The Alt problem. *solution possibly*

[Tourniquet]

Let's talk about alts. No not separate accounts that have different labor pools. I'm talking same account alts and how they interact with the game currently.

With suggested solutions at the bottom of the post for each.

If suggestion is ignored look at this as a resource page on how to abuse your alts.

1. Scarecrows 16x16 question. We all know how it goes you do the quest chain you get yourself a fancy new scarecrow 16x16 plot you can slam down in your favorite zone. We also know that alts are the easiest way to get more scarecrows for free basically just do it again on your alts. Odds are character creation restrictions will be a thing pre auroria where you can only have one character until it opens up in more recent discussions that isn't set in stone So those of you who want to create alts for the easy 50 gilda and also the free easy 16x16 prior to auroria will not be able too do so. Unlucky. note you can only have 2 unbuilt per account

2. Honor. We know how this goes aswell, did GR/CR on your main already today? Why not log over on your alt and just do it again. I mean why not since we're getting a gross amount of honor. Already so much honor why do we need too do this?..... Yeah yeah I know what you're thinking But Agi you don't NEED too run another alt for MORE honor well, unfortunately if you are trying to minmax if you can do something for even the smallest gains you'll do it. Rip.

3. Prestige. Another situation where alts can come in handy, now I can't recall exact days but I think its 3 days for each gem. So instead of being able to get one gem a day you'll be able to potentially get, lets say you have 2 alts. You'll be able to get a grand total of 3 gems every three days. Not too bad right? OH almost forgot, you guys remember those pesky costumes and undies? yeah but agi they're not being added according to the daru's To clarify they said they have no intention of adding them at this time that doesn't mean later down the road they will not be added........ Why does that matter? Glad you asked misagon crystals can also be bought and with your main/2 alts you'll be WELL prepped for when they come out and you can buy them at 10 prestige each. You'll be able to potentially max out a costumes in no time at all!


4. Pvp interactions. Okay so speaking from experience on this one as something else I've also abused through and through let me lay out some situations for you, Leviathan is up instead of driving out there why not just put an alt out there and log in just to scout it out every so often? Nah doesn't seem too busted right? Right how about you and your guild are at DGS and fighting at Ynystere DGS and you guys got wiped and they're on their boats heading to freedich, they're already well ahead of you and beat you for the content nothing you can do right? Wrong luckily for your guild you made the 300 IQ play to park your alt in a random spot on freedich and now you're logging over and flaring your guild over to head them off. You start a fight with them completely caught off guard with packs on their backs and just chew them up and spit them out and turn in the packs for yourself. GG, this can also happen on a small scale say trade runs and such if planned out properly.


Why am I telling you all this? What is the point of telling us that? Well there was a discussion that took place that was a little concerning that creates some frustrating gameplay scenarios.


Referring too the scarecrows and land situation. The discussion broke down too asking about the amount of alts we'll have and as mentioned before they're talking about locking the idea of alts until auroria comes out. Which means you can't get your extra scarecrows and such until 14 days INTO the game launch. This frustrated me as it would others.........


So it got me thinking and it dawned on me. Do we need alts? NOW HOLD UP BEFORE YOU GET THE PITCHFORK AND RIOT HEAR ME OUT, I think we can solve some gameplay issues here.


Lets talk about two IN GAME FIXES for the lack of alts
1. I lose warehouse storage from my alts! - Solution is craft storage chests and you can also mail yourself.
2. But I lose out on honor! Well the honor is already juiced as it is so the need to bring alts to CR/GR is irrelevant you get that bonus honor natively that you would otherwise with an alt. Thanks daru's.

