Only one character slot? (Please answer poll)

Two problems with what you said. 1) you can always play it again offline. 2) you're making my point about the difference between a game designed to see the same thing over and over and a story you share with your family that doesn't end. It's not that you play through once and are done (which is a multislot concept) but rather an involvement in the game world that keeps you involved indefinaty in the story you and your family make together. It's never "over".

 

No.. because I never made such an argument. I'm not sure anyone else has either. From my point of view.. the role player always has something to do. It's not about 'finishing the game' maxing skills or anything to do with mechanics. It's about living in the world as whatever character(s) you want to play and how that character interacts with other PCs. The point of not being able to max skills is about showing how skills is not a good argument for either side of the debate to make because it's based on a false assumption.

If there is no NEED for extra characters then specializing, maxing out, muling, storage.. etc is irrelevant to the arguments for or against multiple characters.

Not necessarily 100% accurate. Selective Multiplayer theoretically solves both a technical and financial problem of having to host multiple game servers. Plus this doesn't change the nature of the argument. Players who want to socialize will.. players who don't cannot be forced to. Many will simply select Single Player Only mode and play that way. There is also the difference between encouraging.. and attempting to force. Selective Multiplayer sounds very nice yes.. and may make it easier but it cannot force socializing.

Fundamental difference of viewpoints here. Would you expect two different people who have little or know contact with each other.. and who are not aware of the decisions made be each other.. to behave any differently than they would otherwise? The assumption here is that all players will use multiple characters the same way.. to have those "two lives" (or more).. this is not always true. Each of my characters are their own person. I do not consider them to be me.. any more than I consider them to be versions of the same character. It's very likely that I will only take one character through the main story unless there is some significant benefit necessary for their individual development to take the rest through.

As for the psychological part.. not a 100% fact. Others may allow themselves to fall into that. I would depend on your decision making progress and your motivations for making the decision. Not everyone is going to go through the story multiple times to explore all the options. I personally dislike the very idea. I don't care what the evil result is.. I always want the best result possible and so no matter how many times I play through it I'm likely to make the same decisions with NPCs with any character. It won't matter if I'm limited to one character or not.

So as far as I'm concerned.. if it's in your head.. it's your responsibility to deal with it.

Of course I am. "Depth" cannot be measured by stats.. or how long you play. It is solely a product of the player's imagination, creativity and performance. The implication I took exception to what the notion that Player A automatically has a character of more depth and Player B purely because A took their character through more quests and built up some stats. Jumping through game mechanic hoops doesn't make a character of more depth.. it only makes a character with higher stats.

Or perhaps someone needs to explain what it is you mean by "depth" as I take it to apply to an individual's personality and personal backstory which needn't necessarily have anything to do with the main quest line of the game.

Note: I didn't respond to the one quote as it wasn't mine.

 

You're funny. So whatever freeman posted stands as my response. I've had this single character argument for many years. I probably have well over 25k (this is not an exaggeration) posts on this one issue alone, over 3 or 4 games that I've followed.

I didn't even read what freeman responded, but I'm fairly certain he covered most of the ground I would've if I thought it would even matter. I know that the devs have made their decision and that's that. If they went single character slot, they made the right choice. If they went multiple, they made the wrong one. Outside of that I've said my peace and have no control of it. See you in another thread.

 

ah but you see they haven't made a final decision have they? It's not "written in stone" and they've expressed a willingness to change the initial plan more than once. If they had just come out and said "this is the way it's going to be and we're not changing it" then we wouldn't be debating it.

 

2 or 3 toons is good and if you want to make one then only make one. now everyone is happy?

 

sample size is now 120 which is a fair size and there is 4 votes difference, its going to cause less inconvenience for the single character crowd if they allow multiples than it is for the multiples if they only allow 1. Maybe make a button when you set up your account which disables multiples forever or only allow a second once the story has been completed on the first

 

SotA isn't in the end, a Democracy. More like a science, it only requires one person(group) to be right. The formula for fun.

 

Except that in this case the devs specifically said 'if one character annoys people then it can be changed', its annoying just about 50%

 

I think whatever the dev team decides to do they need to make the decision before the SotA's proper release and stick to it. Because having people purchase multiple copies of the game only for them to then give people extra slots six or twelve months later is going to leave some people with a bad taste in their mouth.

 

The formula for fun is like the formula for the best pizza toppings. It sounds like something you can figure out... but you can't. Everyone has their own preferences.

 

87 percent of all stats are made up on the spot.

This poll is by no means a fair representation of who all will be playing. Most players won't visit these forums, or know there was a debate.

Some of the people on both sides have a preference, but that doesn't mean the other option will annoy them.

 

Indeed, it spinning circles here. And the nearly 50% is actually everybody who voted here. Not everybody who is here. I can aswell asume, that many peoples who are more in conventional online RPGs would prefer more as one character slot aswell.

