I sort of had a hit or miss idea for part of the social aspect of PFO.
Everyone you see in the world begins with [Race] [Gender] over their character, instead of their name. For example, instead of “Pheoran Armiez” dangling over my beautiful self, it would say Human Male. From an RP standpoint, it means you actually have to interact with someone to differentiate them from everyone else. A simple /introduce command could be given to politely introduce yourself to a targetted player character, and if they reply in kind both parties now know each other.
Exceptions to this may be those who have bounties on their character, but this information would only be accessible to you if you have checked the local territory bounty boards. The individual would stand out in a crowd of player characters because their name would be known (having recognized them from their description on the bounty board). Such information would only be as current as the last time you checked the bounty boards (say next to the marshal’s barracks).
Alternatively, individuals that are a part of a guild you join may have their name appear above their character to you because you are in the same social organization. Likewise, party members would probably have their names appear above their heads as well.
One reason for doing this would be the Disguise skill. You could have an item that would essentially be a Disguise Kit for a specific Race/Gender combination (with bonuses or penalties involved if the race or gender does not match your own). It could also allow a “known” criminal or individual to move about relatively anonymously (since the exact detail of character avatars may allow for someone to quickly pass by someone they know or who knows them without being detected as anything other than an unknown player character of X race and Y gender). Think RP-style cloaking device.
Another reason for this is to “spot” known associates in a crowd, and to more easily see who you have or have not worked with before. Acquaintances could be given an RP designation using the helpful, friendly, indifferent, unfriendly, or hostile monikers.
Alternatively, a simple asterisk next to a player character’s name to denote you have interacted with them (rated your attitude towards them as helpful, friendly, indifferent, unfriendly, or hostile) could work as well.
Just a brain-fart in the wind.
Goblin Squad Member
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Absolutely love this idea. Thus: seconded.
It makes a lot of sense RP-wise, that you can hide your identity. That would also open another Crafting possibility: fake IDs ;)
No, in all seriousness, it could make some things harder, but I'm willing to take that risk, because RPing is a lot more fun when you don't know exactly with whom you're dealing.
I also support this idea.
Although I also would like the ability to disguise yourself.
Figured the Disguise skill and disguise kits (disguise self spell?) could take care of that. Depending on your merit badges, you could disguise yourself as a different race, gender, or both. However, I am not sure how /introduction command would work while disguised (whether it would break the disguise or not), but it should be able to hide an infamous individual for at least a short period of time. If you interact too closely with someone, your cover is blown.
While not perfect, it would add an interesting element to social interactions. Perhaps this could be a specialty of the bard or rogue. Plus, I'd love to see "monster" disguises for sneaking past some goblinoids.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I very much like this. One thing I would also include is the ability to "introduce" yourself under a fake name if you make a proper bluff/disguise check against their spot and sense motive check. Or the ability to hide your identity with a helmet or mask if the person looking at you doesn't have a high enough spot check.
Would add an interesting dynamic to bounty hunting in that a bounty hunter might have to be very talented in order to track down a particularly sneaky target.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You all should check out our previous discussions on forced anonymity (that is what those who hated the idea called it).
You all should check out our previous discussions on forced anonymity (that is what those who hated the idea called it).
Read through the discussion.
I can see merit in both sides of the argument, but very little in the way of actual progress towards a goal.
I, for one, suggest each player have a "character sheet" with different groups of information on it (name, race, gender, merit badges, and character autobiography). Your name could be, by default, automatically present, while your race and gender were automatically listed in the "character sheet" people could pull up of you. You could choose to set your other information as public, private, or friends only so as to limit who can see what of you (sort of like a social networking site).
There could be options for you to use in-game items to conceal your true name or add titles to it, as well as conceal your true race and gender. If these mechanics are present in the game, must be activated through the use of items or class features, than I think people will be less against it. This would be especially true if such disguises were "broken" if you engaged someone in combat.