Now for some features Daru's could tinker with and fix.
1. 16x16/8x8 will now give you TWO of each, by doing this will create a need for the player to farm gilda to invest into those stellar scarecrow farms that they're adding.
2. Specialization prof has a cap, they could either remove this cap entirely or add another resource like the spec snowflake to push it past cap.
3. Prestige could be tinkered with aswell and maybe give a little bit more per daily, not as important but doable

Removing alts would also remove the strange Pvp interactions that could be seen as unfair and abusive

Now that is just a small portion of things you could do. Its not everything but I made this post to get an idea of what everyone thinks about it since it was a really hot topic earlier. So this post isn't completely flushed out. Suggestions on how to either make this work or possibly tweak the idea of locking alts. I'm not a fan of putting alts behind a paywall to any degree since the idea of this server is to replicate 3.0 and also putting the hammer down on P2W. That's all I got boys. For now.

 

[Sparklingtips]

@Blondie Your opinion is requested in this thread

 

[Ulfnaor]

Imo, one main and one alt is all people should need. Long deletion timers already prevent people from getting more than one farm design per week, a single labor pool prevent hard land baroning and having one alt as a scout isn't that many and would be offered to everyone. It'd allow people to have more professions too, if they so desired (not that I think people really need or will go for many 230k profs). As for honor, if someone wants to farm two distinct characters at two distinct times, jesus, be my guest. That seems fucking awful, especially on a x2 pve honor and x4 pvp honor server. Ten kills net you more honor than all of CR.

Limiting our accounts to two slots would allow for some customization while keeping the worst stuff at bay. In short, I think it'd be a good compromise.

 

[Tourniquet]

Imo, one main and one alt is all people should need. Long deletion timers already prevent people from getting more than one farm design per week, a single labor pool prevent hard land baroning and having one alt as a scout isn't that many and would be offered to everyone. It'd allow people to have more professions too, if they so desired (not that I think people really need or will go for many 230k profs). As for honor, if someone wants to farm two distinct characters at two distinct times, jesus, be my guest. That seems fucking awful, especially on a x2 pve honor and x4 pvp honor server. Ten kills net you more honor than all of CR.

Limiting our accounts to two slots would allow for some customization while keeping the worst stuff at bay. In short, I think it'd be a good compromise.

I actually wouldn't be opposed too this suggestion either, I also don't want the second character behind a pay wall or even any kind of weird restriction of waiting 14 days for auroria just seems ridiculous

 

[Blauauge]

They could also limit the alts lvl to 1 and gate everything that they dont want alts to fk with with a min lvl requirement >1. This way the Alt would still be storage but cant do anything of importance.

 

[Blondie]

@Blondie Your opinion is requested in this thread

Haha you asked for it!

Torniquet makes some good points, which I'd never really considered before.

Point 1. Yes, I'm guilty of using an Alt to get a second Scarecrow Farm . But it wasn't something I could do easily, in fact, I couldn't even get my first Scarecrow until I'd joined a guild and I had their help.

I could be wrong, but I don't think there's a safe 'Cargo Ship' in this version of the game and without that ship it's incredibly difficult to complete that quest. I think this will go double for AA Classic, as this server seems to have attracted a much more 'predatory' player base. I suspect there won't be a lot of players who can actually finish that quest (at least, not without help and not until much later in the game).

Note: This is a nice business opportunity for someone. I remember that there used to be boat owners on my old server, who charged a fee to ferry players across the sea to complete their Scarecrow Quest.

Point 2: Farming Honor. Yep, I'm totally guilty of this. I love farming mobs for loot. So while I'm waiting for my crops to grow, I go monster hunting. While I'm at it, I complete all the Honor Quests in each zone, then I buy Honor Gems and sell them on the Auction House. Again, it's another small source of income for Carebears like me who don't actually need the Honor for themselves.

Points 3 and 4: I can't really comment on these as they have no relevance to me.

Anyway, I'm trying really hard not to sound selfish here. But if I was restricted to just one character, I'm not sure if I'd want to play on this server. Alts are a way of life for me.

