Forced duplicate last names and reputation per account.

The post by Corleth reminds me of a time I played the RPG game "Secret Agent" with two of my friends. One of us had "wine & women" as a weakness. So while my buddy and I were engaged in a deadly gunfight with adversaries in a dark back alley - two bad dice rolls drove that friend back into the building. As luck would have it, our starting point was a casino
There is an inevitability about roleplaying that trumps your personality or the logic of the current situation. I would argue that if you play a backstabbing , thieving unscrupulous character then it would definitely have an impact on your main character if the two were living in the same house.

The true test of a roleplayer is that given a choice between convenience or staying true to your character - the latter would win most of the time. The majority of people don't have that kind of discipline, we'll see a drastic reduction in the number of people claiming to be roleplaying under the linked alts mechanism.

 

Your last name should definitely be part of all your characters. Im not even a fan of alts. I had only one character during my 17 years with UO.

And for all those players wanting alts to roleplay with, buy another account... Look at it like an option in the Add-on store "Want to roleplay different characters without using the same last name? Only $45!".

 

By this example, then you are taking for granted that Character 1 would decorate their house EXACTLY like Character 2. That could be solved by owning more than 1 house for sure in that case I guess and ignore that you have a bank with the same Gold and equipment, if that is something that is shared.

 

This.

 

It's not that I don't agree with his vision and I know I wont be popular for challenging it, but if it was in fact a way to control some kind of perceived issue specific to griefing (which I'm not saying isn't warranted) and was intended to allow the easy identification of a player regardless of which character they are playing, I feel there are better ways to accomplish the goal without restricting the freedom to roleplay characters as unique.

If on the other hand, it was NOT designed for the purpose listed above and was strictly lore specific; I'm not sure why RG would force a prescribed multiple personality disorder within a role playing game with it being extremely prohibitive of real RP. (I KNOW this comment wont be popular) but as an old school RPG guy I know even he would understand what I'm saying here, despite it being contradictory to his own intention.

 

I agree with you on this and a lot of the community is behind the visions but some of this makes no sense in the gaming world we live in today. Yes we are not paying a monthly fee for this game and online is completely optional but I think a basic PVP rep, housing, banking should be the only things linked. They should have a "House" name for all characters so last names can be optional because you can follow an account with the "House" name. This allows for role playing of servants or married to another player if you have same last name and doesn't force that last name on every character you or they have. RG has some great ideas but what happens if I delete all my characters does the rep reset or am I stuck with a choice I made 3 years ago?

For people saying buy another account your forgetting this game is going to have 5 eps and I would have to buy all 5 eps for my alt account, how is it fair if I only play one alt with another person then I'm paying 2x what someone else is and not really using 2x the resources just so I can enjoy the game with my friend and not worry about messing up my main character. What happens if I want to start my online character over? I can't do that with this system as it sounds like virtues are stored so if I delete all characters it will keep my virtues on the server and however I start I have those already stored. So exploring in this game will be limited to offline play as you don't want to mess up your main if they save virtues account wide.

Again RG has a vision and I respect that but he doesn't foresee all the issues and problems that his vision has. That where we the players need to have discussions and help both him and the dev team work things out.

 

Agree 100% with this.

I've invested plenty as a duke and a POT owner, and I'm involved in actively pushing the SotA sponsored charities and I encourage my friends and community members to support the game. I don't feel I should need multiple accounts to play the game the way I want to play it. This is not an appropriate solution in my opinion.

 

Well I won't keep harping on this. I am not saying you are not fine or entitled in your desires of how you want to play the game. So what if this does not change? Can you change with it? That is the question. It is like the quote 'If you only look at what is, you might miss what could be'. How would you work around this decision? Ok well I deliberate more than I wanted to on this subject. That is not a criticism of you, just a criticism of me that is personal in how I deal with others.

 

I always appreciate your perspective Majoria and I do now, but you have to acknowledge the albeit unintentional disregard for free form role play when every other playstyle has been significantly catered to simply because our dev team members are proponents of those playstyles.

By no means am I saying they did anything wrong, I just feel this is a significant oversight which should be corrected.

