Upcoming Change - Cover, Disguise and Examine

[NPC Logger Number 2]

1. That seems a bit of a hyperbolic response for a mechanic that basically says 'this person dressed sus is sus' and removes tags,

It's not hyperbolic at all. If I'm the person hunting drows/pirates and I come across a fully covered figure at night on the same road people have been getting attacked, this is exactly how it will go down. I'll tell them to drop the disguise and reveal themselves. They'll say no. PVP ensues. I'm not going to stand around and argue with them about it while they call their buddies to their location over discord or via wisp bottle.

which, since we're getting real personal here: Are bad for RP and have led to a sort of automation of checklist style 'does this person have tags I don't like -> does this person have disguise behind name -> !' pseudo-rp that npc-ifies both sides and doesn't lead to a good story anyway.

What makes a good story is entirely subjective. One person might get robbed by pirates and say it was a terrible story. Then the next person might get robbed by the same pirates and say it was the best RP they've ever had. Becoming a pirate and getting pirate tattoos should be an IC decision that carries weight and CONSEQUENCES! If you make an Outcast, that should similarly be treated as making an IC decision with weight and consequences. Drow, should be feared and despised by surfacers, and drow should be smart enough to know if they hang out around settlements bad things will happen to them, it's on the wiki for crying out loud. Tags might not be a perfect system but it does serve a purpose in allowing consequences for decisions. Don't think of them as OOC tags, think of them as IC pirate tattoos, or an IC reputation that warrants IC wanted posters and bounties. Being a drow is not an OOC action either, you can clearly see they have black skin and red eyes.

If you think someone's abusing mechanics to get away with griefing without consequences, like, report it. Even just the time and server, logs exist for this reason.

I think it would be more prudent to not introduce mechanics that are easily abused to grief and avoid consequences in the first place. Especially considering the disguise mechanics are already being abused to grief and avoid consequences pretty regularly. I'd rather nip the problem in the bud and nerf disguises than buff them and create more reports and more work for the DM's.

[The GrumpyCat]

I mean a character have slain hundreds of drows who is almost covered with dark skin. But having no idea of spotting the one right of you
Wouldn't the WYSIWYG apply here?

I'd argue WYSIWYG still applies. But if they're fully covered up and getting all these benefits, then it shouldn't be an issue(?)

[Anachorn]

I really dislike disguises already because they essentially act as a way to avoid consequences. Consequences are important to keep the flow of RP going. When you get killed by a disguised character with stoneskin and no description, there is nothing at all you can really do to force consequences on your killer. You can't report them to the guards, or form a party to hunt them, or post a bounty on them, because all the information you have is that they were a fully warded figure in a hood/cloak. The most you would be able to do is tell them if it was a human, an elf, or a dwarf, but now with cover we probably won't even be able to do that in most cases. So any kind of further interaction will simply not happen after that, the person who killbashed you with barely any RP can continue happily living alongside you in whatever settlement with no repercussions.

For as long as I've played on Arelith, surface drow have been greatly discouraged, as have been outcasts and pirates hanging out around surface settlements other than Sencliff. This has always been mostly enforced ICly by players, whether they are town guards, paladins, vigilantes, or whatever. Speaking as one of these players who has invested everything in the Spot skill on a character who hunts said drow/outcast/pirates, to where I have 120+ Spot, this feels like a slap in the face, honestly. Now I'll have to either hostile and kill nearly every hooded person I come across (because lets face it 9/10 won't be cooperative even if they are good aligned), or do the complete opposite and be buddies with pirates and drow, with very little room to compromise.

Cover is going to drastically lower the quality of RP for everyone on the server, force us Spotters to be hyper aggressive to all disguised/covered players, and encourage more Surface Drow and Friendly Pirate/Outcast buggery around settlements which last time I checked the DM's explicitly said they did not want, going so far as to take control of NPC's to intervene when player characters did allow it. Is this really a needed change when DEX builds and stealthers are already way stronger and more prevalent than spotters in the meta? If anything, I think disguises need to be nerfed, and there needs to be a HARD REQUIREMENT that you have a detailed character description, detailed enough so that anyone who read it could easily identify your character at a glance.

