Suggestion:20080827 Cellphone Auto-Response & GPS Bluetooth

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20080827 Cellphone Auto-Response & GPS Bluetooth

 Swiers 21:57, 27 August 2008 (BST)

Suggestion type
improvement

Suggestion scope
Cell Phones, GPS Units

Suggestion description
This is actually two ideas, but they would ideally be implemented together, because they support each other. Also, I suspect the GPS part may be, if not a dupe, not entirely original.
Note- the author of this suggestion is from the USA, and what is here called a "Cell Phone", the game calls a "Mobile Phone". Same thing, and I'm not going to bother changing the suggestion text and title now that I've noticed.

Cellphone Auto-Response

Cellphones would have a new "Auto-Reponse" feature; anybody who sends you a message that is not ignored would get your "Auto-Reponse" message (if set) in reply, at no cost in AP to you. To set your Auto-Reponse message, you would simply send YOURSELF a message. If you wished to turn this feature off again, you would simply send yourself a blank message. When newly found, Cellphones would never have any Auto-Response set. Note that only mutual contacts can send you messages, and people you have set to ignore won't get this info. Among other things, it provides a way for individuals to make "for friends only" information accessible in game, by managing their contact lists. If you have enemies on your contacts list, you could either ignore them, or be aware that they might access your Auto-Response. As such, it might be an ideal way for group organizers to distribute tactical info with less meta-gaming, by setting up "information hotlines".

GPS Bluetooth

Clicking on a GPS unit currently consumes an AP and dos nothing. Under this suggestion, clicking it would consume an AP and would enable /disable the units Bluetooth feature, with a report as to the resulting status. When enabled, GPS Bluetooth would append your GPS co-ordinates to any outgoing text messages (including the above auto-response messages) you sent. When newly found, GPS units would never have Bluetooth enabled. This has two main uses I can see. The first is simple convenience for normal texting, since the most commonly asked question (on real cell pones at least) is "where are you at?" The second use would be an Auto-Response message that says something like "Join me at the following co-ordinates [XX-YY]" or to use the cell phone as a "homing beacon" so that people could locate you for revives if you were killed; this is possible because the auto-response and GPS Bluetooth works even when you are a zombie or a corpse, and is the reason these two ideas are joined in one suggestion.

Note

This suggestion's effects can not be used to "stalk" or "track" unwilling parties. If somebody can locate you via this method, its because you added them to your contact list, did not ignore them, carry a GPS with enabled Bluetooth, and have a cellphone with auto-response set. You acually have to do some work to make it possible for people to find you, and can always remain hidded when you like. Even if you are a zombie or corpse and need to disable tracking, you could simply drop your GPS or cell phone, or ignore or remove contacts you don't want tracking you.

Voting Section

Voting Rules

Votes must be numbered, justified, signed, and timestamped. # justification ~~~~ Votes that do not conform to the above may be struck by any user.

The only valid votes are Keep, Kill, Spam or Dupe. If you wish to abstain from voting, do not vote.

Keep Votes

1. BEEP! Axe's phone here. Axe doesn't have AT&T, so he has no bars in this place. But whatever you have to say to him, he'll want you to go *BLEEP* yourself! <--Now there's a nice message for those on your don't-ignore list. --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ ^{#nerftemplatedsigs} 22:33, 27 August 2008 (BST)
2. Keep Hi. You've reached rosslessness' phone. Im sorry I havent answered your call but currently im unable to comprehend what this strange ringing sound is. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 22:40, 27 August 2008 (BST)
3. Keep Hello. This is Cheese's phone. Sorry I'm not picking up, I'm either asleep, eating, dead, undead or on the toilet. Leave a message and I'll get back to you. -- Cheese 23:43, 27 August 2008 (BST)
4. Keep - BEEP - You have read Suggestion:20080827 Cellphone Auto-Response & GPS Bluetooth. To vote "keep" please proceed to [66-69]  Swiers 00:10, 28 August 2008 (BST)
5. Keep - To leave a call back message press five. To leave a GANG BANGA HARMANS smash yourself in the face. Have a nice day :) --Diablor 01:47, 28 August 2008 (BST)
6. Keep - Although this will be a lot more interesting if you just said 'iPhone'. --Aeon17x 01:50, 28 August 2008 (BST)
7. Keep - ^ This Aeon17x has smarts, but has broken the chain. Good idea though, gives more use for the mostly neglected phones and GPS. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 03:08, 28 August 2008 (BST)
8. Keep Mp3 capable too please!--Airborne88^T|Z.Quiz|PSS 05:06, 28 August 2008 (BST)

