Remove Incognito Mode

[steady crystal]

Incognito Mode was a mix between a couple suggestions that didn't satisfy the original intent of the "incognito" part of the original suggestion. From my discussions with users, it seems I have not been the only one being left with a sore impression over time.

Benefit of the mode

The original suggestion behind this was to allow a user to hide their online presence to friends in their list. This would allow them to play without having a friend click on their name to join. It allowed a user to take it slow. By having a feature like this, a user would not have to remove their friends to be left alone for a bit.

A different suggestion had asked for Steam players to be able to play as a guest. I suspect this was mixed into the original suggestion. If a player has an account (as they 100% do if they are playing on Steam), then I see no reason for them to need to jump into a guest account; especially given how it results in bad team balance with smurfing.

Its abusive nature

The way it currently works by obfuscating a player's username makes the user feel anonymous. With this feeling comes a higher likelihood of doing things one may otherwise avoid due to peer pressure and reputation. Similar to how guests using the chat was abused leading to its removal, I see users use incognito to be toxic and scummy to others and water down the experience for both myself and others I have spoken with (I obviously can't speak for all). Players have also had difficulty knowing how to handle reports for bad chat behaviour when they can't even tell who the perpetrator is.
It also plays a similar role to those who jump accounts or change names regularly. There's no way to build up any sense of comradery or rivalry with players. There's less sense of community and more feelings of alienation. For someone like myself, I prefer to have a name next to a person I see. I want to know to whom I hold my respects for or avoid based on how disrespectful they may be.

Some players treat it like being a guest, and will go as far as also including a guest skin, with the bonus of getting to farm up stats for themselves in the process of being disrespectful.

The setting either needs to be removed entirely, or kept to what users were originally asking for with only hiding online status on friends list.

[rocky harness]

while I agree and hate being in the same match as one, I can't play war brokers outside of a stream without being followed everywhere, so if I just want to chill by my self and disassociate I can't without changing my name or incog, I am not fighting the removal or supporting it as I can agree in both ways this is just my two cents

[steady crystal]

that I believe is the sole benefit of it

I know Red Stone has also enjoyed being able to avoid recognition

though I believe that was via a guest

[floral blaze]

I just recognise incognito ppl via their skins

makes it even more pointless

should just be guest skin imo

[ebon plover]

I like incognito mode for similar reasons as Volk. I prefer it stays. Remove it if you must....but also remove the ability of a logged in user to use a guest skin. Change that skin to a different colored variation for logged in users.

[steady crystal]

my take on that is different

I believe users should have access to all skins

the issue I think needs to be flipped onto the guests/bots

and we already see a solution in BR

BR bots use a name generator and have random cosmetics from old crates

I think this should be recyled

in the case a user also actually liked the style of the current default skin and wanted to use it, it wouldn't be looked down on or considered "guest skinning" and could be used for visual reasons rather than hiding ones

[ebon plover]

Fine. Similar effect. As long as all the guests and bots are distinct.

[broken sentinel]

I would say, remove "incognito mode" and replace it with "offline mode". For the rest, I absolutely agree with this suggestion. I never understood incognito mode in the first place with exception of streamers being stream sniped or followed around.

[steady crystal]

If I remember tomorrow I'll write up the guest skin/name thing. Assuming I haven't already suggested in past as I thought I had. Flooding the suggestions

specific to this I find it unfortunate that the benefit the setting provides specific to well-known users like streamers has to be paired up against the negatives

I'm pretty set on players sticking to an account and not being hidden behind anonymity where toxicity thrives

so I prefer things that keep players to an account, signed in

while I still recognise the few innocent players who benefit, such as streamers, from being anonymous

as there are benefits to anonymity

[ebon plover]

Back to incognito...what problems with people playing incognito are not also true of people playing as guests? There's the potential for bad behavior in the chat, but if that's the only distinction, like for guests, incognitos could simply not be allowed to use it while in that mode.

[steady crystal]

and I'd prefer they did so via their account than via a guest account where balance is hurt of course

[steady crystal]

guests cannot chat

their ability to was stripped

they can still use the quick chat though

[ebon plover]

Yes, so apply that to incognitos too.

[steady crystal]

so "User on top of mountain" on Office hasn't gone anywhere

[broken sentinel]

Random thought; Maybe there should be something like a "streamers mode". When activated, streamers will not be shown online, and also will the name of the server etc not be shown in the scoreboard. Something like that...

[steady crystal]

ultimately I look forward to when guests aren't needed and players must have an account

I don't think being hidden is good generally

[ebon plover]

Yes, but until that point.,.

[steady crystal]

it's more than just chat that users can be toxic through

I get the premise there though

and certainly better than doing nothing at all

[ebon plover]

Yes, as guests and as incognitos.

[steady crystal]

addressing one of the concerns

if I had to choose between now and incog having no chat

I'd take that

if I could have the setting removed I of course prefer that ultimately

[steady crystal]

if just available to all it's the new incog, so would need some kind of req

private servers (planned feature) also would maybe provide some benefit to those wanting some quiet to themselves

[broken sentinel]

Another solution I can think of comes close to what redrum said. When incognito, you play as guest, so chat will be unavailable and stats won't count.

[steady crystal]

ultimately when you go out in public, there's some level of being targeted that's just going to come with playing and I think has to be handled

issue with being a guest is smurfing

and a permanent no Elo one at that

at least with a new tab in a browser the guest eventually gets assigned proper Elo

saved via cookies

[broken sentinel]

True, that will result in unbalanced teams

I prefer removal as well, or else calling it offline mode just to not show up online in the friends list.

