Goblin Squad Member
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I don't play multiplayer games anymore but used to MUD quite a bit. "Back then" it used to be common to build up a stable of characters (even if you were only allowed to log one at a time) and share gold, property and equipment between them. Is that still the done thing? (Or more specifically, will it be the done thing in PFO?) It did create a problem of unique or other valuable items sitting unused in "storage characters". No doubt there were other issues I wasn't aware of.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As I understand it a subscription gets you 1 month of training time. So if you have more than one character you will need to split that training time amongst them. Of course, you could just use it all on one toon and not give any to the others.
In general though, to answer one of your questions, yes it is commonly done in today's games.
Usually any item that valuable is bound to one character. So usually if you find that awesome item it's something you can't give to one of your other toons.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As I understand it a subscription gets you 1 month of training time. So if you have more than one character you will need to split that training time amongst them. Of course, you could just use it all on one toon and not give any to the others.
In general though, to answer one of your questions, yes it is commonly done in today's games.
Usually any item that valuable is bound to one character. So usually if you find that awesome item it's something you can't give to one of your other toons.
I highly doubt the bound to characte rportion of the game will co-exist in PFO. Most gear is going to be crafted, and in general bound to character isn't a standard component of sandbox games to begin with. (that isn't to say such is impossible, but I would say it is improbable).
Now using them for alts on the other hand, is another story, because many types of gear will require you to train up in a specific tree to be able to use, and well if your new character is training in the same skills as your old one... that kind of defeats the purpose of having an alt.
And yeah because of PFO's training system where skills are earned in real time, regardless of how often you play, training time will have to be purchased seperate for each character, so having multiple characters will cost you more than having 1 character (or you will have to alternate which character is training).
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Goblin Squad Member
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As long as I CAN train up alts without costing me obscene amounts of money.
I kind of Sony like the idea of only being able to work one at a time, it means that either all my characters suffer, or all but one... For years.. It means that working 2 characters would take 5 years. Either to get both up at the same time or one after the other.
3 that's 7.5 years
4 that's 9.
Which means if someone gets bored of their character and wants to try something different, they know it will take them years to get there. Sure you could do it all on one, but if you want to go for a totally different playstyle, your options are limited, eg, you can't make your paladin into a necromancer due to alignment issues, you'd have to start again if you still wanted your paladin, and who knows what other alignment restrictions there will be.
Or even if you just wanted to play an assassin as well as a lg character... It's very constraining and cutting off whole areas of the game from practically being explored by the player without paying for multiple accounts.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One of my major concerns is how viable it will be to have alts. Splitting my training time between multiple characters doesn't appeal to me, I definitely want a main that gets full training. But if alts cost the same as another full account it gets prohibitively expensive to try out alt very fast, which is undesirable since I like to experiment with lots of different character types.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Prohibitively expensive is a relative term depending on the player. Despite my income level or what I am willing to back on Kickstarter I could never wrap my head around having more than two accounts even for a game that only allowed a single character per server. While at the same time I have friends that typically run 4+ accounts per game they play.
I like the idea that you get one month of training time per account. It will allow you to have a main or one character per account that is at the current skill training time cap. If you want more characters at the cap you will need to effectively buy another account though with this model these extra characters would still be tied to a single account login (nice idea unless you are part of the multi-box crowd). This keeps the over use of alternate character spies, look outs, bait, mules ect, low on the skill training unless they are also paid for and when they are paid for it effectively makes them another main or on an equal playing field.
It also help keep the community specialized and encourages player interactions. One player could be the gatherer, producer, and crafter all at once but it would cost him three accounts worth of training time and three time the amount of in-game time to be equal to the three other player who each spent their time focusing on a single aspect; still possible but expensive by some standards.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The problem with that, is that if you get to say 3/4 of the way up a path (about 2 years), then get bored of it, it takes you another 2 years to get to that point in anything else, which means people are more likely to stop playing altogether than retrain, if people can train alts at the same time, they don't need to start again even if their alts are less developed and they'll stick around with something else.
Although... Since there's that stats influencing gain, perhaps it won't be as bad to train a different path on your main after all, which is fine if they're not opposed to what you have (like the paladin/necro example)
Or if someone has been specializing in crafting, then gets bored of it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Dividing up your training between alts is exactly the same as dividing up your in game leveling between alts in a game that doesn't have offline leveling The only difference here is the sheer amount of time it takes to cap a toon.
