Preserving the mystique

[Davairus]

Here's the number one reason why you should not let slip who you're playing, especially with villains - Mystique.

Preserving the mystique

Suppose you play a game on the subject of espionage, like Metal Gear Solid, or Syphon Filter. Most good spy games like this tackle two issues well: TRUST and IDENTITY. When you find out who the real antagonist was all along, both of these issues are given closure, the movie ends, and there's no point watching it again, because it holds no further surprises. Its time to hope for a good sequel. I think we can all agree that espionage games are as fun to watch and see the drama unfold, as they are to actually play.

Why do people play a spy game? Because its just satisfying to finally find out the ending, or because the road there makes it satisfying? I think the answer is pretty obvious - if someone tells you the end of a game, its ruined, why bother with the story anymore besides the action scenes.

Why preserve the mystique

Its the same with your AR character. Once people have you sussed out, your RP really isn't going to matter anymore, they're just watching for the "action", like its some hack n' slash mud. Interest in the character drops predictably, and its even less fun to fight, when you now know its somebody who you've fought a hundred times to a predictable outcome. So its in your interests to keep it quiet.

Also, most of the game's players roleplay better when they don't know who's playing the character they're interacting with. If you care about good roleplaying - and since you chose to play an rp enforced mud, you obviously do or you wouldn't be here - there's another reason why you don't want to do it.

Examples of the "missing" mystique

Not too long ago I was watching a Legion cabal channel discussion, and I saw one of them saying things like "Not ideal" ... stuff he uses in real life. Why? Cause that's the way he talks when he's talking to his friends. It just isn't the kind of quality rp expected from cabals.

I've also spotted in IRC recently, and I quote "I thought ___ was somebody who was kind of new. Then I found out it's ___ so I'm staying away from him." That's pretty obvious evidence of ruined mystique having an impact on gameplay, to the detriment of everyone's enjoyment. So its not only RP that suffers here.

There are countless harsh facts to serve as examples of this, from over the years.

How to preserve the mystique

I'm pretty sure most of us have played long enough to know the benefits of maintaining mystique, but given up trying because it always seems to slip out.

1) protect yourself

Defensive thinking is in order, you have to assume that people are wondering constantly and obsessively about who you're playing.

Simple precautions
* don't tell any people OOC who you play - duh
* avoid any "ticks" (think poker faces) that give you away. for example I've seen people say things like "Not ideal" or "Waoh" on several characters, and I just roll my eyes
* don't just play all your characters the same, e.g. a ton of rangers, or being one of the few guys playing 24/7 and wondering how people know
* limiting ranking to peak times helps you blend in, and plus its easier to find groups

More effective measures
* stay out of IRC/AIM, or build a reputation for AFK on those media, to create uncertainty and doubt (since those people actually compare the mud who-list with their AIM list/list of MIRC users)
* set your aim status to invisible, see above
* don't post on forum while you're playing
* avoid contact with noob people, who'll sell you out to impress their friends, since their pk skills don't
* avoid cabals, or if you join one, consider staying in a low-key role where people aren't going to get ridiculously obsessive about "who you are"

Making sure nobody finds out
* never post logs anywhere
* never admit who you have played - this might clue people in on your playing style - if you do want to do it, then leave it a long time first
* never talk about AR, outside AR (game and forum)
* never use IRC/AIM
* set forum account hidden
(it can be lonely but it works and I can testify you won't miss it a bit)

2) protect others

* don't let slip things that can give away who others are playing
* avoid finding out who others are playing as much as you can
* warn other people about who the OOC whores are

Proof it works

Thkot is the most obvious example of a character that relies heavily on his mystique, and is remembered well by virtue of that fact. He remains an enigmatic character largely because he is still an unknown. He was not logging in with four people, but he was still a successful character that kicked plenty ass, even though the time period was during Runath's lead of Knights with Navatar and Prastin (easily the strongest the cabal has ever been), even though he was arguably the worst combo in the game, drow invoker.

If you adopt this, you might even soon be churning out characters as memorable as Thkot. Yes, YOU. But if you don't, its a near certainity that you won't.

Closing Words

You may feel that this is a hopeless issue, but you're wrong. Every individual taking part helps. One person roleplaying good inspires others to roleplay well, and they do it in turn. We're not asking you to stop playing - we're asking you to step it up another level and play better. All you have to do is work a little harder on preserving your character's mystique. Every little helps - you can make a difference.

