Best Of
Re: Alt characters effect on pseudo faction design
@Ludullu
You have just described the entire reason behind alts not having surnames. Steven wants this kind of shit. The guild sabotage, the drama, the "soft" friction, etc.
People will do this regardless, actively enabling it is what will make it eat itself. I'm just trying to bring attention to its flaws.
The consequences for the player will come from their inability to be on 2 chars at the same time. If you miss guild gatherings because you needed to be on an alt for something - that's a hit to rep. If you don't spend enough time on your main char, because you're progressing an alt, while the rest of your guild is boosting forward - minus rep. If you ever get caught in voice - minus rep. If you can't join voice, because you're scared to get caught - minus rep.
Most guilds won't be on all the time, you just level, sow chaos while it's down time. Who you spy for will know that. You won't take a hit with your guild rep. If your role in Guild1 is to be a spy for them, they'll know you have to do spy shit. So you won't take any flack from Guild1, and Guild2 who you're spying on won't know any better because you're spy is actually your main in their eyes. Easy to change discord profiles, easy to voice modulate. The barrier isn't high, everyone will be a spy, because they can have 6 different identities. This is bad design. The game already lacks structure and this design just adds to the chaos. That's going to impact a lot of players that don't engage in this and will eventually impact them enough to the point they leave. There needs to be some guard rails on it, is my point.
As for the unpunished abuse of players on alts - I've been suggesting an account-wide PK Count for years now. If you want to PK on an alt - sure, go ahead. But you'll still have to pay for it sooner rather than later, AND you won't be able to PK as readily on your main, cause you'll get completely fucked over by the corruption scaling.
Account wide PK count is interesting, I"m not sure how that would be represented in the game or what effects it would have on your characters in the account. Corruption and death penalties are a different topic I think which need some more work. PvP is too steep at the moment.
@Slayven
Basing a game on reputation follows you and yet you can spy with an alt is contradicting each other?
Yes, which is kind of my point. Reputation here is "player" reputation. How do other players see you in the game. But alts are basically burner phones you can uses as you need. They aren't linked to your reputation. So what's the point of the whole idea of 'player reputation'?
Correct me if I’m wrong.
Either way spying is as old as gaming it self.
Sure you can add a surname of account or a tracking tool..
What stops the player from just getting another account and spying with that.
Nothing it's just another barrier to minimize the amount of players that scum spy.
Some peoples game play loop is based on spying I’ve met people like this and know of several in other games.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be allowed. But in Ashes the amount of work need for a Node or Guild will be massive. The effectiveness of spy will be immense and devistating, which compounds the issue. The reputation ideally would be the tool to handle this, but has no capability to do so.
There always a work around.
True, but doesn't hurt to have some guardrails.
The tool to stop this is ip tracker put to the account .
What about vpns then..the rabbit hole just goes deeper and deeper.
I don't think it'd need to go this far. Althought I don't think connections through VPNs should be allowed. That's how botters and exploiters say anonymous. That and game cards. I will assume they are already tracking your IP when you log in and associating it with your account. This is just good practices to help protect your account for theft, among other reasons.
At what point does a game designer just throw their hands up.
When they don't want to be paid anymore.
These decades old problems with zero solutions from a game designer perspective.at a minimum in my belief there should be at least a tracking tool for alts.
Spy’s will always be there at least that makes them buy another account and sub it.
Pretty much all you can do to stop the ugly.
Yeah, I'm in the same boat really. Reputation should be account wide, not limited to the character. Something to tie them together. I wouldn't want my alts to suffer corruptions because I was PvPing though, that'd be dumb. A lastname, alt tracker, something to limit it make player reputation matter, or it's really just character reputation.
You have just described the entire reason behind alts not having surnames. Steven wants this kind of shit. The guild sabotage, the drama, the "soft" friction, etc.
People will do this regardless, actively enabling it is what will make it eat itself. I'm just trying to bring attention to its flaws.
The consequences for the player will come from their inability to be on 2 chars at the same time. If you miss guild gatherings because you needed to be on an alt for something - that's a hit to rep. If you don't spend enough time on your main char, because you're progressing an alt, while the rest of your guild is boosting forward - minus rep. If you ever get caught in voice - minus rep. If you can't join voice, because you're scared to get caught - minus rep.
