Token Visibility Wheel Choices

[Tootingdog]

When you right-click on a token you get a wheel of choices and one is "Visibility." What does the purpose of this? You get the choices Set Always Visible, Mask Sensitive Visibility, Include Party Vision, Reset Fog of War.

I was hoping that I could click on a token on the map and click some kind of visibility that then makes it now visible on the Combat Tracker and to the players. Right now, I have to scroll down the Combat Tracker to find the proper NPC and click the little eyeball to make the token visible or not. In a big combat with a lot of tokens it'd be easier to right-click the token to then make visible in the CT and to the players. So, what is this "Visibility" selection when you right click a token?

[superteddy57]

I passed this along to Moon Wizard to have a look, but this behavior is the same in FGC from my testing. So this has been in the system for some time. I will wait for his decision on the subject, just wanted to inform that this appears to be expected behavior at this time.

[Moon Wizard]

The challenge is one of complexity.

The image and token system is built with a finite set of events, APIs and behaviors as a discrete system; but the rulesets/frameworks are built on top of that to represent specific game system behaviors by finding the closest behaviors to match.

Currently, the combat tracker controls all the initial setup of the tokens to match the combat tracker state (which is completely external to image/map data). So, whenever you make changes to the combat tracker state, it will always make the token states fit what the ruleset/framework thinks they should be.

In order to replicate every token attribute back to the combat tracker, we would have to implement many APIs to trigger for each event of a token attribute change (and there are many), write ruleset/framework to capture those API callbacks, and write ruleset specific code to update the combat tracker state to match, as well as prevent circular update logic. The complexity of the code to build and maintain in both the API and the ruleset code is not really justified for how often people want to override the settings on a token. There are also some people that want to change token behavior without changing combat tracker state, usually on a one-off basis or as a workaround to implement a customization they prefer in their game.

Finally, the combat tracker state is not a one-to-one mapping to token data; so there is not always a direct mapping.

In the case of Visibility state, changing the visibility button state on the 5E combat tracker will check faction to determine which visibility state to use (owned PCs vs. friendly combatants vs. enemy/neutral combatants) In that case, there is not a one-to-one mapping of what was desired for owned/friendly/enemy visibility to the raw token visibility states.

Regards,
JPG

[LordEntrails]

I've never actually understood the tokens states, I need to go explore those, but I've always wondered... What about the possibility of the CT visibility state to not just be limited to Hidden/Visible? What about Hidden/Mask-LOS Sensitive/Visible?

That would be my ideal use case. I could drop all the NPCs on the map, set them to Mask-LOS Sensitive, and then when the players' vision revels them then they show up on the CT for the whole party (would not want/expect CT visibility to be player unique).

Anyway, something to think about, if you haven't already :)

[Tootingdog]

I had to read that twice and even look-up "API." I think I follow, though.

So, what does Set Always Visible, Mask Sensitive Visibility, Include Party Vision, Reset Fog of War actually do when I right-click an NPC token? When I was messing around with it, I did not see anything change. I searched Google but came up with nothing of an exaplanation.

[LordEntrails]

I had to read that twice and even look-up "API." I think I follow, though.

So, what does Set Always Visible, Mask Sensitive Visibility, Include Party Vision, Reset Fog of War actually do when I right-click an NPC token? When I was messing around with it, I did not see anything change. I searched Google but came up with nothing of an exaplanation.
You will have to be logged in as a player to see the effects of the options. Start a second instance of FG and connect to the game you are hosting as a player.

Described here; https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FGCP/pages/996640745/Using+Tokens#Visibility
Include Party Vision = the LOS/vision as calculated by this token is added to Party Vision, so rather than a player just having the reveal of their owned character token,this one gets included in what they can see when their token is not selected. It is also impacted by the GM option Party Vision and Movement.
Reset = clears the history of what a tokens has seen (fog of war) and reveals only what they can currently see.

See also; https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FGCP/pages/1315930113/Player+and+NPC+Token+Vision+on+Maps

[Tootingdog]

Hey, thanks for that! I'll log in as a player to see how the Set Always and Mask Sensitive works.