Ares Tour Feature Feebdack

[Faraday]

Since I know not everyone who plays Ares games is on the Ares forums, I figured I’d cross post this here.

Ever since retiring the web client screen, I’ve been contemplating ways for someone to check out a game more easily from the web portal. Here is what I’ve come up with, and I’m interested in what y’all think.

Historically, guests have been pre-designated shared characters. connect guest (or tour in Ares) will connect you to the first available guest, so you can chat as Guest-1 or whatever. As soon as Guest-1 logs out, the next person who logs in as a guest can re-use Guest-1.

Having shared characters has always presented issues. For example, you don’t want the next Guest-1 to see what the prior Guest-1 had said in PMs. This also makes it impossible for guests to submit requests, receive mails, etc. since they can’t necessarily get back to the same character. Also there are security issues with this, because the first Guest-1 could cause mischief, but their IP would be overwritten by the second Guest-1. Finally, shared characters are unsuitable to a web app for many reasons.

But what if it was easy to make a temp character that wasn’t shared?

Here’s the pitch:

• connect guest/tour will now just auto-generate a character for you with a temporary name and password.
• A new ‘tour’ button on the web portal does the same thing.
• This is a regular character, same as if you’d created them yourself from the login screen.
• If you decide to stay, you can just rename them and keep on playing. Otherwise, that char will go into the idle queue for recycling.

I’m open to suggestions on how these temporary chars should be named. They’ll get recycled eventually by the idle system, but not necessarily right away. So any naming system needs to account for potentially a lot of different temp names. A few possible ideas:

• An easy system mirroring tradition would just be to let you configure a base temp name (“Guest”, “Visitor”, “Wanderer”, etc.) with a number onto the end. So the first guest ever would just be Guest-1 and eventually you’d work your way up to Guest-999 or whatnot.
• Common practice these days is having a big list of adjectives and nouns. Combine them to get a silly temp name like “TriumphantPanda” or “HappyWombat”.
• You could specify a list of guest names, like [ “RedGuest”, “BlueGuest”, “GreenGuest”…] but if all them had been taken and not yet recycled, it could tack a number on the end.

[dvoraen]

@Faraday This is my initial, immediate reaction, so I have not really sat down and thoroughly thought this through.

• tour lets you create a (temporary) character flagged as a guest, with a hardcoded -Guest — or equivalent, maybe (Guest)? — tacked on to the name for communications purposes. The flag and moniker/suffix indicating a guest character would poof if that player applies and is approved.
• Players “could” have the option to specify a name when touring (admin setting?) or use a predetermined one chosen from a list (also admin setting?). This is one point I haven’t thought all the way through, because of the potential abuse factors (such as harassing and/or impersonating players with similar names, even with the clear “GUEST” designation that would be appended).
• Should guest/temporary characters have their own database table? That would largely deal with the need to track them as far as data goes (e.g., preserving communications), but I did not dig into the database part of the Ares codebase to see how you handled characters in general, or if this would be an absurd refactor. It would be a much easier process to purge (all of) them when they’re in their own table, though, if the need arises. Name collisions would have to be a special check, though, not to preach to the choir.

On a less technical side:

• I’ve wondered why I’ve seen some games have their Guest characters get into the teens for numbering, because I had thought Guest chars were recycled on disconnect, so I always wondered how this was happening.
• I was never really a fan of the “anonymous” guest nomenclature, tbh. Thank the creepers and other memorable folks (hi Jill!) for that.
• Being able to preserve guest communications would be useful insofar as potential players is concerned. This is partly why I mention the possibility of conditionally allowing “real” character names for guest characters. Certainly, they should be able to rename (once?) during chargen when they want to be serious about playing. (The rename would be part of the actual application. This does put an onus on staff for name vetting.)

[Faraday]

@dvoraen These will be full-fledged characters, so there won’t be any separate data table/permissions/changing names/etc.

The only reason this feature even exists is that I’ve gotten feedback that expecting people to use the create command (or web equivalent) with a name/password is too much burden for a quick tour.

So this feature basically just does that part for them with an easier command/button. Otherwise these characters will be functionally equivalent to any other new character.

It is also worth noting that Ares allows players to change their own character names up to the point where they’re approved, so there’s no admin burden if they decide to stay.

[Tez]

I was just chatting about this elsewhere, and for me what it comes down to is this:

Anything that takes pressure off people and makes it easier for them to nose around makes it more likely that they will check a place out and maybe even play. I think this is a great idea for new, curious people checking a place out, who maybe don’t know anything about this style of play, or how easy it is to change a name.

I’ve run into some of the concerns you mention around IPs for guests, etc., as a game-runner, so I’m glad to see an idea to tackle it from that side too.

Personally, I like the random combination of adjectives and nouns. I couldn’t tell you why, but I don’t love the numbering. This is 100% vibe and not logic-based.

[KarmaBum]

Just checking my understanding: current plan is automating creation/login via a “tour” command, with a customizable config for autogenerated names? Seems like a good solution to me.

Will it both create and login a new user with a single button press? As @Tez mentioned, the easier the better. I think people will balk at the idea of creating a character AND logging in just to chat (they already do), but if it does all that at once, then cool.

[Hobbie]

@Faraday said in Ares Tour Feature Feebdack:

these characters will be functionally equivalent to any other new character.

You’re on to something here. If someone uses tour to create Guest-AvariciousBinchicken (highly recommend a prefix for Guest instead of a suffix for clarity purposes), then there’s a command like convert that… well, converts the Guest bit into a full playerbit, you’re minimising clicks between the initial inspection and working on their real character.

This hits @Tez’s point about taking pressure off people. It makes it super easy to check the place out and then super easy to stick around. And if they don’t stick around, the Guest bit goes poof into the ether, its job done.

People love convenience.

Spoiler

NB: No, I have not had a Docker container spin up with the name avaricious_binchicken but that won’t stop me from running them until I get it.

[Faraday]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

@KarmaBum Yes, it will automatically log them in.

@Hobbie There won’t be any guest prefixes or suffixes, because that presumes that they provided a name. The whole point of this feature is that people don’t want to think of a name, or feel the perceived permanence of creating an account. The only difference between a temp character and a real character is that one has an autogenerated placeholder name (like ScarletVisitor or whatever) and the other has a name that you chose. There’s already a command/screen to rename an unapproved character.

@Tez said in Ares Tour Feature Feebdack:

Personally, I like the random combination of adjectives and nouns. I couldn’t tell you why, but I don’t love the numbering. This is 100% vibe and not logic-based.

Some games have requested specific names, and the config for combos turned out to be a bit ugly. So I’m currently leaning towards just a single list of guest names with some preset list of AdjNoun combos as the default.

[Hobbie]

@Faraday Does it? I thought the name was autogenerating as Guest-AdjNoun and up to the player to change later.

[Faraday]

@Hobbie What’s the point of the prefix though if the goofy autogenerated name already conveys the fact that they’re a temp name? Unless your game has a habit of new players naming themselves things like JadeWanderer.

[Hobbie]

@Faraday Trust issues lol. I tend to err on the side of caution and go for absolute clarity because I assume no one looks beyond the text and sees what’s actually happening.