-optout Guidelines Could Be Clearer

[perseid]

So I realize a lot of the wording that was chosen is to encourage the playerbase to actually try the new system without reflexively taking a stance of maximum non-compliance. That said, I find the wording for the -optout command extremely unclear as far as both the acceptable scenarios to use it an and the consequences of using it. It's suggested as a "last resort" for example but also suggested that if a player doesn't want to proceed with the manacle rp they use it immediately.

Will there be consequences for players who use it without clear reasoning for why? Will captors be judged more severely if they're reported following an instance of their victim choosing to -optout? Again, I can appreciate that it's hard to get people to try new things with an open mind and so the wording of the guidelines is meant to steer people towards giving the system and its use in capture rp a chance. But right now the guidelines mostly amount to "Use this if you don't like what's happening. But try to do everything else first even if we'd prefer you use this as soon as possible if you're going to use it at all." which is very ambiguous.

I think these things are worth having strong explanations for because ultimately capture and subdual mechanics are (when you include things like the past subdual and -giveup implementations) being gradually redesigned towards a dark pattern meant to encourage their use by default. New players are inherently pressured into trying them and those players aren't going to have a strong sense of what the appropriate time to use these sorts of things is or what the etiquette should be (or even an awareness of all the commands at their disposal for that matter). I think this especially pertinent since there aren't a lot of commands that operate along similar lines in terms of being considered a purely ooc measure and yet which are meant to be used to effectively opt out of certain roleplay outcomes. Even -giveup ultimately has some minor amount of historical explanation for what using it represents is happening in-character. Along similar lines of feedback, I think it would be good if -optout was included as part of a combat dialogue at the very least or else it's hard to really say what good the command is at all to newer players since nothing about the interaction will even make them aware they have the choice going by the flow presented in the update notes.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

DMs are putting together an official ruling.

[perseid]

DMs are putting together an official ruling.

That's fair then. I do think the system itself is very promising but since it's so new there obviously hasn't been time to test the rest of it to give broader feedback or this would have been a more general thread. That was just what stood out to me from the initial notes in the update thread.

[With Darkness and Silence]

I encourage some kind of in-game statement of the fact it's not to be abused. A lot of players will never read anything and will definitely be abusing this in spite of an in-game warning, but it can at least deter with some big red text to scare the mass amount of non readers we have on this server.

[DM Poppy]

I'm not sure I follow entirely.

When using -optout you are given a clear warning on what is expected of you as a player to fulfil and if you agree, to type -optout again.

On the flip side. Players whom are present when you optout are given feedback. So they might consider an appropriate course of action in relation to their Character, Alignment etc etc. To report instances of what they feel to have been abuse, to the DM Team

Opting out sends you to fugue, introducing the Death Memory ruling and the 48 Hour ruling. So it fulfils all the same conditions as dying in PvP. This is also informed to the player whom opted out.

If their are more specific concerns you've discovered after using the system, please share.

[Aradin]

Hi, love more roleplay tools. Looks like a fun system! A couple questions:

Give Up/Opt Out
Give Up: Sends you to the fugue, removes manacles. An in-character choice to die rather than be restrained. There is no 'wrong' way to use Give Up; using this command will never be punished by the DM team.
Opt Out: Sends you to the fugue, removes manacles. An out-of-character choice to remove yourself from roleplay that breaks the rules, is distressing to you as a player, from situations where the other characters involved have logged off and there's nothing you can do besides wait in the hopes someone will return, etc. There is a 'wrong' way to use Opt Out; using this command carelessly will be punished by the DM team.

Right? Or wrong? And if right, why would I (when subdued and faced with manacles) use Opt Out when I could just use Give Up? It seems like the latter has the same effect with no risk of a slap on the wrist from DMs.

Submitting/Resisting/Fleeing
Do other characters know which choice my character makes, ie. does a text box or something pop up saying "This character is resisting the shackles!" "This character has chosen to flee!"?
If only the manacled person knows which option they chose (particularly between submitting and resisting), I'm having trouble figuring out why I would ever go with submitting when I could go with resisting, when resisting gives me all the same 'going along with it' roleplay potential while also giving me mechanical options to escape. Like does resisting mean that, as far as appearances go, you're going along with your captors but secretly you're trying to escape? Or is it an obvious effort other characters can detect? In which case, I don't see player captors treating resisting any different to fleeing, given that they're both quasi-hostile actions taken to avoid being manacled.

edit: I realized I can also just wait for the official ruling haha. So no pressure to answer.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

Give Up/Opt Out
Give Up: Sends you to the fugue, removes manacles. An in-character choice to die rather than be restrained. There is no 'wrong' way to use Give Up; using this command will never be punished by the DM team.
Opt Out: Sends you to the fugue, removes manacles. An out-of-character choice to remove yourself from roleplay that breaks the rules, is distressing to you as a player, from situations where the other characters involved have logged off and there's nothing you can do besides wait in the hopes someone will return, etc. There is a 'wrong' way to use Opt Out; using this command carelessly will be punished by the DM team.

