We already have a feature that allows us to "Watch" a thread, which lights an "eye" when someone posts in said thread.

We also have a feature that allows us to "view" all public forum activity from an individual's profile.

Is there any way we could in essence, combine these and give us a "Follow" feature, that would light up that eye anytime an individual that we have followed posts in any public forum.

These followers would be anonymous (meaning you would have no idea who is following you), but your profile could show how many followers you had.

This feature would only work for current characters only, so as not to break anyone's incog attempts.

I'm not sure how hard this would be to code, but I'm sure someone could enlighten us of that side of it.

Opinions? Thoughts?

Well, I'm already annoyed with even other IG forums in other games turning more "social" with following features, so, no.

Also, it couldn't help the game in the RP aspect either.

I don't really care for the "You've got x people following your activity!" thing but generally I like the idea.

While it isn't really hard to do it manually.. I think it'd be nifty for a "watch" kind of thing for a specific players posts.

Also , Zwei, how would this affect RP at all?

Kyubey, I meant that it won't affect the RP aspect, therefore it would be useless to the game in the RP sense.

Anything that encourages someone to be more active on the various forums has the potential to impact the RP aspect of the game indirectly, so I wouldn't be so assertive in it being 'useless' to be honest. It does have just as much potential for negative impact (stalking players, harassing them, etc) but as with the positive impacts it might have it's all stuff that can be done anyway with just a tiny amount of work.

The only negative I see here is the time required to code it up (any other negative results are there with or without this and need to be tackled independently of this), but then it's a question of what real positives do we get for that time? I can't see any major benefits, personally, so while I'm not against it I can't say I'd have it any higher on a to-do list than "testing a greyer shade of grey on that one button over there" for me. 

Actually, I think this has a ton of potential to help even the Role Playing side of the game.

You could "follow" those that you either have roleplayed with in the past, or were hoping to roleplay with in the future, and would be alerted immediately if they posted/started a thread, giving you the chance to jump in if you like.

Also, keeping an eye on the streets/business districts is not always your first priority, even if you love that part of the game, you have obligations elsewhere. This would give everyone a heads-up on current events and potential threads/posts they could read/contribute to that they might not normally be receptive to.

Only plus I see from this is the fact that currently Leaders/Hands are punished for their users inproper activity in forums, this would make it easier to track such activity.

But even then, I see that as taking the easy route instead of actually doing a bit of work. I already tire so much of how the "work" ethic in the game has been bit by bit removed to make things easier. No longer is skill or hard work often needed to progress, just luck.

And when the fuck did this become a "job" rather than a video game?

I hear this a ton, but seriously...

I'm not even close to lazy.

It's a game that should reward strategy, tactics, effort, doing the right things, being willing to work that little bit harder than the other guy... so the reason people complain about the dumbing down and the over simplification is that if it gets to the stage that it's purely (even more of) a clickmonkey button mashing race with zero thought or strategy required, it would no longer be fun. 

As for this causing a dumbing down? Not really. The reality is that the function is already there in terms of being able to view a single users activity, this would just be providing a flag/notification against new activity for the user(s). Technically it's something you could do manually without it being coded into MR at all, but it'd take a small bit of coding knowledge to do it and would only provide the notifications via email or an RSS feed reader rather than in game. 

And when the fuck did this become a "job" rather than a video game?

I dont think I've ever regarded MR as a Video Game. Its an Online MMORPG. Different than a simple button bashing video game.

Sal, you are one of the hardest workers on here, so don't take it personally that I view your idea as a means to removing actual work. Simply call it as I see it.

How many people say that their CLs don't give them anything to do? Or that the game isn't fun as you have nothing to do other than click buttons? We get people moan like that all the time and quite rightly.

Why then do people not create jobs such as a position in the family where the person would not only monitor activity in Forums, but create a means to use that information to reward members for such acitivity?

Now your idea would obviously enhance that aspect and make it far easier for someone to monitor these things, but it would also largely take away any actual work they need to do and so it kinda removes the aspect of giving them something to do whilst online, in my view.

I hope you can see where I'm coming from.

I understand the concept, yet, despite having interest in several street speakers - I would dislike being notified every time they posted. Obviously, this is just my perspective. As previously mentioned, it's already very easy to view a players forum activity. This is why I'm uncertain whether this feature is necessary.

I have no problem with having a specific notification for "watched" people.

I don't think we need any sort of 'followers' display in profiles though. That seems a little much.

Achilles poked you.

Sounds like a popularity contest for sad fucks to me.

"Oh you have 39 followers? lol ul, I have 56 m8"

P_habulis retweeted

I doubt you'll have any tbh.

Reply by: Barry at Dec 09, '14 17:32

P_habulis is now following Barry