Limiting Alternate Characters?

[Tintomara]

I like this. I'm sure there will have to be additions made one way or another along the road, but as you said, it will make things more difficult for most of us, should we want to try abusing it.

If this is implemented in the current age, though, the delete char function would probably be needed, so people with a number of chars higher than X have a chance to actually comply with it, other than abandoning some chars and having to see their sad faces as noone logs on to them.

[Tim]

Definately will add delete function if I add this. As you point out, it's a bit late to add this to the current age. Looking at changes lately, I'm thinking I'll be releasing a v1.5 or so that will be UI changes, but the core gameplay won't change. This kind of thing would go in that. Plus it will give me a bit more time to work on v2. V1.5 will come with a reset, but don't worry it won't be for a while yet. Want to let the current version play out quite a bit further.

EDIT: Good catch, secon. I'll have to check for that as well.

[Tim]

Not logs so to speak, but I've been keeping my eye on things. I agree that the test site never had what I would call a 'full age'. I don't plan on resetting this age until there's at least a good chunk of players above 40, probably some into the 50's as well. After that there's not much advancement that can be made on an individual basis anyways.

I've been tracking IPs for about the last 12 hours. In case you guys are wondering, there were 53 different IPs between 143 different characters. Only 5 IPs were used for more than 3 characters. Most of you can probably guess who had the most...

[Jay alAvid]

*shrugs*
Do I win a prize..?

[Tim]

You may average 1.2 levels per day now, but the amount needed to level up increases pretty strongly over time. Once you get into the 30s you'll all likely slow down pretty good. Or at least hopefully.

[Tim]

Well, looks like we're both sorta right. From level 1-12, the experience needed to level up goes up by 107% (ie. +100 experence becomes +107 experience for the next level). From 13 on, it goes to 125%. However (which I was not aware of. Silly me), Craig put a cap on the experience needed to level up at 800. If my math is right, you should hit this at around level 22ish. At 20 or so exp for a win (depending on your talismen), that makes a win 2.5% of your level. So I guess it won't take as long as I though. That just means I'll likely let things get a little bit higher. And tweak the exp a bit for 1.5. I'd rather have it be 125% at the beginning, then switch to 107% and just stay there (no cap). It would take a while for the time to level up to get out of control.

[Tim]

Good point. You're actually right (unfortunately). I did a little bit of math to create a slightly disturbing table.

• -12%->-8%: 18/9
  
• -7%->-6%: 19/9
  
• -5%->-3%: 19/10
  
• -2%->2%: 20/10
  
• 3%->4%: 21/10
  
• 5%->7%: 21/11
  
• 8%->12%: 22/11
  
• 13%->14%: 23/11
  
• 15%->17%: 23/12
  

So while a differents of +/-2% doesn't effect you, a couple of them would slightly. Though really they don't make that much of a difference.

[Almon Crisade]

Hmm interesting concept lads. One thing I love is long term and challenge...got to love a challenge. Such is why I enjoy taking forever to lv, getting hardly any gear AND >.> probably a bold mans dream permi death AKA hardcore sometime in the future. This is the ultimate challenge for any serious gamer out there and like these challenges rules should be applied. If HC was made I would suggest when you have NPC's AKA V2 I believe but also you couldn't die in PVP unless you wanted it that way. Would make people more cautious on attacking or defending.

But then little things would come up such as you had high agility you could perhaps escape being decapitated, get a quick cheap shot in so you could make your escape but not kill your openent. Just little things that would make the game more detailed and realistic.

Then you could go even further, to prevent alt spamming as you know if you piss someone off they can make an alt millita and bombard you *I think it happened to me once in one or two games haha o.o*

So limit it to the few say you hit lv 50 bam get a special message where you could be restarted to 1 again but added as HC and get a cool title, such as Champion, Chicken Chaser, or Slayer lol. that way people would now your HC and they wouldn't be able to die by non hc and vice versa as well as receive nearly as much loot as if it was a hc vrs hc or non hc vrs non hc.

If this is a stupid idea please slap me with a fish because it's one thing I love seeing in games is you get one shot and bam your done just like rl really...that and my head wont stop thinking of random things haha!

