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As discussed, there are few factors in the disguise meta that could really be addressed by a few core additions to appear and an additional disguise-title feature.
1. Appear (Weaker/Tougher/Uglier): An alternative to holdback, this would allow the user to lower their overall health indicator to excellent or raise it to a higher level to give the appearance of being tougher. In addition, it would also allow the user to discard any attractiveness traits in their shortdesc.
This would reinforce the non-meta identifiers of cybernetic load out, clothes, description, and skin color which is the de facto way to possibly identify a disguised person.
2. Disguise-title: Currently, you cannot use the title feature while disguised. This means an easy way to demonstrate you aren't disguised is to use a title and it has quickly become a clear differentiator between PC's.
Ideally, these would all be gated behind a disguise skill level.
However whenever you use an item to disguise your identity that's more than say a wig, or a mask, and covers more body area then yes, it should automatically hide your 'fitness' stat.
The thing is that there's this annoying meta where people see a new Display name and think they're either an immy, or a disguised person. So appearing in 'excellent' condition combats this meta.
If a player could see their character had spectacular health, but everyone else saw it as a percentage (ie. everyone looks excellent at full health to others) would it really be any problem? You can still see them taking damage and their relative condition during fights even if it was a percentage indicator.
Johnny has explained at length that this was huge complaint of players back in the day who felt extraordinarily misled when they would punch up without having the slightest indication.
I agree though.
It seems like Excellent for Everyone would solve all these issues at a stroke and bring END in line with all the other stats getting obfuscated to others, though maybe there is call for something like a 'consider' verb. It's kind of an interesting question whether players should be able to tell if something is 'strong', or not.
