Room-wide OOC

Hey everyone,

So the idea of a room-wide OOC command came up yesterday on the public channel and staff and I chatted about it a little bit after that, because I was one of the people who spoke up in support of it.  So they asked me to make a poll to see people's thoughts and opinions!  Also to test polls.  So here goes nothing.

A few thoughts here:  Firstly, staff have stated that it is an intentional choice not to have a room wide OOC option, this poll is not intended to challenge that or call into question their decision, just open things up for thoughts from the playerbase because I was asked to after a brief chat about it with Pilgrim.  I, and apparently a few others, used 'say ooc:' or similar prior to learning it was an intentional choice, but currently room-wide OOC isn't ok per staff policy, and shouldn't be used.  That said, there are arguments for it, mainly these two that I see.

1. If you're sorta slow rping with someone and they're aware that it's slow but someone else walks in, it could be useful to let them know this scene will be slower.  This is a common thing these days with people on from work or rping around taking care of children or other RL concerns.  Admittedly, this might be my MUSH background talking, but I love a good slow back and forth scene sometimes, it's a great way to break up my day when working from home.  Being able to pop a quick OOC hey we're playing slow, you're welcome to join but be aware! - could help let people know the status of the scene, and invite them to play without making them feel ignored because you're taking forever to reply.
2. Sudden RL needs, this one is sorta related to the above but - 'ooc one second, door' -- I, and I'm sure all of us, have had sudden RL interrupt a tense moment, and being able to say 'gimme a sec, sorry' is useful.  Like the above, it's about communicating the player's needs to the other players in the scene so that everyone knows what's up and nobody leaps to assumptions about a delay in a response.

Both of the above could *absolutely* be solved with flags or other potential solutions. A  SlowRP flag and a BRB flag could be added too, limiting the amount of random OOC chatter, which is the main concern of a roomwide OOC command from what's been discussed.  The main purpose, in my mind, is to facilitate player to player communication, which facilitates people finding ways to be able to tell cool stories together, which is what we're all after.  There are likely other, better solutions and pros and cons that I haven't listed, so let's chat a bit and give our feedback so staff can see what we think!

This might also be my MUSH background talking, but I'm a fan of OOC chatter or banter at least when it comes to smaller scenes or one on one. I vaguely recall from the tutorials that there is a way to specifically target someone to send an OOC message if you need to clarify something but what if you need to clarify something with the whole room? Or ask if people are comfortable with something before you do it, or want to check in and make sure everyone's okay with the way things are going.

I do understand the XCard system but I think combining it with at least a limited form of room OOC channel would make it better. To that end, I voted for a rate limited version since I know OOC chatter -does- break immersion on some level and this is an immersion heavy game so it should only be used sparingly. 

Related to polls, not the topic: This is for staff, because I don't have a better place to put it.

1.  Can't edit a poll once it's set up.  It's fine that way but putting it out there.

2. You can vote an endless number of times.  Everyone please only vote once.

3.  The percentages are.. wonky.  It's currently got two options at 66%, which is mathematically impossible, lol.

Hey there! Obligatory I also love that one particular word used in your character's sdesc as it was one I had never heard before and it is now my word of the week. It's just sort of fun to say.

But onto your poll!

I'm one of those people who is avidly AGAINST a roomwide OOC function. I've played on games with these capabilities and I've seen them used rather religiously to correct every single typo (I get it, though. I cringe and headdesk when I typo myself), to be like, "Oh, ugh what I just typed didn't make a lot of sense. Sorry folks," or for idle banter, or to LOL at someone's IC quip, or for just... weird... commentary on the current scene, to discuss the latest episode of The Bachelor, to flirt with another player, to yell at another player, to tell everyone every five seconds that you have to go AFK again and ugh about RL, to lament a lack of some IC game feature or otherwise complain about a mechanic, etc. etc. All of these were real examples, by the way.

