Charisma, notoriety, and nameplates.

[cannabination]

I've seen a few discussions about the "blank nameplate" idea, wherein anyone you run into to whom you've not been introduced or with whom you've not interacted before would come up as a blank nameplate. The idea of this being to increase immersion and reality while also opening possibilities for more sneak oriented play styles. I've read arguments for and against, many revolving around the feasibility of such a system. I'm not interested in started that discussion again, but I'd like to put forth a thought on the matter.

The following is predicated on the idea that the devs are interested in the aforementioned concept and that it is feasible. Both may be false assumptions, I know.

In a system where nameplates don't give you info that is impossible to know by looking at someone(i.e. name, class, possibly guild, etc.), it seems reasonable that they would populate with info that you *could* discern by sight. This would be an opportunity to allow some aspects of PnP to migrate to the MMO in a way that totally enriches game play and could be otherwise challenging to translate in terms of player to player interaction, such as charisma, intimidate/diplomacy(abilities, not skills), certain vibe-y auras, and I'm sure several more difficult to quantify effects. Someone with one or more of these traits could toggle them on to appear on their nameplate to randoms to reflect their character's attitude or demeanor, lending more rp, more immersion, and more realism. Say in the circle where in most games you'd see class, instead you see a slideshow of traits chosen by the character from among those afforded by his abilities, e.g. an angry face for intimidating, a calm face for diplomatic, a happy face for charismatic, and so on.

In a more intensive system certain abilities could provide a range of possible demeanors your character could switch on and off almost like a persistent emote. Bluff could allow you to simulate these and any of those mentioned above, and they could be applicable by attributing sets of them as preferences for npcs(Johnny the page responds best to intimidate and dplomatic, for example) and if desired there could be opposed rolls from sense motive or just wisdom. Yes, I know that bluff and sense motives are skills in PnP... for the purposes of this discussion let's call them abilities.

In a much more intensive system, each character could have a "detailed nameplate" that each player could click on and fill out like a survey, checking boxes based on their interaction with a character(i.e. generous, helpful, heroic, rude, ruthless, etc) which would be compiled server side. If a character has been attributed such a trait a given number of times in an area he could gain that trait on his nameplate. Positive traits could be toggled on and off just like the previously mentioned demeanors, but could provide buffs("helpful" could give a 10% bonus to resistances for group members > 3 levels below you, for example) and only be effective in said area. The bad ones could follow you to new areas for a certain period denoting the stigma associated with being a bandit, murderer, or what have you and scale up to the point where you start developing social penalties(more expensive items, services, possible barring from town depending on local laws). Seems like a possible way to introduce notoriety as a game mechanic rather than a function of the game forums or titles while encouraging people to be friendly... or at least discouraging them from being hateful.

The major flaw in this system is that griefers could report everyone they see as hateful or rude and cause problems, but if there are any kind of moderators for the game it would be pretty obvious if the same 30 people are constantly tagging someone as hateful and never tag anyone with anything positive. Possibly by making tagging only possible by physically clicking someone rather than through a menu pane or /command you could keep that to a minimum. Towns would still be a problem, I suppose... maybe the character to be tagged has to show up in some type of interaction log(or your combat log) and one could only access the interface from there.

There are probably more aspects of this that I haven't considered that would make it impossible or game breaking or w/e, but I guess that's why this is a forum post instead of an email. Do these ideas seem interesting to anyone?

[HalfOrcHeavyMetal]

I like this idea. I also think we can ALL see ways of abuse, but at what point do we turn this from a RPMMO into a totally sanitized MMO. I can see both sides of the potential arguements here, but I feel that being able for players to tag other players on their own as well as having access to the standard player's details.

Player A has filled out their name-tag, and this is openly displayed for all and sundry. Player B has interacted with Player A a few times, and feels the need to add some details for his future interactions with Player A. Player B can 'add' to Player A's name-tag, but the details of these 'additions' are only available to Player B.

For example, Player B could have added 'Friendly, outgoing, a little too hesitant in combat' to the name-tag of Player A. Player C could have written something else entirely, but neither Player B nor Player C can read each other's 'additions'.

[Nihimon]

I really like the idea of innovating the way we receive information about the other characters (PCs and NPCs both) in-game.

As I've said elsewhere, I think it would be a very positive thing if it were possible for a PC to pose as an NPC.