Right? Or wrong? And if right, why would I (when subdued and faced with manacles) use Opt Out when I could just use Give Up? It seems like the latter has the same effect with no risk of a slap on the wrist from DMs.

Submitting/Resisting/Fleeing
Do other characters know which choice my character makes, ie. does a text box or something pop up saying "This character is resisting the shackles!" "This character has chosen to flee!"?
If only the manacled person knows which option they chose (particularly between submitting and resisting), I'm having trouble figuring out why I would ever go with submitting when I could go with resisting, when resisting gives me all the same 'going along with it' roleplay potential while also giving me mechanical options to escape. Like does resisting mean that, as far as appearances go, you're going along with your captors but secretly you're trying to escape? Or is it an obvious effort other characters can detect? In which case, I don't see player captors treating resisting any different to fleeing, given that they're both quasi-hostile actions taken to avoid being manacled.

You brought up a few things that reminded me some stuff I probably need to do. To answer what you asked...

Give Up: Sends you to the fugue, removes manacles. An in-character choice to die rather than be restrained. There is no 'wrong' way to use Give Up; using this command will never be punished by the DM team.

Not even a thing. -giveup has nothing to do with Manacles and can only be used while subdued.

Opt Out: Sends you to the fugue, removes manacles. An out-of-character choice to remove yourself from roleplay that breaks the rules, is distressing to you as a player, from situations where the other characters involved have logged off and there's nothing you can do besides wait in the hopes someone will return, etc. There is a 'wrong' way to use Opt Out; using this command carelessly will be punished by the DM team.

Correct. -optout also doesn't leave a corpse (to avoid implying suicide, primarily)

Do other characters know which choice my character makes, ie. does a text box or something pop up saying "This character is resisting the shackles!" "This character has chosen to flee!"?

You reminded me that I need to make text pop up on dialog option selections. During my testing it looked fairly obvious what was going on from my point of view, but I also know the ins and outs of the system. Adding this to my notes.

If only the manacled person knows which option they chose (particularly between submitting and resisting), I'm having trouble figuring out why I would ever go with submitting when I could go with resisting, when resisting gives me all the same 'going along with it' roleplay potential while also giving me mechanical options to escape. Like does resisting mean that, as far as appearances go, you're going along with your captors but secretly you're trying to escape? Or is it an obvious effort other characters can detect? In which case, I don't see player captors treating resisting any different to fleeing, given that they're both quasi-hostile actions taken to avoid being manacled.

If you're asking about the [Resist] option, I've changed it to [Struggle] to be more concise.

Struggle is a soft-consent option that rolls grapple check attempts. If the person trying to put you in manacles succeeds, nothing changes. It's just like as if you accepted the manacles. If they failed, then it shows you the failed grapple check in the combat log and no manacles are applied. However, I realized just now that the grapple check doesn't hostile if it fails. That may need to be corrected.

[Aradin]

Struggle is a soft-consent option that rolls grapple check attempts. If the person trying to put you in manacles succeeds, nothing changes. It's just like as if you accepted the manacles. If they failed, then it shows you the failed grapple check in the combat log and no manacles are applied. However, I realized just now that the grapple check doesn't hostile if it fails. That may need to be corrected.

Just want to make sure I have this completely right. If someone tries to manacle my character I can:
1) Accept the shackles. Auto-success, I'm manacled.
2) Flee the shackles. Auto-failure, I'm free.
3) Struggle against the shackles. There's a chance of either being manacled or being free, and neither party will really know until the grapple check is resolved.