[steady crystal]

then say Elo is saved though but has no influence, players could do that on a new account to hold perm low Elo to deliberately throw balance off forever on the same account

or to hit "save checkpoint" on a high Elo to not lose it

for example DYGS we all know has been farming

[broken sentinel]

Elo stats should be removed too

[steady crystal]

let's say he reaches his goal of 2200 something

he just hits "save" and never lets it drop

yes, that's a different story yet again though

[broken sentinel]

Haha

[steady crystal]

I still find this to be the ideal

it's annoyed me for a long time, had plenty of time to think it over

[broken sentinel]

Same

[steady crystal]

I don't find the general negatives being outweighed by niche positives for a few players looking to avoid targeting

I sympathise and see value for those users

I just think it's a "necessary evil" in this case

[broken sentinel]

I got bothered by that mode ever since and never understood why people want to play incognito. Especially when POMP's mod was intergrated I even got more annoyed by it.

[ebon plover]

I don't think you really avoid the negatives while guest accounts are still used though.

[steady crystal]

and yeah, other suggestion focusing on the guest skin issue when I get to that

[steady crystal]

we can't, yes

but if we can remove one

I'd like that we can

incog I can see us removing

guests are required for stability of numbers atm

I have some suggestions for that anyway... trying to encourage users to make an account if they have played enough rounds

the whole taste test aspect is still there, and reminds those who may not be thinking of an account

and pesters those trying to play continuously off of an account

it just has to be done carefully to not actually drive traffic away from the game

hopefully a good balance of new names and a sense of community from seeing common names will help keep people in

[broken sentinel]

Just wanna leave this here as well..
duplicate

#1087036150474088470 message

[steady crystal]

with the prompts being enough to get most normal users into properly joining to be one of the team

[leaden sleet]

[steady crystal]

is it a duplicate

very similar

I'm just going to... change the tags on this quietly

[broken sentinel]

Haha

[leaden sleet]

👀 how about a try-before-buy time you can play "for free"/without an account.

[steady crystal]

and get those up since it seems the top may get buried

[leaden sleet]

to not scare all guest only players away by forcing them to immideately create an account

[steady crystal]

well that's the idea

[leaden sleet]

I somehow sense a "but..."

[steady crystal]

^ round numbers is one way

thing is, when guest chat was still a thing there were many users asking "how to change weapon"

they don't know about menu

[leaden sleet]

Tutorials should be ingame and not on YT duhh

[steady crystal]

people who might have made an account don't actually know how

[leaden sleet]

😠

[steady crystal]

so it needs to be a little more intuitive

a prompt after a few rounds would link to this, so at least from that point they have a direct way to the process without having tried to find a way

[leaden sleet]

I will teach myself c# or whatever it needs and do it on my own if the devs haven't done it before

[steady crystal]

just needs a UI change really

have it listed in the on-screen controls

chuck it in a corner or with the rest above HUD

simplest solution

[leaden sleet]

🙏

[drifting yacht]

@wise palm

[wise palm]

Uh

[warm mural]

i can see both sides of this topic. I sympathize with the devs and veteran players who have to put up with the paparazzi when they play. they can always play with a new account if need be. but, if you're revamping incognito and guest mode and guest skins, i am all for it, people should stand behind their elo and skill and reputation, good or bad... but i will also add, along those lines, reduce the name changing as well. Changing names 2 or 3 times a year is enough, some people are changing 2 or 3 times a week, or even daily. I just personally find it more fun to enter a game, recognize people, and play accordingly, it's annoying having to relearn people or figure out who they are. Good players have certain style of play, i think its fair they can be recognized quickly. i think the skins are great, and they are how people should express themselves. i think names should be permanent or nearly permanent, toxic players should live with their reps, high elo players shouldn't be able to hide behind anonymity. but that's just my opinion.

[floral blaze]

I think that we should be able to change our names at the same rate we can now, because sometimes there's a running gag where people change their names to something but if you can only change it a few times a year, you would be committing to the joke for months even after it's long dead

and I like funny moments where people change their name to someone else's confuse people

"[SE] Fear Striker was destroyed by [SE] Fear Striker"

[steady crystal]

Not so sure about that when gags I've only seen run in Australia was stuff like "Rocket likes men" as a name

there are other ways to joke without needing a name change

[ebon plover]

The only funny one was after the font change. Other than that one time, I've mostly seen it used for bullying.

[leaden sleet]

When JoJa played some matches in 2021 half of the lobby had names like "Hey JoJa"; "JoJa best guy" or "I <3 JoJa". 😄
Name changes should be possible maybe once a month, or similar to twitch or Instagram, once in two weeks

At least with a great time span to wait to make the users more thoroughly thinking about the name change

[steady crystal]

Do they need a username change to still show support and say hi to someone though?

I think the current cooldown is something from 5 - 15 mins

I don't think complete lockout of changing names should be present

sometimes a user makes a name in early teens, grow up, and then look back at a username and cringe at what their younger self was thinking

with no way to change, that could lead to avoidance of the game

though it's not like it's uncommon to see permanent names

Reddit as an example has permanent usernames

the popular rhythm game Osu! has semi-permanent names, making the feature to change a name locked behind a purchase

each consequent name change costs more

there was a fairly popular player who was once #1 in the rankings who was known to pay up for many name changes for sake of anonymity and keeping to themselves for periods of time

Twitch I think has name changes limited to once a month

this is straying from icognito though

[warm mural]

to the ones wanting anonymity- who are the ones you would benefit being anonymous from? are they more along the lines of sub 1600 players? could there be an elo break that you could be anonymous from that would work? i know the game is not real keen on 'penalizing' people based on elo, but if its the sub 1600ers that are following the vets and creators it might work to be invisible to only them?

[steady crystal]

could be unfair on them

either everyone should see or nobody should

my opinion

[warm mural]

yeah i can see that. i still vote no incognito, and way less name changing.

[grave patio]

No. Just No.

[peak maple]

This