   KEEP This looks like a needed survivor buff. Surprisingly enough this would work better than just relying on Radios that get taken down by Zed lovers. Unsigned vote struck --WanYao 06:01, 28 August 2008 (BST)

9. Keep Camera phone needed also. as above. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 07:17, 28 August 2008 (BST)

   Camera Phone suggestion exists - Suggestions/8th-Mar-2007#Cell_Phone_Whiz_.28aka_picture_phone.29 which directly inspired http://iwitnss.urbandead.info  Swiers 07:27, 28 August 2008 (BST)

10. Keep - Useful. Again, you might have an issue with people not liking the fact that something costs 0AP. Will it cost a server hit? Linkthewindow 09:37, 28 August 2008 (BST)

    Re: It likely costs another IP hit. Anything that accesses the main game map costs an IP hit.--Kolechovski 19:55, 2 September 2008 (BST) Non-author reply struck. --Midianian^{|T|T:S|C:RCS|} 09:45, 3 September 2008 (BST)

11. Keep - As above. --Midianian^{|T|T:S|C:RCS|} 09:58, 28 August 2008 (BST)
12. Keep, as above. - User:Whitehouse 12:02, 28 August 2008 (BST)
13. Keep - Wary, but sounds alright. ~Ariedartin • Talk • A KS J abt all 15:12, 28 August 2008 (BST)
14. Awooga - /me Stalks you. _■^■ 00:30, 29 August 2008 (BST)
15. i liek blootuth Yeah. Good idea. --Secruss^|Yak|Brahnz!|CGR|PKA||EMLN|Templates|RRF|RFTM|Crap|WHOZ||MU|GN|C2008||02:23, 29 August 2008 (BST)
16. Keep - Message onscreen. --BoboTalkClown 02:42, 30 August 2008 (BST)
17. Keep - Sounds good to me.--G-Man 06:19, 30 August 2008 (BST)
18. Keep - Worth coming out of retirement for! --Uncle Bill 04:22, 31 August 2008 (BST)
19. Keep - per above. gabdewulf 16:18, 5 September 2008 (BST)

Kill Votes

1. Kill - This allows free information, passively received... That doesn't sit right, especially not when we have radios which are very powerful if used properly. IMNSHO cells need the buff everyone has clamoured for for ages: allow sending the same text to multiple recipients, though not an unlimited # of CC's. Not something that gives intel passively and for free to up to 200 people for only 1 AP: as I said, we already have radios and spray cans for this kind of stuff. --WanYao 23:47, 27 August 2008 (BST)

   To recieve the information, you have to send somebody a text message on your phone, and then read the message they send back. That's not free, nor is it passive. This would very nearly allow what you are speaking about; if they spend a couple AP, anybody who is on your contacts list can receive a message from you. However, if 200 people want that message, not only do you need to spend an AP to create it, but they need to spend 2 AP to "request" and read it. That comes to a LOT more AP (spent by all the recipients) than it would be if you could send a message to multiple recipients.  Swiers 23:59, 27 August 2008 (BST)

   You'll note that I do not favour unlimited # of CC-ed text messages. I believe there has been talk of allowing 5 or 10 SMS messages to be sent per AP. See, the advantage of mobile phones is that, unlike radio and graffiti, they are private between sender and recipient. Privacy is guaranteed, as is the authenticity of the message (i.e. people can't spam your cell phone and pretend to be someone else, send misinformation, etc.) -- which is not the case with radio or spray tags. Therefore, anything which allows mass communication via this medium is going to be unbalanced IMO. --WanYao 05:59, 28 August 2008 (BST)