 

Thank you Sir Grave for your kind words in spite of my debate. Anyway to say this, Oh but I do not think it was unintentional but very intentional to see us squirm a bit perhaps. People will usually fight for 'what they know from the past' verses trying on something new or not used to in the future. Humans are adaptable though and it is interesting to see what creativity arises from having to experience this. So there were little secrets in UO also. One difference here is that we get to give feedback early on this game, thus what havoc we can wreak in the developers vision for the game. Sometimes this will play out in a good way and other times pershaps not. Who can say until we actually have the game. I am one for personal freedom to be creative and yet I am having this debate with you. It does not make sense, sheesh In this case I just defer myself to the decision of the team. I do of course appreciate the tone of this thread Grave GodsHammer, you are very commendable in your handling of this thread. I know you do so in the spirit of best wishes for your passion for this to be a great game.

 

I'm confused by your aim, and your definition of roleplay.

If you want to have a second character to progress through the entire story with, but play opposite/different than your primary in your interactions with NPCs, then yeah, you need a second account and each episode for that account. That is story progression.

If all you want to do is participate in roleplaying, you can do that without any other accounts. Just don't progress through the story on that alt. You are not dealing with NPCs, really, and you are not getting flagged for different virtues. Sure, you don't get to see any of the (possibly) different storylines, but we really don't know how much of that you will get anyway.

I'm happy to see you are being active and supporting the game, but you are trying to change it based on how you want to play, instead of how they want you to play. If it was only a single character per account, this wouldn't even be an issue. As it is now, its still a single character per account, but with up to three different pre-set faces and skill loadouts. Alts in SotA are not like alts in WoW, they are simply aliases.

 

You are awesome and we need to get together in game and go kill things together. According to the opinions of most retort posters, my perspective is at odds with the game devs and RG themselves and I hope for my sake they see this as constructively as you do.

 

I vote No. I would like to play a virtuous person on one character, and have the option to play a non virtuous person on another character if I wish. When I played Ultima Online, I had several different characters and would role play a different way for each one. I had characters that reached Glorious Lord titles, and some that I purposefully reached Evil Lord titles with. I would enjoy the same freedom here as well.

 

My aim here is to point out that just because what you said in the quote above is true specific to the communicated plan of Portalarium, it doesn't mean it 'should' be the way it is at game launch. I see this not as a conflict of how things should be from a lore perspective, but how a specific goal is achieved, so it doesnt interfeir with a popular playstyle.

And I would never be able to experience the story from the perspective of the other virtues if I followed this advice... unless I paid for more accounts. Again, not a reasonable solution imo.

I already posted a myriad of ways Portalarium has changed game mechanics to support specific playstyles, so I see no issue with pointing out this oversight and working toward a solution that is nonintrusive to ANY playstyle, including RPers.

 

Not entirely true. You can delete your character and start over any number of times (keeping any of your account bound items and pledge rewards that you have not sold/given away), and you can play offline as many times as you want. So the only reason to have multiple characters is if you want to play them concurrently; which I don't see a problem with requiring another account for.

 

Then its no reason to give us alt characters except if you make one of your alts a crafter max out the crafting skill lock them then never have them leave the basement or wherever you put the crafting tables so you don't get skill decay. This to me makes no sense as it giving everyone a cheap and easy way to get a crafter maxed out without the risk/reward. If this is the only reason why then give them? And people forget I might want to play with others online and try and do crazy stuff for fun but if everything is shared I won't do it and that is no fun. They have said that the quests lines and story do not transfer between characters so you could use it to make gold via doing quests for rewards then storing the rewards in house/bank then deleting character and doing it over again.

Games are about having fun what Grave and I are pushing for is a disconnect between the characters so that choices one makes won't effect another. I want to explore with my friends while drinking and not have to worry about causing issues cause I say or do something wrong on my alt I play with them. Yes I can do all this crazy stuff in single player offline mode but half the fun is being on voice chat with friends and goofing around doing silly things. I do think PVP shouldn't be disconnected across characters tho for the reason of someone being a jerk then going onto their good character without anyone knowing that they just killed someone took the loot and gave it to their other character. Also if they are known as a great hammer maker then if you see the persons alt on you can ask them about making a special hammer or whatever.