As far as I know killing someone without RPing it properly is an issue whatever or not are are covered and/or disguised, I would prefer we better detect the few who do this and discourage them strongly than avoid adding features to the game, if it becomes widespread its a different issue but I think its worth testing out first rather than just assuming the worst.

I am not quite sure why you think this is a slap in the face to spotters, I would say this feature makes spot an even more vital skill, someone with 120+ spot (an probably even half of that...) will be able to penetrate cover 100% of the time, the change affects mostly people without spot vs people without bluff, where those without bluff can now conceal their race/identity when previously they couldn't.

Also, as detailed in the first post, you can always tell if someone is dwarf/elf/gnome/etc with or without cover, with or without disguise, the change is that you can't tell precise subrace (duergar, shield dwarf) when covered if you don't have high enough spot.

[Anachorn]

Real question is... What do you do if your head model is a hood

I'll say either ask to change it, DMs will probably agree but don't catch me on my word, or just don't display a neck cover/armor in one of your saved outfits and add it to the other, then instead of switching on and off hood just switch between those outfits.

Also, its becomes very probable I'll add a toggle that can disable the cover mechanism entirely no matter what you wear, if not in the initial release then in the week following, it seems like a mandatory addition after reading the feedback here.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

My main concern is pirates and outcasts will be able to just put on their "good law abiding citizen hat" when in settlements and put on their "no description fully warded bad guy who one lines and ganks lowbies" hat outside of them. So they'll get to quite literally have their cake and eat it too. It won't be the level 30 PVP hounds with 120 spot suffering from this. It'll be the new players who are only level 5 and trying to do writs but keep getting ganked by faceless statues. And all the town guards, vigilantes, paladins, etc. will be powerless to help them.

[Irongron]

Thanks for all feedback, and do keep them coming. I specifically asked for this topic to be created prior to this update, as very much saw some of these concerns coming.

I'll reserve my own judgement until I've read more.

Remember always that with changes like this there can be some strong views on either side.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

Seconding the idea that it would be nice if there was a way to change head appearance.

Ultima Online had disguise kits for guild thieves where you could change your hairstyle for 2 hours. Would it be possible to get some kind of disguise kit on Arelith if you have X amount of bluff, that would allow you to change head for 1 in-game day? Maybe a command like -disguisekit [number], where the number is the head number you want to use.

This would allow people who invest in bluff to have more options and not be reliant on the hood/helm. As things currently are, some people use the (disguised) tag as an excuse to go up to people and hood check them. If there was a disguise kit, people could have their faces exposed and not have to deal with that. Hood checks would be a problem for people without bluff/perform.

Edit: You know how mages get perks for epic spell focuses? What if -disguisekit was a perk for epic skill focus bluff or perform.


Overall though I really like the idea. It opens up options for clerics of evil deities especially, who can go and set up sermons outside of settlements.

[Nobs]

This looks like a lot of work.

Personaly i never liked the tags but i understand they are to prevent griefers.
I dont know how many griefers Arelith gets but if its just a few a year would it not just be better to remove the tags then to spend dev time to code all this.

Then again i dont know how long it would take or how mutch work this would be

[Party in the forest at midnight]

This looks like a lot of work.

Personaly i never liked the tags but i understand they are to prevent griefers.
I dont know how many griefers Arelith gets but if its just a few a year would it not just be better to remove the tags then to spend dev time to code all this.

Then again i dont know how long it would take or how mutch work this would be

Griefers do things like set traps all over Skal, or tame as many horses as possible to kill people, or macro -pickup_fixture to vacuum up entire areas (there's a cooldown for a reason now). Actual griefers do not care about the disguise system.

[TooManyPotatoes]

I really appreciate the team bringing this up for feedback before implementing it.