But alts will still be viable because if I want to dabble in sorcery I cna level fatsre on my high Cha alt than on my low cha fighter.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ryan has made it clear that we'll be able to have multiple characters on a single account, and that we'll be able to train them simultaneously as long as we've purchased the appropriate Skill Training.
I plan on keeping a single Subscription to keep my Main constantly training, and buying occasional Skill Training Packs to use for any alts.
I'd really love it if they'd allow me to have multiple characters from the same account online at the same time, but I'm not confident they will. That's the only remaining advantage to having multiple accounts right now.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ryan has made it clear that we'll be able to have multiple characters on a single account, and that we'll be able to train them simultaneously as long as we've purchased the appropriate Skill Training.
I plan on keeping a single Subscription to keep my Main constantly training, and buying occasional Skill Training Packs to use for any alts.
I'd really love it if they'd allow me to have multiple characters from the same account online at the same time, but I'm not confident they will. That's the only remaining advantage to having multiple accounts right now.
Which is why I purchased another Pledge in case they don't allow multiple characters from the same account. Going with 3! =)
Ryan has made it clear that we'll be able to have multiple characters on a single account, and that we'll be able to train them simultaneously as long as we've purchased the appropriate Skill Training.
I plan on keeping a single Subscription to keep my Main constantly training, and buying occasional Skill Training Packs to use for any alts.
I'd really love it if they'd allow me to have multiple characters from the same account online at the same time, but I'm not confident they will. That's the only remaining advantage to having multiple accounts right now.
Nihimon, Please correct me if im wrong in my understanding, so we have one character the subscription pays for training time on, and our alts we buy training time for? or do they train simultaneously for the regular subscription cost no more money needed as long as thier skills are at appropriate levels, It is late, and I am confused.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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You will receive one month of total training time per month you are subscribed. You are allowed to use it all on one character or break it up among several characters with the combined total not exceeding the original one month total. You can then buy additional training with Skymetal, the cash shop currency, or from other players selling their training time for coin.
I also believe that you can not have more training time on a single character than the total maximum amount of time the game has been live; ie. 60 total day of training at the 60 day mark from the time your character was created. This is how I have been led to understand the Train time situation will work.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I also believe that you can not have more training time on a single character than the total maximum amount of time the game has been live; ie. 60 total day of training at the 60 day mark from the time your character was created. This is how I have been led to understand the Train time situation will work.
So... if the game has been going 60 days, but you only made a particular character 30 days ago, would you be able to buy 60 days worth of training?
I guess I wouldn't be opposed to someone buying extra training time to get a character caught up, as long as an Open Enrollment account has their max set at open launch, and Early accounts have their max measured from Early launch. That's necessary to preserve the value of the accounts for people that are making the early-adopter leap of faith. The longer the game operates, the less that 9-month headstart will matter, but I don't think it should ever be made irrelevant.
In cases when the launch date is not an issue, such as two characters made on the same account, I suppose it's not a problem to let the 'alternate' character catch up to the first one, over time. If the normal skill advancement rate is 1, then someone with extra training might be able to advance at a 1.2 rate until such time that they catch up. That would let people make new characters on their account without the feeling that they will forever be behind the curve.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I believe that if the game has been live 60 days but you made your character 30 days later it would only have a total of 30 days of training. I could be wrong though as this is my interpretation of things here on the boards, other interviews, and the way things have been done in the past for other games.
Though the only real leap of faith people were the tech-demo backers. This game will be created and will go live even if this current kickstarter fails. It will just release faster with the success of the current kickstarter. Also, as for those tech-demo backers the only one that are in the game from that kickstarter are the 32 alpha backers. The value of our accounts is the ability to shape the game not the training time bonus. If the Devs decided that we could purchase "missed" training time later it would not decrease the value of our accounts. We are the ones that have been playing for the entire time; earning badges, exp, gear, crafting, warring, building a rep, ect. The newly created characters that spent the money would only be on equal footing in the skill department. They would still have a very long way to go (with very little sleep) if they wanted to catch up.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm really hoping you are allowed 3-5 characters per account. And can buy more character slots with skymetal if desired.
Subscriptions should only come with enough training time to train a single character 24/7. If you want to train more than one character at once that should require purchasing additional training time. This should be s bit cheaper than training an entirely separate account.
The reason for this is plain and simple. People WILL but alternate accounts. Alternate accounts not only allow you to train multiple characters at once, but to play multiple characters at once, which is pretty easy with the right software and/or multiple computers.