I usually have several different Alts that I play at different times. My main character is usually my Farmer and Crafter, who very rarely leaves the safe zones. Then I have my 'Monster Hunter' this character is usually deleted once she reaches level 55 and I create a new one, so that I can start monster farming all over again (yes, I know, I'm weird! But it's something I enjoy ).

Then I have a bunch of mules. But Sparklingtips has come up with a workaround for that, involving the use of Storage Chests. It's not ideal, but it's doable.

So for me personally, I feel I'll need at least 3 character slots. One for my 'main', one for my 'hunter' and one for a new character to start playing when my 'hunter' reaches level 55 and has to wait 7 days for deletion.

But that's just me

 

[Beerson]

So the biggest problem with this is you'd be completely removing a renewable source of 16x and Gazebo farms.

3) The Prestige feels like it should be addressed, I don't have access to test and my memory is spotty, so I'm not certain what necessities Prestige shop has in our version, but I do remember grinding Prestige on 4 characters AND buying misagon crystals from others.
It would be good if someone with test access shared screens of Prestige shop, also clarification from Darus whether undies/costumes are on or off the table in future would help. (Personally I like the horizontal progression undies and costumes offer, I think they were a good addition, one of few)

Point 1. Yes, I'm guilty of using an Alt to get a second Scarecrow Farm . But it wasn't something I could do easily, in fact, I couldn't even get my first Scarecrow until I'd joined a guild and I had their help.

I could be wrong, but I don't think there's a safe 'Cargo Ship' in this version of the game and without that ship it's incredibly difficult to complete that quest. I think this will go double for AA Classic, as this server seems to have attracted a much more 'predatory' player base. I suspect there won't be a lot of players who can actually finish that quest (at least, not without help and not until much later in the game).

Note: This is a nice business opportunity for someone. I remember that there used to be boat owners on my old server, who charged a fee to ferry players across the sea to complete their Scarecrow Quest.

There is a sister quest to that one, giving reasonable rewards (I think gilda or something) for ferrying a newbie to get their farm quest done, I don't really remember live 3.0 since that was like a decade ago, but on AR we were more then happy to jump on a chance to escort a newbie or an alt for this mission, typically there would be 2-3 players escorting just to get in on the quest.

 

[Blondie]

So the biggest problem with this is you'd be completely removing a renewable source of 16x and Gazebo farms.

3) The Prestige feels like it should be addressed, I don't have access to test and my memory is spotty, so I'm not certain what necessities Prestige shop has in our version, but I do remember grinding Prestige on 4 characters AND buying misagon crystals from others.
It would be good if someone with test access shared screens of Prestige shop, also clarification from Darus whether undies/costumes are on or off the table in future would help. (Personally I like the horizontal progression undies and costumes offer, I think they were a good addition, one of few)


There is a sister quest to that one, giving reasonable rewards (I think gilda or something) for ferrying a newbie to get their farm quest done, I don't really remember live 3.0 since that was like a decade ago, but on AR we were more then happy to jump on a chance to escort a newbie or an alt for this mission, typically there would be 2-3 players escorting just to get in on the quest.

I think you're right, I vaguely remember that quest. I remember everybody on the Cargo Boat making a Raid to take advantage of that quest. But I can't remember if that quest is available in 3.0. Does anybody know what patch introduced the Cargo Ship? Was it 3.0 or later?

 

[Beerson]

I think you're right, I vaguely remember that quest. I remember everybody on the Cargo Boat making a Raid to take advantage of that quest. But I can't remember if that quest is available in 3.0. Does anybody know what patch introduced the Cargo Ship? Was it 3.0 or later?

The quest was added with the rework to scarecrow quest, the cargo ship was added with the rework of trade routes, I think that was in 3.5

I'm pretty sure that if Cargo ship was in 3.0, we'd already be rioting here to force the Daru to remove that sht.

