With a MMORPG this would be a rather pointless discussion.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/h/help.html

Can you tell me what is the fifth word in the introductory "What is Vendetta Online?" page linked above?

Well i don't have any real alts. But I don't just because i'm to lazy to make some.

I think having alt is a good idea though. This game is somewhat about RP.

Atlast, JesBes has some sense!

borrowed from someone else. has to be.

;-)

(this sign of semi-politenes and openness graciously provided on loan from someone else)

Pointsman, that's a question for me?

Kat, I think you're not so much against alts as you are the abuses that can sprout from them. The two that come to my mind are:

1) Spying/RP Lying (ala Borb)
2) Spam guilds/characters (ala [VOID] Vendetta Online Ingame Dramarama)

I'm against those, personally. But 1 will always happen, unless we restrict characters somehow. And 2 will happen as long as we're all bored of doing anything else in VO.

As a personal suggestion, take a hint from WoW's PVP server: Allow a person to join only one faction with ALL their characters. If they want to delete all their characters and make a new other faction character, fine by me.

Moldy, you hit the nail on the head.

I don't care how many alts one has, as long as he can keep his chars separate. But since this is NOT bound to happen, no matter what, due to the inevitable bad apples, then I prefer a total restriction (like the one I have in my game), rather than giving even the slightest chance for abuse.

I can envision countless ways for this alt frenzy to be totally incompatible with my own idea of a MMORPG, as Vendetta Online sanctimoniously bills itself. Just off the top of my head, while bored to death at work:

1) Your guild organizes a trade run, you learn the route, disconnect, enter with your pirate alt, and exploit the info to disrupt the convoy.

2) You see that your actual char has no chances to win anything in the NW because his nation is seriously outnumbered. Hop in the alt whose faction has most (or best) players and raise your chances.

3) Itanis (or Sercos) are coordinating an attack in BS/BP/B12/CTC, whatever. Gather as many details as possible with your Itani (or Serco) char before switching to your Serco (or Itani) alt and sling your "RPG loyalty" down the crapper.

4) Put a spy in every guild, and learn the trade/roid maps from TGFT, take advantage of weapon cache discounts from SCAR and PA, access VPR/CLM/ITAN training session, and so on and so on, and basically do whatever you want.

5) Use your alts to build a fake, sad, one-man guild. Yes, Jest, I'm looking at you: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/guildinfo/100/

6) Learn the position of one of your alts' buddy who doesn't know you're also his worst enemy with another alt, who can then "find" you even if you're well hidden.

In a word, having access to inside info with alts from outside is the best recipe for RPG disaster. Most people cannot refrain from taking advantage of every diminutive loophole they can exploit, and you could run a Constellation thru this loophole.

Hitting the problem where it counts (the wallet) is the least evil way, IMHO, to fix it.

But, again, devs aren't interested in the least to plug it. So why bothering demonstrating how wicked the whole system is, when you can fight for faction/nation/group/guild/person X and against it/him/her at the same time?

Things are not so gloomy.

The initiator of this thread is a counterexample, and is representative of a good deal of players who keep their alts distinct simply because it is more fun that way.

There is another important fraction of players who openly don't keep their alts separate. If you bring them on a team effort, you know what you are doing.

Tricks 1, 2 and 3 are often used in the opposite way, that is to reinforce the weakest side or to bring fun to an otherwise event likely boring due to the lack of serious opposition.

There are more than one discussion threads in the forum about trick 4. I believe that if you can achieve that, you're a hell of a role-player.

Trick 5 in your list doesn't affect the other players' gaming experience in the slightest way.

Trick 6 is bad, but easy to detect and prevent if it is really exploited.

All in all they are minor issues compared to the possibility to see the world and players community from different eyes, which is the best side of a RP game.

If you give your players the possibility to spoil the game, they will. Maybe some of them won't, maybe some can rebalance things so that everyone can have a fair share of fun (the NW counterexample is a good one, thanks). But if there's a loophole, it's very naive to hope that players won't take advantage of it.

Demonstrated, time and again.

Relying on players good will in a competitive environment is a design error.

The problem is, if you only make it 1 character per account, then more people would have multiple accounts, and thus they could do most of the things you pointed out without having the 1 character online at any time limitation.

slime hit the nail on the head.

It's far better to have six alts that can only be online one at a time than six accounts of one character with all six online at once.

Although it would give Guild more money.... :P

Wait, Kat has a game? >.>

some players have two (or more?) accounts.

but that's life.

...At least, six accounts have the money factor, as deterrent. If one is SO determined as to pay six times as much to cheat, well, he would do it anyway. But at least John and Andy would have more resources to hire a new graphic artist or grunt programmer. :)

There are ways of finding out who is who for those who wish to know. There are certain times when sharing user information between guilds can be useful in determining who is who.

