Dissolving IC Names

Hey people! First post ever! Been here six months and I love the game! So let's get into it.

So everyone has an IC display name, and a great majority of us don't even go by that name. And let's face it. We as players are all human. So when you catch on pubsic about somebody, or somebody meets you in person, your IC display name is the first thing they see and that pretty much is how you will oocly be remembered. And we being humans will often use that name as a way to even identify those we do not even know. Now! In the real world this could never happen, you would have to recognize somebody and then associate how they look with a name. (If given one.)

So basically the idea would be to drop the names. (Walk with me we will get there.) Everyone is just an Average mano, Or Slender tomboy. Whatever. You can still look and see a desc. And you identify everyone by their looks UNTIL you are offered a name or learn there name and you can -recognize- them as said name. SO suddenly the Lithe Tomboy is now Gretchin and they will always be Gretchin because that is who you recognize. Until they are shrouded or hooded etc etc.

Hope I was able to put this thought into proper words so it is understood how it is in my head. I can answer questions on it if need be.

Happy RPING!

By Floki at Jan 13, 2020 5:07 PM

I always thought this would be a good thing.

By Evie at Jan 13, 2020 5:08 PM

The idea's been floated around before but it's partly a matter of having character objects to address conveniently.

By Azriel at Jan 13, 2020 5:09 PM

There are serious issues with photographs and television programs with this, but otherwise it’s a good idea.

By Pavane at Jan 13, 2020 5:15 PM

I've considered this in the past.

While it's a cool idea, I'd need some way to specifically mark down names to attribute to characters, or else it'd be difficult as rocks to RP properly. And even then, RPing becomes crazy difficult because if I type something like...

.wave to Jaka.

And then everyone knows who Jaka is. Because like heck am I going to write a shortdesc for someone every time, lol. And now someone knows someone's real name without learning it. Uh oh!

And then factor in disguises on top of that. Oh no!

Using the current aliases for characters really seems like a happy middle-ground. Shortdescs are too unwieldy to RP around, and real names give away too much.

By ynk at Jan 13, 2020 5:15 PM

I see the problem ynk mentions but - Other MU*s I've played that do this have a @set-alias command and with that, even if you use their alias in a pose/emote, it shows their shortdesc.

I know this may not be feasible but it's just an idea of how I've seen it done.

I also dislike being able to recognize someone's name because they gave it to you - a @set-alias command or something would be better so you can give different names to people and have them recognize you differently.

Just my 2c.

By Kyrius00 at Jan 13, 2020 5:18 PM

This immediately becomes a problem because ordinals don't work in every situation (namely in the case of poses, emotes and addressing.)

It's already very problematic in combat situations whereby people with the same shortdescs are in attacking. I'd really like to not multiply that problem, personally.

By TalonCzar at Jan 13, 2020 5:19 PM

There is defo pros and cons to either option.

By Evie at Jan 13, 2020 5:19 PM

This would no joke get me to leave forever if it were implemented.

By Vera at Jan 13, 2020 5:19 PM

Explaining why would be a lot more helpful. But I'm assuming it's due to the combat issues stated above.

By Evie at Jan 13, 2020 5:21 PM

I see zero plus with this other than confusing players who aren't as able. I have terrible memory irl and this would be an awful impact on how I play if I can't remember someone's desc, nakeds, or clothes on the fly. I doubt I am the only person who will have trouble. Not to mention, it will just destroy the disguise system.

By deaddragon at Jan 13, 2020 5:23 PM

I'd like it if you spoke to someone enough times, their name shows, just so you can recognize them easier. Even if it's not the name you know. Either that, or you let someone recognize you with some kind of command or keypress. Did that in uh, half life 2 roleplay. Gmod. It's old.

By Evie at Jan 13, 2020 5:26 PM

Seems tedious, unnecessary and like it'd break a whole bunch of stuff. To start with it'd ruin being able to recognize characters from photographs, including making all photographs taken before this change worthless unless you ran around IDing everybody you already had a record of.

It would also make it even harder to remember what someone looks like from seeing them through a security cam because you wouldn't be there to physically set an alias to them. I think it'd create more problems than it would solve.

By Necronex666 at Jan 13, 2020 5:28 PM

May be so, but gotta admit, the names being visible does have a meta effect to it. Whether subconsciously or consciously.

By Evie at Jan 13, 2020 5:29 PM

Point is that it's already very easy to keep your identity a secret when it's most important. For this to even be considered completely new code would have to be put in place that might as well be a complete overhaul of the camera system, especially when talking about security cameras.

There's also the issue with trying to target people when multiples are already an incredible pain in combat. It's going to confuse a lot of people and make things harder than they need to be.

By Necronex666 at Jan 13, 2020 5:32 PM

@evie: People meta no matter what, even with disguises. Honestly, imho, someone who metas my name is such a small crime that it doesn't call for making an entire system that would break so many things.

By deaddragon at Jan 13, 2020 5:39 PM

This has been a gigantic pain in the ass in every game I've seen it implemented in and we already have an entire skill based around dealing with it. Invest in disguise if you want to hide your name.

By Vera at Jan 13, 2020 5:41 PM

Regarding meta behavior:

Most of the time accusations or perceptions of "You're meta!" revolve around disguise situations. If it has been happening around whether someone acts like their character read your character's name from a holoprojection floating in the air above your character's head, it would be a surprise to me.

It could be, I don't know. I've been away for about 3 years. But before that, I played for years including on the admin side where accusations or questions of "She's Meta!" got reviewed regularly, and I don't remember the visible name causing meta behavior more than once.