 

[Eggwarden Dolbu]

3.0 does not have cargo ship, if it did I would have blown that damn boat up already...never deserved to see the day of light in AA

 

[Sovereign]

This post is almost entirely based for pvp aspect of the game with no consideration for the pve players. You mention people do the MSQ for the 16x16 and 50 gilda are getting it for "free" when we know it takes time and yet when talking about the honor gain

"But Agi you don't NEED too run another alt for MORE honor well, unfortunately if you are trying to minmax if you can do something for even the smallest gains you'll do it. Rip."

why all of a sudden we have all the time in the world?

We are limited to two unbuilt's which is account wide if people want to re-do the msq for another 16x16 or 50 Gilda to get better housing let them.

limiting 1 character pre auroria isn't a solution either ur alienating care bares only method for gilda and forcing them to pvp when they aren't here for that. Alts are alot more useful to manage ur houses/crafters which can be all over the map not even at ur own land, on a public crafting house

Mailing for storage isn't the solution they expire in 30 days and yet they have no warning to let you know there about to expire and they aren't ordered from newest to oldest, forget a mail? ur item just went into the void

Removing qol and income for a f2p server (specialization crystals, skill savers, storage expantions, character slots, DRIP) because people will wait in the ocean for predetermined spawns in mind boggling.

 

[Beerson]

This post is almost entirely based for pvp aspect of the game with no consideration for the pve players. You mention people do the MSQ for the 16x16 and 50 gilda are getting it for "free" when we know it takes time and yet when talking about the honor gain

I don't see how this is for pvp and after reading your post, you did not provide any points to support that, strawman argument...

limiting 1 character pre auroria isn't a solution either ur alienating care bares only method for gilda and forcing them to pvp when they aren't here for that. Alts are alot more useful to manage ur houses/crafters which can be all over the map not even at ur own land, on a public crafting house

Have you forgotten this game is about economy? Just buy the gilda like everyone did in old archeage. This part is likely a positive because it stops people from alt running to tank gilda price value.

Mailing for storage isn't the solution they expire in 30 days and yet they have no warning to let you know there about to expire and they aren't ordered from newest to oldest, forget a mail? ur item just went into the void

Pure skill issue. If you can't get chests in two months and or manage to do refresh on mails every 29d, you suck too much at this, don't blame the game.

Removing qol and income for a f2p server (specialization crystals, skill savers, storage expantions, character slots, DRIP) because people will wait in the ocean for predetermined spawns in mind boggling.

I don't follow, and I'm not even drunk yet.

 

[Sparklingtips]

I don't see how this is for pvp and after reading your post, you did not provide any points to support that, strawman argument...

Have you forgotten this game is about economy? Just buy the gilda like everyone did in old archeage. This part is likely a positive because it stops people from alt running to tank gilda price value.

Pure skill issue. If you can't get chests in two months and or manage to do refresh on mails every 29d, you suck too much at this, don't blame the game.


I don't follow, and I'm not even drunk yet.

I'm trying not to put my own comments on this thread since I've already talked through my points in the conversations leading up to this thread being created and most of my points revolved around how PvE players will view this change so I'm sitting back to let them get their points out instead of trying to talk for them. However I will say that the conversations that were had leading up to this almost completely revolved around why alts are bad for PvP and Sovereign was present for those conversations so it may seem like a strawman to you since you're missing the context (which is fair and why I'm writing to add context) but I will come in and say that he's not wrong and this is a pretty much entirely PvP driven change request. Things like scarecrow and honor farming were tacked on as extra reasons why alt characters are bad in those discussions.

 

[Ogt]

I'm too lazy to run anything else than 1 extra account, if even that, just to song me and spend its labor for farming stuff, let alone use a toon on my main account for honor or whatever, so I don't really care bout MY alts. With that said tho, alts are important for the general economy as, alongside tons of other things, they also introduce more farms into the server.