At present, I believe disguise also covers up what race you are.

If the coming change means we remove this behaviour but let the -cover function assume this role I'm sort of okay with it. Disguise becomes more a matter of playing an alias and looking like someone different than just another cloaked figure that could be anyone. At present disguise is often used just for the latter and I dont think it's quite the correct use, whereas -cover fits it nicely!

Also, with this being brought in can we finally have drow show up as drow, rather than "elf". At present no amount of lore will help you, only FE and being an elf yourself.


With that said, I used to play a spotter. After some time I realised that breaking someone's disguise almost never leads to meaningful RP as the person disguising is usually disguising because they want to avoid consequences or interaction with others. I came to the conclusion I'd rather just let them do that than having OOC arguments about how dare I break their disguise and am I metagaming. It simply isnt worth the stress and effort, I'm here to have fun.

[Anachorn]

My main concern is pirates and outcasts will be able to just put on their "good law abiding citizen hat" when in settlements and put on their "no description fully warded bad guy who one lines and ganks lowbies" hat outside of them. So they'll get to quite literally have their cake and eat it too. It won't be the level 30 PVP hounds with 120 spot suffering from this. It'll be the new players who are only level 5 and trying to do writs but keep getting ganked by faceless statues. And all the town guards, vigilantes, paladins, etc. will be powerless to help them.

Is this very common? if so we can monitor when a PC with disguise/cover kills another PC, especially low level, and handle those cases if it wasn't done nicely. I'm not sure how those outcasts and pirates can now enter a settlement and play good guy though, a good guy doesn't take the effort to completely cover his appearance when talking to you inside a settlement, also NPCs reaction to outcasts in settlements wasn't changed, with or without cover. For an outcast or pirate to play a good guy inside a settlement they will need a very high bluff, which is the same as it was before the change.

[Defense Light Fables]

Perhaps with the addition of this change, we remove the (Disguised) tag from people with high enough bluff (80+?).

That way, they arouse no suspicion and can still be detected since their face is still shown, also, WSYIWYG on Drow, for example.

Hard to abuse!

[Anachorn]

I really appreciate the team bringing this up for feedback before implementing it.

At present, I believe disguise also covers up what race you are.

If the coming change means we remove this behaviour but let the -cover function assume this role I'm sort of okay with it. Disguise becomes more a matter of playing an alias and looking like someone different than just another cloaked figure that could be anyone. At present disguise is often used just for the latter and I dont think it's quite the correct use, whereas -cover fits it nicely!

Also, with this being brought in can we finally have drow show up as drow, rather than "elf". At present no amount of lore will help you, only FE and being an elf yourself.


With that said, I used to play a spotter. After some time I realised that breaking someone's disguise almost never leads to meaningful RP as the person disguising is usually disguising because they want to avoid consequences or interaction with others. I came to the conclusion I'd rather just let them do that than having OOC arguments about how dare I break their disguise and am I metagaming. It simply isnt worth the stress and effort, I'm here to have fun.

Disguise doesn't currently hide your race, this can be easily changed to match the cover logic so a disguised PC will show only its parent race (Elf) and not actual race (Drow) but while under cover it makes sense this is always the case, under disguise without cover it raises the question if we want this to happen all the time? and if not then we will need to add ways of saying which sub-race you want to be when disguised, and from there it gets complicated, not impossible to implement but only worth the effort if its really important to bluffers.

Regarding seeing yourself as Drow, this update will also make all PCs and NPCs have the proper race in their description when they are uncovered and the observer have enough lore (except any bugs I may have introduced, please report them if you find them! ), this includes the recent approved suggestion for elemental planet touched subraces btw (but not aasimars and tieflings, don't worry your secrets are safe.)