I think I get it more now; struggling is really a roleplay action rather than a mechanical one. It's for situations where a criminal might want to be obstinate, like a street thug resisting arrest (without actually fighting) from the guard trying to shackle them. Or a prisoner of war trying to escape their captor. But it's entirely voluntary; you always have the nuclear yes (accept shackles) and no (flee shackles) options available to you. The notion is that you as the manacled person can choose the grey zone (struggle) as a roleplay device.
I still worry that PCs will see struggling as a hostile action and just treat people who do that as if they'd chosen to flee (in which case there's no real point to struggling, so I'd advocate for someone who successfully struggles out of manacles to NOT be auto-hostiled; if they wanted to actually get out of the situation, they'd just use the flee option. Struggling means they want to roleplay more with the guard, not necessarily fight them.), and that struggle will see any use at all when players will prefer to just accept, flee, or opt out, but I can see the roleplay potential now. Thanks for the answer.

[chris a gogo]

Surely someone attempting to put manacles on a character without there permission is subject to all the pvp guidelines anyway so they should already be hostile to the player they are attacking right?

[The GrumpyCat]

Reguarding -optout I'm going to run through the design process that got us where we are now.

Firstly keep in mind that, under any circumstances, in an OOC SENSE (PLEASE NOTE OOC!!!!) taking the manicles is a choice. You can always say 'no' to being manicled, if you don't like the way the rp might go.

So with that in mind, origionally we didn't have the -optout function, but there came up a concern about what if there was a situation where a pc, who entered the roleplay in good faith, but found it became distasteful. Maybe the other player is far too graphic with any torture/brutality emotes? Maybe The poor player is left in a room without rp for hours and hours on end? Or maybe a serious RL emergency crops up? So it was decided that some sort of 'emergency escape cord' could be put in - the '-optout'.

But the concern then came up of abuse of that. So say Bob the Drow attacks Ellie the Elf on the road, Ellie accepts the manicles. Bob goes 'oh great we can do some rp' then Ellie suddenly just types -optout and legs it, (completely ignoring all the other purely ic options for escape). That's not really fair on Bob is it? So -'optout' killed the pc if chosen. Which means that it's not entirely a 'get out of jail free' card.

The counterbalence that rose up after that is how people might use such rp in malevolent ways 'Oh the guards killed me in jail!' or 'It was so terrible I KILLED MYSELF!' (we really don't want to encourage suicide roleplay. Someone useing -giveup dies to their wounds, they arn't their slitting their wrists) So we made sure to add feedback that encouraged that such was not the case, the reason for the escape is nebulous, and up to others to determine.

We are going to be monitoring all aspects of manicles in the near future. It's a big change.

There are LOTs and I mean LOTS of fun, In Character ways to escape manicles. Ways that make roleplay, or encourage character builds, or are otherwise really nifty. And heck, truthfully? Even in the cases I mentioned above, most of that can be fixed simply with a tell to your captor. 'Hay I don't feel comfortable with this rp.' 'Hay I've not had any rp for ages, can you send someone down?' 'Hay I'm sorry but my dog is being sick, I need to log for a bit, do you mind?' That said, some team members were still very concerned about this being abused, or.. just having the extra saftey measure, so there it is.

With that being said, there are really very few reasons to ever need the 'optout' feature, and if we do see that it's being over used as a lazy 'get out' then we're not afraid of removing it entirely.
On the same vein, if we see a lot of people abusing the other side of it, putting players in postions which they feel extremely uncomfortable with, or using it for sexy elven fun times, we arn't afraid of removing Manicles themselves entirely.

Just to touch one other thing.

Give Up/Opt Out
Give Up: Sends you to the fugue, removes manacles. An in-character choice to die rather than be restrained. There is no 'wrong' way to use Give Up; using this command will never be punished by the DM team.
Opt Out: Sends you to the fugue, removes manacles. An out-of-character choice to remove yourself from roleplay that breaks the rules, is distressing to you as a player, from situations where the other characters involved have logged off and there's nothing you can do besides wait in the hopes someone will return, etc. There is a 'wrong' way to use Opt Out; using this command carelessly will be punished by the DM team.

The reason why we're policing -optout more than -giveup is you don't neccesarly get to 'opt in' to pvp. PvP just happens. Ellie Elf didn't get to choose wherther bob the Drow pvped her, and thus if she didn't want the rp that Bob seemed to be offering, giving her a way to avoid that is good. But if Ellie Elf has manaicles on her she (OOCLY!!!) AGREED to those manicles. Agreeing, then withdrawing that agreement for the easiest ooc out is somewhat poor form. I don't want 'optout' to replace all the other legitimate 'escape' options provided by the manicles.

I hope this helps. I intend to write a larger announcement later covering much of the same points, to adress other concerns.

