There are some good things about the setmessage command, and there are some bad things about it. While I'd imagine it certainly would be useful in special circumstances such as when you're mining for people, or trying to sell things ingame (Though I haven't seen that since Cody last)
Although there have been many.. many.. MANY times that i've been watching the server feed, and I see something along the lines of.. "When you get here, /1 /2 and engage, get in here"
This irks me beyond belief. People should strive for interaction, not for a quick and easy way that is already typed out to engage someone in PvP. Everything is turning scripted in more ways than one. Setmessages are not the only reason for this, though it certainly contributes.
Zealot seems to have a few things I especially like to see. One in specific being..
Quote:As long as you only put the responsibility for improving rp on one side of the interaction, it will never really improve.
While the subject that I pulled that quote from is in regards to traders and pirates/law-enforcement who are forced to interact with them, it models the fact that all sides need to be willing to communicate and play a situation out with each other. Not the setmessage junk I see where both sides type in a quick command, and use it as RP excuse to engage each other. That's how things start to become stale. I encourage faction leaders (and players in general) to try to do what hasn't been done already. To expand your boundaries. To start doing things which aren't scripted, letting it evolve into situations where nobody knows what will happen next. There is no losing there, it's about the journey. Not how much pixel empire you can amass.
Setmessages are but a small part of that problem. I'm hoping that something might come out of this trial of shutting the system off for a little while. I don't expect it to remedy everything where the system becomes perfect, but perhaps it's a step in the right direction.
More directly on the subject of traders, I'd absolutely love to see a conversation spark about what can be done to fix the matter of silent-trading in a reasonable way.
Coming off of my tangent, a quick reiteration. -- I know some people think that it's useful, and it certainly may be in some situations. Although the purpose of being used to quickly hop into engagements, or bypass legitimate interaction with scripted responses isn't what it was built for.
