After reading through the growing ####storm in the battlefield, I am glad I've never been a multi-charring person. Look, I understand if you guys need a break from your characters. I get that. But, to be quite honest I tend to see that the people who really kick ass are the ones who stick with one character. Personally, I wouldn't know how to do it otherwise. I can't pour myself into a character and then just cut that off and go play some other persona. It's probably just me.

But here are some reasons why I think having multiple characters is bad:


1) Conflicts of Interest

ex) You have an imperial hero. You have a mid-30's squire. While playing the squire you are faced with the possibility of killing a group of imperials that you've caught at the perfect moment. All of them are from your own imperial's sect, and you personally like them. You also know, from what your groupmates have said, that these imperials are going to get looted heavily if they die (due to vengeance and blahdy blah). Honestly no matter how you play this situation, you're a bit of a ####. Why? Well, if you just stuck with one character the situation would not even be happening. And, if you stick to what your squire should do, you are killing your own cabalmates (again, wouldn't even happen if you had one character).


2) Temptation to Cheat

ex) Your hero gnome shifter just tore through velkyn oloth, for whatever reason. It's about 3am and there is a total of 15 people on and so you think "I could just leave all this gear on the ground...it's no use to me, but my level 13 fire giant warrior sure would like it. Yeah, I'll just leave it...when I log on in the morning with my fire giant, if it's still there...well, cool. If I let enough time pass by it isn't cheating..." Wrong, wrong, wrong, ####ing wrong! I can't tell you how many obvious gear drops I've come across over the years (Velkyn is a big one).

My personal experience with this, though not a gear situation, was Rorg squatting on the orc chief spot so I couldn't get it as Ghriz. He got it, logged in maybe once or twice, and then auto'd. You know he was playing something else, knowing full well he was ####ing me over. Who knows why? I am guessing he had a reason, but I'm not going to bother throwing it out there. Needless to say, it was a ####head move and you should be kicked in your colon with a steel-toed kodiak work boot for it. Sure, if I had another character to play I could have just put Ghriz on ice for this whole ####ty situation, but I also would have completely lost interest in the character by the time Rorg auto-deleted.


3) Gear Circulation (and storage characters)

ex) By having two characters (one of which is probably an explore character, and so has virtually no interaction in cabal wars or PK in general), you are putting a stranglehold on gear. Even worse is the "storage character" who squats on fancy #### for a buddy, or is timing it so that they can log in, delete, and then have their serious hero character run and kill the mob holding the phat lewt a couple times and get the goods. Or, hell, they just go out and get PK'd stupidly by an ooc buddy so they can get it all.


4) Padding Power Characters

ex) This one is the least of the concerns, but let me just say this: When you log in that explore-only invoker after your rager gets mauled by someone, and then get that invoker killed by...say, a lich, you are giving that lich a lot of power that he/she wouldn't otherwise have. Same goes for AP's and just PK stats in general. Just sayin'. This one isn't that big of a deal compared to the others though.



That's the gist of it. If anyone wants to tell me why having multiple characters is good, OTHER than to relieve the tedium of having one character, go for it.

Basically a roleplay intensive char, and one that is non cabaled, non empowered, just there to explore and relax with. That second char I try to keep non-limited or at least very common items on only so I don't end up gear whoring. If I get mad at something, it's not time to login another char, it's time to take a bath and read a book.

I tend to be an advocate of having multiple characters. Generally for me that means one real character and one screw around character. Screwing around means stuff like exploring, random rping or pking.

>1) Conflicts of Interest

I agree it's lame to have characters in opposite cabals. I always make sure that if I have two characters in a cabal, those cabals are basically orthogonal. e.g. Tribunal and Maran don't have much to do with each other, not directly anyhow.

