We’re hanging out in Miranda’s Cafe, having a friendly chat, a fun little roleplay, and someone comes in. A new friend, I hope! No, they leave immediately. Someone else enters, leaves. And again. And again. I watch a dozen people over the course of a few hours enter and leave the cafe within seconds. Clearly, not okapi enjoyers. Though I wonder, with the huge plate glass windows facing the street, whether a passerby could, without entering, peek inside the cafe and see the occupants therein, and decide whether to enter the cafe based on that information?
Or, you know, stick around and say hi. Most of us are nice.
I honestly see it a bit of as a culture problem and I try to occasionally nag people (by message’ing them ‘belated wolf sounds’) to be nicer and respect the others in the room. While the transparent exits are nice, if all the exits are transparent it feels a bit dumbed down.
That said, I’m not against transparent cafe exits per se. It’s a quality of life improvement. I just think that we should try to guide people to be less about popping in and more about throwing one-liners at strangers.
Transparent Miranda Cafe would be great! It’s a hangout spot for sure and though I can tell it’s occupied by looking at the population list in Sinder, there’s a variety of reasons you might not want to hang out in a room with certain other people that aren’t a culture problem and aren’t ‘those people suck’. e.g. I know if Alexander and Keet are in the room and I’m playing a character who isn’t fantasy or scifi inclined, I probably want to dip. If the Ode Clade are having a scene somewhere, I want to give them their privacy because I don’t have anything to add to it. If a person with ‘in heat’ as their status and has looking for rp turned on in a room with someone whose status is ‘rutting’ then I want to leave them to their business and be on my way. When I know my character isn’t going to bring anything constructive to a room, I don’t bother the people there. You can’t always tell at a glance, but sometimes you absolutely can. (And conversely, if I see a friend in a room, I’m more inclined to hang out there.)
Besides, Shinyuu, you pop into the park, hmm at us, and pop out all the time and that room has a transparent exit.
I try to keep my ‘Hey there, I’m not staying’ interruptions to a minimum because it’s not really productive to whatever RP is happening in the room. So if I do, it’s generally a quick wave or nod to a friend or someone I might be interested in, and then I continue on so I don’t interrupt something I don’t plan to get involved in.
I’ve been thinking that making the entrance to Miranda’s (and probably thus also the exit out) into a transparent one would be a big value-add.
Up until now I simply assumed that the cafe already had a transparent door facing into the building. I can understand the argument that relying too much on transparent doors could dumb down the rp culture (I’m personally all for engaging with and meeting new people from time to time, so when I see folks pop in and leave back the way they came a few seconds later, it does feel just a lil disheartening ), but considering how prominent of a location the cafe is in, being in the town centre, I’d think it’s probably worth putting a transparent door to and from both sides.
It’s a good change. Most cafés make a feature out of letting you see and be seen. Of course, then you get into “why doesn’t Cookies 'n Cream have it?”
Honestly, I think it’d be good to give regular users a small budget of transparent exits, like profiles, rather than gating the feature behind a paywall, so they can apply them to critical areas of their builds (either where ‘churn’ is a problem, or where it just makes the most sense).
Of course, another way to approach it would be a script that changed the description on one side when someone visited the other… hmmm.
), but considering how prominent of a location the cafe is in, being in the town centre, I’d think it’s probably worth putting a transparent door to and from both sides. 