I think that there should be 1 char per account as well, at least that creates a (admittedly small) financial disincentive to lie/spy from one alt to another. It'll cost ya $10 a month to spy, then.

I share my account with my two kids. That's three base characters right there, plus an alt each. We cannot play at the same time (even tho we'd like to) because it's one account. If I had to pay $30/month to support three basic characters I'd go find another activity because money is tight for me these days.

No matter what system you have, someone will figure out a way to abuse it. I have an alt on the other team not for spying but because I wanted to experience both sides. Over time they have moved into activities that don't overlap (a fighter and a trader). I originally created the serco character back when there would be ten itani in b8 and zero serco, so I'd still get to fight. The serco character no longer looks for fights.

I have alts, they do stuff, and yes some of them are even violent, or spys. Yes some do over lap, no I don't feel this is a problem. Yes you are all ninnies.

/me waits for your comments in guild chat.

Really though, no one is going to be able to keep their alts separate I don't care who they are or how good of an RPer they believe them selfs to be. I've argued this many times and I've seen it first hand many times. Back in the day I used to be all over this game, I joked that if there was ever some thing that happened in the game I didn't know about it was because one of the devs was doing it. I was in every guild at one point or another (Save TGFT, mostly because I never wanted to trade or mine to get in, and I already have people in that could give me access to the forums.) and I've done just about every thing there is to do in the game twice.

My point is I've seen y'all when your not looking, I've been your confident, I've seen the image you like people to see, and the image you hide from people. Other then BLAK most people here only know a few of my alts, many of them are and will remain unnamed. For me it was a way to make an other wise unchallenging game (In all honesty lets face it the game in two years has undergone very few real big changes.) more challenging. It was a fun way to spend 10 bucks a month and relax after a day of RL.

Here are some things I have observed about the game, alts, and RP, over the years.

First off the game it's self while fun and entertaining lacks the player base to remain as dynamic as it could be. This I feel leads to alts being needed as a way of filling the void. Will this ever change? Maybe, right now the game needs to undergo some changes if it wants to ever draw a player base, because as I said before aside from a few changes and upgrades here and there the game is basically the same as it was when I first started playing. Which means players will very soon get board.

Second, alts have many rolls in the game and while I would never have a problem treating alts as different people one must always remember who the alt is. Let's go back to the golden days of BLAK, for a bit there we had Smittens alterego ninja dude in the guild. All fine and dandy, he wanted to be kept separate from smittens so what ever. But Smittens as every one knows has an ego about the same size as his mouth. For this reason we kept him in the dark about mostly every thing and in the end kicked him. So while I'm sure many people like to think if they change nations and names it makes them different, well I'm sorry but it doesn't. Your still the same person behind the screen with the same flaws and traits as you we're before, and your gonna retain information the same either way.

And lastly we come to RP, I'm a shitty writer no matter what people tell me but for some reason I'm told I happen to be one of the big RPers of VO. What ever, the fact is I've done it and I know some about it. In VO RP is hard to say the least, other then the back story the game it's self really gives you no immersion what so ever. RP with in the game is practically impossible, many ideas have been suggested to fix this over the years but as of yet as with many other things in the game this fact remains unchanged. In the end all you "great RPers" out there are nothing more then fan-boy writers this includes my self. All the RP happens here on the forums, very little of it can happen in game and this is because of the design of the game.

I was always sickened by people that would call them self's RPers in-game only to spout off random stuff on 100, or break char, or make up the rules as they went. The only person I ever knew that could do this right was Holden, and even he had to break char because of game limitations.

As for me I'm tired of waiting. I was gung-ho about this game forever, any time any one said some thing bad about the devs man I was there defending them, I logged hundreds of hours in game and out side of the game working to make it fun not only for my self but for every one else, it was my own little play ground that I was convinced was only going to get better. Only to be let down by over hyped update after over hyped update turning out to be buggy, or nothing really big, or just a minor cosmetic make over, while more and more of my friends left the game. Now after 8 months away from the player base I don't know half the people in game, RP even on the forums is hardly around, no good guilds are left to infiltrate. And the game is still the same as it was 8 months ago just with some of the bugs reworked and cooler ion storms.

So now your saying why bitch about this now, and why not just shut up and leave if you don't like it. Which is fine that's your right and for the next 6 years I've sworn to give my life defending it at least for you Americans if need be. I signed up 2004-11-24 and after all that time I've gotten to know some great people here in VO and have had a great time and I thought I at least owed it to those people to say my peace. So I guess this is my good bye at least for now. Y'all know me I'm a fuck the rules kind of guy so I refuse to make my own topic but rather highjack one that is ironically enough about alts.

So there you have it, good luck VO, till we meet again.

Yarr, Borby. Take care.