Is Alt-Spamming even a bad thing?
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I see a lot of comments in regards to how certain mechanics implementations will cause people to spam alt characters(toons, whatever) in the game.
My question is: What's really bad about that?
Some players actively enjoy running several different characters through a game. Making character builds in fact is a major mini-game to a lot of player types. Also, depending on how the game is run once it releases, alt-spamming could be a major coup for Dynamight as a company, because I figure most accounts will only allow so many 'toons' and you would need to pay for additional slots to play. Even in the Free-to-play'esk version of the game, as opposed to VIP monthly premium play, players would more than likely still need to purchase a base account for each set of alts, and so they would be debating whether it was more cost-effective to buy more slots on their main accounts, or open up new accounts, and of course there would be a finite number of slots an account could handle before new accounts would be needed anyway.
These are GOOD things for Dynamight Studios, because it means additional revenue from the game, without a Pay-to-win element being involved. Additional 'toons' that specialize in different things, from hunting/gathering, to crafting, to even being the diplomatic bridge between allied guilds is a natural occurrence in MMOs and should if anything be encouraged, not looked at as a downside.
Besides all this, every character in Fractured gets 5 presets for skills, AND 5 presets for Talents, and in the case of Talents, they get their 60 talent point threshold to respend as they see fit on each preset, where with skills, once you unlock a skill, those knowledge points are spent, and you can't then unlearn a skill in a preset to learn a different one in another preset. This of course also assumes there's no 're-spec' option added in later. This already makes for a world of character role customizations in the building process, not to mention any of these presets can be deleted and rebuilt without cost as well, thus allowing for an infinite possible set of character builds on every character. The main limit is total knowledge points acquired and acquirable in game, and how you spend them on skills as opposed to talents.
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Alts can be a bad thing, but I don't think anything can be done about them.
Examples in which alts offer advantages: if the game has a crafting focus system, having more alts = more money. Scouting ahead with a cheaply geared alt to protect your main from gankers / camping an alt outside a dungeon so you can see who comes in. If the game has travel limitations for zergs, these can be bypassed by having multiple zvz-ready alts located at key areas.
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@Razvan said in Is Alt-Spamming even a bad thing?:
(...)if the game has a crafting focus system, having more alts = more money(...)
This doesn't seem to be the case, or am I unaware of something?
@Razvan said in Is Alt-Spamming even a bad thing?:
(...)camping an alt outside a dungeon so you can see who comes in(...)
That's a bit of two conditions at once situation. It's not just about having multiple characters, but about running multiple clients/characters at once. And that should be prohibited by the rules. as it indeed offers drastic advantages.
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This doesn't seem to be the case, or am I unaware of something?
I was talking about ways in which alts can be advantageous in general since there's a lot of stuff we don't know about Fractured yet.
That's a bit of two conditions at once situation. It's not just about having multiple characters, but about running multiple clients/characters at once. And that should be prohibited by the rules. as it indeed offers drastic advantages.
Some people have multiple devices that can run the game. Some use VPN. In my case I can even run the game on 2 different machines with different ISP (wired <100ping, and 4g shared from mobile for ~200ping). How can you tell that a character which is a few screens away is someone's alt anyway?
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@Razvan said in Is Alt-Spamming even a bad thing?:
Alts can be a bad thing, but I don't think anything can be done about them.
Examples in which alts offer advantages: if the game has a crafting focus system, having more alts = more money. Scouting ahead with a cheaply geared alt to protect your main from gankers / camping an alt outside a dungeon so you can see who comes in. If the game has travel limitations for zergs, these can be bypassed by having multiple zvz-ready alts located at key areas.True. Alts can and will be used wrong for sure, and that is the main reason why I do not personally like much of alts. I understand alts so people can play different races and classes, but the positive things will stop there.
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@Razvan @Logain I guess people can benefit from alts used for crafting and farming. More characters means access for more timed plots like farming and processed resources (e.g. tanning tubes). In addition, we have so little information of crafting in general so it is hard to say what kind of mechanics there will eventually be implemented. I personally hope that we will not benefit from alts or at least that the benefits will be relatively small.