As already stated by the devs, if someone unlawfully kills you, you will automatically have the option of assigning a bounty to them (without having to track down who they are exactly).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd like a system that highlighted people who were especially famous or notorious, to simulate the buzz they would generate.
So if someone is #5 on the leaderboard for total kills, I can see his name, even if we've never met. Likewise Mack the Knife, with 4 bounties on his head. And the mayor of the settlement I'm currently in.
People can choose to go incognito, but that would require either obvious and suspicious full face covering, or a complete disguise - like a fighter changing half his kit.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd like a system that highlighted people who were especially famous or notorious, to simulate the buzz they would generate.
So if someone is #5 on the leaderboard for total kills, I can see his name, even if we've never met. Likewise Mack the Knife, with 4 bounties on his head. And the mayor of the settlement I'm currently in.
People can choose to go incognito, but that would require either obvious and suspicious full face covering, or a complete disguise - like a fighter changing half his kit.
Brilliant!
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Goblin Squad Member
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With single server, I would prefer a completely open naming system. Every character would have an identifying tag, which would be used for mail, private messages and such.I would really like to see a game where you don't know the name of a person, or any information about them until you /greet them or receive a dossier on them created by a spy-type player. Players would be able to train skills to disguise them selves, as well as players could train to see through disguises.
The system should be designed to provide no advantages for criminally flagged or lawful bounties. This would help and hinder players operating through legitimate breadmaking businesses.
Found this post in another thread, but it fits here also.... Hope Valkenr don't mind.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I read through some of the previous discussion, too many Scott posts to read them all. Valkenr and Pheoran Armiez state ideas I like.
1. Open naming with first and last, but no specail <ascii> characters. Ðeamonicßetty, not OK. Deamonic Betty OK. You can then set a unique nick name, Betty for people to use in chat and mail.
2. A friends list that uses your unique nick name to chat to that character, and also an email to chat to your account if you want to give it to them. RealID for the WoW players.
3. Anonymity. Nameplate and name is <sex, race> until certain criteria is met, obsevation roll is successful. Positive modifiers for having seen the character before, interacted with them, been in same group with them, in the same guild with them, thier infamy is high, thier fame is high. Negative modifiers for bluff, disguise, nighttime etc. The modifier would depend on how may times you interacted or how famous/infamous they are, how dark it is, how long you had to observe them, has thier apperance changed etc.
What I would be trying to accomplish with the above is, you don't automatically know me. Blaeringr can ambush people and get away with his identy being known, but if he attacks you serveral times, you get an increasing chance to recognize him. Better if hes #5 on the kills list and is infamous. Also tougher, if he is doing it in the dark and is disguised. It would get increasingly easier the more times you interact with him. You would automatically recognize him if he is on your friends list.
I do realize that the criteria part would be a resource hog for the sever though, having to store a bit of info for your character vs every other encountered. But hey, its idea.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's probably quite heretical to propose, but I would actually like to see no nameplates.
If you don't personally recognize the person, you can target them or mouse-over for a tooltip that can show you what your character knows.
I would like the viewer to be able to voluntarily choose or not choose to see nameplates on others...but if they do, they only see information they have collected (either manually or some skill-based "gather information" automated function).
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Great idea, but technically infeasible. Simply storing every "level of detail" known by everyone about everyone scales very poorly.Sorry, forgot to mention, this DB of personal information should be kept client-side, even if people share it...there is no benefit.
If there is no benefit to being able to identify everybody, make the anonymity options toggled client-side as well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well, the point is, I don't want others to have my information unless I want to give it to them. If I walk around introducing myself as Gilbert Snifmitows, unless they know better, people should know me as such. They would do so by entering this information into the same UI that would be used for dictating nicknames for people for ease of communication (as suggested elsewhere). And, whatever they enter in that tab is what shows on my nameplate...but it is all in their client. This should also nominally decrease server-client traffic.