True fog af war type game.

Maby someone has suggested this idea before but how about a game type whereby the identity of all the players is hidden and the chat function is disabled?
Also make it impossible for players to send each other messages and only reveal the identity of a player when you defeat them or for those player who have been defeated reveal the identity of all the players at the end of the game.
I think it would be cool to not know who your playing.
Often player make strategic choices based on the ranking/ skill level of the opponents.
In this setting this would not be possible.
You would also elliminate the endless " this is a fog game, you can't reveal my position/ armies " discusions that dominate most fog af war games.
Just my 2 cents.

That would indeed be awesome but it may be a bit overwhelming to program. I'd be one of the first to play that type of game though!

id say too disoriented.
id have no idea what was going on

Why would it be overwelming to program?
If they have the ability to stop a player from using the chat function how hard can it be to stop all players from using it?
The not being able to see wh you are playing might be a little bit more tricky.

I love it!!!! Crazy!  What a twist!

Never been suggested that I know of!

Keep them comming bluebird005vis!

I'd play it for sure.

I don't really know if it would be hard to program or not. I suppose that I just assumed so as I have absolutely no idea how to do anything like that so it would be very hard for me

Hmm, so what you want is just see the colours? Should be doable.

However,
maybe I am seeing ghosts here, but basically playing anonymously also allows to misbehave anonymously. The identities are revealed after the game, so that might make it a little bit less anonymous, but still it is something to watch out for.
Secondly, I think diplomacy is a huge part of the game. Thus playing in a game where nobody can chat would in my opinion be horribly boring. Part of the FOW games is that you can bluff how powerful you are and can set up people to attack a certain player if you "find out" he's strong. Taking that away... I think the game would turn boring.

Regarding the programming part. It will be very hard to make sure the game is really anonymously. Yes, disabling the chat should be a piece of cake, but anonymising players is not. Sure, we can just not display names in the list, but what about the players profile where it says which games he joined? There are a couple of those small things that really have to be figured out.

If you are able to perfect the way this works (i.e. how does the interface look, how do you join those games, what things have to changed to make sure you can't find out who is in the game, etc.) and there are enough people that want it, I can see if it is not too much work to write the actual lines of code. I don't have the time to completely figure out these details myself though.
You could possibly make this a little bit easier by actually showing the players in the game, but not their colours. To prevent you from educated guesses as of who chose which colours, colours would be distributed randomly on the start of the game.

I like the idea, and it should not be too hard to program, except that Cireon is right and there are lots of details to think about.

And yes, disabeling the chat completely makes the game really different, but then that's part of the grazyness right, so I would go for that too yes


It's a great idea.

Well there you go....two programers on board...one to go!

Part of the appeal for me at least would be that you don't know who you are playing.
A lot of the way you treat another player is determined or at least influenced by your previous experiences with this player and their ranking/reputation.
This would take that away but in it's place it would force you to consider each players style and moves on their own merrits in that single game.
Now you often see players comment, oh him or her is doing that again or ah classic ***** should have expected that.
Flying blind ( nice name for this type of game don't you think ) would totaly change the way you " size up " the other opponents.
Very often you see players targeting other players or players that are lower ranked try to eliminate as many " high ranking players " as they can regardless of the general tactical picture.
This is linked to the " losing last " mentallity that is dicussed at length in the forum.
Often you see players that go out of their way to elliminate a high ranked player because they think they are more dangerous or if they manage to win the game it will be better for their skill rating.
What you would get with this is " pure tactical play " without personal vendettas or biase in any way shape or form.
No players hunting " scalps " or players that just want to beat that guy that beat them in a previous game.
I think a lot of players that suicide do it out of dislike for a player.
This would change that dynamic and without chat that would be the only breaking of the rules you could possibly get.
Teaming would also be impossible.

PS, as for your showing players name but not their collor I think it's rather the other way around.
Most long time players have a collor they prefer or use more than ohters.
If you don't see the names you could still speculate if you are playing fendi ( pink ) or urgul ( dark blue ) or someone else who ussually plays with a predictable collor.
The interface would be the same as it is now but the names would be blank or player 1 2 etc etc or ( my personal favorite but perhaps a tad difficult to programe ) random names.
The games would be started like they are now, a player chooses a map and the other settings.
Players that are interrested choose a collor 1st come first choice unitl all the open slots are filled.
The game choose randomly who begins and assigns territories and we are of to the races.
When you defeat a player you get to see their identity, the players that are defeated see the idenity at the end when there is only 1 player left.

You would also have to disable the profile function in those particular games, or show a random profile so you would not know if it was accurate or not.

Great thoughts bluebird005vis...this would be fun...and I see nothing wrong with your thoughts.

Thorpe: like I said, it is not the idea I dislike, but all the things involved with it. Basically I am saying that the alternate option (not showing the colours) would be a lot easier to me and by distributing the colours randomly, you would take away all suspicions to who a certain player is.

So yes, if you guys are really pursuing the thing you want to have now, then this will go move down on my todo-list, because the amount of work involved will become larger for the amount of extra fun you get from it. The interface would have to be redesigned, a lot of pages and logs edited and most importantly: it all has be fit in nicely with game creation, the lobby, etc.