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There is a difference between having multiple characters and having multiple clients running. I have no problem with people having alts (multiple characters run one at a time) as apposed to multiboxing (running multiple clients at the same time). True there are some time based situations where alts can give a big advantage, like garrisons in World of Warcraft. There are other situations where they do not, Like gardening in Black Desert where crops only grow while you are online and the contribution points to rent farm plots are shared across the account.
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In UO I ran two accounts on two computers. I had one crafting while I was playing another. I knew a guy that ran 9 accounts at once. 8 of them were running some kind of macro crafting or skill working while he played one. He had several monitors setup so he could watch them all in case he was asked if he was unattended macroing.
I can see players having several alts simply for having different builds for pvp or pve. I ran 16 characters in SWTOR just so I could do all the storylines lol.
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Alts will have a huge impact for economy in Fractured. Why travel to another planets gathering resources under heavy debuffs when you can do that with alt who already live on that planet? This will also lead that guilds will have sub-guilds on another planets making the access to all resources as easy as possible.
In Albion alt scouts are a real pain in the ass and developers there wants to limit that kind of behavior. People are scouting all kind of content especially gates, hotspots, dungeons and such. When people arrives, a little bit later they will be ganked.
If all this is possible in Fractured, of course I am going to benefit the loop holes as much as possible, however, I would rather like to live without this kind of alt behaviors.
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In the MMOs I've played, I can't say I've ever enjoyed the mechanics that actively promote alt spam.
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The problem I see with people's complaints about Alt spam is the fact that without fast travel, and shared banks, the advantage of alts for money making purposes goes way down. You still have to physically transport any materials or products in order to make it worthwhile, whether your using 1 account or 10. The same is true of time costs, you still have to spend whatever time it takes, and finally, if the game cuts back on the ability to use Macros to play, even better.
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@Billa2720 said in Is Alt-Spamming even a bad thing?:
There is a difference between having multiple characters and having multiple clients running.
Yes, but what is the difference between one person having 2 clients on the same PC and one person having 2 clients open on two different PC? The only difference is that one can be caught and the other can't.
The problem I see with people's complaints about Alt spam is the fact that without fast travel, and shared banks, the advantage of alts for money making purposes goes way down.
Then maybe you should reread the thread? For this specific problem: you have to transfer resources anyway, but using an alt scout makes the journey way safer.
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@Razvan said in Is Alt-Spamming even a bad thing?:
Then maybe you should reread the thread?
I created the thread, so I'm familiar with it's premise.
I don't see it making the travel any safer at all. I see it making it so you might use some throw away alts to take the journey, but if captured/killed in a PVP area, the stock is still lost, and thus the profits are still gone.As to multiple PCs logged in at the same time (or multiple windows on a PC with different toons) this is still stopped or at least slowed down if you have to pay for every active account that you run, and only 1 character from a given account can be logged in at any given time.
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@Billa2720 said in Is Alt-Spamming even a bad thing?:
There is a difference between having multiple characters and having multiple clients running. I have no problem with people having alts (multiple characters run one at a time) as apposed to multiboxing (running multiple clients at the same time). True there are some time based situations where alts can give a big advantage, like garrisons in World of Warcraft. There are other situations where they do not, Like gardening in Black Desert where crops only grow while you are online and the contribution points to rent farm plots are shared across the account.
In themepark games like WoW (retail) I do not mind much of the benefits from alts because the impact is typically quite small. However, garrison is a good example where alts can matter a lot. That BDO systems sounds somewhat interesting, however, in other hand it benefits those who can play 24/7.
In sandbox games with player driven economy and open world PvP the situation is totally different. There alts can give economical advantage over other players and alt scouts are used for spying ganking opportunities. These two factors what alts can bring to the table are something I personally see as the main downsides of them.
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The way I see it, you have a few things to consider:
- The type of player who would create Alts just to scout ahead or act as bait to draw out ambushes is going to create alts no matter what the rest of the game mechanics are like. Throw away characters are just that, throw-aways. Anytime you don't want to risk your mains, your going to use the throwaway method to circumvent that risk, regardless.