Rather than seeing nameplates the way they've been implemented elsewhere, I'd like to see Auras and Runes used to indicate things like apparent aggression level, any obvious symbols of membership in guilds, factions, orders, etc. Special Auras for people you recognize, with Skills that let other characters disguise themselves.

Once you click on a character, you could get more detailed information. Here is where it would be really convenient to put a lot of detail into a facial portrait (or little detail, if they're in the shadows of a hooded cloak, etc.) that could convey current mood, etc.

I've been playing SWTOR with nameplates mostly off and I have to say the world looks a lot different (and better!) when there aren't neon signs hanging all over the place.

[Nihimon]

As for abuse, the only cure for the ills of Free Speech is more Free Speech.

[Nihimon]

And cowbell...

[Arbalester]

Oh man, PC's posing as NPC's would be great. Especially if many of the "monster races" are included in the game. "What?! That hobgoblin lieutenant is a player?!"
And yeah, not just being able to see all the information about everyone the second you run into them would open up more roleplay opportunities, as long as the unknown info isn't needed for quick PUG runs. I don't want to have to recite two paragraphs of info every time I jump into a group of strangers just to be able to act as a group...

[cannabination]

Agreed. Some ability to make certain info known to your group or an individual character just by running a macro or something would be key.

[Daniel Powell 318]

Can this be done in N storage, instead of N^2? I don't see any way to make this practical, other than keeping all the information on the player's system; that means that logging in from a different computer, or after a reinstall, would wipe all the collected information.

Maybe "This is what I share with everyone, this is what I share with party members, this is what I share with factional members" would work, rather than keeping track of what everybody knows about you individually.

[Nihimon]

Daniel Powell 318 wrote:

Maybe "This is what I share with everyone, this is what I share with party members, this is what I share with factional members" would work, rather than keeping track of what everybody knows about you individually.

I see it more as lore that other characters learn about you, rather than what you store about what each other character knows. This is why I made the distinction about being recognized.

[KitNyx]

Daniel Powell 318 wrote:

Can this be done in N storage, instead of N^2? I don't see any way to make this practical, other than keeping all the information on the player's system; that means that logging in from a different computer, or after a reinstall, would wipe all the collected information.

Maybe "This is what I share with everyone, this is what I share with party members, this is what I share with factional members" would work, rather than keeping track of what everybody knows about you individually.

I was actually an advocate of having no information shared...each player/character has the responsibility/privilege of keeping track of with who they interact (I was all for using player drawn maps too *grin*). As Daniel rightfully pointed out (and Scott before him), this means all the information would be kept client side. This did pose a problem for those who play on different computers. I did not consider this because I only have and only ever play on one computer (so it was a good point, thank you for bringing it up).

There are however, other solutions...what if the game optionally requires a security authenticator to log in (something like this). This authenticator could be built on/in a USB drive which also houses these personal client-side files (only contains maps and personally entered data). The game searches for the files there if the authenticator log in is used. Or, the option can be used to load these files into any USB drive and taken with you to any computer. I do agree this would be a pain to those not interested in dealing with it...but I think if it is already necessary to load a 15-20 GB game onto more than one computer, why not a few MB onto a flash drive?

[Daniel Powell 318]

"No information stored" is N^2 information, distributed over N space (each client has to keep track of potentially every character in the game). How soon would it be before third party software broke the encoding on that information, and started extracting and modifying it? Hours, or minutes? Encrypting won't help. (This is an infinite known-plaintext attack, against export-grade crypto.)

[KitNyx]

Daniel Powell 318 wrote:

"No information stored" is N^2 information, distributed over N space (each client has to keep track of potentially every character in the game). How soon would it be before third party software broke the encoding on that information, and started extracting and modifying it? Hours, or minutes? Encrypting won't help. (This is an infinite known-plaintext attack, against export-grade crypto.)

Well, I was suggesting the information be kept client side...and the client only updates the data from user I/O. So, players enter personal data on characters they meet based upon what they learn from social interactions. No server traffic at all...except for a unique key for each character which is recognized by the client and server and matched to the client side database. This would actually be much less traffic than a standard MMO that transmits a ton of information on other characters for the player's user interface. Of course, you probably also want stuff like HP.

But, we probably want a happy medium...probably something akin to what MMOs currently use as to not alienate that player base.

[Daniel Powell 318]

That system works, but should be in addition to the system that tells you their name and other vital statistics. It works best when implemented as a true analog persistent hardware storage mechanism, like a notebook.