How many clients should Second Age allow?

[Euph]

loth is awol too? who is taking care of my HOOSE?

[Derrick]

Just a couple notes:
We would not delete developed characters.
This is not a binding poll
It's incredibly difficult to GM a crafter here no matter how many accounts a person might have.

[ironfistmax]

Why not let people play the way they want? Even though you can run multiple clients here, no one is forcing you to do so. Why not go enjoy the UO like you remember and will we will enjoy the UO the way we remember.

[Hemperor]

Why not let people play the way they want? Even though you can run multiple clients here, no one is forcing you to do so. Why not go enjoy the UO like you remember and will we will enjoy the UO the way we remember.

This game is about interaction with others.

Why would I want to play normally when you have every possible character macroed up and are playing at an extreme advantage. It basically forces me to do so as well.

[benny-]

Its a hard decision to make imo. Allowing multiclienting is a big attraction for a shard, removing it could deter players from here. On the other hand, it does reduce social interaction and can easily be abused.

Im not sure to what extent it is used here (as Im very new =D), but on other t2a-based shards, Ive seen multiclienting used commonly to give players huge advantages over other players.

Such as giving yourself a crosshealer......using a thief and a blue gatemage to steal off other players (if the thief dies the gatemage grabs the loot from his body, gates the thief to chaos shrine, the thief comes back and goes right back to stealing =/), or having a red on hand that your pvmer can gate in (to kill any blues who try to come to "your" spawn)....theres endless possibilities of abuse that can come with allowing multiclienting, none of them era-accurate.

Ultimately I say revert to the original playstyle of one account (at least one account in use at a time) per ip....if for no other reason than its one more way this shard's can maintain gameplay similar to old uo.

[Zim]

I dont want to, but I do support the one account idea. I would like the idea of same characters on the account to get auto co-owner status somehow.

[Kylock]

As much as I hate to say it, you will never have a 100% T2A replica. Second Age might get all of the PVP aspects the same -- but it still will never feel the same. We've all evolved since the era using vent, razor (better macros overall), and basically veterans just understand every corner of the game. People saying 3 accounts is killing the server, in my opinion it's doing the opposite. If everyone had one character logged in, the server would look empty. I wouldn't bother with a crafter char or mule when I could be on my bard hunting, or pvp char fighting. Multi clienting allows me to do both simultaneously, without hurting the server.

However allowing 3 clients at the same time, totally makes this game too easy, risk free, and no real community. Any character can gain skills off his other character. Where is the adventure, risk or even FUN in that? If you want to have 7xGM skills, 225 stats instantly, there are servers that offer that. However, the true UO Fans, the old school gamers, respect and understand the gameplay.

No Risk? Too easy? There are several pks on the server who will hand you your ass in a heartbeat -- there are also just as many clueless newbs on the server who have trouble gaining skills, gold, and loot overall.

Crafting is pointless now, to an extent. Allowing 3 clients at the same time, means instead of 1000 ingots an hour, you can get 3000.

Nonsense. My vendors sell out daily, I don't even have time to keep up restocking them with multiclienting, and the only purpose I do stock them is to keep newer players equipped. I only mined about 5k of my ingots to GM my blacksmith, the other 45k I bought off new players which helped them out greatly.

Where is fun in stealing from your other character knowing it's safe just to raise your skill. Go buy a pack horse and steal from it. It's a little riskier.

Back in the day all we did was sit in a house and steal dye tubs back and fourth from eachother. Pack horses were another way, but more of a hassle & not as popular on the server I played.

"Oh no!! My Red just died, let me get my blue character to come res him." Weird... no pride, no skill required, no risk, no adventure. Multi clienting eliminates the soul essence of this game.

If you haven't noticed, there is statloss. Noone resurrecting red anytime till they're blue basically.

"It does take the fun out of the game, but it's easier to gain skills off another one of my characters that doesn't hit back." What happened to sparring?!

Well, I don't know about others but i've noticed my skills slowing majorly or not moving at all versus characters with no combat skills GM'd. For example I was working wrestling, at 95.9. I wrestled one of my mules for 4 hours, not .1 gain then I call a guildmate over who has GM wrestling -- 2 swings and I gain.

"Oh no, I just got PKed!! let me Alt Tab to my other client and come get my belongings, kill the PK and rez my player before it's too late." PATHETIC.... If you can't handle losing what you have, don't have it on you. That is the purpose of this game.

From what i've seen from the pks here, they'll be killing your 2nd character and collecting their loot as well -- or they'll be long gone with your loot before you can alt tab and get there.