Most guilds won't be on all the time, you just level, sow chaos while it's down time. Who you spy for will know that. You won't take a hit with your guild rep. If your role in Guild1 is to be a spy for them, they'll know you have to do spy shit. So you won't take any flack from Guild1, and Guild2 who you're spying on won't know any better because you're spy is actually your main in their eyes. Easy to change discord profiles, easy to voice modulate. The barrier isn't high, everyone will be a spy, because they can have 6 different identities. This is bad design. The game already lacks structure and this design just adds to the chaos. That's going to impact a lot of players that don't engage in this and will eventually impact them enough to the point they leave. There needs to be some guard rails on it, is my point.
As for the unpunished abuse of players on alts - I've been suggesting an account-wide PK Count for years now. If you want to PK on an alt - sure, go ahead. But you'll still have to pay for it sooner rather than later, AND you won't be able to PK as readily on your main, cause you'll get completely fucked over by the corruption scaling.
Account wide PK count is interesting, I"m not sure how that would be represented in the game or what effects it would have on your characters in the account. Corruption and death penalties are a different topic I think which need some more work. PvP is too steep at the moment.
@Slayven
Basing a game on reputation follows you and yet you can spy with an alt is contradicting each other?
Yes, which is kind of my point. Reputation here is "player" reputation. How do other players see you in the game. But alts are basically burner phones you can uses as you need. They aren't linked to your reputation. So what's the point of the whole idea of 'player reputation'?
Correct me if I’m wrong.
Either way spying is as old as gaming it self.
Sure you can add a surname of account or a tracking tool..
What stops the player from just getting another account and spying with that.
Nothing it's just another barrier to minimize the amount of players that scum spy.
Some peoples game play loop is based on spying I’ve met people like this and know of several in other games.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be allowed. But in Ashes the amount of work need for a Node or Guild will be massive. The effectiveness of spy will be immense and devistating, which compounds the issue. The reputation ideally would be the tool to handle this, but has no capability to do so.
There always a work around.
True, but doesn't hurt to have some guardrails.
The tool to stop this is ip tracker put to the account .
What about vpns then..the rabbit hole just goes deeper and deeper.
I don't think it'd need to go this far. Althought I don't think connections through VPNs should be allowed. That's how botters and exploiters say anonymous. That and game cards. I will assume they are already tracking your IP when you log in and associating it with your account. This is just good practices to help protect your account for theft, among other reasons.
At what point does a game designer just throw their hands up.
When they don't want to be paid anymore.
These decades old problems with zero solutions from a game designer perspective.at a minimum in my belief there should be at least a tracking tool for alts.
Spy’s will always be there at least that makes them buy another account and sub it.
Pretty much all you can do to stop the ugly.
Yeah, I'm in the same boat really. Reputation should be account wide, not limited to the character. Something to tie them together. I wouldn't want my alts to suffer corruptions because I was PvPing though, that'd be dumb. A lastname, alt tracker, something to limit it make player reputation matter, or it's really just character reputation.
Volgaris
2
Re: Alts shouldn't count towards a Guilds member count.
It does directly influence gameplay though. Your alt might be of a lower lvl, but is now benefitting from the guild's passive buffs. You're benefitting from the guild's storage (guild does from your alts as well).
And on the opposite side, GW enemies benefit from all the weaker alts, because you might get caught on one and farmed for points or mats or whatever the war conditions are. Determining power lvl of a guild (for GW purposes) would be more difficult, because alts would not just muddy the waters, but could be used to explicitly fool the system into making the guild appear weaker.
And if you try to address those points through limitations (and those are just the first few issues that came to mind) - the entire system becomes way more difficult to present to people, for no real reason.
I'd much rather have super indepth friend lists that allow you to add character connections, have char filters, annotations, group chats, etc etc. Because that kind of system would help literally everyone in the game, while having slotless alts in guilds would only help the hardcore players optimize their gameplay even more, which will only make the experience of casuals even worse.
And on the opposite side, GW enemies benefit from all the weaker alts, because you might get caught on one and farmed for points or mats or whatever the war conditions are. Determining power lvl of a guild (for GW purposes) would be more difficult, because alts would not just muddy the waters, but could be used to explicitly fool the system into making the guild appear weaker.
And if you try to address those points through limitations (and those are just the first few issues that came to mind) - the entire system becomes way more difficult to present to people, for no real reason.
