Fixing alts with a player limited guild!

ArchivedUser

They talked about guild sizes and that they have ideas on it.


I came up with:

What if you could “special mark” alts of mains in the guild that dont fill "guild player space" in the lets say 300 player limit.

That would allow a guild of maxed out 300 players to also have alts, because the online limit stays to 300.

Since most/hardcore guilds won't allowed alts because they want to have a bigger upfront in battle, otherwise if they have let's say 10 alts in the guild, there missing out on 10 players in a scenario.

ArchivedUser

I would be okay with this only if there was no way of having more than one character active at a time ever. No boxing...

ArchivedUser

This has been done countless times before.

Make account names join a guild, not characters. This way all characters on the same account are in the same guild.

ArchivedUser

There is no technical way of successfully prevent multiple active character at the same time (you can't restrict 1 account / IP otherwise nobody will be able to play with his familly/friend in the same place and even if you do, VPN/proxys can be used).

Same for boxing, a well implemented box is not detectable and even if they manage to do it, it will impact a lot of legit boxing people like cloud gaming (thinking about Shadow PC) or even linux users. Both represent maybe 1 or 2% of gamers population.

ArchivedUser

FliP said:

This has been done countless times before.

Make account names join a guild, not characters. This way all characters on the same account are in the same guild.

Already said this isn't going to happen. They want people to be able to create alts to "spy" on other guilds and conduct espionage on other nodes.

Ghost0 said:

There is no technical way of successfully prevent multiple active character at the same time (you can't restrict 1 account / IP otherwise nobody will be able to play with his familly/friend in the same place and even if you do, VPN/proxys can be used).

Same for boxing, a well implemented box is not detectable and even if they manage to do it, it will impact a lot of legit boxing people like cloud gaming (thinking about Shadow PC) or even linux users. Both represent maybe 1 or 2% of gamers population.

They have left their stance on multi-boxing open as of the last information released. They said they will make a firm decision later, but are confident that the vendors they are working with will be able to detect anomalous activity they want to prevent. Anything that automates gameplay will be detected and suffer penalties up to and including account removal. Going to be several of your "legit boxing people" appealing bans in the future I imagine. Here is a link to just one vendor they have bothered to name that has been working with them since the beginning to lock out what they have decided as undesirable play. https://www.panopticonlabs.com/ 

ArchivedUser

Yea I think their stance so far has been as long as your not automating any of the boxes your good. I have a lifetime sub and I plan on paying for a sub account as well most times both will be open unless their stance on the matter changes. As far as forcing all account characters Into the same guild doesn't really fit well. Ashes doesn't let you main archtype swap. So if I want to have additional classes it requires another character. Being able to chose the community of that character is nice. 

ArchivedUser

Screenshots like this will be sure to be looked at.

ArchivedUser

I'd approve of this as well. I remember BDO doing it and it prevented that age old problem of people parking alts in your guild without telling you that it's an alt or people who have a main but play their alt most of the time and that alt slowly transitions into the new main in a matter of weeks or even months so they use up extra space.

Well, that was a long sentence.

I hope it's still understandable.

ArchivedUser

They are going with active guild leader policing. If you want to open you guild up and let a person have their 8 alts join, more power to you. You will be giving up slots and guild power for being that central clearinghouse for someone to park their toons. I can see many of the "uber guilds" putting restrictions on membership based on time on toon. Other guilds will be formed for people who only log on for a couple hours a week. With an extensive guild system promised, that has different benefits based on member cap choices versus active benefits this should help with guild bloat. You will see fewer guilds with a 300 cap with only 25 active players. You will see many more 25-50 person lean and mean guilds with mostly active players in them. People are going to be less forgiving of those that just want to join a guild to farm the benefits like an experience boost while leveling or a crafting bonus. Guild specialization will gain relevance. If pvp is your thing, then you will gravitate towards pvp in active pvp guild. If gathering and crafting is your thing, there will be a support guild for that. We know from the latest livestream that certain threshold caps will have to be met just to even form a guild. You can bet there will be population barriers on certain benefits also like a guild bank and others. If you have a grand plan of creating a guild, filling it with your alts, kicking out the other people, then using the guild system for extra storage for your account, (which probably won't be needed anyways) you are in for a surprise I bet.

ArchivedUser

I realy think spies are a part of the game. I think it would be a good think to let every alts be in the guild they want. Informations are a crutial part of the game (carvans path/timing etc). Guild leaders/member have to be carefull about who got those intels.

ArchivedUser

Ghost0 said:

There is no technical way of successfully prevent multiple active character at the same time (you can't restrict 1 account / IP otherwise nobody will be able to play with his familly/friend in the same place and even if you do, VPN/proxys can be used).

Same for boxing, a well implemented box is not detectable and even if they manage to do it, it will impact a lot of legit boxing people like cloud gaming (thinking about Shadow PC) or even linux users. Both represent maybe 1 or 2% of gamers population.

