Don't allow hooding with a cloak with insufficient

[Puciek]

I would suggest that we shouldn't allow hooding with a cloak that doesn't have sufficiently long @desc_cloak set. Currently, the system seems to allow to hood even without any @desc_cloak set, and this creates for a cloaked, and hooded, figure without any features, which is more than slightly unrealistic and requiring OOC clarification to even RP with said person as from what others can see this is just a blob of cloak without any features except height difference.

[Giftherz]

You can pay fot all of my character's cloaks to be retooled and a @desc added to them then? I like the idea, but not the wardrobe issues it presents.

[Puciek]

You can pay fot all of my character's cloaks to be retooled and a @desc added to them then? I like the idea, but not the wardrobe issues it presents.

Maybe a free retool for empty cloaks to go with this change?

Problem is that when a person with empty cloak shows in, hooded, you literally only got their height to go by with, without clarifying it oocly how they look. And I don't think that hooded people are just floating masses of a cloak .

[Taunya]

I agree cloaks shouldn't be worn without some kind of description. I think the whole system should be overhauled myself; I don't think I've heard anyone claim they're satisfied with the change.

I understand cloaks were changed to keeping the desc on the cloak due to people forgetting to edit their desc cloak, and oocly leaking their identity (e.g. from their sneaky mage cloak to their public persona's or vice-versa), but I think the baby was really tossed out with the bathwater with the change to address that.

With the old desc cloak set by the player, you could describe how the cloak fit on the character, what it does and doesn't expose, hints at the character's bearing, voice, etc.
But as a cloak might be loaned/borrowed/stolen, now that's pretty much out the window, as it'd be giving traits to some other character that just don't belong. That pretty much leaves you with only describing the cloak itself, which is rather boring and unhelpful.

If there needs to be a per-cloak description set, I think it should be saved on the character's pfile rather than on the cloak. Something akin to the remember notes that you can set for other characters, setting a description in how you look in different cloaks.

[Temi]

It was less the risk to people forgetting to edit and more the ability to look at a cloaked person and tie it to one specific person. Even in the same cloak with the same attributes, different wordings make it pretty precisely one individual. It is a feature, not something we overlooked, that someone taking and wearing someone else's cloak will look the same- because with the same build and height they mostly would.

We did lose the ability to add personal touches like hair sticking out, but it is supposed to be about the cloak now. As such, I find the blank desc and the cloak desc approximately the same level of useful. The current implementation does grate at me a bit, because I have already said approximately everything I want to say about the cloak in the short, but this is intended to make cloak anonymity a bit stronger.

One thing I would caution is that cloaks are useful for more than disguise. They also help keep you dry.

[Puciek]

I do get the point of anonymity, but it's such a scene killer when someone cloaked and hooded walks in without any description on it. The only thing that can possibly come to my imagination is a pacman ghost with cloaks texture:

And if I want any more details about said person, like is the cloak thick, or thin, or does it have all arms, or all legs, or literally anything, I will either have to clumsily emote around not knowing that when I speak to said person or ask ocly "Hey, how the heck do you look like?". And that's just a massive scene killer for me. It doesn't have to help identify a person, but it must also not siffle our ability to picture someone.

[Temi]

Yeah, things as they stand now are a bit sticky. We don't want to have no description at all, but just describing the cloak seems to be problematic as well. But in some ways it is better than it was, too.

[Kinaed]

Noting Az, this change is approved.

[Andruid]

It was less the risk to people forgetting to edit and more the ability to look at a cloaked person and tie it to one specific person. Even in the same cloak with the same attributes, different wordings make it pretty precisely one individual. It is a feature, not something we overlooked, that someone taking and wearing someone else's cloak will look the same- because with the same build and height they mostly would.

We did lose the ability to add personal touches like hair sticking out, but it is supposed to be about the cloak now. As such, I find the blank desc and the cloak desc approximately the same level of useful. The current implementation does grate at me a bit, because I have already said approximately everything I want to say about the cloak in the short, but this is intended to make cloak anonymity a bit stronger.

One thing I would caution is that cloaks are useful for more than disguise. They also help keep you dry.

The same build and height -- this seems like quite an assumption to me, as I have argued elsewhere.

The current implementation grates me a bit, too, as does the now stringent requirement to add extra fluff about the cloak, which I honestly care far less about than the personal touches that were unnecessarily stripped away to allow for this object-oriented system.