I'd much rather have super indepth friend lists that allow you to add character connections, have char filters, annotations, group chats, etc etc. Because that kind of system would help literally everyone in the game, while having slotless alts in guilds would only help the hardcore players optimize their gameplay even more, which will only make the experience of casuals even worse.
Ludullu
1
Mount Keybind
Just tried the PTR for the first time. I noticed my interact bind is no longer the same as my mount/dismount bind. Not a fan of needing a different key bind to mount and interact.
Druley
2
Re: How Solo Players (Basically) Saved MMOs From Going Extinct
The main reason why I like AoC is because it's not solo friendly.
I agree, but it is also going to cause massive issues post launch.
When the game comes out, everyone will be in a rush to get to the level cap. Groups will be plentiful, this will be good. A month in to that though, lower level groups will dry out - people will still be leveling their first character and so won't be interested in alts or lower level stuff.
People that start the game at this point are going to have a VERY rough time. They are going to complain about it, and other players are going to cite their experiences of the same level range just weeks earlier, where grouping was easy and they didn't have the issues being talked about at all.
People will leave because of this - and both Intrepid and the community need to be aware of this. I am not making any claims as to how many, but people that start the game after the initial rush but before players hit the cap and some roll up alts are just going to have it rough.
Players also need to be aware that at some point, Intrepid *WILL* make the leveling process easier. Those same players that were telling the late starter above how easy leveling was when they did it just weeks earlier will now be telling Intrepid how hard leveling was for them, and how they think it's unfair that new players don't need to go through all of that - and then these players will go off to another thread and complain about the population drop and be disappointed at Intrepid for not doing anything to attract new players and keep them in the game. Almost as if these people put zero thought in to what they are saying.
The above is all just going to happen. It is a given, a forgone conclusion.
remember that as nodes develop, levelin gwill be easier for new players (at least faster).
How do you figure this?
I can see it from the perspective of all the content being there for leveling so no need to wait while nodes level up, but I can't see any other reason.
yeah thats why. people starting on day one will probably be stuck for days at a time waiting for nodes develop and geting 0.000001% exp per mob lol
From my perspective of being in this exact situation right now (playing a game with a slow leveling speed, and I started in between waves of players), it may well be true that people at the front will be waiting days for content, but it is equally true that people behind them will be waiting weeks for groups.
If we are going to be actually realistic, people that start 4-6 weeks after release will hit the level cap with the first wave of alts.
Noaani
1
Re: Alt characters effect on pseudo faction design
Again though, it's bad design in your opinion, but it's Steven's preferred design, because he wants all of this in his game. Because he experienced this in his inspirational games and there you did have server rep, even if you had a ton of alts. Mostly because it takes time to get an alt to a proper stage of progress, which means that each of your characters will get their own rep and quite often people in your own guild would start disliking you, if they know you have certain alts that do random bs in the game. I've seen this happen a ton of times myself.This is bad design. The game already lacks structure and this design just adds to the chaos. That's going to impact a lot of players that don't engage in this and will eventually impact them enough to the point they leave. There needs to be some guard rails on it, is my point.
And keeping your alts secret from your guild just brings us back to what I already said - minus rep. Though even those secrets are rarely kept for too long. Someone somewhere usually finds out and either rats you out or starts going after you themselves.
Ludullu
1
Re: Poll + Bonus Dev Discussion - Multiboxing
So can I use a single keyboard to send signals to all 5 of my computers? Single input to 5 computers running different accounts? There'd be no way for intrepid to detect that. It'd be fairly easy to setup. I'd probably use 1 keyboard to the main pc, and a game pad of some kind for the other 4 or 5 or 10. Just need to send a few to command to the followers. Follow, jump, eat, target of target, attacks, buffs, ect. normally about 10 different inputs per follower is enough depending on it's class.
1 man takes on 13 other players hahah glorious
We won’t have a game
People won’t play that.
The current stance seems all they can do.
Multi family on one Ip 😎 cool.
1 man playing more than one account auto blocking and getting healed by the bot commands through pixel detection is a whole different thing.
Any good bot maker can get around most of this but it’s so obvious it’s being done should be easy to ban too.
It should be a bannable offense.
A mule sitting at a bank is not hurting anything I think we can all agree to that.
