Today I want to offer a suggestion that I believe would not only help incentivize myself but many I know used to play the game to come back. You have taken years to get the game in what would be considered "release" state, but have this massive problem left behind by poor design choice when it comes to promotion and character limits.
To be frank, many, many players were encouraged and did buy multiples of the game, creating steam accounts specifically to have more characters. To many this was "reasonable" because there was no sub fee at the time, yet here we are today. With the added 2nd character slot there is now room for players to create, customize, test, and reroll without feeling like they lose all their progress. But those people that had the extra accounts will not feel the same.
My suggestion is letting players merge mortal online 2 accounts And create an "archive" system for characters.
To merge an account you will have to be logged into one of the accounts where you can input the username, password, and a 2 factor authentication code linked to that account in order to merge it with the main account.
The archive system will allow you to set a character aside, deactivated, and keep up to two active characters to be played normally. If the player decides to switch one of their main characters to an archive character, they incur a 24 hour timer before another switch can be made.
As for how many accounts can be merged, this will be limited by the available character slots. This is determined by how many active and archived slots the main account has empty. I would suggest 8 archive slots and 2 active slots, for a maximum of 10 characters on an account. the amount here is up for debate, but I would not go less than 4 archived character slots.
I believe with this merging of accounts being possible, and the ability to archive characters, players will have the freedom to test the limits of the game so that they can find what they actually enjoy to play without the massive loss linked to deleting a character and the frustration and degenerate spending of playing with multiple accounts. Hell, you could probably charge players for the account merge, lets say 20 usd per account merge and that would be fine, you get paid for creating the systems required to make this happen, and they get to keep the time they invested in your game on other characters.
Now, I know there will be concerns about the selling of accounts, but frankly, I dont give a single crap about it. that should be the least of anyones worries as its definitely already happening. It is more important and beneficial to the game for us to have these two systems.
To be frank, many, many players were encouraged and did buy multiples of the game, creating steam accounts specifically to have more characters. To many this was "reasonable" because there was no sub fee at the time, yet here we are today. With the added 2nd character slot there is now room for players to create, customize, test, and reroll without feeling like they lose all their progress. But those people that had the extra accounts will not feel the same.
My suggestion is letting players merge mortal online 2 accounts And create an "archive" system for characters.
To merge an account you will have to be logged into one of the accounts where you can input the username, password, and a 2 factor authentication code linked to that account in order to merge it with the main account.
The archive system will allow you to set a character aside, deactivated, and keep up to two active characters to be played normally. If the player decides to switch one of their main characters to an archive character, they incur a 24 hour timer before another switch can be made.
As for how many accounts can be merged, this will be limited by the available character slots. This is determined by how many active and archived slots the main account has empty. I would suggest 8 archive slots and 2 active slots, for a maximum of 10 characters on an account. the amount here is up for debate, but I would not go less than 4 archived character slots.
I believe with this merging of accounts being possible, and the ability to archive characters, players will have the freedom to test the limits of the game so that they can find what they actually enjoy to play without the massive loss linked to deleting a character and the frustration and degenerate spending of playing with multiple accounts. Hell, you could probably charge players for the account merge, lets say 20 usd per account merge and that would be fine, you get paid for creating the systems required to make this happen, and they get to keep the time they invested in your game on other characters.
Now, I know there will be concerns about the selling of accounts, but frankly, I dont give a single crap about it. that should be the least of anyones worries as its definitely already happening. It is more important and beneficial to the game for us to have these two systems.