A roleplayer's case for multiple characters

I didn't get the impression they were going to allow for multiple avatars in the offline version. However there is no limit to what you can do with the single avatar. I think they said you can max out every single skill in the game in the offline mode. No need to have multiple characters.

However in the offline mode what good would it do to be evil? Maybe there will be an evil path in single player offline, but the style of the Ultima games always focused on goodness and revealing the greatest qualities of who you are. To be virtuous.

You could never even complete Ultima 4, or even 5 and 6 without being virtuous.

 

Yeah, I realize 'save points' won't exist on the online portion of the game.

Its implied that decisions made online are persistent and that players will have to 'live' with the choices they make on their single character for a decent amount of time; unless they just restart their character outright.
I don't agree with having multiple characters and just 1 with 'main benefits', giving people these options makes people too self sufficient and too efficient in general. Travel is already easier with the dual scale map, 'teleporting around' with multiple characters would just make any PvE task trivial.

 

No, yust one character active the same time. But it could be possible to use the other avatars you made as npc companions. But with the same restrictions as the other companions.
For main, i mean that only one of your avatars can be the main with all rights. So citizenship, etc. but you can only have one activate at all. If you want to get the benefits over to another one, you have to delete the main to free it up. So you would effectly have your self, but can't switch it to another avatar, who would stay beeing lowest class (not skill level). If you have only one avatar and delete this one, the next you create will get the main attribute. Its acutally a between hybrid thing between restricting to only one avatar, but give the possibility to test around other avatars in the online game.

 

Which is why many companies employ a spiral development model. Requirements are firm right up until the point where they are changed, at which time you now have a new requirement. If players are fuzzy on that subject, all is needed is a bit of education.

 

For many people (role players, or story folks) skills alone do not make a character. They also do not make a story. Roles do.
You can even see this from RG and Tracey in a dev chat, when they break down their paradigm for fundamental story structure - there are 8 roles. (no mention of skills).

Not everyone thinks this way for sure. This breakdown exists even in PnP RP. Some people will always view their character as a set of skills, a tool to interact with game mechanics.
And that's okay. However, some people are story, role, intent driven.

I think the problem being discussed in this thread, is that there are some people who enjoy playing multiple roles, and contributing to a story, via different characters (instead of or in addition to morphing one over time).
The real question to ask is "Does the design benefit the game, and if so, does it benefit the game more than the side effects detract from the game?"

Lets assume the answer is that the benefits outweigh the side effects. Then the question becomes "Does a mitigation exist which reduces the side effects in an effective manner?"

 

I think that's an interesting conclusion you've drawn from your perspective of playing a role. Consider this, if there is only one you, and you are playing a role then how many YOUs can there be? Some might argue that you have split personalities. Sorry folks in a game where you face the consequences for your actions then the insane multiple personality guy has one body. The arguement of having multiple characters is very weak at best. The only real argument for it is that you just want to have it. I say let you have multiple characters but pay for them.

So I say good for the games that allow alts, but I hope Lord British sticks to his guns on this issue. It would be nice to see something unique, and realistic as well... one you, one character. Pay for your alts.

 

For the sake of discourse, I will answer your questions even though you avoided mine.

In your counter, it depends upon your definition of role and the scope at which you are analyzing.
There is certainly only one me. But I most certainly play different roles given different context. This is pretty natural, and a healthy part of group dynamics.
There is even a real world profession in which 1 person plays different roles. Would you argue that all actors have split personalities?
Would you argue that RG has split personalities, since he has discussed the possibility of having 2 of his characters in the game? Would that mean that he is sticking to his guns or breaking his own design in your mind?

I don't have a big problem with the idea RG is presenting, in theory.
I just happen to think that the current implementation is suboptimal - mostly because it is a really challenging problem to enforce people to play 1 character.
And even if the technology were easier to enforce this design, and lets say it cost $120,000 for a person to somehow circumvent the tech, I am not sure that it would yield a better overall game experience.

If everyone only played 1 character, how many people would be evil?
How well could AI fill in that gap? How would that make for a more interesting game, more interesting antagonists, contagonists?
And this is an important one - if 1 person played 1 good character and 1 evil character, and never broke character ... how would you know that it was one person?

