This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Kendra Kirai: I'm not sure it's exactly a Hand Wave in-game...it's logical in real life as well. If someone sees a bootprint with a sole that isn't part of the standard uniform (Which is easily verifiable simply by making a print with your own and comparing), you'd know that someone who isn't a guard has been there. And why would you have a search team continue searching for someone who may not even still be there when you have limited numbers of guards to do the searching?
Ununnilium: But would you naturally and immediately notice that there's a different bootprint in among the other tracks? Wouldn't you stay on alert in case they are still there - especially when a second incident happens in the same area? It just seems very tenuous to me.
Looney Toons: Would this trope include cases where the enemy critters don't seem to notice you doing incredibly noisy stuff just a couple dozen yards away? The villains in City of Heroes are like this — they have a very short detection radius (on the order of 15 or 20 yards), and you can do all manner of destructive and noisy stuff outside that radius and they'll never know you're there. Even if it's outdoors, with no obstructions and full daylight. Likewise, if you pick individuals in a group off with sniper shots, the others stand a good chance of never noticing it's happening...
Tulling: Yes it would. Both excessive attentiveness and excessive neglect are a consequence of the game designers creating triggers that do not seem reasonable, making the game world seem more artificial than it needs to be. There is also the aspect of enemies having ridiculously short memories (this might be considered a trope of its own). An egregious example of this is found in the recently released Company of Hero RTS. I myself have seen a sniper, who when camouflaged is invisible to most enemies but briefly turns visible when he fires a shot, pick off an enemy, be noticed by an enemy tank which swivels its turret towards him, but swivels back to the original position when he turns invisible again, forgetting where he was and making no effort to pursue him.
Excuse me. Shouldn't this be "Conspicuously" Selective Perception? Or is it meant to be a portmanteau of "conspicuous" and "suspicious"?
dkellis: Everything above that line was copied-and-pasted from Conspiciously Selective Perception.
Tulling: Removed this: "* The soldiers in Assassin's Creed won't bat an eye at a hooded, robed monk walking down the street with two swords, a pile of knives, and lots of very non-scholarly belts, boots, and other gear clearly suited to combat. But the moment said monk pushes an annoying beggar out of his way....And heaven forbid you commit the unpardonable sin of galloping your horse around the Holy Land. Apparently, only those wacky Assassins ride around on their horses at full speed.
- Gallop? They won't even let you get away with a canter. Man, they really enforced the speed limit in those days."
MCE: Wondering if Outside Detection Range
is so close to this trope that examples gathered so far could be included in Conspicuously Selective Perception
MCE: Added a new section for those examples and separated the whole article into two folders.
some deleted content
25/Feb/10 at 01:55 PM by ninjacrat 58.175.132.93 Deleted line 24:
- The beggars don't throw rocks. The guards do.
- The beggars do, actually. It doesn't happen often, but this troper was once pelted with beggar-thrown rocks till he fell off a long ladder.
- This contributor had worked as a security guard before playing the games, and found that the behaviour of some of the guards was scarily, not to mention humorously, accurate!
- This troper has fond memories in MGS 1 of hiding in a box, hearing the guard say, "Hmmm...just a box" and coming out of the box to knock the guard down(but not out) and immediately hiding back in the box to endlessly repeat the same loop.
- In MGS: Twin Snakes, the Gamecube remake of Metal Gear Solid, guards tend to be a little more suspicious of out-of-place cardboard boxes. Even when I've been lurking out of the way, the guards have opted to lift the box and see why it's there in the first place rather than ignore it. Good times.
- Hum yes, they do kick the box in MGS1 if it is on their patrol route. This is in fact how this troper was caught several times, which made him make sure he was not preventing the soldiers from passing by.
- On the being shot and not noticing it thing, it's happened. People have been shot near construction sites and not noticed it until later, and given the low caliber of the weaponry that you can silence(well, mostly), it's not entirely unbelievable that this paragraph is devolving into fanwank.
- To be shot once without realising might be considered a misfortune. To be shot several times without realising seems like carelessness. If you can get through several hundred enemies because they never notice when they get shot, well, it makes them look a little silly.
- On the being shot and not noticing it thing, it's happened. People have been shot near construction sites and not noticed it until later, and given the low caliber of the weaponry that you can silence(well, mostly), it's not entirely unbelievable that this paragraph is devolving into fanwank.
- What's hilarious is when you figure out just how you can break the hell out of this system. This troper has taken out entire squads without moving from one spot by lining up shots, quickly switching to Armor, tapping a single bullet into someone's skull, and switching back to Stealth before spotted.
- Justified by the fact that, in real life, you do not see the beam of a laser pointer unless there is sufficient dust or smoke particles in the air to reflect the light. All you see is the red dot on the target. I may be giving the game too much credit, but it is possible that the guards can't see the beam either, unless you shine it right in their eyes... just like real life.
- In San Andreas, this troper has actually forced other vehicles to hit police, which causes the police to go berserk on the vehicle in question. Sometimes.
- In addition to seeing cops chase and sometimes gun down other people, this troper has seen a cop car tailing a car WHICH HAD A PERSON OPENING FIRE AT THE POLICE WITH AN SMG, the cops managed to flip the car over and gun down the two people in it.
- This troper, while playing San Andreas, buffed CJ up like Conan, got a blond afro, wore nothing but a pair of heart boxers and blue sandals and every time the law was after him, put on a pair of joke glasses (complete with bushy eyebrows and a huge nose) and the police lost their suspect.