[Gygh]

I think you should put this along with the other stratagy guides on the website.

This makes me want to make a kick ass (as opposed to passive) charecter- because everyone who's anyone knows that I don't pk and the last thing anyone (well maybe not now, since I'm telling everyone this) would expect is seeing that from me.

[Davairus]

Mystique adds menace to any evil character - when I was asking the guys in IRC about it, among things they've told me is they'd get the shakes over fighting a character they thought might be played by me... with little evidence to suggest so. Its obviously a lot easier to pk people who're shaking in their boots...they're going to do stupid stuff. It sure as hell can't hurt...


And also the point I made somewhere in there, that many people RP better when they dont know who they're interacting with, is VERY important. Once you know who the other person is, its harder to feel motivated to try and show off so to speak.

[Slade]

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This is an important thread…


The mystique is all but gone for me at the moment, some of that is knowing of ooc shitdumps like unofficial irc, the aim rings people have and stuff like that. Some of that on the other hand is my fault too. Like Remm I know I probably had more fun with the game before knowing who everybody is and all that kind of stuff.


While my current stance is that I don’t reveal who I am (and even spread a little misinformation about it if I can) and hold logs until I delete, I do check current logs where you can see posted by and such and thus pin characters to their player, every now and then I’ll also ask someone who they are – the point is I care enough to figure out who is who because its useful information to have when dealing with that person. Or if I particularly want to kill someone I’ll hang around to see if they show up in chat and there is some chatter going on where I know they are in the game so I can login and go at it – having not wasted time logged in and waiting before.


I don't get scared at anyone, but I will adjust. If I know I'm fighting jeo, I will make sure I'm prepped up (and should have the right vuln hitters if necessary, stuff like that) and carefully think about my tactics beforehand. If I'm fighting Remm I'll just stroll in there and do whatever I want and pawn him (just kidding). But no longer am I really fighting this justice or that legion or that knight, or that thief, that random protected guy, whoever. I am fighting pip, clifton, jeo, burzuk. I'm not fighting Rigwarl, thats just you know who. And thats not Blogu, thats just you know whos other char. The characters themselves don't really matter anymore, because I'm really just fighting the person.


And who really is unknown these days? From top to bottom.. people know say the top cabal guys (everyone knows who Taere is, who Rigwarl is, who uhh Naiirok or whoever knights main guys are), people know who random uncaballeds are, every caballed in between, we know average players, top players, crappy players, even top imms chars.


Hell even people I didn’t know before because of that person mindset you attach possibles to them, like if I see someone in half gambled, half rare/unique with some breaks and stuff like that like say a Lonova, maybe I didn’t know who that was before buts its automatically either one of the few elite players or an imm basically just on gear, pk record, other factors (like a drow DK 50 in the first place) and what not alone. So then do you say hmm that Lonova is tough… not really, just the player is tough. The char itself becomes semi meaningless even in this case – there is little to no mystique. And even chars like that where you might not have known - everyone knows who they are anyway now too.


The biggest offender is probably unofficial IRC, where you can walk in and see a topic like ***** plays Voravith!, or have running commentary on stuff that is happening in game from all kinds of different people. Maybe they are just talking about something interesting that just happened (bountied no recall self owning), or even using IRC in lieu of group tell like legions in underworld, or when people rank they will be silent/near silent in group tell yet saying all the normal conversation things in IRC/wherever like ‘I have to go in 5 mins’ ‘lets move to such and such location’ ‘watch out for blah blah’ you know all typical chatter that could/should be in game anyway. And that’s just the semi harmless stuff, let alone people making characters with each other (same cabal, whatever), ranking groups, ganking groups, the worst of course being stuff like ‘hey, come login, such and such is going on come help us’ which everyone knows happens. Hell that was evident back before I even knew anything, like on Istorvir where some legions were about to gank some justice and all of a sudden two fellow buddy justices log on to even the score and help him out of nowhere.