The devs need to give us more information on what the system will transfer and what won't as well as how it works now while designing it before they run into these issues so we can have discussions about it and help them list out pros and cons, this is what the open development is about.

 

I should delete my character whom i've poured hundreds of hours into sculpting and skilling up, when an extra character slot (which is available as of an upcoming release) is all it would take to accomplish the same goal?

This is just not a reasonable compromise.

EDIT:

On the other hand, all the concerns stated in this thread regarding the tracking and identification of players regardless of which character they play is achievable through other methods which do not inhibit RP.

 

I'm not sure how I feel about this topic at all.

• I see a valid reason for mandating an account-wide same last name - to assure that people can't hide behind another alt and pretend to be another person for unsavory reasons.
• I see a valid reason for allowing different last names - people want to RP their characters as entirely different beings and thus should not share the same last name.
• I can see a valid reason to share reputation/virtues - our actions are supposed to be those of our "real" self and should be reflected across any character we play.
• I can see a valid reason to not share reputation/virtues - we may want to follow different paths to experience other aspects of the game that a linked account would not allow.

Those are just one reason for each argument and IMO, all of them should be taken into consideration. The problem is that you simply can't have it both ways.

I would need to know more info about what is being linked (other than the surname) and why the Devs think it should be linked before I can form a true opinion on this topic.

I think one of the most puzzling aspects here is "why do we have access to more than one character if we can't make them separate entities?" With the way skills are in this game and the "skill decay" simply a means of being a soft cap to keep the hardcore gamers from being insanely superior to the casual player... there really isn't a need to make an alt because your main should be able to do anything you want it to do without limiting something else.

It's not like you need to make one avatar a crafter and the other combat oriented because leveling up in one doesn't affect how you level up in the other. And you don't even need to specialize one in blacksmithing and another in carpentry to be able to "max" out the skills in both because there doesn't seem to be a system that gives a penalty in one if you max out another. The combat side may give a reason though with the upcoming "attunement" system... so this might give us a reason to have an alt if we want to specialize in more than one opposing force of magic. But other than that, what benefit does an alt give us?

• Bank accounts and housing is shared, so having 2 or 3 avatars doesn't do anything for us in terms of inventory space.
  
• Leveling up multiple characters from scratch takes longer than leveling up multiple skills on one character.
• You can't have more than one avatar online at the same time (unless they are on different accounts) so they can't help each other progress.

Honestly, I'm not complaining about having 3 character slots, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what I would do with them if not give them different personas and play them differently to experience various virtue specific content or perhaps different magic schools if the attunement system warrants it. So if reputation (speaking of NPC and quest/story related content) are linked, then how would I be able to try a different path? Am I supposed to be forced into one virtue path because one of my characters leads me that way? What if I'm a generous person at heart and my rich main character gives gold to every beggar he sees, but my poor low level alt just doesn't have the coin to give them anything? Does that mean my account wide reputation should be affected by either of those actions?

Again, I don't have a side picked out yet because I don't really know all the facts. I think the more I think about the subject, the more I confuse myself too.

 

I took this as an excerpt from another thread to prove a point here that linking reputation prohibits experiencing the story from different virtues which would potentially provide a different overall game experience and who I ask is the most prominent group to not only follow story lines but to build upon them with their own personal character stories and player to player interactions?

Yes, RPers.

 

Personally, I don't think roleplaying is a solitary sport. I think you need multiple people to actually be "roleplaying".

Are you roleplaying if you're put into a game with no walls, no floors, no NPC's, no items, you don't have a head or a body, the screen is white and you have no way to interact with anything? This is actually pretty close to what single player mode is, you might as well be playing Super Mario because whatever you're doing you're not really roleplaying. You need other people in the game with you to either validate the experience, or remember it. Otherwise it's like it never happened - just like when you reach level 43 in Super Mario brothers, if it happened it only happened in your mind because it's really not a shared experience and that's ultimately what roleplaying is.

So I would argue that what you're concerned about is actually your ability to day dream on multiple paths without the game invalidating your attempts to be Wario in the middle of Super Mario brothers. I'm not trying to use semantics here, I'm serious. Roleplaying has to be performed with other people, it's a team sport.