While we’ve briefly touched upon this topic in our Discord discussions, one aspect of gameplay that remains undecided is whether to support multiple characters or restrict players to a single PC per account.
Both formats present their own set of advantages and disadvantages, but personally, I’m inclined towards supporting multiple characters. Games following the RPI style that allow for multiple characters provide players with the opportunity to explore different avenues of roleplay and experiment with coded skillsets they may not want to commit to long-term. This can alleviate the potential monotony that might arise from playing a single character for an extended period. While we do intend to implement aging and permanent death mechanics to prevent characters from becoming unrealistically old, even a couple of real years can feel excessively long, especially when new skillsets are introduced that don’t align with the current character concept.
Of course, there are challenges associated with managing multiple characters, such as preventing information crossover and addressing potential exploitation. We’re open to hearing your thoughts and suggestions on this matter, including whether you prefer a single-character approach or multiple characters, and how best to implement and enforce it.
I’m generally against allowing multiple characters for an individual due to the possibility of bleed but after experiencing a system that allowed people to have multiple characters I noticed that it’s not as common as some may make it sound.
With some rules in place, I see no issue to allowing people to play multiple characters. People generally get attracted to one of their characters and stick to it like glue since it becomes a part of their persona to a degree. I doubt those people would really abuse another character just to get information.
Having the ability to play multiple characters would also alleviate one of the most draining moments for some in a perma-death game’s lifetime: the death.
I have friends that get so distraught over the curtain’s call that they drop the game for quite a while. But if you had a second character who maybe was more on the backburner, you can switch to that one mentally and continue there.
I for one say that multiple characters should be allowed. Subconscious bleed might happen, but most people auto-correct and a few rules here and there can help with that.
Red teams will always exist, so people will find ways to cheat and meta and all that, but a person who wants to break the system will do so whether you let him or not.
I’m against it, because I’ve played both in free alt type games (You can just log out and login as a different character) and restricted alt games (Where you lose access temporarily to one and start playing another). There is ALWAYS abuse, because the player knows all this stuff from Character A and then has to force Character B not to know it.
Example, Maybe Character A got scammed and robbed by a group on day one of play, they tricked him with a job offer. Character B now gets presented with the same scam, but seems to find every reason under the sun to avoid it, or actively avoids the area it happens. While not the end of the world, it’s still cheating because the player knows X Y Z happens at this spot and this is the scam and now the player suddenly has a bad feeling about it, doesn’t trust anything and is outwardly motivated to avoid said encounter.
Not to mention that most RPI’s don’t have the volume of players to even support the barebones game. I know a lot of us are Arm vets. You saw their folly over there, “No Salarri Merchants, No Kuraci Agents, but let’s open up four more new clans/tribes further diluting the world under the guise of CHOICE.”
The Alt conversation is one you have when the game is thriving and running out of stuff for players to do, or there are lines for roles IMO, not when it’s just starting and/or you have a handful of players playing during prime time (American or European).
So again, I’m just some asshole on the internet, but my recommendation is cool your horses on the alt conversation and figure out the base game, the basic needs of the game and the things that will flesh the world out and bring it alive before you start worrying if Player A might be bored with his one and only character…
I’m in support of allowing for alts. Maybe I’m in the minority, but characters, to me, are like virtual machines. I can switch into and out of them with no problem. I would be lying if I said it didn’t take effort and active thought preventing bleed, but it’s worth it to me not to let that happen.
The arguments against it don’t hold water. The only valid one is potential abuse IMO. While this is a concern, people would abuse the game in other ways even if alts were disallowed.
I’m against multiplay, for reasons of abuse, bleed, and increasing the value of a player character. I’ve seen people use their alts to orchestrate stories or gather resources for a “main character”, or to gang up against someone they dislike, or to railroad a romance that they really want to happen - and their targets don’t always realize that kind of thing is going on because it isn’t known who plays who. By forcing people to play the one character you not only avoid this, but you encourage them to be far more cautious and thoughtful in their decisions and interactions with others, which often deepens the character being played and prevents it from becoming a throw away “resource alt.”
Thanks everyone. We’re keeping a close eye on this thread. Please feel free to keep contributing to the discussion! We’ll take decisions based on your feedback.
For now our lean seems to be against multiplay. While in staff we felt it might’ve been worth a try, this is a community effort and the arguments have been quite good.
We really appreciate everyone tugging our ear on this topic! Your thoughts are really appreciate.
