Anonymity on the radio and the problems caused by it

[Jos Elkink]

"Jos has spoken" is not how it works - I was just trying to contribute to the discussion ...

I like the bandwidth-repeater suggestion.

Seko, I think the difficulty here is that it is difficult to find a good middle ground. Either you have no way of identifying a person (like it is now) or you have a perfect way of doing so, but in real life it's somewhere in between. Not that the game should always be as close as possible to real life, but some opportunity for abuse (in an IC sense, not in an OOC sense) should really be part of the design, shouldn't it?

This is why some suggestions like detecting direction could be reasonable, since it would give you a lot more information, but still not by any means full-proof.

[Cdls]

What about using secret frequencies[..]? The radio system was partly designed to be somewhat anonymous, but to allow characters to invent tricks (hence the ability to change frequencies).

People keep throwing this around as if it were a viable option for most people.

New frequencies are EXPENSIVE.

Welcome to telecommunications...


The solution should not be cheap, and should be expensive and time consuming. It should be something that would require cooperation from a large number of people.

[SekoETC]

I was thinking of a system where people could pick voice characteristics and by standard, everybody would use the voice they have picked as their default, but people could choose to alter their voice in different directions, only there would be a margin of error involved, so that you couldn't be a 100% that the voice you were trying to imitate came out exactly as intended. The only way your voice would always sound the same was when you were using your own voice instead of trying to imitate someone else.

You could pick adjectives from the following tables:

Voice height/depth - can only pick one:

shrill
very high (falsetto?)
high femine/soprano
medium femine/mezzo-soprano
low feminine/alto
medium masculine/tenor
low masculine/baritone
very low/bass

Other voice qualities - should be arranged into groups where one thing cancels out the others, several can be picked as long as they're from different sub groups:

melodic
fruity
monotonous/flat/toneless
nasal
husky
hoarse
screechy
gravelly
gruff
guttural
ringing
soft
tight
brittle
croaky

[sanchez]

How about something simpler, along the lines of whispering, where, if the speaker is known to you (i.e. you’ve named them), you’ll get a random chance of recognising the voice.

[hyrle]

I think that's a pretty good suggestion, sanchez.

[Swingerzetta]

How about something simpler, along the lines of whispering, where, if the speaker is known to you (i.e. you’ve named them), you’ll get a random chance of recognising the voice.

My favorite proposed solution so far. Not only would it fix the problems, but it would be Exciting, as well. Imagine recognizing the voice of your least favorite radio troll...

[kicking jay]

Fully for sanchez's solution.

[SekoETC]

I'm guessing if that was implemented, it would get nerfed like overhearing so that there would be a cap on how many people get the chance to recognize a person each time they send a message. It would make more sense without a cap but given the size of some radio networks, an uncapped system would mean there would statistically always be a high chance of at least one listener recognizing the sender.

[*Wiro]

I'm guessing if that was implemented, it would get nerfed like overhearing so that there would be a cap on how many people get the chance to recognize a person each time they send a message. It would make more sense without a cap but given the size of some radio networks, an uncapped system would mean there would statistically always be a high chance of at least one listener recognizing the sender.

Except everyone knows the people in their town, they can physically see them. Radio users aren't known by the majority of listeners so they would be ruled out automatically.

[Money]

Subject: Anonymity on the radio and the problems caused by it

But problems rise when you need to talk to strangers, for example to track down a criminal or to warn people of pirates.

This is when the radio is in most of need of some kind of balance. Villains like this are already facing difficult odds when it comes to actually evading arrest (summary execution) let along identification. Cantr is generally a slower paced games with a few clear exceptions (combat, healing, etc). What I see your voices suggestion doing is allowing for a high degree of certainty coupled with an instant method of communication across vast distances. This will further skew the game to favor those that are very active and part of the universal morality system which is prevalent in this game.

No one has any ingame means of figuring out which messages are legitimate in either end

I have to take the complete opposite stance, their are plenty of ways to figure out if a message is legitimate, just none that are hard coded. If your talking to a complete stranger with no connection what so ever I think you should be unsure as to who your talking to. If however a group of towns instituted a code or password system of some sort then you wouldn't ever need to worry if your talking to a stranger from a different town, you could share the same code.

Example
Town a and town b agree on a coded phrase system with a list of very unique questions and responses that would only be used once each. Person in town A: Hows the furniture building going in the old castle Town B? You have an incoming thief with a stolen crossbow. Person in town B who doesn't know the person in town A: Its hard goings but the chandelier is starting to shine. Thanks for the heads up, I'm bob, I'll inform town leader. This phrase is struck from the allied towns code books and will never be used again, thus if someone tries to use the code to mess with either town they know it a fake.

This seems like something that could be implemented by anyone and doesn't require any staff intervention or resources. It does however mean that if your being contacted out of the blue by someone you've never heard of before your going to be in the dark, a fair trade off for instant communication.

but if someone pranks you repeatedly, in real world you would be able to recognize it's the same person.

I'm willing to sacrifice a little realism to keep the game well balanced. I'm sure its frustrating to be messed with by the same few individuals again and again but that doesn't seem like a difficult problem to fix IC.

^^ This is why I was all for the suggestion of making radio repeaters either repeat on all frequencies, or a wider band of frequencies - like 100-199 or 200-299.

The bands of frequencies idea is good, and more realistic... and... may take some crap off the main frequency? Or is that just wishful thinking?

An interesting idea that could cut down, radio clutter. Anyone else down to draw up a suggestion for this? While I'm not sure I fully support the idea it does seem like something that could be implemented fairly easily and would help cut down on radio clutter.

[LittleSoul]

I have to take the complete opposite stance, their are plenty of ways to figure out if a message is legitimate, just none that are hard coded. If your talking to a complete stranger with no connection what so ever I think you should be unsure as to who your talking to. If however a group of towns instituted a code or password system of some sort then you wouldn't ever need to worry if your talking to a stranger from a different town, you could share the same code.

Money is on the money with this one, in my opinion.


And Sanchez has a great idea that I would support as a suggestion.

[Jos Elkink]

Money is on the money with this one, in my opinion.

And Sanchez has a great idea that I would support as a suggestion.

Yup, I agree with both points. I think Sanchez' suggestion needs some minor refinement, though, in particular in the sense that if you just split the same radio message into multiple messages, the probability that on at least one of them you can recognize the person is very high. So it can't be a fixed probability for each message and needs to be something adjusted to avoid this trick. But otherwise I agree and it's a clever solution.

[SekoETC]

Maybe the chance of being recognized could be tied to the amount of characters in the message. If someone said only a single word, very low chance of being recognized, but if they spoke a whole paragraph, a high chance of being recognized.

[Otherside]

Money is on the money with this one, in my opinion.


And Sanchez has a great idea that I would support as a suggestion.

Maybe the chance of being recognized could be tied to the amount of characters in the message. If someone said only a single word, very low chance of being recognized, but if they spoke a whole paragraph, a high chance of being recognized.

Sanchez' solution and Seko's implementation makes perfect sense to me.

[*Wiro]

As we all know complicated solutions that sound great on paper are very unlikely to make it into the game. Instead, here is a simple solution someone proposed on the suggestions forum. I suggest that everyone annoyed by the radio in any capacity reads it. From a purely pragmatic point of view this suggestion is more likely to happen due to its simplicity.

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