Forced duplicate last names and reputation per account.

Yeah, don't need a last name.

 

Your point really doesn't apply. We are taking our souls to another world, not our physical selves. Your arch-type has NOTHING to do with your path to the virtues. Whether you are loving or truthful or courageous has nothing to do with being a mage type or a melee type..

And no, the system is designed on the assumption you have the starting skills they give you at that level of competency. If you are well below that you will die and continue to die until you get your skill set at the level of competency the game assumes you started with.

And there's no way you want to start a game asking players to exhibit that kind of patience, that's just really stupid. It's also a great way to chase a whole bunch of players away and give this game a really bad rep.

 

It seems that there are a number of people here that can't grasp the concept of role-play.

 

Not everybody role plays. Me, for one.

 

That's not an excuse to force others not to.

 

True. Some folks here seem to thank that it's imperative to role play. Most think, correctly, that it's optional.

 

The link has no visual requirement. Only the presence. If there is a toggle to not display a last name, all is well.

 

Indeed. It boggles my mind that people will sign up for a Lord British role playing game, and then reject Lord British's vision for the game, and the story that is written around you playing the role of the Avatar. But, to each his own, I suppose. Personally, I signed up to play the game Richard wants to make.

 

Games are multi-faceted. Just because you don't like one particular aspect doesn't mean you don't like the game as a whole, or the general vision of the developers. It's natural for all aspects of game play to be questioned by at least some people.

 

So then your fine with only ever being able to play it once and no replay and no changing your choices? Because with what is being suggested in online mode with the information we have thats what going to happen unless you buy another account. No reply or play a different way because your virtues will be tied to your main character. No trying to be a jerk just to see what the story would do. No being silly with a alt to play and see the story line trying different ways of completing the mission as this would mess up your main. Why would you care about your main? Well if you have a house or spent 100's of hours doing things with him and in a year want to replay it you can't with this vision as your rep/virtues are all tied together.

 

I didn't want multiple character slots anyway, can't say I have sympathy, I'd rather see the original intent upheld. Having everything shared is the 2nd best option (as I posted before)

 

I voted to keep the "same last name, same reputation". My reasoning was twofold:

• When I upgraded my original pledge to Ancestor level, I was aware of the restrictions regarding the extra slots.
• The pledge levels that contain extra character slots already contain many cool benefits that will be unavailable to players who pay $45 to play the game post release. It is just my personal feeling that it is too much to give the Benefactor pledges yet another perk when new post-release players would have to pay for an extra account to get an extra slot.

 

the problem with your statement is that there are multiple ways to role play, not just one standard method. some people prefer to role play polar opposte characters from each other, some prefer to have a clan or a family they play.. forcing names to be together, forces one style of RP, which will completely alienate several people from this entire aspect of the game. that, is not a sandbox.

note, i said names, not reputation. i could care less if that is tied or not. what if i wish to RP a town drunk in my town, on one of my slots, that isn't related to my primary character? tying names together will not allow me to role play the way i wish to role play.

while i'm playing that town drunk, i wouldn't care if someone rightclicks on me and finds out i'm thuri that way, but i would not want, via role play and character names, to be related to my primary toon, who runs the town and the guild....

 

DarkStarr you should have said in this thread that you probably won't change it but we are listening to the feedback. Not that your not going to change it.

btw he said this on the live stream so just posting it here for people who couldn't watch.

 

So glad to hear reputation will be shared among all characters on an account! Thank you Portalarium for sticking to Richards original plan for reputation in New Britannia!

 

I'm glad he said that, it means there is still hope that it could be changed.

 

I suspect for roleplayers the only hope is false hope.

Fast travel is going to be severely nerfed by E1, so having shared ownership of a home is of dubious benefit - even assuming this allowed all linked characters to fast travel there anyway. Since it is possible to allow "strangers" to store and retrieve items from our homes, I can't think of any reason to use linked characters for roleplay. Rather than fight Portalarium on this, I think it makes more sense to have truly independent characters, each with their own account.

Linked characters can be seen as an extension of the facility that lets you swap loadouts - extending that to first name, appearance, skills, inventory and location.

 

Warning long post with lots of ideas and questions for devs and community to talk about please try and keep responses constructive. These Q&A are based off what I know so far and some thoughts on other things they have talked about.

Why is shared rep/virtues bad for multiple characters?
Well if I want to explore another virtue or path inside the story and see different options to reply to NPCs then I have to play in offline mode. I can not share this with my friends going down being silly. Sometimes people just want to goof off inside of a game not "play" the game systems or worry about that play session messing up my main character. This makes this very hard to impossible to do with shared rep/virtues. A real world example of this is every time you play D&D with a different group of friends you would have to buy a new game book plus and expansion books they are using because you can't play a different role without a new account.

Do these additional character slots help out RPers like people said?
Short answer is yes it helps out people who would like another character slot with a different name if they wish to explore RP another main story line so long as the virtues and rep are going to be the same. Or if they want the alt for events or other items. If you want to RP a different style of a character then no these do not help.