>Honestly no matter how you play this situation, you're a bit
>of a ####. Why? Well, if you just stuck with one character the
>situation would not even be happening. And, if you stick to
>what your squire should do, you are killing your own
>cabalmates

I totally disagree with this. As a player, you have no obligations to any particular character. So killing "your cabalmates" with your squire, is not being a jerk at all. These cabalmates are not your friends, at best they're your friends' characters. You absolutely should kill them as the squire in your hypothetical and doing so makes you a better person than someone who has some misplaced sense of loyalty like you're implying.


>2) Temptation to Cheat

Yeah, if you're prone to cheating, having multiple characters increases the chance you'll cheat. Personally, if I'm killing stuff I make damn sure I sac everything (from a mob) that falls to the ground just to make sure that I can't get confused and accidentally pick it up on another character.

>3) Gear Circulation (and storage characters)

You're basically just talking about various ways of cheating that are already illegal here. As for characters that sit on fancy gear, yeah, you shouldn't do that. If you know you have nice stuff and aren't playing your character as much as you would if you only had one, then you should ditch the nice stuff. I would point out that my exploration characters generally improve gear circulation since I go explore and grab some random stuff, then go sell it, hand it out (not to allies of another character) or just drop it in market square.

>That's the gist of it. If anyone wants to tell me why having
>multiple characters is good, OTHER than to relieve the tedium
>of having one character, go for it.

Good reasons to have multiple characters:
First, it allows you to blow off steam. You can quit in a furious rage, log on and do something completely different instead of say rage-deleting, going into an ooc tirade or similar. Yes, the ooc tirade would be against the rules, but I see having multiple characters as an outlet.

Having multiple characters allows you to do stupid things to get better at the game and not worry about it. You don't want to lose 5 con with your serious character figuring out some random area.

Sometimes you're tired, sick or otherwise not up to the level of attention that an important character can demand. For example, do you really want to risk your uber-unholy by playing drunk? Are you really up to properly roleplaying your wise elder prophet when your baby is keeping you up all night crying? By having a low-pressure character you can maintain a consistent quality of play on your high-pressure characters.

You can actually help reduce the pendulum extremes. E.g. if there's 20 imperials on and you're bored stiff because nobody wants to fight those odds, you can log in your herald and do some exploring to let things even up a bit.

Basically if you're already a crapface of a player, then playing multiple characters will probably make it worse. If you've got the best interests of your fellow players in mind, then having multiple characters will have at worst a neutral impact.

How about the alternative methods, rather than just nuking the ability to have multiple characters, that I mention below?

The level cap, for instance. Would that be an issue with you?

>How about the alternative methods, rather than just nuking
>the ability to have multiple characters, that I mention
>below?

Well, ignoring the impossibility of actually enforcing these rules (which really is all but impossible). Here are my opinions.

"Only one of your characters can be in a cabal."

Meh, whatever that wouldn't bother me personally, though honestly I'm not sure how much good this does, since you can always be a cabal lackey without actually joining. E.g. your elf paladin can be more or less a fortress character without actually joining. There's no good rule I can come up with for "don't make characters that would oppose each other"

"A limit on the total amount of limited gear your characters can have."

That wouldn't bother me. I personally don't care about gear much anyhow.

"-Level cap for secondary and tertiary characters."

Absolutely unacceptable. One of my more common secondary characters is a lone wolf (ell oh ell) exploration shifter. That character needs to get its 4th-tier major and minor forms. In general I want any explore character to be hero-level because it makes life easier. Also, I personally just don't spend much time sub-hero. This is a personal bugaboo but I hate the fact that losing a bunch of con early makes you permanently weaker at hero, so I avoid that by not taking many risks sub-hero. It's kind of stupid, I admit, since missing 40hp or whatever isn't going to break your character, but I'm enough of a min/maxer to hate the feeling that I've gimped my character. I suppose being forced to play at 35 would be good for me, but really I just would be very annoyed by it. Plus how do you explain to your characters friends that you can't level anymore because you have another hero?

