Removal Of The Acceptance Of Alts

[Fenrir Greycloth]

I have been long against the use of alts, in every game I have evr played. For me the use of an alt to advance your rp is like outsourcing jobs to another country.

I firmly believe that if you need another character to play to help further your current characters rp than you're not looking hard enough at other peoples rp. The whole point of a mmorpg is to be able to rp with others in a sumiliar "world". I am sure that certain cases are acceptable but the large majority if alts are being misused whether to get tokens on certain creatures, to spy on another alliance, or to manipulate people to do your bidding, or to complete the same quest twice for the reward.

This is why I am asking for the removal of the acceptance of alternate characters. To many times have I seen the abuse of alts to win the head contest or to flame another character.

I am asking for the complete removal of alts, except
for the use of rpcs. They are the only people out there that have the real need to use alts.

As for things like the training grounds I know that mrd and other rpcs can take care of those alts.

[dst]

And how do you propose of doing that? You really think that it can be possible? If you do believe that you can ban the usage of alts then...well...what can I say other that the fact that you don't know too much about certain things.
Ok, you remove them but then you need an "alt police" to monitor the accounts. I don't think Mur wants that (otherwise he would have banned the alts long before).

And the reason for all this: one word PROXY. They are slow but they do their job.
And another issue: what happens to the ones that use the same PC/laptop etc? Those will be banned as being alts? It's their fault that they share the same pc? I think not.

So, how do you suggest your idea should be put in practice because I don't see you coming up with a solution for the problem.

[Fenrir Greycloth]

First of all, I don't want alts to be banned. I don't want them openly accepted.

I know of several games that track the ips of it's players and post them on a log so that they can be monitered. Trading on between accounts that have ever used the same ip should not be possible.

What I suggest doing is placing one of these logs in md' if there isn't one already. So that people can't make an alt load it with trees and wait for the trees to max their age and trade
them to their main foe insane boosts in ve. Doing such things is not right for those players who play ligitimily. Or those who use alts to put tokens on the creatures they want.

If the removal of the acceptance of alts isn't allowed than a way to stop the trading of creatures between accounts needs to be forbidden. Ever since the ctc came out there have been massive ammounts of ve boosts.

I am not a professional coder, but I do see something that needs to be adressed.

[Prince Marvolo]

Its not cause YOU dont accept them, you can force Others to do so

[Fenrir Greycloth]

Extra thought... What if we remove the stat gains made fe saccing creatures that were traded?


Marvolo you like how people abuse the use of alts? Just because the current game mechanics allow me to make ten alts load them with critters and then wait for them to age does not mean I should.

Sure, go ahead make alts to rp by yourself with or for a change of pace from your main but don't allow them to trade inbetween.

Edited August 9, 2009 by Fenrir Greycloth

[Prince Marvolo]

Then why would you trade them?
Not all trades are Alt buisiness Lol

[Raven]

[quote name='Fenrir Greycloth' date='09 August 2009 - 06:12 PM' timestamp='1249837961' post='39046']
Extra thought... What if we remove the stat gains made fe saccing creatures that were traded?
[/quote]

So you suggest that creature I traded and now has few k wins and I'll eventualy sacrifice it for stats... It would be now negated and I wouldn't get anything?

I can just suggest you to stop coming up with ideas like this.

[dst]

[quote name='Fenrir Greycloth' date='09 August 2009 - 07:55 PM' timestamp='1249836951' post='39043']
1)I know of several games that track the ips of it's players and post them on a log so that they can be monitered.
2)Trading on between accounts that have ever used the same ip should not be possible.
3)If the removal of the acceptance of alts isn't allowed than a way to stop the trading of creatures between accounts needs to be forbidden. Ever since the ctc came out there have been massive ammounts of ve boosts.

I am not a professional coder, but I do see something that needs to be adressed.
[/quote]

I edited a bit your post so it will be easier for me to reply.

1)You really don't get it: PROXIES! I can use each day a different proxy and so can do others. Even of other games do it, I don't think MD is evolved enough for this. There are other issues to be addressed. Alts are the last.
2)That's a big cr**. And I told you already: what happens to the players that use the same laptop/pc? Not to mention a recent fact: some players left for several days (vacation) and they asked other players to log in with their account to get the active days. Should both parties be punished just because they WANT to be part of the game?
3)Here I can come with so many possibilities to bend that rule that you will be amazed.


Now, I would have some partial solutions but they are far away from perfection. We can try but...I am sure you lots of players will find a solution to avoid the rules. After all, MD community is a special one made mostly of very smart people. If you want to challenge/stimulate them more put this rule into place . I would love to see the outcome

[Fenrir Greycloth]

The legit ones are acceptable! I don't want the removal of the ctc.
But a way to stop people who do things like this from doing it.

