Got it - just making sure.
But for everything youāve given so far these are what Iāve been calling ancedotes and examples.
Correlation is not causation.
Bad things happening due to privacy does not refute above pointā¦
Please define (your version) of what balance is.
edit: wikilink
This solves the debate in this thread, but it pretty much puts you right back at Square 1. Your whole reason for wanting the option was so that you could have confidentiality on your character build, but Rank choices are the easiest thing to figure out on a player. Do battle with them or spectate them battling and you can figure out most of their Circles based off their skill usage. They can always change around their gears, but they canāt change their Circles. You could also get trolled by asking for a Priest C2 in dungeons, a guy with a Cleric costume and Hide turned on telling you heās a Priest C2, and as soon as you step foot in the dungeon, he starts spamming Monk skills.
Flip it around so that Ranks are always viewable and Gear can be turned to Show/Hide, people with Hide on canāt see another persons gear, and add a timer to how often you can flip the option (So someone doesnāt turn it off, quickly look at others gear, then turn it back on), and youāre done.
Just as a heads up though, broadcasting/pug parties might refuse access to end-game dungeons and raids if they have standards set for gear level/fort, and you guys refuse to take your shirt off so the Doctor can check you. ( Ķ”Ā° ĶŹ Ķ”Ā°)
I completely agree with this proposal. I think this is the fairest thing we can do.
A minimum of transparency and honesty never hurt. Human beings tend to seek the shortest and effective way. If some builds are emulated is that they should work well. Also, I donāt think without a little investment, a player is able to understand and make full use of his character.
@Sixaxis made a fair point with that suggestion. So I guess this should conclude our discussion. As for the timer, I think 10 seconds should be enough.
1 hour or bust. 10 seconds is being way too lenient.
In iCBT2, I loved to check other peoples class-choices all the time.
Whether I was waiting for party at an instance dungeon, grinding, questing, or simply whenever a new person came into the party or I joined one, the first thing I was curious about was what their class-path is and that habit never got old in more than a month.
Would be sad if the next time I get to play TOS, Iād be getting a āhidden character infoā 90% of the time when checking someone elses character.
Besides, whatās the point in wanting to hide it? This is quite basic info about your character, not like people get to see what skills you took or how your stats are distributed, just the basic class-choices you made so far.
Equipment is a whole different story of course, and Iām not siding either way on that for now.
Make it 1 minute then LMAO
Well Iām fine with 1 hour or whatever suggestion you come up with as long as the idea is implemented.
@Charon you can scroll up and read various explanation why people prefer to hide it. But thatās not a big deal for me now so I wont continue to debate over it.
But but butā¦ Itās possible to take priest c2 and monk at the same time!
I still donāt think both rank and gear should be something other people can view on demand. What the original post was asking for was an option to hide both class and gear. Even if they later backed down from this position, the original topic still stands.
People can still request that you show your information, but the option to hide this information should still exist and the control should be with the owner (or renter according to the Steam terms of service) of this information.
ā¦Would probably be what Iām trying to say here.
Also, as gear enhancement is simply a question of how much silver (and luck) you have how is this morally any different from giving people access to information such as how much gold you have, your market listings and your inventory screen as well?
Well, Iām fine with it either way, I just didnāt want the thread to turn into a mess with the āI 1v1ād you b4 m8ā and circle-syndrome posts where everyone goes back & forth using their prior arguments.
^And thatās also a good point. Iād prefer to not go into Klaipedia (Town), right-click on 100 people to see their character, and only 10 people can be viewed. Itās also a pain to have to tell someone everytime prior to entering dungeons when I want specific roles to uncheck their Hide box just so I can confirm what their Rank is. Itād also be a pain to them because theyād have to wait ONE, HOUR, 
(@Erokhi) just to hide their gear again.
Iām not saying the option shouldnāt exist, Iām just saying that hiding Ranks is unnecessary, and that you shouldnāt be able to look at other players gears if you have your own hidden (At least in PvP situations).
