Shattered Kingdoms

I feel like the who list and the ability to identify player bodies makes it too easy to figure out people's names.

Proposal one:

Make it so that only greeted people appear on the who list. Let people who have greeted and been forgotten still appear. Make the who list display alphabetically instead of in order of login, so that people can't figure out who you are just because they see you've recently logged in or you've been on for a long time.

OR,

Alphabetize the who list, let players toggle if they appear or don't appear on the who list to people they haven't greeted.

Proposal two:

Make it so that corpses, body parts and voodoo dolls do not show the name of the person when identified if the person is not greeted. Make corpses, corpse parts and dolls show adjective if not greeted (the corpse of a white-haired male elf is here.) and show name if greeted, with auto reminder applicable. (The corpse of Orion (white-haired male elf) is here.)

Proposal three:

Make greet and greet all invisible command. Greet is basically an OOC command that players enter to recognize the fact that other characters know their character's name. It is not a greeting. Sometimes people greet because they know the other person already knows their name, sometimes they say their name and it's graceless to watch XXX greets XXX, sometimes they communicate through tell or gtell.

Conclusion:

It's too easy to figure out someone's name, being logged on or logged off is an OOC thing (everyone is always somewhere) so being able to magically 'sense' that your enemies are active is absurd and has a chilling effect and a 4th wall effect. Body part identification is lame, as is who list sequence identification.

I'm a bit confused, since this is how it works already, unless something has gone wrong recently. It's possible that dolls don't work like this due to some oversight, but definitely corpses, body parts, skins and steaks should.

Last time I played a bard, I definitely could lore the name from a corpse, don't know about identify though.

The not appearing on the who list if not greeted is a stupid idea, newbies would be affected and think nobody is playing.

This sort of thing is right up there with taking detect aura and alignment out of the game. It's for an atmosphere only some players advocate. Why make it harder to find and meet new people by making the who list even more easy to not be on? Sounds like someone just wants an easier time ganking other players.

You might want to look at hide, invisibility, and a whole bunch of other abilities if you don't want to be seen in-game. Or maybe try a rogue-like game.

Trying to roleplay a mysterious character is kind of silly and drags on the fourth wall more than any function of the who list. People who want to blend in already steal their adjectives from popular NPCs and pets in the game and set no titles already.

I can confirm that severed body parts don't appear to follow the greeting rule in my previous experience.

I've mentioned before that in previous games I've played that were enforced RP, Who lists and tells were considered not considered IC channels. In fact tells were frowned upon in general with the exception of helping newbies, that sort of thing.

Cabals and Guilds had different methods (depending on each guild) of Cabal speaking:

Like some organizations would have pigeons arrive with the communication, some communicated mentally (in that game it would have been a guild of mages doing that)

I'm going to stop right there though, because I know there is a lot of history with tells and who lists as being in game in SK.

My suggestion would be:

Who lists should still relate the number of online players no matter what is done. Let's face it but prospective new players look for mud activity. That's a reality we don't want to lose:

The next suggestion is Who lists should only show:

People that the other player could sense with their other senses. If you cannot see an invisible person, they shouldn't be shown on the who list (except as a difference in counted names to total online players) - which would be indicated somewhere.

The exception to that would be if someone made themselves known by sending a tell, that sort of thing.

I'm ambivilent towards the greeted aspect, that's too easy to control.

I'd say you should be able to sense anyone you've encountered in game:

Seen, received tells from, etc. but if you don't know their name you'd see their adjective / race

I'd also like to see a system (if we're getting this technical) where someone else could give the name of someone if they knew it, and it would count as being greeted.

There's definately review improvements that could be invested into the who list.... but I wouldn't put it high on the development priority list.

Not a big fan of this idea, since a large who list tends to attract more players and a small who list makes people think the game is dead or dying. No reason to create conditions where the who list is artificially smaller than the actual number of people playing.

In theory, when you enter the who command it might show only players that you have greeted or don't have auto anonymous or whatever toggled, with the total numbers of players online still showing. For instance, you see seventeen people on the who list and see Players found: 25 to represent characters that you don't have greeted or have chosen to be anonymous.

However, I still don't think that sort of feature is good for the health or growth of the game. If I log on and see a small who list, I am likely to log out and go play Hearthstone or another game. A new player probably logs off and never returns, thinking the game is dead.

Allow multiplaying. Then our who list would rise drastically.

What if there was two who lists: One would just be a characters name. That way people could still get an accurate number of people on, but they would not really know who was who. The second part of this would be the titles that we all currently see. So if you have the person greeted, you would be able to see their title.

Just a random thought.

This seems a bit pointless like your last proposition of making resurrection take xp away from priests.

If it aint broke, don't fix it.