TH SUMMER 2020 BREAK OFF: Skintone
Summer Town Hall 2020 Topic Suggestion Response

The problem now is that people can't help but meta when they see someone with a namechange and contacts or a wig. It sets off their "I'm about to get conned" radar. Even if they don't act on it. To me wigs and contacts are boutique disguise items because they're disposable, and expensive for a disposable item. Additionally you have to put a lot of thought into how you look otherwise (clothing, etc.) for them to even be helpful. Given the cost and disposability, it would be great if they blended in with your skin better to buff them a bit.

I think it could help mixers pass more topside to sneak into locations or con corporates. I see this as being a cool medium priority because it can drive plots. As it stands, a player just flat out knows OOCly that the person talking to them isn't who they say they are with a name change.

We can talk about how they shouldn't be doing that, but it's just hard to ignore as a player. @titles for players with disguises are also something that I think would take disguise meta closer to zero. People meta more than they can help sometimes. Having a title and no discernible "giveaways" as a disguised player could open up a lot of cool plots of people hooking unsuspecting victims into stuff.

Subterfuge is a really cool CP theme. If players can't codedly tell who you are (like appear and hoods, etc.) more cool stuff is going to happen. It also sets up the reveal scene, which is awesome.

I will say that I know someone that can do this without wigs or contacts, and that the items that should HELP disguising actually hurt it because they're so blatantly obvious from an OOC perspective (your hair is mustard!). At a minimum it would be cool if you could custom order these things to your skintone at least. I've tried that IC and haven't had a ton of luck. That wouldn't require a ton of code change and would be a nice buff.

It's just a bummer that this boutique item that has massive applications for topside subterfuge works against the person trying to use them from an OOC standpoint. A lot of people can't help themselves, and the worst of us use that information to meta super hard. I hope that doesn't happen a lot but removing it codedly would be super dope.

One time I literally set everything and covered up the wig with clothing, rewrote all nakeds, changed voice, modified @socials, had a different name and @describe, different shortdesc, got all skintone to match, altered my common word choices and syntax, arrived from a location where I'm sure I couldn't be tracked by the people I was RPing with, and still I was asked, "Who are you, really?" after like less than 5 minutes of RP. After responding casually with a fake name that matched my disguise name, I was met with enough suspicion that I had to give up and end the scene.

Maddening.

Jumping back into this, since disguises like wigs and contacts are supposed to be "unseen" by other players, I think they shouldn't be counted in the player's aggregate "fashion score". Its kind if silly to spend fifteen kay on a conman outfit or topside as a mixer and look like shit because your wig (which shouldnt be perceptable) makes you look "cheap".

That is the most infuriating giveaway ever. 😠