Optional time blackouts

Tahquil

I'm wandering what people think of having optional time blackouts. These blackouts are basically a set time a player can config for themselves in which they won't be able to log into Achaea.

Example : I have something important to do but I am constantly getting distracted by Achaea. With this, I could config a blackout period like 0300GMT to 0400GMT in which I wouldn't be able to log into Tahquil. If I was already online I would have a 10 minute warning, then a 5 minute warning, then a warning every minute until I am automatically logged out and unable to log into until 0400GMT. If I wished to change it, I would have to wait until I was able to log on and then change it.

This is suppose to promote better gaming habits of the players. I know how hard it can be to resist Achaea especially when it is the more attractive alternative of studying or going to class and this is suppose to help people be more functional in OOC areas.

Santar

Pointless feature. Players can manage this on their own with a clock and a shred of willpower.

Tvistor

I guess there's nothing wrong with implementing it and some people have a problem but I'm sure there are better alternatives.

(see: having a clock and a shred of willpower)

Xith

Don't know whether to like or disagree with Santar's post.

Addiction is the continued use of a mood altering substance or behavior despite adverse dependency consequences, or a neurological impairment leading to such behaviors.

I know some games have a vacation mode and things.

I've heard of people recently wondering what they can do short of getting shrubbed to make themselves

leave Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands for a while, cause if they can come back, they will.

The only other known way to successfully leave Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands is for real life to 

suddenly become much more interesting (preposterous, right?).

On other instances, players might be coerced to forfeit their habit by way of the administration making

Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands a less enjoyable place to hang around, either by unfavourable game 

changes or unfair treatment of said players.

In other games I can think of, vacation or other 'away from game' modes are usually enabled to prevent negative effects to the game account while the player is away, things that can't really happen to Achaean characters.

It could be done as an alternative to SUICIDE, where the player confirms that they want to leave, but cannot set times or anything, but instead accept a fixed time of 7-12 days, after which they can either return and set vacation mode again or just not return. There's a saying though that habits take 30 days to break, so I figure that timespan was within the realm of returning to the addiction, good news for Achaea.

Cosmetically, maybe have this form of self-shrubbery turn the player into a plant of their choice, or maybe turned to stone, like a gargoyle only to reawaken when their stony, 7-month exoskeleton fully decays. :O

Oooooh, I like it.

Tvistor

Some people do get themselves shrubbed by messaging administration as far as I know.

Nizaris

I see this as being one point short of "self-shrubbing". It's limiting the times available to log in on any given day, not leaving for a few days. So, different feature, there.

That said, this can be accomplished with a little know-how and configuration in one's router to block ports 23 and 2003 over a certain time frame. That said, being able to accomplish something client-side, so to speak, is not itself a good reason to not implement something; cf. latest landmarks change and Sarapis' comment that it was done to provide a server-side implementation of autowalkers.

In regards to the willpower comment: it is often hard-to-impossible for someone who is truly addicted to exert the willpower necessary to quit any addiction. That's why it's an addiction, and not, say, a preoccupation.

Myself, I would not use this. I presently use the client-side solution outlined above to block the requisite ports at night. Should I really require more time to get something done, I log out of mudlet and into the nexus client, utterly deprived of my scripts and system. This gives me the flexibility that I need to get something done in an extra 20 minutes or so, while at the same time reinforcing the behaviours that I need to reinforce in myself. Presumably, this feature would deprive me of that flexibility.

Finally, I do not see IRE implementing this, unless the demand is very high. It simply does not make business sense for them to limit access to the game. Of course, a high demand for a feature to limit access could compensate for this loss of access, and, properly spun, serve as a PR coup -- albeit unlikely.

Eld

Santar said:

Pointless feature. Players can manage this on their own with a clock and a shred of willpower.

But I own neither...

Antonius

If you don't want to study, or go to class, then you're not going to do those things. Even if you can't play Achaea, there are still plenty of other things you could do that are going to be more attractive options. While I can understand the reasoning, I really don't think it's going to help much in the end.

Sylvance

I really don't get the resistance to this. Nor the bullsh- comments like 'lol just don't log in n00b'.

I also cannot get my head around the idea that this would somehow lose IRE money. Someone who enjoys the game (i.e. the type of player that buys OOC credits) is still going to enjoy it if they are given a tool to manage their time more effectively. Actually, they will probably like the game even more.  Someone who feels the need to self-shrub (possibly because there was nothing like this available to help them to manage their game-time), now there's someone who won't buy credits.

