Visibility of Players Online Status - Incognito? 🥸

Potato Basket

I wanted to bring up a concern and potential feature idea for discussion: the ability to log into the game in an incognito mode, where your online status remains hidden from other players. In a game which could heavily rely on strategy with open pvp and potential griefing, this should be taken into consideration.

Why Incognito Mode is Necessary:

1. Giving Away Strategic Advantage:
In a game where strategy is paramount, being able to hide your online status can prevent others from easily gaining critical information about your activities. If your opponents can't remotely confirm whether you're online, they can't plan their actions around your presence or absence, for example, by trying to message you privately to easily gain information about your status (assuming the game would return a message regards your status).

2. Privacy:
Sometimes, we all just want to enjoy the game without interruptions. Whether you're focusing on gathering resources, exploring, or simply taking a break from social interactions, an incognito mode would allow for uninterrupted gameplay.

3. Protecting Streamers:
Streamers, even with stream delays or when playing on alt accounts, often face griefing attempts. An incognito mode would allow them to play without unwanted attention both on and off stream.

Potential Concerns and Mitigations:

I understand that this might clash with some MMO social norms, where visibility and interaction are key components. However, there are ways to balance this feature:

1. Trade-offs:
Players who choose to log in incognito could face certain limitations. For instance, they might not be able to access certain group activities, like participating in guild missions or public raids while incognito. This ensures that while privacy is maintained, the social and collaborative aspects of the game are preserved.

2. Cooldown Periods:
There could be a cooldown period for switching between incognito and visible modes. This prevents players from exploiting the feature to constantly hide and reappear at will, maintaining a fair balance in the game.

3. Limited Duration:
Incognito mode could be available for a limited duration per day or week. This allows players to have their privacy while ensuring that they're not completely invisible for extended periods.

Just sharing some thoughts from the top of my head.

Cheers.

CROW3

I agree with the goal. I’m wondering if a whole new mode is necessary.

What do you think about restricting online status to just ‘/friends’?

RocketFarmer

Think they should be able to have a toggle that players can select to either show or not show you are online. I think there’s a benefit in knowing who’s on from a social perspective.

RocketFarmer

Oh, and if we view players who go undetected as an exploit, then isn’t that feature an exploit itself?

I would opt for them to keep it simple. We are probably overthinking it on the exploit side. If they want to conceal a strategic event there are better ways to go about it which have been done and will be done.

For example, have all players over the course of a few days bring their participating character to a rally point and then log off. Then go play an alt until the “shot caller” gives the rallying cry. This may be the more common strategy and it really wouldn’t matter if you knew they were logged on or not. And any defensive strategy needs to factor that, which might mean having a defender character staged at a defensive rally point for when it all goes down.

Depraved

Potato Basket wrote: »

I wanted to bring up a concern and potential feature idea for discussion: the ability to log into the game in an incognito mode, where your online status remains hidden from other players. In a game which could heavily rely on strategy with open pvp and potential griefing, this should be taken into consideration.

Why Incognito Mode is Necessary:

1. Giving Away Strategic Advantage:
In a game where strategy is paramount, being able to hide your online status can prevent others from easily gaining critical information about your activities. If your opponents can't remotely confirm whether you're online, they can't plan their actions around your presence or absence, for example, by trying to message you privately to easily gain information about your status (assuming the game would return a message regards your status).

2. Privacy:
Sometimes, we all just want to enjoy the game without interruptions. Whether you're focusing on gathering resources, exploring, or simply taking a break from social interactions, an incognito mode would allow for uninterrupted gameplay.

3. Protecting Streamers:
Streamers, even with stream delays or when playing on alt accounts, often face griefing attempts. An incognito mode would allow them to play without unwanted attention both on and off stream.

Potential Concerns and Mitigations:

I understand that this might clash with some MMO social norms, where visibility and interaction are key components. However, there are ways to balance this feature:

1. Trade-offs:
Players who choose to log in incognito could face certain limitations. For instance, they might not be able to access certain group activities, like participating in guild missions or public raids while incognito. This ensures that while privacy is maintained, the social and collaborative aspects of the game are preserved.

2. Cooldown Periods:
There could be a cooldown period for switching between incognito and visible modes. This prevents players from exploiting the feature to constantly hide and reappear at will, maintaining a fair balance in the game.

3. Limited Duration:
Incognito mode could be available for a limited duration per day or week. This allows players to have their privacy while ensuring that they're not completely invisible for extended periods.

Just sharing some thoughts from the top of my head.

Cheers.

if you just want to play unbothered, that wont happen. random people will still try to kill you at farming spots.

Otr

Potato Basket wrote: »

1. Trade-offs:
Players who choose to log in incognito could face certain limitations. For instance, they might not be able to access certain group activities, like participating in guild missions or public raids while incognito. This ensures that while privacy is maintained, the social and collaborative aspects of the game are preserved.

guild missions ?
You should not to be able to pretend you are offline against your guild members.

But against strangers, outside your guild you should be able to.
If you remove a friend from your friend list, you should vanish from his list too.
If players block another player, they should not have a list of blocked players. Unblocking should be done face to face.

tautau

I don't think that this 'semi-hidden' node is a good idea.

First, let's clarify...the player could still be seen by someone and attacked, right? Otherwise, this could be used to place hidden spies in key spots around the map.

But beyond being hidden, it seems to contradict the 'risk/reward' trade off. If you can be online and hidden to any degree then you can still do somethings in the game (even if it is just talking and planning with your guild or maybe crafting), so you have some reward, however minimal. But by being hidden your risk is mitigated, at least somewhat.

So, I would hope that this mode is not implemented.

Aszkalon

CROW3 wrote: »

What do you think about restricting online status to just ‘/friends’?

Optional, Please.

Like with World of WoW-Token Craft. Make it so that Players can choose who to add and if they want to be visible to those People or not.

Privacy is a valuable thing that should not be touched. At least not in the wrong way.

Fantmx

I am not sure I would want to go full incognito. I liked the old school ability to set your status to anonymous so nobody saw anything other than you were online.

Githal

There are multiple games already where you cant see if a player is online if he is not in your friend list (friend request and approval required from both sides). Even League of legends which is not even MMO dont show you online players who are not in your friend list. And you cant even "/Wisper" to players who are not your friends, so no way to find out if they are logged or not.

I think AOC will be something similar,