"-Your characters cannot pick up gear that is obtained or dropped by another character you own. "

This is either cheating already, or such a fluke that it doesn't really matter. If I kill a guy and get a longevity bracelet then get killed by a guy who is killed buy a guy who is killed by my other character, meh, I don't see a problem with taking that longevity bracelet. If it's only one step I can see that as being dubious, but personally I just wouldn't do that. If I know someone took an item of mine, I wouldn't take that same item off their corpse with another character. But a second degree of separation pretty much nullifies any issue I would have with that.

-Non-primary characters auto-delete faster, and their limited crap crumbles faster when inactive.

Honestly I don't think speeding up auto-delete is useful. I just did have a secondary character auto-delete, but I could've kept her alive if I cared. All it takes is a 2 second login to prevent it. As for gear crumbling, sure, let it crumble faster.

Hey there. I seriously, seriously doubt a one character per player rule will ever be hardcoded into the game (not that I'd complain if I was proven wrong...duh). With that in mind, here are some possible ways to help address the issues I mentioned in the main post. Note that all of these require some form of coding. No guarantee of quality here...just putting down what comes to mind.


-Only one of your characters can be in a cabal.

-A limit on the total amount of limited gear your characters can have. If you have one character, it's unlimited. If you have more than one, a scaling limit is imposed. I have no idea what the reasonable amount would be, but basically if you are running two characters it would be helpful to the playerbase as a whole if they weren't both decked in darkened gear, for example.

-Level cap for secondary and tertiary characters. If you have a hero, maybe your secondary character can't go past 35, and your tertiary character can't go past 20. One might argue that this would foster "level sitting douchebag" behavior. Well, that already exists. This just keeps the possibility of having one guy from being able to affect approximately the same range of characters with more than one of his own.

-Your characters cannot pick up gear that is obtained or dropped by another character you own. Basically gear would get flagged when one of your characters touches it. It can't magically find its way to another of yours from that point on. So, someone kills you and takes it, and then your other character kills that guy and wants it back...? Tough titty. Go get it some other way.

-Non-primary characters auto-delete faster, and their limited crap crumbles faster when inactive.


Anyone have some more?

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I'm not a coder, but...

Is it not possible to write some kind of code that can basically see that player X (the player's identity isn't necessary) is playing character's A, B, and C?

Assuming you can, when any of those character's gets into a cabal, the other characters get an invisible flag that prevents them from being inducted into any cabal. A similar method can be used to enforce the gear limiting thing.

As far as the primary, secondary, etc. character level cap, perhaps the primary character is simply the one that was created first among them. Therefore, if you delete the primary, the other(s) bump up. One other reason this is a GOOD idea is because if someone kinda loses the zeal for playing their hero, and that hero is a decked out mofo, cabal leader, person of importance, etc., so they can rank up something that they like better...well, now once they hit that cap they need to make a decision..."Do I keep my eq-bank hero who I don't even want to play, or do I delete him so I can have fun with this new guy who has a bangin' role, has never lost a PK, and still has his Academy cookie?"

As far as not being able to pick up or use gear that another character of yours obtained, well, some kind of invis flag on the gear when it's obtained by character A(or the mob with the gear is killed and the crap ends up on the ground) would prevent B and C from being able to pick it up.

>Is it not possible to write some kind of code that can
>basically see that player X (the player's identity isn't
>necessary) is playing character's A, B, and C?

I can give you the long version if you want, but the short version is: not really, no. At least not reliably.

What I suggest would require a re-tooling of the login system.

It could work like this, when you connect to CF:


1st prompt: Account Name

The game is still free, but you login via your account, not a specific character. Each player is only allowed one account (this may be some kind of problem to code, and may be the same issue with what you're already bringing up, but then again maybe not...I know people can be sneaky with their identities if they want).

2nd prompt: Password

Self-explanatory.

3rd prompt: Character Login

This is where it matches the current setup (By what name do you wish to be mourned?)

