Who has rights to Boston?

[DarkNacht]

2 hours north? How does that promote a social providence town?

How does the current barrel system not? Secure barrels may as well be a secure trade system. Knowing who is around you to thieve out of your barrel, and/or giving an incentive to trade with another person, and not just your alt, very much increases the social uniqueness of the game.

The problem is now there are people that just follow everyone around with barrel thief alts preventing them from trading. I've ported into town a couple of times to make a trade, just to find that the town was full of alts following everyone around, and we eventually had to head out of the core area to go trade in a Oak bush. This does not happen very often but when it does its quite frustrating, it seems that you have just traded on alting problem with another.

[nonsonogiucas]

This is random, but since we are in I&I and talking about trading...

I was thinking what trades between people that distrust each other are like in the movies.

A: "Show me the money"
B: "Its all here..." opening the case
B: "Where is the stuff?"
A: shows another case with the "stuff" inside
Both parties kick, throw or otherwise exchange the goods while still being able to fire at each other...

Inb4 "That movies, you watch movies, here Salem, Salem different! *@§#!%!!"

I was thinking, will it change anything to have the ability to actually showcase the "stuff" you are exchanging before the other party is even in range to grab it?
What if you could activate a "In Plain Sight" mode that makes all your moves (like putting x objects in a container) plainly visible to another player/s (maybe the ones in the party).

That way you could put items in a container while "In Plain Sight" of the trading partner, than lock the container with a shared key and have two guys lift the two containers and move them to complete the exchange...

It wouldn't probably change anything but it would be very cool... trading mafia style

[Scilly_guy]

Inb4 "That movies, you watch movies, here Salem, Salem different! *@§#!%!!"

The old devs, and by the sounds of it the new ones too, have never been in favour of any secure method of trading, it seems JC is trying to address the issue of people using ALTs to transport goods from a to b but I don't get how you can stop that and still allow normal trade. I'm a bit confused about it all really.

[nonsonogiucas]

Inb4 "That movies, you watch movies, here Salem, Salem different! *@§#!%!!"

The old devs, and by the sounds of it the new ones too, have never been in favour of any secure method of trading, it seems JC is trying to address the issue of people using ALTs to transport goods from a to b but I don't get how you can stop that and still allow normal trade. I'm a bit confused about it all really.

I don't think what I suggested can be described as secure trading.

I was addressing the fact that the only way to demonstrate possession of an item is to let go of it either by dropping it on the ground or by placing it in a container while the other party is using that same container.

The first mechanic is a risk because of item disappearing when dropped.
The second (and currently only mechanic that I know of) could be in fact comparable to directly shoving items in someone else's pockets...

But If I could "show you" that I have an item and then "show you" I'm putting that item in this box here... you could to the same 10 tiles away and we could then slowly move to each other boxes and complete the deal.

It is not secure... you could kill me or stun me mid-way, you could ask for a long distance and outrun me (maybe) or you could hire someone else to do it.

I see it only as an instrument that could (but then again could not, I'm always open to discussion) allow for emergent behavior in regard to trading.

[DarkNacht]

The second (and currently only mechanic that I know of) could be in fact comparable to directly shoving items in someone else's pockets...

But If I could "show you" that I have an item and then "show you" I'm putting that item in this box here... you could to the same 10 tiles away and we could then slowly move to each other boxes and complete the deal.

It is not secure... you could kill me or stun me mid-way, you could ask for a long distance and outrun me (maybe) or you could hire someone else to do it.

I see it only as an instrument that could (but then again could not, I'm always open to discussion) allow for emergent behavior in regard to trading.

No what you are doing is trading over a barrel not shoving crap in peoples pockets, you can't kill or stun people in Prov, which is where many people trade, and while its not 100% secure trading it is a form of secure trading. The fact that a trader can steal the item or silver is part of the game and forces you to trade with people you trust or only trade in amounts you are willing to lose.

[jesi]

. . . I believe part of this may be rooted in the desire to alt-port alt-trade stuff with multiple clients and thus, looking for some safety and breathing room in said circumstance. As I don't wish to necessarily support this behavior, I don't see the problem with choosing a barrel a few seconds away from another if you are looking for a secure trade.

Does this mean you are thinking of banning multiple accounts?

[JohnCarver]

Does this mean you are thinking of banning multiple accounts?

No. But we want to make sure we keep our eye on mechanics that encourage it.

[Feone]

Does this mean you are thinking of banning multiple accounts?

No. But we want to make sure we keep our eye on mechanics that encourage it.

I've always felt the best way to discourage behavior is by making it less efficient than another alternative.

Alts are used commonly for certain types of forgaging or for gathering lime because transporting it via land or even water is extremely time consuming. Not to mention the amounts that can be carried are relatively meaningless to what you can move around via boston in minutes.

Providing a way to transport more lime (or any type of stone/ore, I guess) at once would provide a non-multiclienting option. A barge or cart able to carry significant amounts of it could actually work for a lot of people who have lime at medium distances away. Re-doing mine mechanics to where each mine isn't fixed purity would reduce the need for scouting ages away from camp to get to a decent purity mine, allowing it to be solved in the same way.

[jesi]

I am confused by JC's response. Perhaps it is a nomenclature problem. Having alts and having multiple accounts are not the same thing. I have alts to perform tasks in faraway locations and those alts travel through Boston to give supplies to my main. Trades are made using containers and logging in and out the alts and my main. By increasing the distance in town between barrels as JC has done, this activitiy is a bit more risky. Thus, the change in town, to me, seems aimed at discouraging alts transfering in town.

Multiple accounts means having more than one registered account active at the same time. Trades using multiple accounts are less risky even with distance between barrels, Barrel distance is irrelevant if you are multi-accounting since both chars are logged on at the same time and the time it takes to switch from one to the other is fairly minimal.

[JohnCarver]

The answer is we are aiming to discourage both. In a perfect world you would be using a single character for the majority of your play session and would not have incentives to constantly cycle between alt chars or accounts. The first patch already has a rework to lime which is a step in the right direction. The future purity patch should remove the need to maintain mines all over the map. We understand we may never have a system where alts do not emerge, however, we will always strive for one.