We have permadeath. Great! But then we have alts. Why?

[MagicManICT]

You should neither discourage nor encourage hermiting. You should just let it be. What you have to look for is abusive use of alts or multiple accounts. If this were a relatively large production, sure, you could create some reasonable limits to the number of accounts any one person could snag, and I know a lot of f2p games that do just that (assuming that the accounts are all flagged "free" vs paid). It is, however, a technical and manpower hurdle that requires resources that may not be available.

EVE is a perfect example of a game where alts are highly discouraged as you can only train one character at a time. You can still get a lot of alts up (3 characters per account, need multiple accounts for more than that) and I had about 7 characters the last time I played regularly (love them PLEX...). However, that doesn't work in f2p where you can make as many accounts as you want (again, reason above for policing this).

Making characters choose one path or another only encourages alts, thus ending up at the same situation as currently exists, so changes to the development mechanics really doesn't do anything other than change the game for no net profit. However, it does make a hermit's life harder as not all hermits want to raise an army of alts to do things. (I kept 3 around in HnH: hunter, farmer, miner.)

The "skill synergy" doesn't really solve anything, either, and just creates other issues. You want to chop that tree faster? Attack the problem with more people and better tools. Encourage cooperative gameplay. Don't make "super characters" which are the bane of every PvP game. FYI, super characters don't discourage cooperative play. Cooperative play just makes getting super characters easier, thus if anything, it encourages cooperative play, usually at the cost of anyone else that doesn't have a super character.

[Banok]

Magic nailed it on the head. Alts are a very important part of this game by letting you not make swiss army knife characters. It allows you to retain functionality if one of your characters dies.

so the argument is: its useful so therefore must be better for the gameplay? tut tut I thought you had better reasoning.

alts ruin alot of unique gameplay, but pretty impossible to stop in a f2p game so not worth arguing why anyway, if only the game was p2p or at least b2p.

[Darwoth]

this entire discussion is retarded, short of closing down the game you will not stop people from making multiple accounts and having multiple characters if they want , darkfall is a good example. 1 char per account, 15 bucks a month. between my wife and i we had 5 accounts.

aside from that it isnt exactly like a combat character with high stats is cheap to make.

[L33LEE]

I have little coding knowledge, but with some chat with some friends, its easy to implement some features to discourage multiple accounts.

2 accounts log into from the same IP/computer ? ban the newest account (Automatic system)
This is one of several methods you can do to detour multi logging happening.

You can implement programs which can detect the computers hardware and ban accordingly, so even proxys cannot bypass this.

in Games with Subs, game companys do not care about multipul accounts, as they get a monthly sub from each account.
in games with a cash shop, they allow multi accounts, as it will encourage people to spend more money across more accounts (in theroy, hard in sandbox with full loot)

So truth be told, some very simple tools can be made to basically shut down use of multipul accounts, yes you can bypass these with hacks, cheats etc, because lets face it nothing is secure, and well, again truth be told, games like this with the current rules only seem to attract the kind of players who "must cheat, hack, exploit" to play a game.

[Darwoth]

yeah because banning people that want to play your game is a great idea

oh btw, my isp gives me 4 different ip addresses to use since i have the "business plan" which means i do not have to spend 10 minutes finding a good proxy and i have 5 old but working computers laying around that can easily run salem.

the devs are not retards and therefore would never try to implement some of leelee's and similar suggestions, but i laugh at the idea that you would all shoot yourself in the foot preventing yourselves from using multiple characters while foilks like me would continue as normal. go for it

[MagicManICT]

That's exactly the reason why jorb and loftar haven't implemented these things. They know IP restrictions are pointless. For those behind NAT, all you have to do is reset your router (or, for those with the option, request a new IP). Now, if IPv6 ever gets fully implemented... haven't we been waiting on the upgrade for 15 years now?

[L33LEE]

yeah because banning people that want to play your game is a great idea

oh btw, my isp gives me 4 different ip addresses to use since i have the "business plan" which means i do not have to spend 10 minutes finding a good proxy and i have 5 old but working computers laying around that can easily run salem.

the devs are not retards and therefore would never try to implement some of leelee's and similar suggestions, but i laugh at the idea that you would all shoot yourself in the foot preventing yourselves from using multiple characters while foilks like me would continue as normal. go for it

Im not saying these measures should be implemented, all i am pointing out is measures exist to prevent multi account abuse. Almost no games put these measures into effect as you pointed out, you will lose players and a bad business plan.

Again, was mearly pointing out to the people who say you cannot stop it that strong measures can be made to prevent many accounts by one person, yet doing so would be shooting yourself in the foot.

[Banok]

this entire discussion is retarded, short of closing down the game you will not stop people from making multiple accounts and having multiple characters if they want , darkfall is a good example. 1 char per account, 15 bucks a month. between my wife and i we had 5 accounts.

aside from that it isnt exactly like a combat character with high stats is cheap to make.

Yes you are right darkfall did not wholly stop alt accounts but it still "worked" to make it a much better game.

because alot less people would pay more money to use them, plus you are funding the game 5 times more.

it worked enough so that everyone knew who was who, and your name meant something. I knew if someone was good at pvp or trustworthy etc. just by their name. you can't straight transfer all that to a permadeath game, but the point is still valid; p2p does create single character only gameplay.

[darnokpl]

Yes you are right darkfall did not wholly stop alt accounts but it still "worked" to make it a much better game.

because alot less people would pay more money to use them, plus you are funding the game 5 times more.

it worked enough so that everyone knew who was who, and your name meant something. I knew if someone was good at pvp or trustworthy etc. just by their name. you can't straight transfer all that to a permadeath game, but the point is still valid; p2p does create single character only gameplay.

Never played darkfall, but I like the idea "when name can meant something".
Imho 3-5$ as initial fee to create new account would help little in this case... and for good start you could have some very basic pack attached to this new account (free backpack maybe?) and informations that you can get more from $tore, so people from first minutes of gameplay would be aware that they can get more packs for real money. Of course it would not stop all spying !@#$%^&, but we wont have to read generabutthurt and others like him again and we wont get 20k forum accounts while only ~2000-3000 players are active.

[Dallane]

Yes you are right darkfall did not wholly stop alt accounts but it still "worked" to make it a much better game.

because alot less people would pay more money to use them, plus you are funding the game 5 times more.

it worked enough so that everyone knew who was who, and your name meant something. I knew if someone was good at pvp or trustworthy etc. just by their name. you can't straight transfer all that to a permadeath game, but the point is still valid; p2p does create single character only gameplay.

Never played darkfall, but I like the idea "when name can meant something".
Imho 3-5$ as initial fee to create new account would help little in this case... and for good start you could have some very basic pack attached to this new account (free backpack maybe?) and informations that you can get more from $tore, so people from first minutes of gameplay would be aware that they can get more packs for real money. Of course it would not stop all spying !@#$%^&, but we wont have to read generabutthurt and others like him again and we wont get 20k forum accounts while only ~2000-3000 players are active.

it will be a miracle to see 2k players