-Farms being the source of 90% of the certain/safe goldmaking methods. They are VERY important for the health of the server and the economy, as otherwise there's gonna be limited supply of AH mats, with a huge demand, making prices skyrocket,shortages etc. Not even gonna get into the real estate market aspect, but if you remove alts, then forget about it, everyone will hug their farms close to their chest and never part with them.

-Without second/third+ accounts for alts, we'll all have to do the good old "make toon on main account, get farm, sell to main, delete and repeat next week". It's super easy and quick, but also requires effort and time taken away from progressing your main toon.

-As OP stated, the remaining negatives of alts, are that people can use them to camp/check spawns, grind extra honor/prestige.

I do get the points mentioned in the OP, and they're valid to an extend, but completely removing alts will kill the server as there simply won't be enough farms to accommodate the needs of a healthy population, and I don't think spamming extra farms on the mains will be a solution anyways.

Per my first point, you need a steady stream of farms into the server. You got your PvErs that will want to sweat farming 24/7, the ones that'll look into buying farms from others, and find ways to generate more(through alts). If you remove alts, they'll be cucked and unable to create extra farms, and they won't be able to buy any as they'll be limited and noone would be selling em. Which then snowballs in less land for mats, less AH listings, etc etc. Sure, you could get around it by buffing the yields, one potato eye giving you 500 potatos or some other buff, but I don't think it's good for the server.

Which ties in with my 2nd point, how the alts acquire those farms. You need to level your alt and get him through an easy but tedious questline to get the farms. If the darus limit it to 2 toons per account as @Ulfnaor suggested, that means that you gotta decide between keeping your alt for the honor/prestige grind, proficiencies blah blah blah, or wait out the deletion timer to make a new one for new farms. Pretty fair tradeoff imo, which also gives everyone the choice of what to do, doesn't limit/force them.

Thirdly, the honor grind won't be an issue. We're already getting tons of honor, the alt extra won't mind much. Prestige could be tinkered with as mentioned in the OP to make it on par with honor. The PvP/camping abuse is what I don't see as an issue. I've been in both sides of it a shitton of times, and personally, I think it adds to the game instead of taking away, it creates more PvP situations that only the people that lose the fight will complain about





tl;dr
Ulf's suggestion to limit it to 2 toons per account is the best call imo.Then it's down to each individual to choose between grinding extra currencies on that alt, or delete for more farms. It gives people the choice of what to do, not forcing them down one path or the other

 

[Beerson]

...However I will say that the conversations that were had leading up to this almost completely revolved around why alts are bad for PvP and Sovereign was present for those conversations so it may seem like a strawman to you since you're missing the context (which is fair and why I'm writing to add context) but I will come in and say that he's not wrong and this is a pretty much entirely PvP driven change request...

When I was last playing, on AR, aside from PVP and events, I did my fair share of lifeskilling (crafting and feeding an epic erenor scepter from ground up with mostly resources I produced myself) and lazing around my Mansion and connected land, so I think I have very good grasp on the PVE side of the game.

I see no PVE specific detriments to this, other then Proficiency limits that should honestly just be removed completely, which was already addressed in part in the initial post.

I see PVE benefits in this, not having to manage multiple alts sounds like a massive QoL improvement, not being able to abuse alts for gilda stars and free storage sounds like a positive change to me too, and if we remove/limit alts, I'm certain that the Darus will make it easier to obtain storage chests to compensate, maybe give us an Otherworld chest along with the 16x

If PVE players have specific issues with this, they should express them, saying "this is bad for PVE" or "this is PVP focused change" holds the same weight as saying "I just don't like it"

 

[ramz]

let the people that want to spend time leveling alts to do all this shit do it. just limit it to a certain number of slots per account so its not excessive. fully removing something that's always been a fairly integral part of the game is just going to raise new annoyances you like just as little.

 

[Hamilton]

I think limited Alts should not be a thing because of the pure amount of time investment concentrated on one character is paramount to multiple characters. Honor trading will be inefficient, because the amount needed will be easily gotten from 2x honor, if someone does any other events like CR or GR they risk missing world bosses. Land is a legitimate consideration, I think mitigating will not result in much change as you can get a lot of land fast already, and with the new housing zones there’s plenty to go around with the lack of mega alt farmers.