__

If we keep 3 accounts pretty soon everyone and their mothers will have every single type of character possible, the economy will further go down the drain.

I've made the same point elsewhere, that it's hard to make a livingas a crafter on a shard where everyone can multi account and make their own. I'm all for one account so guys that craft have a fighting chance at making a decent living and serve a higher purpose than simply keeping my own PvPer whichI likely won't ever have) in gear.

Not everyone enjoys crafting. I really don't, the only reason I made a smith was to supply my guildmates and new players. My vendors sell out nonstop like I said, there's PLENTY of room for more crafters out there. And the economy is fine. With people buying up reagents for macroing, buying housing, even sinking gold into player run towns -- the economy isn't bad whatsoever. They could also implement another way to drain some gold out of the economy with player run/sponsored events such as CTFs or 1vs1s for fun, with no trophies handed out.

So what you're saying is, new players won't want to play because they can't 7x overnight like everyone else has.

Best post from you yet. And as for lack of community? Orc guild just started up here, and with Kingdom of Ascalon i'm sure there are going to be some nice player invasions/battles in the near future. I personally think i'm going to set up a player run town soon, to add to that equation.

Why not let people play the way they want? Even though you can run multiple clients here, no one is forcing you to do so. Why not go enjoy the UO like you remember and will we will enjoy the UO the way we remember.

Right. I highly doubt anyone is provoking in Destard while stealing from you on another character in Brit, most of the thieves are pretty much their mainly played characters.

This game is about interaction with others.

Why would I want to play normally when you have every possible character macroed up and are playing at an extreme advantage. It basically forces me to do so as well.

I feel like i'm repeating myself because the same thing keeps being brought up -- interaction with others? There have been lots of Order/Chaos fights lately, everytime I go to a dungeon I see someone/fresh monster corpses, and player run towns & orc clan building up. Plenty of interaction. Noone is macroing up 15 hardcore pvp characters either.

Such as giving yourself a crosshealer......using a thief and a blue gatemage to steal off other players (if the thief dies the gatemage grabs the loot from his body, gates the thief to chaos shrine, the thief comes back and goes right back to stealing =/)

This is the only problem I see with multiclienting, though i've only seen 2-3 people being this lame. Easy fix -- bank in a different town, or get yourself a lockable box.

or having a red on hand that your pvmer can gate in (to kill any blues who try to come to "your" spawn)

I don't take the time to switch to another character, neither will anyone else who wants the spawn/loot bad enough.


All said and done, in my opinion multiclienting does not hurt T2A accuracy. I also had used 3 accounts back then with 2 computers next to eachother. As I'm sure many others did.

The main complaints I see in this thread are worried about crafting and player ineraction. Which the server has absolutely no problems with from what I can tell.

[Thor]

I think the biggest issue with player interaction would come from a less poplulated shard. I played on Atlantic, then Chessie and so you couldn't hunt without meeting 5 new people. As far as trades go, I've hardly EVERY seen anyone selling in person, it's all through vendors.

I can see where you're coming from on the economy side. It's not easy to make a fisherman who will do well financially (which was definately possible back in T2A). At the same time, if you train up the harder skills you will be able to make a handsome bit of change (like Kylock and Coffee, whom 50% of all the gold I've ever made has gone to).

And there are a lot of players who as they get wealthy won't be spending time running to every mage shop buying up regs to make recalls/heals/whatever. As people get wealthy they will spend money on things they COULD do so that they can spend their time doing what they WANT to do.

Edit: In regards to the client issue, I would still play either way. It would just be a bit different. The only problem is that a lot of people have more than 5 chars they would want to keep. Not to mention, the external IP is logged the same from each connection. Not sure if they would be able to get around that. The IRC server the shard uses has a limit based on the same sort of thing, and one of the admins mentioned that it would be anyone on my router. I'm assuming the same rule applies.

Assuming this is right, Derrick/staff have to decide if it's really my wife/brother/mother/illegitmate child playing or if it's me. What if I have multiple personalities?

Another Edit: Also, the appeal of T2A for me is PvP. Everything I do is so I can afford PvP. 1 client would DEFINATELY hinder this, for what is being suggested as the "True T2A". Yes, the true T2A had more people selling recall scrolls at the bank, but it also had more people.

[Coffee]

Plenty of people multi-cliented back in the day. The only difference here is that those who wish to multi-client don't have to shell out an extra $10/per account. Some people take advantage of this feature, some do not. It all depends on your playstyle.