[Xerah]

The counterbalence that rose up after that is how people might use such rp in malevolent ways 'Oh the guards killed me in jail!' or 'It was so terrible I KILLED MYSELF!' (we really don't want to encourage suicide roleplay. Someone useing -giveup dies to their wounds, they arn't their slitting their wrists) So we made sure to add feedback that encouraged that such was not the case, the reason for the escape is nebulous, and up to others to determine.

I don't know what this will actually say but, just like with subdual, people will weaponize that to say that they were killed by the evil paladins.

Sure, the idea that the "evil" paladins could go overboard and kill someone could be a fun story, but we all know how these situations actually play out in game. No matter what the RP efforts paladin does, time and time again, the other person can just -optout and die, putting on the blame on the paladin.

It all just feels super lame and cheap.

[DM Poppy]

The counterbalence that rose up after that is how people might use such rp in malevolent ways 'Oh the guards killed me in jail!' or 'It was so terrible I KILLED MYSELF!' (we really don't want to encourage suicide roleplay. Someone useing -giveup dies to their wounds, they arn't their slitting their wrists) So we made sure to add feedback that encouraged that such was not the case, the reason for the escape is nebulous, and up to others to determine.

I don't know what this will actually say but, just like with subdual, people will weaponize that to say that they were killed by the evil paladins.

Sure, the idea that the "evil" paladins could go overboard and kill someone could be a fun story, but we all know how these situations actually play out in game. No matter what the RP efforts paladin does, time and time again, the other person can just -optout and die, putting on the blame on the paladin.

It all just feels super lame and cheap.

You've got this backwards. The party whom opts out is sent to fugue with the Death Memory and 48 Hour Rule applied. They recall nothing of the capture and they leave behind no corpse to allow the accusation of unlawful execution or suicide etc.

The freedom to fabricate how they left is down to the captors. They are given the feedback to encourage this as well. Maybe they escaped, they were freed, they were escorted out by a Guard or they were executed. This allows you to fulfil the alignment and personality of your Characters

[Xerah]

Nice. If that's how it all layers out, then I think you've fixed that sort of issue.

[DM Poppy]

When you optout you are given some information on what you are about to do and what is expected of you, the player. You are then asked to confirm and type it again to apply.

At that point, players in close proximity are given feedback on what that player has done and how you can design their leaving and if you feel it was abuse of the function, to report it.

[Eira]

For a little more clarity, these will be the messages shown when -optout is used.

CAPTIVE

You have triggered the -optout command. This is an OOC method of escaping bound roleplay. By opting out, you agree that your character has no memories of these events and you are required to follow the same 48 hour rule as with PvP. If you are absolutely sure you wish to proceed with this, type the command again within the next 30 seconds to confirm.

CAPTOR (and others in vicinity)

<playername> has used the OOC -optout method to release themselves from the roleplay. Whatever their reasons, you may come up with a reason for closure. Perhaps a guard came to take them away, they escaped, were perhaps executed, or some other method. Please report this incident if you have any concerns.

No body will be left behind when the command is used; the person who used the command cannot claim anything about their captivity or how they got out. The captor will be able to define things, such as how they explicitly did not kill them.

[Amateur Hour]

Just for the sake of clarity, if you have a Mark of Destiny/Despair/Dauntlessness and use -optout, does that count as a death for the death counter?

[DM Poppy]

Just for the sake of clarity, if you have a Mark of Destiny/Despair/Dauntlessness/Disaster and use -optout, does that count as a death for the death counter?

Yes

[Eyeliner]

Surely someone attempting to put manacles on a character without there permission is subject to all the pvp guidelines anyway so they should already be hostile to the player they are attacking right?

I think this is implied but if it isn't spelled out anywhere it should be. I can see players applying manacles with zero RP trying to use the loophole that "it's not hostile, they didn't have to resist" to justify it.

[DM Poppy]

Surely someone attempting to put manacles on a character without there permission is subject to all the pvp guidelines anyway so they should already be hostile to the player they are attacking right?

I think this is implied but if it isn't spelled out anywhere it should be. I can see players applying manacles with zero RP trying to use the loophole that "it's not hostile, they didn't have to resist" to justify it.

The act of using shackles is not hostile. It is a concent based system. However. Their should be some RP involved, as with all aspect of the server

Should you refuse to be shackled, hostility would need to be established in writing emotes and speech before attacking still.

If hostility was established before the manacles are used then pvp can ensue. If not, it would need to be established.

It comes down to Be Nice as much as anything.

