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Espionage - and related issues with main characters, alts, guilds, housing and citizenship
Nerror
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
Back in 2017, Steven had this to say about espionage being a legitimate aspect of the game:
However, all the characters on the account share housing (and storage in housing) and citizenship. Unlike guilds, those aren't per character. Because of that, any wannabe spy worth their salt will be using a second account to spy with anyway. Is it possible to spy with the same account? Yes, but you are much more limited in what you can get away with, especially if you are spying on a guild where the members are citizens of a different node. And there is the whole Superman/Clark Kent dichotomy.
I am not a fan of the whole espionage thing negatively affecting quality of life aspects of the game, like guild-membership not being account-based, so that's my bias in this. If people don't want a specific alt be a part of their guild, I think it's fine to have an opt-out option though, but not so they can join another guild.
However, if Intrepid is serious about espionage from only one account, and they want it to be a legitimate part of the game, I think they should make some changes to reflect that and perhaps not have accounts share citizenship and housing. And/or some other ways to help spies obfuscate who they really are.
To be clear, my preference is to make spying hard or impossible from the same account and instead force spies to fork out the $15 a month for a second account. I don't give a damn if those people find it unfair
I would fire up a second account myself if I were to spy, without complaint.
Thoughts?
- A character may only be a member of a single guild.
- Alts on the same account can join different guilds
- Intrigue, espionage and intelligence gathering is a legitimate aspect of the game.
However, all the characters on the account share housing (and storage in housing) and citizenship. Unlike guilds, those aren't per character. Because of that, any wannabe spy worth their salt will be using a second account to spy with anyway. Is it possible to spy with the same account? Yes, but you are much more limited in what you can get away with, especially if you are spying on a guild where the members are citizens of a different node. And there is the whole Superman/Clark Kent dichotomy.
I am not a fan of the whole espionage thing negatively affecting quality of life aspects of the game, like guild-membership not being account-based, so that's my bias in this. If people don't want a specific alt be a part of their guild, I think it's fine to have an opt-out option though, but not so they can join another guild.
However, if Intrepid is serious about espionage from only one account, and they want it to be a legitimate part of the game, I think they should make some changes to reflect that and perhaps not have accounts share citizenship and housing. And/or some other ways to help spies obfuscate who they really are.
To be clear, my preference is to make spying hard or impossible from the same account and instead force spies to fork out the $15 a month for a second account. I don't give a damn if those people find it unfair
I would fire up a second account myself if I were to spy, without complaint.Thoughts?
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Comments
I do agree that citizenship comes in the way of hardcore top lvl spying, but I don't think we still know if we have the citizenship on all chars or if it's only one char that has it and all the alts CAN'T have another one.
I'd rather prefer a feature where you can do some hardcore quest that lets you have double citizenship (any costs related to it being double obviously included). It could even be a guild quest that requires a ton of help from mates.
And my main reason to be against "all alts in one guild" is that it would either have to be "8 slots taken up (or however many alts we can have)" or "it's one slot but all alts get the benefits". And I'm strongly against both of those designs.
And if it's neither of those, and you can put your alts in other guilds - how exactly is that any different from the current setup?
I wonder if some People will call this a Pay-to-win Tactic.
As long as the Game doesn't get boring because of People constantly trying to spy on their Adversaries, then it should be okay. Let the People add some Spice with being sneaky and cunning. People should however have a Reasoning that the Game's Goal is not to have several Accounts solely to spy on other Guilds.
" Hey J~aaack !! I found out that half the Guild has high Fever the next Week. They all got the Flu !! "
" Great. Now let us commence the greatest Siege onto their Node /and/or Castle that the World of Verra has ever seen ! "
Funny, but also kinda overkill.
Yes, all secondary accounts people buy are P2W. Even more so if they buy a second PC to play on. For spying or other purposes, it doesn't matter. And I don't care as long as we aren't talking multiboxing in the sense that people macro and mirror kb/mouse clicks. We know having a 2nd account is something Intrepid has deemed to be ok. You can even pay for your spouse's or friend's accounts for the ultimate in P2W, because now they can play with you to your direct benefit.
And I mean 1 slot per account in the guild, so up to 300 accounts per guild, so no matter which alt you play that day you are still connected to guild chat etc.
Although, I'll tip my hat to anyone dedicated enough to level two characters with the exact same look and class with the purpose of roleplaying a Clark Kent / Superman dual personality.
I am pretty sure the infiltration will have to take place in discord and such as well, for the top spying. For the superman/clark kent thing, I just meant not being able to be online at once on two different characters, but I love the idea of someone being silly enough to do what you wrote as well
Spy with your main, remain in your real guild with an alt.
This also works in the opposite way. If I want to keep a connection to my guildies on my alt, but don't want to keep dying to enemies cause a war is going on, I'd simply joing an alt guild in the alliance and have that connection. But if alts can opt out of being in the same guild, but not be in any other guild - the connection is lost.
And in my experience those "Alt" guilds also serve as a temporary home for casual players who want to be a part of a bigger whole, but are not yet ready for the big fight, be that due to level, progress or own desire. And I've seen such casuals build great relationships throughout the alliance, which led them to greater powers than even just existing in the main guild would have.
But with limitations and some effects on what I consider to be QoL aspects of the game.
Sure.
But then spying on an alt account also has some QoL aspects to it. They are different issues, but there are indeed still issues with multiple accounts.