1 man takes on 13 other players hahah glorious
We won’t have a game
People won’t play that.
The current stance seems all they can do.
Multi family on one Ip 😎 cool.
1 man playing more than one account auto blocking and getting healed by the bot commands through pixel detection is a whole different thing.
Any good bot maker can get around most of this but it’s so obvious it’s being done should be easy to ban too.
It should be a bannable offense.
A mule sitting at a bank is not hurting anything I think we can all agree to that.
Slayven
1
Alts shouldn't count towards a Guilds member count.
As the title says. If your main is in a guild and you bring an alt into that same guild it shouldn't count towards the guilds player count. Since guild member count will be a mechanic in the game alts shouldn't be invited into the Guild because they clog the numbers. Since it's the same account the two characters can't be logged in at the same time, it won't give the guild any advantage in anything really. It'll help with the GuildName1 GuildName2 GuildName3 issue we see, to an extent. This is just a way to help keep players that want to play together, together. We're not all in discord all the time, I personally like to play some music and engage in some mindless gathering and crafting for hours here and there. But if my alt isn't in the guild chat i'll miss the LFM for somethingsomethingsomething, that I wanted to do with my main.
Just a feature that adds to the game without breaking anything, a no brainer in my mind. But maybe I didn't think of something.
Just a feature that adds to the game without breaking anything, a no brainer in my mind. But maybe I didn't think of something.
Volgaris
2
Re: A P3 Petition
Yes.
Also, I've been seeing the content has been removed a lot. I'm starting to think it's an account called Unknown, and they're just randomly posting "This content has been removed." on threads...
Also, I've been seeing the content has been removed a lot. I'm starting to think it's an account called Unknown, and they're just randomly posting "This content has been removed." on threads...
Volgaris
2
Re: Poll + Bonus Dev Discussion - Multiboxing
So can I use a single keyboard to send signals to all 5 of my computers? Single input to 5 computers running different accounts? There'd be no way for intrepid to detect that. It'd be fairly easy to setup. I'd probably use 1 keyboard to the main pc, and a game pad of some kind for the other 4 or 5 or 10. Just need to send a few to command to the followers. Follow, jump, eat, target of target, attacks, buffs, ect. normally about 10 different inputs per follower is enough depending on it's class.
If they need to be different inputs for each computer and some is "multiboxing" by just leaving a character in area to watch for a spawn or something. Then I don't really think of that as multiboxing. To me multiboxing is using multiple accounts together to achieve something. Like dungeon running, pvp, gathering defense ect. Just being logged in at town with a mule while your main is out pvping or something isn't multiboxing.
If they need to be different inputs for each computer and some is "multiboxing" by just leaving a character in area to watch for a spawn or something. Then I don't really think of that as multiboxing. To me multiboxing is using multiple accounts together to achieve something. Like dungeon running, pvp, gathering defense ect. Just being logged in at town with a mule while your main is out pvping or something isn't multiboxing.
Volgaris
1
Re: Multiboxing - Cap at 2 - 6 Characters? - Can we please have clarification if this will be allowed?
As a multiboxer I have to say allowing multiboxing in Ashes will break it. The game just doesn't have room for it. It's already a pretty niche design with their concept of PvX, splitting the focus between PvPers and PvEers, if they were to add in multiboxers it'll break not only the PvE content but also the PvP content. It breaks it in other games too but the consequences here would be even worse. Allowing this play style would bleed more players than it brought in. Imagine you're running around gathering and not only do you get ganked but you get ganked by a multiboxer, talk about insult to injury... the PvE crowd is already on the fence about the game, this would just push them away. Looks like their not going to allow this anyways, which is the right choice.
I do agree there a legit reasons to multibox. I found it really fun clearing dungeons. Even brought my group into a raid and that was interesting lol. PvP was fun, but i'd fight other multiboxers. Fighting a single player was pointless. Overall though multiboxing goes against the spirit of the mmos. I'll do it if allowed, but prefer it not be a thing.
I do agree there a legit reasons to multibox. I found it really fun clearing dungeons. Even brought my group into a raid and that was interesting lol. PvP was fun, but i'd fight other multiboxers. Fighting a single player was pointless. Overall though multiboxing goes against the spirit of the mmos. I'll do it if allowed, but prefer it not be a thing.
Volgaris
1