Eh?

Edit: Surely you're not saying that it is up to players to be turning their gems off when not in combat so that the list of active players online is more representative? I don't want to have to choose between possessing a very useful defence or helping the game seem more alive - I should be able to do both!

... it's pretty obvious.

When you want to be seen / socialize, you turn off the gem.

When you want to hide, you turn it on.

I just wonder if it wouldn't be better to keep the gem working on hiding your proximity or location, but not so much your existence.

Why? Part of buying the gem is to hide your existence. At least, it was for me.

Part, yes, and it would still hide your proximity and location, just like it does now.

So, you're proposing to nerf the gem (no, that's not an improvement, since that's a significant part of the reason I bought it!)

As I said, it's not really key to the original suggestion, but personally, sure. If you can get that information from the website, it seems rather pointless to hide it in-game.

Maybe the solution is to hide it on the web site, then.

Why? I have a gem, but I don't want to have to turn it off before I count towards the size of Lusternia's active playerbase. That's not what I bought the gem for, as I said, it was so that I went mostly unnoticed.

Exactly. Unnoticed by people who want to, say, talk to you about Commune things when they aren't a part of the Commune / Guild... as well as people who might want to see where you are.

Getting the gem decreased the random bothersome tells I got as a Commune leader by a -huge- amount. That was the main reason for the purchase, at the time. I was just getting talked to by the people who could see me usually (commune members), and not outsiders.

As to the why-- you are trying to use the OOC website to justify an IC change to WHO. I'm merely turning your argument around. If the issue is that the website shows everybody... maybe it shouldn't.

Well, I'm trying to point out that if the second part of this suggestion goes through, WHO would become more of an OOC list of players online, than a 'sense who is about' skill. VWHO would instead fill this role, and thus the gem should most certainly conceal you from observers in this list. That is why the comparison with the website seems valid to me.

If it's an in-game command like that, it's not OOC...

And there are a lot of people who do not abuse the OOC website.

You mean, like HELP CREDITS is an in-character command because it's also an in-game command? Or ISSUE ME is an in-character command because it's an in-game command? Or BUG?

Come now, I expect better reasoning than that from you!

Help files ('scrolls') are generally referenced as IC scrolls, yes. Just like Honours is. A who listing that told you everyone was on would be absolutely no different.

I'm not sure why you'd argue otherwise. Or think it's flawed reasoning.

There are just too many counter-examples. Do you really want to argue that REPORT related commands, or the envoy communication channels, are in-character purely because they are in-game?

To an extent, the report stuff actually has become in-character, as have the various envoy things, because of those commands. Previously it was very firmly separated (to which you can attest, having been a part of it)-- but now that it's been tied to the game, in-game, it's a much looser boundary. The channel itself is still OOC such as other OOC clans, but the commands are a different matter, based upon my own experiences in fielding questions.

It doesn't matter what you think they are, really. Once they're tied in-game and are readily accessible, they become a common part of the general playerbase's arsenal and are used in an "IC" manner, since nothing about them actually says, "Hey, I'm OOC". You can argue it all you want, but the line is far more blurred than you remember.

That is indeed a shame then.

On topic, I don't really mind ceding the argument if there is significant dislike of the idea of gemmed people showing on WHO. I probably wouldn't do it that way myself, but it's not worth eclipsing the rest of the suggestion over the idea.

I'm just giving my thought on the gem-part of it. The base idea still sounds like a pretty decent proposal.

I, too, like the basic idea a lot. However, I'd like gem cloaked people to be hidden from WHO and the web site both. (Cloaked people can still count towards the active user total, too.)