Alternate accounts will cut down on how many people play PFO during beta. Alternate accounts will disrupt the economy and maybe even combat if the system isn't overly complicated. Alternate accounts favor people who run the game multiple times at once which either requires a good connection and machine, or lowers the performance of the game.
Training multiple characters on the same account for cheaper makes it a valid alternative to multiple accounts for people who don't have uber-computers/super fast connections.
Finally I think being online with multiple accounts at the same time should violate the User Agreement. Obviously this will be hard to catch in some instances, but it should allow them to find and ban the people who blatantly use macros to fight with multiple characters at once.
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Goblin Squad Member
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the only real leap of faith people were the tech-demo backers. This game will be created and will go live even if this current kickstarter fails. It will just release faster with the success of the current kickstarter. Also, as for those tech-demo backers the only one that are in the game from that kickstarter are the 32 alpha backers. The value of our accounts is the ability to shape the game not the training time bonus.
So current backers should be kicked to the curb, as far as you're concerned? Does that include current alpha backers who would also be there shaping the game? I didn't choose to skip backing the tech demo Kickstarter, I just didn't know it existed until it was already closed. Maybe the word didn't get out very well because the tech-demo goal was relatively tiny, allowing those involved be lazy about getting the word out?
The current Kickstarter goal will take bigger individual investments from more people, and it'll still be a relatively long wait to see that come to fruition. Acting like current funders are somehow less-than will only make some want to drop out, and potentially double your wait time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think you guys are missing the obvious here. A character that was created 30 days ago can have 90 days worth of training bought and in the account, but it still takes 30 days to train 30 days of training. So there is no way for a character to advance beyond the time it has been created.
Extra time has to go to alts.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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They are not less then nor kicked to the curb. They are the world shapers. That is the real advantage. I did not mean to sound harsh or elitist. The skill training is only a small part of our characters and it sounds like there will be additional requirements for some of the skills like earning in-game badges. My intention with the "leap of faith" statement was simply that we are not taking a leap of faith. The game will be made and that at the time of the tech-demo it was not fully funded. They even had a section that covered what would happen to our pledge if the game did not get funded. I do agree that without our current backing the game will be diminished.
It is part of the reason why i am heavily working within my guild to get more people into the early enrollment stage. They seem to have an issue fully understanding the "limited entry" part of the planned roll out. They think it will be like every other game and as soon as they want to play they can sign-up/ pay, download then join us in-game. As it stands right now we are closing in on the cap for the first month of EE. Once we hit the 2k pioneers then the 2k+1 person will have to wait 30 days before they can join up.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I think you guys are missing the obvious here. A character that was created 30 days ago can have 90 days worth of training bought and in the account, but it still takes 30 days to train 30 days of training. So there is no way for a character to advance beyond the time it has been created.
Extra time has to go to alts.
That might not be entirely true as your base stats adjust your training time. If you were to min/max your stats you could in theory train more things in those 30 days than someone that has lower stats in the same abilities.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That might not be entirely true as your base stats adjust your training time. If you were to min/max your stats you could in theory train more things in those 30 days than someone that has lower stats in the same abilities.I think you guys are missing the obvious here. A character that was created 30 days ago can have 90 days worth of training bought and in the account, but it still takes 30 days to train 30 days of training. So there is no way for a character to advance beyond the time it has been created.
Extra time has to go to alts.
You will get more skills for your 30 days of training if you use it on skills you are built for. But it will still be 30 days of training.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Nihimon, Please correct me if im wrong in my understanding, so we have one character the subscription pays for training time on, and our alts we buy training time for? or do they train simultaneously for the regular subscription cost no more money needed as long as thier skills are at appropriate levels, It is late, and I am confused.
You've already gotten good answers to this, but I'll throw in my 2 cents as well.
Your subscription buys you a month of Training Time that you can use to train one character at a time. You can buy additional Training Time - either directly from the Cash Shop, or in-game from other Players - so that you can train multiple characters simultaneously.
I'm fairly certain you'll also be able to buy 2 or more Subscriptions for a single Account so that you can consistently train multiple characters simultaneously, but that might not be available during Early Enrollment.
There was some decent discussion and feedback from Ryan in Never punish a player for using a single account, if you'd like more information.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For me the journey has always been more exciting than the destination. I think that the most compelling feature of PFO is the ability to build a richly textured story around a character. It is the interaction with other players' characters that will allow me to have the tastiest of stories. If I do have more than 1 character I plan to advance each as if it were my primary because each will have their own story to build. I know that there will be plenty of players who have "disposable" characters; it goes with the territory. Nevertheless, I want to interact with characters whose players are invested in those characters.
