A roleplayer's case for multiple characters

@Onore For the most part I agree with the point you're making but I would argue that such people don't roleplay at all. People who actually engage in roleplay tend to get emotionally attached to even multiple characters.

Among the RPers I've known the past 10 years or so.. quite a few only had one character I'm aware of. Of course, most of them had about 2 or 3 on average and they put a great deal of time and effort developing those characters. Not so much their skills & equipment but their personality and backstories.

I believe I mentioned at one point I had up to around 15 characters at one time. Most of them I created to testing game balance on my NWN server but I was still somewhat attached to all but one or two. Every one had a backstory and something that set them aside.

We keep calling this an RPG but truth is when it comes to computer RPGs you're normally put in a role that's designed by someone else. Or in the case of MMOs most people don't truly RP at all. They simply play a game where they have very little emotional investment in their character(s).

I won't say this is a right or wrong way to play. It's a game. We should play it as we like so long as that doesn't interfere with other player's enjoyment of the game. What I am saying though is it won't matter if we're only allowed the one character or 15. An roleplayer will roleplay. Those who don't, won't. This is simply the nature of players in general.

I am a roleplayer. I have my character I want to play.

Incidentally, as a roleplayer I'm also quite happy if passing items or house permissions to other characters on the account is darn near impossible. In fact I prefer it this way. If my crafter is to make something for my 'main' then that item gets placed on a vendor where anyone else can buy it at full price.

 

@Bowen Bloodgood

I think that's actually why I'm OK only having one Avatar. This character is more or less "you" from Earth. But all the characters with interesting and different back stories, aren't from Earth. They're from little towns in Britania. Perhaps through the story, through attaining status in the world, as a backer / through RMT, I unlock a permanent companion slot as a henchman / apprentice / servant that I can role play and make a story for.

 

I've probably said this a few times before here but it's really at the heart of one my main arguments so I don't mind repeating it but I just don't believe that most people will embrace the 'you are your avatar' concept. You can't force players to play the way you want them to.

Many are simply going to say screw that I'm going to play this other character I developed in my weekly RP group.. or I'm going to use my favorite avatar I always use in other games. The majority who don't RP at all are simply going to threat their avatar like they would in any other game. I know quite a few people who will want to play their old characters from worlds other than Earth as well and regardless of RG says if someone asks they'll say "I'm from world X where this and that happened"

It's not really something you can dictate and enforce. At least not on a large scale. I applaud anyone who embraces RG's concept and runs with it but I fear they will be the minority.

 

@Silver Sterling, "The most reason for multiple accounts would be to be able to test something other."

You have a single player offline slot you can use to test things. Online, there should only be one, to paraphrase Highlander.

 

@Bowen

I applaud your dedication to Role Playing but I think your style is few and far between. Most people that are looking for multiple characters are doing it so that they can support either a main, or are forced to do that because of restrictions in class/race or skills.

I think the idea of having multiple characters but restricting them from interacting with one another may satisfy both sides of the argument. It would be like you bought two copies of the game and neither of the characters are connected in any way (excpet that you would have saved the money of actually having to buy the copies).

I do believe that people should adapt to a well made game rather then a game adapt to a variety of people. In the end the players will have way more fun learning and exploring the new system. As many products in the past have proven, the customer knows what they want but does not know what they need.

So in the end if Lord British opts for only one character at a time then people will learn to enjoy that one character. I highly doubt anyone will be running around the world saying "If only I had five other characters to play right at this moment", and if they are then the game is a failure at capturing their attention.

 

People will always want more than they have, the simple fact that if the game limits you to one character will be the driving factor to the majority of people casting off the chains of oppression and asking for more accounts.

The rest of us simply want more characters to make life easier because we have short attention spans and/or just want easier access to that win button. Me: Win button required.

 

@Onore I believe I've been at least implying as much. The actual roleplay crowd at least in MMOs is hard to come by and maintain. However, I think SotA has a good chance to attract a higher percentage of roleplayers than most games. Especially with selective multiplayer options. It would be a shame to not champion the cause on their behalf.

