Forced duplicate last names and reputation per account.

Lum said it was all placeholder and it's a WIP - as I remember. I think you're making a good point, but I also think they realize that the starting scene needs some work.

Keep giving feedback on it, it's probably going to be a few releases before it looks like it's headed in the right direction.

 

I agree completely. Answering virtue questions makes sense to get to a particular scene, but not to set starting skills.

 

Why is the system more of a bonus to PVPers and Crafters then to the RPers?

A PVPer can have all his alts in the same guild and when they go to war they will have 3 bodies with different skill sets to be able to go to war with or he can have his alts at 3 different points on the world map so he has no travel time between them. Bonus to his play style of PVPing.

A Crafter can use 1 alt for blacksmithing and 1 for tailoring to raise up his skill sets to GM level and as they are on different skill decay accounts no need to worry every time his main dies to go do skill gains.

A RPer can't have a unique last name for his other 2 alts, he can't try and play the quest line with different options of virtues in multiplayer and can't just go out and have fun with friends on an alt without worrying about messing up his mains virtue/rep.

A casual can't let a friend make an alt on his account to show off the game in online mode cause the friend might pick an option that ruins his mains virtue or rep cause the friend just wants to do something odd just to see what happens.

Again you are bending over for PVP/crafters without giving RP or casuals or people that want to explore different play styles in online mode anything. Also your pulling up a reason from over a year ago some of us weren't active back then because it was to early and your saying that "God" aka RG spoke and thats all there is to it which is wrong. I thought this was a open developed game, yes I understand he has a vision but when he allowed the multiple characters that help certain play styles but then hurt others how is this fair? PVPers are getting things handed to them and a lot of development work is going into PVP which I will never and this system looks to help them more then anyone else in this game that is what I have a problem with.

 

You are forgetting the reason multiple character slots were added. For the RPer. It should be 1 character slot. The change to multiple slots comes with the stipulation that it's all linked. The RPers are the ones that originally pushed for the change, and won.

 

But it helps out PVP and Crafters more then anyone with this change as I have outlined. Saying its the RPer's fault or they are the reason we have it is wrong when RG post say that "I am content letting role players have more than 1 physical form, as long as it remains YOUR spirit, animating that body." It gives bonuses to a select few play styles. Sure you can create another body that is for just certain social events but it also gives huge advantages to people parking alts in different major cities for market checking, selling/buying things without having to travel to another major city to check and see if its cheaper. They just log into the alt check and if cheaper buy then transport it to the main. A person with one character slot can't do that without spending 2x the amount of time, ie walk to city check price buy then travel back to were they were. Talking about going across the map not to the closest town. Which I think ruins the vision of local markets. Fix would be all characters login and out at the same place but then people would complain about it.

Again devs have bent over backwards to add things like Guild warfare and other PVP events and these character slots are going to help them more then others in my view. So why do PVPers get more? Because they complain and are more vocal on the forums. I know of 5 other backers who don't go on the forums because its not something they like to do and after I explained the character slots where like "Why?" Some people don't know that characters are joined in that way. When you play any other MMO you don't have to worry about what one character does or how it will effect another. Here you do and that is something not described unless you know where to look. The last names is an issue for some but it could be solved with other systems. And some people are forgetting this game is going to be 5 eps at least. Say you take a year off and come back and start a new character cause you want to start fresh, well guess what your choices you made on another character effect your new character. They have not said if you delete all your characters if it stores your rep and virtues or not but it sounds like it will cause he wants choices to have consequences. A fresh character shouldn't have those virtues.

Another thing I still do not see how RG outlined why we are limited to one rep/virtue in online when some people still share accounts within the family. Say someone wants their kid to play in the online world friends only mode, safe from other people and able to enjoy the game with friends but will mess up mom or dads main virtue. And this system is only hurting people that care about the rep/virtue system not someone who says naaa its to hard to keep my virtue up so I'll just go do whatever I want and deal with the bad parts. That person isn't limited in what they do with the alts as the person that cares. So again your penalizing people that care about the game systems but giving a bonus to those that don't care.