Not all OOC is bad, just what has to do with the current state of the game. I mean I’m generally an anti-social and negative person but even I know its cool to hang out usually, and that there are cool people in the scene and what not. So IRC itself isn’t so bad. And its also definitely ok to talk about AR there, just like it would be on the forums. Like discussing tactics and balance (as long as you are careful – like if you just got owned by rigwarl you shouldn’t be strongly whining about fire berserkers out of nowhere so you could get pinned to a char), asking questions about skills, what spells you would use here, there, blah blah. Or talking about interesting things that happened in a log or whatever (lets assume it was anonymously posted, or even better, a new account was made like say Thkot had a log that was posted by account name Thkot or whatever it was that was created just for that – note that you would have to watch your prompt and triggers so you couldn’t be identified there).


Other ooc stuff is very good in fact. I’m all for free information with stuff like logs (people can learn from that stuff, etc.), ID database, stuff like that. That adds to enjoyment and knowledge yet doesn’t have to conflict with the mystique. That’s all cool. Its just when it has do with state of the game stuff, like oh Kedenn just did this, oh Voravith got owned, oh this person runs too much, oh there are such and such people on, oh its hard being evil at these ranks (anything where you can be pegged to a char basically, or are talking about other chars and current stuff going down).


Maybe a push back towards something official like ar_chat with good rules in place is the way (but again, you can [or should, I don’t know the ar_chat rules] talk about AR and ask questions and discuss things in a place like that, just nothing that talks about happenings or anything connecting chars to people). Personally I totally forgot about that place and just went to the other one because that’s where everyone is. Theres nothing healthy to AR about the other room though at all, lets be real here. I’m not sure I’d be for something draconian like remm wanted like banning and such but honestly I’m not sure I’d oppose something like that either. I don’t know how you stop places like that really, you probably don’t. Some people you know are hopeless there but I mean some of the rest of us like the imms, uhh jeo maybe, amdorin, me, etc, if we all just moved we could have roughly the same experience in ar_chat or wherever without the negative elements found in the other place.


It is tough though in that even if I say stay out of the unofficial room and do other things to try to bring the mystique back, I do like logs so that’s a problem because people use their ‘person’ account to post like aronar vs whoever posted by slade so you unfortunately figure stuff out that way. And obviously its doubtful invokation would make rules like make a ‘character’ account to post logs, or don’t post logs until your char is condead/deleted, stuff like that… and I’m not sure another competing logboard is such a great idea (say for example a log forum section on this site where posted by is all converted to anonymous, or it asks you for your character name and uses that instead of account name, etc.), so I dunno.


Negative ooc (again, there is much good too) elements are definitely hurting the game in my opinion though and I’m for something being done about it one way or the other. Thkot was a good example of something good – good rp, good enough fighting, no one knew who he was, it was always just about Thkot, not the player. I think I’m personally at least going to try to ditch the unofficial and maybe even invok logs (man, I dunno) except to post logs when I die. Hopefully there would be something beyond that like push to ar_chat, or logboard changes, maybe even bannings, who knows. It’d help, whatever 'it' is.

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[m1co]

I didn't read the posts, but yeah, i agree! PERVERT THE MYSTIQUE!

[Davairus]

The "crap" logboard has been tidied up a bit, with a buncha mods, and approvers, unfortunately lacks the cool colours of invokation.net which makes the logs hard to read. Though I haven't ever heard of anyone getting rumbled because of invokation.net besides Blonk.

I don't know if prompts really matters, the <> brackets with hp mana move and combat styles is pretty standard fare. Maybe with more unusual ones.

What can I say about IRC ...umm, well the main thing is, don't be on IRC/AIM/AR the same time and it becomes a lot harder for people to figure anything out - those lists are the first guesses people make, so unless you got the reputation for afk'ing IRC the whole time like Hans/Ops, its making it really easy. Also don't join or leave IRC/AIM when you join/leave AR, obviously that announces your character. 30 mins is a good start. This would be no different even if it was moderated.

From what I hear recently the biggest culprit for identity loss is the real you "bleeding" through your character. Consider that other people playing the game have known you for 5, 6 years, they know what motivates you and what you play the game like.. like if you quit out when its looking bad for you, not many people do that. If you have a mannerism you do in game, they're going to notice it. So you gotta take care to cover that up, do something out of the ordinary that you wouldnt do, things like that...

I dont know what to say of the gossip, because it is BS, it spooks you fairly good when its accurate for sure, but it is BS all the same.. pretty sure you can just ignore that as just idle speculation unless you're bleeding through your character.

Unfortunately the only cure for a rumbled character's loss of mystique is deletion since we don't offer renames.