They can easy make a code thats let them see thats it your account, no ip needed.

ArchivedUser

Interesting to see that the good old spying is a thing again. Intrepid truly tries to make MMOs great again.

Those memories when your enemy guild suddenly showed up at a boss only you had the exact timer for as you killed it and all the conspiracy theories on who leaked info and why.

Good times.

ArchivedUser

Azathoth said:

I would be okay with this only if there was no way of having more than one character active at a time ever. No boxing...

Steven said that alts will be a thing on the game, if you work to up 2 chararacters then you will be free to use 2.

ArchivedUser

That's fair and I am okay with that.
My point is if the guild has a limit of 300 then only 300 avatars should be allowed in. If a player wanted multiple avatars (alts) in the guild then I would want them to use an equal number of the membership slots.

Otherwise with boxing (or just running two avatars off two PC's, however someone would want to do that) a 300 member guild can function like a 600+ guild - Not Cool imo.

If the accounts were set up so that every player could only play with one avatar at a time, then I would be okay with someone's 6 alts counting as 1 membership slot.

ArchivedUser

If a guild lets anyone and everyone in without knowing them and they are worried about spies in their guild that is there problem. 
As far as sub accounts etc I would agree that as long as they are not automating play I would have no problem with it. I would be furious if both my son and I cannot play from the same location. 

ArchivedUser

As long as people can't create alt guild, put all alts inside it, and then BID on siege vs main guild, win the bid, and be protected from a siege...

(Yeah, I know sieges don't work like this. I'm just describing a principle.)

ArchivedUser

Penetrate said:

If a guild lets anyone and everyone in without knowing them and they are worried about spies in their guild that is there problem. 
As far as sub accounts etc I would agree that as long as they are not automating play I would have no problem with it. I would be furious if both my son and I cannot play from the same location. 

Alts made by the same account. Therefore there would be a system to check that and mark them as alts.

ArchivedUser

But wouldn't the only way you knew if someone was on an alt or main be if they were on your friends list, thus you could see what character they were on. With alts not being in the same guild automatically and many guilds not wanting them it might be quite hard to tell on from the other. How would you be able to tell one from the other, spying is supposed to be a viable part of the game and if alts are revealed as alts or not the first created character might crimp a spies ability to operate somewhat.

They will no doubt have some ideas on this and we will just have to wait and see how it is handled and provide feedback as needed.

ArchivedUser

Azathoth said:

If the accounts were set up so that every player could only play with one avatar at a time, then I would be okay with someone's 6 alts counting as 1 membership slot.

I can't think of a game that allows multiple logins from one account. But if someone wanted to dual box or higher that would require more accounts. That wouldn't fall under the alt category because it would be a second account. 

I'm not a fan of forcing all alt characters into the same guild but if suggested above the game knows the character account it can flag them for roster and the 2 separate characters can't be logged on at the same time. So you'll never go over your roster limit. 

ArchivedUser

"I can't think of a game that allows multiple logins from one account. But if someone wanted to dual box or higher that would require more accounts. That wouldn't fall under the alt category because it would be a second account. "

If they control both at once with one input, it counts as botting to me (ie one keyboard goes left, they all go left), even if its manually done. I'm iffy about people keeping chars logged and afk switching back and forth, but I guess they could be killed while afk, and its 15$ more a month.

ArchivedUser

Varkun said:

But wouldn't the only way you knew if someone was on an alt or main be if they were on your friends list, thus you could see what character they were on. With alts not being in the same guild automatically and many guilds not wanting them it might be quite hard to tell on from the other. How would you be able to tell one from the other, spying is supposed to be a viable part of the game and if alts are revealed as alts or not the first created character might crimp a spies ability to operate somewhat.

They will no doubt have some ideas on this and we will just have to wait and see how it is handled and provide feedback as needed.

I only think you alt someone if you know them. At Least i never alted a random person in my past guilds, that i didn't know.

Besides that, that ashes inputs some sort of program to check if it's indeed a alt you're promoting. Since they said they are going with a in depth guild system. Maybe it's possible to add something like that.

ArchivedUser

Argentdawn said:

Azathoth said:

If the accounts were set up so that every player could only play with one avatar at a time, then I would be okay with someone's 6 alts counting as 1 membership slot.

I can't think of a game that allows multiple logins from one account. But if someone wanted to dual box or higher that would require more accounts. That wouldn't fall under the alt category because it would be a second account. 

I'm not a fan of forcing all alt characters into the same guild but if suggested above the game knows the character account it can flag them for roster and the 2 separate characters can't be logged on at the same time. So you'll never go over your roster limit. 

Same. Dont get the point of what this discussion evolved into..

Fleelix made a very good point in his original post however. That idea has no downsides and solves multiple issues.