After this, it goes to either the character generation sequence or to the MOTD/in-game.


I am not sure if this would help, but if we're shoring-up the amount of characters people have, and imposing some accountability on people, maybe this would be a good route.


Additionally, I am sure there could be some interesting features added to the "account" system, where you are logged into your account but not yet in the game. Not sure what, but there's always room for that kind of improvement.

We talked about doing an account system years ago, but now I can't even remember where we were trying to go with it beyond making it a lot harder to hack characters (since I shouldn't ever be able to guess your account name).

However, I can't see any way to prevent one player from having two accounts. Probably the only halfway decent way is to require something like a credit card number to create an account, and that's got its own problems.

Basically the problem we always ran into in pondering any kind of character limiting is that there's nothing you can do that's foolproof, and almost anything that accomplishes anything at all also eliminates legitimate cases. For example, let's say you track IPs and try to do it that way. Now a player who comes up with a new IP for each character (I know of at least one of these; the player is distinctive enough for various reasons that it doesn't provide them with anonymity) can still play multiple characters at once if they'd like to, and any legitimate two players with the same cable modem or whatever (hi, my marriage!) can't anymore.

Yeah that's a pickle. Well, all I could say in that case is that a system like that might deter the casual gamer who is pondering some kind of cheating, rather than the guy who is hardcore about screwing the system. Those types will always need policing.


You would have access to this info, so I'll ask: In your opinion, of the number of people caught cheating, what percentage would you say are the former, and what percentage is the latter?

>You would have access to this info, so I'll ask: In your
>opinion, of the number of people caught cheating, what
>percentage would you say are the former, and what percentage
>is the latter?

Though I don't have any access to this info I'll go ahead and point out that the people who get caught are disproportionately going to be the casual guys because they don't care so much. People who really are hardcore cheaters are much harder to catch. In fact, I don't see how it's possible to catch them at all, if they're smart. I'm quite sure I could roll up 3 characters and perma myself to hero and never be caught, if I wanted to. All that is just to say that the number of people caught cheating is almost certainly going to make it look like it's all casual guys (plus a few repeat offenders who are just stupid).

.

I do find though that they tend to be less rewarding, have poorly defined roles and aren't as enjoyable.

It tends to happen if I hit a rut. Not very often, but now and again.

One well defined character is worth more than X roleless ones in my opinion.

Maybe someone doesn't want to bang her head against or get hosed by a) permas rolling as 4 deep gank squads? b) air/offense powerhouses who make her life a hell? c) liches, mummies, bears oh my?

I'm of the 200+ hours and delete crowd, myself, as I don't have the time or energy to juggle multiple characters, but I perfectly understand why people may want to have fun and find their current character's situation as being unfun if not patently unfair. That's when I say, "Screw feeding into their game. I'll play my own," and make a ranger or rp intensive character and hope they grow bored.

What's-his-face felt there was an injustice, and seeing no corrective action taking place, screwed up and tried to get revenge in a way that is clearly against the rules. I liken this to anyone who as ever been chastised/arrested for fighting who said, "What, was I just supposed to stand there and let him beat me up?"

Until "a pattern of abuse" is established: "Yes. Sucks to be you." But that's the way of an orderly society.

My major issue is that I might share things with my allies (e.g. where I run when hurt) that I would not share with enemies. But if those allies are also my enemies...

That said, one situation I felt me playing multiple characters was legit was with Sossaphrin.

If you remember, he was an ap of mine that built a decent weapon I think approaching 50 charges, solo. He never used barrier. So he was vulnerable.

If I was very tired, I wouldn't log him on. I'd log on my other char.

Prior to logging on, I wouldn't know who else was logged on. And I wouldn't log out if it was tough. Basically if I hadn't played my other character at times when I was tired, I just wouldn't have played cf at all.

Nevertheless, I'd be quite happy for a 1 char per player rule.