Essentially, opting to grab a second account specifically for espionage is just trading one set of issues for a different set of issues. Some people may prefer one set over the other, but as someone that almost always has multiple accounts in an MMO I am playing, I can tell you without hesitation that there are always issues to it.
Or people will swap characters in and out of the guild, creating an unnecessary administrative task-load for the officers every day.
As for guild benefits, it's me, the player who has worked on levelling the guild, and spent my time on it, no matter which character is in the guild that given day. I think it's reasonable all those characters get the benefits.
Good point about the guild wars though. Perhaps alts shouldn't be able to opt out
I guess you want higher reward for higher risk. Understandable and valid opinion, but I'd hope that guild wars are near-constant in Ashes, so I'd want people to be able to relax from them when they choose so.
Though depending on how often those wars are and how big the guild benefits are - there might be a HUGE imbalance in the risk/reward equation if all alts are under one guild banner, while only occupying a single slot.
To me, not having all alts in a guild also supports guild builds interaction much better. If guild A has only full mage parties, which counters guild B's full melee ones - having a full damn set of alts that then completely counter the counter would, imo, beat the purpose of builds. And imo it would almost border on "every person can do and be everything", which is another design that I'm against.
This then pushes away any party movement between guilds. If there's a party of archers out there, who counter mages, and they wanted to join guild B to help them out - why would guild B accept them, if its members could just get their own archer parties and not share any potential spoils from a won pvp encounter.
Yes, there's the argument of "the archers are already built, while guild B might not have archer alts", but I'm talking about later on in the game where any self-respecting hardcore guild would in fact have any/all alts they need leveled, if all those alts took up only one slot in the guild. Hell, I'd expect them to have those alts set up in the location that the guild expects to fight at in the nearest future. So if they come with melees and lose to mages, they immediately relogin onto archers and win, while the mages relogin onto their own different alts, and this fucking bullshit continues until someone gets tired or the goal of the encounter gets taken.
To me that sounds like a bad interaction between guilds, but I'm 95% sure it's what will happen if this design was implemented.
Hrm I can't find any information about that. I assumed no penalty for guild rejoining, because clicking leave guild or a guild kick can happen by mistake. Maybe a question for a dev stream?
You mean you want to be a triple Agent ?
depending how necessary the bard is for progression (and possibly the cleric or a support summoner) some people will 100% dual box a bard to buff their main xD
ill probs dual box a bard myself to buff my cleric, but then if I want a dps idk if I should make it on the bard or the cleric account. i don't wanna pay for 3 accounts ugh 2 is already too much
I can already see "Multi-Boxers" rocking the Show and completely subdueing all other Players.
No kidding. Maybe we should have Server-Types JUST FOR THAT - to deal with it. One Server-Type on which Multi-boxing is possible -> and another Server-Type in which You can lock in only with one of your Accounts no matter how many of them you have.
Problem solved.
And then, THEEEENNN let's see how many People actually play on the "Multi-boxing" Servers, when all they are greeted with, are mostly other Multi-Boxers. 😁 Get the Saltshakers and the Popkorn ready, Dudes. The Hilarity of Drama would welcome us with open Arms. 😁
In fact, an argument could be made that it is easier to kill a multiboxer than a regular player of equal skill. I'm not going to make that argument, because if you people can't this out, I - as someone that usually has 2 or 3 accounts - have no intention of telling you.
We'll have to see how many Guilds require citizenship.
And that may differ quite a bit depending on the server.
I like this idea. Since you can only have 1 char logged on at a time from 1 account, if the alts all share the guild then you only take up 1 guild slot and don't block new players just because your alts want to be in guild.
This was a really nice feature in ESO. I didn't like how players could join 5 different guilds at once, but having guild membership account-based was just perfect. It's a superior way of doing guild membership.
I don't really have strong feelings about spying, but whatever it takes to get account-based guild membership is what I'll vote for.
Much love ❤️
Hrm, all is fair in love and war and espionage?
With AI tools for copying voices in real time, crafty people can pretend to be either guild-leadership in Discord on "their new alt account" or at the very least hide their real voice.
meh just play in a party hahaha. actually that might not solve the problem since we don't know how many buffers we gonna need T_T
it depends on the game, and you have explained how you did that in archeage, but other games are different.
lets say you are a mage with just 1 account, then you fight another mage, with the same build as you, but he has bard, cleric and summoner buffs. for the sake of the argument, lets say he has 50% more power from stats over you. how are you going to beat him in 1v1?
he isn't going to try to attack you with all his accounts, he will simply use the mage. the other characters only serve as buff bots and they can just stay there without moving or even relog after buffing and come back in 20 minutes for the next buff round.
so how do you easily beat someone like that?
I don't really consider those dudes multiboxers, cause you're still fighting a single char. Yes, they're multiboxing overall, but direct impact on me is not the same as if they were bot-like multiboxing several chars that all attack me at the same time during the fight.
bruh you know if ur a mage in l2 with no buffs, or a gladi or an archer or anything, and the other dude has full buffs, you auto lose. the boxes don't even need to attack you... imagine the other dude has empower and magic barrier and you don't. you really gonna win? does he really need to attack you with his shillen elder basic attacks or 1 nuke from augment every 5 seconds? you will be dead before that.
and I remember steven said the longest duration for a buff in ashes will be 30 minutes. but I've seen cleric buffs last for only a few seconds. I'm just waiting to see the bard to see if we gonna need to dual box one or not.