What now? - I'll put in my two cents in.
I'm fine with not being "warned" if I get attacked from behind or even face to face, if there was some sort of balance and defense in the game. So if someone comes up behind my character, they should have to roll twice, once that they surprise my character, and another that they hit my character. If they pass both of those, then with a bonus to hit, they'd carry out their attack, and as my character has failed to show better reactions then the attacker, I shouldn't get the message to allow me to hit my keyboard and mouse fast enough to dodge the attack. Ah, I can see this is more complicated then I thought when first reading it. As with PS should we be separating "my character" and "me" because if someone does a good job of trying to backstab my character and has all the stats and skills to do so, why should they be denied that just because I can work the keyboard and mouse better than them? So having that message popup would be great if it was tied to your character passing a /Save roll eventually, whenever the mechanics get smoothed out for PS. Right now, I stay on auto-accept because I want to see if I can react in time for such an occassion. Keeping an eye on the info box changing to a new target, someone close by in combat mode, system tab blinking or if I happen to be on it seeing the message in time, etc. I'm trying to learn to customize the chat window which may help with this as well. So if you can have a split screen chat window with System messages on one side and Main in the other, you can see if someone has challenged you a bit quicker without having to spend the time to flip to the system tab. I personally don't like all the flashing messages, must face enemy, you are too far away, etc., it gets in my way of view. Having a character "intuition" type of message pop up automatically that someone is possibly about to attack me is good if it is like a spidy sense, so something my character has achieved to perceive, but not something to be convenient for me as a player, if that makes sense. Temporary maybe until game mechanics are upgraded, but having the ability to mode it permanently would give that player an advantage.
