Was one character per account a mistake?

[Kaemik]

Funny enough, I am paying for 2 accounts BECAUSE of this fool and others like him want to ruin my profession by arguing in favor of its misclassification as a combat skill. And then he throws out words like "honor" and "fair" to say why I shouldn't just pick it up as an essentially free profession on an alt.

If you don't want multiple accounts, you actively work to suggest mechanics that minimize the impact they have. Not actively work to grow that advantage then act surprised when people just pay to bypass those disadvantages because it violates your own personal sense of fair play. Your suggestions are helping build a pay-to-win paradise Piet.

 

[Jhackman]

People will probably have 1-2 accounts trained up ready for wars or whatever need been and unsub them in times of peace.

 

[Necromantic]

It's one of the problems I see with the whole argument of how it solves multiple character abuse.
People will still make multiple accounts and therefore have exactly the same as before, it'll just cost them more and there are enough people that don't care about that.
So now the rich or uncaring will be mostly the ones abusing it, yay.

a single character means a lot of good things.
1 The economy will flourish more if you can't be self sufficient.
2 More repercussions and meaning to your choices. You can't kill on one character then log over and hang out with the other. Murderers will be real bad asses now instead of only killing on their other character.
3 It will help with the many flaws of multiple characters like boulder holders, getting around bank space limits, logging in another character to fight in same battle you just died, etc
4 It will make people actually think about how they interact with others more so less trolling and killing on sight when you may be able to talk to them and save your reputation. This will mean more interesting interactions for everyone.

There is more as well those are just off the top of my head. Everyone keeps saying how they want to try lots of stuff and I get that but it's really easy to reskill so really it's not that big of an issue.

The thing is it's not about trying different things. It's about playing different things in parallel. All reputation or whatever abuse aside.
You can't reskill your character to be a viable "different character", which would also involve name. Being able to play different kind of characters is kind of part of an RPG. You can't reskill the clade of that character, the looks, the age or the height (for now) either. These all, besides name and looks which affect RP or "playing" another character, affect your play style.
And reskilling shouldn't even be easy or fast. Where did the whole "repercussions and meaning to your choices" go, when you argue that redoing your choices is easy anyway? Make character progression and decisions on the path actually meaningful on a character and a player level, which doesn't work if you can just redo them.

My big problem with all these decisions is they seem more like cop-outs and workaround for people abusing things rather than genuine "design decisions". It's all punishing everyone for the abuse of some.

 

[Kaemik]

In terms of properly classified profession skills. I think Mortal Online has gotten it wrong. Skillcap systems are REALLY bad at preventing everyone from doing everything when a lot of people when 12$/mo means A LOT less to some people than others.

The issue is professions being a fast grind. Don't get me wrong, I think it's GREAT that combat skills are a short grind. Professions are different. I'll give an example:

I played Wurm Online's recent Steam release for the first month or two it was out. In that game you can train every profession to max on any character in theory, but the time it takes to get a skill to 99 takes an ETERNITY in practice. For the entire time I played, I focused nearly exclusively on Fine Carpentry. By the time I quit I was like 70-something in that skill. And you could say "Yeah well what about the older servers?" 90+ was still a rarity for most players and having a 90+ skill carried a lot of value.

The reason I quit, is I was so swamped with orders for high-end fine carpentry items filling those orders was all I did, and I was bad at saying no to jobs.

Mind you in Wurm crafting isn't a (Acquire Resources -> 10 second timer -> Finished Good) system. Making decent items takes time in that game. Ultimately though, crafting skills are the one area it's appropriate to have endless grind, and it does FAR more for a health economy than some pay-to-win bait skillcap system.

If I CAN fully max skills on 14 different accounts dedicated to different professions. Like if that's even possible. I think profession grind times are WAY too fast.

 

[Xursed]

My main concern is being left out of certain guild activities based on your roll. For example if half the guild is going on a mounted roam but you rolled a foot fighter you basically have to miss out. Same thing is you are dedicated MC and the guild goes out on a foot roam you wont be able to participate.

 

[Necromantic]

The issue is professions being a fast grind. Don't get me wrong, I think it's GREAT that combat skills are a short grind. Professions are different. I'll give an example:

I played Wurm Online's recent Steam release for the first month or two it was out. In that game you can train every profession to max on any character in theory, but the time it takes to get a skill to 99 takes an ETERNITY in practice. For the entire time I played, I focused nearly exclusively on Fine Carpentry. By the time I quit I was like 70-something in that skill.

The reason I quit, is I was so swamped with orders for high-end fine carpentry items filling those orders was all I did, and I was bad at saying no to jobs.

Mind you in Wurm crafting isn't a (Acquire Resources > 10 second timer > Finished Good) system. Making decent items takes time in that game. Ultimately though, crafting skills are the one area it's appropriate to have endless grind, and it does FAR more for a health economy than some pay-to-win bait skillcap system.

If I CAN fully max skills on 14 different accounts dedicated to different professions. Like if that's even possible. I think profession grind times are WAY too fast.