 

[Tourniquet]

let the people that want to spend time leveling alts to do all this shit do it. just limit it to a certain number of slots per account so its not excessive. fully removing something that's always been a fairly integral part of the game is just going to raise new annoyances you like just as little.

My biggest issue is that too do so as Aguru mentioned he's going to prevent players from having alts right away and make us wait 14 days for auroria launch, which I think is completely unnecessary and if he does that he's only seemingly willing to give us only ONE alt on the account and make us pay for the rest with the possibility of unlocking a 3rd character slot at 50 or 55. That's all TBD but I REALLY don't like the idea of being choked out of more content during the 14 days.

Those of you that do not remember but back on reckoning/vengance 4 slots + 2 with expansion slots.

The reason for the creation of this post is because they pitched that they wanted to make it where you get 1 character slot ONLY then once auroria opens up you'll receive another and then you'll have to pay for the rest. Which means for 14 days you'll have to wait to get your second scarecrow and wait 14 days to farm up more gilda on your alt for your clipper potentially or another house as you're using your main gilda to work towards higher cost designs.

Making us wait 14 days and on top of that making us pay for the extra 2 slots is NOT in the spirit of this server that they have been pitching too us. Why do we have to pay for something that was natively given too us back in 3.0 originally? Strange.

If they don't see alts as an issue whatsoever give us our character slots and don't restrict us at all. If you're going to restrict us then make it one character per server. Restricting it is 100% unnecessary and perceived as predatory practice given that AGAIN 4 character slots are NATIVE to the game.

 

[Stinky Pants]

The only real degenerate thing I see from having an alt slot is placing it somewhere to flare. All the bonuses for doing events, missions, etc take time away from being on main as you cant play both at the same time so atleast there is a tradeoff.

Even the flair thing you have to have it ready at the spot you want it with enough guild prestige to buy a flare. (probably multiple so you dont have move it back out after one use.) You also can't flare yourself so there needs to be another used after waiting for the person to swap characters depending on how time sensitive this may not really be an option to wait.

It has been easier to flare with alts in the past and it hasnt been a huge issue.

 

[Sovereign]

My biggest issue is that too do so as Aguru mentioned he's going to prevent players from having alts right away and make us wait 14 days for auroria launch, which I think is completely unnecessary and if he does that he's only seemingly willing to give us only ONE alt on the account and make us pay for the rest with the possibility of unlocking a 3rd character slot at 50 or 55. That's all TBD but I REALLY don't like the idea of being choked out of more content during the 14 days.

Those of you that do not remember but back on reckoning/vengance 4 slots + 2 with expansion slots.

The reason for the creation of this post is because they pitched that they wanted to make it where you get 1 character slot ONLY then once auroria opens up you'll receive another and then you'll have to pay for the rest. Which means for 14 days you'll have to wait to get your second scarecrow and wait 14 days to farm up more gilda on your alt for your clipper potentially or another house as you're using your main gilda to work towards higher cost designs.

Making us wait 14 days and on top of that making us pay for the extra 2 slots is NOT in the spirit of this server that they have been pitching too us. Why do we have to pay for something that was natively given too us back in 3.0 originally? Strange.

If they don't see alts as an issue whatsoever give us our character slots and don't restrict us at all. If you're going to restrict us then make it one character per server. Restricting it is 100% unnecessary and perceived as predatory practice given that AGAIN 4 character slots are NATIVE to the game.

I don't agree with limiting characters for 14day's every one should get one free extra slot at launch and any more slots enabled after the 14days for purchase. It is a f2p server its unfair to want EVERYTHING given. Extra slots should be paid to help support the server its a one time purchase per slot. That being said I don't think they should cost too much