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

[Steve]

... There is NO way, what so ever, to stop alts from being created. ...

Correct, like in other games there's no way to stop people to create alts - but that's not really the point. The point is to make alts less useful and less easy to skill-up. And that can be achieved with a few changes to Salem's game mechanics - if the developers would want it.

Salem's game mechanics make alts both very easy to skill-up and very useful to have (permadeath mitigation, risk avoiding, criminal throw-away characters). It's the feeding mechanic Salem uses. Levelling the stats (humours) of alts in Salem is even easier than it was in H&H - because you can feed characters unlimited amounts of food.

But I suspect the developers rather want to encourage the use of alts - therefore they have made it easier to level them up.

[Tonkyhonk]

... There is NO way, what so ever, to stop alts from being created. ...

Correct, like in other games there's no way to stop people to create alts - but that's not really the point. The point is to make alts less useful and less easy to skill-up. And that can be achieved with a few changes to Salem's game mechanics - if the developers would want it.

would you enlighten me? what few changes?

But I suspect the developers rather want to encourage the use of alts - therefore they have made it easier to level them up.

i dont think so.

[Shoi]

People say, 'easy' to level up. In a way I agree, but when you get higher levels it take more and more time to allow them to study and food to fortify that. And usually they do work while their alts study so what so bad about it? They have to consume the same amount of time to level an alt as they do any other character, wasting that time leveling multiple alts vs leveling a single character. Plus a good killer would try to think like their victim and go 'If this person has an alt, it'll most likely come here to savage whats left or is logged out here.' Then proceed to camp the area if they see fit.

It pretty much breaks down to having advantages to both sides.

Play it safe with alts, but have spread out talents that you have to log in and out to accomplish a task. Which people may catch onto. And you have everything so spread out it takes longer to get things done. Or having a mule that conceals your money. If it dies you still have that risk of losing all of it.

or

Have everything on one character which bumps the risk of losing everything but tasks and studies are easily mastered. And tend to have higher stats to defend themselves. Humors and what not.

[MagicManICT]

... There is NO way, what so ever, to stop alts from being created. ...

Correct, like in other games there's no way to stop people to create alts - but that's not really the point. The point is to make alts less useful and less easy to skill-up. And that can be achieved with a few changes to Salem's game mechanics - if the developers would want it.

would you enlighten me? what few changes?

Well, you could do it in a few (relatively) simple changes but anything like this that would make it harder to skill up an alt would make it harder to skill up any character. You could, in theory, do something like in Haven and provide a portion of the characters old stats upon inheritance, but to me, that just turns death into a giant XP penalty instead of permadeath.

But I suspect the developers rather want to encourage the use of alts - therefore they have made it easier to level them up.

You're suspicions would be wrong in this case. Jorb has said many times that they don't like the use of alt armies, but what can you do as a developer without becoming draconian about account creation policies? Even then, it's fairly easy to circumvent these things with a bit of time and knowledge.

[Steve]

...

But I suspect the developers rather want to encourage the use of alts - therefore they have made it easier to level them up.

You're suspicions would be wrong in this case. Jorb has said many times that they don't like the use of alt armies, but what can you do as a developer without becoming draconian about account creation policies? Even then, it's fairly easy to circumvent these things with a bit of time and knowledge.

Oh, I didn't know that, thanks for correcting me, MagicMan. I only noticed that skilling-up of alts is easier in Salem than in H&H and thought it was intentional (for example: unlimited amount of food that can be consumed in Salem vs. limited amount in H&H).

[Steve]

... There is NO way, what so ever, to stop alts from being created. ...

Correct, like in other games there's no way to stop people to create alts - but that's not really the point. The point is to make alts less useful and less easy to skill-up. And that can be achieved with a few changes to Salem's game mechanics - if the developers would want it.

would you enlighten me? what few changes? ...

Easiest example would probably be to limit a humour increase of a character to say, once per 2 hours /played. With the current mechanic you can run a new alt into the village kitchen and come out 2 hours later with 50 in the humours you want, all is needed is a supply of food.