I don't quite understand the crafter/economy argument whatsoever. Yes, there is less in-game interaction/trading on here than on OSI, but to reiterate what has already been said there are FAR fewer players on here than there were on say Catskills or Atlantic. With a low population, I have no desire whatsoever to hang out at the Brit smith shop taking an order every 2 hours or so. That just doesn't seem like a very fun experience. Rather, people with special requests or bulk orders can instead contact me via IRC, and we can then take care of those wonderful in-game exchanges.

The ratio of players/crafters is still extremely small, regardless of however many accounts people use. We have slow gain here, and all of the crafting skills require a tremendous amount of resources/gold to reach GM. Think of how many players are on here, and then think of how many of those players have GM mules.

When it comes down to it, limiting the number of accounts available won't have any major affect on someone's playstyle in that regard. Those who want to make a crafter/mule, will go ahead and make that character.


As far as macroing characters goes, yes it does yield an advantage there. However, it seems like you're more-so complaining about AFK macroing in general. Again, everyone will play the game in whatever method suits them. If you don't like macroing, then don't macro your characters. If you like macroing, then macro your characters.


I think Kylock covered most of the general multi-client issues you seem to have.


Regardless, my answer to your question is this: players have invested time in other characters.

Overall, this is a change that should've taken place much earlier. It is too late for it now. If you were to decide to limit the number of accounts in any fashion, whatever the method, it would certainly irritate one party -- whether it be your older/established players, or the new/incoming ones.

[Onslaught]

TLDR

[platy]

i'm with ironfist: we're not paying to play here, it's all just extra time we have to devote to mmorpgs.. people come to Freeshards to play chars they never tried, PVP with big guilds and old friends, some people come to Freeshards to just farm everything and "dominate" the economy..

whatever you play for, it will always help to have access to multiple chars at one time, and I disagree that this game is intended for interraction.. people can play shards without talking to anyone- ever.. [I know, i'm doing this on half the chars i made on this server]

It's agreed that Siege Perilous had something pretty intriging on their hands, but if everyone was only given one char, the entire shard would be either: a. TankMage b. Tamer or c. Provo/Carto ... - all depending on what you came here for (pvpers make tanks, trammies make tamers, and RP'ers/monsterhunters might make provos) Why would someone make a smith/mule if they can only play one char?

[Hemperor]

Kylock, I won't even bother quoting your post for several reasons. One, I don't have 5 hours to spare and two, I think your arguement is pretty weak.

You've pretty much danced around every point we made or reply to each one with something totally irrelevant. What the hell do the Orcs and Ascalon have to do with multiclienting?

You also mention that you really don't enjoy crafting, but thanks to being able to macro 3 people at once, you have a smith! Awesome!. I think I will make one right now too, that way no one has to buy armor and can make their own. This is what we mean by unbalancing the economy, it's not just about gold numbers, it's about trades and the "market" (like an actual economy)

The risk we are talking about doesn't really have too much to do with PKs, if you're in destard and die, how easy is it for you to jump on your other character, res yourself,and not have to worry about your other char stealing all your shit? Pretty freaking easy.

Anyways, I just woke up, I could go on forever on your post, but I got shit to do.

[benny-]

I mentioned this briefly in my last reply, but what about a compromise here....allow multiple accounts so that players can keep their existing characters, additional housing, etc., but eliminate multiclienting by only allowing one connection per IP?

[Hemperor]

I mentioned this briefly in my last reply, but what about a compromise here....allow multiple accounts so that players can keep their existing characters, additional housing, etc., but eliminate multiclienting by only allowing one connection per IP?

That is pretty much what it would have to be. I don't see why people should be building 3 characters at once. It really does ruin the fun.

If they can't enjoy UO without 3 clients on, I guess they just don't remember the way it was.

And you can make the arguement that SOME people were able to do this back then, I'm sure it was a 1 in 1000 ratio and I highly doubt most of you did it. It wasn't like on here where every single person is.

[Derrick]

I mentioned this briefly in my last reply, but what about a compromise here....allow multiple accounts so that players can keep their existing characters, additional housing, etc., but eliminate multiclienting by only allowing one connection per IP?

That is pretty much what it would have to be. I don't see why people should be building 3 characters at once. It really does ruin the fun.

If they can't enjoy UO without 3 clients on, I guess they just don't remember the way it was.

And you can make the arguement that SOME people were able to do this back then, I'm sure it was a 1 in 1000 ratio and I highly doubt most of you did it. It wasn't like on here where every single person is.

There is currently a client per IP restriction, but this cannot be set to one. Multiple clients from a single IP doesn't mean that there is only one real person behind that IP.