I've been saying this for years. I've been playing UO on an RP ruled freeshard 2 decades ago where it took me 2 years to max the skill set I was focused on and it felt meaningful and worth it with every point. There are ways to make longer progression viable.

I'd even expand this to combat though. There are ways to make the skill curve smaller, so people can hop into action early but still make mastery meaningful. Or even if it doesn't make you way more powerful it should open up more options and specializations on top, things to vary gameplay and adjust some parameters. And even if you completely ignore skills alone, add more things to work on long-term that change how your character can play. Clade Gifts being a small nudge in that direction only.

In my opinion quick progression only incentivizes grind as it's just the "short grind before playing" instead of it being an long-term part of gameplay both to get better as a player and on the character level. I wouldn't even call it grind if it's done well and has meaning.

 

[Kaemik]

I wouldn't expand it to combat. I think that's where MO2 really beats the crap out of Wurm or really any other MMO I've played other than Crowfall which is comparably good. I'm playing this game to run around with my friends in PvP. My guys are here because I said:

"In ArcheAge we spent 95% of our time grinding and 5% actually doing things that were fun. Here, I intend to spend 95% of our time running around PvPing as a group, and 5% grinding."

If I'm not bare minimum 90% of combat strength after my first week of play, I'm out. Done that crap before and it is NOT fun. I say after the first week because even if I stick around for years, every new recruit is going to have to deal with that stupid grind. I'm not bringing new people into another endless grindfest.

 

[Necromantic]

To me it all depends on how things are designed any progression curves.
As I said, if it's well designed it shouldn't even be considered grind and just be part of, and not of hindrance to, normal gameplay.

ArcheAge is an Asian grind fest and as all of them designed around grind anyway.
The problem I think is that people only think in numbers and big differences in them when it comes to progression. That's what Asian grind fests do, measure everything by ridiculously increasing numbers.

The skill set I worked towards for so long in UO was combat based.
I've always mainly played combat or PvP roles in pretty much any game, even if the combat in MO never really appealed to me.
I just need more meaning, depth and things to work on long-term even there.

 

[Kaemik]

The issue with "not making it feel like a grind" is there is no way to make PvP as effective of a path to progression as PvE that isn't highly abusable. Thus the inevitable outcome of all highly grind based combat systems is "PvE for thousands of hours to get good at PvP". Which is a REALLY bad outcome. All such systems will feel like a grind if you don't want to continually forced to PvE.

That's also why I don't oppose professions being grindy. "Spend thousands of hours making bows to become the greatest bowcrafter." Oh ok. That's fine. And if it isn't fine, I shouldn't be a bowcrafter. Mind you Wurm found better ways to have people leveling bowcrafting than "Make and delete thousands upon thousand of trash bows." As in my example, I got fine carpentry to 70 doing jobs for people. Almost every piece I worked on was eventually sold to someone. And ultimately I would hope for MO2 to eventually do something similar if they go with an endless grind crafting system.

So if we want any reward for PvEing thousands of hours, I would prefer it be a profession skill that only impacts combat against NPCs. (Combat tames or any keep guards shouldn't be classified as NPCs for the purpose of those skills either.)

 

[Piet]

It's one of the problems I see with the whole argument of how it solves multiple character abuse.
People will still make multiple accounts and therefore have exactly the same as before, it'll just cost them more and there are enough people that don't care about that.
So now the rich or uncaring will be mostly the ones abusing it, yay.


The thing is it's not about trying different things. It's about playing different things in parallel. All reputation or whatever abuse aside.
You can't reskill your character to be a viable "different character", which would also involve name. Being able to play different kind of characters is kind of part of an RPG. You can't reskill the clade of that character, the looks, the age or the height (for now) either. These all, besides name and looks which affect RP or "playing" another character, affect your play style.
And reskilling shouldn't even be easy or fast. Where did the whole "repercussions and meaning to your choices" go, when you argue that redoing your choices is easy anyway? Make character progression and decisions on the path actually meaningful on a character and a player level, which doesn't work if you can just redo them.

My big problem with all these decisions is they seem more like cop-outs and workaround for people abusing things rather than genuine "design decisions". It's all punishing everyone for the abuse of some.

grow and shrink food already in and rp shouldn't be a good basis for how to play a game unless it's an rp game.

As for the reskilling taking a long time that's the bad kind of repercussions of choice where there is a crap ton of grind so the repercussions are way more grinding if you choose wrong. The good type is the quick grind and be ready because then it's the actual choices you make like if you are a murderer or not or if you keep exploring and find something amazing or keep trying the dungeon you are losing at so you can eventually make it and get the epic loots.

Yes people will still abuse the system but it makes it less which is good.

 

[Necromantic]

grow and shrink food already in and rp shouldn't be a good basis for how to play a game unless it's an rp game.

It is literally an RP game, it's in the genre, RPG. And RP is only one aspect of wanting to play a different character. Grow and shrink food does very little and means nothing about all the other things I mentioned.