And unfortunately just stopping an alt from trading on the same ip won't work. We will need to have a way for the logs to stay with the creature itself and to recognise going back to it's original owners ip.

Yes raven. When you trade for a creature, you don't trade purely to sacceifice it later on, but for it's strength as a creature. Why sacc a creature with a crap load of tokens on it? You wouldn't unless you really had to.

As for bending the rules but and everything dst, there will always be a dst out there. Lol

[dst]

And there will always be dst's wannabes like you Fenrir

[Fenrir Greycloth]

Wow your ego is almost as big as metal bunnys haha

[Raven]

I change creatures every here and there.. None of my creatures is one of those I had when I started playing. Every one of them will be sacced eventualy when I level up same creature to max..

[Fenrir Greycloth]

But surely you won't sac a drachorns or bloopact or se other powerful creature. You can only get so many.

Surely not all of you creatures that you use day to day are from trades?

What I am guessing is that you did just as I described. And you are against it because those creatures are now useless.

If you trade for a powerful creature you are not going to just give it up withoutt some serious thought. If you gave something up that is really valuable for that creature why sacc it later on?

If none of the creatures you started plating with are with you right now, you probably sacced them all... But I really doubt anyone would just sacc a drachorns for a couple stat points. I have one creature I have yet to sacc and that is my bloodpact. I will not sacc him at all because he is essential to a lot of my rituals.

Edited August 9, 2009 by Fenrir Greycloth

[Raven]

Why wouldn't I sac my bloodpact for stats if I can get a new one that is totally the same?

Its same with drachorns but I don't fight with them so often.

And how would I get one of these in really easy way if not by trading? And later reppeting the process over and over again.

[dst]

Let me give you an example: I was in need of a type of crits really bad and I had no time to wait the amount of time to get them. So I traded some from another player. When my own crits grew enough I was able to sac the ones I traded. For me was more than a fair trade. For others might seem a bad move but hey! everyone's entitled to their own opinion

[Burns]

seems i popped in too late for this topic, it's already flamed enough the way it is...

just one more question: why do you care if players boost their VE a tiny bit faster than normally?
alts in HC are being punished anyway...

and people rping with themselves is pityable, but why should it be banned? who cares? don't read the crap if you don't like it, and sometimes something good comes off it...

[Guybrush Threepwood]

I do agree that it's increadibly annoying to see everyone's Ve going through the roof like that. I've worked relatively hard without aging critters on alts to get my Ve to the point it's at. And it is also annoying that tokens are best bought on alts, something awful tempting to do, but I have not done. Yeah, alts are abused a lot, and I do wonder how some people get the critters they do. There are a few things that could be done. For example, require a certain amount of vitories/wins or something before a person can trade. Problem being that it would have to be a ludicrous number before it would really affect people. Another is have all trades monitored to make sure that they aren't one way deals, like imperial for diddly squat between an older person and a random MP3 no one has ever heard of.

Like DST said, there are ways around all that though, and it's a pain in the butt to try and monitor every single trade.

[Fenrir Greycloth]

Well, it is not like we can just write a line of code and the problem is fixed. There will always need to be someone watching over the player base to make sure noone is cheating. That is one of the roles as a game manager I am afraid. Maybe we need another one?

[Lifeline]

i see this thread with high chances to win the worst thread of year 09 category

people use alts to get age on their crits and then trade them to their main. so what!? everybody can do that so there is nothing unfair at all. if ur moral standards tell u that is cheating, well then that is ur problem but certainly not a "mistake" of the game that needs to be changed.

look perm stats and principles are the fruits from training that crit after it was transferred and then sacing it. the only thing that is abuseable are the VP and Vit boost. so the only half decent way would be to only remove the vit and vp boost from transferred crits. but what about real crit trades between 2 different players? it would cost all players trading normally vit and vp boost ... how fair is that?

and what about people playing 2 completely different roles? like one honorable knight that protects bob for example but at other times they prefer to play a character that is dunno an evil necromancer or something like that. there are a lot of players that invest a lot of time in multiple characters and dont use alts to only transfer crits.

[Fenrir Greycloth]

Then they would ask an rpc for permission to make an alt

I know this isn't a popular topic because a lot of people do it. An insane ammount do. But just because everyone does something does not mean it us right.

[Burns]

see, i agree with you on the fact that alts with the single purpose of storing creatures there are not 'right', but most alts do a lot more than that...

most of them have a role of some kind, else people wouldn't bother to play them, and filtering the few which don't have any purpose is just too much work for the little damage they can actually do

if you personally don't want to use alts for tokens, VE and so on, fine, don't do it and have the feeling that you are morally superior to others, but if others want to do it, let them and think of them what you like...