[Eyeliner]

The question though is does there have to be solid RP immediately before like a standard PVP encounter? Or is it okay to (as an example) emerge from stealth to manacle someone by surprise without any dialogue or just saying "gotcha!"

[The GrumpyCat]

The question though is does there have to be solid RP immediately before like a standard PVP encounter? Or is it okay to (as an example) emerge from stealth to manacle someone by surprise without any dialogue or just saying "gotcha!"

Are you planning on following up a rejection with pvp?

If so then yes, definatly give more rp than that. Heck, I honestly think giving more rp than that is a good idea in general!

When in doubt - give lots of rp.

[rosediode]

So my concern here is also with -optout, and how DMs plan to punish those who they feel use it in an abusive way. Defining things as 'An out-of-character choice to remove yourself from roleplay that breaks the rules, is distressing to you as a player, from situations where the other characters involved have logged off and there's nothing you can do besides wait in the hopes someone will return, etc.' can be problematic. What if I feel someone has broken the rules, and the team determines otherwise? What if I feel uncomfortable and the team determines the other person didn't mean to make me feel that way?

I think this is an extremely general way of defining what is acceptable and leaves a lot of room for people to feel forced in to roleplay they might find distressing or they feel is against the rules. I think this could create an environment where players feel a sense of fear over retribution for not consenting to capture rp that is not only from OOC player pressure, but also from fear of DM enforced punishment. I can think of a handful of times where as a player, I have already felt this within the current system, I would encourage some formalized clarity here on what abusing the mechanic entails.

[The GrumpyCat]

So my concern here is also with -optout, and how DMs plan to punish those who they feel use it in an abusive way. Defining things as 'An out-of-character choice to remove yourself from roleplay that breaks the rules, is distressing to you as a player, from situations where the other characters involved have logged off and there's nothing you can do besides wait in the hopes someone will return, etc.' can be problematic. What if I feel someone has broken the rules, and the team determines otherwise? What if I feel uncomfortable and the team determines the other person didn't mean to make me feel that way?

I think this is an extremely general way of defining what is acceptable and leaves a lot of room for people to feel forced in to roleplay they might find distressing or they feel is against the rules. I think this could create an environment where players feel a sense of fear over retribution for not consenting to capture rp that is not only from OOC player pressure, but also from fear of DM enforced punishment. I can think of a handful of times where as a player, I have already felt this within the current system, I would encourage some formalized clarity here on what abusing the mechanic entails.

I say this cautiously because I'm always unfortunatly suprised by how certain players can be particularly awful and imaginative in abusing roleplay systems for their own gain rather than playing fair, so please don't take what I'm about to say as a 100% guarantee but...
I imagine that in most cases where we think someone has been abusing it will be with rpr reductions at worst (again dependent on any other surrounding offences). But my concern really isn't with the single individuals using it.
Rather it's if we see that most people choose to lazily use this option in all circumstances, rather than using the ic options available to them.
The main threat here isn't so much for me 'We will punish people who abuse this!' more its 'If this option does get abused, we're not afraid to take it away.'

[perseid]

Just for the sake of clarity, if you have a Mark of Destiny/Despair/Dauntlessness/Disaster and use -optout, does that count as a death for the death counter?

Yes

Doesn't this sort of mean that if you're a marked character it's essentially being decided that part of your punishment is having to put up with gorey/uncomfortably explicit scenes or whatever else might make someone want to -optout? It's ultimately an escape hatch mechanism that creates a sense of active and ongoing consent for the capture rp. Being punished for using that ultimately means that part of your punishment is the loss of your freedom to consent or remove said consent to this kind of rp based on your personal comfort which seems unnecessarily vindictive.

[With Darkness and Silence]

For a little more clarity, these will be the messages shown when -optout is used.

CAPTIVE

You have triggered the -optout command. This is an OOC method of escaping bound roleplay. By opting out, you agree that your character has no memories of these events and you are required to follow the same 48 hour rule as with PvP. If you are absolutely sure you wish to proceed with this, type the command again within the next 30 seconds to confirm.

CAPTOR (and others in vicinity)

<playername> has used the OOC -optout method to release themselves from the roleplay. Whatever their reasons, you may come up with a reason for closure. Perhaps a guard came to take them away, they escaped, were perhaps executed, or some other method. Please report this incident if you have any concerns.

No body will be left behind when the command is used; the person who used the command cannot claim anything about their captivity or how they got out. The captor will be able to define things, such as how they explicitly did not kill them.

This well addresses my concern among other replies.