If it ultimately turns out we have the one character limit I think we won't hear a lot of complaints from RPers but that there will be more of a quiet disappointment. I myself will adapt but it really will irk me to put skills on my character that he was never meant to have. It'd feel like being robbed of the chance to RP and forced to simply play the game like a non-rper.

Depending upon how skill progression and storage is designed and implemented there may be very little value to having multiple characters beyond roleplay and I'm sure that RG has this in mind when he says he doesn't want people to feel they NEED another character. (Well, minus the RP needs of the players like myself I mean).

Ideally, if the average player doesn't feel they need another character.. then extra character slots will go unused. So I can hear that argument "so why have it at all if it's useless?" Well the RP crowd of course.

 

Why not just do something like what Wizardry Online does.


All characters have the same surname. So if they switch characters, you will still know.


Or just show their account name as well above/near their name. Or some identifying characteristic to the character name display that lets you know "Oh ok, that's the idiot from earlier, on a new character."


That shouldn't really be too hard to take care of.

 

Yes, that was actually my group/gang/clan idea. A name to identify them and we would know, who he is. But think some peoples here would dive so deep in the ruleplay, that they want different persons in the game all time as only one character and not different. But so lets hope, we will get different chars at least in the single player game. But i think there shoudn't be any reasons to not include them there.

 

You're pretending while role playing anyway, so multiple characters shouldn't be a problem for a player. He or she can pretend in various different ways.

 

The only reservations I have with that idea in general are those who want their characters to be unrelated or those who don't want people to know their account username for security reasons. I don't really consider these to be major issues but that depends on how accounts are handles.

 

@Arkhan
<blockquote>You?re pretending while role playing anyway, so multiple characters shouldn?t be a problem for a player. He or she can pretend in various different ways. </blockquote>
Well, i think the same way and would be happy to have at least 3 avatar places. And best to be able to use them as companions. So like a nice little group/clan. But seems many here woudn't want this because of the mentioned reasons. And Portalarium seems to think the same way. So most likely possible only one character. :/
Ok, at least for the single player game there woudn't be any reason against multiple char slots.

@Bowen Bloodgood
<blockquote>The only reservations I have with that idea in general are those who want their characters to be unrelated or those who don?t want people to know their account username for security reasons. I don?t really consider these to be major issues but that depends on how accounts are handles.</blockquote>
And yes, again thinking the same way. And the clan would show a name (doesn't need to be the account name, so secure reasons should be off here). But should be unique to identify a specific player. If there should be the possibility to rename it, would be another question, similar, as if there should be a way to rename the characters. But if something like this is possible, it shoudn't be there to avoid crimes and recognizing.
And yes, i am still for some friend and foe lists. I can't remember the names very well and i tend to lose my jotting papers all time. ^^

 

Oh, and I just have to say this, LB said that the reason for the one character rule is because it's YOU in the world. But the thing is... I. DON'T. WANT. TO. BE. ME. Now I highly doubt he's going to try and force me and others to be myself rather than someone else. But since I'ma bit of an alt-alholic, I like to try new things like spells or weapons or personalities and backstories. Having just one charcter slot means I can only roll one character, one way, with only so many abilities. And not get to try out the other ones. That honestly just feels painful to me as if I, say, want to try out a mage character, I would have to delete my paladin that I spent practically hundreds of hours on. I know that may seem like whining, but it would absolutly hurt you a bit if you decided to delete a character that you put so much time and care into because you're dead set on trying out some new abilities and the game doesn't give you an option to have another character slot . Basically I think that having the one character slot has more problems than multi character slots because it constricts you to doing only a few thing and to try other things you have to delete your character to make room. Though make no mistake either way, there will be problems I don't think the multi character slots are perfect. Thanks for your time. (Also if anything I just said is abjectly wrong please don't kill me, I havn't seen the interviews yet)

 

No one's going to 'kill' you. But you should know RG is also determined that you only "need" one character. Where your concern is limits of a single character, mine is maintaining the purity of a character. Given what little we know of the skill system you shouldn't have any trouble learning "paladin" and "mage" skills or whatever else.. it only takes time.