Ordinarily I'm not one to respond to ideas with "it's been this way for years, it's fine" but in this case while it's a cool idea and has been implemented in other M**, in this one, lacking this feature hasn't caused meta problems in my opinion.

Floki:

I understood your description of the idea, but I didn't really follow your thoughts about why you wanted it. Others talked about this issue but I'm not sure you were. Why do you think it's a good idea?

everyone has an IC display name, and a great majority of us don't even go by that name

To be honest I know that some people have a display name which doesn't remotely match any of the names they're ICly known as, as a deliberate honeypot if you know what I mean. It forces players they interact with to actually have their characters learn their IC names.

What trips me up is posing or emoting to someone and flubbing it up because I typed their IC name instead of their object name! Some characters get me with this all the time.

By bean_dip at Jan 13, 2020 5:41 PM

This would be terrible for the game.

Why can't you just not be meta and RP your names properly?

By villa at Jan 13, 2020 5:49 PM

I've loved every @recognize system I've seen in other MUDs. No, they aren't a pain in the ass, but yes it would probably be a pain in the ass here on Sindome for the reasons stated above: the problem with multiples and other coded systems such as cameras and TV scripts.

One key distinction is that most of those other MU*s let their players have more control over their short description. I'm not arguing for that here on Sindome, just saying why it works at those places and may not with the way descriptions have evolved here.

By Leech at Jan 13, 2020 5:50 PM

I think it's totally feasible to do this. Theoretically you -could- get every in-game system to work this way.

However, I think it's an awful ton of extra work for players (and admins) to get a net minus in UX and increase in learning curve.

If metaing undisguised display names were actually a big pervasive problem, then I could see a reason for doing this, but we're surprisingly well-behaved on this one from what I've seen.

By ynk at Jan 13, 2020 5:54 PM

Not to mention that everyone can just change their shortdesc at whim so it's going to be extremely easy for you to lose track of "who is the svelte tomboy" vs the "svelte chica", our brains recognize specific patterns more easily, I don't want to have to keep track of all the sveltes, averages, and stockies in a crowded room.

By villa at Jan 13, 2020 6:01 PM

I wonder if there's a feasible compromise where it doesn't display your shortdesc by default, but you can @remember a name or something over it -- so let's say that someone's character is named JimBob, but he always introduces himself as BobbyJim. When you first meet JimBob, he displays (as he would today) as JimBomb, but you can @remember JimBob as BobbyJim and from then on he displays to you as BobbyJim whenever you see him.

That might be intense code, but it would help the more serious problem I see, typing 'JimBob' when you're tired when you know someone as 'BobbyJim'. I sometimes find the cognitive dissonance between the two names OOCly difficult.

By Pavane at Jan 13, 2020 7:22 PM

I would honestly probably just stop logging in to the game if I had to memorize everyone's character description just to associate with them.

By DizzyAtraxa at Jan 13, 2020 7:24 PM

That's not at all what is being suggested.

By Leech at Jan 13, 2020 11:13 PM

I think the current system works well.

I've thought of a system similar to the GMOD gamemode HL2RP's recognition system, where everyone is "Someone you do not recognize" until they manually use a command to let you see their name. Despite how well it works in that gamemode, I don't think it would translate well to this gamemode.

By adamdenton930 at Jan 13, 2020 11:15 PM

Can you imagine forgetting people because your INT is too low and you can only remember 16 people, including NPCs? Imagine micromanaging that list. Does that sound fun?

@remember 2nd average in 3rd photo is SomeMixerInThatPhoto

@remembered-people

@forget SomeMixerInThatPhoto

@remember attractive on screen is Corpie47

By ynk at Jan 14, 2020 9:39 AM

I won't pretend to know every detail of the Sindome codebase but I can say that most of the things I've seen so far would make implementing this change a massive undertaking. We have so many systems that would need to be taken into account - some mentioned here by other players. We have over 20 years of code built on top of certain assumptions - one of those being character object names.

I personally would love a well made implementation of this but that would have to have been done so, so long ago. At this point I personally don't feel that the time and effort it would take and the bugs that would be introduced and need fixing (which would add to the over all time and effort) is worth the reward.

By Mobius at Jan 14, 2020 9:48 AM

I'd also like to add that with SD's robust pose system, it's probably a good thing to keep everyone in the same page as to who is doing what action to what character, even if that character object is slightly meta.

By TalonCzar at Jan 14, 2020 9:59 AM

I'm with Mobius on this one. This type of system is not complicated but needs to be built first and other systems are built around it. In other games I've seen this implemented, players create whatever short desc they want within the theme (there is no code influence based on stats) and people simply 'remember mona as Jane' and that character object, regardless of how many times they change their short desc, is still Jane to that player who did the remembering.

Considering Sindome wasn't built with this in mind, it would probably be a coding nightmare. Good idea, OP, but I agree it would just be too much to implement.

By DoveCage at Jan 14, 2020 10:07 AM

Rereading my last post, I feel it came off as more aggressive than I was intending. Sorry. I was legitimately curious if that seemed fun to the people who wanted this change.

By ynk at Jan 14, 2020 12:52 PM

So, the biggest problem I see -- ICly -- which is what sparked this a little is 'people forgetting to use people's IC names when they are tired as opposed to their character name.'

I wonder if there are low hanging fruit targets for that?

By Pavane at Jan 14, 2020 7:10 PM

-	QueenZombean	2m
-	BigLammo	1m	youtu.be/NZR4EeTkRqk
-	zxq	1s
a	Mench	36s	Doing a bit of everything.
-	SmokePotion	19m
-	Ameliorative	16s
And 28 more hiding and/or disguised