Only issue I can think of that wasn't handled yet are evil races NPCs in the underdark that used to be just "Elf" or "Dwarf" with the proper dark colors will now become the default subrace of that parent race, which is "Moon Elf" and "Shield Dwarf" instead of "Drow" and "Duerger", please report these as NPCs well if you see them so they can be fixed.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

I said this in a previous post but I'll reiterate it. Tags should represent an IC decision. Stop viewing tags as entirely OOC. If you have the pirate tag that signifies your character made a conscious choice to join a pirate crew and get tattoos which they would most likely proudly display to show they are part of that pirate crew. Pirates don't go around wearing turtleneck sweaters to hide their big muscles and tattoos, that's just silly. If you have an outcast tag it is because your character made an IC choice to do something notoriously bad that would get bounties and wanted posters of them put up so that they are shunned from society. Just because Jason Vorhees is wearing coveralls and a hockey mask doesn't mean people should suddenly accept him as a productive member of society.

If your character makes the choice to become a pirate or an outlaw, they shouldn't be able to just hang up their pirate/outlaw hat temporarily so they can go shopping in Cordor without being hassled. Hiding these tags simply by being "covered" essentially lets players cherry-pick when they are treated as pirates/outcasts and when they are not. This means when those pirate/outcasts get done ganking people in the Bramble Woods they don't have to go all the way back to Sencliff or Anundor to resupply, they can just go to Cordor to rest and buy heal kits or whatever without being bothered then go right back to ganking level 4-5 characters. If you don't think this is going to make life harder on lowbies trying to do writs and won't be rampantly abused you are fooling yourself.

My main concern is pirates and outcasts will be able to just put on their "good law abiding citizen hat" when in settlements and put on their "no description fully warded bad guy who one lines and ganks lowbies" hat outside of them. So they'll get to quite literally have their cake and eat it too. It won't be the level 30 PVP hounds with 120 spot suffering from this. It'll be the new players who are only level 5 and trying to do writs but keep getting ganked by faceless statues. And all the town guards, vigilantes, paladins, etc. will be powerless to help them.

Is this very common? if so we can monitor when a PC with disguise/cover kills another PC, especially low level, and handle those cases if it wasn't done nicely. I'm not sure how those outcasts and pirates can now enter a settlement and play good guy though, a good guy doesn't take the effort to completely cover his appearance when talking to you inside a settlement, also NPCs reaction to outcasts in settlements wasn't changed, with or without cover. For an outcast or pirate to play a good guy inside a settlement they will need a very high bluff, which is the same as it was before the change.

I've been attacked on low level characters in low level areas by higher level characters quite a few times. And yes, one of them ended up avoiding IC consequences entirely and being good buddies with the leaders of a certain settlement after attacking many different people on the roads and trying to enslave them. I don't mind being attacked, I like PVP. I just wish that people who made an effort to ICly summon devils from Hell and murder random people would just accept their bad guy status and go hang out in bad guy settlements and stop trying to do the "I'm secretly evil but you don't know about it even though I just burned down an orphanage in front of everyone in broad daylight yesterday" type of thing.

[Nekonecro]

Perhaps make cover give a bonus to your disguise skill rather than outright negating the ability to break a disguise.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

This all looks great and I want it. Fantastic stuff. Well done.

@NPCLoggerNumber2, we still have had vastly experiences of playin this game. I'm sorry you had such awful encounters. Those people sound like trash RPers. Come join me so we can be excited about cover/disguise updates together.

[Polokko]

After reading through this thread I still can't quite tell if helmets add to cover on not.

I like the sound of it from a role play perspective, especially if a helmet counts as cover. In the wild it's not abnormal, or even remotely sus, for someone to be covered head to toe in armour, or wrapped up in clothes if the weather is snowy, windy, rainy, or just cold. Your probably not going to recognise them later if they're not in the same armour (or in the same clothes but without the hood), unless you pick up on a lot of details the usual person doesn't (High spot).

If you're in a town, or talking to someone, it gets a little weird though. Stick up the visor, or carry your helmet around with you.
Bringing a little bit of normalcy , unlike disguise, could help out some of the potential metagaming issues, demanding everyone instantly removes it, and thinking they're up to no good because they're dressed up in the wild.

