Getting shipments through telephones.

[Geo_Zeus]

Like the title says, the shipment NPC system is as uninteractive as it gets, my idea was that HC of each faction would have specific phone numbers to plugs, they'd give those phone numbers out to whoever they want(reducing the amount of racket abuse). You'd type out the phone number on one of the payphones and you'd be able to order whatever shipments through that.

Edited yesterday at 07:41 PM by Geo_Zeus

[KingJewMonaclu]

i actually like this a lot. +1.

[ASkull]

+1  great idea for RP and would make more sense to why you would need to pick up a shipment compared to “oh talk to this guy and he will tell you where the shipment is in 10 minutes” 

[handsome]

-1

[Chuilliov2]

+1 would fuck with this hard, adds RP and is just cool as fuck

 

[Canadian-bacon]

Cool thought, maybe better for drugs instead of typing it to every individual shipment, or a group of shipments (1 number to access multiple guns for instance)

but

1) What stops meta/powergame/racket abuse of someone who isn't HC sharing the number with others? I guess the default argument is "HC would know they did not give that person the number" but someone the HC gave the number to could give it to that other person, or the HC faction could lie to try and find a reason to pk someone.
2) Would the number have to be entered every single time? I'm sure someone would eventually whine about having to do that each time, the novelty of the 'rp' would wear off after the first hundred uses. There's a certain threshold of 'interactivness' that someone can tolerate before being annoyed, functionality over form when its a menu you will interact with thousands of times.
3) Does this suggestion aim to completely remove the existing racket NPCs and replace them with payphones and number in totality? This would likely be a fairly hefty vendor recode on the backend.

 

[Geo_Zeus]

56 minutes ago, Canadian-bacon said:

Cool thought, maybe better for drugs instead of typing it to every individual shipment, or a group of shipments (1 number to access multiple guns for instance)

but

1) What stops meta/powergame/racket abuse of someone who isn't HC sharing the number with others? I guess the default argument is "HC would know they did not give that person the number" but someone the HC gave the number to could give it to that other person, or the HC faction could lie to try and find a reason to pk someone.
2) Would the number have to be entered every single time? I'm sure someone would eventually whine about having to do that each time, the novelty of the 'rp' would wear off after the first hundred uses. There's a certain threshold of 'interactivness' that someone can tolerate before being annoyed, functionality over form when its a menu you will interact with thousands of times.
3) Does this suggestion aim to completely remove the existing racket NPCs and replace them with payphones and number in totality? This would likely be a fairly hefty vendor recode on the backend.

 

The first point, I think, adds even more to the RP. Instead of dealing with "This new recruit can see the whole racket and can buy whatever shipment they want whenever they want" we are dealing with "Okay this person is leaking info he shouldn't be, let's crack down." Now i understand the point about that maybe being abused for PKs, but I think HC would still need proof of who did what at the end of the day for the PK to be valid, which if you think about it, no more or less proof is needed with the current system we have.

For the second point, logically the number should be set up by HC, and obviously there would need to still be whitelist access to use the number. Since phone numbers have to be at least 5 digits, the racket numbers could be 4 digits for ease of access. I get your point about this type of system getting dull over time, but I still think it's a good step to the right direction.

Now for the third point, what is "The right direction" that i just mentioned? Well I think the vendor recode is long overdue already. We've had basically the same system for 5 years now, besides some UI changes, and as far as interactivity goes it's gotten pretty stale. I think the community as a whole should collectively think up ideas to replace the current system we have, at every aspect. This suggestion with the payphones came to me because I was trying to think of a better shipment system. Now I know that making a whole new vendor system is a tall order, but small implementations can take us there.

[Canadian-bacon]

57 minutes ago, Geo_Zeus said:

"Okay this person is leaking info he shouldn't be, let's crack down."

Yea but if i get pk'ed from your faction and become resentful I can go around on discord / an alt char telling all your associates the number to fuck with you. I guess there is a possible way to "re-roll" the number to change it up but it just means more of a backend recode.

If it's whitelist then there's no point in the number besides being a little gimmick, you'd be denying access to the possible RP of an associate who is using or doing something they shouldn't be in a criminal org and if the whitelist truly controls who can buy what then entering a silly number is pointless and just becomes redundant, I guess the solution is simply requiring it to be entered once per session so it does not become cumbersome, but I easily see a guy going LOA, getting back on, not remembering the number and hopping into discord #made-men-ic "@here hey what's the fucking number for the fucking racket i forgot"

The system has changed once significantly. at least the back end (and some interaction elements on the front end) so it's already far superior to what we launched with, and as it's a system that you would interact with more than a dozen times daily it is purely function over form. It needs to work, and it does. 

In the same vein, since it's a system every user interacts with constantly the idea that you can add 'RP' interactions to it that won't become redundant is nearly impossible. Even if you think it's epic to enter a number every time to get a shipment there's someone that will think it's cringe. The intended use case will be run out and optimized by users.

I'm not saying it can't be done (a recode) but it takes time and all the niche questions and holes that I'm asking and poking need to be answered with full diction before I can even consider making a mock write up for it. So keep it rolling.