Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Character Visibility/Privacy

I'm not sure if this has ever been brought up, so I apologize if I'm duplicating another post or idea.

How would everybody feel about a simple feature that allows those on your friends list to view private characters? Like, each character could have a button that would decide their level of privacy instead of just being anonymous or not. This way you could have your characters fully on display for your friends and maintain privacy from those who you really don't want snooping through your character roster. On the same note, you could still have a character or two be completely anonymous, which is handy for those embarrassing types.

What do you guys think?

How would you envision this working with communications?

For example, if I have a character set to "friends only", and then post with that character on the forums, what happens? Does it show as Character Name (played by Kim) to the entire public, but clicking the character name link sends me to a locked page?

Oh, no, nothing quite like that. I just mean the anonymous part as a whole. Like, if I posted in the forum my friends would see "Reticent (Played By Reticent), but everybody else would see "Reticent (Played by Anonymous). Everybody can view my character, but only friends will know I play that particular character. Does that make sense?

In a way, it's basically to sort out trolls. I like having my characters public, so my friends can see them, but I don't like when someone clicks one and then finds my OTHER characters and harasses them too. Like, if they clicked Reticent and saw all my characters (if they were public to all) they would know the names and descriptions and be more capable of stalking me across multiple platforms.

I like the sound of this, if it's possible to implement! I have a few characters stuck on anonymous that I wouldn't mind a few people knowing I have, though would prefer that they remain anonymous to most. Though just telling someone about such a character suffices, it would still be a neat option to have.

I wouldn't be against it because I'm in a similar boat, but at the same time just because I'm friends with someone on RPR doesn't mean I automatically want all of them them to know my anon alts if I toggled this. And it wouldn't be worth it to me to organize the 60 characters I have and decide which one of my friends can see the anon ones individually. Nor would I enjoy having to constantly update this list for new friends I may add who qualify to know. I also would have real issues with managing in case I change my mind.

I like the idea but if the user interface isn't simple to use for such a complex idea I'd never get to use it.

I'd be all for this idea. I have quite a few characters that I don't mind if my friends see, but I wouldn't want the general public seeing them. If something like this was implemented, I'd love it. c:

Not trying to come off rude here, but I'm curious, how would this be more better than opposed to telling such friends? As Sanne said, it would be a little straining on users, especially if they had a bunch of Anonymous characters.

What about adding a feature to categorize friends? It would take the hassle away from organizing those you want to see your characters and those you don't, at least in theory. I'm not entirely sure how tough something like this would be to implement or if the pros would outweigh the cons.

I kind of picture it being a third option per character instead of a blanket effect thing, so you'd see like,

- Public
- Friends Only
- Private

In the character settings, like the public and private options are now.

That still seems like a big hassle to me, personally! Would friends categories be useful in other ways?

I would never use the Friends Only option because I have a LOT of friends on my account whom I'm not necessarily close enough with to reveal characters to I wanted to keep anon to the outside world. Like I said earlier I'd have to select which friends would see it. There are a lot who should and a lot who shouldn't. We also have the option to befriend someone without reciprocating; would those people be counted as friends for this setting?

I would say it needs a little more data mining. Refine what the real purpose of this would be, why it's needed, how it's going to be implemented, and all that fun stuff. Then I'd setup a poll to see how the community as a whole responds, see the ratio of those who could and couldn't utilize such a feature.

What I'm thinking is something similar to what the site Facebook uses; your photos/information can either be seen by only you, your friends, or the public. I personally don't add people to friend lists unless I trust them to some degree, especially because I've had a problem with trolls and stalkers in the past. I used to have all of my characters visible, until someone on a game I played decided to note every single character I had displayed and utilize that information to stalk me and message me or harass me at every turn. Not feeling secure at all, I made them all anonymous. But then my main page just looked so bare and sad with only 0-3 or so characters showing; I wanted to show them off, but didn't feel safe doing so because people outside of the site use that information against you.

You are witnessing the early stages of data mining, how all features begin.

That does make sense, but my first concern is, in mixed company there's literally nothing to stop your friends from calling you by your username, and little way for them to distinguish whether it's ok for them to do that or not without some major interface changes. It would provide some protection for sure, but it'd be weak.

Edit: I want to clarify, I see a need for greater privacy controls. I'm just trying to figure out the exact nature of such a system, and the pros and cons of various approaches.

If it spared me from having a complete stranger casually peek at my profile to follow all my alts on a game, it's all I'd need.

I've had friends do that before, but it's not nearly as detrimental as having everything constantly listed out in the open for anyone to glance at. As is, I'm incredibly cautious about where and to whom I speak just because of past experiences.

I think it's important to recognize that everyone uses the friend system differently, which makes it more difficult to find a balance that caters to everyone. I'm definitely not alone in the 'has a lot of friends in my friendlist who aren't necessarily people I'm close to' department, so a feature that disregards this while adding a new level of privacy will make it useless to a lot of people on the site.

I definitely want something like this, but so far all the options I've heard are much more trouble than simply letting my friends know "Hey, character such and so are mine!". Some of us have a lot of characters, I have 50+ anonymously and if I want to use this feature, I would not only have to customize this for 50+ characters, I would have to edit their settings every time I gain or lose a friend. That sounds very exhausting to me and I can't even imagine how troublesome that is for mobile-only users.

The only idea that comes close so far is to categorize friends in lists, like we have with characters for friend, family, acquaintance and enemy and make 'which friends can see your anon characters?' a global setting. I'm not sure how well that will work out with the recent upgrade we had on those systems and how beneficial it would be though!

I don't know two things about implementing things on a site, but I can easily picture this feature looking something like the categories that were recently added, where you can now organize your characters by horror, drama, romance, etc. It didn't change a thing unless you wanted to go in and modify it all yourself.

I play a lot of games, and more than a few times I've had some pretty unfavorable people sift through my page and track down my characters everywhere else on the internet just to stalk and harass me. This has happened to a handful of friends, too. If it helps even a few people, I think it's completely worth it.