The Clan Lord Sentinel

Seeing all the cool Dashboard widgets that are being developed got me thinking: what if there was a widget that gave us a glimpse into Clan Lord from our desktops? I don't mean a picture (like Algy cam), I mean a simple display of # of people clanning (being able to see the list of clanners would be even better) and some sort of "current status" that players could control from TC (e.g., "Orga invasion!")

I imagine that this might bring people out of the library more often and reduce the disappointment people experience from missing some big event. It would also help you catch up with that guy who still owes you 1000c (assuming the whole player list was available).

Please vote based on whether you think this would be a good feature to have--independent of how hard you guess it might be to implement.

Rieger

Eldon's update: Here's the Clan Lord Informer

I like it!

Date and time, number of players, RSS news..."This just in!"

And announcements from Glory and Honor too

I bet it could even be done without GM interference.

Use Applescript to scrape your log file and update the feed. It could work...

Perhaps it could display Crius' most recent /yell.

I'm all for it. Sounds neat.

-Xel

Eldon wrote:I bet it could even be done without GM interference.

Use Applescript to scrape your log file and update the feed. It could work...

Except that you'd have to have a character logged in 24/7 to do it.

Aside from that little problem, it'd be pretty trivial, yeah. Not sure I'd use AppleScript, personally, but whatever floats your boat. <G>

This was discussed before, but not in Widget form. Someone suggested a way to find out who is playing without actually logging on. There was a lot of discussion about how it would keep more people in the library, the argument goes like this:

As it is now, if I'm at my computer, I'll often idle in town and do some work with CL in the background, waiting for friends or excitement to show up (Relkin is lazy, I'm not!). If we had a widget that showed the player list, or that alerted me when an AH invasion was going on, what reason would I have to do this? If all my other friends did the same thing, we'd never see each other logged on, so we wouldn't bother logging on, and thus, overall clanning goes down.

I figure, if you want to know what is going on in puddleby, step out of the library and find out.

-Relkin

Relkin wrote:This was discussed before, but not in Widget form. Someone suggested a way to find out who is playing without actually logging on. There was a lot of discussion about how it would keep more people in the library, the argument goes like this:

As it is now, if I'm at my computer, I'll often idle in town and do some work with CL in the background, waiting for friends or excitement to show up (Relkin is lazy, I'm not!). If we had a widget that showed the player list, or that alerted me when an AH invasion was going on, what reason would I have to do this? If all my other friends did the same thing, we'd never see each other logged on, so we wouldn't bother logging on, and thus, overall clanning goes down.

I figure, if you want to know what is going on in puddleby, step out of the library and find out.

-Relkin

On the flip side to that.

How about those of us who play other games, maybe the widget telling us exile x has come on, or there is an invasion might make us quit the other game and play CL.

Plenty of times ive missed things because ive been playing another game and not known, the chances of me 'just coming out of the library' are 0 especially when im playing something else, BUT if i knew something was going on... who knows.

Lots of for and against. Id still idle i town occasionally, but you might get me online more often if i knew about stuff.

Anyway looking at the numbers around at present what can it hurt.

Sometimes I come out of the library and stand around in town for a little while. If no one I know well is on, I'm likely to say "oh well another time" and go back to the library.

On the other hand, if I knew that my friends might have just seen a "Rieger is now clanning" message, I would probably wait around to see if that lured anyone out.

In any case if I had this widget available I would much more likely to participant in big events (invasions, challenging rescues, FMOCR, etc.) than I am now, simply because I would know about them.

From a development perspective it seems like we have a couple of choices. We could approach it as Eldon suggested as a strictly player-developed thing, or it could be a DT-supported venture that exposes some data in a new way. The former would require a new Algernon-like presence in TC with the whole data stream dependent on that one logged-in account. The latter presumably would require new server-level code. While the former is a lame long-term solution, it might make sense to develop it that way first to see if it's used and useful (and has positive effects). If it proved its worth we could make the case for replacing it with a "better architected" solution. Perhaps all we need to get started is the blessing from the GMs (so they won't disconnect the monitor character). And some volunteers who know how to do this sort of thing, of course.

Rieger

I like the idea personally, even though it seems like ICQ accomplishes more or less the same thing.

Relkin wrote:This was discussed before, but not in Widget form. Someone suggested a way to find out who is playing without actually logging on. There was a lot of discussion about how it would keep more people in the library, the argument goes like this:

As it is now, if I'm at my computer, I'll often idle in town and do some work with CL in the background, waiting for friends or excitement to show up (Relkin is lazy, I'm not!). If we had a widget that showed the player list, or that alerted me when an AH invasion was going on, what reason would I have to do this? If all my other friends did the same thing, we'd never see each other logged on, so we wouldn't bother logging on, and thus, overall clanning goes down.

I figure, if you want to know what is going on in puddleby, step out of the library and find out.

-Relkin

Would it be possible to have a list of people Clanning, and then a number of people connected via widget? That would give people a, "This many people ARE clanning, and this many might come out if something cool happens" perspective. At the very least it would give people a far off hope that logging in might accomplish something, and sometimes hope is all you got.

Zephyrus wrote: Would it be possible to have a list of people Clanning, and then a number of people connected via widget? That would give people a, "This many people ARE clanning, and this many might come out if something cool happens" perspective. At the very least it would give people a far off hope that logging in might accomplish something, and sometimes hope is all you got.

Oooh, now that I really like. I'd put myself on that status if I were around. Idle timeout after 30 minutes or so. Half the reason I don't clan so much anymore is the lack of people to clan with. The other half, and I'm sure this is why the current numbers suck so much, is that it's summertime and there are fish that need catching. Those fish aren't gonna catch themselves you know!

I want the ability to opt out of tracking in your Big Brother widget. Thanks.

'Sounds like an opt-in solution would be best: "Check this box if you want to be shown as 'on stand-by.'"

But let's crawl before we walk, and save that for version 1.1. (AKA "Artak Cougar").


Let's suppose we do this and we have some character in town (Widget's not a bad name, maybe) 24/7 tracking the who's clanning list and monitoring Crius. What else should he monitor and what he shouldn't do?

Would it be acceptable to track who's fallen and report that? (I don't like the thought that people would start wasting a share slot on this guy in order to get prompt fallen announcements. We could discourage that somehow, I bet.)

Should he only report Crius (and Glory and ...) messages or can you pay him to announce other things? Otherwise how do we get the "Invasion!" accouncement out?

I would suggest that we include no in-game reaction logic. He'd be the anti-Algernon. That is, his only action would be to wake/sleep every x minutes to stay connected. No healing; no thanking; no nothing. If he falls, no big deal. If he gets dragged away, we just lose the Crius piece.

Hmm, this could be fun.

HWC for Rieger

Rieger says:

I would suggest that we include no in-game reaction logic. He'd be the anti-Algernon.

Actually, this would give that big worthless Sentinel standing in town something to keep track of...isn't it SUPPOSED to be watching us??

Hmm, I kin see tha objections ta knowin who be clannin, but howbout how many be clannin?

Tha population boom what happens durin an invasion be tha clue sumthin be up, so ya dont gotta trigger on 'invasion' or else Snertbot will pop out every half hour and broadcast "invasion" jest ta mess with Widget's head.

Also, tha guy yonder in tha healer bar knows who be falled ta what - that be a good non-shared bit o info on sumone what been falled a long time.

One thing this thread reminded me of - I think that some people left CL when Census published figures on how many hours per week people were clanning. Along the lines of "I've been spending THIS many hours gaming???? I gotta quit."