[Kafuuka]

There is a subtle difference between banning alts and discouraging alts. Banning is difficult, perhaps even impossible. Discouraging will have little influence on existing alts. However, right now it feels like alts are encouraged. As if when someone would ask 'who does not have an alt?' and someone would actually dare to raise their hand, people would point and laugh and say things like 'noob'. If this mentality would change, perhaps fewer alts would be created.

Alts are encouraged in various ways. I've seen people talk about switching to their alt, saying they were going to make another alt etc. There's been discussions in which 'that is exploitable by alts' was met with 'yeah, but it would take a lot of effort, so let them do it.' Right now there is a mention of Libs army in the AL. The least convincing alt award... People aren't even supposed to hide the fact that they use alts anymore. And everybody knows what alt means.

The influence of alts on roleplay varies with the skill of the player. It takes time, effort and planning to develop a character. If you want to play two characters you should have twice the time for it. If you want to play two characters you can be in character a, in character b and out of character. Lots of people mix up in and out of character, so this 'added difficulty' is not to be underestimated. I have often had new characters say hello to me and talk like if I knew them for a long time and then I can start guessing whose alt it is... not that it is that hard. Added to this is alts interacting with each other. This is something I would avoid at all cost - alts being best friends implies they would have the same enemies and work together against them, just try not to make your fights unfair... alts being worst enemies results in fighting with yourself, which is very non interactive - and thus actively ignore everything that might lead frequent interaction between the alts, unless it is totally inconsistent with a characters logic to ignore something.
That said, it is possible, but how many people really have [b]both[/b] the skill and the time to [b]fully develop[/b] two characters? I don't even spend enough time on the one character that I roleplay. Lots of people probably roleplay an alt because they got bored on their main... They'll get bored on their alt twice as fast.

Quests, HC... this has all been stated before. I do reject the 'two wrongs make a right' kind of arguments. It is not because you can use the same exploit everybody else uses, that it is a good thing.

Good uses of alts: sometimes a quest requires interaction with a character that didn't exist yet, so an alt is the obvious solution. I used to have an alt to walk around Golemus in case a quest involved that place and I'd need to know more about it, it was aptly named 'scout' or something. If you are really strict and your character loathes Loreroot, it makes sense to switch to an alt if you do need to get something in that territory. Or if you are stuck in story mode but want your RP fix. Being a MD addict that has so much time they can play three entirely different characters without ever confusing in and out of character knowledge or start to talk to themselves, even if no one else is online to talk with.... well, perhaps it should be allowed when no one else is available. Having MPD.


Alts should not be banned, but actively frowned upon until we're all wrinkled. *buys stocks in anti-aging cream*

[Grido]

"Then they would ask an rpc for permission to make an alt"
you're trying to kill free time RPC's have aren't you?


firstly let me point out, that if this ever does happen, it won't for loooooonng time, personally i don't think it'll ever happen


so you are wanting to prevent people making alts?
for a moment forget i'm an rpc, now i have many alts, i don't rp with many of them, and those rarely, i use them to look at different story routes there are, for personal knowledge(not to tell or use in game), you are saying i should not be able to do this? (currently it says explicitly in the rules you're allowed to do this)

[Fenrir Greycloth]

Yes burns I do. The original reason that was put there was because the storylune needed thoroughal testing. I believe it has been tested. If you read something in the game it does not necesarily mean it is right. For instance read the hc page and tell me how much of it is applicable now.

What we have here is just a poor genral attitude to work and the right way of doing things and the easy wrong way. Mur cannot possibly police everything. That is what shoeps was for, to take care of normal game thongs so that mur could spend his time coding and developing.

Perhaps this is something we should look into once more? Having a gm or two that can sift through the crap in a (mostly) unbiased way. They couldnhave a set ofnfuide lines to follow and work like an lho but with a bit more power.

And if anyone thinks but look at the last gm, that person didn't have anyone to keep an eye on him. Perhaps that is a good reason to have several to keep each other in Check.

Lhos could still be in place, but the gms would have more abilities to check on the honesty of players, deal with player squabbling, and other minor things.

[Burns]

you consider this work?

i think you should throughly think about your attitude towards MD...
if you think grinding is work, you are surely doing it wrong LOL

and really, how much time do you wnat people to invest?
being a GM IS a job, same with being an RPC, they are doing a goddamn hard job every day to make the game a bit more worthwhile for the rest of the players who are here for FUN

if you want a bunch of GMs out there again, you'll need to replace them every 2 weeks, MD will burn them out within days if they have to deal with such bs as minor alt-abuse, player-squabbles, 'checking honesty of people' and whatever else you are thinking about...

in all the time people are dealing with such things, they can't play and are most likely not having any fun, and unlike RPCs, who can take break from questing and such, a GM would have to be there 24/7 for all the crap happening in MD...

Shoeps was a great and active player before he was made GM, and look at him now... he's sick of MD!