DarkStarr and other devs haven't addressed these issues and if they say no thats how its going to be no changes then why have open development of this, just do whatever you guys want. You want feedback about systems but when you are not addressing issues that people bring up your ignoring things and putting your head in the sand. Again I don't expect all dev talks to be for everyone to see but saying that this won't change and ignoring your users will not make problems go away. I would expect to at least see a dev say, you bring up some points and we will talk about it and get back to you. But the only thing the davs have said on this so far is not going to change RG has spoken, which sounds very arrogant because he hasn't addressed a lot of the issues that have been brought up in this thread.


Edit: So with that being said I forgot to write this at the end. Lets talk about it or change it back to one character in online per account cause otherwise your penalizing people that care about the system and people that don't care and getting free stuff.

 

Go back and reread the thread from the beginning, I was calm and respectful with you and Conleth but was being called petty and dismissive, so while I agree there was useless bickering, it wasn't coming from me. What 'is' and what 'might be' are two different things and no one will ever correct any concerns unless they speak up, so I did.

You didn't seem to care if my perspective was valid, all you saw was that I was at odds with something RG said and the grand vision, so due to that fact only, you took the path you did. That is until I provided logic that blew RG's Multiple personality explanation out of the water and we didn't hear from you again until after DarkStarr posted. Id add that he only posted to set an expectation which was more likely due to the fact that it had been their long term plan for the last few years.

That doesn't make me wrong.

 

I never said that you were, I simply disagreed with your reasoning.

Validity had nothing to do with it. I can see why you wanted what you do, and I responded with why I disagreed and why. Nothing you posted "blew RG's Multiple personality explanation out of the water", nor did I find much logic beyond you want it because you want it.

That said, I'm not going to argue with you. Your point was valid, but the decision has already been made.

 

I was going to post exactly this, as I commented on this self-defeating design in the other thread regarding the gypsy questions and weapon/skill assignment. Players are no longer answering the gypsy questions as themselves. They are answering them to attain the starting skills they want. Effectively, the whole point of playing as "you" by answering "virtuous" questions is thrown away at the very start of the game.

Why not present the player with three weapons on a rack. Whichever one they pick up is the one they want for their skills. They're free to change it for as long as they're in the tutorial scene, but once they exit it's a permanent change. A simple design change that isn't self-defeating.

In any case, regarding multiple characters on a single account sharing reputation, I'm not a fan of it as currently designed. The game allows you to RP your profession, but not your alignment. So I'd have to get an alt if I wanted to RP an evil cannibalistic child-killing mage to be able to party with Ravicus via selective multiplayer.

But being forced to get an alt account causes you to lose the benefits of multiple characters on a single account. So I propose that the devs allow for account-linking on the Account screen to share rewards/bank/etc except the rep/last name thing.

 

Not a bad idea, but I'd much rather have the ability to pick my starting skills completely. If I pick a staff (for magic) maybe I don't want fire spells at all. So those become a waste for me, while they might be a great advantage to someone else.

That's not true. You could always party with Ravicus. It would just make less sense from a roleplaying persepctive. But since your SOUL is the same one no matter what character you're playing, what really doesn't make sense is why you would ignore alignment and WANT to play with Ravicus OR ignore alignment to make your "good" character. Those things have nothing to do with roleplaying, it's meta gaming, min/maxing, and ignoring roleplaying for the sake of convenience. Just "playing a game" is not roleplaying. That's what you're missing.

If they link accounts they're surly going to link last name and rep too. Otherwise they'd be breaking their own design.

 

It's fun to be a bad guy when there are no consequences. But it's not so much fun when you're held accountable for your actions. That's honestly what I think this all comes down to. Some people just hate the idea of not being able to casually be destructive and "evil" on a whim. I'm really annoyed by the sense of entitlement to this as a "feature".