Griefing can be reported. It might make doing bad things a little bit safe though, especially at earlier levels.
Honestly I don't think there is anything wrong with the current disguise mechanics. This sounds nice for RP flavour, but I don't think it adds too much more than that. Whether that's worth the potential problem's it brings, I suppose that's something we'll all find out soon.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

@NPCLoggerNumber2, we still have had vastly experiences of playin this game. I'm sorry you had such awful encounters. Those people sound like trash RPers. Come join me so we can be excited about cover/disguise updates together.

I've had good encounters too, so it's not all bad. And some of these people I know can be good RPers, it's just the "I must win" mentality combined with easily abused mechanics. It would be easier to fix the mechanics so they can't be abused than it would be to ban or lecture every offending player. When you're designing a game you typically want to fix any cheats, glitches, exploits, etc. instead of nicely asking people not to cheat and then giving them a stern talking to when they do.

[The GrumpyCat]

Perhaps with the addition of this change, we remove the (Disguised) tag from people with high enough bluff (80+?).

That way, they arouse no suspicion and can still be detected since their face is still shown, also, WSYIWYG on Drow, for example.

Hard to abuse!

Here's what this means.

If we do this, then it means that (espeicaly with the changes to player list, log in, ect) someone can more or less disguise themselves as another person, with very few ways ways, player side, of dicerning if this is true or not.

So for example someone could disguise themslef as your character, then run around yelling how Humans are the master race and all other races should be destroyed.

or go to a favorite friend and say that they hate them.

Or ask follow someone into a guildhouse you're involved in, or a quarter, and be able to steal from it willy nilly because it's very difficult to tell that it isn't you, even oocly.

They could also, theoreticaly, break various rules, and you yourself could be under susspicion for some time until we work out it isn't you (which hopefully our logs would be able to show us, but still itd be more work and stress.)

Now if all this sounds fine to you? Maybe it's a good idea. But the above will happen.

[Anachorn]

Being suspicious while covered is mostly going to be irrelevant because going for a casual walk through a city or visiting the bank isn't the likely use it's going to see. What it is going to be used for is anonymously killing people, summoning demons and/or undead, and generally being antagonistic in a context in which being asked to show your face doesn't matter. Sure, presumably anyone with a spot investment could see through this but it would be silly to give people something so deleterious for free when the counter is to invest in a skill and the gear in a meta in which skill bloat is already horrible. A lot of characters don't even have access to spot.

A synergy between cover and disguise that would make more sense to me would be for cover to simply give a bonus (around +5) to your disguise skill. This makes sense because just covering your face isn't an impenetrable means of concealing your identity. There are all manner of things that people look for when attempting to ascertain someones identity - height, weight, posture, voice, demeanour, etc. - these are all things that someone skilled in identifying people would check for, and things that someone skilled in disguise can adjust.

This would mean people wouldn't be getting a free disguise as you'd still need an investment to make good use of it, and you could still ask "suspicious individuals" to unmask to get a better look at them.

Perhaps make cover give a bonus to your disguise skill rather than outright negating the ability to break a disguise.

That's a viable option, but it has some downsides in my opinion:
First it gives an extra edge to strong bluffers vs strong spotters, I'm not certain how the spot vs bluff/perform balance is right now but changing it requires consideration.
Second and more importantly this means you still need to be a master bluffer just to hide your face instead of just putting on a piece of cloth/metal. having 10 bluff won't be enough to fool almost anyone if your PC didn't invest in bluff, and giving any more will disrupt the spot vs bluff balance further.

What I'm hoping will happen is people will use cover + disguise when they just want to hide who they are, which will make them look suspicious so it isn't very good when walking inside settlements or talking to other PCs, and people will use high bluff + disguise when they actually want to pretend to be another persona, and invest in the description of it and RP it properly, or if they want to hide who they are while staying unsuspicious, or when they want to hide who they are against really good spotters, not just average ones.