Nihimon, Please correct me if im wrong in my understanding, so we have one character the subscription pays for training time on, and our alts we buy training time for? or do they train simultaneously for the regular subscription cost no more money needed as long as thier skills are at appropriate levels, It is late, and I am confused.You've already gotten good answers to this, but I'll throw in my 2 cents as well.
Your subscription buys you a month of Training Time that you can use to train one character at a time. You can buy additional Training Time - either directly from the Cash Shop, or in-game from other Players - so that you can train multiple characters simultaneously.
I'm fairly certain you'll also be able to buy 2 or more Subscriptions for a single Account so that you can consistently train multiple characters simultaneously, but that might not be available during Early Enrollment.
There was some decent discussion and feedback from Ryan in Never punish a player for using a single account, if you'd like more information.
thank you. its kinda important for me to prepare and budget now that I'm going to be in early enrollment day one. I fully plan on having at least two characters I'm working on simultaneously.
Also a big thank you to everyone else that has helped me get a better idea of whats going on with the training time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Personally I would like to see you have an account, and all your characters run through that one account. Do NOT allow multiple logins from one person. There is no reason to allow automated ganks, 1 man sieges, etc. Frankly, it is sort of questionable to even be able to have one of your characters effect another. Why does one of your characters suddenly know the other one? Why would you give the other character anything for free? If you are not doing this for strangers, it is biased and completely out of character that you would do it for yourself.
RP is to play a role, if your actions defy the logical actions of your character you are no longer in role.
My 2 cents
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Goblin Squad Member
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Remember, Malarious, that the way you play a MMO is not the same as the way others play MMOs. They could be in it for the community, not the lore, and have no reason to follow your same philosophy. Or they're playing for, gasp, non-RP related fun. Sometimes it's nice to turn off your brain and click on monsters for a while.
If they want to break their own immersion, I say fine by me. It's their own experience, after all.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Personally I would like to see you have an account, and all your characters run through that one account. Do NOT allow multiple logins from one person. There is no reason to allow automated ganks, 1 man sieges, etc. Frankly, it is sort of questionable to even be able to have one of your characters effect another. Why does one of your characters suddenly know the other one? Why would you give the other character anything for free? If you are not doing this for strangers, it is biased and completely out of character that you would do it for yourself.
RP is to play a role, if your actions defy the logical actions of your character you are no longer in role.
My 2 cents
Your characters could be related, or in other ways have related stories
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Personally I would like to see you have an account, and all your characters run through that one account. Do NOT allow multiple logins from one person. There is no reason to allow automated ganks, 1 man sieges, etc. Frankly, it is sort of questionable to even be able to have one of your characters effect another. Why does one of your characters suddenly know the other one? Why would you give the other character anything for free? If you are not doing this for strangers, it is biased and completely out of character that you would do it for yourself.
RP is to play a role, if your actions defy the logical actions of your character you are no longer in role.
My 2 cents
I don't know about you but I ALWAYS have RP connections between my alts and my main. Most if the time they are related by blood or close friends.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Personally I would like to see you have an account, and all your characters run through that one account.
That's impossible to enforce.
Do NOT allow multiple logins from one person.
So, the only way to get multiple characters in-game at the same time is to have multiple accounts. There is a real value in GW encouraging players to use a single account, because it makes the players more susceptible to account bans. Why would you want to create any situation at all where it was actually better for the player to have multiple accounts?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I dont have a problem with being set into a long term character. This could be solved by either offering a microtransaction (limited to how many you can use in a time period, say once a quarter or some such), or offering a once a year retrain. I do think that retraining needs to be offered as game mechanics change though.
I actually like the idea of it being 2.5 years or more to capp a character and I like the idea of not being able to train your training willy nilly, it makes the training desicions you make important.
anyway thats just me.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Either retraining needs to be in from the beginning (Not my preferred option, but should be really slow and possibly a skymetal option) or some way to test several abilities/ builds before actually training needs to be in place (preferred choice, maybe a magic training room to "test": you future potential or paths).
