Change Stealth/Bluff Mechanics to Prevent Metagaming

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Might-N-Magic
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Change Stealth/Bluff Mechanics to Prevent Metagaming

Post by Might-N-Magic » Sun Mar 10, 2019 5:46 am

As things are, both Disguise and Stealth's mechanics foster metagaming. When a person stealths, their name becomes greyed out. This is helpful ingame to tell others that this person nearby is trying to be sneaky and that's great, but for some reason, that same person's name is greyed out on the Player List. This is bad. It's telling all sorts of people who casually look at the list that this person (whom they may never have even met) is sneaky and operates a certain way. This is information gained through OOC means that leads to things like swapping in stealth detection equipment, casting True Sight, etc. Obviously, the system shouldn't foster such.

The same goes for Disguise. The moment you go into Disguise, for some reason a "(Disguised)" pops up by your name ingame and on the Player List. This shouldn't even happen for both instances because the moment it does, everybody around your character metagames that and suddenly starts examining you more than they ever would before in an attempt to break your disguise. If I choose to Disguise myself as "James Boneville" instead of using my real identity, it should just say "James Boneville," no "(Disguised)" and no different colors or other indicators. This way people don't metagame these flags and don't run around becoming "extra paranoid" moreso on Disguised characters for no logical reason.

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Re: Change Stealth/Bluff Mechanics to Prevent Metagaming

Post by The Rambling Midget » Sun Mar 10, 2019 5:48 am

This is a well known issue. Unless I'm mistaken, Silvard attempted to fix this just recently, but it didn't work properly, so he'll be looking into other ways.
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Re: Change Stealth/Bluff Mechanics to Prevent Metagaming

Post by Durvayas » Sun Mar 10, 2019 6:17 am

Might-N-Magic wrote:
Sun Mar 10, 2019 5:46 am

The same goes for Disguise. The moment you go into Disguise, for some reason a "(Disguised)" pops up by your name ingame and on the Player List. This shouldn't even happen for both instances because the moment it does, everybody around your character metagames that and suddenly starts examining you more than they ever would before in an attempt to break your disguise. If I choose to Disguise myself as "James Boneville" instead of using my real identity, it should just say "James Boneville," no "(Disguised)" and no different colors or other indicators. This way people don't metagame these flags and don't run around becoming "extra paranoid" moreso on Disguised characters for no logical reason.
Two things.

1. The suggestion box is closed, and this is a suggestion thread, this really isn't feedback. Stahp.

2. You can stop beating the (disguised) tag horse by now. We've had a dozen threads about it, its already been stated many, many times that the disguise tags are never going away, because removing them would make the DM's job of dealing with reports of malignant action a hundred times harder and more complicated if spoofing PLAYERS was made easier by removing them. The tags are there for the players, and also for the DMs. People are also likely not using the examine key on you that much more merely because you are disguised, you just don't get a notice that you're getting pinged with that function when you aren't disguised.
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Re: Change Stealth/Bluff Mechanics to Prevent Metagaming

Post by CosmicOrderV » Sun Mar 10, 2019 6:45 am

I think when the disguise tag stuff was brought up in the past, as well, it was mentioned that short of an on-heartbeat automated system vs disguises (which would likely create lag), it was easier to have the (disguised) tag that way players *knew* to examine you. You might say, "Well they wouldn't have tried to see through my disguise, otherwise!" but really, pattern recognition is a natural thing our brains do. Noticing something is sketchy about somebody is usually a first impression, or pre-generated based on some sort of bias.

In short, the disguise tag is doing exactly what it's meant to do. Otherwise, the only logical system that would be put in its place, is an automated roll against all disguised characters. At that point, you're either getting an equal amount, *or more*, of people trying to break your disguise. So there's not much difference. And honestly, as someone that frequently uses disguises, I can understand the desire for something like this. But we do the best with what we got, and the system really isn't that bad. In fact, I'd say it's great. ANY other game I've played, especially MMOs, I find myself regularly wishing that the game had some sort of disguise feature like arelith.

So hats off to those that have developed and implemented it. What ya'll do is amazing!
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Re: Change Stealth/Bluff Mechanics to Prevent Metagaming

Post by Dragonfyre » Sun Mar 10, 2019 9:02 pm

Just chiming in with my two cents here.

