A roleplayer's case for multiple characters

I'm with Zeki on paying for an extra character. Now, I wouldn't advocate buying a whole new 60$ copy, but instead a character slot in game for say, 20$ or a little more if you want the character to have what Sir Asguard mentioned. I wouldn't see that as unreasonable.

 

@Asguard, what you paid for in Kickstarter is admirable, but that is intended for supporting the development of the game. It doesn't earn you freebies above and beyond what you've already gotten for your pledge, and you shouldn't expect it to grant you an easy way to circumvent part of the game design, which at this point is one account, one character. If that doesn't change, then if you really want that, you'll have to cough up for another account.

 

I am not sure it is one character right now, RG and Chris' comments on it have varied throughout the "public" life of the project.

I would be interested in hearing their current take on the subject, but after yesterday and the pvp answer, I fear even that knowledge wouldn't kill the debate.

I respectfully suggest we wait until the alpha to make our arguments. Both sides have been clearly argued for well and completely. The devs have seen our thoughts on the subject, now it is for them to decide, us to test and then make our arguments based on what they have decided and implemented while it can still be fixed.

But to to do that we need to actually know more about the game and experience it. Hence alpha.

 

Just had a thought to provide an option to people who want to replay at a later date without losing their current character... how bout an option to reset the main quest thread and start it from the beginning.

 

Great discussion here, good points all around. Playing into the Ultima storyline, the idea is YOU are the one who gets to go through the moo... err, lunar portal. The player is transported and is expressed through the character, but the goal is to avoid the disconnect that so often occurs. I think the fact that this isn't being done elsewhere is reason enough to try it out. And it would certainly be easier to add multiple characters later than trying to do away with them. A simple and streamlined system will be easier to manage as well (can you imagine how many stagnant chars are lurking in the WoW servers?)

I defer to Lord British's wisdom - even though they are using us as a resource, there may be certain times when RG or the devs say, "You know, it's just not that kind of game", and I think we should respect that - we're supporting this thing <i>because</i> it's different. I'd rather play one character in an RG world than a hundred chars in the others I've tried. Mick Jagger sang a song about this once...

Perhaps you will be able to unlock the rights to a second character at a certain point, or through special questing. Back in the 90s there were some MUDs that, upon reaching top level, conferred immortality on characters - this basically gave them administrative duties (responding to character questions etc) and limited creative powers. If your work was good, they'd promote you from Immortal to Lesser God, Greater God etc. The devs are already talking about crowdsourcing art and possible art/object edits for crafting, maybe there is a place for something similar in SoTA

IMHO there is a compromise to be found here, but continuing to build the strong sense of community present in UO and extremely evident in the Kickstarter campaign should take a high priority.

 

In today's Dev chat RG himself heavily implied the biggest hangup against mutiple characters for him is dealing with karma. This is pretty much a non-issue for me because in the absence of witnesses or ulterior motives, the player will tend to make the same choices in their dealings with NPCs regardless of the character they're playing.

A karma system can't really track dealings between players.. it can only track dealings with NPCs since the NPC's behaviors and motivations are pre-programed.

Karma also assumes the PC will be taken through many dealings with NPCs and player behavior only really factors into the story when the player engages the story. Yet the scenarios everyone seems to be concerned over is player-player interactions which you can't reliably track at all except through PvP and even then it's iffy. Basically what you have to work with is who attacked who first and what the game thinks is the motivation.. which can be completely inaccurate.

IE: X has a bounty on his head. Y attacks and kills X because X implied Y's mother was a llama. Game thinks Y attacks X because of the bounty. Game treats it as a justified attack when it was really over some petty insult. Y gets good karma for commiting murder because the game can't track how each player thinks. The game doesn't think it's murder even though in Y's mind it is. How dare they imply my mother is a llama!

If the karma issue between multiple characters is solved to his satifaction then RG will likely green light multiple characters.

 

Richard won't ever solve the karma issue simply because of the multiple account loophole.

I fully support Richard's vision of "the avatar is you" and how he'll deal with that with the karma / virtue system in-game. However, that only works if people aren't roleplaying anyone except themselves IRL, as far as virtues go.

Perhaps this is Richard's subtle statement that however you roleplay in games (in terms of profession for example), your virtues IRL should define your virtues (and thus actions) in-game -- and more to the point, face the consequences for it.

If you roleplay your virtues as well, you aren't as emotionally impacted since they aren't your own.

 

No such think as a perfect solution, but at least the multiple account workaround make the game more successful than it would be otherwise.

 

Maybe not a 100% solution but you can get 80% of the way there by just making the karma counters account wide instead of per character.

 

I've already had my say, but I don't think the main concern with multiple characters has been addressed so far: being able to switch freely among multiple characters is functionally indistinguishable from having one character with all abilities.

