Secrecy permission

[Narure]

I would like an extra permission added to guild ranks, this being secrecy. Some guilds need spies in their otherwise public guild, or ranks that need secrecy for other reasons. I could also see this being used to keep the lowest rank, in guilds that have an initiation stage, secret so members have to earn the badge and can’t tarnish the name of the guild with ease.

[Zan]

I'd like to see this as well, certain guild ranks who can be made secret without the entire guild being secret.

[emeraldfool]

Sounds good to me. I can't see any reason why not...

[zanzibar]

Why not just give the spy a normal looking rank?

[shorty13]

This is a great idea IMHO as well.  I like the idea of the intiation stage being secret so they can't tarnish the guild easily and need to "earn" the guild badge

[Narure]

Why not just give the spy a normal looking rank?

Say your an 'evil' guild and want to listen to the goody goodies conversation. Not easy to get that information flowing easily if you have a badge flying over your head. Could work the other way round with 'good' guilds listening to 'evil' guild conversations by pretending to be on their side, which wouldnt be easy with the guild badge.

[ThomPhoenix]

I like this feature to make certain ranks secret.
Good thinking!

[Zan]

Why not just give the spy a normal looking rank?

Because, and I know you'll agree with me here, there are plenty of people around who can't ignore OOC information and like to use it ICly.

[drah]

Yup.. an obvious example is the "Swindler" rank in our (Outlaws) guild.  They aren't going to con anyone with that label above their head!!!

"But why don't ya just make the guild secret"

Well... some of our members will be brazen about their membership and allegiance, as to them, it'll offer protection through (albeit negative) reputation. - No matter how good or bad an idea that is. (that's not the point of debate here).

And conversely, there will be some ranks who especially need NOT to be identified, and for other guilds... ranks dealing with espionage are a fine example of where this would be useful.

The whole having-your-spies-as-alts-only-unless-you-are-entirely-a-secret-guild... has it's drawbacks.

It would be nice for the sake of flexibility... to have this option... and I can't see any reason why it would cause a problem.

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Have to admit.. I never thought about the idea from the perspective of tarnishing-a-guilds-name either... but it makes sense.

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Because, and I know you'll agree with me here, there are plenty of people around who can't ignore OOC information and like to use it ICly.

I've lost count of the times people have responded to our new members (and evidently older members that their character obviously doesn't know!!) badly, COMPLETELY OOC.. purely because of the label.

Which just reinforces the need for an ability to turn it off... especially for newer members, and especially in the case of "evil" or unlawful guilds.

[Nurahk]

The whole having-your-spies-as-alts-only-unless-you-are-entirely-a-secret-guild... has it's drawbacks.

One of them being that alt spying has been ridiculed.  Even the Cabali laughed at anybody who needed to do it, err, in it's later days.

The IIA has Disciples.  They are like any new recruits except, we don't actualy let them into the guild until they have proven their worth.

[Under the moon]

I would like to add onto this. It would be nice to be able to hide -just- your own personal lable. If you are in a public guild, but do not want to show your colors, then you could turn the guild lable off on your character alone.

[Vrin]

But if they talk in group kinda hard to listen to the conversation.
[/quote]

Say your an 'evil' guild and want to listen to the goody goodies conversation. Not easy to get that information flowing easily if you have a badge flying over your head. Could work the other way round with 'good' guilds listening to 'evil' guild conversations by pretending to be on their side, which wouldnt be easy with the guild badge.
[/quote]

[lordraleigh]

I would like to add onto this. It would be nice to be able to hide -just- your own personal lable. If you are in a public guild, but do not want to show your colors, then you could turn the guild lable off on your character alone.

That's the reason why any guild of the Black Sun Union have the "secrecy" toggled on, as nobody is obbliged to wear the organization symbols(also the guild ID should be in the description, not hovering above a character's head), and also the fact that a guild name hovering above the character's head is pretty OOC.

And also I suggested such thing before, a toggle on/off "See number of members and other members names" permission would really be a great help for many of the secret guilds around, as claiming that IC a character from a certain rank has no knowledge of other members while OOCly anyone can open a member menu and see ALL the other members names.

I would like to expand further this idea by applying the concept of compartmentalization on the way knowledge about a guild is known. For example, in a secret society, a member would only know the members of the same degree than him or those who work together with him by using a more wide hierarchy of clearances on the way information is entrusted. Also this would give another motivation for people to work towards being entrusted in such guilds.

For now the only way of circumventing this is by creating organizations instead of "guilds" or by creating off the charts ranks that doesn't exist inside the OOC "guild" when the need "clearance levels" and compartmentalization is required.

PS: What I meant with the expression OOC "guild" is that the word guild doesn't fit well IC for many organizations inside Planeshift, and is mostly an inherited term from others MMORPGs.

[Garile]

hmmm I like that idea a lot.

The IIA has some public members aswell that don't hide there allegiance while the majority is obviously secret to the public. The idea of making ranks secret or not would definately add something.

Also the idea of having new recruits not show the guildname yet, but do let them in on guildchat and such so they can easier proof their worth is a great addition to how people recruit I think and definately gives guildleaders more to think about on who is worthy of the "badge"

[Seytra]

Because, and I know you'll agree with me here, there are plenty of people around who can't ignore OOC information and like to use it ICly.

Definitely. Add to that that many people can't handle evil stuff that is directed against them very well or at all.
However what does that mean we should be doing? Does it mean that we should make the system support secrecy so that they just don't know (until it's too late, that is, meaning that there will be quite a lot of OOC trouble and OOC whining and so on when they find out), or does that mean that we should consider very well whom to pick in order to play with (meaning that the number of potential RP partners is severely decreased)?

The alt spying has become regarded as something bad and sneaky. However, such secret-rank-spying would be very similar, and lead to the same issues eventually.

I think that you cannot force people to be able to RP well. It doesn't even work with RPing something universally agreeable. How much worse will it be if we start trying to force upon them something that they can't even handle OOC-ly? Especially people with less than average RP experience / ability are unable to separate IC and OOC, which is the reason for this thread. That means they will be unable to distinguish evil RP from being jerks OOC-ly. Worse even, the reverse will also be true.

Playing evil will lead to OOC trouble, be it justified or not. The system cannot help there. The only thing that this would IMO do is to facilitate claiming "That's just how the game works, so shut up". That's a very easy argument to make, as it doesn't require consideration of the particular instance (and therefore is a "quick fix"), but doesn't create welcoming atmosphere.

I'd rather see secret rank spying than alt-spying, though (since it's less OOC), but I still don't think it solves the actual problem of people who just can't deal with it. BTW, secret guilds have not solved this, either.

Regarding the "tarnishing of the guild's name" I can only say that a guild that doesn't manage to screen their recruits decently deserves no better. Also, if such a member creates trouble, the guild leader is the one to talk to. However, this is not possible if one is deprived of the ability to acquire that information.