Xith

Solution #2 - add a 5 bound credit cost to put one of these 'blackouts' into effect. Now the idea makes money.

Trevize

Personally, I have to agree with Santar. Log in or don't.

Seems silly to make this an in-game feature.

Horatio

Sylvance said:

Someone who feels the need to self-shrub (possibly because there was nothing like this available to help them to manage their game-time), now there's someone who won't buy credits.

Not sure I really understand the logic behind this statement. Most of the people I know that have asked to be shrubbed (or asked for the Garden to change his/her password) fell into one or both of two categories: A) Had something very important coming up IRL and didn't need the distraction, and got so enveloped in the world of Achaea that it effected their real mood and reached a breaking point. These people were also very supportive of the game by way of credit purchases.

Also, we can leave discussion of addiction out of this since that's an extreme case where an in-game feature like a blackout time or vacation mode is seriously unlikely to help even if it is implemented.

Sylvance

Addiction isn't an extreme case of anything. It's just a dirty word. Nobody's suggesting that there's a bunch of people clucking and in need of rehab.  If the word is distracting/upsetting, then sure let's switch it for something nicer, but that's what we're talking about.

I digress. If somebody self-shrubs for X months, what I'm saying is that that's X months in which they will definitely not be making credit purchases. If instead they 'just' can't play for 6 hours a day, they can go on playing and paying.  I'm not sure what there is to disagree with there.

Tarkanian

Would be an even better idea if this can be forced, ie, MIND COMMAND @SYNBIOS BLACKOUT ME 10 RL YEARS.

And make the blackout extend to forums.

Horatio

Sylvance said:

I digress. If somebody self-shrubs for X months, what I'm saying is that that's X months in which they will definitely not be making credit purchases. If instead they 'just' can't play for 6 hours a day, they can go on playing and paying.  I'm not sure what there is to disagree with there.

It's entirely baseless to assume that somebody who's wanting to self-shrub for X amount of months would much rather have the option to restrict their access to Achaea with daily blocks of time. It's also baseless to assume that the self-shrubbed players wouldn't be purchasing credits in their off time. I know if I had to shrub myself for say, 2 months, to take care of stuff in my life, I wouldn't be giving up my Iron Elite membership. And, if in that time there was a big credit sale or a cool promotion tied to credit purchases, I'd definitely buy credits while self-shrubbed. Maybe I'm the exception to the rule, but I doubt it.

Aside from whether or not an in-game mechanic like this would help or hurt business, I just don't feel that it's Achaea's job to make sure we're all responsible people. Achaea's not the problem if people are having a hard time prioritizing their shit.

Sylvance

Horatio said:

Sylvance said:

I digress. If somebody self-shrubs for X months, what I'm saying is that that's X months in which they will definitely not be making credit purchases. If instead they 'just' can't play for 6 hours a day, they can go on playing and paying.  I'm not sure what there is to disagree with there.

It's entirely baseless to assume that somebody who's wanting to self-shrub for X amount of months would much rather have the option to restrict their access to Achaea with daily blocks of time. It's also baseless to assume that the self-shrubbed players wouldn't be purchasing credits in their off time. I know if I had to shrub myself for say, 2 months, to take care of stuff in my life, I wouldn't be giving up my Iron Elite membership. And, if in that time there was a big credit sale or a cool promotion tied to credit purchases, I'd definitely buy credits while self-shrubbed. Maybe I'm the exception to the rule, but I doubt it.

Aside from whether or not an in-game mechanic like this would help or hurt business, I just don't feel that it's Achaea's job to make sure we're all responsible people. Achaea's not the problem if people are having a hard time prioritizing their shit.

Can we quit with the straw-manning?  Nobody, anywhere in this thread, has suggested that it's Achaea's job/responsibility/moral imperative, to implement this.  The question is whether it would be implementable/desirable to do so.