This game will not have the typical beta phase where players can tinker with various classes and ability builds before launch. The vast majority of players will start day one with the character they intend to play for the next 2.5 years from a role-play/ PnP concept. I see an issue if they have been playing for a few weeks but do not like the way the class is shaping up or how it fits with their playing-style. Without these methods they would either have to "re-roll" and lose the training time or switch to a new set of skills effectively wasting the previous training time as a bad decision but not he badges, ect. Both options push the 2.5 year cap out longer. Though I guess for the rich they could simply roll every possible type of character they may want to play and pay to keep them trained as a back-up; seems kind of silly to me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Personally I would like to see you have an account, and all your characters run through that one account.That's impossible to enforce.
Do NOT allow multiple logins from one person.So, the only way to get multiple characters in-game at the same time is to have multiple accounts. There is a real value in GW encouraging players to use a single account, because it makes the players more susceptible to account bans. Why would you want to create any situation at all where it was actually better for the player to have multiple accounts?
Yes, it's impossible to enforce a one-account-per-player system, as there's no way to tell the difference between who is running multiple accounts and who is just one of may people playing from a single IP or even a single computer.
One could allow multiple characters from the same account to be logged in at the same time, but that would favour multi-boxing more than family/friend groups. A single character could get the whole account banned, which is just if the same player is behind them all, but somewhat unjust if there's an individual player of a shared account that starts breaking rules.I think the best thing may be to keep it to one character per account logged in at one time, but to allow accounts to be linked in such a way that a 'parent' account would have access to 'child' accounts, being able to affect things like MTX store purchases, login times, and password changes. If a 'child' account gets in trouble, the email of the parent account receives a notification. That's how Wizard101 runs things, though it also offers 'family' price discounts for accounts linked in that way.
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As to retraining:
It may not be as difficult to reshape a character as you think. Say that everyone has certain basic capabilities to train, like general classes in school. Then there would be more specific areas, like spellcasting and weapons. Finally, the areas of training that focus on what is unique to a class, and thus carries its name, would be like picking one's major.
If you started out as a rogue and took moderate weaponskills, lots of general skills, and majored in 'rogue' to get access to things like sneak attack and trapfinding, you could later switch to a 'ranger' path by stopping the rogue-specific stuff like sneak attacks, picking up the ranger-specific favoured enemy and terrain, and shifting a bit more training time away from general skills and into weapons and minor spellcasting. You wouldn't have to start over because a lot of your general stuff still applies.
If you were well-trained in weapons, that training wouldn't have to be redone if you switched from a paladin to a barbarian, it's just that the equipment and abilities from the paladin's supernatural skills would not be available unless you're lawful good, and the rage-specific equipment and abilities of your barbarian training are unavailable if you are lawful.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Keep in mind that "capping" a character in 2.5 years was a preliminary statement about getting the equivalent of a level 20 PnP characters end abilities in ONE class.
It may not include time needed for leadership skills for guilds and alliances, harvesting, research & manufacturing skills for crafting, exploration skills for finding dungeons, trade skills for using Markets, tracking skills for Bounty Hunting, etc.
Also, since this is described as aclassless skills while it might take 2.5 years to get the rogue cap abilities, it might take a lot more time to branch out into other class's skills, like Divine Magic (clerics), Arcane Magic (wizard/sorcerer), Bard Songs, druid pets, summoners eidolan pets, alchemits potions & magic, etc.
People have been training characters in Eve for some 10-12 years and they still don't have a "capped" character with all the skills.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Right, this is about the 2.5 year to cap a single class. Even if there are general skills (common across all classes), and the like, the current estimate is 2.5 years. It is assumed that if you were to spread your self out more, dabble in other things, multiclass (what i plan to do), craft, gather or any of the other things that might be possible in this game it will take more than the 2.5 years to cap that single class. The issue still lies with the perception of wasted training time. In almost every game i have been in that has a skill/ ability system that allows characters to eventually earn them all there is also no ability to retrain. Normally this is due to the perception that you can slowly switch over to the new style. The reason that will not work in this game is the fact that your training time take real world time to complete. No matter how much i replay/ grind i can never catch up to those that effectively got lucky with there role choice/ playing-style.
Say I started the game as a paladin and after trying it out for a few weeks I wanted to switch to Wizard because i dd not like the majority of the style behind the paladin (given the PnP pally mechanics are not PFO pally mechanics). I would image that very little of my paladin skills would transfer or even be usable as a wizard; Heavy armor vs no armor, divine vs arcane, ect.
This game will not have the amount pre-launch lead up time that most games have. The alpha players are very small in numbers and the beta will be live; meaning no wipes. Your first character will most likely suffer mistakes or chose options that having tested them you would not have made. I feel there should be something to address this issue or Alt's may end up being just place holders for "crap I screwed this version up, better start playing Bob #2).