ArchivedUser

SchalaZeal said:

"I can't think of a game that allows multiple logins from one account. But if someone wanted to dual box or higher that would require more accounts. That wouldn't fall under the alt category because it would be a second account. "

If they control both at once with one input, it counts as botting to me (ie one keyboard goes left, they all go left), even if its manually done. I'm iffy about people keeping chars logged and afk switching back and forth, but I guess they could be killed while afk, and its 15$ more a month.

Yea i don't think you need to worry about botting IS already said they were against that. But me personally i have a lifetime sub and i will also be using a sub based account side by side. As long as you only control one screen at a time you wont be breaking ToS.

ArchivedUser

Uao said:

Same. Dont get the point of what this discussion evolved into..

Fleelix made a very good point in his original post however. That idea has no downsides and solves multiple issues.

My original point was, I don't care if guilds allow alts that don't count towards guild player limits. Unless players can play their alts and primaries at the same time. Otherwise a 300 guild can function like a 600+ guild if everyone made the effort.
I don't think that point was addressed in Fleelix's OP.

If multiple players controlling multiple characters are in the guild but each group of multiple avatars controlled by a single player count as only 1 guild member, I see that as a downside that solves nothing.

ArchivedUser

Fleelix didn't mention it because its not worth mentioning..
There is no game(where you're supposed to control just one person) that allows to login with multiple characters on same acc at a time, but even if theres one this sub based game wont have it for obvious reasons.
(one player pays the sub and everyone and his mom uses that acc to play simultaneously)

If a player pays for multiple accounts he will be abel to login with multiple chars and you cant really prevent that without ip block etc(which you wouldn't want to do).

However this has nothing to do with not counting alt characters for guild limit as these chars are on extra accounts which means theyre not alts by design.
Also multiboxing is a pretty useless gimmick if youre not allowed to use 3rd party tools to copy keyboard inputs into all instances, which you wont be allowed to for also obvious reasons.
(no allowed hacking and botting in this game)

ArchivedUser

I might not be sure what the OP meant by "special mark." He might or might not have been referring to "alts" from other subs (in this case more of an alt-sub than and alt-character I guess). I would be against this as it leads back to my original concern.

That said, your points are valid and do negate most of my argument.
One account = 1 character in play at a time, makes sense.
In this case I couldn't see the harm in allowing alts to be in the guild under 1 guild-spot. I also think it would allow the guild to do more guild-stuff together, if they needed a healer someone could use an alt and so forth.

My only concern is having 1 player using 1 guild-spot for 2 characters and being able to manipulate them at the same time. I am not savvy enough with coding/rigging/MMO's to know if/how that's possible or not. I appreciate @Uao for clarifying this for me, thank you .

ArchivedUser

@Azathoth
Well the mechanic wouldn't work with special marks for alt subs as it could be abused through people marking other players as alts and thus removing the max player count for guilds completely. So its certainly meant for alt characters within one sub

ArchivedUser

Personaly i'd like to have a way smaller max guild member cap of ~20-30 people.

That makes everything way more personal as you wouldnt spam the guild chat for 300 people you hardly know while talking with your group of friends.

Any larger formations would be handled through alliances between guilds which could have a alliance leader with rights that are similar to guildleaders in other games just on alliance level. 

Or maybe even some more representative democratic leadership, so guild leaders within a alliance can only make alliance decisions through some kind of majority decisive between eachother or other representatives of the guilds depending on the type of decision. While including appropriate UI to encourage that.

 

Another main idea behind all this is so these extreme small guilds would be forced to participate in alliances way more which could decrease the problem of imbalance between large and small guilds. (The biggest raid size will be 40 people so a guild would have to find at least 1 partner guild to complete that content.)

 

The max player count within a alliance could be handled through some function instead of a hard cap. 

Like the biggest alliance couldn't have more players in it than the second biggest alliance+~60 subs*.

Also no alliance could include more than ~5-10% of all active** guilds within a server.

The biggest alliance wouldn't instantly decrease in size if previous conditions arn't met anymore, but couldn't add any new guilds and its guilds couldn't add new members meanwhile.

 

*If a player joins various alliances on his diffrent alt characters within a sub he needs to choose one alliance to assign his sub count (private data - so spying wont be immediately noticed).(this prevents the biggest alliance from creating a second alliance with inactive alts only just to increase the original alliance size)

 

**guild is active as long as atleast 2 players were online within last ~2 months.

 

Guilds within alliances could enable various chat types so as example within a alliance, someone entitled in guild x could mark a checkbox for guild y and z within a tabular to enable a temporar channel between guild x, guild y and guild z so they could communicate easier if wanted.

 

Imo large alliances had very poor structuralisation options in other games which resulted in massive groups of players that feel no connection between eachother,

so what do you guys think about this approach?