Talonia

Most of you are making very poor arguments against implementing this proposal. Players are not being coddled per se because there remains an element of willpower in using a self-lockout, it's merely a matter of when you exercise that willpower. In many cases, people tend to be more rational, perceptive, and all-around better at calculating expected utility when they are making decisions further in advance, removed from various stresses. So at the start of a semester, a student knows she really shouldn't be on Achaea some weeks from now when midterms are coming up, and she could easily make the decision to set a future self-lockout for that week to help herself do well. After she's been studying for 12 hours straight during midterms week, the stress makes it a lot easier to self-justify an hour of Achaea here or there even when sleep would be much more rational and beneficial. Why not give people tools to help them help themselves? That is all this kind of proposal is suggesting. This is like putting your credit cards in the freezer to resist impulse buys - it's just another manner of exercising self-control, which can ultimately be quite empowering.   

Synbios

Tarkanian said:

Would be an even better idea if this can be forced, ie, MIND COMMAND @SYNBIOS BLACKOUT ME 10 RL YEARS.

And make the blackout extend to forums.

I already have blackout. It's called school.

Trevize

Talonia said:

Most of you are making very poor arguments against implementing this proposal.

I agree. I also haven't seen a good argument for it. In my eyes, it's like an idea to change the sky color... most arguments for and against would be silly. And the idea itself is silly. I know that's a rather extreme example, but that's how I view this proposal. I don't know, maybe it would be useful to some, in which case I have no real objection. I just don't see any merit in it.

Mathonwy

Haha, man, this thread.

Whether or not it costs IRE money/is difficult to code/etc aren't the sort of claims we can make with any sort of substance. They're simply not our concern as players, which someone (@Cardan, I think?) made clear in one of the previous threads. Maybe it will cost IRE money. Maybe the blackouts en masse somehow create a quantum singularity that consumes all of existence. Neither of these claims are backed with a shred of evidence on our side.

(If the blackouts do cause a singularity, I will begrudgingly concede that that actually is our concern. My hypothetical bad.)

The trollish comments about willpower or the lack thereof are also about as applicable in any of the other threads proposing 'quality of life' changes to the game-- client-side autowalking wouldn't be necessary if you had the shred of willpower to learn where you were going text-directionally or learned to code to develop an autowalker or accrued enough capital to buy Achaea and/or IRE and pay coders to simply put your character where s/he needed to be any time s/he needed to be there. Absolutely none of those concerns, again, has any bearing on whether or not this is a good idea.

All of that being said, it is a good idea per the criteria of being able to benefit people while having absolutely no (or perhaps exceptionally few) repercussions as it pertains to the game itself. It might actually improve the game, in that it could probably help prevent binge playing and the burnout that often accompanies that playstyle. Even if that weren't the case, though, I feel like it would help the people it's designed to help and the people who don't need it or don't want it wouldn't use it.

Tahquil

Man, autowalkers made my sky a lovely shade of rose pink.

Trevize

Mathonwy said:

(If the blackouts do cause a singularity, I will begrudgingly concede that that actually is our concern. My hypothetical bad.)

You'd have Babel's approval on this idea, in that case.

Tahquil

Yue

I would not mind this feature if it could be forced.

Averi

@ Above conversation about shrubbing

One thing I loved about being shrubbed was that I didn't have to tell 237194696437826 people that I needed to concentrate on school for the term and i won't be coming on and blah. Instead, they looked and saw "oh hay, she's a tree. We should probably not bother her with house stuff/random events/random comments/etc etc". If I ever felt like popping in for a moment or two, I could do so without having ALL the voices in my head and without being kept there. Saying I will play 5 minutes of achaea literally became 5 minutes of achaea. The problem with logging on and just qqing is that literally, the process of qqing takes FOREVER. I always find that whenever I'm about to qq, someone decides it's a good idea to start talking to me about something, etc. Not that I don't enjoy conversation. Anyone who knows me knows I to talk but whenever that happens I'm always like -flap- .

I always find that when I don't have achaea to procrastinate with, I find a different way to do so. Personally, I probably wouldn't use this feature but I think it would be nice to have. It might be really useful in making me pay attention to the sheer amount of time I spend on it though. I currently find it most useful to simply play achaea after you finish doing all the other things because I know that once I get on, I'm not coming off. But this year, with senioritis and such, it's hard to get motivation to do things. >.< 

Edit: Dunno why the formatting is weird.

Edit Edit: That being said, I'd personally love it if there was a honours line that said something like:

Averi will be sleeping peacefully from 13 Chronos 619 to 15 Sarapin 620.

Then there'd be less people worrying about others when they disappear for a few days or so. It's impossible to tell everyone about one's plans and people often forget so this feature might help.