In my opinion, the (Disguised) tag doesn't scream "Metagame me!" There are functions in-game which players can utilize not only to get that floaty -disguise name over their head, but also to change your in-game description/bio to further help with said disguise. My character's Spot is... laughable. I'm only able to break someone's disguise with a high roll, and only then if they've invested so little into Bluff/Perform that any random low-level character has a chance to see through their disguise.

That said, whenever I notice a character with a (Disguised) tag, I go to examine them, yes. It's not with the intent to break a disguise, however, so much as it is to see what kind of effort the character/player has put into their disguise. This is particularly the case where I see the same "disguise" being used over and over again. Is this a disguise I've seen before? Would I have a chance of recognizing the disguised "persona" (in contrast to the actual character)? That is the sort of thing I look for when examining a disguised character. It's not to metagame a player, but to really take a look at the character in question.

I've even gone out of my way, several times, to inform players of things like "Hey, I know you're disguised and all, but your description is still the default one for your undisguised character. You might want to think about changing it, if you don't want to be metagamed." I especially go out of my way to let them know if that's the case when the character's real name is mentioned in their description. Every single time I've done so, I've either gotten thankful replies or, in a few instances, questions about how to go about changing one's in-game description.

We're not all out to metagame other players who use the -disguise system. If you suspect someone is going out of their way to do just that, report them. Plain and simple.
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Re: Change Stealth/Bluff Mechanics to Prevent Metagaming

Post by CosmicOrderV » Sun Mar 10, 2019 10:14 pm

Here's a potentially interesting mechanic regarding disguise: corpses not instantly showing one's actual name, when generated. Maybe only when picked up, the server pings you with a message sharing their name. Maybe it's even just an OOC message, for ease of communication.

Doesn't make much sense to suddenly fall out of disguise, simply because 0 hit-points were reached. Between all the blood, rags, maybe burn marks (just depending on nature of death), it might even be /harder/ to confirm.
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Re: Change Stealth/Bluff Mechanics to Prevent Metagaming

Post by Silvard » Sun Mar 10, 2019 10:19 pm

The Rambling Midget wrote:
Sun Mar 10, 2019 5:48 am
This is a well known issue. Unless I'm mistaken, Silvard attempted to fix this just recently, but it didn't work properly, so he'll be looking into other ways.
It was fixed actually (along with some other things more recently...), the server's just due a NWNX update to have it live and support it.
Might-N-Magic wrote:
Sun Mar 10, 2019 5:46 am
The same goes for Disguise. The moment you go into Disguise, for some reason a "(Disguised)" pops up by your name ingame and on the Player List. This shouldn't even happen for both instances because the moment it does, everybody around your character metagames that and suddenly starts examining you more than they ever would before in an attempt to break your disguise. If I choose to Disguise myself as "James Boneville" instead of using my real identity, it should just say "James Boneville," no "(Disguised)" and no different colors or other indicators. This way people don't metagame these flags and don't run around becoming "extra paranoid" moreso on Disguised characters for no logical reason.
The disguise tag does not appear on the Playerlist (or portal), only on the actual character, chat and other UI elements.

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Re: Change Stealth/Bluff Mechanics to Prevent Metagaming

Post by Skald Haldi » Tue Mar 12, 2019 4:20 am

As someone who was recently metagamed into a dumb interaction due to my failed disguise - I feel the pain. One bad player can instantly ruin all the effort you put in building up your alternate identity - and the other players have no choice to follow, because once it is said, it's hard to RP that it never happened.

I think the problem is that Disguise is being used for two purposes.

The first, more common is the "alternate identity" or "you don't know who I am" concealment. Unless it's "Clark Kent is Superman", you would expect this task to be simple. If you completely change/cover someone's body and face, only their closest friends would be likely to know who it is - and then only after hearing their voice or watching them move around. On the other hand, you aren't going to trust this disguised person - because you don't know them - unless you've built a relationship.

The second, rarer scenario is when someone impersonates another character. Yes, this SHOULD be hard. Especially if they are trying it on someone who has personal interactions with that character. This is why the (Disguised) tag makes sense - it's up to the player to RP and decide whether or not they would be tricked by such an interaction. If the dialogue seems off, then they have reason to be suspicious!

Unfortunately there's one mechanic to handle both situations. Instead, the first should probably be Spot vs Disguise + a big bonus. The second should be Spot vs base Disguise, which I think is what we have now.

From my experience, I would say that the player who can RP the difference between those two situations is actually really rare.

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