Also I would hate to see the Eve problem come here. Meaning pay for some time, login, que up your chosen skills, log out. Eventually log back in to que up more skills, buy more time, rinse and repeat for about 6 months. Now you can actually play game with your friends without sucking and if you want to try something else you still have a "fall-back".
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Goblin Squad Member
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Keep in mind that "capping" a character in 2.5 years was a preliminary statement about getting the equivalent of a level 20 PnP characters end abilities in ONE class.
Not quite. The game is designed to play out like the 10th to 15th levels of the PnP. 'capping' a character is not possible, you can 'cap' an archetype on your character by getting its 20th merit badge.
And 2.5 years is the estimate for the power gamer. Badges can require both a skill training and a in-game act. I expect a lot of the more casual players to fall behind in their in-game requirements, and be ahead in their skills. And getting the 20th badge isn't a "you've put 3 years into skill training, here's your badge," the 20th badge and probably a few below it may require some very challenging tasks, some people may never be able to reach the 20th badge.
When Ryan talked about 20th badge characters, he didn't make it sound like everyone would eventually get to a 20th archetype badge, like everyone in in a Themepark has a max level character. He made it sound like meeting a 20th badge character wouldn't be a common occurrence, and those players would be coveted for their ability.
I would be supremely disappointed if in 5 years everyone who has stayed on from Early Enrollment had a 20th archetype badge. I don't want to see the game become a time-sink until max level like every themepark mmo, I want it to be a series of challenges that get progressively harder(in both character and player ability), with reasonable time-sinks put int he game for immersion purposes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Do NOT allow multiple logins from one person.So, the only way to get multiple characters in-game at the same time is to have multiple accounts. There is a real value in GW encouraging players to use a single account, because it makes the players more susceptible to account bans. Why would you want to create any situation at all where it was actually better for the player to have multiple accounts?
Technically I think blatent playing of multiple characters at a time, should be a banable offense. Now in many cases, it obviously won't be an identifiable one, and without very clear undeniable uses (IE characters being clearly hardwired together, constantly doing moves in exact syncronization as a keyboard macro etc...) it would be ignored.
Due to the fact that in 90% of cases, you can't with any certainty distinguish between if something is 2 legitimate players in the same household, or one player running 2 computers, I would like for the game to be designed in a way that most simul play methods are just impractical. IE the possibility of something popping up and attacking someones AFK set to the side heal/buff bot, should be high. Characters actually needing some level of attentive focus regardless of what they are doing. If a role can be played to a decent level of use, with 1/4th focus tapping on a second keyboard, or switching over to a seperate window etc... your role is designed boring as heck.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...the possibility of something popping up and attacking someones AFK set to the side heal/buff bot, should be high...Maybe if logging out and back in is very fast; otherwise, you're penalizing someone for using a toilet instead of a catheter.
Or you use the toilet, before heading off into dangerous territory alone. If you are with a group, than that group can form to protect the afk member. The key of course to reducing the multi-account issue, is that protecting the semi-idle character, slows one down, more than the benefit of non-attentive heals/buffs are.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Technically I think blatent playing of multiple characters at a time, should be a banable offense.Technically I think that is completely unreasonable.
I completely agree.
It will be not only possible, but easy to get multiple characters online under your control at the same time. Why do you want the only people who can do that to be the people who are willing to break the rules?
It would also be really nice if you didn't give away your alts because they were never online at the same time as you.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just because anti multi-boxing policies are impossible to enforce 100% doesn't mean it should be encouraged. It should still be against the T&C and should be enforced where it is obvious somebody is doing it. It opens up far too many avenues for cheating and abusing game mechanics.
Onishi is right, it should be a ban-able offense.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As soon as you encourage multi-boxing as a perfectly acceptable way to play, you force everyone to do it if they want the same advantages. For most people, this is not a fun way to play, nor is it a fun way to interact with other players when most PC's you see are just an empty shell because the player is paying more attention to alt #3.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It opens up far too many avenues for cheating and abusing game mechanics.
Such as?
Edit:
As soon as you encourage multi-boxing as a perfectly acceptable way to play, you force everyone to do it if they want the same advantages. For most people, this is not a fun way to play, nor is it a fun way to interact with other players when most PC's you see are just an empty shell because the player is paying more attention to alt #3.
Wait. What?! That's absurd. I never found that to be an issue in EVE.