Visible action bars & chat box messages; share your opinions

[Deep-Freeze-Defender]

Making this thread following a brief convo on discord and some private convos; action visibility seems to be a little inconsistent, both in general and sometimes weighted against antagonists, and I want to make a lil place for discussion about it

To clarify; there is more often than not, no way to tell what only you can see and what others can see. The changeling's kill ability doesn't have a visible action bar, only makes sound when the victim dies, and shows a progressing message in chat if someone is close enough. On the other hand, the vampire's drain ability has all of the above; it's noisy, and very visible

Especially the meta aspect of players being able to copy your name or actions directly. The first Rev round I saw 2 years ago featured someone pasting the whole phrase "Spaceman Johnny has added the revolutionary flash to the backpack!" in the radio, followed by "Lol". Everyone hates this behaviour of course, but security can't unsee it; worth thinking about why this message exists at all.
In these same two years of playing I still don't know if anyone can see me dissolving pills in the cloner or in drinking glasses. And if they can, from what distance? Does anyone else see the message that you see when you store an item in a stealth storage? Have never found an answer through playing or reading guides (though I realise I could just ask mentors)

I think it could, and does, cause some unneeded anxiety in peoples first few antagonist rounds, where there's already a lot of paranoia over being seen and hunted over the slightest proof of owning contraband or criming (esp. on Classic)
Being Unknown solves most of this of course, but isn't always viable and shouldn't always be necessary

In short I'd love if people shared their ideas & opinions on the meta aspect of actions showing up on screen and in chat for others (or not), and how much you think it affects gameplay
Like I don't personally have many suggestions on changes but I'm curious about what others think about it. Would love to hear from both Classic and RP perspective!

[Kotlol]

I do agree some antag actions should be unseen completely, where as others do.

For example with the flash.. I think the text "<<ITEM>> has been put into the backpack." Should become... "<<Player>> has put away something"

You have no idea how many times antags like me or me finding antags get busted cause: "THE GAME JUST STATED IT TO ME" insted of me: "Figuring it out" or "The antag did a dumb"
I once was caught as an antag because we had a packet nerd tracking all packets from PDA's within the 1st 10 mins of a shift. Me and my fellow spy lost all our contraband and plans within before we even got going on the RP server of all things. So I decided to be a sore loser and make my arrest annoying , demanding a lawyer and shouting over the radio that your PDA isn't private at all.
In the end.. I did get my trial and my lawyer of all things, mindslaved the judge when holding it as evidence and got me out scottfree... (also since another antag was blowing up stuff so in the chaos it happened XD)

But.. yea.. I was caught before doing anything illegal then just having contraband hidden away because a mechanic tracked our packets....
I just think some things need to be invisible like that.

If your antagging can be stopped before you even tried anything...it makes antagging less fun...

[Ikea]

Maybe just have small and tiny items not show being inserted into backpacks?

[KikiMofo]

Personally I believe actionbars should only be visible to the person doing the action or the person the action is being done to. Not to other people not involved in the action.
There would need to be more obvious tells that something is going on though if those were made only visible to the ones in the action though so other people outside can tell when something horrible is going on.
Big obvious actions though maybe can keep the global action bar. Like handcuffing someone or eating someone as a ling. Though trying to remove handcuffs from yourself should only have the action bar visible to yourself because its suppose to be stealthy.

[NanoDano]

The issue is you obviously cant see people preforming actions like that so the chatbox is there to tell it to you, but i understand it being weird if you find out someone put away a pipebomb or something from the corner of your screen. Maybe just have it only tell you things like that if you're close enough?

[Kotlol]

The issue is you obviously cant see people preforming actions like that so the chatbox is there to tell it to you, but i understand it being weird if you find out someone put away a pipebomb or something from the corner of your screen. Maybe just have it only tell you things like that if you're close enough?

Agreed. Just like standing next to someone you can hear their radio chatter. This kinda stuff you need to get close to see em put it away.
Of course if you observe them holding it out in public that's their own fault, but atleast you ACTIVELY LOOK AND CLICKED ON THEM!
Insted of them putting an item away and now you know.

[Nihisohel]

action bars should absolutely be only visible to the player and not to other people whatsoever
i genuinely dont think i need a visible action bar above someones head to figure out if someone is mopping the floor or not
it also fucks with stealth and i dont really want other players to know if im about to do this ability or that ability unless for wizards, spells should absolutely be obvious to someone compared to say, a vampire hypno

addendum :
based on the other servers i go to, id say the best way to go about it is have three ways of actions
1. an action sequence where its not inherently clear to others and therefore the action bar is only shown to you
2. an action sequence where it is somewhat clear to others, but needs a bit of looking closely and be in visible light (a new loading icon should probably be done for this, or something clever codewise or holding down the examine key)
3. an action sequence where you should be shitting yourself when you see this, where the action bar is shown to everyone. eg. werewolf or abom transformation

pivoting the topic onto a somewhat hypocritical suggestion, it would also be nice if there would be more sprite offsets when doing certain actions though
such as the player sprite offsetting itself towards a corpse on aggressive grab, and on choke
or when mopping a tile, the player sprite moves towards the tile being mopped then returns

[TDHooligan]

action bars should absolutely be only visible to the player and not to other people whatsoever
i genuinely dont think i need a visible action bar above someones head to figure out if someone is mopping the floor or not

A variety of actions are completely invisible to all but the chat, and there are several feature requests solely to add action bars to things that aren't properly communicated like someone ramming a pill down your throat.

When escape is rammed and you hear someone welding, your only way to see who is welding without action bars is to see who's welding in chat, then look at every person by every airlock to find the person with that ID, then you notice they're already finished.


A standardised way to show a discreet action bar would make sense. just make it smaller and a little transparent.

[Chayot]

>action bars should absolutely be only visible to the player and not to other people whatsoever
>i genuinely dont think i need a visible action bar above someones head to figure out if someone is mopping the floor or not
>it also fucks with stealth

I'd have to agree, stuff like vampires biting down and changelings eating people, should be player-only.

Afaik They're INSANELY VISIBLE especially when youre trying to hide out in the dark of maint.
They also give an edge to the victim to defend themselves when perhaps they shouldn't have it.

>3. an action sequence where you should be shitting yourself
super funny

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[Ikea]

Removing all public action bars seems really extreme for like no reason, an action bar is a good gamey sense of having it clear who is doing what. Chat bar can be a lot of visual noise for people, and can often be overlooked, not to mention its way slower to process then action bars. Action bars tend to make things way more clear for players both new and old for who is doing enough. I think a good change is to have the more antagonist action bars have a variant thats a bit more discreet (honestly really all it needs is to be affected by lighting)

[Love]

Dear heavens, I most certainly wouldn't want ALL action-bars hidden.

Low-res spessman pixel game isn't exactly fully animated. Sometimes things that SHOULD be INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS need to be communicated.
It's not like I'd realistically fail to notice that one of the two people standing five feet away from me has someone in some kind of crazy wrestling crab lock and is choking them to death.

And TDHooligan makes a fine point about how when the chat box starts rolling, you'll never find out who is doing something incredibly obvious.

That being said, yeah, I'm sure there are things that could realistically be made less intrusive, or hidden when they should be better hidden. If mopping got a little swish-swish particle effect, we wouldn't need the action bar, for example. And, like, a few days ago I ran into a vampire hypnotizing someone. And, on RP, I was absolutely flummoxed how I could rationalize how I knew what was going on. Oh no, someone is staring longingly at another person! The fiend! Stuff like that should maybe be more private.

Or perhaps the action bars for more covert things could only be seen when you're directly next to someone, or within one or two squares.