Again, that's hoping people will not abuse this mechanic, although to be honest if someone really wants to be a griefer he can just do it by choosing a build with a bluff dip, I don't think adding that option will raise the number of griefers, just possibly their build diversity.

That being said, if I missed some dangerous scenario, or we test it and find out this does cause issues, (or Irongron just likes that direction better ), its certainly an option for using the cover feature in a somewhat safer way, that will allow people to hide their sub-race, tatoos, collars, etc. but not their identity and therefore won't ever replace disguise, just give bluffers more options to play with.

[chris a gogo]

I see No role play benefits from this system as it is.

We already get evil McHated guy/girl wandering around the streets of Cordor fully buffed despite the fact there is an army of npc's because the disguise system that requires investment (not enough of it IMO) allows them to do so.
The disguise system linked with wysiwyg, means they can wander around and feel fully justified in doing so, this cover system just adds another layer of protection to this behavior, you already know they are evil scumbags that are looking for a victim you just can't break the disguise to call them out on it(nothing against evil scumbags just an example).
Now you have to stop chat to them and demand they remove there hat and then have to try and break there disguise.
I don't see it adding any fun or any point to it, unless you remove the ability to be disguised while covered.

That is a more reasonable option IMO but I still think it's not required as the disguise system is already in place and I really don't want drow wandering around a human city in daylight just because you added another system that allows them to do so.

Peace out.

[Nitro]

Perhaps make cover give a bonus to your disguise skill rather than outright negating the ability to break a disguise.

I second this notion. Otherwise we get a silly situation where an epic spotter with 80+ spot cannot identify a 0 point disguiser because they wore a fully covering outfit together with their disguise.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

Perhaps make cover give a bonus to your disguise skill rather than outright negating the ability to break a disguise.

I second this notion. Otherwise we get a silly situation where an epic spotter with 80+ spot cannot identify a 0 point disguiser because they wore a fully covering outfit together with their disguise.

Even a 120+ spotter is already easily thwarted by stoneskin, generic looking outfit with cloak/hood, and a blank description. I mostly identify the bad guys I hunt with their severed heads.

[CNS]

It would still be good to have an option to opt in and out of the cover. Say, if I play a paladin, and want to have a collar (neck piece), gauntlets, and a plume helmet because it just looks good, I don't want to be considered covered and suspicious. That's just a basic warrior getup and armor style, with no actual attempt made to cover up the identity or traits otherwise.

As in, not all fully covered people are up to something shady. That's just fashion.

I mean, you're still fully covered so I think it works well.

If you're known and have a distinctive style you should still be able to roll with it but if you're unknown then whoes to say you're really a Paladin and not 3 goblins in a shiny trench coat?

[Nymann]

My main concern is pirates and outcasts will be able to just put on their "good law abiding citizen hat" when in settlements and put on their "no description fully warded bad guy who one lines and ganks lowbies" hat outside of them. So they'll get to quite literally have their cake and eat it too. It won't be the level 30 PVP hounds with 120 spot suffering from this. It'll be the new players who are only level 5 and trying to do writs but keep getting ganked by faceless statues. And all the town guards, vigilantes, paladins, etc. will be powerless to help them.

Is this very common? if so we can monitor when a PC with disguise/cover kills another PC, especially low level, and handle those cases if it wasn't done nicely. I'm not sure how those outcasts and pirates can now enter a settlement and play good guy though, a good guy doesn't take the effort to completely cover his appearance when talking to you inside a settlement, also NPCs reaction to outcasts in settlements wasn't changed, with or without cover. For an outcast or pirate to play a good guy inside a settlement they will need a very high bluff, which is the same as it was before the change.

Believe not long ago there was a surfacer disguised and killed people who did writs in stinger caves. And I met one who attempted to kill my PC in FoD and same on Skal. Sadly it does happen sometimes. Not sure if often