It doesn't bother me one bit if it's in single player mode, because you're not putting any pressure on the integrity of the game in single player mode. But in multiplayer mode, that's where alts are really toxic.

 

Well, you aren't forced to do anything. You can answer questions honestly, and if you get a weapon you don't like, you can put it down, go buy the one you want, and retrain. Oh, but that would take time, and it's a race to see who can play faster.

 

You do have a skill tree that is populated based on the choice you make though. That's annoying.

 

Maybe it's annoying, but you can retrain.

 

Yes, but that requires extra unnecessary grinding. That amount of retraining is probably a good 10 hours of killing the same thing over and over again.

 

Haven't read the last 12 pages.

Linking all characters with reputation/last name is a little pointless imho.

I would probably end up using 1 char per account.

 

ok just for kicks, and since this horse is still twitching.....

I'm curious, how exactly can someone be a bad guy and what consequences can such a person expect? I'm still new so forgive me if I'm missing some hardcore mechanics here, but in the few weeks I've been in sota I don't think it gets much more ******** than this. Barring the accidental wandering into a well labeled pvp zone, or intentionally flagging yourself, how is someone going to be evil to you in this game?

But, assuming bottom feeders being the creative scum they are lets assume they do. Exactly what consequences are we talking about? Shunning? /ignore... you don't even have vulgar emotes to retort with.

really just trying to get a grip on this whole "I know the rep of all of your toons and one of them is a douche" and why I would even care, barring the awkwardness of unintentionally being nice to someone who was evil to me on another toon.

John Doe is mean to me.. I hate him. Mary Brown is nice to me, and bakes me cookies. Do I really care if they are the same RL person at the keyboard?

I understand the spirit of the mechanic.. and I understand by the vote most of the population heartily agrees. I don't understand why it's important to anyone.

 

In the spirit of my love for Game of Thrones, I wanted to be like my two favorite characters in SOTA. Jon Snow on one, and Ramsay Bolton on the other. . . since reputation and stuff is going to be shared between the two I really have no chance of fully doing what I want so I'm being forced to choose one or the other. That's why it's important to me, because I'm being forced to play a certain way even though I'm the one paying for the game!

 

Again, you aren't being forced to do anything. The premise of the game is you playing you, not your favorite fictional characters. You want to do something different from what is planned for the game. You made a poor choice.

 

@Jordizzle THAT I do understand.. I probably was unclear on what I was asking. I was more curious why people felt it so important to be able to tell you are both Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton to the extent they force you to display the same last name to avoid the bother of clicking your paperdoll to see it.

But further, exactly what are you going to be able to do to people as Ramsay (psycho that he is) that anyone would feel a need to know it's you? There's no stealing, you only loose two items if you loose in consentual PVP, and you can't even taunt people. I don't even have to worry about someone stealing the loot off my kills!

The masses are in agreement of imposing this somewhat game changing mechanic, which you can avoid by buying different accounts (and not pay more for the pledge that gives more alts) or changing the way you *would* play by not selecting a last name... because why?

If the answer is "because Richard" and everyone is on board because he's so awesome, ok then. Kinda "the emperor has no clothes on but we're not going to talk about it" moment but ok. I get that. Just wondering if there's a hardcore side of this game where someone is really going to be so nasty to me I'm going to always want to know who they are. If there is, I'm missing it.

 

In multiplayer, and especially in PVP, yes I do care. Because John Doe can use information from Mary Brown to allow John Doe to be a bad boy. That's not behavior that we want to see in this game. It happens in every MMO, and most players that perform these acts are the ones that are the most adamant about having multiple characters without any restrictions or links between the two.

I have no problems with people having multiple unlinked characters in single player mode. If there are players that want to cheat through the game and not play it as intended, that's fine with me. It's multiplayer where that destroys everything that is important to me.