Swapping back and forth between characters at will reduces them to people-shaped vehicles. Shouldn't "roleplaying" -- playing *as* another person in another world -- be something more in <em>just one game</em> than simply a rules-based mechanic for accessing skills-gated content?

There may be a solution, and a simple one: every character stays exactly where he or she was when the player switched to a different character. You can switch between Bob and Susan at will, but when you quit as Bob in one place, he blinks out of existence in that place and Susan blinks back into existence wherever she was (and with whatever she was carrying) when you last quit playing as her. ("No instant travel" would also be a very useful rule, and not allowing items to be dropped any place but one's home would be a further improvement.)

This one thing would allow players to run as many characters as they want, subject to RG's design and technical limitations. It would also minimize treating multiple characters as one ubercharacter since you wouldn't be swapping out your warrior in the middle of a dungeon to pop a lock, then swapping right back again for a fight.

Characters played by the same player would be able to freely trade items in a house to which all of them have been granted rights. But that wouldn't privilege one player's multiple characters over another player's characters. Separate characters, regardless of who "owns" them, would be treated by the rules of the game as separate characters. That supports the roleplaying interests of both those who want multiple characters and those who want one character -- you can have more than one, but you can only run one at a time.

No solution can please everyone. And of course there'll always be a few people buying multiple accounts and trying to run them simultaneously. But I think "characters retain their locations" comes as close as the rules of a computer-based roleplaying game can to enabling both camps to get what they've described as most important to them.

I might be wrong about that, of course. Constructive comments are very welcome!

 

Don't games do this as a general rule already? I've never seen a game that hasn't done that. No online game I've ever seen has not tracked character location and inventory separately.

The real issue isn't the game mechanic but the player's mindset. Something which, unfortunately, you can do very little to absolutely nothing about. The non-roleplayer will use mutliple characters as nothing more than a tool.. but then they won't be stepping into their 'role' with only one character either. All we can do is accept that there will be non-roleplayers playing the game.

But remember that we don't have to deal with players we don't want to. That's what that nifty slider they've been talking about is for. There will also likely be an option to filter out individuals. So I really don't see a reason to concern myself over what I would consider a minor annoyance due to a personal preference.

 

Maybe, we will see an Online only Add-On package coming up later for a reduced price, which (eventually) requires, that you have one full package and allows you to add characters to an existing account and/or create a new, online only account.

 

Flatfingers I just assumed this was always the standed, I want to play through the game with x, y and z characters, not skip between them in the same timeline

 

If RP players and others feel the need to have more than one Character there could be a 7 day timer delay after playing one before you can swop to another, I usually play Multiple chars myself but they can lead to a stagnated crafting system where everyone can supply their own needs.

 

I really don't think that's a major issue. From what we know of skills so far it sounds like if you really want a be self sufficient with one character you can. What really keeps demand for crafters up is the number of players who simply have no interest in crafting. I've yet see such a high percentage of players making their own goods to the point where it had a negative impact on the economy.

I just don't want to be forced to put skills in to a character that was never meant to have them.

 

Characters aren't simply defined by their profession and skills they have, but also by their actions. One of the critical aspects of the game is the virtue system. Different characters will have taken different actions and thus have different virtues or karma or whatever. So switching them at will is not exactly the same.

Unless, as Elvish points out, the virtues are account-wide and not character specific. But that presents more complications. One character who has not done any evil deeds will have to face the consequences of an entirely different character who has done evil. In-game, that won't make much sense per character. That is like damning the son for the sins of the father.

In the end, Richard will simply have to make a decision and stick to his vision of "the avatar is you", which may lead some people to create multiple accounts, or allow multiple slots with each character entirely separate from the other, so people can roleplay not just their profession and skills, but also roleplay their virtues.

 

Right. I sympathize with how he wants players to be their avatar but I think it's too much of an unrealistic expectation. He's not going to be able to get everything he wants. As a player I already know a lot of the things I want my character to do and most of it is stuff I'd never do (ie hunting or even *cringe* fishing.. I hate fishing irl).

But when it comes to trackable interactions with NPCs and such I think most players will behave the same regardless of what character they play. Especially if there's no other players around to act as witnesses. That is unless there's another reason not to like aquiring achievements or wondering "what happens if.. "

 

I'm not sure I understand why karma is such an issue for multiple characters. From what I see, if someone has more than one character, he can do bad things on one character and then switch to another to avoid the consequences? But if there's only one character per account, what's to stop the player from just going afk in his house to avoid the consequences? Or logging off the game and playing another one while he waits? Or -- heaven forbid -- logging off entirely and... going outside?

 

@Molina: Sure, the player can go afk or log off or whatever. The game will be waiting for that character to return. And when that character does, he will face the consequences however Richard and Tracy has deemed fitting for his actions. NPCs and MOBs and who knows what else will react to you in unique ways based on your virtue / karma in the game.

 

So, if they had a different character to log on to, then when they logged back to their bad character, they'd face the consequences anyway? I don't see what the problem is...