2. Kill - The GPS tracking is a horrible idea.--Karek^maps?! 01:59, 28 August 2008 (BST)

   Please clarify, preferably on talk page to allow resonse. Do you mean non-functional, abusable, unbalanced, or just not to your liking?  Swiers 02:04, 28 August 2008 (BST)

   Somewhere around the part where this is a free skill that does what takes zombies at least two skills. But even without that I'd still have a problem with freely being able to give away your coordinates with 100% accuracy when idled. I assume you see where I'm going with this.--Karek^maps?! 02:15, 28 August 2008 (BST)

3. Kill - I vote kill because the combo of the two sugggestions offers an easy way to locate buddies even if they are idle, zombified etc... which, I think, is too powerfull. My idea is that the phone call localisation ability must depend on a specific skill or/and on facilities of a specific powered building (ie : phone mast building). - Bug MacLock 11:01, 28 August 2008 (BST)

   It does depend on phone masts; if there is not a powered phone mast for the burb you are in, you can't receive or send text messages, so the auto-response never happens.  Swiers 20:23, 28 August 2008 (BST)

4. Kill - as Karek and Bug. --Funt Solo ^QT 17:29, 28 August 2008 (BST)
5. Kill, because I see heavy abuse potential. Assume I want to distribute a certain message to a large amount of people. I set this message for 1 AP. Now, up to 200 people can request this message from me (2 AP) and set it as their own (1 AP). After this, this, 199 can request those messsages from the first layer of more people. This continues with 199 more users per participating user and each user uses at most 3 AP (to be precise, the root uses 1 AP, the middleman use 3 AP and leafs use 2AP). Just to demonstrate, 2 layers distribute the message to 201 persons for about 2 AP per person, with 3 layers, I can distribute this message to almost 40.000 people - for a meager 3 AP per person at most. I think this would be a real rival to metagaming, and thus, I don't think it is possible to balance this. (Unless you can only autoreply to 2 or 1 person. With 3 or more people to autoreply to, we get an exponential increase in reachable persons.) --Bubblefish 21:11, 28 August 2008 (BST)
6. Kill - As Karek said. Also, I find it completely unnecessary and complicated.--William Told 22:27, 28 August 2008 (BST)

   Kill - Ditto with William Told Unsigned vote struck. --Midianian^{|T|T:S|C:RCS|} 12:02, 29 August 2008 (BST)

7. Kill - I want to like this idea but i just can't, i have people in my contacts who are not my friends, and while yes, i could ignore them all - some of them aren't people i want to ignore. There is a significant grey area of people i want to show up highlighted that isn't either people i want to know where i am the whole time or people i want the game to ignore. I am aware i could simply not activate the device but if it's not useful to someone who would use and enjoy this tool then what's the point? Add another contact category (or give a colour an intrinsic value) that means people are unable to locate me using the bluetooth feature and you'd have me.--xoxo 12:22, 29 August 2008 (BST)

   Yes, it would be ideal if there were a checkbox (initially unchecked for all current and new contacts) next to each contact for "friendly", where only friendly contacts get this benefit. That would also be nice for Suggestion:20080826 Dead Reckoning. I left that out due to complexity. I suppose a (new) color could be assigned to that purpose, but that would go against the "colors have no pre-set meaning" system that has been in place so long.  Swiers 20:24, 29 August 2008 (BST)

8. Kill - too many reasons why this shouldn't be implemented. LemonHead7t7 *̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡|͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|]]| ̡̡̡ ̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡*̡͌l̡* ^{Talk/PDA/Red Rum/MOB} 22:19, 1 September 2008 (BST)
9. Kill - In all honesty, I think it's a good idea. However, as mentioned before, it could easily be overpowered and I don't want to ignore my enemies. -- BioMech 18:44, 2 September 2008 (BST)

Spam/Dupe Votes