The theory so far is that the main reason why you won't be able to master ALL skills is simply because there will be to many to master. You won't have the time to do so and more skills will be added on a regular basis. Also RG has said that if there's a cap (which had/has yet to be determined) then it would be raised as new skills were added.

So skill limits for single characters shouldn't be a major concern.. at least that's the design goal to best of my knowledge. This makes a little harder to role-play though since not everyone can realistically be a renaissance man (so to speak). I don't want my character to have ALL the skills I want to explore. He wouldn't be the character I designed anymore. To me that's more like just playing a game than it is stepping into a role and playing a fun personality and I don't want to pretend to be ME either. I already have to life with myself in the real world and as awesome as I am, taking on a new role is a nice change of pace.

 

When i play, then its an avatar for me and not myself. And i doubt, that all player would rebuild themself in the game. Of course i wouldn't even be in the condition to life a life in some Fantasy world like the one in SOTA.

So for me its yust an avatar. Because of this, i would be more happy to have more as one avatar how mentioned.

<blockquote>But you should know RG is also determined that you only ?need? one character.</blockquote>
Yes, we don't need more as one avatar. We even don't need the game. Its actually more a what we would like to have and what we could have to have fun. Aswell this one with the skills is a thing for everyone self.
If one only use one avatar, then he would most likely get this one skilled way faster as one, who use more as one, because he has to level all of them, if he want play them the same time.
Aswell the thing with we can aswell test things offline, etc. Thats right, but with the mod tools, it could become a nice offline experience. And when the online version is to restricted, people could start to prefer the other one more. In the end, the number of player who play online could decrease rapidly.

 

I like the one avatar limit. Richard is all about giving us what we need, not what we want. It's called tough love. If you want everything handed to you on a platter, go play WOW. Sota forces you to make tough decisions and live with the consequences. You can't have a host of alts farming for you and storing your stuff. You're going to have to work with others or find another way. Time to be creative...

 

One character limit is fantastic. So much win. You can threaten to not play the game all you want, you're liars, you'll play, and you'll love it. Give it a chance -- if it doesn't work? Easy enough to add another character slot AFTER we try it out. Right?

 

Is it? Sure it might be easy enough to BUY another account but that would be a stupid solution which benefits no one

I come from the single player world and therefore I want replayability, I want to be able to try the castle siege with an archer shooting out the bridge and then again as a thief stealing the key to get through the secret passage etc. I'm not interested in PVP so the objections others have raised about being bad then switching to another character don't apply to me

And being told to just delete my character in 6 months when I have finished the game and want to try again from scratch BEFORE the next chapter comes out are annoying.

My opinion if you want to play one character only whats stopping you? but for those of us who want to play more than one your imposing YOUR views\playing style on us.

 

@danceswithstaplers I think you're reading far too much into RG's intentions. I seriously doubt tough lough has anything to do with it. This limit is simply his design decision based on his vision of how he intends the world to be played and nobody here is asking anything to be 'handed on a platter".

@Holt I don't recall anyone here threatening not to play if we don't get multiple characters. I myself have already indicated I will be playing regardless. That doesn't mean I will like having a limit for reasons already stated by myself and in my case having the limit simply won't work.. again for purity of roleplay and wanting to experience the parts of the game I want to enjoy.. my main character is NOT a crafter.. but I love crafting and want to contribute to my guild.. so either I abandon RP and just play a game.. or I abandon have the game. I find neither option favorable.

These arguments may work for those who are just here to play and grind or what ever else.. but they don't really apply to me or those like me.

 

I already have two Digital Explorer pledges, so even if the idea is for players to only have one character, I will have at least two.

And I truly doubt I'm alone in this.

The absence of a subscription fee means that players can "purchase" extra character slots by purchasing extra copies of the game. There's no way to force players to settle for just one character.