- If the game makes it where every player can technically learn every skill, but it puts a geographical and a time-sensitive restraint on learning too many skills at once, alts aren't going to really circumvent most of these limitations. Sure, an alt might overcome the geographic aspect of a limitation by having that alt based around the crafting tables/material spawn locations needed for a given craft, BUT with having to physically transport goods across not 1 continent, but optimaly, 3 worlds, the alt doesn't really overcome the geographic restraint at all.
- With time sensitivity restraints, things like the tanning tubs needing 16 hrs to 'mature' and finalize a segment of a crafting, players are still limited in learning everything, while still being allowed to do so, and no amount of Alts can overccome these types of restraints in the first place. What it comes down to is amount of time you can invest in this game, period!
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@GamerSeuss, pick one:
I created the thread, so I'm familiar with it's premise.
I don't see it making the travel any safer at all
hint: you obviously don't transport the stuff on your alt, but use it to scout ahead
As to multiple PCs logged in at the same time (or multiple windows on a PC with different toons) this is still stopped or at least slowed down if you have to pay for every active account that you run, and only 1 character from a given account can be logged in at any given time.
So basically it's alright as long as only people who paid for an extra account do it? What happens if/when the game goes f2p?
Other than that I explained in the first reply how others (including me) abuse of alts in other similar games, and that I don't think there's a solution to deal with it.
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@Razvan the thing is, if you scout ahead and actually find a group of gankers, you are goinf back to the city with your Main and all the resources, right?
That pretty much ends your play session right there, haha
But what if you pay a group of mercenaries, or are accompanied by guild companions to make that trip. You are going to fight, right?Would it be cool to have a tracker character that can actually give you some information of the enemies nearby ( equipment, skills, number of players ) before the fight so you can prepare accordingly? Would it outweight the expendable alt option?
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Actual Alt Spam, like with games such as Archeage, are usually pretty cancerous and invite botting and people paying others for their services, in my opinion anyway. Definitely not something I'd like to see here.
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If you want to pay for a separate account just to have a disposable scout alt to sneak ahead and take that risk, using up not only another account, but possibly another PC, more power too you. It doesn't really give you a huge advantage at all. Shoot, spells and pets in other games do the same things, and its balanced out by the convenience of the solution, not very!
The game is not set to go f2p, it is set to go pay once for your account, then free to play from then on, with monthly premium VIP access. If, sometime in the future, the game actively goes true f2p, by then, there will have been so many people figuring out exploits and loopholes that it won't matter if you're running a throw-away alt or 6
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Yes, alts are bad for MMOs. I automatically do not play games that have any kind of mechanics that encourage alt making.
Its not as simple as saying alts are bad in and of themselves. I certainly think alts break immersion and i play mmos in order to experience a virtual world - but there is more to it than that. If a game has benefits to making alts it signals fundamental design problems.
In some MMOs - typically themeparks - alts are blatantly encouraged even to the point that there are mechanics in the game based around making alts. These are always present in games where the games experience, its 'content', is consumed and you would run out of things to do even on one character. A good MMO does not give you time to play lots of characters.
In other MMOs alts become more of a strategic asset, throwaway characters for certain purposes. A game where this is advantageous becomes a game that people will do it in, and a game that people will do it in becomes a game that you must do it in to remain on an even playing field with everyone else. The issue here is that this is subverting the multiplayer nature of mmos firstly. If everyone has a scout alt, then the player role of 'scout' stops existing. But secondly and perhaps more importantly, if something CAN be handled by such a throwaway character then that thing is obviously too basic and not an engaging thing to start with, meaning the game itself is designed badly in that regard. If you have a game where people are making alts for a certain task then you have a game where that task needs to either be made to require more than an alt to do, or removed entirely.Players will make an use alts if it is sensible for them to do so. Universally this occurs when it is not sensible to play your character in the game world. Alts indicate flaws in game design.
