Name: Identity Thief Purpose: To steal the name and skin of a dead player that has yet to be identified (or is, if the traitor decides to make himself obvious). Now for the spelled out part: Identity Thief is a traitor weapon-slash-tool used by which a traitor can procure the identity of a victim he/she or their fellow traitors have killed. The traitor would be able to keep this identity until they decide to switch from it (most likely just from the C-menu Disguiser style and switching off the identity theft), but will remain a one-time use item. If the traitor disguises as a player, and that players' body is discovered, the traitor can switch from the victim's identity back to their own but is not able to procure another identity. To remain balanced, and for obvious reasons that the traitor most likely will not resemble the victim's way of typing nor will they sound the same, the traitor's text and speech will remain in their own identity. If a traitor were to type in chat, it would not show under the name of the victim's, same as when he is speaking through his mic. To preserve the traitor, however, speaking in mic should not show a mic symbol over their heads nor should their model move their hand to its ear. There is no tell-tale signs for typing besides standing still, which can not be helped. Identity Thief should compliment Disguiser; a disguised identity thief can place the blame on the victim, leading innocents and detectives on a wild goose chase around the area for the victim rather than the traitor. This enables the traitor to use the identity of his victim to keep the heat off of themselves, while also lending them the issue of the victim's body being discovered and innocents putting together that the disguised victim was in fact an identity thief. Ideas for refinement is welcome, and criticism is more so welcome so as to discover and possible issues and flesh them out.
I think this could lead to a lot of heartache in terms of reports and rulebreakers. I can imagine a lot of different scenarios where issues could arise over actual identity of a person who is breaking rules, whether its on ingame reports or on reports done through the forums. Along with that, I think this has the potential to cause a lot of chaos on the server anyways, a degree of which we don't really need on the server. For those reasons, I'm not in support of this.
I think that this would be a great addition, however logs or console would obviously need to be able to show someone stealing an identity otherwise this wouldn't work.
Nah, in logs it wouldn't show the person whose identity was stolen, and when you were killed it would still show the real person who killed you. And voice and text chat would still show the original player, so there wouldn't be an issue there. Also, if you took more than 20 damage the mask would break anyway, so you'd have to pick your shots carefully.
Not only is that a problem that the admins would work out easily (as Lemoncakes has explained, and we both have talked over this idea extensively in the shoutbox), the kill logs will still show the traitor as the killer at the end of the round, not the victim. Further, in the same way as Detectives killing traitors and their card shows "Killed you from DNA", same will be said for thieves: "Traitor killed you as Victim". Any so called "chaos" that stirs from any deaths out of identity thieves killing someone then disappearing, happens anyway with disguisers killing someone and running off. Really, what's the difference in the amount of chaos occurring, and really, how does one solve chaos on a TTT game? Plus, who the hell reports a traitor for killing them as an innocent? The only time that makes sense is traitor-on-traitor, and even then, other traitors would be fully aware of their actual identity. Unless of course it's just a random report, but that's against the rules. They would. It would be treated the same way as a disguiser, except a bit more complicated. Players killed by an identity thief will have it listed as a kill under the traitor, not the victim. Fellow traitors will even be warned via jihad bomb buying style in that there will be notice in their chatbox: "Soandso has stolen the identity of Victim!" and will proceed to still have a red T over their heads. The rest, Lemoncakes has explained. Can both of you explain to me a bit more what do you mean by needing logs or some notice that an identity was taken, or in Lone's words, would cause chaos? The whole point of traitors are to cause chaos and kill off innocents, after all. Just confused by that.
Well, maybe to get around issues arising with evidence in the form of screenshots or demos of people who have taken someone's identity, there could be some kind of indicator either in their name or on their person that they aren't actually who they seem to be. This would also serve as a good balance for this traitor weapon. Could be something in the name, or it could be something that actually appears on the person themselves that allows others to discover that they aren't who they appear to be, like was originally suggested in the OP. It would make little sense if someone like this wasn't present, because something has to be there to give away the traitor if someone's vigilant and actually cares to inspect the person. Maybe something like slight changes in the name, an occasional slip in the disguise, etc., to allow innocents to actually figure out that it's a traitor if they're observant.
I'm sure the fact they can not speak nor type in the victim's name is enough. Most people that frequent the servers are knowingly chatty, and a chatty person that is suddenly running around quiet and refuses to reply back to anything is suspicious as it is. Name slips or "disguise slips" just serve to make this just another tool to be thrown aside as much as the poltergeist and radio are, because you give too much of an advantage to the innocents. All in all, identity theft is none more complicated than just the fact you're wearing some one else, and can be as easily busted as that person and if not more considering you lack the ability to speak in their name. As for player complaining on a character, that is very unlikely; most dead Ts tend to reveal the entire roster of the traitors as it is. They will, without a doubt, reveal the identity thief just as much. "Soandso is a traitor, but he's stolen the identity of Victim." This is as well pointless as, when you notice when you are dead as an innocent, all MIA (missing in action) players are listed as well; simply looking at the scoreboard to see the victim is currently considered MIA will be enough for people to realize the player running around with his name and model is an identity thief. You're looking at this as if there is no present way to discover players for their true identity, when said issue is actually already taken care of before this suggestion was even put forth in the fact there is already current solutions at hand as said above that have been long instated, and have thus far been without fault. TL;DR, don't fix what isn't broken, and the current way to discover a player's role isn't broken.
The problem is, though, that the main way to discover and kill a person with a stolen identity is through suspicion, and killing off of suspicion is RDM here. We obviously can't kill someone because they aren't talking. You're right in saying traditional methods do stand, though, and that's a good point. Perhaps a good way to balance this out would be to create a detective-weapon counterpart that allows them to see through stolen identities? Not sure how that one would go, but considering how useful and common this kind of thing could become, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a way to break it if a detective buys the right weapon for the job.
Trust me, these guys are observant on their own as it is. If they have suspicion on someone, they tend to trail that poor traitor around everywhere he goes, and stare at him as much as they can. If anything, they're doing something worse than random deathmatching a frustrated traitor; they're annoying and pestering him. I would never wish that on anyone. As for the device to disable it, I mentioned that in shoutbox and forgot to add it; if the victim's body was found, a detective can be called to it. The body, similar to traitors' who buy vests or radars, will say "This player's identity card and clothes have been stolen" or something of the like. Detectives can use their DNA scanner to trace the identity thief. This will be its fatal downside; even after you take off the identity, the DNA will stay present on the victim till the round ends, and can be traced back to you no matter your current state. Even if another traitor were to kill the victim and you took their identity, it will lead to the identity thief.
