De-spamming spammy actions

Skye

There are all sorts of reasons this would be difficult to implement and not necessarily a good idea, but I'd like to posit it all the same.

There are certain actions that those of us who love to monitor our surroundings use repeatedly, tens of hundreds of times in a row. A lot of them are not invasive, like CW, WHO, etc. Unfortunately, some of them are, like the arte SCENT, or [what gave me this idea] the gnomish telescope. They send emotes into the room that take up a whole lot of space if used repeatedly. I'd like to suggest a command that lets the spammer use the ability repeatedly, but without actually spamming up the room. I will use SPAM as the sample command.

Typically, non-totems SCENT would send

So-and-so snorts and snuffles the air through a ridiculous pig nose. [that might not be it exactly, but whevs...]

So if you want to keep a constant nose on the area, people around you would see

So-and-so snorts and snuffles the air through a ridiculous pig nose.
So-and-so snorts and snuffles the air through a ridiculous pig nose.
So-and-so snorts and snuffles the air through a ridiculous pig nose.
So-and-so snorts and snuffles the air through a ridiculous pig nose.
So-and-so snorts and snuffles the air through a ridiculous pig nose.
So-and-so snorts and snuffles the air through a ridiculous pig nose.
So-and-so snorts and snuffles the air through a ridiculous pig nose.
So-and-so snorts and snuffles the air through a ridiculous pig nose.
So-and-so snorts and snuffles the air through a ridiculous pig nose.
So-and-so snorts and snuffles the air through a ridiculous pig nose.

And that's a bother. But if you could use, say: SPAM SCENT, then it could be that the people around you see:

So-and-so snorts and snuffles the air through a ridiculous pig nose

[10 seconds pass]

So-and-so snorts and snuffles the air through a ridiculous pig nose

[10 seconds pass]

So-and-so snorts and snuffles the air through a ridiculous pig nose

...and so on. Meanwhile, your LOOK description could be changed to "So-and-so is here, snorting and snuffling through a ridiculous pig nose." That way, it was clear what was going on. On the user end, the command will be automatically repeated for you every two seconds or so (or upon balance/eq restoration, provided it requires one or the other). Using any command whatsoever will break the command.

Again, I understand that this spam is sort of a part of things, and the coding to make every verb into a present participle would probably be absolute hell, but as a monitoring junkie, I think it could make life prettier for people.

Phudmog

Some clients (not sure about mudlet) have a "watchdog" setting that can gag lines repeated within a certain time window.  Sounds like that might do what you're looking for.  Not sure about having it done server-side, since not everyone would want to use the same settings.

Ssaliss

Honestly, I'd rather remove the snorting line in this specific example. As you said, Totem users don't have it, so there's little point (in my eyes) for pig nose users to have it.

Llandros

@skye Pretty sure obliviousness would hide things like that but @phudmog cutting down on server side spam whatever the source can help with game lag and client lag so is a worthy endeavor. 

The admin have been receptive to ideas like this especially with Iosai taking Lusternia from good to fabulous. I think some of the reason is to make the wearers of the dingbat item to look silly, as if wearing a pig nose wasn't enough. I've never really seen people spam scent before but a 3rd person message like this does seem to be of dubious value.

Phudmog

Sure, I'm all for reducing server-side lag.  I had thought that filtering for who wants to view which lines would be more onerous than the sending of said lines, but since they're already doing that kind of filtering for obliviousness, maybe it's not such a big deal.  If a watchdog timer does go in, though, please make it a CONFIG option!  Not everyone will want it.