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Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2011 9:47 am — Post subject:
Day 11. Nothing really new to report: Adam has been committing more code, it’s looking pretty interesting. He is also including support for the ‘preference’-model of dealing with mutuality, so that can be added too.
With respect to the mutual invisibility thing (and this is my opinion as a reader of the thread, not a decision about what will or will not happen): The thread so far convinces me that it makes sense to be putting together code for both one-way and two-way invisibility, so that if Cyan were to decide to opt for one or both, they could do so with a minimum of hassle. I am not convinced, however, that mutuality absolutely has to come. Granted, it would be my personal preference, and I’ve named my reasons, other people have added theirs. But I’m not yet persuaded that this preference outweighs the objections we’ve heard from people like adi or even the reservations of someone like Marten. What I personally would most like would be for Cyan to introduce one-way invisibility for a trial period of a few months and then see what our experiences have been. If at that time we discover that the problems people have been worried about have actually arisen, we can see about pushing for step two (the code will be there, after all). I think that is a more careful and more rational approach than the all-or-nothing, all-in-one-go position rocketdog is urging.
But please bear in mind that this is not my, or even our, call. At the end of the day, Cyan decides what makes it into the client, not me or Adam or anyone else. We—those of us contributing to the thread, or the kind of working group Rudolfson has suggested, or someone who feels like sitting down and writing a mail to Chogon or RAWA—can make a case for it, the best case we can (which I think is pretty good), but it’s not going to be us deciding to do any more than to make the code available and raise the issue. The game isn't a democracy, and Cyan are not our elected representatives: they don't have to do anything we want.
Which brings us to the question of a poll. I think it is out of the question that a poll in this thread would tell us anything at all about popular support for introducing invisibility of either flavour into the game. Of the 4000 players logging into MOUL each month, not even a quarter are registered on this forum. And in the thread itself? I count 35 contributors so far. So that’s not even 1% of the current player base. Yay. A poll here would inevitably be crassly under-representative. It would also make all votes look alike: a poll does not distinguish between a mild, toss-of-the-coin kind of preference and a strongly held, well-reasoned conviction. It would provide no legitimation whatsoever for any decision at all affecting the 3900+ players who won’t take part (and Cyan certainly won’t see that any differently); the more I think about it, the less willing I feel to attach something to the discussion here that would only create the illusion of such legitimacy.
With respect to the mutual invisibility thing (and this is my opinion as a reader of the thread, not a decision about what will or will not happen): The thread so far convinces me that it makes sense to be putting together code for both one-way and two-way invisibility, so that if Cyan were to decide to opt for one or both, they could do so with a minimum of hassle. I am not convinced, however, that mutuality absolutely has to come. Granted, it would be my personal preference, and I’ve named my reasons, other people have added theirs. But I’m not yet persuaded that this preference outweighs the objections we’ve heard from people like adi or even the reservations of someone like Marten. What I personally would most like would be for Cyan to introduce one-way invisibility for a trial period of a few months and then see what our experiences have been. If at that time we discover that the problems people have been worried about have actually arisen, we can see about pushing for step two (the code will be there, after all). I think that is a more careful and more rational approach than the all-or-nothing, all-in-one-go position rocketdog is urging.
But please bear in mind that this is not my, or even our, call. At the end of the day, Cyan decides what makes it into the client, not me or Adam or anyone else. We—those of us contributing to the thread, or the kind of working group Rudolfson has suggested, or someone who feels like sitting down and writing a mail to Chogon or RAWA—can make a case for it, the best case we can (which I think is pretty good), but it’s not going to be us deciding to do any more than to make the code available and raise the issue. The game isn't a democracy, and Cyan are not our elected representatives: they don't have to do anything we want.
Which brings us to the question of a poll. I think it is out of the question that a poll in this thread would tell us anything at all about popular support for introducing invisibility of either flavour into the game. Of the 4000 players logging into MOUL each month, not even a quarter are registered on this forum. And in the thread itself? I count 35 contributors so far. So that’s not even 1% of the current player base. Yay. A poll here would inevitably be crassly under-representative. It would also make all votes look alike: a poll does not distinguish between a mild, toss-of-the-coin kind of preference and a strongly held, well-reasoned conviction. It would provide no legitimation whatsoever for any decision at all affecting the 3900+ players who won’t take part (and Cyan certainly won’t see that any differently); the more I think about it, the less willing I feel to attach something to the discussion here that would only create the illusion of such legitimacy.
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But you raise a good point about tracking experiences, and about figuring out criteria for deciding when things get "too much". Most of our, or at least my, information to date has been anecdotal: people turn up at the Guild of Greeters, where I hang out on occasion, with stories to tell, or I hear stuff from other players who know I have an interest and have been thinking about this for a bit. Cyan of course sees the support tickets, but those only go in when people have made so much trouble that there's a desire for them to be banned from the Cavern entirely, and this thing is still below that threshold: the beauty of an individual invisibility function is precisely that it can distinguish between one person's capacity for coping with disturbing behaviour and another's.