As someone who sometimes has to abruptly leave a scene because of RL or sometimes has to go AFK without warning because of RL or who has to be a little slower on occasion because of RL, I get it. But in your example of you having a slowmote scene with someone and someone else walking in, you could OOCwhisper them, if there was a large concern with that. Though really, I wouldn't be concerned. I was literally slowmoting with someone on the main part of the deck last night while three-four other people were having snappy, shorter emote RP times around us and no one seemed to mind us drowning everyone in paragraphs and we just sort of each kept to our separate scenes within the same room.

Something that I saw brought up on gamehelp at some point, though, that I think is food for thought is: what if you disconnect and need to express that you need reposes? Do you just send an OOCwhisper to everyone? Announce it on gamehelp? What if your RP partners have gamehelp tuned out (guilty as charged at times over here)? Should staff put in another XCARD that can be used to express, "I need a repose!" But with the latter, how do you let people know just how far back you need? Maybe a way to attach to the card an OOC note of the last emote you saw? So I do recognize that there are times when you need to communicate OOCly with your RP partners in a timely fashion.

I also recognize that you (and others) are coming from a MUSH background which has a totally different culture there around OOC chatter. I've only played on one MUSH and I remember my confusion once when I posted my character up in a public space, flagged myself as looking for RP, and then waited. And when someone finally came in to RP with me, they first asked me OOCly if I was okay with them joining me. Like... yes? Of course? This is why I'm here! Different strokes for different folks. I'm one of those people who wants as little OOC interaction as possible in my IC world in order to keep me immersed. But I also fully understand that some people are used to more ways to OOCly communicate with their fellow players and so are probably missing that in Avaria.

But I'm really enjoying it, honestly.

Thanks for making this post! 

I want to elaborate a bit on what I voted, which is that what we have is fine (though I'm biased, as it's something me and Mistsparrow discussed a lot together).

We really don't want to make OOC chatter in-game normalized, and I've actually been considering a way to let a player mute OOCwhispers if they want to go silent. Sometimes for those with anxiety or who really like to just immerse themselves, any sort of freeform OOC communication in the middle of roleplay can be really jarring, potentially uncomfortable, and anxiety-inducing. While GameHelp is pretty chattery right now, I think that's fine because we're in alpha, and it's also possible to turn off GameHelp. You can see from reading HELP NOTIFY that we've gone to some lengths to decrease any sort of pressure on players regarding responsiveness to OOC communications. 

Also, I really really want people to freely use XCARD GREEN when it comes to situations involving needing extra time. We've made it so that XCARD GREEN doesn't shut off when you act -- so, you could theoretically leave it up in the room just to signal that you're going to be taking your time. It can be useful for a player with a screenreader, as well, to activate a green xcard and just leave it active until they decide to clear it.

Part of the reason that I want people to feel comfortable with using a green xcard is because that will normalize xcard use in general, and when a situation occurs where a player seriously feels like they must use a yellow or red xcard, they will feel less OOC pressure to ... not use an xcard at all, because it'll be weird, and people will think I'm making a big deal, and so on. We want people to feel comfortable with using the xcard if they need to. We don't want there to feel as if there is a mental obstacle to using an xcard -- it should be a relatively familiar and comfortable thing to do, because if someone is using a yellow or a red one, that means they're legitimately being triggered, and it's rough to ask them to also do something that they're unfamiliar with (using an unfamiliar xcard system) in order to halt a triggering situation. 

So, please get comfortable with using green xcards for being AFK, for doing slow RP, for needing people to slow down a bit due to your using a screenreader, and so on. The xcard systems don't require any OOC communication or strictly-verbalized boundary-drawing or comfort level with OOC chattiness, so while they are a little hit to immersion due to being OOC, they are more like formalized tools you can use for the sake of negotiating the story rather than just open freeform OOC chatting.

Great poll options and I appreciate the poll testing. 


Editing to add a note regarding reposting emotes, because I was half-AFK writing this and took forever on it and others posted meanwhile: If you haven't been logged out (like, your character is still there), you should be able to check your log to see what people did when your internet session was disconnected (and if you were logged out, people would have seen you disappear, and know that you needed emotes reposted). 