A quick "grind" and reskilling is basically no choice at all. That all of you refer to progression as grind just shows how biased your views are.

 

[Kaemik]

It is literally an RP game, it's in the genre, RPG. And RP is only one aspect of wanting to play a different character. Grow and shrink food does very little and means nothing about all the other things I mentioned.

A quick "grind" and reskilling is basically no choice at all. That all of you refer to progression as grind just shows how biased your views are.

I am happy to put in the work to level a skill if it means getting better at the content I find enjoyable by doing content I find enjoyable. I do not find killing thousands of creatures in PVE enjoyable. My intent in this game is to spend a lot of time out fighting players and occasionally killing small quantities of high value mobs. If you can describe how this will not hamper my progression vs. a no life mob grinder in a system that sounds viable, I will grant you that so long as I can reach 70% full PvP strength on day 1, and 90% in week one, I could support your system for the final 10%.

Anything less than 70% day one and 90% week one, and personally I'm 100% against it though because I find it completely unfair to newbs. Vets should be more reliant upon player skills than character skills to maintain status.

 

[Piet]

I am happy to put in the work to level a skill if it means getting better at the content I find enjoyable by doing content I find enjoyable. I do not find killing thousands of creatures in PVE enjoyable. My intent in this game is to spend a lot of time out fighting players and occasionally killing small quantities of high value mobs. If you can describe how this will not hamper my progression vs. a no life mob grinder in a system that sounds viable, I will grant you that so long as I can reach 70% full PvP strength on day 1, and 90% in week one, I could support your system for the final 10%.

Anything less than 70% day one and 90% week one, and personally I'm 100% against it though because I find it completely unfair to newbs. Vets should be more reliant upon player skills than character skills to maintain status.

exactly long skill progressions take away the actual player skill or there is no reason to progress the skills and it takes away player choice because they have to usually pve to train up said skills in those types of games. That's not what mortal is and that's a good thing. It's based on what you do not how long you grind.

 

[Xunila]

The profession argument doesn't count for me because StartVault could increase the primary skills in the profession area or change some primary skills to secondary to allow players to work on three or four professions. Two professions are available in the current system anyway.

 

[Necromantic]

If anything, longer progression makes player skill more valuable and therefore adds to it.

You guys are simply just looking as progression as increasing numbers, efficiency and a grind. So no point talking about in-depth mechanics for it.
If you have to go out and do PvE because you have nobody to train with, well, that's on you.
Being able to reskill anything quickly makes choices null and void. So no point in talking about training choice there either.

 

[Kaemik]

If you have to go out and do PvE because you have nobody to train with, well, that's on you.

Oh you mean keep in the horrid macroable action-based system AND longer progression? Nope. 1000% no. Been there, done that. It was called Darkfall and it was one of the worst leveling systems I've ever suffered through.

Not even for the final 1% of PvP strength. Fuck that shit eternally.

 

[Necromantic]

The only way you picture training with others is through macros? That's sad.

 

[Piet]

If anything, longer progression makes player skill more valuable and therefore adds to it.

You guys are simply just looking as progression as increasing numbers, efficiency and a grind. So no point talking about in-depth mechanics for it.
If you have to go out and do PvE because you have nobody to train with, well, that's on you.
Being able to reskill anything quickly makes choices null and void. So no point in talking about training choice there either.

on the contrary it takes a lot of actual training with actual skill instead of numbers in the system of I have grinded more so I win. Have you tried switching between fighting with a sword and switching to a sledge? takes a lot of time to get actual personal skill with it and that's a small change compared to mage or such. We want actual play skill instead of skills you grind a long time for. If like you mention there is just skill and the numbers don't matter why grind them up in the first place? The whole system would be meaningless.

 

[Kaemik]

The only way you picture training with others is through macros? That's sad.

Yes. Because if it can be done, it can also be done with macros. So even if I find it enjoyable and do it for 4 hours a day legit, I'm still going to spend every moment I'm asleep or working macroing it.

Why? Because I CAN do it, and it gives an advantage so I WILL do it. I've long since realized holding myself back in competitive games for some made-up / arbitrary notion of honor is beyond foolish.

If a system can be macroed and it's not against the rules I'm going to macro it. If a system can be macroed, and it's against the rules, but those rules aren't really enforced. Then screw whoever made the rules and screw paying for that game.

This is precisely what we saw in ArcheAge Unchained. "We're going to police gold-selling much more strictly." "No more than 3 accounts per player." etc. Multiple people I knew with more than 3 accounts, not a single one was banned. And half the top 100 players (And like 100% of the top 10 players) on every server were buying gold and having nothing done to them about it.

So screw any macroable system. SV isn't really going to enforce that to the degree that it needs to be enforced. So if the system stays in I will macro everything that can be macroed, largely just to make a point, and if they ban it without dealing with the root cause (An easily macroed leveling system) then the first time I report a macroer and see them in-game again later, I'll take my money elsewhere.

 

[Dominatrixx]

Any serious sandbox MMORPG must have "one char per account" restriction.