Disguises and Small-Worlding
The burden of proof is too high.

There's always a dozen plus people who looks just like who you are after hanging around. That's what eighty million people in cramped confines looks like.

Identifying someone because you think you know what shroud colour they habitually wear is metagaming.

In one case you were attacked by X (green shroud) not Y (person you have identified), and those would not be treated as the same by staff because you would reasonably remain in sight of your assailt if you followed them immediately to the next room.

If X attacks you and you later attack Y because they also wear a green shroud that is metagaming, as is attacking some random green shroud at a later date because it's the only green shroud amongst active players.

The metagaming rules enforced by the staff are pretty well throught out and fairly enforced in my experience, if you have legitimately good reasons for suspecting someone and explain that you may find them agreeing with you.

In fact, I once was disguised and went to buy another better disguise and still got attacked on the way out. Which made me lose faith in the disguise 'etiquette' or 'code of honor'.

Guess what? After that I started shooting at hooded motherbakas first and asking question much much later, no evidence needed and if you were hooded and I felt threatened you got got, easy as that.

Also this approached backfired PLENTY, but at least it was consistent.

It wasn't oh Joebaka might be under there, so I attacked him. It was, I got fucked up by hoods a lot so now, I am jumping them first if they linger or act funny.

I am not one to play xhelp meta inquisition, that thing turns me off. Sure, if the GMs ask you stuff be sure to answer them nicely...if you are not getting murdered while they are asking (happened to me too.)

The new appear command is a different beast tho, and it should be RPed on par to the skill.

But yeah, just wearing a disguise doesn't make you invisible. But also you don't need a great reason to confront a hood, just have it make sense with your RP and your character.

Someone's shortdesc has never been enough to identify them in any situation I've ever been in involving disguise, nor has their shroud colour. Appear doesn't meaningfully make someone harder to identify at level in which staff get involved and metagaming comes into play, it just makes it harder to isolate who is who in a meta sense.

Players are always allowed to xhelp if they think someone is metagaming.

If there is a need then balance appear itself, whether metering or setting cooldowns or raising skill requirements for appear or shrouds themselves. Lowering the burden of evidence to identify players just encourages metagaming and small-worlding.

It is very, very easy to identify any given player OOC regardless of their shortdesc or shroud if you know what you're doing, and because of how few players there is, those 'guesses' are almost always right. These protections exist for a reason. I think weakening them would be a mistake.

If the appear command lets me change those options too quickly, or hold them for X amount of time, or change them in the middle of a bar with 20 PCs in it, or whatever, with zero or minimal Disguise skill, is that my problem, or the game mechanics needing tweaked? It's a VERY new and VERY power mechanic so I think we all understand these discussions are important and it's going to take time to settle, and people are relying, often, on disguise / appear(now) for their very lives, sometimes it's the only thing they can rely on, so there are emotions running high in these situations sometimes.

Otherwise we're just going to have players going from one kind of hammy jokey stupid gaming of the mechanic (or just using it as a joke) to...hammy stereotypes to do whatever they think satisfies some minimum RP checkbox to not get yelled at. 'umm, @voice me is....' offensive lesbian thing here, or what have you. And since many of the appear choices don't have any real boxes to check, people will just start funneling to those to avoid having to worry about it, and then every disguised person is a chen w/e, 'my reason is I want to be disguised'. How do you ask them to RP their effort to 'be like a chen'?

But that's not what the mechanic is. 'help appear' even states there is a cooldown, affected by skill. If I"m able to change, on the fly, to evade pursuers, quickly enough, because my skill lets me and the mechanic lets me....that seems like it should be fine. I'm not being argumentative toward 0x1 or anyone in the thread or staff necessarily, I'm just very confused. What is 'the RP' necessary? when appearing fatter? the command itself says I puff out my chest or whatever. Do I emote that too for no reason? Help appear says 'If you appear as a bro, RP that way'. That's not helpful. Let's have five and then 30 PCs say what 'a bro' RPs like. Someone might say 'nitpicking isn't really something that will happen, people just need to put in effort', but nitpicking will of course happen, but anyone who observes and might decide boxes weren't properly checked.

The common sense being offered is 'if you're 90 pounds and 4'8 and female, and appear as a hulking mano, use common sense and.....' but we don't use that reasoning for things, like, people slipping in behind others' apartment doors in a split second, a completely absurd situation, but 'because the game didn't tell you you saw them....' we accept it as a mechanic, right? Common sense / goodwill aren't really tools to lean on here, the game is not a 'realistic' experience in many ways. If my disguise skill is high enough, this is apparently letting me do exactly the above.

Appear is a very weird new area where a mechanic and RP meet so feeling this out is important, and interesting!

'without some kind of justifying roleplay in that, it is against the rules'

But there are no examples of any kind, clear and helpful, in the New Features thread, or in help appear, that begin to limn that what is, at all, is the problem. Arguably if your disguise skill is high enough doing those things should be perfectly fine -- high enough stealth lets you do quite silly stuff, as already mentioned. High disguise -already- lets you do very silly things sometimes.

Players can't be asked to fulfill requirements that mean they aren't cheating if it's incredibly ambiguous what those requirements are. A comparison to 'sometimes you can kill gangers, but you can't murderhobo 24/7 even if you CAN' doesn't hold and isn't constructive to the complexities and new ground being broken here. We're not just talking about players abusing the mechanic to be 10000% silly for no reason, that's pretty easy to spot and police. We're talking about when the policing starts getting even -slightly- pickier, and it will, if it isn't already.

What I don't think is tenable is both giving people the super powerful tools they have today with enhanced disguises and appear AND still maintaining the up to now standard regarding what is allowed when it comes to IDing people. Together it puts gives those using disguises and appear WAY too much of an advantage.

Absolutely this. Dealing with meta complaints is SO ANNOYING when you have heaps of evidence and the other player isn't even trying. Ponchos should not be invisibility cloaks!

We don't police players recognizing another player is person X, if person X is shrouded but doesn't change their description, or doesn't change their appearance, or they have some IC evidence to indicate to them that the person is who they think it is. Please be aware, this means a character has legitimate reason to believe it is person X. Us not policing that, is a result of the robust systems we have in place to change your appearance. This doesn't mean that we don't police small worlding. We are avoiding the following: Too much time goes into the GMs arbitrating if someone 'would really know it was person X' and in the end the decision is still entirely subjective.

If a person or group is attacking every shrouded person they see that matches a specific /similar description, in a crowded area that would presumably have hundreds or thousands if not tens of thousands of people passing through it... That is small worlding. If you ask yourself 'Would this work in downtown Tokyo?' and the answer is 'no' then the answer is probably small worlding if it happens in the game.

Ignoring ambient population has negative impacts on the game. We don't have enough players or NPCs or GMs to make it NOT cost effective to just attack every person in a shroud (or every person in game!) or everyone with something of a similar description. If it was the real world, there would be a very real cost in both rep, money, and possibly fucking with the wrong person (or the law).

Doing this results in a bad experience for people involved. It short circuits roleplay. And it goes against the spirit of what we're looking to accomplish in creating a vivid world in our lovely imaginations.

So please consider what I've said here and why you should avoid this. Thanks!