Another note! (This time I'm just making a new post, because I want it to stand out.) Mistsparrow and I had a quick conversation about this.

If you're in a situation (like you're working) where you're regularly taking anything longer than a two minute break of your attention from the game, it's better to just log out and log back in at another time. If you get attacked, you could get injured very seriously within two minutes of not paying attention. We don't want to have a culture where it's normal to be inside the game but also consistently taking more than five minutes between responses to others, because then it leads to confusion over what can be expected when you're roleplaying in the game. 

The expectation when you're in game should be that you're engaged with the world and plugged in -- and then, when you can't be plugged in, you unplug. If you want to roleplay slowly like while at work or something, and you're maybe posting every half-hour or so, please use the cutscene system.

I'll try to get in the habit of putting up regular public cutscenes with the ship NPCs in order to facilitate the start of this culture, and there may be some plot involved there, so please enjoy it!

Everyone on the ship so far should be able to participate in this one. I'll end it tonight.

I've been lurking around the forums since the game activity level has been intimidating me (lol) and I figured I'd put my two cents in, as the originator of the xcard idea (as a MUD tool at least).

TL;DR: The XCARD system can do most of it!

Personally, I've been on the fence about a room OOC. The pro: I like to facilitate OOC interactions that give players the ability to coordinate and to safely resolve potential player conflicts in the OOC sphere where they belong. The cons: I don't want to force people who don't like OOC chatter to have their immersion broken by people abusing the OOC say to just, you know, chat. I also don't want to sow the inevitable confusion when two people are playing and one tries to ooc say and the other had ooc turned off.

So. My current, untested, tentative solution that I think resolves most of the use cases described in this thread?

The XCARD system. Specifically! Adding a "reason" field to the xcard command.

That slow scene where you want to warn people on entering the room that it's going slowly? "XCARD GREEN slow RP in progress, please wait for replies"

That confusing moment where you need to clarify with the whole room what happened? "XCARD YELLOW confused what just happened, can we work it out in oocmail/on the forum/via your other OOC channel of choice"

Because when you really sit down and think about it, there's no reason you have to work out an ooc issue directly in game - all you really need is a way to indicate that issue in game, and to make ooc coordination between players possible. The XCARD system handles the first very well, I think, and as far as I know, Avaria gives plenty of ways to do the second.

p.s. unrelated note to pilgrim, posting on the forum seems to work great on mobile 👍

I think ooc whispers are fine, and just have roomwide flags for AFK, maybe an AFK with the estimated number of minutes so your RP partners can expect you to return after x minutes, a slow-emote warning flag if that's needed.

I was just about to say what Jahzat recommended! I like the idea of attaching a reason to a card to give indication of any weirdness that needs to be addressed quickly. 

That being said, I acknowledge that including an optional 'reason' to cards could imply to players that they MUST include one, possibly causing some anxiety around ooc boundary setting. The best idea I could come up with is leaving green, yellow, and red cards as is, and implimenting a 'purple card' system. This purple card could have an ooc message attached to allow explaination when the other colors don't quite fit the need. 

Hmm.... That's a good point.

I'm not actually sure what features XCARD has in Avaria, having not used it yet, but mine is designed with People With Anxiety (like myself) specifically in mind, so I included special keywords for things like placing it anonymously and needing to resolve a thing OOCly rather than having to say it yourself. (So you could say `xcard yellow ooc` or `xcard red anon`.) That's part of why I love the x-card system in general (it's from TTRPGs, if anyone is unfamiliar) - the fundamental concept behind it is creating a "low cost" tool for establishing player boundaries and expectations. Placing down a card (or entering a build-in command) is far less stressful and anxiety-inducing than having to speak up.

An extra "status message" card is an interesting idea! I'll have to think about that one, but I feel like it'd solve a lot of these conundrums better than adding an all-around `reason` field. (Although I would probably choose grey, to implicitly be "Not A Color" in the stoplights system.)