[Almon Crisade]

Aye I am insane but oh well thats why I play many a game and have the ideal game in my head...but that is on a totally different series called Legend of the Green Dragon which I have retired from mind you...six years playing a text game and leading a clan from realm to realm sheehs. That was when I decided to have fun with my life and joke around but the side affect is I lost my marbles haha! Still, it's a nice thought to die and stay dead ^_^

[Morgaine Le Fay]

I used to play that, what server were you on?

[Almon Crisade]

Dear god don't get me going on lotgd...well keeping to Tim's wishes I will not side track this is about Alt's please keep on topic I will just message you.

[Tim]

While I'm reluctant to ban people, I won't let people ruin the game for others. Banning won't be my first choice, but I'm not afraid to use that option if I have to. And with IPs being tracked now, it will be easy enough to do.

[kaldar]

Tim I would like to make the first appeal to first of all not slow down leveling and secondly let this version run a while unless the reset actually holds some changes to game play ......... there are some different things that happen at the higher levels ..... for instance , eventually you get enough hit points that maybe a ranger with 100% critical can't kill you in a single hit *glares at Tintomara and Cauthon*

If we keep having resets all the time then it becomes the same old grind trying to save up talismans you will never use because the game gets reset before you even get to a point to use different strategies.

I would like to see the version go to atleast lvl 100 which would probably take about 2 months ... seeing as your first estimate was to restart around the 1st of the year , letting it go atleast until the start of December seems reasonable.

And I think it would be nice to actually have some game play changes in after the restart. If your completely new battle system and what not can't be ready then some other changes like ....

*new skill tree that diverges more and continues past lvl 40
*possibly more hit points / level so that battles after lvl 30 until god knows where dont' always end in 1 or 2 hits ...... 1 on a critical , 2 on regular (this was what i noticed in the beta between 30 and 38 when it was reset)
*quests - even a basic version of quests would add some fun to the game
*npc's - npc's that you can fight to get special drops or what not .........

some of these would atleast change up things enough to make the game interesting after a reset and while trying to build back up to the decent levels.

[Tim]

kaldar, I don't plan on resetting any sooner than necessary. I'm not sure about letting things get to level 100, but it will be at least a month, probably 2 before I'd have code changes ready to even consider reseting. I don't plan on resetting just for the heck of it. There will be some changes at the very least.

As for slowing leveling, I only plan on adding that after I have some other changes in that makes levels mean something more than every 5 levels. Meaning more weapons, more skills, more stats to change. Really, my biggest problem with leveling right now is the early levels. Most people reach level 10 after 100 battles or so, making all the weapon changes that early fairly pointless.

[malorian]

I have had opportunity to play quite a few multi player online games and one of the foremost issues has always been using multiple accounts to facilitate achieving your goals within a game.

GoS itself had an age in V1 and Beta of V2 where craig asked for us to only use 1 character a piece. Having Shelaura playing as well, It was easy for me to adhere to his wishes. Without her, I would have been very tempted to create against the rules alts at the point where I started to realize that other players were using them. When realizing how much easier it is for an alt user to accomplish what I was busting ass to do, I think I would break down and cheat.

War of Empires has very strict 1 account per player rules which were easily broken if you were careful and smart about it. During their beta testing, you could have alts galore which gave you a taste for what could be done.

Most graphically based games allow unlimited alts, but most of the time, peoples computers were taxed enough running 1 instance of the game. Having to pay monthly fees on each account you had limited things a bit as well. Being a much more real time environment made alt use difficult in many ways too.

With the way GoS works, it would be an enormous task to try to eliminate alt use. Doing the job in a limited fashion will end up making people more careful about their use, but it will hurt the honest folk who play just 1 character, and possible cause moral people to loose a bit of themselves and cheat.

Once they start cheating a bit, it then becomes very easy to continue down that path.

Peer policing of issues in a game can help a bit, but more often than not ends up just causing people to not trust each other and makes for heated arguments and eventual dislike for the game.

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Having an all the alts you can use policy in a game ends up causing it to become very anti-social. No need to rely on others when you have alts to do it for you, and your too busy keeping them all productive to spend time getting to know other players.