And yes, people who want to make more as one character can only do it by more as one char slot. People who want to play with only one can do it regardless if its only one or two. Then there are aswell the other things about balancing. Ok, everything mentioned already 100 times, so no need for me to to do it again.

 

I think people are expressing some interest. But we have no idea how the mechanics will work, so it doesn't mean much.

I really never played alts in lineage2 because there was infinite grind. You would need a large amount of time to do anything on your alt and it would take away from your progress on main. Eventually your main could subclass allowing you to switch between multiple styles of play. I'm hoping SotA allows you to do a similar switch.

It's going to come down to something like, I want alts because:
1) I want to try different playstyles (mage vs melee vs healer or w/e)
2) I need more professions for crafting
3) I love the character creator / gear selection and want to make multiple, different characters to dress up and RP with
4) I want to fully explore different choices / facets of the story
5) I've "maxed out" my current character and want to see bars move again.
...

I've used all of those reasons before in other games. But I can't say right now if any of those are true for this game. They may all be non-issues.

 

I think all those things could be accomplished in single player offline, which would totally avoid the problems Richard Garriott identified when explaining why he was opposed to multiple characters per account.

 

You saying I rigged the poll?

It is quite common to use polls to get a representative sample of a group of people, 1200 is used as a representative sample of a whole country accurate with a 5% margin of error, no one thinks that this game is going to be anywhere near that popular as the population of a whole country. If it had come up saying that 75% voted your way you would be the first to jump on the results to get your own way, but because it goes against you its made up?

 

1, 2 and 5 aren't really viable based on what we know and has been explained about skills by either RG or Chris.

3 and 4 however seem to be relatively common. I suppose I would fall under #3 though I don't really consider it 'dressing up' and the character creator and gear aren't really factors. Some of us just want to RP a certain variety of characters.

But no specific skill cap.. and if there is one it will be raised as new skills are added.. meaning there is also intent on adding new skills after launch. So there's no benefit to having alts for this skill based purposes. This includes different play styles (simply change your style with the current character).. professions (same as before.. just put in the time and effort into learning the skills with the one character).. and "Maxing out" according to RG will not be feasible as new skills will be added regularly.

 

Yes, but then don't feel lonely, if everybody is only in the offline game, because they try things or want to test other characters.

 

Ok, several things.

1) Can you show where I said you rigged the poll? Or that you 'made it up'? Or are you just putting words in my mouth? I simply am pointing out that a poll saying people have a preference doesn't mean you get to jump to the conclusion that 50% of the people will be annoyed if you pick one options (which also seems to suggest that you don't think the other 50% will be annoyed if you pick the other). That's different than saying you made up the poll. Just drew the wrong conclusion.

2) I have just as much issue with any internet poll, because it's not a random sampling. It's a very specific subset. Anyone who follows any poll will tell you that. If I poll 500 church goers about how important religion is in their political candidate, that's not a representative sample of the population. Likewise, if we sample forum goers about a game they paid 2 years in advance for, it's not necessarily a good sample base, size or otherwise. So no, they have as little impact to me when they go my way as when they don't. Most of the players affected simply aren't us.

3) How does "we almost have as many votes as your side does" even come close to saying it's not going my way? Seriously? We're only loosing by 4% so therefore we get our way? What kind of logic is that? If you want to challenge me on the point that I'd have a different attitude if the poll was going my way, we only need to look at THIS poll. Worst case for my side is that you can say it's statistically tied through margin of error (although we could be leading by an even larger amount as well). But then, guess who'd get to cast the tie breaking vote? RG. What would he vote? We already know.

4) I'm also implying the question is lacking.

4a) It's a question of preference, not requirement, and there's no option for "Who cares?". Here is a good example for another thread of how scripted dialog doesn't work. When you only have so many choices, they sometimes don't fill all available ideas.

4b) This doesn't address how many people have a preference but honestly wouldn't be too upset about it going the other way. We have no way of knowing how many of them there are.

5) Popular != better.

5a) If we were going to make a game that was based on popular opinion of how it should work, it would be a WoW clone, and it would fail like the other WoW clones because you can't compete with WoW. This is why I give huge lists of why one character slot adds things to the game, and not just something people want. If you want to make a case of how the game is actually improved, how it adds something different than one slot, that's fine. Make that argument. But if we're just talking about being popular, that's not good enough to prove it's what's best for the game.

5b) Almost all of RG's ideas were outside the box, not popular, and actively pushed back against by the people around him, and sometimes the fans. And time and time again, he's shown that if we just listen to what he's wanting to do it makes a better game that we would have done remaining popular. So based on track record, if it's popular opinion vs RG's opinion, I'm going to put more stock in RG's. Which, again, is why "I wanna" isn't going to cut it. Show us something that says "And the game is improved because...."

 

hmmm

 

I hope not, but I only tend to play one toon anyway so I will live.