What do I mean by different style of character?
Well lets say your main has been honest and hasn't looted, lets say you want to see what happens when you loot and lie to people. The devs have said based on your rep for lying and looting you will have different conversational options, some people won't talk to you or help you and other won't talk to you if your "good". So this leads me to believe that we will have multiple options within story lines to complete quests with different outcomes and different results. This means that the game has replay value which is a good thing for people that want to try and complete the game different ways a few times.

Well who does this help and how does it help them?
I see multiple characters helping PVPers, Crafters, RPers who follow the same rep/virtue, RPers who just want a alt to use at events and Traders.
PVPers:
A PVP player can train up his alts to have different skill sets ie Swords, Polearms, Hammers, Magic, etc. and used what is needed in the PVP fights.
Another way this can help PVPers is they can have the character logout in different locations in the world. This could be useful for when Guild vs Guild is introduced or near PVP zones so that they can quickly log into each character to see what zone is active or has easy kills in it.

Crafters:
A Crafter can have alts setup to be Grand Master level crafting in different items like Blacksmithing and Tailoring without having to worry about the skill decay system hurting them when their main character dies.

RPers:
RPers can use whoever they want to use without worrying about it if they follow the same virtue/rep on the character or if the character isn't going to progress in the story or do quests.

Traders:
A Trader can have his alts logged out in cities around the world next to the public vendors to quickly check prices and put items up for sale or buy what they need without the need to travel.


So how are these problems?
Well some of these items will be out of balance with what I think RG is going for in this world.
For the PVPers this allows someone to have 3x the durability of armor and weapons in PVP. They can do this by having the 3 characters(1 main and 2 alts) all max durability waiting to go in fighting with repair kits ready to go. He could be going into a Guild vs Guild battle area and then be able to fight till that character is in to bad shape and switch characters. Or if he losses some of his gear to loot rules he switches characters so he can go back in and kill them to get his loot back. Or he could be looking for easy kills by logging into the characters on different sides of the world to check the PVP zone without having to travel overland to get there.

For Crafters I said that they don't have to worry about skill decay because they don't die or skill up because they do not leave the safety of where the crafting stations are located.

For RPers no real issues with this as far as I can see currently vs RG world view.

For Traders this gives them rapid travel to look at prices and buy or adjust prices in another zone or buy to move to another zone where they are selling for more. Yes I know people will run websites outside of the game with "vendor" information and stuff but this will give them a quick way to go from one town to another without waiting to see prices.


So how do we fix these problems?
Multiple ways of fixing these problems and I think it should be something along the lines:
For quickly traveling via logging into on alt in another location the system could have you always log in where you last logged out on any character. This removes any quick travel via alt in one town then an alt in another.
For the skill decay I belive the best way to solve this issue is that any time any character has a skill decay event then all characters have that skill decay happen to them.
For the PVP I can't really see any way of fixing this unless any debuffs from PVP are account wide timers. But that still doesn't fix some of the issues without creating more. Or maybe only one character can be flagged for PVP every hour and doesn't let you go into PVP zones unless your on that character but when you log out of your PVP character thats the start of a 1 hour cooldown. Again this is not ideal.


Overall I think the character slot system is giving the most bonuses to the PVPer without really giving that much to people who follow the games lore and systems. So PVPers are getting bonuses while people who are following the story are not. As I have searched I have not seen any developers address these issues. They have fallen back on RG layed out his vision and that is the way its going to be. This is wrong in my view as PVPers are getting a lot of things added for their benefit such as Guild vs Guild and siege warfare. I welcome constructive feedback and talks but saying "RG has spoken" is not helpful because he has not addressed the issues I have raised.


Quick Edit: No I haven't thought of everything but this is why I'm posting so people can like to agree so we might get a dev to reply with more then 1 line and answer the questions and for other people to point out other flaws and issues with the system as we know of it now.

 

I like the idea of all characters on an account sharing the same last name for mainly accountability reasons. It makes it more difficult for trolling, spying, etc.

 

Honestly when I think about a Lord British RPG. .Ultima Online is the first game that comes to my mind. In UO you could freely role play a different way on each character and there was none of this.. shared reputation, shared karma and last name stuff. In my mind, the way multiple characters is being offered in this game is contradictory to what a Lord British RPG is. To me a Lord British RPG means freedom. UO gave me the freedom to be a theif, a respected warrior, a distinguished tamer, a disgruntled blacksmith, or even a snarky egotistical bard. In this game where we are encouraged to be just ourselves no matter what character we are logged in with. .just seems. .I dunno like a step back because no matter how I feel like playing when I log in. .people will always know it's me. I'll always be expected to behave the same way that I did in the first impression that I made.

In UO I would craft weapons for players on my smith. .then I'd come across them in Felucca with my red character and we'd have an epic battle.. .and the player would have no idea I'm the same smith they bought their weapon from. It was kool to be able to see the weapons I crafted in action, being used against me. .That was part of the beauty of UO I think. I'm going to miss that in SOTA when I'm just Jim no matter what character I log in with. (my name isn't really Jim btw) If I'm me no matter what character I log on with, then am I really role playing at all?

I know this game isn't meant to be Ultima Online. . but I want it to be as successful as Ultima Online I don't think it can be this way.