How about let the player lie on the ground so enemies from a distance have more trouble spotting them?
How about omitting some details if the object is far away? (depending on how big the object is)
Example 1: you can tell there’s a humanoid there but you are not sure if it is a zombie or an NPC.
Example 2: small objects on the ground stop being visible or become obscured (Computer Science 101 --> a book --> something)
The first is fairly difficult, we can do it in a simple way by applying some kind of penalty, but the real benefit of doing this kind of thing is if it completely blocks line of sight, and that requires a major extension to how we define obstacles and calculate line of sight, as well as providing a UI that lets players know what moves will or will not reveal them, as well as some amount of prediction for whether a particular enemie’s movements will bring them into view.
The second I’d like to do and it’s fairly simple, most of the work is in providing alternate descriptions for items.
The first one could be solved tolerably well by simply having a multiplier on sight range for big and small things.
The second one would be painful without map memory, or at least saving the highest visibility level the item was seen at. It would not add much difficulty, but cause a lot of annoyance and tedium.
While prone could things like bushes and small trees break line of sight?
Not without a big rework of the sight system.
Oh, about the second one, I’m curious why I can’t see things inside a cabinet from a distance. I thought they are similar features, but it appears not.
It sounds also like going probe could be a stop gap for setting weapons up. Bipods and heavy machine guns and the likes.
Cabinets and similar furniture simply hide their contents unless you’re adjacent.
For prone etc., wouldn’t the answer be to give all furniture tags for whether they block prone players’ sight? You could then make it block all creatures’ sight in the same way.