Well, me seeing how much money and stock you have doesnāt help me to determine your damage-output and ability to survive being one-shot by the Lvl 285 Trigon the Terrible (+Karma to whoever gets that reference).
āI can āseeā your Ranks.ā ( Ķ”Ā° Ķ Ķ”Ā° Ķ”Ā°)
I canāt really give a ā ā ā ā if some1 can or cannot see my equips/class build. Idk why ppl care about it, itās literally irrelevant to the game(imo).
I actually found it nice in iCBT2 when ppl randomly came to me and asked if Pala c3 was good,how some skills works and how did I get a equip or two, the way I see it,allowing others to see your equips/class build is just an incentive to socialize and for others to get direct feedback
ā¦assuming you want feedback on your gears. Perhaps you donāt want noobs coming up to your wizard constantly calling you stupid for having a sword equipped. Maybe some people just like to play outside of the meta without being interrogated constantlyā¦ 
Well, your sword would appear regardless of it being able or not soā¦ Atleast if yours equips/class were open, they could try to understand it before asking you. And I also dont think ppl will be interrogating you very often about it, and even if they do, its -socialization-, maybe youāll end up making a friend or two because of it. Ppl are not going to be flaming on you like that tooā¦ Chill man/woman xD
If anything Iād say showing you equipment would lower the amount of noobs doing that as, if they are smart enough and not just idiots to begin with, they will check you inventory and see itās a Wizard Blade instead of just looking at a Wizard using a sword for no reason.
For any PvP-based game a free ability to check opponentās item/skill build is a huge minus imo.
For example:
And how is that fair for person that spent some time and effort to get that sword trying to surprise his opponents? Any tactic/strategy involving rare and/or unorthodox gear would be void and countered with 2 mouse clicks. A small example: during a castle siege in RO some guild equipped their members with Alice cards and used linkers to put magic reflect buff > enter the emp room > wipe wizards > quick recall to previous room > equip normal gear (thara) > 2nd push that has a higher probability to succeed because enemy is in disarray. Enemy wizards never saw that coming. But with gear check they can see their enemy sporting Alice cards and use lower level spells to get rid of reflect 1st.
For PvE-based game ability to check on player promotes discrimination a.k.a. āLFM > at least 6000 gear scoreā or āLFM > 300+ iLvlā etc. This kind of thing doesnt take into account experience of said player in given raid/instance. Thats what we can see in āstatistically best game ever - WoWā: if you do raids with pugs you WILL encounter players that think they know better what to do because they have higher gearscore, but at the very 1st encounter you see them doing 10 to 20 times less dps than any other member because they either have PvP items equipped to boost itemlevel OR they dont know the encounter at all OR they dont know their characterās skill rotation.
Well, dungeoning in ToS and WoW is incredibly different, the pve concern doesnt really make sense because of that. And I also dont think you used a very good example for the PvP one because you dont really have alot of options in ToS, you cant change your own element nor any of those significant stuff that were possible in Rag. At best you can get more (M)DEF/HP/ELE resist and its not like you can just counter that super hard like you can in Rag
In ToS you can swap armor types (Cloth, Leather, Plate, Ghost) to counter your opponent. You also have elemental resistance gears and elemental weapons you can swap around.
My point was that it should take some time to figure out enemiesā strategy/tactic they have put time and effort to prepare. Equipment check invalidates playersā creativity and effort in PvP.
totally disagree, RO was full of mediocrid characters because people often gave missleading info, would set gems and upgrades public, dont know why they arent now.
same about the circles. WoW has this info public and is still king. Just sayin.
Element resist/dmg swapping doesnt really make such a huge difference, like I said. Also, the cloth type seem to not matter on most cases. Only matters to Swordies and STR-clerics and canāt you tell what armor the other person is using right after attacking him/her? Or is the āpierce/strike+ā hidden in PvP?
Here, it seems to be a discussion/debate going on. And as you can see, the issue is not clear cut.
So what I will do is to summarize the opinions listed above and forward them to our Dev team.