[TeckXKnight]

Easiest example would probably be to limit a humour increase of a character to say, once per 2 hours /played. With the current mechanic you can run a new alt into the village kitchen and come out 2 hours later with 50 in the humours you want, all is needed is a supply of food.

That means you have even less reason to have a main. If anything, you'll want as many alts as you can get your hands on. Materials are no longer the limiting factor in your character growth, flat out time is.

[mrnuggets]

There is NO way, what so ever, to stop alts from being created.

This. The End.

Unless you have some great idea, otherwise you're wasting your time arguing the point that they shouldn't allow alts when there's no viable way not to allow them.

As in real life: even though laws exist, some people will circumvent those. Does this mean laws shouldn't exist, since what's to stop anyone anyway?

But granted, as things stand now, it's complicated to enforce a no alt policy in Salem. As long as things don't change at all, case closed.

But how many Steam accounts do you have on the one comp? How many paypal accounts can you create with the one card? If you play it, how many Minecraft accounts do you have for yourself?
Or even how many paradoxplaza forum accounts with registered games do you guys have? (yeah you could make one account per game you own now that I think of it, bad example...)
Facebook used to be quite easy to create alts to troll/spam. Not so much now that you need to enter a valid mobile phone number. At least where I'm from.

I'm not saying those are good examples to follow for Salem or Paradox games in general. Just giving examples.

A decent idea would be to make Salem an "almost" free to play game. Like, you would have to pay 1$ with a unique paypal account to create a unique Salem account linked to it.
Then, okay, if you don't ever want to pay anything again, fine, free to play.

Look at Minecraft's success, another java crafting multiplayer game, and look at all the kids playing, even though you have to pay a few euros/dollars for the game!

But again, as things stand and as you said, no need to argue, alts are here to stay if things don't change.

[Shoi]

There is NO way, what so ever, to stop alts from being created.

This. The End.

Unless you have some great idea, otherwise you're wasting your time arguing the point that they shouldn't allow alts when there's no viable way not to allow them.

Sorry to break your theory... but...

But how many Steam accounts do you have on the one comp? How many paypal accounts can you create with the one card? If you play it, how many Minecraft accounts do you have for yourself?
Or even how many paradoxplaza forum accounts with registered games do you guys have? (yeah you could make one account per game you own now that I think of it, bad example...)
Facebook used to be quite easy to create alts to troll/spam. Not so much now that you need to enter a valid mobile phone number. At least where I'm from.

Look at Minecraft's success, another java crafting multiplayer game, and look at all the kids playing, even though you have to pay a few euros/dollars for the game!

I own 1 Steam account myself, but I know many people who actually have multiple. My room mate actually has two; one for single player games, a second for multiplayer games. I even know a guy who has 6!

Also Minecraft. Probably the biggest alt game I know. I actually have two accounts. I own an alt for various reasons. I know several other people whom own even more then 5.

And paypal. There are people out there whom have more then one, yes you can only have one card per account but in America, you can easily get multiple debit cards and/or credit cards to use with it. You actually don't even need a card at all sometimes. Some people have alternate accounts for various things. I have two, one for work and a personal one. Altercations are nearly impossible to stop there will always be loop holes. Final Fantasy XI is a perfect example. They frown on alt but have given up on the war of it years ago, they used to ban credit card numbers to stop alts and people from dual boxing. But they slowly stopped cause people either came up with excuses, threatened not to pay, or even take people to court over it.

[Superiodity]

Don't understand the "2 steam accounts and multiple minecraft accounts" things, why would you need a separate account to play multiplayer games (unless one account has been banned or other non legit things), if its because you don't want people messaging you during games then just set it to offline. There's no real player progression in minecraft since it's all just material goods and property so there's never a reason for alts unless you just like to have 2 separate names.

With paypal, the only reason I can see for having more than 1 is if your doing something illegal (or you've hit some sort of deposit limit with a poker site and need to use another account to deposit more in which case there's not much point in setting yourself the limit).