A long time ago there was an app which allowed for quick and nigh-instant notifications on the status of the playerlist. It was called Discovery Server Watcher and it did several nice things. Amongst other things, it would let you add tags and charnames which you would get notified about if they logged or entered a system. It also informed you on the status of POBs (back when the POB information page on the forums, you know, worked).
It was an overall very nice tool. You would use it to get quickly notified if someone from your faction logged (so that you can join them perhaps), find out if there were enemies online instantly and generally increased pvp interactions. I know that certain LPI players also used it to track known smugglers and bounty hunters used it to track bounty targets.
I would like to see something like that back, considering we have a new API now this can be set up much more easily and with much less resource-waste than the way it was done originally (scraping HTML is one of the worst ways imaginable for obtaining data). Additionally, considering there is a very nice and friendly (both for users and developers) notification system available in the form of Discord, such a tool would be quite easy to set up and make available to everyone.
I feel like there's going to be a ton of people saying that shadowlogging is powergaming but honestly, there is no way to prove shadowlogging happens and theres no way to get rid of the in game playerlist. Plus for people in crappy Asian timezones like myself, its practically the only way we can see some action because of how empty the server is in our timezone. Basically, I like this idea.
People cried metagaming, but honestly, all it really did was automate the process of someone taking items in the playerlist and pasting it into a Skype e-chat.
It should come back. It makes no difference to interactions at the end of the day aside from convenience. The people complaining about it just want a justification to latch onto to give credence to their complaint.
This is an interesting subject. On the one hand, this sort of tool can feed the fears of "shadow logging." But, that being said, being able to tell when allies log in would be a nifty benefit which may out-weigh the potential maliciousness.
It would also make being individual bountied something to concern oneself over, since your movements would be tracked. Actions beget consequences, and more often than not, I see many individual bounties being left un-fulfilled. This would also incentivize bountied targets to perhaps work out a deal with the people they've earned ire from?
Honestly, I'm for it. Especially because there is limitless potential for increasing RP interactions. "Hey, my favorite restaurant just logged in! Good excuse for me to jump on, as well."
If it proves to be more detrimental to the server environment than beneficial, then it can always be deactivated again. If being able to see when friends log in when I'm not online means taking the risk of being hunting on some characters, then that's honestly a risk I'm willing to take. Player counts have been promising as of late, so let's turn up the fire and make it easier to coordinate random encounters!
The Gaelic Wyvern Inn
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Back then, "shadow logging" was simply logging in to interact with certain someone. Term was coined up by some over paranoid sensitive bunch of people who thought everyone is ought to get them. Newsflash, that's called harassment and has always been possible to report with sufficient proof. People need to understand that not all interactions in immersive universe is beneficial to them and those where they lose something are simply part of roleplay environment.
I know of some people who I played with who was actually conducting harassment against certain someone as he or she logged to combat that specific low-combat-skill player at every opportunity. It's bullying, nothing else and if I saw this nowadays, I would certainly tell that to him or her.
That is an announcement I missed, since I came back to Discovery around July last year. Personally, I've never had a problem with using the player list to seek interactions with others. I mean, Digital Anvil put it in the game - It's there to be used, right?
Anyways, it's never an issue I've personally been faced with before, I was just mentioning it so that I could counter it with more positive benefits. We are in 2018 - Any tools we can utilize to get players logging in more often is a welcome sight to me!
Seriously, I would LOVE for this to be implemented. How cool would it be that every time my fiancé and I log our mobile restaurant, people would be watching for the name "The.Celtic.Dragon.Inn" just to have an excuse to log in for a lite RP encounter? I do want - Very much so.
Likewise, I just joined an official faction for the first time in literal years. It would be infinitely awesome to be able to tell when fellow faction-mates log in while I'm fiddling around doing non-FL things, so that I have the chance to join them and stir up even more activity.
Any potential downsides to this are far outweighed by the potential gains and benefits. To put it in the words of Jean Luc Picard: "Make it so!"
The Gaelic Wyvern Inn
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This is the sort of thing which may take some work. I see that utrack has his code open-source, which may be a good thing in terms of getting the software running again.
I may consider putting this on my project list. If I have no luck getting his version up to spec, writing it up from the ground up merely sounds time consuming. Not necessarily difficult.
I'm not making any promises, but it sounds like something fun to do.
Quote:writing it up from the ground up merely sounds time consuming. Not necessarily difficult.
Seems to be pretty easy tbqh, at least on node just use discord.js, some db to store the configs and you can probably be done in an afternoon with not much functionality.
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