 

1) There's no way to know until we test and see. I'd be surprised if there weren't some imbalance at first. Not knowing makes it more fun in my opinion.
2) I don't think AI is expected to fill anything; PvE is against all players.
3) Answer: You wouldn't, unless for some reason you deduce that the 2 characters in question can never meet (normally would never happen, since both characters would generally not even meet the same players).

I still argue that multiple characters make manipulating the online world too easy; and each additional character is a multiplication of available skills to use at any given moment, making reacting to the events occurring in-game easier.
Don't act like there is going to be a big separation of players into 'good' and 'evil' at the start of this as well; initially we're all 'Avatars' fresh-born into this world as a united front.
I expect some 'evil' players may even put up 'good' front to other players they meet, in order to bide time to find better equipment, or just to wait until an appropriate amount of loot is in their grasp to take advantage of the moment.

 

Fair answers. Re #2. My viewpoint is that if a sufficient number of people are not playing evil, then the importance of AI as evil increases, to maintain the element of conflict necessary in a strong narrative.

I am not saying that multiple characters doesn't make manipulating the world too easy. I agree with you on this point. I am saying that paying $60 to do so anyway hurts people who will not manipulate the world, and it isn't a good mitigation for those who will manipulate the world. $60 is less than what most people paid to get around other rules in other MMOs. The pledges alone show proof that people are willing to pay excessive amounts of money to get what they want in this game, and it doesn't even exist yet. I am also not saying there is going to be a big split, especially initially. I am looking at this as a 5 year + game that will be iteratively improved and expanded, but still want to do the best of getting it mostly right from the get go.

I think it is great that you mention testing. I would encourage people to approach this community experience like testers - and a tester's job starts well before implementation.
Someone has put forth a 1-pager informal design doc/narrative on player:character ratio.
Who are the personas interacting with this design? What are the boundary conditions that may emerge by moving forward on this design? What if everyone follows it? What if no one follows it? What is the average expected result based upon knowledge/data? Given that, what are the pros/cons of the presented design? Alternative designs? Is there a better design to achieve our shared goals? etc, etc.

From a pure personal standpoint, I don't really care if I have to spend an extra $60 to get another character. But I see that as irrelevant to whether I believe it is the best design strategy for the game.

 

The way I see it, people have been given so many pledge options that I would call 'supporting in excess', that RG must be prepared to design this game to handle the kind of people willing to pay out larger sums in attempt to just circumvent his design. Either way I'm looking forward to trying out the game the way Richard intended.

 

Well, i could life with only one character slot in the online game, but it would take care, that i will make the other chars i want to test out or play in the offline game. So my game time would be most likely be more in the offline game world. Ok, if we have more as one, i would have aswell offline character, because i want to play around with the mods and test things, i don't want to play online. Playing a thief or something evil is something, i woudn't want to make in the online world. An for testing out the full character designer, what we can do with followers and to even try how a female character would work, i would aswell only use the offline mode.
But the argument of the buy the game again is not valid for me. And for the offline experience, there have to be more as one slot, because you buy a game and not a half game. And more as one games you can play is normal for the offline game. So i woudn't doubt, that we get this here aswell. The only question is, if we can safe in the offline mode, or if it works like the online game, yust with only NPCs. Then we would to have character lots at least there. And somebody who already payed over 120$ to help the game to be made and to get the full game should be fine with it.

 

Why does a person with rogue skills have to be evil?

 

They don't have to be... but the general execution of Rogue skills in a city setting would generally be a criminal activity, unless its just in an lawless NPC controlled area or they stick to non-city adventuring.

The possibility of branching out into non-traditional skills with a Rogue set is interesting however; if RG's design of allowing anyone to use anything if they're willing to devote time to it, then there's many more possibilities for gameplay options than you might expect.

It could go either way in the end; we'll just wait and see what happens I suppose.

 

Playing a Robin Hood type character isn't intrinsically evil. You'd be a hero to some, and more than an annoyance to others. Quite frankly even Batman could be played fairly rogue like.

As I've said, I love the idea of a character with many masks and methods. But it's still you. You can roleplay a dozen different alts in different ways but there must be a thread of consistency.