It also gives a huge advantage to people who just have more time to play, which in and of itself isn't too bad. More time, thought and work at something should have it's benefits, but making the casual player feel as though they can't even compete will cause a lot of burn out. A big part of why I don't want to play WoE, or any of the huge graphic based games is for that very reason.

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Now that I've laid down what I've seen, and my thoughts on other games, here goes what I'm thinking would be our best solution.

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Any limits from no alts, to a maximum per person will just be cause problems. Obvious, uncreative and serious game effecting alt use has to be controlled.

Let say you wanted 50 characters. You go through the work of laying some personality, motivation and beliefs into each of them, and I'm just as happier to have 50 potential friends or enemies than I would be to have just 1.

Someone else has their main character and decides to have an alt. They name the aaaa bbbb, never bother with an avatar or profile. Don't respond to messages or put anything out there in clan or town messages. Have terribly inferior equipment. ect.... I would at least want someone to have the power to delete aaaa bbbb or have the main character marked out in some way with a scarlet letter A for poor Altmanship.

For something like this, you as the creator would be stuck having to make decisions, and we as players just have to trust you or take a hike.

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I do have a few suggestions to make alt abuse less tempting.

1. First and foremost, I have been against any item or skill that grants +%xp from about 3 days into V2 beta. I had been doing nothing but trading shots with my wife for 3 days in 10 minute intervals wearing our queenly gear against bare flesh. I was first to level 20, could not be beaten, and realized that what I loved about GoS was gone. The new leveling system, combined with the xp items would actually make it impossible to win in fights against people even a few levels above your own.

With each age Craig improved on this a bit. The last, with most high end talismans providing +xp made it so you could fight with good equipment, never touching an alt, and still keep up with people who fought nothing but alts.

- just a quick interesting story. That age I was trailing Revengeof from the get go, but stayed close hardly ever fighting an alt. When the characters owner had to take time off to move, I ??cheatingly??? told him I'd run through his battles for him so all his hard work didn't go to waste. When I first logged in and saw his equipment, I was truly surprised. It was junk. Good junk, but poorly matched against each other piece. Not a single extra piece of equipment to switch out when not attacking. No huge market bank hiding his actual assets. Only the bare minimum needed to stay ahead in levels and ragtag top tier stuff. I felt pretty stupid, but happy all the same. ---

Ditch +xp items and skill bonus. (side note - limit + gold steal. about 105% cap? come one)

Now you can fight alts for an automatic 20 xp, but with much less effort, just fight people who you know you can always beat and get the same. Either way bores the hell out of me, but I at least know that if I fall behind the pack, a little boredom will get me back to competition level in no time.

2. Make item trading a 1 way endeavor. You can only send items to characters at or below your level. With this in place a change to the market as well would have to happen. You can only buy items from the market that you could get in a drop for your level.

3. I hate this one, but it would help win count alt abusers. There's a no xp/no win battle clause for anyone 5 levels below you. There need be a 7-10 level cap for giving a win to someone you fight above you in levels.

4. Here on out are just some maybe things.... Only trades allowed with in a guild combined with no xp for fighting a guildmate. Would need the market item level cap in place too.

5. Auto-banking 80% in, 20% out with no market bank. This might make alts nearly as expensive as they are helpful.

6. Having all attack/defense results public domain so spotting alt XPers would be simple.

7. Having all trades and market transactions public. Market would have to be an after the sale sort of thing, not listed as 'Blademasters talisman of Havoc - For sale by Malorian - 666666 gold.

8. No return policy. You bought it or found it. Sell it. Give it away. Destroy it. - Once you have gone and worn it it's worthless. You already stunk it up. This would make hand me down impossible. It would be somewhat harder to keep an alt high enough level to be of great use to your main character. Also some of the huge advantage given by being part of a heavily populated guild would be lessened.

9. Put a little 'I will treat each character I play as individuals of equal importance, never one in servitude to another. This I swear on the memory of Robert Jordan" - I feel kind of guilty already and I only wrote it, not agreed to it.


OK, work time. Hope some or any of this is of any use. ...