Nuke the playerlist; improve in-character communication

[KT28]

Whether or not a particular character is online at any given moment is OOC information that can be (and is often, even unintentionally) meta-gamed. Sometimes this meta-gaming is benign or even constructive (you want to know when someone is online so you can find them and RP with them!) and sometimes it is damaging to RP/immersion/fun (eg, knowing when to break/sneak into someone's quarter without getting caught, knowing when to conduct certain Sneaky Behaviors without being scried, if you're a diviner having a guess of who might be scrying you, generally knowing when you're free to get away with something because you know the player(s) who might be affected are offline, etc).

This happens all the time to varying degrees; I have done it before, not out of malicious intent but just because it's human nature. Once you know something you can't un-know it. Personally, even though I know from decades of experience I have so, so much more fun with RP going into things blind and knowing as little OOC information as possible, it's hard not to open that Pandora's box. I can't imagine I'm the only one who feels this way.

I am aware this has been discussed before, particularly in regards to the online playerlist portal (which we can now opt out of, thank you) and I know a lot of players have really strong feelings about this. Arelith (and NWN) has had a Playerlist since the dawn of time and I think we've all grown to feel a little entitled to knowing this information OOCly. We've gotten so used to relying on it to make RP happen that the idea of taking it away seems scary. Nonetheless I genuinely feel the server would be much better off, more immersive, more mysterious, more exciting, without these things - and I think we could make the game even better than it is right now by shifting some of the purposes that the playerlist serves to have in-character analogues instead.

I'll preface this by saying the proposal below is large, probably pretty radical, and imperfect but I have tried to be thorough while recognizing that these changes address and require a fundamental shift in player culture.

The proposal:

1. Replace character names from the in-game playerlist window with "Unknown character" or something similar
2. Suppress "Playername has left/joined as a player" server messages
3. Hide all character/playernames/portraits from the online portal
4. Change -playerlist to only list the number of players online on each server, or even just the total number of players online across all servers

Additionally, add the following:

GOBLINS/HALFLINGS/IMAGES/WISPS

1. Allow all characters to toggle on/off receiving of goblins/halflings/images/wisps at will. Everyone can already sort of do this with stealth, but that's not always practical. Separate this behavior into a toggleable mode.

2. Give no automatic feedback to the sender about whether the person was successfully found or not. Simply tell the sender "Okay, we'll try to deliver your message to Bob" whether the receiver is online, not receiving messengers, or offline.

3. Allow all characters to send an optional "confirmation" response back to the sender whenever they receive a goblin/halfling/wisp/image. This confirmation would simply alert the sender that their message was received. This would greatly reduce the need to check OOCly with people via tells whether they received a messenger or not as well (since sometimes this bugs out)

ALTERNATIVE #3: Instead of just a 'confirmation' response, allow recipients of messengers to send back an actual text response to the sender within a 2-3 minute window. Add a ~10 minute cooldown on messengers sent to the same person so you can't do something silly like have an interactive conversation across space and time.

MAIL CENTERS

1. Add mail centers in all major settlements where characters can leave written notes for other PCs to receive. Useful for both contacting PCs who do not own a quarter and also leaving private notes specifically for one person who is sharing their home with others (we should encourage sharing of quarters, imo; personalized mail system would help with this)

2. Allow players to register aliases with the mail centers for use with -disguise

YOINKING

1. Allow all characters to toggle on/off whether they are open to receiving a -yoink at will (or, even better, create a whitelist/blacklist system for receiving -yoinks). Give the player feedback when this occurs, eg "So and so tried to summon you, but you are resisting their summons." From the summoner's side, only give the feedback that the summon failed, whether the subject was offline or resisting.

2. Allow -yoink to work across servers.

SCRYING

1. If -scry fails for any reason (whether the subject is offline or warded from scrying), only tell the scrier that their scrying attempt failed.

2. Remove spell component loss for failed scrying or reduce it down to only 1 charge instead of 5, because with these changes there will probably be about 50x more failures happening

3. Allow -scry to work across servers.

RELATED FIXES

1. When attempting to open a quarter door with letters attached with a full inventory, drop notes that couldn't fit into inventory on the ground instead of sacrificing them to the void


I can't speak for others but these changes would greatly increase my enjoyment and sense of mystery with the game. I don't want to OOCly know everything all the time, but with the way things are now it's hard not to, even if you're trying. I can only hope others perhaps feel the same way so I figured I'd put this forward for consideration.