Posts: 23
Threads: 2
Joined: Jan 2022
BYOND Username: Emrsnn
Character Name: Elric Coil
We have this conversation in RP chat on what feels like a weekly basis but in sum it's usually
Quote:"metaclique bad."
"agree. LOOC makes people treat me funny"
"LOOC bad."
"but helping people with game mechanics good"
"what if we could LOOC but not have people recognize us"
so yeah. Would this be a relatively easy change and would there be any cons to it? The only one I can think of is that it may be confusing to new players since there's nothing in the tutorial in the game lobby or the RP rules that mentions anything beyond "LOOC does, in fact, exist."
Posts: 40
Threads: 4
Joined: Feb 2021
BYOND Username: BotchKing
Character Name: Gerald Bostock/ Granny Golden
As mentioned in Discord, I'm all for it.
The RP rule popup DOES mention LOOC is available, but the shortcut of Alt+L should probably be shown explicitely.
The metaclique problem does not happen with newer players generally, so I don't think there's a problem there.
The mentor LOOC could still show up in purple, just with the character name.
If people want to stay as Unknown, just don't use LOOC or trust people around you not to act on your character name alone.
Posts: 96
Threads: 22
Joined: Sep 2020
BYOND Username: DisturbHerb
Character Name: Rupert Wilde, ADVISOR
That we haven't done so yet doesn't seem to be a technical limitation or even that nobody's dreamt up the idea yet. I imagine there's been some lingering reason why character name LOOC hasn't been implemented, and I *think* such a PR might've existed. Citation needed.
Posts: 1,334
Threads: 41
Joined: Jun 2019
Posts: 2,004
Threads: 81
Joined: Mar 2021
BYOND Username: Kotlol
Character Name: Selena James
No objections. Infact let people set it to what they prefer. Ckey or Charater name.
Posts: 7
Threads: 1
Joined: Nov 2022
BYOND Username: KolIsDumb
Character Name: Causes The Problems
Would be nice!
Like said by Kotlol I think having the option to choose between your Ckey or your character's name in character setup would be best.
Posts: 73
Threads: 4
Joined: Nov 2022
BYOND Username: Emikamiyuki49
Character Name: Jasmine Zhang, Amelia Lettuce
Good idea. I had an issue once with LOOC-ing ling that makes it easier to get meta information about who is who just from the ckey. Yes, you should not use LOOC info IC, but it bothers me when I know staffie mcstaffie got linged just because I know their ckey when I LOOC if I did something wrong as sec.
Posts: 731
Threads: 13
Joined: Jul 2022
BYOND Username: Lord_Earthfire
Character Name: Heron Asimov
To be honest , a recurring character has the same effect like seeing the ckey in looc. So i think changing any of this won't help with metacliques.
Then again, this can help when a person wants to random name to not fall in their own crowd. So an option for these people to hide their ckey and use their character's name would be good.
Posts: 141
Threads: 50
Joined: Mar 2022
BYOND Username: CalliopeSoups
Character Name: Caroline Soups, Subject Saphira, Grup Guppy
I'd like this just for random naming, yeah.
Posts: 96
Threads: 22
Joined: Sep 2020
BYOND Username: DisturbHerb
Character Name: Rupert Wilde, ADVISOR
If we do switch to character names in LOOC, I don't think it should be optional. Such a feature shouldn't just be there so that individual people can chooise to hide theirs if they want. The issues that arrive from knowing the ckey behind the character are systemic and cannot be lessened with piecemeal measures, notwithstanding the effect of known static character names on player behaviour.
Posts: 62
Threads: 5
Joined: Jun 2021
BYOND Username: RubberRats
Character Name: Sergeio Favero
Did a bit of poking around with this. One possible concern is that messages from mentors/admins will still have their special colors. This is probably fine, but it does limit how useful it is for concealing who you are. Another concern I had was that it makes it way easier to notice that someone has died. If I see John Stafferson in a round and then 30 minutes later see "[LOOC] John Stafferson: lmao" appear above me, I'll 100% know something is up, regardless of if I know who plays them.
Posts: 492
Threads: 15
Joined: Jul 2020
BYOND Username: Jan.antilles
Character Name: Fleur DeLaCreme
09-29-2023, 07:18 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-29-2023, 07:28 AM by jan.antilles. Edited 2 times in total.)
I'll be the lone dissenter here: I think using ckey for LOOC is important, because those messages are supposed to be coming from the player, not the character. Separating the two is so important, and I'm very hesitant to make it even harder for people to maintain that separation, by allowing them to use character names for the Specifically Out Of Character chat.
Editing to add: and this is coming from me, as an admin who has the option to use a stealth ckey and appear non-orange in the round, and never does. I know people will act differently around me when they see me LOOC, but I'm ok with that. We are all players and this is a game we are playing together by making and roleplaying characters. If I make an LOOC comment, it is coming from Jan, not from Fleur or Grafton or Randomname McStaffiepants.
Posts: 1,301
Threads: 57
Joined: Jul 2016
BYOND Username: Mordent
I'm with Jan on this one. If it's important for them to know your character when you're saying something LOOC then I don't think anything prevents you from saying who the coupled character is but it doing that by default would blur the line between player and character further.
LOOC is for communicating information as a player to another player.
I would argue that cases where you don't want to share your player account name with others for some reason are indicative of an underlying issue that should be resolved rather than able to mask over it.
Goonhub
