in the hands of any "responsible parties" or "vetted members of the community."

Humans are gonna human. At the end of the day we all have different backgrounds which shape our opinions, alliances, tolerance to certain types of behavior, and so on. While GM's are technically in charge of moderating the overall gaming environment, it's important to remember that they've all come from the same playerbase, and that they are not exactly immune from making bad decisions themselves. I'd prefer to not fool ourselves into thinking that righteous judgement is something any of us are capable of possessing individually, and rather that the community as a whole is able to dictate what is unacceptable.

If there's a specific HLC out there that's abusing gwethsmashing just because they can, chances are what goes around will come around. It's a small pond, but there's always a bigger fish.

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>befriend clear all
You are now friendless.

I'm of the opinion that such designations are superficial, but you're free to disagree.

TF, despite some foul language, is supposedly a more welcoming and hospitable community than prime these days.

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>befriend clear all
You are now friendless.

>If you have a basic problem with members of the community being given powers to shape, influence, and police the community, that ship sailed about twenty years ago.

Quite the contrary, I'm asserting that the community is already capable of such, and that those privileges should be available to all members of that community.

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>befriend clear all
You are now friendless.

>>If the community in its entirety was capable of acting in a capable and mature manner, this thread (and every PvP thread) wouldn't exist.

I agree wholeheartedly. People need tougher skin.

>If the community in its entirety was capable of acting in a capable and mature manner, this thread (and every PvP thread) wouldn't exist.

I'm not so sure that these forums paint an accurate portrait of the actual gaming environment at times.

>toxic garbage fire

Case in point.

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>befriend clear all
You are now friendless.