identify people

[Onionfighter]

Loftar:

Yes, I actually do agree. In particular, I think it would be reasonable to be able to recognize kin immediately, for exactly the reason you describe. The problem is mainly in determining just how to actually display it. I, for one, don't really want to litter the game view with a lot of GUI-like stuff, since I think that would diminish the immersion. Maybe a tooltip could be acceptable. I'm not really sure.

How about an action that would briefly show the names of kin over their head, with a special icon for strangers.

[Vattic]

Not a bad way of doing it I don't suppose and I don't mean to derail your suggestion but I have an idea of my own in regards to this .

Personly I'd like it if by clicking a small icon or using a certain keypress (ctrl-r for example) would toggle on and off a set of little icons for each hearthling, one for kin, one for party, one for unknown, one for known and you could even expand it with one for when you have marked someone hostile or other similar things. I like the idea of getting to know someone's face from reading a wanted poster and then when you toggle this on it shows a little icon for that. Then again the icons could be shown for a brief second alongside names.

One other solution might be again toggleable, perhaps give the hearthlings a glow, different colours mean different things? Might not work well at night though I suppose. Again you could colour code the names when they appear for a brief second.

I also have to say that I think that while adding more GUI-like things can lower immersion it is much more damaging when it comes to immersion, among other things, not to know someone from their face when your practically related to them and stood feet away, seems Loftar agrees with me luckily .

[shockedfrog]

It is all about finding a reasonable balance -it's fair to recognise people you know close enough, but from a distance anyone should be harder to identify and it would be up to the player to decide if they should confront the person or trust them. Some kind of disguise system, where a disguise can be made possibly based on a specific target (though this could lead to griefing) or an invented person, could be used to bypass even closer checks, but would require a variety of ingredients (things that change skin tone, remove or add wrinkles/scars/spots etc) and would only work for a limited time, which would deplete faster when the player is too near others and being watched with suspicion. The alternative to balance things is stealth, but I'm not sure how well that would fit the game, and besides, I've never played an RPG where the stealth system made sense, though that doesn't necessarily mean it's impossible.

[Trafalgar]

I used to have alt-` bound to AllNames in Ultima Online back in the day, hit that key combo and everyone's names would appear over their heads for a few seconds.

There was also an option, I think, in UO to temporarily show the name over the head of anyone who is moving onto your screen. The way this worked is, normally if you click someone it shows their name, and this just made it automatically happen when they come onto the screen.

Of course this was before they had tooltips and stuff where you could just hover your mouse over someone to find out their name.

Of course, you could make it only work within a certain range, and not if their face is covered.

[trollfairy]

Well, what about introduction?
I mean, when you meet a person you've never seen or have never heard being mentioned, the first thing you do is introduce yourself and waiting for your new acquaintance to introduce himself\herself. So, why not do the same thing? Maybe it should be available as an option right clicking on a person? And maybe it even could spawn a random introduction text, like "My name's Urist McDeerskin." or something.

[shockedfrog]

I'm not sure if I got around to mentioning that or not, but that's the way I'd like it, so that if someone doesn't tell you their name and you can't identify them from some kind of wanted poster, you don't know their name. However, I'm not sure if it's feasible to keep a list of which players know each other as the amount of players grows.

[Vattic]

I like the above idea when it comes to letting someone know your name, when you go to the chat screen it would be nice if it displayed "???" or "Unknown" or something until the person uses their name in conversation with you perhaps or if you learn it from a wanted poster or similar. It could just check for certain keywords in peoples speech or key phrases as an alternative to a greet button.

[trollfairy]

I'm not sure if I got around to mentioning that or not, but that's the way I'd like it, so that if someone doesn't tell you their name and you can't identify them from some kind of wanted poster, you don't know their name. However, I'm not sure if it's feasible to keep a list of which players know each other as the amount of players grows.

Well, I think it could be stored the same as kin.
Or/And the amount of people you remember could be limited - like, you know... Not everyone can remember even the names of childhood friends.
But this would be even worse - storing some kind of a ttl token for names.

[Vattic]

On the topic of it not being feasible to store all this information would it not be possible to store it on peoples computers rather than the server.

I don't know if its the case but I'd imagine players are stored in a database and have unique numbers, the file on your computer could just store playerNumber playerName playerRelation in a table for all those you have met and relation could be wanted or whatever, this way, if someone went file editing, they cant really cheat and add people unless they already know their names and make a lucky guess of their number. When you meet someone and they give you their name it would just add another person to the list. When it comes to displaying someone's name in game the server would give you their number and it would refer to this list to get their name, perhaps displaying their name in red if they are a foe.

I must admit though I remember reading that its players names that are used as a unique field in the database so you can probably ignore me .

[trollfairy]

I just thought of an addition to this idea.
Why would you want to tell a person your true name?
Perhaps, Urist told me when we first met that his name is John and my friend knows him as Sam.
Think of a social part of the game and all the possibilities this feature could bring.
Like...
- Look, Sam is stealing our steel!
- Who?
- Sam!
- Sam!? That's John!
- Who cares! Beat the crap out of that bastard!

But, that has a lot of complications, really.
Imagine, you post a wanted poster for Urist. Since you know him as John, the poster contains Urist's face and name John.
Now, your friend looks at this poster, and sees a drawing of Sam who is for some reason named John.
And now we have over 9000 problems - deciding the most trusted source of information, introducing user to new information and so on.

Edit: Forget it. Stupid idea.